The European Nabokov Web, Classicism and T.S. Eliot: A Textual Interpretation of Pale Fire.
by Robin Davies
ISBN 978-1-936235-65-0
235 pp. cloth
$69.00
Order

Publication Date: June, 2011

Robin Davies here demonstrates that Nabokov’s Pale Fire has a classical unity and represents a direct attack on T.S. Eliot’s philosophical position, particularly as given in The Waste Land and as represented by Eliot’s later tendency for conservatism in literature, politics and religion. After Nabokov was forced into exile from Germany and then France in the 1930s with his young son and Jewish wife, Eliot’s passivism must have seemed to him the very antithesis of survival. The enigmatic Pale Fire and its surface triviality suggested that there could be self-consistent logic within the obvious commentary of Charles Kinbote and John Shade’s poem. Davies places this work in its vast European context, forming a bridge between Russian and European literature which will be appreciated by scholars of both.

Series: Out of the Series

“I am to be read not from left to right, but in Jewish: from right to left”: The Poetics of Boris Slutsky.
by Marat Grinberg
ISBN 978-1934843-73-4
400 pp. cloth
$65.00
Order

Publication Date: January, 2011

Boris Slutsky (1919-1986) is a major original figure of Russian poetry of the second half of the twentieth century whose oeuvre has remained unexplored and unstudied.  The first scholarly study of the poet, Marat Grinberg’s book substantially fills this critical lacuna in the current comprehension of Russian and Soviet literatures.  Grinberg argues that Slutsky’s body of work amounts to a Holy Writ of his times, which daringly fuses biblical prooftexts and stylistics with the language of late Russian Modernism and Soviet newspeak. The book is directed toward readers of Russian poetry and pan-Jewish poetic traditions, scholars of Soviet culture and history, and the burgeoning field of Russian Jewish studies.  Finally, it contributes to the general field of poetics and Modernism.

Reviews:

“Boris Slutsky, according to this brilliant book, accomplished the seemingly impossible: a poet of Soviet times, he reforged the totality of Russian literary culture, from Church Slavonic to Pushkin to Khlebnikov and beyond, within the crucible of Jewish self-understanding.

Marat Grinberg, author of this impressive study, has also accomplished the seemingly impossible. He demonstrates how this supremely Russian poet can and must be read in his totality: 'from right to left,' from beginning to end, and from his desk drawer to Red Square.”  
—David G. Roskies, Sol and Evelyn Henkind Professor of Yiddish Literature, Jewish Theological Seminary. Director, Center for Yiddish Studies, Ben Gurion University of the Negev


“In this erudite and insightful book, Marat Grinberg rescues a great poet from a numbing set of mid-century cliches. No longer a 'war poet,' or 'Soviet diarist,' or sometime Jew, Boris Slutsky emerges as he was in fact—a sometimes playful, sometimes anguished heir to Russian modernism who read Jewish catastrophe through Jewish texts.”
—Alice Nakhimovsky, Professor of Russian and Jewish Studies, Colgate University

Series: Borderlines: Russian and East European - Jewish Studies

Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak.
by Frederick T. Griffiths, Stanley J. Rabinowitz
ISBN 978-1-936235-53-7
250 pp. cloth
$69.00
Order

Publication Date: April, 2011

The authors read some of the classics in the Russian novelistic tradition against a critique of the Lukacs-Bakhtin view of epic, all the while demonstrating the modernity of epic as a literary mode and arguing how some key Russian novels challenge or outgrow their generic form to re-imagine or re-invent a new, monumental one.  The chapters on Gogol's Dead Souls, Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, have major implications for understanding the sweep of Russian literature as a whole, while the final chapter on Stalinist epic, which includes fresh insights on Anna Akhmatova and Nadezhda Mandelstam, considers other literary genres--the memoir and the narrative poem--against the background of the epic tradition.  Teachers, graduate students, undergraduates as well as serious non-academic critics will profit from the original arguments which provide suggestions for re-reading Russian prose generally.

Review:
“Griffiths and Rabinowitz reveal the genre's liveliness, fluidity, and seemingly limitless ability to assert itself in modern letters. Nearly every sentence rewards, and will provoke serious readers to pause and think. The impressive erudition and critical imagination which Griffiths/Rabinowitz combine make one hope that this ancient/modern pair of critical bogatyri will sally forth again.”
—John John M. Kopper, Dartmouth College

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Creating the Empress: Politics and Poetry in the Age of Catherine II.
by Vera Proskurina
ISBN 978-1-936235-50-6
250 pp. cloth
$55.00
Order

Publication Date: January, 2011

In Creating the Empress, Vera Proskurina examines the interaction between power and poetry in creating the imperial image of Catherine the Great, providing a detailed analysis of a wide range of Russian literary works from this period, particularly the main Classical myths associated with Catherine (Amazon, Astraea, Pallas Athena, Felicitas, Fortune, etc.), as well as how these Classical subjects affirmed imperial ideology and the monarch’s power. The book allows for the viewing of these themes and motifs not only in the immediate historical context of Catherine II's reign, but also in the context of the broader European symbolic traditions. Each chapter of the book revolves around the major events of Catherine’s reign (as well as some major literary works) that give a broad framework to discuss the evolution of important recurring motifs and images.

Reviews:

"The strength of Proskurina's work lies in its detailed analysis of a wide range of Russian literary works from this period, particularly in highlighting the frequent use of Classical subjects or genres by authors to discuss the symbolic or analogous content of their writings. Similarly, she draws on an impressive range of English and Russian language scholarship to emphasize the need to view these Classical themes and motifs in the context of wider European symbolic traditions, as well as the immediate historical context of Catherine II's reign."
—Paul Keenan, Department of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science, in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 10, Number 1, 2009, 179-182.

