Russian Literature Commons^™

An Unusual State Of Matter (Russian Translation), Victor Fet

Victor Fet

A selection of science poems by Roald Hoffmann (Cornell University). Translated into Russian by Victor Fet. Dedicated to the 80th birthday of this famous chemist.

Freedom. – What If? – Still Unknown. – The Actor, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

No abstract provided.

Berg’S Diary. – The Plant Anatomy, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

No abstract provided.

Dostoevsky As A Translator Of "Eugénie Grandet", Julia Titus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of this study in comparative criticism is a close analysis of Dostoevsky’s first literary publication - his 1844 translation of the first edition of Balzac’s Eugе́nie Grandet (1834) and the stylistic choices that he made as a young writer while working on Balzac’s novel. Through the prism of close reading this dissertation analyzes Dostoevsky’s literary debut in the context of his future mature aesthetic style and poetics. Comparing the original and the translation side by side, the dissertation focuses on the omissions, additions and substitutions that Dostoevsky brought into the text. It demonstrates how young Dostoevsky’s free translation …

The Distorted Images And Realities Of Andrei Bitov’S Literary Photographs., José Vergara

Russian Faculty Research and Scholarship

Although Andrei Bitov’s best-known exploration of photography remains “Pushkin’s Photograph (1799–2099),” in which a young Pushkinist travels into the past to capture the poet’s image on film, this motif in fact appears throughout many of the author’s major works. This study addresses the two conflicting stances regarding photography that Bitov develops across a variety of genres. On the one hand, the manner in which a photo attempts to freeze or distort reality according to a particular worldview deeply disturbs his narrators, both fictional and semi-autobiographical. It becomes a tool for manipulation in texts such as “View of the Trojan Sky” …

Fatum Ad Benedictum: Moscow-Petushki, Homo Sovieticus, Postmodernism And The Fatidic Post-Soviet Irony Of Venedikt Vasilevich Erofeev, Paul N. Kleiman

Honors Papers

The following honors thesis is structured into two parts, four chapters apiece.

The first part is a philological study of the Soviet dissident and writer Venedikt Vasilevich Erofeev’s magnum opus, Moscow-Petushki (1969-70). This half of the thesis investigates Petushki in light of its thematic development of fate, or, more particularly, the fate of homo sovieticus—the ironic term devised by Soviet sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev (1922-2006) to describe a typical conformist citizen of the Soviet Union. I will focus predominantly on Petushki’s connection to the end of the Khrushchev “Thaw” in the early-mid-1960s and the beginning of Brezhnev “Stagnation” in the late-1960s, …

Ideology In Literature And Literature As Ideology: Totalitarian And Reactionary Appropriation Of Resistant Texts, Huntley Hughes

Master’s Theses

This thesis seeks to explore the means by which nominally or potentially resistant texts are appropriated into violent or exploitative political structures for propaganda and profit. In the first chapter two pre-soviet Russian novels closely associated with the radical tradition are examined, through the lens of literary analysis, in order to uncover the ways in which ideologically egalitarian revolutionary movements can degenerate into authoritarian regimes. The second chapter is concerned with a Welsh text, How Green Was My Valley, which, despite being concerned with the conditions of the Welsh mining class, utilizes the narrative form of childhood recollection to insidiously …

Limited Absolutes: A Study Of "War And Peace" And The Pluralizing Experience, Sophia Melora Scanlon

Senior Projects Spring 2018

On the one hand, War and Peace contains statements that read as "absolute" or universalizing claims; these appear often in structures like that of the syllogism. This aspect of Tolstoy's style has earned the title of "scriptural." On the other hand, however, Tolstoy's universalizing language is continually undermined through his equally persistent "subjective" language, which confuses and threatens all "absolute" claims. I'm interested in the possible failure of the Tolstoyan "absolute," and the potential which the other "subjective" or "limited" authorial mode might offer. Through a number of "revelatory" experiences, I explore the division and imbalance of these two modes, …

Seize The Means Of Reproduction! Gender Wars In Zamyatin's We, Alexandra Gage Michaud

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

How Do You Depict The Life Of A Soul?: Word And Text In And As Image In Soviet Nonconformist Art, Matthew Blong

MA Theses

Visual artworks by Soviet nonconformist artists, especially those associated with the Moscow Conceptualist and Sots-Art movements of the mid-1960s to mid-1980s, prominently feature experimentations with word and text—both in and as image—for a wide variety of reasons that have been studied by scholars of Soviet and Russian art.

In this paper, a formal and conceptual analysis of nearly thirty text-and-image artworks by nonconformist artists of the period traces the motivations and inspirations for this highly creative and generative practice. Beginning with the desire to resume where the historic Russian avant-garde had left off, these artworks challenge notions of language as …

Жеф, Чйлфпт. Учпвпдб. – Юфп, Еумй?... – Еэј Оейъчеуфоп, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

No abstract provided.

Жизнь В Человеке, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

No abstract provided.

Verses And Versions, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

A review of the book: Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvabrin. Harcourt, 2008, 441 pp.

Резюме:

рецензия на книгу набоковских стихотворных переводов, Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvabrin. Harcourt, 2008, 441 pp.

Around Sonja: On The First Russian Translation, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

The first Russian translation of Wonderland was published anonymously in 1879 as Sonja v tsarstvie diva (Sonja in a Kingdom of Wonder, hereinafter referred to as Sonja).1 Deep Victorian mysteries surround it. Its translator remains unknown—but a hint from Lewis Carroll himself leads one to Russian aristocrats, patrons of the arts, and famous writers. Its readership is undocumented, but the faces of children who most likely first read this book are still well known in Russia today, having been painted by the most famous nineteenth-century Russian artists. Further, as one looks carefully at the text itself, one finds it remarkably …

Nabokov's Silverfish, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

I discuss silverfish, of Lepisma—a strange insect that crawls through many of Nabokov’s pages.

Beheading First: On Nabokov's Translation Of Lewis Carroll, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

Anya v Strane chudes, young Nabokov’s 1923 Russian translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, contains an intentionally shifted statement “beheading first, sentence later” compared to Lewis Carroll’s “sentence first, verdict later”. The shift is fitting for the 1920s children émigré audience.

An Anti-Locust Campaign In Nabokov (And Pushkin), Victor Fet

Victor Fet

Pushkin’s non-apocryphal anti-locust campaign is reflected in Nabokov’s unpublished sequel to The Gift.

Notes On Eryx, Omega, And Ata, Victor Fet

Victor Fet

Observations on several Nabokov’s works (Pale Fire, Lolita) where geographic or zoological names provide sources for puns and hidden parallels.

Citizens United V The Federal Election Commission, Inverted Totalitarianism And Contemporary Fiction, Cory R. Chambers

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

In this paper I will explore the results of the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United vs The Federal Election Commission as reflected in the contemporary literature. I will look at the role the corporation plays in American politics post Citizens United. My primary texts is the novel Super Sad True Love Story. My research question is: did the Citizens United decision open the door for ‘inverted totalitarianism’ to seep through the cracks of American society Using the allegorical novel Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, I will show how Citizens United, the political theory of …

For Narrativity: How Creating Narratives Structures Experience And Self, Natallia Stelmak Schabner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation responds to the challenge to narrativity posed by Galen Strawson in “Against Narrativity,” where he claims that not everyone is Narrative by nature and that there is no reason to be. I make my claim “For Narrativity” as a mental process of form finding and coherence seeking over time that is an inherent mental activity and essential for experience of one’s Self. I make my case through examinations of our experience of time, our use of language, how we plan, and our sense of Self. In the first chapter, I show that considering Narrativity as viewing life as …