Download Free Sampler
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Thank you for downloading this free sampler of: BREAKING FREE FROM DEATH The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer GALINA RYLKOVA March 2020 | 204 pp. 9781644692660 | $29.95 | Paperback SUMMARY Breaking Free from Death examines how Russian writers respond to the burden of living with anxieties about their creative outputs, and, ultimately, about their own inevitable finitude. What contributes to creative death are not just crippling diseases that make man defenseless in the face of death, and not just the arguably universal fear of death but, equally important, the innumerable impositions on the part of various outsiders. Many conflicts in the lives of Rylkova’s subjects arose not from their opposition to the existing political regimes but from their interactions with like-minded and supporting intellectuals, friends, and relatives. The book describes the lives and choices that concrete individuals and—by extrapolation—their literary characters must face in order to preserve their singularity and integrity while attempting to achieve fame, greatness, and success. ABOUT THE AUTHOR GALINA RYLKOVA is Associate Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Florida. She is the author of The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Russian Silver Age and Its Legacy (2007). Her research interests include psychology of creative personality, biography, and Russian theater. PRAISE “Provocative, refreshing, and always original, Galina Rylkova’s excellent new study explores ‘the elusive fabric of creativity and creativeness’ in regards to such giants as Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, and Ivan Bunin. Weaving together the intricate lines of her analysis, Rylkova reveals previously undiscovered dimensions of these writers’ ever- lasting struggle to sustain their creativity in the face of death. Readers of Rylkova’s superb book will see these ‘eternal companions’ in a completely new light.” — Radislav Lapushin, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Take 20% off your order when you sign up for our newsletter at www.academicstudiespress.com/newsletter Breaking Free from Death The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer Breaking Free from Death The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer GALINA RYLKOVA Boston 2020 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rylkova, Galina, author. Title: Breaking free from death: the art of being a successful Russian writer / Galina Rylkova. Description: Boston: Academic Studies Press, [2020] | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043803 (print) | LCCN 2019043804 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644692646 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644692653 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910—Criticism and interpretation. | Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904—Criticism and interpretation. | Death in literature. | Authors, Russian—19th century— Attitudes. | Death—Psychological aspects. Classification: LCC PG3415.D42 R95 2020 (print) | LCC PG3415.D42 (ebook) | DDC 891.709/003—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043803 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043804 Copyright © 2020 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-64469-264-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-64469-265-3 (adobe pdf) Book and cover design by Kryon Publishing Services. On the cover: William Blake, Dante running from the Three Beasts (1824-1827) illustration for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Inferno I, 1-90) pen and ink and watercolour over pencil and black chalk 37 .3 ´ 52.8 cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest, 1920 (988-3) Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Published by Academic Studies Press. 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA In memory of my parents and their parents Table of Contents Acknowledgments vii Prologue: Breaking Free from Death x Part One—Beginnings and Endings Chapter 1: Leo Tolstoy and the Privilege of Formidable Hypochondria 3 Chapter 2: In Chertkov’s Grip 21 Chapter 3: Uncle Vanya: The Drama of Sustainability 54 Chapter 4: “Homo Sachaliensis”: Chekhov’s “Character” as a Strategy 65 Chapter 5: The Steppe as a Story of Humble and Spectacular Beginnings 84 Photographs 99 Part Two—Transcending Death Chapter 6: Reading Chekhov through Meyerhold’s Eyes 109 Chapter 7: Living with Tolstoy and Dying with Chekhov: Ivan Bunin’s Liberation of Tolstoy (1937) and About Chekhov (1953) as Two Modes of Auto/Biographical Writing 129 Chapter 8: “There is a way out”: The Cherry Orchard in the Twenty-First Century 149 Chapter 9: A Boring Story: Chekhov’s Trip to Germany in 1904 162 Epilogue: Oyster Fever: Chekhov and Turgenev 173 Index 181 Acknowledgments n 1966 my father, Stanislav Petrovich Myasnikov, was sent to teach physics Iat a polytechnic college built by the Soviet Union in francophone Conakry, Guinea. The Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School (MVTU imeni Baumana) chose my physically unfit and myopic father