Held in the Silver Age extension of the State Literary Museum, the Booker Conference 2017 was devoted to the contemporary historical novel. Why is it that novelists are increasingly more likely to look for solutions to present-day problems through retrospection, invoking the long bygone or a more recent past, travelling back to the origins of Russian history and the 20th century’s turbulent revolutionary events that paved the way for our present existence? Which challenges seem particularly poignant, and where do they come from? The speakers include novelists Petr Aleshkovsky and Olga Slavnikova, critic and essayist Vladimir Novikov, and literary critics Evgeny Vezhlyan, Anna Zhuchkova, and Elena Pogorelaya. Also present was writer and historian Sergey Belyakov (Ekaterinburg) to talk about the novel Nomakh. All participants concurred that, while overcoming historical inertia remained a key challenge in contemporary novel-writing, serious progress has been achieved in recent years, judging by the shortlists and the winners of the major literary prizes.

As usual at this conference, the Russian Booker’s literary secretary Igor Shaytanov was its moderator. The hosting institution was represented by Mikhail Shaposhnikov, head of the Silver Age Literature Department.

The article discusses novels which, written by Russian authors in 2017, did not make it in time to be included in the shortlists of the 2017 literary awards: Long Jump [Pryzhok v dlinu] by O. Slavnikova, Teacher Dymov [Uchitel Dymov] by S. Kuznetsov, Prince Incognito [Prints incognito] by A. Ponizovsky, etc. The critic analyses these novels to discover the turnaround and main trends of the last year’s Russian prose, such as a renewed attention for the individual, a dialogue between generations, and insanity as the ultimate subject. The author argues that the previous year was marked by a turnaround in literature: away from large-scale historical retrospections and more towards the contemporary private individual, where even history and philosophy are viewed from the point of personality. The creative focus shifted from ideology to questions of personal existence: it is clear that critics will have plenty to discuss, and judging panels to dispute during long- and short-listing, in 2018.

The article offers a detailed examination of Mikhail Bakhtin’s biography by A. Korovashko, which came out in The Lives of Remarkable People series [Zhizn’ zamechatelnykh lyudey, ZhZL] in 2017.

M. Bakhtin’s life and legacy have always sparked keen interest among Russian and foreign scholars alike, but his biography still holds its secrets and, despite the efforts of M. Holquist and K. Clark, of S. and L. Konkin, N. Nikolaev, N. Pankov, I. Popova, and others, a comprehensive scholarly version is missing to this day.

With his ideas permeating the global intellectual environment and his theories influencing the modern studies of human sciences, Bakhtin is a preeminent contemporary thinker. It is only natural, therefore, that his biography by A. Korovashko, entitled Mikhail Bakhtin, was published in the ZhZL series.

In his attempt to offer his own view and interpretation of the scholar’s lifetime and the historical and cultural context of his research, Korovashko decided to debunk what he calls ‘the Bakhtin myth’ and undermine the so-called ‘Bakhtin industry’. However, his unusual manner of ironic narration and a penchant for literary reimagining of the subjects lead to the emergence of factual errors and inaccuracies, while the author’s rhetoric of demystification frustrates any professional and competent analysis of Bakhtin’s theories.

This critical review extensively discusses Ilya Falikov’s book Marina Tsvetaeva. Harsh and gentle [Marina Tsvetaeva. Tvoya nelaskovaya lastochka], published in The Lives of Remarkable People series in 2017. Unlike other Tsvetaeva biographers, Falikov had access to a wealth of materials introduced in the past twenty years. Yet his attempt to produce the poet’s new biography is far from successful. The article points out numerous factual errors, including incorrect numbers of poems in the poetic cycles, mixed up dates and events, as well as careless and inaccurate citations, which, being the book’s systemic issue, works to distort Tsvetaeva’s image. Particularly disturbing are the biographer’s very arbitrary treatment of documentary sources, their biased selection and presentation, as well as unsubstantiated interpretations and ambitious claims.

In the article numerous allusions and direct citations that reciprocally reveal an intensive dialogue between the two Acmeist poets are pointed out and examined. The data are extracted from O. Mandestam’s and N. Gumilev’s poems and articles, as well as the latter’s narrative poems and plays: mostly texts with references to temples, with which Acmeists strongly identified their creative work on poetic as well as thematic levels. Since the erection of a temple is a recurrent image in Gumilev’s works throughout his lifetime, it is easy to assume that Mandelstam’s poems like Notre Dame, Hagia Sophia [Aya-Sofiya], and others can be seen as responses to the leader of Acmeists from his loyal disciple. Mandelstam tends to follow Gumilev’s lead in this dialogue, developing and detailing his ‘architectural philologism’. However, he also sympathizes with the idea of rebuilding a temple, the topic becoming even more pronounced after Gumilev’s untimely death.

