Art After Philosophy
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Art after Philosophy Art after Philosophy Boris Pasternak’s Early Prose Elena Glazov-Corrigan The Ohio State University Press | Columbus Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Corrigan, Elena. Art after philosophy : Boris Pasternak’s early prose / Elena Glazov-Corrigan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1206-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8142-1206-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8142-9308-9 (cd) 1. Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890–1960—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PG3476.P27Z654 2013 891.78'4208—dc23 2012025253 Cover design by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe Type set in Adobe Minion Pro and New Caledonia Text design by Juliet Williams Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To my daughters, Maria and Sarah Contents Abbreviations x Acknowledgments xii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Character of Philosophical Influence in Pasternak’s Early Prose 12 1.1 Safe Conduct: Farewell to music and the soul’s stretched wings 16 1.2 Seeing the fate of philosophy “in the flesh” 20 1.3 Between Leibniz and Neo-Kantianism: Archival data and Boris Pasternaks Lehrjahre 24 1.4 The multi-voicedness of philosophical themes searching for literary nourishment 30 Chapter 2 Similarity and Contiguity in Pasternak’s Early Poetics and Their Philosophical Underpinnings 38 2.1 Pasternak’s “justification through metaphor” 43 2.2 The “unparalleled analytical clarity of Hume” 48 2.3 Perception, contiguity, and Immanuel Kant’s a priori of time and space 54 2.4 Beyond “The Wassermann Test”: Contiguities and their characterization in Roman Jakobson’s essays and Boris Pasternak’s early prose 59 viii | Contents Chapter 3 Arguing with the Sun in “The Mark of Apelles” 71 3.1 Poetry born in darkness: Toward an unwritten philosophical aesthetics 73 3.2 “I have dug into idealism to its very foundation” 87 3.3 The composition of “The Mark of Apelles” and its “vertical saturation” 92 Chapter 4 “Letters from Tula”: “Was ist Apperzeption?” 113 4.1 “Was ist Apperzeption?” Finding a fruitful approach to “Letters from Tula” 116 4.2 Between love and art in the world of reflections: The adjustment of the protagonists’ gaze 121 4.3 Searching for synthesis: Art, play-acting, and film actors from Moscow 135 4.4 Between to kalon and to agathon: Cohen’s Neo-Kantianism, the fire of conscience, and Lev Tolstoy’s gift of perception 142 4.5 Tolstoy, the Tolstoyans, and the living characters of fictional space: Autonomous transcendental consciousness versus a created living world of perceived and perceiving selves 152 Chapter 5 Contextualizing the Intellectual Aims of 1918: From “Letters from Tula” to The Childhood of Luvers 158 5.1 The “spirituality” of prose: “It is important to visit a person when he is whole” 161 5.2 “Three groups”: Three levels of reality in “Ordering a Drama” 173 5.3 The limitations of psychology: Neo-Kantians in dispute with David Hume 183 5.4 Beyond the metonymous self: Moving beyond traditional readings of the novella 193 Chapter 6 “The Long Days” in The Childhood of Luvers: Chronology of a Permeable Self 198 6.1 Transition from infancy to early childhood: Zhenya’s first awareness of the world beyond 199 Contents | ix 6.2 Childhood: Acquaintance with still life and the quiet plasticity of the northern daylight 204 6.3 The boundary of spring and the outlines of the soul: New kindredness with nature at the appointed time 209 6.4 The boundary of summer: An infinitely expanding world approaching limits within the unlimited 220 6.5 Table I: Chronology of a permeable self: “The Long Days” of Detstvo Luvers 232 Chapter 7 “The Stranger” in The Childhood of Luvers: Disruptions in Chronology and the Collision with Other Worlds 233 7.1 The boundary of fall: Erased faces of others and turpentine sun 236 7.2 Metaphoric narrative and spirits meeting at the threshold: Reading Lermontov’s Demon at sunset 249 7.3 What does Tsvetkov do? The world of the indefinable other 260 7.4 In the sanctuary of the sacristan Defendov 268 7.5 “Three Names” and the construction of the “Demonic” or spirit-bearing protagonist 277 7.6 Alexander Scriabin and “the freshness of his spirit” 281 7.7 Philosophical overtones of the indefinable Tsvetkov 287 7.8 Sensing transition: Temporal and spatial complexities of the conclusion 290 7.9 Table II: Disruptions of chronology and the collision of multiple worlds in “The Stranger” 295 Chapter 8 Conclusion. Pasternak’s Symbolic World: Prose and Philosophy 296 8.1 Assessing Pasternak’s later view of his early prose 297 8.2 Metaphor and metonymy: Pasternak’s philosophical studies and their role in his early prose 302 8.3 New symbolism: Toward “the soul” of the later prose 319 Bibliography 327 Index of Works by Boris Pasternak 342 General Index 345 Abbreviations PSS Boris Pasternak, Polnoe sobranie