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Dennis Ioffe
WIENER SLAWISTISCHER ALMANACH, BAND 47 2001 :ENCODING THE NARRATOLOGICAL POINTS OF REFERRING: FROM MELOPOESIS TO THE
NEW VISUALITY. RUSSIAN LITERATURE ON THE CROSSROADS. The German Slavistic periodical WSA has appeared twice a year since 1978
and has the conceptual aim of bringing to a scholarly audience such "extended
pieces" of scholarly meditation, if to put that in the editors' own
words "which are located in-between the "article-scale"
and "the book-scale". (1) It is not surprising, therefore, that
almost all of these declarative components can be found in this issue
of WSA. The most striking feature here is, however, the uncompromising
and almost challenging (for non-German Slavists) totality
of the 'Deutsche Sprache' as used to render the published material: all
except one of the articles are written in German. This is not a most typical
situation, since, as far as we are entitled to judge from the past issues,
the presence of Russian, English, and rarely French texts was much more
notable and impressive there. It is, hence, a solid ground to consider
the 47th Band of WSA as a certain kind of tour-de-force, proudly achieved
by the Deutsche Slawistik par excellence. The present issue of the WSA is devoted (thematically speaking) to three
major topics: the relation of music to literature (melopoesis),
"mimeocentric" problems of representational modes of the writer-figures
in early Soviet film (and the visuality issues in general), and
to the varied analysis of dance's fabric (plastic) ceremonial narratives
within Russian culture. The interdisciplinary, experimental bias of the
article-binding is obvious and self-evident in nearly all of the scholarly
pieces, selected for the present volume. The issue opens with some informal remarks, narrating the events of a
conference (January 2000), devoted to the performative configurations
of the ways, used for representation of culture, inner politics and science
in the early Soviet filmmaking and theatre. A number of papers, originally
delivered with that conference- occasion were incorporated into the present
volume. Before starting a concise discussion as regards the contents of this
issue of WSA, it is worthwhile, perhaps, to adduce one particular and
highly characteristic feature, which is related by some means to the method
of multilingual rendering of the published text's entity. The entire journal
is devoted, evidently to the diverse aspects of learning, pertaining to
the field of Slavic (mostly Russian) cultural habits. As a natural matter
of fact, these "cultural issues" are rendered via Cyrillic syllables.
As we can easily see, there is no any technical problems for WSA editors
to publish Cyrillic fonts: the authors of the issue are doing it most
extensively. But, the notoriously strange thing has something to do with
the crucial inconsistency of applying to its congruent method. At the
one single page we can virtually encounter with the Cyrillic fragment,
and with the Latinized script of originally Russian bibliography. What
is preventing the truly experienced Editor from giving the proper entry
in its original Cyrillic form - remains still a great and unsolved mystery.
My other question, is why are the authors themselves relentlessly translating
each time the cited Russian passage into German (this is, naturally, taking
double space in the paper editions). Surprisingly they are not
translating the passages of English or French citations (wisely taking
for granted, that the reader will understand those languages, but, similarly,
we are encouraged to hypothesize, the same reader can perfectly comprehend
the Russian pieces without the unnecessary and quite pretentious German
translating and fatiguing transliterating). The situation with these entirely
curious inconsistencies within the research apparatus of the referential
matters is receiving its highest caricatured dimensions in the customs
of citing which belong to Mirjam Goller in her extremely penetrating scholarly
piece published with that issue. This is the noteworthy "consuetude"
she is codifying, for instance, Aage A.Hansen-Loeve's article, rendered
like this: [Hansen-Love, 1993."Mandel'shtams Thanatopoetics",
Vroon,R./Malmstadt,J.E. (Hrsg.), Readings in Russian Modernism. To
Honour of Vladimir Markov, Moskau, 121-157.] Unfortunately this is not an occasional inaccuracy, but a sort of a general
"pen's slips system" of WSA. In a lengthy and steadily fascinating
essay written by Aage Hansen-Loeve, which is conceptually opening the
volume, entirely devoted to the scholar's sequel of his ambitious project,
dealing with the determination and analyzing of the so-called (in Hansen-Loeve's
terminology) "Hierarchical Dominants" in the Russian culture
of Modernism, we are coming across with a strange another "Freudian-slip-of-the-tongue"
casus. The matter is that once Vladimir Paperny's name is written "V.Papernyi"(2)
but twice more this American scholar is strangely contaminated with another
Californian professor - Irina Aronovna Paperno: we receive therefore a
curious - "V.Paperno" - that appears two times in the same article
(3). Indubitably, the Universe is unaware of such a hybrid author
"V.Paperno" (a world famous American architecture-historian
"Vladimir Papernyi" is a complete namesake to a literary historian
of Tratu-School "Vladimir Papernyj" presently of Haifa University)
There exists, by the way, Slava Paperno, but not Vladimir). This minor, but bitterly absurdist detail cannot spoil the unique bibliographical
and conceptually sumptuous impression, which seemingly every student of
Russian Modernist culture might get from this brilliantly furnished monograph-scaled
article complied by Professor Hansen-Loeve. The single Russian article, written by the Czech scholar Tomas Glanc
is devoted to the imposing figure of actor Nikolai Cherkasov and to the
peculiar connection which came to life through the certain strategies
of representation of "writer" via the cinematographic medium.
