Books in the Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History series

The academic career of Professor Magnus Ljunggren spans more than a half century. Here he looks back over his meetings with leading members of the Russian intelligentsia who, from the liberalizing Twenty-Second Party Congress, in 1961, to the present, have struggled with the totalitarian structures of Soviet and post-Soviet society.

Presents the first fully annotated and chronologically arranged collection of the Russian philosopher-poet's most important letters, the vast majority of which have never before been translated into English.

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 "e;spiritualization of matter"e;, the "e;task"e; of humanity-Smith constructs a rounded picture of Soloviev's overall importance to an understanding. If 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.

Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak examines the origin of the nineteen- century Russian novel and challenges the Lukacs-Bakhtin theory of epic. By removing the Russian novel from its European context, the authors reveal that it developed as a means of reconnecting the narrative form with its origins in classical and Christian epic in a way that expressed the Russian desire to renew and restore ancient spirituality. Through this methodology, Griffiths and Rabinowitz dispute Bakhtin's classification of epic as a monophonic and dead genre whose time has passed. Due to its grand themes and cultural centrality, the epic is the form most suited to newcomers or cultural outsiders seeking legitimacy through appropriation of the past. Through readings of Gogol's Dead Souls-a uniquely problematic work, and one which Bakhtin argued was novelistic rather than epic-Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and Tolstoy's War and Peace, this book redefines "e;epic"e; and how we understand the sweep of Russian literature as a whole.

For several decades David Bethea has written authoritatively on the "e;mythopoetic thinking"e; 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 "e;erasure"e; 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.

¿`Our Native Antiquity¿: Archaeology and Aesthetics in theCulture of Russian Modernism is one of those works whose theme seems to lie in plain view, but, untilthe appearance of this study, remained unnoticed¿ It introduces essentialcorrectives to the history of national-cultural self-consciousness¿. theauthor¿s achievement is outstanding. [It] allows one to present modernism notonly as a revolution of ideas and aesthetic tastes, but as a transformation ofthe symbolic `habitat,¿ with an entire gamut of new sensations accompanyingthis radical restructuring of the cultural ecology.¿ ¿Boris Gasparov, AbImperio

Life in Transit is the long-awaited sequel to Shimon Redlich's widely acclaimed Together and Apart in Brzezany, in which he discussed his childhood during the War and the Holocaust. Life in Transit tells the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. Redlich's personal memories are placed within the wider historical context of Jewish life in Poland and in Lodz during the immediate postwar years. Lodz in the years 1945-1950 was the second-largest city in the country and the major urban center of the Jewish population. Redlich's research based on conventional sources and numerous interviews indicates that although the survivors still lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, postwar Jewish Lodz was permeated with a sense of vitality and hope.

One of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" is renowned for its innovative style and notorious for its subject matter and influence on popular culture. This book guides readers through the intricacies of Nabokov's work and helps them achieve an understanding of his rich artistic design.

Written at the height of Stalin's first "e;five-year plan"e; 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 "e;production"e; 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.

Identifies and analyses 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 lies embedded much of the novel's most significant meaning.

A fresh and compelling figure, Konevskoi plunged deeply into currents of modern mystical thought and art in the 1890s. This title presents a study of Ivan Konevskoi - poet, thinker, mystic - for many decades the 'lost genius' of Russian modernism.