“Vera Proskurina’s Creating the Empress: Politics and Poetry in the Age of Catherine II is an erudite and imaginative examination of Catherine the Great’s reign through the double lens of politics and poetry.  The author, who is known for her expert and graceful interpretation of cultural symbols, brings this approach to perfection in the new volume.  She traces different aspects of Catherine’s age symbolic representation beginning with a brilliant deconstruction of the gender dynamic in the 1762 coup d’etat and ending with a masterful analysis of the Empress’s dubious reputation as an ageing coquette in the last years of her reign.  Theoretically sound and well-written, the book will be a welcome addition to the library of every Catherine scholar.  The book’s handsome appearance makes it a pleasure to read.”
—Irina Reyfman, Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University

“Vera Proskurina’s Creating the Empress: Politics and Poetry in the Age of Catherine II offers a striking and sophisticated demonstration of the ways literary works served and shaped imperial ideology. It joins other recent path breaking works like those of Andrei Zorin, Cynthia Whittaker and Elise Wirtschafter that read eighteenth-century Russian literature back into the political and cultural landscape of the day. Dr. Proskurina offers brilliant new close readings of many familiar works establishing their rich meanings by reconstructing the Russian and European cultural context. She demonstrates the vital political functions of this literature as it expressed and shaped imperial Russian culture. These functions include establishing various myths that supported Catherine’s power as a woman ruler and that shaped cultural, literary and political aspects of court culture. Dr. Proskurina bring to her subject an impressive grasp not only of the literary texts and written sources, but also of the cultural specifics of the era, viewing the works under investigation through the prism of contemporary literary institutions and the complexities of reigning cultural mythology they helped foster.”
—Marcus C. Levitt, University of Southern California

Series: Ars Rossika

Jacob's Ladder: Kabbalistic Allegory in Russian Literature.
by Marina Aptekman
ISBN 978-1-934843-38-3
250 pp. cloth
$70.00
Order

Publication Date: June, 2011

Focusing primarily on the close study of literary works presented in the broad cultural and historical context, Jacob’s Ladder discusses the reflection of kabbalistic allegory in Russian literature and provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of the perception of Kabbalah in Russian consciousness. Aptekman investigates the questions of when, how and why Kabbalah has been used in Russian literary texts from Pre-Romanticism to Modernism and what particular role it played in the larger context of the Russian literary tradition. The correct understanding of this liaison helps the reader to clarify many enigmatic images in Russian literary works of the last two centuries and to understand the roots of a particular cultural falsification that played an important role in the anti-Semitic mythology of the twentieth century.

Reviews:

"Marina Aptekman makes skillful use of rich and diverse source materials, some new and others interpreted in an original and innovative way. This is an important and thought-provoking contribution to the field of Russian-Jewish cultural relations."
—Mikhail Krutikov, associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Michigan

“This book is a fascinating study of a largely unexplored subject--the role of Kabbalah in Russian literature from the mid 17th to the 20th century and the larger context in which literature developed. Focusing on images and allegories that derive, directly and indirectly, from Kabbalah, Aptekman shows how and why lt became an important element in mystical freemasonry, romanticism, and modernism. In addition, she limns the alternation between mystical and magical (or occult) interpretations of kabbalah and reveals how the occult interpretation came to be associated with black magic and, eventually, with the myth of a Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy.”
—Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, professor of History, Fordham University

Series: Borderlines: Russian and East European - Jewish Studies

Fifty Writers: An Anthology of 20th Century Russian Short Stories.
translated by Valentina Brougher, Mark Lipovetsky, Frank Miller, edited by Valentina Brougher, Mark Lipovetsky
ISBN 978-1-936235-22-3
800 pp. cloth
$69.00
Order

Publication Date: March, 2011


The largest, most comprehensive anthology of its kind, this volume brings together significant, representative stories from every decade of the 20th century. It includes the prose of officially recognized writers and dissidents, both well-known and neglected or forgotten, plus new authors from the end of the 20th century. The selections reflect the various literary trends and approaches to depicting reality in the 20th century: traditional realism, modernism, socialist realism, and post-modernism.  Taken as a whole, the stories capture every major aspect of Russian life, history and culture in the 20th century.  The rich array of themes and styles will be of tremendous interest to students and readers who want to learn about Russia through the engaging genre of the short story.

Reviews:

"I've seen many English-language anthologies of Russian literature, but this is the first one that I want to give to all my non-specialist friends, so that they can finally understand what is so wonderful about modern Russian literature."
—Eliot Bornstein, Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU and the author of Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture

"This selection of mainly newly translated stories from the 20th century includes both well-known writers and new voices. It eschews traditional selections from the former category and presents startling writings from the latter. As the editors-translators put it themselves in their lucid introduction, these stories together form a 'mega-novel' about Russia of the previous century from its first revolution to post-perestroika times."
—Irene Masing-Delic, Ohio State University

Series: Cultural Syllabus

Charms of Cynical Reason: Tricksters in Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture.
by Mark Lipovetsky
ISBN 978-1-934843-45-1
250 pp. cloth
$65.00
Order

Publication Date: February, 2011

The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-soviet tricksters, including such “cultural idioms” as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Shtirlitz, and others. The steadily increasing charisma of Soviet tricksters from the 1920s to the 2000s is indicative of at least two fundamental features of both the soviet and post-soviet societies. First, tricksters reflect the constant presence of irresolvable contradictions and yawning gaps within the soviet (as well as post-soviet) social universe. Secondly, these characters epitomize the realm of cynical culture thus far unrecognized in Russian studies. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in soviet and post-soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s.

