Ekphrasis, Russian Style: Visualizing Literary Icons, 1830
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Ekphrasis, Russian Style: Visualizing Literary Icons, 1830-1930. Yekaterina V. Jordan Chelyabinsk, Russia BA English, University of Utah, 2004 MA Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia, 2007 A Dissertation (or Thesis) presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures University of Virginia August, 2014 Jordan i To Aaron & Thomas Jordan ii Abstract This dissertation examines the conflicted relationship between ekphrasis and iconicity in the context of Russian literature. It continues an inquiry into the classical separation of word and image, touches upon the 19th-c. debates regarding the more appropriate means of reflecting reality within the Russian Realist aesthetics, and attempts to outline those aspects of visuality that tie Classical Realism and Modernism in Russian literature. Since Russian culture differentiates between two types of images – secular paintings and religious icons – an analysis of ekphrasis within a literary narrative must account for the specific type of image that is being referenced. I argue that iconicity determines the object’s role within a narrative and dictates the way in which it must be perceived both by characters within a narrative and by the readers. Although it owes its origins to ecclesiastical sphere, the notion of literary iconicity transcends both the strictly religious sense or Eastern Orthodoxy and Charles Sanders Peirce’s definition of an icon. When a character is endowed with apparent characteristics typical of an Orthodox icon, the effect that this character produces on her surroundings are similar, if not identical, to those of a religious icon. The tension between ekphrasis and iconicity is presented in Russian literature as an ideological conflict between either male domination and female defiance or between western rationalism and Russian mysticism. When considered through the prism of iconicity, female silence becomes a sign of psychological and spiritual strength, not of Jordan iii submission to male authority. Paradoxically, male protagonists and/or narrators, trapped by their need for verbal expression, fail to recognize the heroines’ iconic properties and therefore miss the opportunity for deliverance from their own misery caused by the feelings of wounded pride, isolation or a lack of direction. Thus, iconicity becomes more than merely an echo of religious undertones that may or may not be present within a literary work, but a way of deepening the psychological dimension of a narrative and of offering a more challenging yet a more rewarding way of human engagement. Jordan iv Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One Pushkin, “The Stationmaster”: A Story of a Misguided Glance………………………...43 Chapter Two Dostoevsky, “The Meek One”: A Girl as an Icon…………………………….…………70 Chapter Three Mamin-Sibiriak, Shooting Stars: The Adventures of Pandora in St. Petersburg………112 Chapter Four Kaverin, Artist Unknown: The Eyes of an Artist vs. The Eyes of a Lizard…………….141 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………....172 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….179 Jordan 1 Introduction Ekphrasis … is a literary mode that turns on the antagonism – the commonly gendered antagonism – between verbal and visual representation. Since this contest is fought on the field of language itself, it would be grossly unequal but for one thing: ekphrasis commonly reveals a profound ambivalence toward visual art, a fusion of iconophilia and iconophobia, of veneration and anxiety. To represent a painting or sculpted figure in words is to evoke its power – the power to fix, excite, amaze, entrance, disturb, or intimidate the viewer – even as language strives to keep that power under control.1 As these words by James Heffernan suggest, verbal descriptions of visual images found within a literary text can broaden the scope of a narrative and illuminate its cultural and ideological dimensions. Although literature and visual art2 are most often considerd as distinct modes of artistic expression, they neither exist in complete isolation from each other, nor do they enjoy a particularly tranquil relationship.3 This dissertation explores the tension that exists between word and image in the Russian context. Specifically, it examines the ideological side of the conflict between 1 James Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 7. My emphasis. 2 I limit the term “visual art” to primarily drawing, painting, sculpture, and bas-relief, leaving out film, architecture, and other plastic arts. This is done, on the one hand, to preserve continuity with other critical works on ekphrasis and, on the other, to reflect the types of works referenced in the narrative fiction that is discussed later in the dissertation. 3 The metaphor “sister arts” that is often applied to literature and visual arts suggests a different approach to the problem of representation. It eliminates the question of conceptual gender differences and emphasizes the impossibility of separation of one from the other. Stephen Cheeke sums up this sort of antagonism as follows: “anyone who grew up in a household with sisters of proximate age the usefulness of the metaphor of the ‘sister arts’ will be clear. Envy, rivalry, emulation, quarrelling, imitation – the ordinary human trouble of kinship helps to make some sense of, even if it can never clarify, the awkward intimacy and reserve that we discover between poems and paintings. See Stephen Cheeke, Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 2-3. Jordan 2 verbal expression and visual perception in works of literary prose written in Russia between 1830 and 1930. The word “ideological,” the way I am using it, refers to a general “manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture” rather than to any specific set of articulated political beliefs or “theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program.”4 The key concepts that will be examined here are ekphrasis5 and iconic vision. My inquiry will primarily focus on four prose works: Alexander Pushkin’s story “The Stationmanster” (1830), Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella “The Meek One” (1876), Dmitrii Mamin-Sibiriak’s novel Shooting Stars (1899), and Veniamin Kaverin’s novel Artist Unknown (1930). The work selection is motivated by both temporal and thematic considerations: each of these prose narratives was written during the hundred years that elapsed between the rise of Classical Russian Realism and the official introduction of the doctrine of Socialist Realism, and each of them features a verbose protagonist who struggles to maintain a relationship with a taciturn heroine. The central question of my analysis is how the gendered antagonism that Heffernan speaks of, when taken literally, plays out in Russian literature. The iconophobia and iconophilia are considered in relation to both visual images and icon- like characters, and evidence is presented that the non-verbal manner of expression facilitated by the visual art is often favored to the more customary – verbal – way of engaging in the day-to-day communication. This tendency on the authors’ part is paradoxical, for they, as writers, have to convey their ideas through words; nonetheless, 4 See “Ideology” in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary <http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/ideology>. 5 Some authors choose to italicize the word “ekphrasis” in their writing, while others do not. For the sake of consistency, I will not use italics unless I use a direct quotation in which this term is italicized. Jordan 3 within their narratives, both male protagonists and male narrators, while trying to produce ekphrases of their own, are defeated by the silence of the heroines whom they encounter. On a deeper level, it appears that in Russian literature the drive for ekphrastic expression clashes with the long-standing religious tradition of hesychasm.6 Hesychasm is customarily understood as a form of quiet contemplation that leads one to a spiritual and a higly personal revelation. As the Greek origin of the term suggests, “quietude” and “tranquility” are the essential elements of this practice, but in a more strict sense, however, hesychasm is a religious practice that is associated with “monastic prayer and contemplation” and that is designed specifically to help one “to achieve communion with God and the vision of the divine light.”7 While this dissertation does not pursue the goal of analyzing religious practices, it will examine the idea of quiet contemplation as a way of understanding of and achieving communion with another being. As it will be shown in the chapters that follow, excessive gregariousness often betray strong rationalist proclivities on the part of many male literary characters and are in a direct opposition to the spirituality that is associated with female characters. At the same time, some of the heroines’ characteristics, reticence being the chief of them, makes them icon-like and conceals the potential for facilitating a powerful transformation in the male characters. As such, these heroines – or their literary portraits – challenge the 6 For a discussion of the complicated nature and history of the term “hesychasm,” see John Meyendorff’s article “Is ‘Hesychasm’ the Right Word? Remarks on Religious Ideology in the Fourteenth Century,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7, (1983), pp.