Slot: 29C-3 Dec.
29, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Panel: Self-Identity and Imagining the Other
Chair: Polina Barskova, Hampshire College
Title: Provincialism in Bunin’s Village (1910)
Author: Alina Orlov, Defense Language Institute
It has been observed that Ivan Bunin’s
novel The Village
(1910) serves as a metonymic meditation on Russianness (Maltsev, Dmitrieva,
Henry). What is less often recognized, however, is the extent to which Bunin’s
analysis of Russia’s national character is original. This paper will argue that while Bunin draws on earlier
portrayals of provincialism—from Griboedov to Sologub—thereby charging his work
with the force of a long-standing socio-critical tradition, he uses the rural
topos to stake out a new aesthetic position, one that is thoroughly modernist.
If Gogol portrays banality and Goncharov describes uneventfullness, Bunin re-enacts these qualities in his prose. His narrative rambles along aimlessly,
like a dilapidated carriage through vast flatlands. There are no remarkable characters and events. Major action takes place elsewhere, and
we hear of it only through rumors.
Meanwhile, local conversation is dull, presented ‘as is,’ rife with
ungrammaticalities, and stitched together like ‘found’ objects in Futurist
collages.
This is not to
say that Bunin’s stance vis-à-vis the village that is Russia lacks
emotion. The opposite is true;
behind Bunin’s artistic mimicry, one detects a poignant lament that the country
is so hopelessly dreary and backward.
Bunin’s alter-ego character Tikhon, an aspiring poet, complains that
Russians are not more like the Germans and the Jews, “who behave properly [del′no] and cordially [akkuratno].” That is to say, even the Germans and the Jews are more
civilized. “But with us,” Tikhon
complains, “we are all enemies. We
envy one another. We gossip. We’ll visit once a year, and when
someone does stop by unexpectedly, we rush around from room to room
straightening up…. And
what’s more, we’ll begrudge our dear guest an extra spoon of jam!”
While Bunin
bemoans Russia’s impoverishment, he sees it not as a temporary state, but as
essential and unalterable. His
reproach of Russia’s provincialism is existential in that it is both heartfelt
and cynical, sympathetic and disengaged, admonishing and fatalistic. In The Village, Bunin offers a paradigmatically
modernist mode of Russian self-criticism.
Title: Orientalism in Tynjanov’s Historical
Novel Smert′ Vazir-Mukhtara
Author: Anna Aydinyan, Yale University
Written in late nineteen twenties Smert′
Vazir-Mukhtara was first
published as a book in 1929, the anniversary of A. S. Griboedov’s death in
Teheran. The novel covers one year in the diplomatic
career of Griboedov, the period of time immediately following Russia’s victory
in the Russian-Persian war. As a result of the victory Russia acquired three
new provinces, basically completing its conquest of Transcaucasia.
By the time the
novel was published, official Soviet ideology changed from defining the former
Russian Empire as “a jail of the peoples,” to the theory
of lesser evil, according to which the Russian conquest saved the conquered
peoples from more oppressive Oriental
Empires. Yet the novel offers more support to the former definition. Moreover,
in his book Tynjanov shows how the building of the Empire is closely connected
to the cultural phenomenon that later, in the scholarly world of the last
quarter of the Twentieth century, has received the name of Orientalism.
This paper is a
part of a larger study on Orientalism as revealed in Tynjanov’s novel. While
the study is mostly concerned with Russian Orientalism in its relation to Qajar
Persia, the present paper analyzes Russia’s relation to its own Orient, the
Caucasus. A separate section of
the novel shows how the literary Orientalism of poetry about the Caucasus and
imperialistic expansionism shaped each other. This idea resonates with the
number of later scholarly works on Russian Orientalism, inspired by
disintegration of the Soviet Union.
One of the
persistent myths of nineteenth century Russian Orientalism is the myth of a
“happy marital union” between Russia and Georgia. The marriage between
Griboedov and Nina Chavchavadze becomes the symbol of this beautiful union in
the many memoirs of their contemporaries. The canon for representation of this
marriage, shaped in the nineteenth century, was revived later in Soviet times
as an illustration of the friendship of the fraternal peoples of Russia and
Georgia. Tynjanov deliberately breaks this canon, showing that far from being
“mutually benefiting” this marriage brought only grief to Nina, the Georgian
side.
Title: The Slovak Opera Beg Bajazid: A Socialist-Era “Clash of
Civilizations”
Author: Charles Sabatos, Oberlin College
For centuries, the Turks were seen by the
nations of Eastern Europe as a menacing force of foreign domination, which
continues to influence the region’s perspectives on Turkey, and by extension,
the rest of the Muslim world. As
the fear of Turkish invasions faded, representations of the Turks were adapted
to suit the changing political context.
For example, during the 19th century National Awakening in
Slovakia, writers drew on older sources such as folk songs in order to give
their newly-codified literary language a sense of historical continuity.
One of the best
known examples is Samo Chalupka’s 1863 ballad “The Turk from Poniky” (“Turčin
Poničan”), based on the legend of a Christian boy kidnapped into slavery and
converted to Islam, who later returns to his native village as a Janissary and
enslaves his own mother before discovering his true identity. What sets this poem apart from works
with similar themes in Balkan literature is that unlike the South Slavic
nations, Slovakia experienced a limited and brief Ottoman occupation. Almost a century later, in 1955, this
theme was adapted for the opera Beg Bajazid, with music by Ján Cikker and libretto
by Ján Smrek. This version of the
“Turčin” legend adds historical detail (such as the Turkish name “Bajazid” for
the title character) and features a young Slovak maiden (representing national
“purity”) who is forced to marry the Turk. Although written in the socialist period, the opera displays
the traditional Christian-Muslim antipathy described in recent years as the
“clash of civilizations.” However,
at each stage of its adaptation from historical event to folklore, Romantic-era
poetry to modern opera, the underlying symbolism of the Turkish “other” shifts
in relation to the evolving Slovak sense of national identity.