Faith Wigzell. Reading Russian Fortunes: Print Culture, Gender, and Divination in Russia from 1765. New York and Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xi + 250 pp. $64.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-58123-3.
Reviewed by W. Arthur McKee
Published on H-Russia (September, 1999)
As a twelve-year old eccentric genius, Ivan miniature comedy of errors depended in part on a Babichev, the representative of doomed, Old series of cultural inversions. The dream replays a Regime romanticism in Yuri Olesha's 1927 satire, scene from the past rather than revealing the fu‐ Envy, purports to invent a device that can make a ture. Not only are dreams induced rather than in‐ person dream whatever its user wishes. terpreted, but the "sorcerer" is only a callow male Babichev's father, a stern classicist, asks for a apprentice rather than the usual wizened matron. dream of the Battle of Pharsalus but threatens The skeptical father nonetheless submits to the harsh punishment if the dream does not appear. dream inducer while the mother remains on the Unfortunately for Ivan, the dream comes not to sidelines, even though in many Russian house‐ the father but to a servant, who interprets the holds, as Wizgell shows, women were the most horses in the battle as a sign that her would-be f‐ avid participants in dream-magic. Only the uned‐ ance will lie to her. The father beats Ivan, the ucated servant is cast to type, and her earnest be‐ mother goes into shock, and the maid rejects her lief in the dream's divinatory nature makes her, suitor's request for her hand. A few weeks later, like her predecessors scattered throughout Rus‐ Ivan manages to convince his father that a hot-air sian belles lettres, into an object of humor for balloon fying over their hometown is actually a those enlightened enough to be in on the joke.[2] gigantic soapbubble of his, the son's, creation. Yet those who, like Ivan's father, seek to in‐ That night, the battle of Pharsalus does come to vert the normal process of dream magic, or who, the father, albeit in a disturbing vision that even more ambitious like Wizgell, seek to invert "makes fun of history" : "the battle was decided by all Russian divinatory practices by interpreting Balearic slingsmen who arrived in hot-air bal‐ the interpreters --in short, all would-be scholars of loons."[1] dreams and divination should pay heed to the For Olesha's contemporaries, as Wizgell outcome of the comedy, in which the dream makes clear in her Reading Russian Fortunes, this "makes fun of history." Unlike the future itself, H-Net Reviews how people have tried and still try to predict the 1980s, this furtive and remarkably hardy culture future may be knowable. Nonetheless, like the began to spring through the cracks. Today, as Rus‐ dreams which commonly serve as their object, sia's future becomes ever more uncertain, for‐ divinatory cultures and practices are fraught with tune-telling is enjoying a renaissance. ambiguity, and the scholar who would assay them What hampers Wizgell's ability to peer into need bring a wide range of sources and fnely- this fascinating subculture are the restricted tuned analytical tools to bear. range of materials and questions she considers. Though highly informative, Wizgell's history Having scoured Russia for these fortune-telling of Russian divinatory culture from the eighteenth books -- even Imperial depository libraries often century to the present fails to capture her sub‐ did not acquire copies -- Wizgell understandably ject's rich antinomies. Reading Russian Fortunes wanted to train her analytical spotlight on them. begins with the publication in Russia of the frst Books, however, can only tell us so much of how texts that claimed to hold the keys to the future. their readers understood and used them. Wizgell She explores the range of fortune-telling books ruefully notes the lack of direct references to for‐ that appeared in Russia thereafter, from geoman‐ tune-telling books in literary and other descrip‐ tic oracles to instructions on how to read cofee tions of everyday life, even though publishing sta‐ grounds, from cartomantic tomes to the dream‐ tistics show that divinatory texts were always big books (sonniki) that became the Russian fortune- sellers. Those references which survive are often telling genre par excellence. Narrowly focused on throw-away lines --like the quatrain in Pushkin's these texts and the "secondary" oral culture they Eugene Onegin on Tat'iana's devotion to Martyn support, she only considers pre-existing "folk" div‐ Zadeka's book of predictions-- that dismiss for‐ inatory cultures as "a context and cultural tune-telling as vulgar, feminine superstition. residue" (p. 3) and virtually ignores the arguably Clearly, these are neither revealing nor trustwor‐ parallel elite cultures of theosophy, spiritualism, thy. Though Wizgell was able to fnd some sugges‐ and the occult. She fnds that, unlike other popu‐ tive depictions, much