On the Beneficence of Censorship
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Arbeiten und Texte zu Slawistik ∙ Band 31 (eBook - Digi20-Retro) Lev Loseff On the Beneficence of Censorship Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature Verlag Otto Sagner München ∙ Berlin ∙ Washington D.C. Digitalisiert im Rahmen der Kooperation mit dem DFG-Projekt „Digi20“ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, München. OCR-Bearbeitung und Erstellung des eBooks durch den Verlag Otto Sagner: http://verlag.kubon-sagner.de © bei Verlag Otto Sagner. Eine Verwertung oder Weitergabe der Texte und Abbildungen, insbesondere durch Vervielfältigung, ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages unzulässig. «Verlag Otto Sagner» ist ein Imprint der Kubon & Sagner GmbH. Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access ARBEITEN UND TEXTE ZUR SLAVISTIK • 31 HERAUSGEGEBEN VON WOLFGANG KASACK Lev Loseff ON THE BENEFICENCE OF CENSORSHIP Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature 19 8 4 München • Verlag Otto Sagner in Kommission Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access 0004*009 г i - ׳ / ^ t fé . 1 1 Lev Loseff (1937), der Leningrad 1976 verlassen mußte und seit 1979 in Hanover, New Hampshire am Dartmouth College in den USA als Professor of Russian Language and Literature lehrt, hat u.a. Werke von E. Svarc, N. Olejnikov und M. Bulgakov herausgegeben. In seiner ersten großen Monographie “On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature” analysiert Loseff an Werken von Švarc, Sol- ženicyn, Evtušenko u.a. die aus der Auseinandersetzung mit der Zensur gebotenen stilistischen — auch bereichernden — Besonderheiten der modernen, in der Sowjetunion entstandenen russischen Literatur und veranschaulicht diese im Kontext von Werk, Autor und Epoche. Wolfgang Kasack Translated by lane Bobko CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Loseff, Lev: On the beneficence of censorship : Aesopian language in modem Russian literature / Lev Loseff. — München : Sagner, 1984. (Arbeiten und Texte zur Slavistik ;31) Einheitssacht.: Ezopov jazyk v novoj ìusskoj literature (engl.) NE: Losev, Lev; GT @ b y Lev Loseff Alle Rechte Vorbehalten ISSN 0173-2307 ISBN 3-87690-211-8 Gesamtherstellung Walter Kleikamp • Köln Printed in Germany f 3 JT 4 4 ^־ e Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access 00047009 “Да чем же это дело несообразное? Тут, кажется, ничего нет такого”. “ Это вам так кажется, что нет. А вот, на прошлой неделе, такой же был случай. Пришел чиновник та- ким же образом, как вы теперь пришли, принес записку, денег по расчету пришлось два рубля семь- десят три копейки, и все объявление состояло в том, что сбежал пудель черной шерсти. Кажется, что бы тут такое? А вышел пасквиль: пудель-то этот был казначей, не помню какого-то заведения”. Гоголь, “Нос” “But what makes ту business unreasonable? It wouldn’t seem to be anything of the sort.” “That’s the way you see it. But look here, the same thing happened last week. A civil servant came in exactly as you have now, brought a hand-written note, the charge came to two rubles and seventy-three copecks, and all he wanted to announce was that a black poodle had run away. Ask yourself, what could be wrong with that? But it turned out to be libel; that so-called poodle was the treasurer of some institution, I don’t remember which one.” Gogol, ,,TheNose” Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access ו־ י׳-v i י ^ ן и VM‘V ': -|0*גו \ t\ “' ^ ל' ״ י*! , ^ 1ļJ i > i־ѵт^Цг tfii&'ftf qr Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access 00047009 CONTENTS Preface ix PART ONE Chapter I. The Language in “Aesopian Language” 1 Chapter II. The Aesthetic Nature of Aesopian Language 23 1. Aesopian Language as a Metastylistic Phenomenon 23 2. The Aesopian Utterance’s Semantic Mechanism 29 3. The Requisite Property of the Aesopian Text: Ambivalence 34 4. Aesopian Language in the Light of Information Theory 42 5. Screens and Markers: The Fundamental Elements of Aesopian Language 50 Chapter III. A Typology of Aesopian Means 53 1. Aesopian Language and the Emotional Coloring of the Text 53 2. A Classification of Aesopian Devices 60 3. Aesopian “Genres” 62 4. Aesopian Language and the Intended Audience of the Text 84 5. The Poetics of Aesopian Language 86 PART TWO Chapter IV. Aesopian Language and Stratification of the Text (Ye. L. Shvarts, The Dragon, 1943) 125 Chapter V. Aesopian Language and the Suggestivity of the Text: Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Work on the “Watered-down” Version of the Novel The First Circle ( 1968) 143 Chapter VI. Aesopian Language and the Shaping of Individual Style (Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The White Snows Are Falling, 1969) 169 Chapter VII. Aesopian Language as a Factor in the Shaping of a Literary Genre (From the Experience of Children’s Literature) 193 CONCLUSION Chapter VIII. What Is the Need for Aesopian Language? 