20th cent. Lit course "Women in Russian Lit"

[Alexandra Smith]

Dear Julia,

Just a belated reply to your message regards the 20th.-c. course on  
women in Russian literature. I think that it might be useful to  
structure the course  around various conceptual clusters and have a  
flexible chronological framework.
I think that Blok's vision of the Divine Femininity with references to  
Vladimir Solov'ev is a very good starting point. You could then move  
to Briusov and his acts of transgressing (his publication of Pavlova  
and a volume of poetry of a mythical woman Nelli that uses feminine  
voice) and Voloshin. You could use both Gippius's and Tsvetaeva's  
essays on Briusov as a demonstration of how women resisted this  
attempt to define femininity, as well as Tsvetaeva's and Akhmatova's  
poetry featuring Blok. Olga Matich's recenly published book on  
decadence and sexuality is a good source for looking into some  
philosophical issues related to androgyny, transgressing, etc.  
especially in relation to Gippius and her friends. Olga Hasty  
published an article on Briusov and Cherubina de Gabriak; I've  
published an article on Tsvetaeva's and Gippius's essays on Briusov;,  
and Catriona Kelly's part of her book "History of women's writing in  
Russia" has a good discussion of Tsvetaeva's image of Blok and her  
image of Orpheus  in the poem "Tak plyli golova i lira".
If you'll be looking into an issue of cityscapes and flaneurs then  
it's intriguing to juxtapose Blok, Mayakovsky and Elena Guro (Milica  
Banjanian wrote several articles on Guro that include Milica's  
excellent translations of Guro's poems. Some parts of Pyman's book on  
Blok deal with cityscapes and the Petersburg myth.
I think that a topic on women and revolution and terror might be also  
interesting. That way you could link Kollontai, Gorky's Mother,  
Ostrovsky's How the Steele was Tempered, and Zamiatin's We, and Doctor  
Zhivago. It might be interesting to look at Platonov's works, too.  
Philip Bullock has published a book recently on women in Platonov's  
work (Legenda, Oxford). He wrote his PhD thesis on this topic at  
Oxford under Catriona's supervision. Currently he is teaching at SSEES  
but he'll be moving to Oxford in autumn.
I can not imagine your course with the inclusion of the topic related  
to Stalin's purges and literature. Nadezhda Mandelshtam's book will  
give you an opportunity to talk about Mandelshtam's poems and purges,  
but at the same time you shouldn't overlook Lidiia Chukovskaya's short  
novel "Sofia Petrovna" (available both in English and in Russian -- as  
Opustelyi dom). When I taught a course on Russian women's writing in  
New Zealand it was very popular with students. I think that  some  
passages from Hanna Arendt's book on totalitarian regimes go well with  
the discussion of Chukovskaya's book. In my opinion, Bulgakov's Master  
and Margarita might be compared to it. These books are very different,  
of course, but they do have some common threads related to the  
depiction of socialist realist culture, Soviet society, editors,  
writers,terror, etc.
Olgga Berggolts also comes to mind when one thinks about Stalin, World  
War 2 and the socialist realist canon. Katharine Hodgson (University  
of Exeter) wrote two wonderful books related to this topic: one is on  
Soviet women poets who wrote on WW2 (published by Liverpool University  
Press), and a couple of years ago she published a monograph on  
Berggolts.
I'm not sure whether you would like to have a brief survey of post-war  
literature, but it's worth looking at images of women in Rasputin,  
Soloukhin, Nagibin and Bitov.
Certainly, Bella Akhmadulina might be of use, too, as a dissident  
figure who still keeps her celebrity status. I watched recently a  
Russian TV programme dedicated to her anniversary. All recent news  
clips featuring her presented Akhmadulina as a martyr.Elena Shvarts  
comes to mind, too, as a poet who was influenced by Akhmadulin in the  
early days. Stephanie Sandler wrote several articles on Shvarts, and  
Sonia Ketchian wrote on Akhmadulina.
As somebody mentioned Julia Voznesenskaya already, I would like to add  
that her Women's Decameron was extremely popular with students. I was  
told that one could get from the USA a copy of a film based on this  
book but I never came round to it because it seemed a bit tricky.  
Perhaps, you'll be lucky and will find it easily.(Some of Julia  
Kristeva's feminist approaches are applicable to her text).
Petrushevskaya and Tolstaya are very important for such a course, and  
I would like to point out that Helena Goscilo published a book on  
Tolstaya's fiction, and Tolstaya's recently published collections of  
essays are also superb in terms of teaching materials. Many essays are  
available in English; the book is called "Pushkin's children". In  
fact, her essays might be studies alongside Brodsky's autobiographical  
essays...One of her essay speculates on the reasons of Brodsky's  
no-return to St Petersburg... In any rate, the Pushkin myth and the  
Petersburg myth are interesting topics that could be included in your  
discussion of Tolstaya. If you need any bibliography on Petrushevskaya  
or any of my articles on her, I'm happy to send these itimes to you.
If you are interested in looking at Petrushevskaya's plays it might be  
fruitful to look at some points of comparison between Petrushevskaya's  
plays and Helene Cixous's theatre if you want to  have a feminist  
touch in you part on contemporary writing. (I've found Julia Dobson's  
book Helene Cixous's and the Theatre: The Scene of Writing, Peter  
Lang, 2002) very thought-provoking.)
Good luck with your course!

All very best,
Sasha Smith


==============================================
Alexandra Smith (PhD, University of London)
Lecturer in Russian
School of European Languages and Cultures
The University of Edinburgh
David Hume Tower
George Square
Edinburgh EX8 9JX
UK

tel. +44-(0)131-6511381
fax: +44- (0)131- 650-3604
e-mail: Alexandra.Smith at ed.ac.uk

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------