Reviews:

“Mark Lipovetsky’s work makes a critical intervention in the study of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture. Recent scholarship has made great strides in overcoming the binary categories that once characterized accounts of Soviet society—in most different ways—in both the USSR and the West: official vs. unofficial, conformist vs. dissident, socialist bloc vs. the capitalist West, etc. As works in history, anthropology and sociology have begun to show, life in the Soviet Union was painted in shades of grey, admitting a huge range of economic behaviors, social interactions, and political values located “between and betwixt.” With this book, in one brilliant stroke, Lipovetsky has brought home these insights with regard to the study of Soviet literature and culture. The figure of the trickster, which Lipovetsky finds across an enormous range of important, canonical and beloved works, was at once the embodiment of socialist values and a subversive, concretizing the special forms of identity and social skills required for survival in the Soviet Union. This study shows us in a new manner what was distinctive about Soviet social and cultural history and in what ways it should be seen as a variety of the common story of modernity. Further, it explores how the cultural life of present-day Russia has inherited these structures and patterns. Lipovetsky’s erudition is vast, his critical acumen is impressive, and his writing is superbly nuanced and exciting. In short, this is a remarkable addition to scholarship.”
—Kevin Platt, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at University of Pennsylvania, and author of History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution

“By focusing on the figure of the trickster, Mark Lipovetsky develops a new language for talking about subjectivity and ideology in Soviet and post-Soviet literature. The trickster shows just how inadequate talk of accommodation and resistance is when approaching the discourse of power in modern Russia. It turns out that the famously dualistic Russian culture has plenty of ways to go beyond “either/or,” and the trickster knows them all. Fortunately for us, Lipovetsky knows them as well.”

—Eliot Bornstein, Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU, and the author of Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929 and Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture

Series: Cultural Revolutions: Russia in the Twentieth Century

All the Same the Words Don't Go Away: Essays on Authors, Heroes, Aesthetics, and Stage Adaptations from the Russian Tradition.
by Caryl Emerson
ISBN 978-1-934843-81-9
422 pp. cloth
$75.00
Order

Publication Date: December, 2010

All the Same the Words Don't Go Away brings together twenty-five years of essays and reviews, linked loosely by three themes.   The first explores the legacy of Mikhail Bakhtin: his ideas of dialogue and carnival, and the debates ignited by each. The second delves into three "master workers" of the Russian tradition: Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. In this section, emphasis is comparative: the riddle of Pushkin's life, why "Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky," how Chekhov reads Tolstoy, why Kundera dislikes Doestoevsky and Tolstoy dislikes Shakespeare. The final section addresses the transposition of classic literary texts into other media through musical works by Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. Throughout, the fundamental heroes are Pushkin's Tatiana Larina and Boris Godunov. This volume will be of interest to comparativists and students in interdisciplinary humanities.

Reviews:

"If ever there was a writer whose words should never be allowed to go away, it is Caryl Emerson, our most precious musicoliterary bridge builder.  Having these words collected is like having a party with all your best friends."
—Richard Taruskin, University of California at Berkeley

"This collection illustrates both the astonishing breadth of Caryl Emerson’s interests, and also her ability to return again and again to the same texts from different perspectives.  There is no one writing today in the field of Russian culture more sensitive to its various voices than Emerson.  She has an unparalleled ability to listen to her authors – literary, musical, scholarly, and theoretical – and report what they are up to."
—Donna Orwin, University of Toronto

“For many years Caryl Emerson has been recognized as America's best - most versatile, profound, and energetic - scholar of Russian literary and musical culture.  Her contributions to our understanding of Russian masterpieces have ranged from utterly accurate translations, to scrupulously fair reviews, to performances, to provocative essays, to rigorously researched and argued volumes.  This volume, which should be read cover-to-cover, captures this exceptional range with sections on major Russian thinkers, writers and performers.  I can imagine no better guide to Russian culture than these unfailingly fresh, insightful, and engaging essays.”
—William Mills Todd III, Harvard University

Series: Ars Rossika

The Goalkeeper: The Nabokov Almanac.
by Yuri Leving
ISBN 978-1-936235-19-3
326 pp. cloth
$39.00
Order

Publication Date: October, 2010

The Goalkeeper is a new scholarly almanac devoted to the art of Vladimir Nabokov. Himself an ardent goalkeeper, the author of Lolita viewed soccer as more than a game: "I was less the keeper of a soccer goal than the keeper of a secret" (Speak, Memory). The inaugural collection features contributions from two dozen leading Nabokov scholars worldwide, including academic articles (Neil Cornwell, Gerard de Vries, Samuel Schuman, and others); roundtable discussions (Brian Boyd, Jeff Edmunds, Priscilla Meyer, David Rampton, Leona Toker); interviews (Dmitri Nabokov, Alvin Toffler); archival materials; the Kyoto Nabokov conference report; and book reviews (Pekka Tammi, Zoran Kuzmanovich, Galya Diment). The Nabokov Almanac, edited by Yuri Leving, is affiliated with the Nabokov Online Journal, published since 2007. View the book trailer on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LVIZ0T_1qc. 

