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Rhythm, Image, and Voice in Russian Modernist Poetry and Theory 1905-1924

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Rhythm, Image, and Voice in Russian Modernist Poetry and Theory 1905-1924 Vital Signs: Rhythm, Image, and Voice in Russian Modernist Poetry and Theory 1905-1924 by Isobel Margaret Jane Palmer A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Slavic Languages and Literatures in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Harsha Ram, Chair Professor Luba Golburt Professor Eric Falci Spring 2018 Vital Signs: Rhythm, Image, and Voice in Russian Modernist Poetry and Theory 1905-1924 © 2018 By Isobel Margaret Jane Palmer Abstract Vital Signs: Rhythm, Image, and Voice in Russian Modernist Poetry and Theory 1905-1924 by Isobel Margaret Jane Palmer Doctor of Philosophy in Slavic Languages and Literatures University of California, Berkeley Professor Harsha Ram, Chair This dissertation focuses new critical attention on Russian modernism’s engagement with poetic form. Placing close-readings of poetic and theoretical texts in the context of rapid urbanization, the emergence of new technologies, and socialist revolution, it argues that it is precisely where modernist poets (Alexander Blok, Boris Pasternak, and Vladimir Mayakovsky) and formalist theorists (Boris Eikhenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky, and Yury Tynianov) are most interested in the nature and functioning of poetic language that they respond most urgently to the dramatic changes occurring in early-twentieth-century Russian society and public discourse. Contrary to common approaches to Russian modernism that view it primarily in terms of competing poetic schools and distinct periods, the three chapters of this dissertation aim to think across the theory/practice divide, highlighting the common impulses behind the diverse output of its central figures in order to arrive at a definition of modernism not through periodization or literary school but instead as a certain way of thinking about and through poetic form and its relation to society. Bringing Russian modernism into dialogue with contemporary Western theories of the lyric, old/new media, and the urban environment, the dissertation asks what the poetic and theoretical output of this period has to tell us about the functioning of poetry and its role in the world today. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ii A Note on Transliteration iii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: RHYTHM 15 INTRODUCTION 15 PART ONE: RHYTHM IN THEORY 23 PART TWO: RHYTHM IN PRACTICE 33 CONCLUSION 43 CHAPTER TWO: IMAGE 45 INTRODUCTION 45 PART ONE: IMAGE IN THEORY 50 PART TWO: IMAGE IN PRACTICE 64 PART THREE: RUSSIAN FORMALISM AND THE IMAGE 84 CONCLUSION: WORDS, THINGS, AND “THE INTERVAL” 90 CHAPTER THREE: VOICE 93 INTRODUCTION 93 PART ONE: VOICE IN THEORY 96 PART TWO: VOICE IN PRACTICE 100 PART THREE: VOICE AND AUTHENTICITY 114 CONCLUDING REMARKS 125 BIBLIOGRAPHY 129 i Acknowledgments My greatest thanks go to my dissertation committee, whose generosity, time, expertise, and criticism have enriched this project and taught me much about how to be a scholar and a teacher. I am grateful to Harsha Ram for his thorough and erudite commentaries on my work, which have consistently challenged me to refine this project’s central ideas and their presentation and to grow as a scholar. Luba Golburt’s incisive responses have coaxed many half-formed thoughts out of their hiding places and inspired countless new ones; her sensitive approach to literature and to mentorship will remain a model for years to come. Sincere thanks also to Eric Falci, whose careful eye and thoughtful words have lent much needed perspective at all the right moments. I am grateful, too, to all the other professors in the department at Berkeley, from whom I have learned so much and who have made Berkeley such an intellectually rewarding place to be a graduate student. I owe a particular thanks to Olga Matich, whose early encouragement was instrumental in shaping this dissertation and its topic, and to Anna Muza, whose vast knowledge and nuanced, gracious guidance in matters both linguistic and pedagogical I have benefited from immeasurably. I will always be grateful to Emma Widdis for taking the first chance on me, many years ago; for all the wisdom and advice she has shared with me since; and for planting the idea of Berkeley in my mind. This project would not exist in its present form were it not for my fellow NOMADS, Joseph Albernaz, Alex Bush, and Emily Laskin. I can’t thank them enough for the many hours they have spent reading and responding to different iterations of the chapters here; their unfailing enthusiasm, intelligence, and warmth will be sorely missed. I would also like to thank the Slavic graduate students who have made Berkeley such a supportive and stimulating community in which to live and work for seven years; I would be a very different scholar today were it not for the curiosity, insight, and good humor they have brought to their own work and their responses to mine. A special thanks to Caroline Lemak Brickman, whose friendship and concentration have lasted through innumerable conversations on the subject of poetic form and Russian modernism and many pages of drafts. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Townsend-Mellon Global Urban Humanities Initiative, for a fellowship that allowed me to spend Spring 2017 working on my dissertation in conversation with a group of urban humanists. My thanks to those in the seminar who read and responded to my work. I am deeply grateful to all the many others who have made California home, but most of all to Piper Wheeler, whose friendship and wisdom I could not do without. Finally, to Rebecca, Molly, Thomas, Rosie, Caty, and Patricia; to Simon, Stephen, and Andrew; to Anne, to Crispin, and to Nate and Stella: more love and thanks than I have words. ii A Note on Transliteration Transliterations follow the Library of Congress system, except when an anglicized name has been well established (e.g. Mayakovsky, Shklovsky, Yury). The scholarly apparatus, however, follows the LOC system. iii INTRODUCTION In June 1920, literary scholar Sergei Bernshtein (1892-1970) recorded the modernist poet Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921) reading sixteen of his own poems aloud. Bernshtein was a founding member of the “Institute of the Living Word” [Institut zhivogo slova], established in Petrograd in 1918, where he worked alongside scholars, poets, and actors to promote the study and teaching of the spoken word. The Institute of the Living Word revived an idea that had first been suggested in 1914, when Iurii Ozarovskii, the director of St. Petersburg’s Aleksandrinskii Theatre, sought to bring together in person the diverse contributors to the journal “Voice and Speech” [Golos i rech’], a venture that had flourished briefly in 1913-14 in conjunction with a series of declamation workshops headed by Ozarovskii beginning in 1910.1 When the Institute finally became a reality, it gathered a range of well-known scholars and artists in what was explicitly intended as a multidisciplinary space in which specialists with a broad range of expertise would study the spoken word both in theory and in practice to academic and applied ends. Courses offered by the Institute ranged from the practical study of declamation to the theory and history of the lyric, oratory, the novel, children’s literature, and music, from philosophy and aesthetics to physiology and sociolinguistics.2 While the Institute had included an “otophonetic” laboratory from the start, a studio equipped with the most recent audio equipment that was designed to allow students to make and listen back to recordings of themselves practicing vocal exercises, Bernshtein’s recordings of Blok were part of a new initiative, spearheaded by Bernshtein himself, to use the premises to record the voices of the foremost poets of the period.3 The immediate purpose of these 1 Ozarovskii’s plans were thwarted by financial and political difficulties caused by the outbreak of the First World War. The Institute was eventually founded on the initiative of V.N. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross (1882–1962). Vsevolodskii-Gerngross had been a student of Iu. E. Ozarovskii. See M.P. Ossovskaia, “Sviaz vremen. Mezhdistsiplinarnaia integratsiia,” Golos i rech’, No. 1 (2010), 8-13 (p. 9). Golos i rech’ is the current journal of the Russian Academy of the Voice [Rossiiskaia obshchestvennaia akademiia golosa], established in 2007 after the publication of archival documents related to the Institute of the Living Word in 2007 (See Craig Brandist and Ekaterina Choun, “Iz predystorii Instituta zhivogo slova: protokoly zasedanii kursov khudozhestvennogo slova,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, No. 4 (August 2007), 96-106). The Academy is explicitly fashioned after the earlier Institute, and aims to further research on the voice by bringing together specialists from a wide variety of fields; the goals of this research are both theoretical and practical, ranging from historical-linguistic research to advances in medical treatment for vocal and aural disorders. The Academy also engages in educational initiatives, such as vocal training. See Golos i rech’, No. 1 (2010) for a representative sample of work produced under its auspices. 2 A short list of participants in the Institute’s activities includes the Formalist theorists, Boris Eikhenbaum, Lev Jakubinsky, Viktor Shklovsky, and Yury Tynianov; the philosopher, Ivan Lapshin; the opera singer, Fedor Shaliapin; the writers, Evgeny Zamiatin, Kornei Chukovsky, and Aleksei Remisov; the director, Vsevolod Meyerhold; and the poets Anna Akhmatova, Andrei Bely, Zinaida Gippius, Nikolai Gumilev (who taught courses in declamation and the history and theory of verse), and Viacheslav Ivanov. Rafaella Vassena, “K rekonstruktsii istorii deiatel’nosti Instituta zhivogo slova (1918-1924),” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, No. 4 (August 2007), 79-95 (pp. 81-2). Among the Institute’s interests, Vassena lists philology, declamation, linguistics, music, physiology, psychology, and sociology (ibid., p. 82). 3 The idea seems to have originated with Nikolai Gumilev, the modernist poet, who was active in the Institute’s affairs.
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