217 Appendices 231 Notes 247 Bibliography 267 Index 271 Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access Il r V i וי ! IT D . ו־■ . Ж л яЛ и -* » — < ļ י ■л il i *r и T&l ļ«Lgf Э1 L х * и ! » 4 0 Vi?' ■>r i ł-,; ו V.k Ł/ K ÎÏ -I׳I * t»M \;־ מ ן í»1 № ■ ^ í í j fŁ . 1 Ą ׳I I iitV ji f r u ì ! 1*®ЧФвГ nrr ^w!Awl/bw.«1ł »WB -fe ך Ф ' я *Ж* L. * rיי /1 tribJ•!' י יו: i . ! , « * 5 1 . * •ז - i ו ./**״dq ™4± ■יע:it>j 1 4 ; i ł i Ш я Щ ; ь x '׳<Г 4\ (ЯЙЕЗ!зг5?г• V e jf׳ лгпад•■^ Л• ' ■־- . i t . J : .Wfr וי x p £ *-*!»L р£^І..Г1‘(ф ÿgupir.i .;«ф ״ i ״ -״ I .׳ * ■ י Jfr1 > ! ׳.־<'•/־/•*■ ״ר &«j •ujv ן.A ruמזי ІГ-Л 1. _____ __________ ד. ~, • *W ■ t O U i II r i J I I II I . I Ü l I V. -V tjSļjļbksVĪ ЛV і t*4 ו ļ■ .״.In! In 1U», V УтііІ .г II v ---------- י A . Í L JS Л У ^dSS Ѵ I. ■IV LAItffctlJ ^׳ü<H^V0t»b1^Sc И!* ^ 4 ■ t l i «. ׳I Tv* ? Ш 0 Ь 1 ־ א' ГС1 ,ï«״Чкв?г ?׳׳*״ruin * ** <ך му. ì i f ì.. .*#^"׳־■ןזיע < Л י$*מ*נ¥ Ій wp.^ I rm '-j ״ 4*ף U i& r i x W JMV, ■ l i Ift «іѢ-lt -A Ï A W b « ■־**■V Ч1 ״ V| 4 Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access п и _ ••_ ■ J j 00047009 Preface For the two hundred and fifty-odd years of its existence modem Russian literature has been constantly under the thumb of state censorship. Naturally, therefore, the attention of histo- rians of Russian writing has always been drawn to various aspects of literature’s relations with censorship. Literary historians like Lemke and Yevgeniev-Maksimov, for example, have investigated different periods in the development of state censorship; or they have examined the influence of censorship on the strategy of literary journals and have studied the clashes of individual writers with the censorship; finally, they have posited endless interpretations of the encoded messages of individual works. Strictly speaking, from the era of Peter the Great on, the entire history of Russian literature is to a significant degree also the history of Russian censorship. (This would exclude, however, Soviet literary-historical writing on the Soviet period: the very fact of the existence of Soviet censorship has there been censored out.) There is one area, however, which has received far less than its share of attention: rarely has the relationship between litera- ture and censorship been studied on the aesthetic plane; there has been scant consideration, that is, of the censored text’s artistic specificity and the special nature of the relations among author, censor , and reader. These relations, among other things, take on an obvious signif- icance if one wishes to inject scholarly objectivity into a discus- sion of the fundamental question of Russian literature’s unique national character, if one is interested in a serious typological approach rather than that chronic speculation on the humanism, prophesying, and preachiness “ peculiar” to Russian writers. ix Lev Loseff - 9783954794355 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:17:00AM via free access Unfortunately, there is no end of essays written on the level of the dilettante’s axiom that Russian literature is the more pro- phetic, English literature the more witty. It has in fact been recognized in Russian cultural circles for more than a century that the aesthetic changes in a literature under the influence of censorship have a specific character. First in the spoken language of the intelligentsia and then in criticism and literature itself, this wide range of observed phe- nomena received the special designation “ Aesopian language.” The present work seeks to describe “ Aesopian language” as a special literary system, one whose structure allows interaction between author and reader at the same time that it conceals inadmissable content from the censor. The work has seven chapters, with a summation in the eighth. Chaper One outlines the area of investigation and provides a history of “ Aesopian language” and its critics. The following two chapters take up general theoretical aspects of “ Aesopian language” : there, in particular, an attempt is made to uncover the structure of the Aesopian text and to classify its component literary devices. The analysis of actual literary texts in Chapters Four, Five, Six, and Seven demonstrates the various paths to the realization of Aesopian aesthetics. This is also the place to give notice of a special circumstance which necessarily limits the content of this work.