Reviews:

"A virtual cornucopia of Nabokoviana! With its impressive diversity of contributors and stylish format, Yuri Leving’s The Goalkeeper promises to be the place to look for the latest on one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and most stimulating thinkers."
—David Bethea, Vilas Professor of Slavic Languages, University of Wisconsin-Madison / University of Oxford

"The Goalkeeper is a remarkable team effort. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the life and art of Vladimir Nabokov."  
—Leland de la Durantaye, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of English, Harvard University

"The book that emerges is one of those gifts whose first impact produces in the recipient’s mind a colored image, a blazoned blur, reflecting with such emblematic force the sweet nature of the contributors."
—T.W. Thomas, Professor of Anthropology, Waindell College

Series: Out of the Series

Keys to "The Gift": A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov's Novel.
by Yuri Leving
ISBN 978-1-934843-11-6
564 pp. cloth
$75.00
Order

Publication Date: May, 2011

Yuri Leving's Keys to “The Gift”: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov's Novel is a new systematization of the main available data on Nabokov's most complex Russian novel, The Gift (1934–1939). From notes in Nabokov's private correspondence to scholarly articles accumulated during the seventy years since the novel’s first appearance in print, the work draws from a broad spectrum of existing material in a succinct and coherent way, as well as providing innovative analyses. The first part of the monograph, "The Novel," outlines the basic properties of The Gift (plot, characters, style, and motifs) and reconstructs its internal chronology. The second part, "The Text," describes the creation of the novel and the history of its publication, public and critical reaction, challenges of the English translation, and post-Soviet reception. Along with annotations to all five chapters of The Gift, the commentary provides insight into problems of paleography, featuring unique textological analysis of the novel based on the author's study of the archival copy of the manuscript.

Reviews:

“Yuri Leving’s meticulous dissection of Nabokov’s last Russian novel, The Gift, fully vindicates his claim for it as ‘one of the masterpieces of twentieth century modernist literature,’ fit to stand beside Joyce's Ulysses for the allusive richness of its content and the musicality of its prose. In seven richly fact-filled chapters, Leving has unearthed a wealth of historical, chronological, biographical, textological, literary critical and bibliographical material to bolster his case, and like a scrupulous archeologist, uncovers the multiple layers of Nabokov's complex creation to illustrate and illuminate its artistic essence. In its masterly marshaling of evidence, Leving’s work is unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon.”
—Michael Scammell, the author of Solzhenitsyn, A Biography (1984) and Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual (2010), the translator of The Gift into English

“Prof. Yuri Leving’s book on Nabokov’s magisterial The Gift is a masterpiece in itself, the last – and definitive – word on the subject.”
—Alexander Theroux, the author of Darconville’s Cat (1980) and Laura Warholic (2007), the literary critic of The Wall Street Journal

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Vladimir Soloviev and the Spiritualization of Matter.
by Oliver Smith
ISBN 978-1-936235-17-9
308 pp. cloth
$59.00
Order

Publication Date: November, 2010

While he is widely acknowledged as the most important Russian thinker of the nineteenth century, Vladimir Soloviev’s place in the landscape of world philosophy nevertheless remains uncertain. Approaching him through a single synoptic lens, this book foregrounds his unique envisioning of the interaction between humanity and the material world. By investigating the development of a single theme in his work—his idea of the "spiritualization of matter", the "task" of humanity—Smith constructs a rounded picture of Soloviev’s overall importance to an understanding of nineteenth-century thought, as well as to modern theology and philosophy. The picture that emerges is of a writer whose contribution to a Christian philosophy of matter resonates with many of the religious debates of modernity.


Reviews:

"Oliver Smith’s Vladimir Soloviev and the Spiritualization of Matter is one of the best recent works in English about Soloviev, indeed about Russian philosophy in general. It tackles complex philosophical concepts with unusual clarity, lucidity and cohesion, exploring the evolution of Soloviev’s philosophical system, and offering detailed and nuanced analyses of the relationships of Soloviev's ideas with those of his great predecessors (Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Jewish Kabbala etc.)."
—Lazar Fleishman, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University

"This book is a welcome contribution to a growing body of literature on Russian sophiology. Weaving his narrative around Soloviev’s spiritual and intellectual biography, Oliver Smith offers a nuanced and erudite account of Soloviev’s metaphysics of all-unity. Smith successfully shows that at the core of Soloviev’s metaphysical project was a consistent integration of spiritual and material aspects of reality, epitomized in the incarnation."
—Paul Gavrilyuk, Associate Professor of Historical Theology, University of St Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota

"Intelligently, poignantly, and with clear sight, Smith gives us a portrait of Soloviev and his refusal, indeed, his 'inability to think the divine without the human'; I myself could formulate no better description of this important Russian religious writer, who throughout his multi-faceted career as poet, philosopher, teacher, and journalist sought ever to articulate the ways in which matter can, is, and must be spiritualized. We are all the better for Soloviev's various writings on the subject, and now for Smith's cogent analysis of them all."
—Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

A "Labyrinth of Linkages" in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
by Gary Browning
ISBN 978-1-936235-18-6
132 pp. cloth
$39.00
Order

Publication Date: August, 2010

The renowned Russian writer Leo Tolstoy created a realistic masterpiece in Anna Karenina (1878).  In the same work, moreover, he utilized allegory and symbol to an extent and at a level of sophistication unknown in his other works.  In Browning’s study, the author identifies and analyzes previously unnoticed or only briefly mentioned “linkages and keystones” found in two highly developed clusters of symbols, arising from Anna’s momentous train ride and peasant nightmares, and of allegories, rooted in Vronsky’s disastrous steeplechase.  Within this labyrinth of symbol, allegory and structural patterning lies embedded much of the novel’s most significant meaning.  This study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Russian literature, Tolstoy, symbol, allegory, structuralism, and moral criticism. 