about fortune-telling re‐ lar subcultures, which are ostensibly obsessed mains enshrouded in mystery. Wizgell attempts to with novelty, fortune-telling was remarkably sidestep this gap by giving a cursory diachronic "conservative," with readers preferring the old re‐ analysis of changes in fortune-telling books and liable interpretations and the (generally foreign) an overly ivolved description of the sages who prophets who made them (pp. 1-2 and ch. 7). supposedly wrote them. As enlightened elites became disdainful of the Wizgell refuses to make deeper forays into threat to rationality posed by divinatory books, elite culture to explain not just how fortune- she argues, fortune-telling itself became increas‐ telling books were received but how, more gener‐ ingly feminine and strategically "trivialized," a ally, fortune-telling practices and beliefs were un‐ practice of women around kitchen tables that derstood. In Wizgell's rather simplistic account, posed as a "harmless" domestic diversion. Divina‐ the cultural force of the Enlightenment, with its tory practices thus became unworthy of the efort disdain for popular irrationalism, conquers the to extirpate them, at least until 1917. The apostles imagination of Russia's intelligentsia after the of a "scientifc" means of predicting the future 1830s. The occasional waves of elite interest in who seized power that year could not bear com‐ magic and the paranormal that followed are dis‐ petitors, and so they deprived divinatory culture missed out of hand as fads that quickly "faded of its texts and forced it underground. But as the from view or failed ever to attract a broader clien‐ Communist edifce began to crumble in the late tele" (p. 8). In fact, as a recently published collec‐
2 H-Net Reviews tion on the occult in Russian culture makes clear, nation with dreams that pervades Russian litera‐ elite fascination with secret knowledge that could, ture from Pushkin onward. Not only would it be among other things, reveal the future, had deep interesting to know if dreambooks constituted an roots and infuenced the arts and society through‐ unacknowledged "code" that explains the symbol‐ out the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[3] ism in dreams in literature, but such an explo‐ The emergence and early popularity among ration might provide evidence on the degree to the elite of fortune-telling books in the mid- to which various groups believed in dream divina‐ late- eighteenth century traced by Wizgell may tion.[5] At the very least, placing dreambooks in well have been an important phase in the devel‐ the larger context of belles lettres might allow one opment of this fascination with irrationalism. to trace the development of a psychological, Once they became the common property of petty rather than premonitory, interpretation of tradesmen and provincial noblewomen, however, dreams in Russia. As it stands, Wizgell too often the fortune-telling books lost their cachet. In their assumes that interpreting dreams serves the place, spiritualist impresarios such as Madame much the same therapeutic function as it does for Blavatskaia ofered more "refned" methods of those of us living in the post-Freudian West, even peering into the future to clients anxious to pre‐ though the exegeses suggested by dreambooks di‐ serve their elite status. In other words, popular rect the dreamer's attention to the outside world fortune-telling books may have served as a key rather than the inner self (see, for example, p. 50). backdrop against which newly emerging occult While Wizgell does try to place fortune-telling practices distinguished themselves. Wizgell never practices in the context of pre-existing folk for‐ considers the possibility that the fortune-telling tune-telling culture, she ties herself in knots ex‐ books played a role in a larger cultural system (al‐ plaining the early and abiding popularity of beit an elite one) and thus misses an opportunity dreambooks in Russia. Initially, she claims that to further illuminate her sources. before one can answer the question of whether or Of course, elite disciples of irrationalism were not folk oneiromancy (dream divination) paved not confned to occultists. From the early nine‐ the way for the ready acceptance of dreambooks, teenth century on, romantics insisted that the soul one has "to establish that East Slav oneiromantic could apprehend a more profound truth than that traditions were not contaminated by textual im‐ available to the senses and the intellect. Not sur‐ ports prior to the infux of translated texts" (p. 57). prisingly, such a weltanschauung lent credibility But given the lack of sources on pre-modern to fortune-telling; Pushkin, for example, read folk dream divination beliefs and practices, in or‐ dreambooks and patronized fortune-tellers (pp. der to establish this claim Wizgell falls back on 71, 140) [4]. Wizgell suggests that such romantic ethnographic sources from the late nineteenth sentiments cooled after 1830, and that thereafter century, a time when, as she notes in a later chap‐ elite critics denounced fortune-telling books as ter, "a high proportion of the literate or semi-liter‐ obscurantist trash which drove out "good" Rus‐ ate owned" at least one fortune-telling book (p. sian literature (p. 76). 