‘Exile or diaspora? Russians or russophones? Hyphenated or post-colonial? This fascinating 1920-2020 , volume gathers together top specialists to discuss the critical questions that have emerged in Russian literary studies. It will prove to be foundational for the study of the new, de-centered Russian literature of the twenty-fi rst century.’ – J. Douglas Clayton, University of Ottawa ‘The consistently stimulating and erudite chapters enter into fruitful dialogue with contemporary theories of diaspora and globalization, indicating both points of concurrence as well as ways that the Russian experience diverges. An excellent and necessary book.’ – Edythe Haber, Harvard University , ‘Ranging across geographies and genres, a constellation of the world’s leading scholars of Russian culture rethink the nature of the canon, challenge durable myths and archetypes, and upend 1920-2020 previously hierarchical relationships between supposed centres and peripheries.’ – Philip Ross Bullock, University of Oxford Over the century that has passed since the start of the massive post-revolutionary exodus, Russian literature has thrived in multiple locations around the globe. What happens to cultural vocabularies, politics of identity, literary canon and language when writers transcend the metropolitan boundaries and begin to negotiate new experience gained in the process of migration? Redefi ning Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 sets a new agenda for the study of Russian diaspora writing, countering its conventional reception as a subsidiary branch of national literature and reorienting the fi eld from an emphasis on the origins to an analysis of transnational circulations that shape extraterritorial cultural practices. Integrating various conceptual perspectives, ranging from diaspora and postcolonial studies to the theories of (self-)translation, World Literature and evolutionary literary criticism, the contributors argue for a distinct nature of diasporic literary expression predicated on hybridity, ambivalence and a sense of multiple belonging. As the complementary case studies demonstrate, diaspora narratives consistently recode historical memory, contest the mainstream discourses of Russianness, rewrite received cultural tropes and explore topics that have remained marginal or taboo in the homeland. These discussions are framed by a focused examination of diaspora as a methodological perspective and its relevance for the modern human condition. Maria Rubins is Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at UCL. Her books include Crossroad of Arts, Crossroad of Cultures (2000) and Russian Montparnasse (2015). She also works as a translator and literary critic. m Cover design: www.ironicitalics.com Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920–2020 FRINGE Series Editors Alena Ledeneva and Peter Zusi, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL The FRINGE series explores the roles that complexity, ambivalence and immeasur- ability play in social and cultural phenomena. A cross-disciplinary initiative bringing together researchers from the humanities, social sciences and area studies, the series examines how seemingly opposed notions such as centrality and marginality, clarity and ambiguity, can shift and converge when embedded in everyday practices. Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of UCL. Peter Zusi is Associate Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of UCL. Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920–2020 Edited by Maria Rubins First published in 2021 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Collection © Editor, 2021 Text © Contributors, 2021 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non- derivative 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should include the following information: Rubins, M. (ed). 2021. Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920–2020. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787359413 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creative commons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN: 978-1-78735-943-7 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-942-0 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-941-3 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-944-4 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-945-1 (mobi) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787359413 Contents Notes on contributors vii Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii Part one: Conceptual territories of ‘diaspora’: introduction 1 The unbearable lightness of being a diasporian: modes of writing and reading narratives of displacement 3 Maria Rubins Part two: ‘Quest for significance’: performing diasporic identities in transnational contexts 2 Exile as emotional, moral and ideological ambivalence: Nikolai Turgenev and the performance of political exile 37 Andreas Schönle 3 Rewriting the Russian literary tradition of prophecy in the diaspora: Bunin, Nabokov and Viacheslav Ivanov 65 Pamela Davidson Part three: Evolutionary trajectories: adaptation, ‘interbreeding’ and transcultural polyglossia 4 Translingual poetry and the boundaries of diaspora: the self-translations of Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky 111 Adrian Wanner 5 Evolutionary biology and ‘writing the diaspora’: the cases of Theodosius Dobzhansky and Vladimir Nabokov 137 David M. Bethea CONTENTS v Part four: Imagined spaces of unity and difference 6 Repatriation of diasporic literature and the role of the poetry anthology in the construction of a diasporic canon 165 Katharine Hodgson 7 Is there room for diaspora literature in the internet age? 194 Mark Lipovetsky 8 The benefits of distance: extraterritoriality as cultural capital in the literary marketplace 214 Kevin M. F. Platt Beyond diaspora? Brief remarks in lieu of an afterword 244 Galin Tihanov Conclusion 249 Maria Rubins Index 259 vi REDEFINING RUSSIAN LITERARY DIASPORA, 1920–2020 Notes on contributors David M. Bethea is the Vilas Research Professor (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Professor of Russian Studies (retired) at Oxford University. He has written broadly on Russian poetry, Russian literary culture and Russian thought. At present he is completing a volume of essays on Charles Darwin’s ideas in the Russian cultural imagination. Pamela Davidson is Professor of Russian Literature at UCL (University College London). Her research interests embrace comparative literature, modernist poetry, the relationship between religion and culture, Russian literary demonism and prophecy. Her books include Russian Literature and its Demons, The Poetic Imagination of Vyacheslav Ivanov, an anthology of poems dedicated to Anna Akhmatova, Viacheslav Ivanov: A reference guide, and Vyacheslav Ivanov and C. M. Bowra: A correspondence from two corners on humanism. Following the award of a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, she is currently completing a book on prophecy and power in the Russian literary tradition (1650–1930). Katharine Hodgson (Professor in Russian, University of Exeter) works mainly on Russian poetry of the twentieth century. She is the editor, with Joanne Shelton and Alexandra Smith, of a 2017 volume of essays on the changing poetry canon, and in 2020 published, with Alexandra Smith, a book on the twentieth-century poetry canon and Russian national identity. Other publications cover poetry of the Soviet period, particularly Ol′ga Berggol′ts and wartime poetry, as well as the translation into Russian of the work of poets such as Kipling, Heine and Brecht. She is now exploring the way informal associations of poets may have supported cultural transmission and continuity during the Soviet period. Mark Lipovetsky is Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University (New York). He is the author of 10 books and editor or co-editor of 20 volumes on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russian literature and culture. He is known mostly for his works on Russian NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS vii postmodernism, New Russian drama, the trickster in Soviet culture, and Dmitry Prigov. He is also one of the four co-authors of the Oxford History of Russian Literature (2018). He is a winner of the AATSEEL Award for Outstanding Contribution to Scholarship (2014) and the Andrei Bely Prize for his input to Russian literature (2019). Kevin M. F. Platt is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Russian and East European Studies and the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Platt is the author of books and articles on representations of Russian history, Russian historiography, history and memory in Russia, Russian lyric poetry, and global post-Soviet Russian cultures. He is also a translator of contemporary Russian poetry. Most recently, he was the editor of Global