Reviews:

 "Recent scholarship has by and large taken Tolstoy’s reference to the "labyrinth of linkages" in Anna Karenina to indicate the dense and complicated network of interrelated an mutually illuminating images that create pathways to explicating the novel's many possible meanings. However, a labyrinth in the classical sense in unicursal: one sinuous route leads from the outside into the center. The hermeneutic of Gary L. Browning's book wore closely aligns with this second conception."
—Julie W. de Sherbinin, Colby College published in The Russian Review



Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Bieganski: The Brute Polack Stereotype in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
by Danusha Goska
ISBN 978-1-936235-15-5
344 pp. cloth
$65.00
Order

Publication Date: July, 2010

In this controversial study, Goska exposes one stereotype of Poles and other Eastern Europeans. In the "Bieganski" stereotype, Poles exhibit the qualities of animals. They are strong, stupid, violent, fertile, anarchic, dirty, and especially hateful in a way that more evolved humans are not. Their special hatefulness is epitomized by their Polish anti-Semitism.  Bieganski discovers this stereotype in the mainstream press, scholarship, film, in Jews' self-definition, and in responses to the Holocaust. Bieganski's twin is Shylock, the stereotype of the crafty, physically inadequate, moneyed Jew. The final chapters of the book are devoted to interviews with American Jews, which reveal that Bieganski—and Shylock—are both alive and well among those who have little knowledge of Poles or Poland.

Reviews:

"Stereotypes of Poles have been commonplace in Western society. Danusha V. Goska presents a comprehensive overview of such images in a balanced fashion. She offers no apologetic for genuine instance of Polish anti-Semitism. But she also exposes those rooted in outright prejudice with no foundation in fact. An important contribution to improved Polish-Jewish understanding."
—John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, Ph.D., professor of Social Ethics, Director, Catholic-Jewish Studies Program Catholic Theological Union Chicago

"A powerful, provocative, ultimately profound work of scholarship regarding the stereotypification of Poles and its implications not only for Polish-Jewish relations in the Old World and the New, but also for anyone wishing to fathom the interworkings of class and ethnicity in an America that has all too often fallen short of its promise."
—James P. Leary, folklorist, University of Wisconsin

"In this most important work, Dr. Goska's style incorporates those necessary ingredients that justify writing as an art form: her grammar is impeccable, even while the pathways of her sentences can be unpredictable. Her imagery is robust, but yet it never gets in the way of the underlying premises of her arguments. Moreover, her thinking is crisp, and her knowledge of this very sensitive topic is thoroughly evident. Indeed, the reader cannot help but be persuaded by the logical unfolding of the positions she brings to this necessary work. Above all, she establishes that all-important trust in her readers: that while she may jostle their previously-held constructs, she will also protect them on a literary journey that could be harrowing and dangerous in lesser hands."
—Dr. Michael Herzbrun, Rabbi Temple Emanu-El, Rochester, NY

Series: Jews of Poland

Ivan Konevskoi: "Wise Child" of Russian Symbolism.
by Joan Delaney Grossman
ISBN 978-1-934843-89-5
276 pp. cloth
$59.00
Order

Publication Date: March, 2010

Ivan Konevskoi: "Wise Child" of Russian Symbolism is the first study in any language of Ivan Konevskoi – poet, thinker, mystic – for many decades the "lost genius" of Russian modernism. A fresh and compelling figure, Konevskoi plunged deeply into currents of modern mystical thought and art in the 1890s. A passionate searcher for immortality, he developed his own version of pantheism meant to guard his unique persona from dissolution in the All-One. The poetry of Tiutchev, Vladimir Solov’ev and Rossetti, William James’s psychology, paintings of Pre-Raphaelites and Arnold Boecklin, Old Russian historical myth, the Finnish Kalevala: all engaged him during his brief life. His worldview grew more audacious, his confidence in the magical power of the word grew more assured. Drowning in 1901 at 23, Konevskoi left a legacy unfinished, rich, and intriguing.

Reviews:

"Ivan Konevskoi (1877-1901) strove throughout his tragically brief earthly life to 'abolish death' by penetrating the mystic core of the universe. His earthly survival has now been notably enhanced by Joan Grossman's splendid book, a comprehensive account of the poet's life, thought, and accomplishments. Deeply sympathetic but always clear-eyed and sensible, Grossman's narrative is exhaustively researched but never pedantic, engagingly written and rich in illuminations derived from the author's lifelong study of Russian poetry, especially of the Symbolist era.”
—Hugh McLean, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

"Joan Grossman’s spiritual biography of 'poet-mystic-thinker' Ivan Konevskoi (Oreus) fills a large gap in the scholarship on early Russian modernism. Although never entirely forgotten, Konevskoi was largely ignored by scholars in both Russia and in the West, before the appearance of this substantial monograph. With the superb knowledge of her subject-matter that years of painstaking and engaged research have given her, Grossman guides us through the poet’s short, but intense, quest for immortality through his own brand of pantheism. As Grossman shows, Konevskoi’s spiritual journey, which ended prematurely by accidental drowning, has many intriguing stops along the way. Grossman makes this journey entertaining and informative. This is a major work by a distinguished scholar, which is bound to stimulate further research of this elusive poet."
—Irene Masing-Delic, Ohio State University

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Mandelstam.
by Oleg Lekmanov, translated by Tatiana Retivov
ISBN 978-1-934843-28-4
200 pp. cloth
$32.00
Order

Publication Date: January, 2010

Now available for the first time in English, Oleg Lekmanov’s critically acclaimed Mandelstam presents the maverick Russian poet’s life and work to a wider audience and includes the most reliable details of the poet’s life, which were recently found and released from the KGB archives. Through his engaging narrative, Lekmanov carries the reader through Mandelstam’s early life and education in pre-revolutionary Petersburg, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and in Heidelberg and his return to revolutionary Russia. Bold and fearless, he was quoted as saying: “Only in Russia do they respect poetry. They even kill you for it.” Osip Mandelstam compared a writer to a parrot, saying that once his owner tires of him, he will cover his cage with black cloth, which becomes for literature a surrogate of night. In 1938, Mandelstam was arrested and six months later became a statistic:  over 500,000 political prisoners were sent to the Gulags in 1938; between 1931 and 1940, over 300,000 prisoners died in the Gulags.  One of them was the poet Osip Mandelstam. This is the tragic story of his life, pre-empted by the black cloth of Stalinism.