because he was a born teacher who could explain the most complex issues in a way that even beginners could understand. He was also fluent in French. When he returned to Moscow in 1969, he wrote a book designed to prepare students for entrance exams in physics at MVTU. This book went through four editions during his lifetime and another (200,000 copies) after his death. My high school classmates used it to prepare for their entrance exams at various university-level technical schools without knowing that the author was my father. He died unexpectedly on December 24, 1980. His premature death has had a lasting effect on my life. It took me nearly ten years to complete this book, which is intended not only for students and academics but for others interested in the subject. I am grateful to the chairs of the Department of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures at UF (Ann Wehmeyer, Mary Watt, Ingrid Kleespies, and Akíntúndé Akínyẹmí) for supporting my research and for giving me invaluable opportuni- ties to teach and travel, as well as to work on various other projects. My fellow Russianists have maintained an atmosphere of collegiality, fairness, and great interest in our students, which has sustained me. I sorely miss the discussions I had on every aspect of academic life and literature with my dear colleague, the late professor Land Barksdale. My aunt, Rufina Tikhonova, her daughter, Anna Dormady, Alla Sadikova, Irene Kacandes, Meredith Meadows, Olga Glagoleva, Vladimir Oslon, Vera Zubarev, Radislav Lapushin, Vladimir Rylkov, Robert Flottemesch, James (Frank) Goodwin, Irina Men’shova, Anna Krylova, Boris Akhremitchev, Alexandra Popoff, and Vladimir Kagansky have been my support group for many years. In 2016 my daughter Daria reminded me of the effort it takes to start everything anew. viii Acknowledgments Anna Muza (whose last name happened to be somewhat prophetic) has been one of my most important interlocutors during all stages of my thinking and writing. My husband, Alexander Burak, knows more than anybody can imagine and cares to know about the process of my writing this book. He also devoted a lot of time to translating many of the Russian quotations used in the text and to reading the entire manuscript several times. Rufus-Barbosus, Shusher, and Elma have been our most enchanting, forgiving, and loving four-legged friends in Gainesville. With my first book (The Archaeology of Anxiety) I was extremely lucky to have Irene Kacandes urge me to complete it and send it to the publisher. In this instance, Katy Meigs carefully and lovingly provided a first edit of the entire manuscript and told me it was a book. She also suggested that I partici- pate in the 13th International Sandor Ferenczi Conference in Florence, Italy, May 3–6, 2018. Afterward, I was able to complete my last unfinished chapter “In Chertkov’s Grip.” I am grateful to the University of Florida for granting me a semester off in fall 2016, which allowed me to make major progress on the manuscript. I thank the Center of European Studies for giving me a travel grant in the summer of 2018, so that I could participate in the Ferenczi Conference. I am also grate- ful to Slavic Seminars, Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy, Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Moderne, for inviting me to present a lecture on the first chap- ter of the book, followed by an extended question and discussion period in May 2018. Three days in Genoa and inspiring talks with Sara Dickinson and Laura Salmon gave me an energy boost that lasted many months. The University of Florida’s Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment for the Humanities) awarded me a generous subvention grant of $1,500 toward publication expenses. A shorter version of chapter 4 was published as “Homo Sachaliensis: Chekhov as a Family Man,” in Chekhov’s Letters: Biography. Context. Poetics, ed. Carol Apollonio and Radislav Lapushin (New York: Lexington Books, 2018). Chapter 6 was published as “Reading Chekhov through Meyerhold’s Eyes,” Chekhov for the 21st Century, ed. Carol Apollonio and Angela Brintlinger (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2012). I am very appreciative to the editors of these collections for publishing my work and offering feed- back on it. Vera Zubarev was instrumental in making me write down some of my initial impressions from reading “Kashtanka” and The Steppe and publish them in Russian. Acknowledgments ix I am indebted to Igor Nemirovsky for his consistent interest in my work and to the staff of Academic Studies Press (Ekaterina Yanduganova, Stuart Allen, and Kira Nemirovsky) for handling my manuscript with such profes- sional care. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of my manuscript for their time and considered suggestions. Prologue: Breaking Free from Death Two fateful forces control us our entire life. [ . .] They are death and how other people judge us.1 —Fyodor Tyutchev, 1869 ’m thinking of Lev Tolstoy now,” Yury Olesha (1899–1960) recorded in “I his notes in December 1959. Tolstoy always loomed large for Olesha, who for years wanted to write a grand novel comparable to Anna Karenina.