The ingenious essay of Natasha Drubeck-Meyer is devoted to the same person
i.e. Cherkasov-the-actor, who was, accordingly, an interesting exemption
from the complicated regime-rules, which have postulated the "double-conscience"
of almost any performer within the Stalin times. That was a gruesome place
of the representational mode, created artificially by the New Order of
the Soviets. A intriguing essay by Oksana Bulgakova "The Beauty and the Strength"
is devoted totally to the various debates, pertaining to the poetics of
Soviet filmmaking. Interesting emphasis is put on the very concept of
"the fairness" and "handsomeness" especially amongst
the representatives of the "proper 'hegemonic' social class". Whereas, the conceptually close aspects of several thematic narratives,
dealing with the Siberian text, developed through the early Soviet cinema
are convincingly and thoughtfully depicted in the article by Susi Frank. Music, politics, the figure of an important Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev
are most assiduously studied in the essays by Robert Braunmuller and Monika
Woitas. The peculiarly important article by Mirijam Goller, which we had a dubious
chance to mention above is re-opening the grand-theme of the relationship
between music and literary texts. This discussion has a long and well articulated history on the Russian
scholarly ground. From the pioneering concise study of L.Sabaneev (4),
through the well-remembered chapters written by the late Efim Etkind (5)
to some recent (2001) detailed study of Larissa Gerver(6), however, the
latter was regrettably not used by M.Goller in her composition. All of
the needed aspects of melopoesis (mutual [interactive] influence
of literature and music) are meticulously studied within many scholarly
projects.(7) A special collections of scholarly meditations on specific
figures of Russian literature (such as Blok, Pasternak and Akhmatova)
were also compound before by the various comparativist scholars.(8) Using the example of the outstandingly suggestive and alluding verse
"Возьми на радость" Mrs. Goller is showing genuinely unloosened
interest of Mandel'shtam in the figure of the Symbolist composer Skriabin,
his intimate links with the intuitivist philosophy of Bergson. Specifically
important is the multiargumental associations, bridging the topic of insects
with those of music activities. The "Nabokovian block" of the issue is opened by an interested
long-scaled piece by Tania Zimmermann about the figure of the "Double"
within the "insane" and 'bizarre' realm of Nabokov's marvelous
"Despair". The closely related theme is prolongated by the article of T.Jurgens
which is cleverly dealing with the specific "photographic" qualities
of Nabokovian narratives (especially those, related to the thanatopoetics). The entire volume is logically crowned with the penetrating summarizing essay by Julia Kursell, which seeks to put together the existing information on the highly complicated relations between the medium of music and those of "verbal writing". The bibliographic treasures are meticulously sorted, annotated and codified at the end of this decidedly useful text. References: 1) T.Reuter, A.Hansen-Loeve,
"WSA, itogi i perspectivy", NLO, 50, 2001, pp.396-397. The editors
are surprisingly declaring there, also, that there are no any unanimous
"referees" or "evaluating-system" to decide in favor
of each publication. The journal is definitely not a "peer-reviewed"
one, the noteworthy fact for a scholarly periodical of any kind. Everything
is, consequently, entrusted within the editors' relentlessly personal
but still trustworthy hands.
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