Vladimir Kantor is examining the tragic and life-changing situation in Russia in 1917, the year of two revolutions, when Russian literature found itself in search of a new hero who could lead the country out of the catastrophe. Starting from March 1917, many writers believed they had found such a person in Aleksandr Kerensky. Russian poets and writers in unison hailed Kerensky as the new Napoleon, who would rein in the Russian revolt just like Napoleon did with the French one. Kerensky was aware only of the positive implications of this comparison. The article reveals the politician’s true role through comparative analysis of characterizations by his contemporaries.

He began to live up to the phantom and act in the way that his admirers expected from him, losing his identity in the process. He surrounded himself with prominent figures, appointing the famous Social Revolutionary, terrorist and writer Boris Savinkov as his war minister. As the army commissar for ideology he selected Fyodor Stepun, a writer and philosopher. Most prominent artists from that period were all commissioned to paint Kerensky’s portrait. According to Stepun, Kerensky’s speeches were typified by an almost Schillerean ecstasy.

But it was his most liberal law system that spelled doom for Russia and himself. The French National Convention rested upon terror and the guillotine, while Kerensky issued a decree abolishing the death penalty in Russia. In war times, amid raging banditry and with a disintegrating army, this decree proved to cause more irreparable damage than some of Peter I’s most ill-advised laws, and Kerensky used to hold Peter in high esteem. He relied on the power of rhetoric, which had propelled him to prominence during the February revolt, but the times had changed. He was nicknamed ‘negotiator-in-chief’, yet his skills were no longer effective with the mob. The mob was waiting for a show of strength and an order.

The article discusses the complex relationship between the editors of the main third-wave of Russian еmigrе journals, V. Maksimov (of Kontinent) and A. Sinyavsky (of Sintaksis). Based on the correspondence preserved at the Osteuropa Institute of Bremen University, the author argues that this conflict was driven not only by professional or ideological disagreements, but also personal motives. In addition, the letters suggest a third party to this relationship: A. Solzhenitsyn, who would impress his rather strict demands and ideas for running the journal on The Continent’s editor.

The article undertakes to reveal the aesthetic and philosophical succession from Turgenev to Chekhov, despite the long-standing tendency to contrast the latter with the tradition of his predecessors.

The article suggests a polemic rethinking of the literary, philosophical and culturological concepts that present the thinker and artist Turgenev as a keen advocate of classical philosophy. In particular, the paper examines the worldviews and personality of Evgeny Bazarov, one of Turgenev’s principal characters, also in comparison with Chekhov’s heroes like the professor from A Dreary Story [Skuchnaya istoriya] and Doctor Astrov. This leads to a considerable change in interpretation of Bazarov’s nihilism to discover not only an ideology, but rather a methodology of non-dogmatic thinking and a critical approach to reality. In this sense, Bazarov’s (and, essentially, Turgenev’s) nihilism is considered as the philosophical basis of what later became Chekhov’s ‘creation ex nihilo’ (L. Shestov).

The analysis presented in this paper brings to light Chekhov’s and Turgenev’s principal philosophical affinity and semblance of their cultural and aesthetic perspectives.

Selected materials of a virtual round-table session devoted to reminiscences about Sergey G. Bocharov (1929-2017) and discussion of his academic interests and achievements. B. Egorov remembers meeting and keeping in touch with Bocharov, as well as new friends he made through him. Y. Mann elaborates on the ideological challenges to Soviet philology and on the role played by Bakhtin, Gogol, and Platonov in forming Bocharov’s own personality. D. Urnov reflects on the nature of Bocharov’s philological talent and the time when they both worked at the Department of Literary Theory in IMLI (Institute of the World Literature). L. Szilard reminisces about her student days at the Moscow State University and her friendship with Sergey and Irina Bocharov, which had lasted a lifetime from the 1950s. E. Dmitrieva considers the subject of Gogol as developed in Bocharov’s articles, and on the latter’s work to produce a complete collection of Gogol’s writings. V. Kotelnikov brings up the topic of K. Leontiev as perceived by Bocharov. P. Glushakov chooses to revisit Bocharov’s main ideas – for example, his concept of genetic memory of literature – and illustrates it with an extensive discussion of the duel, gunshot, and revenge in works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, and Shukshin.