sochinenij s prilozheniiami, v odinnadtsati tomakh [Complete Collected Works with appendices, in Eleven Volumes], ed. D. V. Tevekelian, compiled and provided with commentaries by E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak, introd. Lazar Fleishman (Moscow: Slovo, 2003–05). References to particular pages are done in the following manner: PSS 3:25 for Polnoe sobranie sochinenij, volume 3, page 25. PSSCom Commentaries by E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak to Polnoe Sobranie sochinenij, 2003–05. References are given to the volume and the page in the following manner: PSSCom 3:641. CSP Boris Pasternak, Collected Short Prose, ed. Christopher Barnes (New York: Praeger, 1977). References indicate the page: CSP 35. Lehrjahre Boris Pasternak’s Lehrjahre: Neopublikovannye Filosofskie Konspekty i Zametki Borisa Pasternaka. [Unpublished Philosophical Notes, Abstracts, and Synopses, in Two Volumes], ed. Lazar Fleishman, Hans-Bernd Harder, and Sergei Dorzweiler (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996). References to particular pages are given in the following manner: Lehrjahre II: 35 indicates volume 2, page 35. Refer- ences to the Introduction to the Philosophical Notes are given in the following manner: Fleishman Lehrjahre 10 indicates the introduction in Volume 1 and page 10. Zhivago Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harari, introd. John Bayley. “The Poems of Yurii Zhivago” trans. Ber- nard Guilbert Guerney (New York: Pantheon. 1997). x Abbreviations | xi MG Angela Livingstone, ed., The Marsh of Gold: Pasternak’s Writings on Inspiration and Creation (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008). Ref- erences indicate the page: MG 35. Poma-Denton Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, trans. John Denton (Albany: State University of New York Press. 1997). When the translations of Cohen are given from this edition, the references are indicated in the following manner: Poma-Denton 55, which refers to page 55. This notation is also followed in references to the other writ- ings of Cohen (see below). The following abbreviations have been used for the works of Hermann Cohen: KTE Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (Berlin: Dümmler, 1877; Bruno Cassirer, 1918). KBE Kants Begründung der Ethik (Berlin: Dümmler, 1877; Bruno Cassirer, 1910). KBA Kants Begründung der Ästhetik (Berlin: Dümmler, 1877). PIM Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte. Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Erkenntniskritik (repr. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968). E Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag zu F. A. Langes Geschichte des Mate- rialismus (Leipzig: Baedeker, 1896, 1905; Leipzig: Brandstetter, 1914). LRE System der Philosophie. Erster Teil: Logic der reinem Erkenntnis (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1902, 1914). ERW System der Philosophie. Zweiter Teil: Ethic des reinem Willens (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1904, 1907). ARG System der Philosophie. Dritter Teil: Ästhetik des reinem Gefühls, 2 Bde. (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1912). Logic Logik der reinem Erkenntnis. System der Philosophie. Erster Teil (Berlin, 1902, 1914). Ethik Ethik des reinem Willens. System der Philosophie. Zweiter Teil (Berlin, 1904, 1907). Ästhetik Ästhetik des reinem Gefühls. System der Philosophie (Gieben, 1915). BR Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie (Giessen: Töpel- mann, 1915). RoR Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism. Trans. Simon Kaplan (1919; Oxford University Press, 1995). Note on translations from the Russian: Unless otherwise referenced, all translations from Russian are the author’s. Acknowledgments t is said that it takes a village to bring up a child. This particular book has I had so many aunts and uncles that to count would not be simple. I’ll start from my adolescence—Moscow of the late 1960s, a decade after Pasternak’s death. In my parents’ three-room apartment I was introduced to Doctor Zhivago. The novel came to us in the form of a thick carbon copy, typed from a text that had been published in the West and distributed in Russia by samizdat. I cannot remember the name of the young gentleman who typed the novel, but I can see him distinctly. Of a Dostoevskian rather than Pasternakian appearance, in his small room he typed while lying down on a sofa; he made a special wooden contraption that permitted him to place the typewriter on his stomach; an ashtray resided on an adjacent chair. As he typed three or even four copies at once, he registered in brackets his own, always quite eccentric, views of particular scenes. This manuscript stayed in our family for a whole week (we were to pass it on to Valentin Turchin, one of Moscow’s leading physicists, and to his wife Tatiana). In our apartment the individual chapters travelled from my father to my step-mother Marina, and then to me.