Reviews:

Of the original Russian edition:

"Lekmanov’s book contains insightful observations of the poems and convincing attempts at psychological reconstruction. The author does not attempt to conceal the hero's 'idiosyncrasies' and manages to forego engaging in 'objective Schadenfreude.' Mandelstam was at times funny, hysterical, naive, but even in the most curious guise he managed to maintain high stature, without which his poetry would not have been possible. Such stature was the stuff of legends. It is also wonderfully illuminated here by amusing (though occasionally common and mean) anecdotes. This is the image of Mandelstam that Lekmanov presents, reminding us of the inherent kinship between poetry and nobleness."
—Andrei Nemzer, "Vremya Novostei"

"Lekmanov makes an important contribution to understanding and appreciation of Mandelstam's life and work. Highly Recommended."
—V.D. Barooshian, emeritus, Wells College. Published in CHOICE, September 2010.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

The Twentieth Century Russian Short Story: A Critical Companion.
by Lyudmila Parts
ISBN 978-1-934843-44-4
400 pp. cloth
$45.00
Order

Publication Date: December, 2009

The Twentieth Century Russian Short Story: A Critical Companion is a collection of the most informative critical articles on some of the best twentieth-century Russian short stories from Chekhov and Bunin to Tolstaya and Pelevin. While each article focuses on a particular short story, collectively they elucidate the developments in each author’s oeuvre and in the subjects, structure, and themes of the twentieth-century Russian short story. American, European and Russian scholars discuss the recurrent themes of language’s power and limits, of childhood and old age, of art and sexuality, and of cultural, individual and artistic memory. The book opens with a discussion of the short story genre and its socio-cultural function. This book will be of value to all scholars of Russian literature, the short story, and genre theory.

Series: Cultural Revolutions: Russia in the Twentieth Century

Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture since the 1880s.
by Henrietta Mondry
ISBN 978-1-934843-39-0
300 pp. cloth
$58.00
Order

Publication Date: November, 2009

Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture since 1880s explores the construction of the Jew’s physical and ontological body in Russian culture as represented in literature, film, and non-literary texts from the 1880s to the present. With the rise of the dominance of biological and racialist discourse in the 1880s, the depiction of Jewish characters in Russian literary and cultural productions underwent a significant change, as these cultural practices recast the Jew not only as an archetypal “exotic” and religious or class Other (as in Romanticism and realist writing), but as a biological Other whose acts, deeds, and thoughts were determined by racial differences. This Jew allegedly had physical and psychological characteristics that were genetically determined and that could not be changed by education, acculturation, conversion to Christianity, or change of social status. This stereotype has become a stable archetype that continues to operate in contemporary Russian society and culture.

Reviews:

"This book is a welcome addition to the small but growing literature that aims to address the neglect of 'race'…It represents a welcome theoretical shift away from the tendency to view religious-based anti-Semitism and racialized anti-Semitism as being somehow distinct."
—Brendan McGeever in Revolutionary Russia
 
"Henrietta Mondry’s Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture since the 1880s is one of the most important books to appear in the burgeoning field of Russian-Jewish studies this decade. Taking seriously the problematics of real Jews in the Russian speaking lands, Mondry examines the fantasies about their bodies in writings from Anton Chekhov to the new Russian racial science of the 2000s. This is a readable and engaging study offering methodological and critical insights into anti-Semitism and its images. It provides the reader with a detailed understanding of the function of such images over the past century from Romanoff Russia through the short and bloody history of the USSR to Putin’s Russia. It gives one pause about the continuities in Russian images of the Jew into the future.
—Sander Gilman, Author,The Jew’s Body

Series: Borderlines: Russian and East European - Jewish Studies

The Superstitious Muse: Mythopoetic Thinking and Russian Literature.
by David Bethea
ISBN 978-1-934843-17-8
432 pp. cloth
$80.00
Order

Publication Date: November, 2009

For several decades David Bethea has written authoritatively on the “mythopoetic thinking” that lies at the heart of classical Russian literature, especially Russian poetry. His theoretically informed essays and books have made a point of turning back to issues of intentionality and biography at a time when authorial agency seems under threat of “erasure” and the question of how writers, and poets in particular, live their lives through their art is increasingly moot. The lichnost’ (personhood, psychic totality) of the given writer is all-important, argues Bethea, as it is that which combines the specifically biographical and the capaciously mythical in verbal units that speak simultaneously to different planes of being. Pushkin’s Evgeny can be one incarnation of the poet himself and an Everyman rising up to challenge Peter’s new world order; Brodsky can be, all at once, Dante and Mandelstam and himself, the exile paying an Orphic visit to Florence (and, by ghostly association, Leningrad).This sort of metempsychosis, where the stories that constitute the Ur-texts of Russian literature are constantly reworked in the biographical myths shaping individual writers’ lives, is Bethea’s primary focus. This collection contains a liberal sampling of Bethea’s most memorable previously published essays along with new studies prepared for this occasion.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts.
by Marcus Levitt
ISBN 978-1-934843-68-0
432 pp. cloth
$59.00
Order

Publication Date: October, 2009

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts brings together twenty essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian literature.  The essays address a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the development of modern Russian literature, from authorship and philosophy to gender and religion in Russian Enlightenment culture.  The first part of the collection explores the career and works of Alexander Sumarokov, who played a formative role in literary life of his day.  In the essays of the second part Levitt argues that the Enlightenment’s privileging of vision played an especially important role in eighteenth-century Russian self-image, and that its “occularcentrism” was profoundly shaped by Orthodox religious views. Early Modern Russian Letters offers a series of original and provocative explorations of a vital but little studied period.