The Russian translation of the seminal and highly controversial book (at the time of its publication in 1994) The Western Canon: The books and school of the ages by Harold Bloom provokes thinking about the process and interim results of the nearly 500-year-old dispute around ‘classicization’, or the forming of a literary canon. Important to grasp are dissimilarities in the functioning of national literatures and the emerging ‘global’ literature (the latter both adhering to the traditional ideas about the literature of ‘universality’ and ‘the world classics’ originated by Goethe, and differing from them). The viewpoint of the American scholar combines conservatism and radicalism, and his book has a pronounced personality, being biased and highly polemical. Inspired by the US cultural reality of twenty years ago, this viewpoint receives a new interpretation in today’s Russian and transnational literary contexts. The review emphasizes one of the key merits of Bloom’s thinking, which his book not merely proclaims but rather consistently and clearly demonstrates with his consummate analysis of literary forms and a keen eye for the deep interconnectedness of the aesthetic and the anthropological.

The article treats the translation of Balzac’s Eugеnie Grandet Dostoevsky did and published in 1844 in the St. Petersburg magazine Repertuar i Panteon. With this first publication, the Russian writer embarked on his literary career. This translation might be to a significant extent considered Dostoevsky’s original work since he largely reinterpreted Balzac’s creative method, his main characters, and his literary anthropology. Dostoevsky strove to emphasize human greatness which stems, among other things, from humans’ existence between the unthinkably far-flung poles of good and evil and from humans’ free choice between them. Balzac’s characters struggle against the evil that dominates society (or submit to that evil), while Dostoevsky’s characters struggle primarily against the evil within. In Dostoevsky’s translation, Balzac’s novel is transformed from Eugеnie Grandet’s tragedy into a story of the salvation of her soul. In contrast with Balzac’s social and psychological realism, Dostoevsky in his translation begins to develop the feel for ‘realism in the highest sense’, his future creative method.

The article examines and compares two translations of the same poem by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), produced by Boris Pasternak in the late 1950s and David Samoylov in mid-1960s, who both relied on line-by-line translation from Bengali. While Pasternak’s translation is a successful Russian poem on its own, it has little similarity with the original’s form and meaning. It may have been for this reason that D. Samoylov was commissioned to make a new translation. His version is closer to the original’s form, but fails to render the meaning. The article suggests that the meter chosen by Pasternak for the translation, with its ‘semantic aureole’ – ‘death (and its defeat)’, is more appropriate for the theme of the Bengali original.

The article renders the contents of the review by the bibliographer Ferapont Vityazev published in Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1934. In his review, the author lashed out at the first volume of Selected works by P. Lavrov, printed by The Publishing House of Political Prisoners [Izdatelstvo politkatorzhan]. The biographical essay, introduction, comments and biography for this publication were written by I. Knizhnik-Vetrov, whose view of P. Lavrov’s output and method of work stood in stark contrast with Vityazev’s own concept, the main point of dispute being Lavrov’s growing ties with the Sovremennik’s editorial board as early as the early 1860s. Having dwelt on Knizhnik’s several errors in text interpretation, Vityazev takes issue with him on the authorship of the article entitled On the popularizer type of journalists and natural sciences [O publitsistakh-populyarizatorakh i o estestvoznanii]. While Knizhnik names Lavrov as the author, Vityazev argues that it was penned by A. Zhuk, and cites payment records of the journal Sovremennik, kept in the Pushkin House archives, as proof. As for the book’s bibliography, Vityazev points out a number of omissions and debatable mentions stemming from the complexity of attribution of articles to Lavrov, who chose to publish his work either anonymously or under a pseudonym.

M. L. Andreev. Farce, tragedy, tragicomedy. Essays on historical poetics of dramatic genres.

S. Zenkin. Theory of literature: Problems and findings.

A. Galushkin, O. Korostelev, eds. Literary heritage. Vol. 105. Andrey Bely: Autobiographical summaries: The material for the biography. Perspective to the diary. Records and registrations. Diaries of the 1930s

Mark Uralsky. Unknown Trotsky: Ilya Trotsky, Ivan Bunin and the first wave of emigration.

Evgeny Bukhin. The train arrives in Boston.

Sukhbat Aflatuni. Rain dissected.

New books.