Thank you for downloading this free sampler of: SPACES OF CREATIVITY ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND THE ARTS Ksana Blank Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History Hardcover | $79.00 | November 2016 | 9781618115409 | 200 pp.; 3 b&w illus.; 13 color illus. SUMMARY In the six essays of this book, Ksana Blank examines affinities among works of nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature and their connections to the visual arts and music. Blank demonstrates that the borders of authorial creativity are not stable and absolute, that talented artists often transcend the classifications and paradigms established by critics. Featured in the volume are works by Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Daniil Kharms, Kazimir Malevich, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ksana Blank is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. She is the author of Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin (2010). PRAISE “An interdisciplinary creative space is a complex thing. It is home not only to plot, language, structure, but also to whole worlds. In this provocative collection of essays, Ksana Blank shows us some unexpected corners of these worlds: the great Realist novelists shunning the railroad, Shostakovich finding poetry in Dostoevsky, the absurdist Kharms weighing in on a religious controversy, Dobuzhinsky becoming a visual chronicler of Petersburg, Tolstoy anticipating the thinking of Malevich and Nabokov’s nymphet drowning in Pushkinian subtexts. Works we know by heart are estranged and refreshed by these resourceful angles of vision” — Caryl Emerson, Princeton University “Addressing the minor themes in great writers, Ksana Blank demonstrates her talent for telling fascinating stories with surprise conclusions. She achieves the effect of theoretical estrangement: what seemed all too familiar in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Nabokov, reveals its paradoxical side. This book shows that the art of defamiliarization is no less important for literary studies than for literature itself.” — Mikhail Epstein, Emory University click www.academicstudiespress.com to order now SPACES OF CREATIVITY Essays on Russian Literature and the Arts S TUDIE S IN RUssIAN AND SLAVIC L ITE R ATU R E S, C ULTU R E S, AND H IS TO RY Series Editor Lazar Fleishman (Stanford University) SPACES OF CREATIVITY Essays on Russian Literature and the Arts KsaNA BlaNK Boston 2017 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Blank, Ksana, author. Title: Spaces of creativity : essays on Russian literature and the arts / Ksana Blank. Other titles: Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2017. | Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures, and history Identifiers: LCCN 2016034189 (print) | LCCN 2016035508 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618115409 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781618115416 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Russian literature—19th century—History and criticism. | Russian literature—20th century—History and criticism. | Art and literature. | Music and literature. Classification: LCC PG2951 .B57 2017 (print) | LCC PG2951 (ebook) | DDC 891.709/003—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034189 Copyright © 2017 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 9781618115409 (hardcover) ISBN 9781618115416 (ebook) On the cover: The Gypsy Woman, by Marina Azizyan Photo by John Blazejewski / Princeton University Published by Academic Studies Press in 2017 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Contents Note on Translations and Transliteration 6 Illustrations 7 Acknowledgments 9 Preface 12 Sex, Crime, and Railroads in Dostoevsky’s Idiot 14 and Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata “Horror—Red, White, and Square”: 34 Abstract Images in Tolstoy Dobuzhinsky’s Farewell to Petersburg 54 Praising the Name: 78 The Religious Theme in Daniil Kharms Nabokov’s Nymphet and Pushkin’s Water-Nymph 106 Captain Lebyadkin’s Poetry 130 in Shostakovich and Dostoevsky Index 153 Note on Translations and Transliteration Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Russian are mine. Russian names in the text are spelled in the form most familiar to English readers. For all other Russian words, I have followed the Library of Congress transliteration system. Illustrations Page 36 Fig. 1. Kazimir Malevich, Red Square—Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions, 1915. Oil on canvas, 53 х 53 cm. © The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 2015. Page 39 Fig. 2. Kazimir Malevich, Painterly Realism: Boy with Knapsack—Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension, 1915. Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 44.5 cm. 1935 acquisition confirmed in 1999 agreement with the Estate of Kazimir Malevich and made possible with funds from the Mrs. John Hay Whitney Bequest (by exchange). Museum of Modern Art, Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Page 42 Fig. 3. Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting: Rectangle and Circle, 1915. Oil on canvas, 43.2 x 30.7 cm. Unknown private collection. Reprinted from Andrei Nakov, Malevich: Painting the Absolute, Farnham: Lund Humphries, 2010. Photo by John Blazejewski / Princeton University. © Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. In many publications this image is mistakenly placed upside down. See the correct position in Nakov, Malevich, 2:70, and Andréi Nakov, Kazimir Malewicz: Catalogue raisonné (Paris: A. Biro, 2002), 227–28. Page 58 Fig. 4. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, The Vegetable Garden on the Obvodnyi Canal (Petersburg in 1921), 1922. Paper, lithography, I: 23 x 34; L: 32.4 x 446 cm. © The State Russian Museum, Petersburg, 2015. Page 61 Fig. 5. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, The Kiss (from the series Urban Dreams), 1916. Lead pencil and red chalk on cardboard, 109 х 77.7 cm. © The State Russian Museum, Petersburg, 2015. Page 61 Fig. 6. Fragment from Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, The Kiss (from the series Urban Dreams), 1916. Lead pencil and red chalk on cardboard. © The State Russian Museum, Petersburg, 2015. 7 Illustrations Page 63 Fig. 7. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Flying (from the series Urban Dreams), 1909. Paper, ink, 44 x 27.8 cm. © Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Page 63 Fig. 8. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Sketch (from the series Urban Dreams), 1909. Paper, ink. © Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Page 64 Fig. 9. Palace Square, St. Petersburg. Photo by Aleksandr Petrosyan. Page 68 Fig. 10. Nathan Altman, sketch design of the Winter Palace on the first anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, 1957 (author’s replica of 1918). Paper, oil tempera, gouache, pencil, 270 х 970 mm. © the State Museum of History of St. Petersburg. Page 68 Fig. 11. Nathan Altman, sketch design of the General Staff building on the first anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, 1957 (author’s replica of 1918). Paper, oil tempera, gouache, pencil, 270 х 970 mm. © the State Museum of History of St. Petersburg. Page 69 Fig. 12. Nathan Altman, sketch design of the Palace Square on the first anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, 1957 (author’s replica of 1918). Paper, oil tempera, gouache, pencil, 267 х 1105 mm. © the State Museum of History of St. Petersburg. Page 71 Fig. 13. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, 1920. Paper, ink, 10 x 16.5 cm. Private collection. Page 73 Fig. 14. The statue of the angel on top of the Alexander Column, St. Petersburg. My photo. Page 73 Fig. 15. The statue of the angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Photo by Alexander Petrosyan. Page 74 Fig. 16. Reprinted from N. Punin, Monument to the Third International (St. Petersburg: Izdanie otdela izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv, 1920). Acknowledgments I would like to thank my colleagues at Princeton University— Ellen Chances, Caryl Emerson, Olga Hasty, Kirill Ospovat, and Michael Wachtel—for reading parts of this book’s manuscript. Their comments and their support were greatly appreciated. At the university administration level, I am obliged to the Office of the Dean of the Faculty for subsidizing this book’s production costs with a generous grant. I would like to express my appreciation for the feedback from the art historians Alexei Lidov, Marian Burleigh-Motley, and Gerda Panofsky regarding the early version of the chapter on Tolstoy and Malevich. I also thank the music scholars Liudmila Kovnatskaya and Olga Manulkina (St. Petersburg State Conservatory) for their advice on the chapter on Shostakovich. I thank Robin Milner- Gulland (University of Sussex) and Marianna Taymanova (Durham University) for their comments to the early versions of some essays. I am deeply grateful to the editorial staff at the Academic Studies Press—the director and publisher, Igor Nemirovsky, production editor Kira Nemirovsky, and the acquisitions editors Faith Wilson Stein, Meghan Vicks, and Sharona Vedol—for their professional expertise and their help with numerous practical matters. It was a particular joy to work with the editor of the series, Lazar Fleishman. I am grateful to him for his support of this project and his wise advice with respect to its publication. Two anonymous readers gave numerous precise recommendations for the improvement of the first version of the manuscript. I benefited 9 Acknowledgments greatly from their generously extensive and profound comments and their useful suggestions. I owe a very special debt to Dalia Geffen and Rebecca Rine for their