108 and the notes on p. 204).[6] Then she boldly if But merely because cultural elites announced contradictorily asserts that the possibility that the their superiority to this popular subculture does Slavs may have "acquired" oneiromantic culture not mean that they were unafected by it. In vain from other peoples is irrelevant to her conclusion will the reader wait for Wizgell to explore possi‐ that "the Slavs possessed an indigenous tradition, ble connections between the most popular forms little touched in historical times by outside infu‐ of fortune-telling texts, dreambooks, and the fasci‐ ences, and retained in rural lore." (p. 58). Finally,
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Wizgell argues that "common psychological pro‐ ularity. Pirated from foreign sources in the eigh‐ cesses ofer the only credible explanation" for teenth century, dreambooks were comparatively why dreambooks and folk oneiromancy overlap cheap for publishers to produce. Readers were at‐ (p. 60). Even if her largely "contaminated" sources tracted by these books' claims to predict the fu‐ supported such a conclusion, it would hardly ex‐ ture (which is indeed, as Wizgell suggests, a uni‐ plain why dreambooks in particular were a popu‐ versal human desire), by their foreign origin, lar fortune-telling text in Russia. which gave them an almost magical aura of au‐ I have tried to untangle the thread of Wiz‐ thority, and by their ease of use (everyone gell's argument here because, I think, it refects dreams).[8] Other factors, such as the relatively the inherent difculties in the hunt for "authen‐ poor level of education in Russia, protected tic" Russian folk culture. Committed to such a con‐ dreambooks from meaningful competition from cept, scholars often chase chimeras in suspect divinatory genres that were popular elsewhere in sources and reject out of hand alternative expla‐ Europe, such as astrology (pp. 36-8). Out of such nations that are equally plausible given the pauci‐ seemingly superfcial factors is the long-lasting ty of evidence. Uncovering more information on popularity of some cultural forms forged. pre-modern Russian folk culture would, of course, Rather than engage in a largely futile quest be of great interest, but, at least as far as fortune- for folk culture's contribution to the origins of a telling is concerned, it may not be possible. print-based, urban popular divinatory culture, a More importantly, it may not be necessary. more rewarding area of study might be the ongo‐ The genres of Russian fortune-telling literature ing interaction between the divinatory cultures of were, as Wizgell argues, largely set in the late peasants, on the one hand, and those of literate eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when urbanites, on the other. Wizgell makes some in‐ both the number of publishers and readers was teresting observations on this score, showing, for relatively small. In such an undeveloped market, example, how cartomancy (reading the future readers could not exert much leverage on presses through cards) spread from the nobility to the to produce the kinds of books they wanted; in‐ peasantry via servants who traveled with their deed, insofar as printed books were a novelty, masters to the cities. But while she does not shy readers' tastes could, within reason, be shaped by away from conjecture elsewhere in her book, she what publishers ofered. And even when the mar‐ claims that speculation on whether or not dream‐ ket became more developed in the middle of the books afected folk oneiromancy is "pointless" (p. nineteenth century, publishers retained enough 62). Finding sources on this interaction would in‐ power to channel readers' tastes in more prof‐ deed be difcult, but not impossible; one would itable directions [7]. Moreover, as Wizgell herself have to move beyond works that directly refer to argues, readers by the nineteenth century had fortune-telling to those which describe everyday been conditioned by the past "success" of certain life more generally.[9] Wizgell's categorical re‐ collections of dream interpretations as reliable, fusal to take up the question of cultural interac‐ and so they did not demand wholly new genres of tion (her word for it is "contamination") suggests a divinatory texts. deep-seated desire to preserve, as it were, a pure folk culture in the terms of her analysis.[10] The reality of publishers' market power (which should not, I should make clear, be con‐ Ironically enough, Wizgell opens her study by fused with hegemony) means that we need not noting that fortune-telling's association with the fnd some pre-existing oneiromantic template into despised categories of the feminine, the urban, which dreambooks ft to explain their lasting pop‐ and the popular had until recently rendered it vir‐
