Slot: 30C–4 Dec.
30, 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Panel: Mothers and Magdalenes: Russian Women
Writers and Orthodoxy
Chair: Stuart Goldberg, Georgia Institute of
Technology
Title: My Sister is Death: Akhmatova and
Pasternak’s Weeping Marys
Author: Martha Kelly, Stanford University
Half a century after Vladimir Solovyev
produced his poetic philosophy of Sophia, two survivors from Russia’s Silver
Age created retrospectives of that earlier period and centered them on salvific
female figures. Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem and Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago both envision poetry as an element that
sustains life in the midst of historical disaster, and both envision poetry as
a female element. Both model,
moreover, this sustaining force on female figures from the Christian
tradition—Mary Mother of God and Mary Magdalene, adapting Russian Orthodoxy’s
presentation of them in its liturgy.
This paper
compares the use by Akhmatova and Pasternak of Orthodox liturgical ideals of
the feminine, suggesting that the key to their differing approaches lies in the
varied ways they present the female body and the differing images they choose
from Holy Week services. At the
heart of both works dwells the figure of Mary weeping. Her tears bear the power of grace and
restoration to a fallen creation, as they impart the very substance of
herself. Yet for Pasternak, the
body of the Mary figure resembles a living tree, and for Akhmatova, a
stone. In each instance, the poet
presents the female body as a hypostasis of one moment of the Passion Week
narrative.
The case of
Akhmatova and Pasternak’s late female ideals indicates the presence of Orthodox
religious systems of meaning at the heart of the Russian poetic imagination.
Current scholarship tends to underestimate both the awareness and use of these
systems of meaning by twentieth-century writers. Closer examination, though, of such uses enriches an understanding
of writers’ presentation and construction of Russian culture, not least in
times of historical crisis. Such
examination also sheds light on Russian literary constructions of the female
body as a fabric of cultural cohesion.
Title: Angelina Polonskaya: Atheist Ice Dancer
as Orthodox Poet
Author: Sarah Pratt, University of Southern
California
Angelina Polonskaya has an unorthodox background for a
poet: a degree in physical
education and a career as an ice dancer.
After more than a decade on ice, however, Polonskaya made a crucial
decision. As the website Сетевая словесность (http://www.litera.ru/slova/polonskaya/) nonchalantly puts it, “Закончив ледовую карьеру, решила посвятить себя
литературе.” Polonskaya has
published five collections of verse, including a volume in English published by
Northwestern UP in 2004.
Evan as a professional poet,
however, Polonskaya appears to reject both the Russian poetic orthodoxy and the
Russian religious Orthodoxy that form the bedrock of Russian culture. In a review from Vecherniaia Moskva posted on her website http://www.polonskaya.com/, Polonskaya
claims to doubt the existence of the human soul, and asserts that talent is
nothing more than “a combination of genes.” Few Russian poets have ever made statements like these. The surrealist cast of Polonskaya’s
homepage, the fact that the website can be easily accessed in both Russian and
English, and her skillful use of the web to publish her work, post interviews,
correspond with fans, and promote her image literally and figuratively (the
site includes a glamorous headshot, as well as snapshots of readings, tours,
etc.) – indeed, the fact that Polonskaya has her own website at all – suggest a
“trendy chick poet” of the twenty-first century.
Polonskaya truly is trendy and has a talent for marketing as well as
poetry, but a look at some of the titles of her poems suggests that there is something
beyond this: “The Monk and the
Child,” “Novitiates,” “Salvatore,” “Sunday,” “Islam,” “Missionaries.” A close reading reveals a poet with
deep spiritual concerns who, purposefully or not, builds poems that resonate
with the imagery, stories, and lexicon of the church. This paper examines the complex identity of the atheist ice
dancer turned Orthodox poet.
Title: Zhiznetvorchestvo in Paris: The Theme of Motherhood in the
Works of Mother Maria (Skobtsova)
Author: Natalia Ermolaev, Columbia University
The figure of the suffering mother and
her sacred prototype – Mary, the Mother of God – is encountered in the works of
many female writers of the Silver Age, from Zinaida Gippius’ “Адонаи” (1914), Mariia Shkapskaia’s Mater
Dolorosa (1921), Marina
Tsvetaeva’s “Подруга”
(1914-1915) and “Стихи к Блоку”
(1921) cycles, to Anna Akhmatova’s Реквием.
An important
female writer from this milieu whose work on the subject has previously been
overlooked is Elizaveta Skobtsova (1891-1945), the poet and theologian known
better by her monastic name, Mother Maria. The centrality of the suffering
mother figure is evident in her earliest poetry and artwork (the poems “Notre
Dame,” 1914, “Руфь,”
1916; the painting “Материнство,”
1913-1917) and remains the thematic backbone of her mature oeuvre written after
emigration to Paris in 1923. In her voluminous literary work (poetry, essays,
plays) and visual art (embroidery, iconography, painting) Skobtsova experiments
with various aesthetic, emotional and theological implications of motherhood
and Orthodox Christian Mariology.
This paper looks
at the changing role of motherhood in Skobtsova’s works - from her poignant
depictions of the deaths of her children (her sketches Умирающая Настенька (1926); the cycle of poems on Gaiana’s
death, 1936), to the merging of the voice of the suffering mother with the
Mother of God (“Не буду ничего беречь,” 1936; the “Покров”
cycle, 1942), to the universal, transcendental motherhood that becomes the
cornerstone of Skobtsova’s theological vision. In her essays О подражании Богоматери (1939) and Почитание
Богоматери (n.d.), Skobtsova develops a powerful and unique
Mariology where the notion
of Godmotherhood (Богоматеринство) serves the new paradigm for the Orthodox
life in the modern world.
In analyzing
Skobtsova’s use of the motherhood theme in the context of Russian women’s
writing, we gain a better understanding of how Russian women’s literary
self-expression developed in the early 20th century. By comparing Skobtsova’s works to other
trends in Orthodox Mariology and Sophiology, we discover a significant new
strain in the conceptualization of the feminine aspect of the divine in modern
Russian religious thought.