Reviews:

"Professor Marcus Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian literature, crowns years spent studying poet and playwright Alexander Sumarokov with a new collection of articles, some now made available in English for the first time. Containing a series of engaging essays on various aspects of Sumarokov’s oeuvre together with a variety of other studies concerning Russian culture, literature, history and philosophy, this volume will serve as an indispensable guide to all those studying eighteenth-century Russia for many years to come."
—Mark Altshuller, Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages & Literatures, The University of Pittsburgh

"The volume of articles by Marcus Levitt, a well-known expert of early modern Russian literature, embodies his pioneering work in this field. Levitt closes a glaring gap in the history of eighteenth-century Russian literature by providing a wealth of material and ideas about playwright and poet Alexander Sumarkov. Levitt goes on to offer an innovative approach to some of the most important questions of Russian eighteenth-century literature and culture. It is a pleasure to see the works by an admired colleague so handsomely presented in this thoroughly put together collection."
—Irina Reyfman, Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures, Columbia University

"This volume will become indispensable to scholars specializing in eighteenth-century Russia. Further afield, specialists in the European Enlightenment will discover a wealth of scholarship about the Russian side of that story, much of it available for the first time in English. Levitt's collection weaves a rich tale about eighteenth-century Russia's linguistic development, the rise of its literary institution, and the complex interplay of Orthodoxy, westernizing secularization, and the heretofore overlooked dominance of the visual. Levitt writes lucidly and without jargon, making his ideas accessible and engaging for specialists and newcomers alike."
—Amanda Ewington, Davidson College, published in the Russian Review

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

A Reader's Guide to Nabokov's "Lolita".
by Julian Connolly
ISBN 978-1-934843-65-9
208 pp. cloth
$40.00
Order

Publication Date: September, 2009

One of the most fascinating and controversial novels of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is renown for its innovative style and notorious for its subject matter and influence on popular culture.  A Reader’s Guide to Nabokov’s “Lolita” carries readers through the intricacies of Nabokov’s work and helps them achieve a better understanding of his rich artistic design.  The book opens with a detailed chronology of Nabokov’s life and literary career. Chapters include an analysis of the novel, a discussion of its precursors in Nabokov’s work and in world literature, an essay on the character of Dolly Haze (Humbert’s “Lolita”), and a commentary on the critical and cultural afterlife of the novel.  The volume concludes with an annotated bibliography of selected critical reading.  The guide should prove illuminating both for first-time readers of Lolita and for experienced re-readers of Nabokov’s classic work.

Review:

"The importance of this book lies in the way it succinctly summarizes critical viewpoints yet provides a fresh and accessible interpretation of the novel… [Connolly] never claims to give a definitive reading of the book, only to try to help readers "grasp the full complexity and sweep of Nabokov's unique creation" (p.1), which he admirably achieves." 
—Jason Merrill, Michigan State University, published in the Russian Review

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia.
by Viktor Zhivov
ISBN 978-1-934843-12-3
524 pp. cloth
$78.00
Order

Publication Date: June, 2009

Victor Zhivov's Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia is one of the most important studies ever published on eighteenth-century Russia. Historians and students of Russian culture agree that the creation of a Russian literary language was key to the formation of a modern secular culture, and this title traces the growth of a vernacular language from the "hybrid Slavonic" of the late seventeenth century through the debates between "archaists and innovators" of the early nineteenth century. Zhivov's study is an essential work on the genesis of modern Russian culture; the aim of this translation is to make it available to historians and students of the field.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

A Companion to Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit.
by Thomas Seifrid
ISBN 978-1-934843-08-6
204 pp. cloth
$40.00
Order

Publication Date: April, 2009

Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Exotic Moscow under Western Eyes: Essays on Culture, Civilization and Barbarism.
by Irene Masing-Delic
ISBN 978-1-934843-40-6
264 pp. cloth
$59.00
Order

Publication Date: March, 2009

This collection of essays on Turgenev, Goncharov, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Blok, Briusov, Gor’kii, Pasternak and Nabokov represents diverse voices but is also unified. One invariant is the recurring distinction between “culture” and “civilization” and the vision of Russia as the bearer of culture because it is “barbaric.” Another stance advocates the synthesis of “sense and sensibility” and the vision of “Apollo” and “Dionysus” creating a “civilized culture” together. Those voices that delight in the artificiality of civilization are complemented by those apprehensive of the dangers inherent in barbarism. This collection thus adds new perspectives to the much-debated opposition of vital Russia and a declining West, offering novel interpretations of classics from Oblomov to Lolita and The Idiot to Doctor Zhivago.

Review:

"Masing-Delic has brought to her readings and intertextual analyses an impressive knowledge of Russian literature and its cultural contexts, thereby opening up new perspectives. Her interpretations are grounded in the texts in such a way that the large historiosophic themes emerge naturally from her discussions rather than being theoretically imposed on them. The has admirably succeeded in combining literary interpretation with cultural history in mutually illuminating ways. Her boldly conceived and thoughtful study will be essential reading for specialists and will appeal to those interested in intertextuality, Russian literature, and cultural history."
—Diane Oenning Thompson, University of Cambridge, Published in the Slavic Review

Series: Cultural Revolutions: Russia in the Twentieth Century

Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries, Vol. I.
by Valentina Polukhina
ISBN 978-1-934843-15-4
360 pp. cloth
$60.00
Order

Publication Date: November, 2008


Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries (Volume 1) offers a fascinating record of conversations with poets of various nationalities about Joseph Brodsky: Czeslaw Milosz, Roy Fisher, Lev Loseff, Bella Akhmadulina, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Tomas Venclova, Viktor Krivulin, Alexander Kushner, and Elena Shvarts. In comparison with the first edition of this volume published in 1992 this new second edition is enlarged with three new interviews and a series of previously unpublished unique photographs from the personal archives of the author and the interviewees.


