Contemporary Russian Literature and more worms

[Francoise Rosset]

Library classifications aside, the worms never stop wiggling, and they
are not limited to literature.
Should we consider Shepitko Russian or Ukrainian -- and she worked
in Belarus too. Is Khachaturian's music Armenian, Russian or Soviet?
And if Khachaturian himself is Armenian, is the waltz in "Masquerade"
informed by his Armenian culture or by the period and play he is illus-
trating? Is there a Kazakh version of "Wolf Cub Among Humans," or do
all those Kazakh characters speak Russian, and why?

It may get unwieldy to always identify all of the relevant categories,
but it's important to make the effort.
The difficulty lies, of course, in determining when and where categories
are relevant. Some of Mandelstam's poems are in fact clearly about being
Jewish. But I confess I am never sure what to tell my students about
Gogol's Ukrainian-ness when we read the Petersburg stories. I don't know
enough about Ukrainian culture to know if and when Ukrainian language/
folklore/culture influences Gogol's style in Russian even when he writes
about Petersburg. But that doesn't mean my students shouldn't be alerted
to the possibility.
It also doesn't mean they should get stuck in the categories. Personally,
I don't want my students to think everything Mandelstam wrote is informed
by Jewish culture any more than everything Picasso painted is Spanish.
I cringe when I hear Grigorovich describe Irek Mukhamedov's special
"Oriental fluidity," so it's time to talk Tatars and stereotypes.

Since most of our students are Americans and hence from a multi-ethnic
country with historical and political "issues" of its own, they should
understand all that means: that it is all too easy to assume the
"dominant" culture is all there is -- cultural/political imperialism
enforced that; that other cultures are not always readily apparent and
occasionally may not be relevant; but that we should at least recognize
them.

This sounds horridly self-righteous and for that I apologize.
Please accept the thought if not the words.
-FR

Francoise Rosset                          phone:  (508) 286-3696
Department of Russian                     e-mail: frosset at wheatonma.edu
Wheaton College
Norton, Massachusetts 02766