Exotic Moscow Under Western Eyes

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.

Irene Masing-Delic (Ph.D. University of Stockholm) is a Professor at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Her publications include Abolishing Death (1992) and most recently an article "Purges and Patronage: Gor'kii's Promotion of Socialist Culture" appeared in Personality Cults in Stalinism.

Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1: Dialogue. The Music of Ecstasy and the Picture of Harmony: Nietzsche's Dionysus and Apollo in Turgenev's "Song of Triumphant Love". A Change of Gender Roles: The Pygmalion Motif in Jane Austen's Emma and Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov. Clairvoyant Mothers and Erring Sons: Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Conrad's Under Western Eyes. Rescuing Culture from Civilization: Gorky, Gogl, Sologub and the Mediterranean Model. 2: Inner Divisions. the "Castrator" Rogozhin and the "Castrate" Smerdiakov: Incarnations of Dostoevsky's 'Devil-Bearing' People? Who are the Tatars in Alexander Blok's The Homeland? -- The East in the Literary-Idealogical Discourse of Russian Symbolists. Gothic Historiosophy: The Pani Katerina Story in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. 3: Saving the Heritage. Larissa -- Lolita, or Catharsis and Dolor, in the Artist-Novels Doktor Zhivago and Lolita. Survival of the Superfluous: Doubling and Mimicry in Nabokov's Podvig-Glory. Moscow in the tropics: exotica in Valerii Briusov's Early Urban Poetry. Bibliography. Index.