The collection combines biographical details with a new and authoritative interpretation of the poetics, style, and ideas of one of the most influential poets to emerge in post-Stalinist Russia. As a poet, essayist, and playwright, Brodsky is widely known and read in the English-speaking world. This book is a superb guide to further study of Brodsky's work both for specialist scholars and general readers who are intoxicated by poetry.



Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries, Vol. II.
by Valentina Polukhina
ISBN 978-1-934843-16-1
604 pp. cloth
$70.00
Order

Publication Date: November, 2008


In the new second volume of Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries, the collection of interviews features eye-witness accounts of Joseph Brodsky’s friends and family members, publishers, editors, translators, students, and fellow poets including John Le Carre, Oleg Tselkov, Petr Vail, Bengt Jangfeldt, Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and others.

This collection of 40 interviews illuminates an intriguing contemporary phenomenon and affords a fascinating insight into the American literary scene. Continuing the discussion begun in the first volume, this series of interviews contains important discussions on the style, ideas, and personality of one of the most brilliant and paradoxical poets of our time. Subtle, incisive, and rigorous in its critical evaluation, each discussion significantly advances our understanding of Brodsky's complex poetic world. All discussions are linked by core questions that are carefully and sometimes provocatively formulated. The interviews are published together with many unique photographs from the private archives of the author and the interviewees.


Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

The Marsh of Gold. Pasternak’s Writings on Inspiration and Creation.
translated by Angela Livingstone, edited by Angela Livingstone
ISBN 978-1-934843-23-9
330 pp. cloth
$50.00
Order

Publication Date: September, 2008

Major statements by the celebrated Russian poet Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) about poetry, inspiration, the creative process, and the significance of artistic/literary creativity in his own life as well as in human life altogether, are presented here in his own words (in translation) and are discussed in the extensive commentaries and introduction. The texts range from 1910 to 1946 and are between two and ninety pages long. There are commentaries on all the texts, as well as a final essay on Pasternak’s famous novel, Doctor Zhivago, which is looked at here in the light of what it says on art and inspiration.
Although universally acknowledged as one of the great writers of the twentieth century, Pasternak is not yet sufficiently recognized as the highly original and important thinker that he also was. All his life he thought and wrote about the nature and significance of the experience of inspiration, though avoiding the word “inspiration” where possible as his own views were not the conventional ones. The author’s purpose is (a) to make this philosophical aspect of his work better known, and (b) to communicate to readers who cannot read Russian the pleasure and interest of an “inspired” life as Pasternak experienced it.

Review:

"Lucid and full commentaries are interspersed between the pieces, making this an indispensable volume for any student of Pasternak or early twentieth-century Russia." 
—Sasha Dugdale, Times Literary Supplement, May 8, 2009

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

In Quest of Tolstoy.
by Hugh McLean
ISBN 978-1-934843-02-4
256 pp. cloth
$75.00
Order

Publication Date: March, 2008

Lev Tolstoy has held the attention of mankind for well over a century. A supremely talented artist, whose novels and short stories continue to entrance readers all over the world, he was at the same time a fearless moral philosopher who explored and challenged the fundamental bases of human society—political, economic, legal, and cultural. Hugh McLean, Professor Emeritus of Russian literature at the University of California, Berkeley, has been studying and writing about Tolstoy for many years. In these essays he investigates some of the numerous puzzles and paradoxes in the Tolstoyan heritage, engaging both with Tolstoy the artist, author of those incomparable novels, and Tolstoy the thinker, who, from his impregnable outpost at Yasnaya Polyana, questioned the received ideas and beliefs of the whole civilized world. In two concluding essays, "Tolstoy beyond Tolstoy," McLean deals with the impact of Tolstoy on such diverse figures as Ernest Hemingway and Isaiah Berlin.

Reviews:

"Reading this collection convinces me that Professor McLean is the most modest, appreciative, and penetrating critic of Tolstoy I’ve ever read."
—Bob Blaisdell, Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York, reviewed in the Tolstoy Studies Journal

"The volume offers an invaluable companion both for readers of Tolstoy and for long-time fans of McLean’s meticulous and thought provoking work... Through his masterful command of Tolstoy’s writings, McLean seems to lead the reader right into Tolstoy’s mind."
—Robin Feuer Miller, Brandeis University

“The volume is an invaluable companion both for readers of Tolstoy and for long-time fans of McLean’s meticulous and thought-provoking work... Through his masterful command of Tolstoy’s writings, McLean seems to lead the reader right into Tolstoy’s mind.”
—Robin Feuer Miller, Brandeis University

"…this book is an important contribution to Tolstoy studies and will be surely of interest not only to specialists in Tolstoy or Russian literature and culture but to the general reader as well, largely thanks to its accessible, unpretentious and engaging style… In addition to its scholarly, informative, and pragmatic value, McLean’s book can be a source of genuine emotional and intellectual pleasure: one leaves it with a sense of having held an illuminating conversation with a very intelligent reader of Tolstoy and a passionate admirer of this great talent."
—Valeria Sobol, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign published in Slavic and East European Journal

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History