4 H-Net Reviews tually invisible to scholars. But a mere reevalua‐ [5]. Wizgell notes that it would be interesting tion of these categories cannot substitute for an to speculate on the degree to which dreambooks attempt to move beyond them. By focusing so re‐ might have actually conditioned Russians to lentlessly on fortune-telling books and on the cul‐ dream in certain ways, but never takes the next ture that sprung up around them, she has, in a step to examine the literary sources that might sense, reinscribed the boundaries behind which shed light on this question; see pp. 29-30. divinatory culture was hidden. Reading Russian [6]. The only credible source on pre-existing Fortunes provides a solid introduction to the sub‐ folk oneiromantic culture that she was able to ject as Wizgell defnes it. Unfortunately, her con‐ fnd was M. Chulkov's Slovar' russkikh sueverii ception is so narrow that her work is of only mod‐ (1782). est value to scholars of Russian culture. [7]. It bears noting that the publisher I. D. NOTES Sytin had a virtual monopoly on cheap books by [1]. See Clarence Brown's translation of Envy 1915. While he could not have reached this pinna‐ in his edited collection, The Portable Twentieth- cle without meeting the demands of the market, Century Russian Reader Revised and Updated Edi‐ the lack of serious competition meant that he tion (New York and London, 1985), pp. 310-4. Wiz‐ could, within limits, continue to ofer readers gell does not refer to this novella in her work. what he had done in the past. See Wizgell, pp. [2]. If Wizgell is right and elite and folk inter‐ 104-7. Similar criticisms could be made of Jefrey pretations of horses in dreams uniformly agreed Brooks' pathbreaking When Russia Learned to that horses were a symbol of enmity (p. 59), then Read (Princeton, 1985), which tends to rather sim‐ it would appear that Olesha had not done his plistically equate the values in the books that sell homework on dream symbolism. Perhaps in well with the values of the readership. Though Odessa, whence hailed Olesha, horses in dreams Wizgell disagrees with Brooks on some minor do stand for prevarication. points, her analysis largely follows in his foot‐ steps; see chapter 8. [3]. See Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ed., The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, NY, [8]. As Richard Wortman's magisterial study 1997). Wizgell does not cite this collection, per‐ of the symbolism of the autocracy makes clear, haps because it appeared too late for her to dis‐ even before Peter I, "foreignness" had been in‐ cuss in her book. Her discussion of the parallels vested with authority in Russia. See his Scenarios between Soviet Marxism and fortune-telling (pp. of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monar‐ 165-7) strongly resembles Rosenthal's attempt to chy, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1995). draw connections between the occult and Stalin‐ [9]. The famous Tenishev ethnographic sur‐ ism. See also Shoshana Keller, "Review of Bernice vey of the Russian peasantry, conducted in the Glatzer Rosenthal, ed., The Occult in Russian and late nineteenth century, contained a number of Soviet Culture," H-Russia, H-Net Reviews, March, questions on divinatory practices; see B. M. Firsov 1998. URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/ and I. G. Kiseleva, Byt velikorusskikh krest'ian- showrev.cgi?path=16609890089662. zemlepashchtsev: opisanie materialov etno‐ [4]. Wizgell presents indirect literary evi‐ grafcheskogo biuro kniazia V. N. Tenisheva (St. dence that other Romantic fgures like Bestuzhev- Petersburg, 1993), pp. 405-409. Unfortunately, this Marlinksii and Lermontov may have also made particular collection does not contain answers to use of divinatory practices; see pp. 52, 140. the pertinent questions on fortune-telling, though one can safely assume that the Tenishev archive
5 H-Net Reviews contains more than a few responses on these questions. [9]. Such an attachment to a pure folk culture, it must be said, is somewhat hard to fathom, given her gentle but germane criticism of the Russian ethnolinguistic school's insistence on studying "in‐ tegral" Russian folk culture; see p. 6. Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights re‐ served. This work may be copied for non-proft educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ tact [email protected].
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Citation: W. Arthur McKee. Review of Wigzell, Faith. Reading Russian Fortunes: Print Culture, Gender, and Divination in Russia from 1765. H-Russia, H-Net Reviews. September, 1999.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3445
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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