AAASS panel request

[Jamilya Nazyrova]

Dear SEELANGERS!

I am posting this on behalf of my friend Zara Torlone regarding her AAASS panel entitled "Phaedra, Medusa, and the Satyr: Exploring Themes in  the Works of Tsvetaeva, Ukrainka, and Vaginov".  The panel was formed from three individually submitted talks,  and the panelists are looking for a chair and two discussants.  Below you can find the abstracts of the talks.  If anyone is interested in participating in this panel, please, reply to Zara Torlone directly at torlonzm at muohio.edu,

All the best,
Mila Nazyrova


 1.Maryana Pinchuk, Harvard U
The talk will focus on the "neo-classical" theme of stone and statuaryin the Ukrainian poet/dramatist Lesya Ukrainka.  In doing so, I willbe working against the traditional framework of Ukrainka study thatequates this theme with "titanic" high culture building, and insteadexplore ways in which stone comes to signify ambivalence anddestructiveness through the trope of the Medusa.

2.Jenna Song, U Chicago
 PAPER TITLE: Vaginov's Satyr Song: Marginalized Collectorsin the Marginalized CityThe paper focuses on Konstantin Vaginov's Satyr Song(Kozlinaia pesn', 1928) which depicts the lives of Leningradintellectuals in 1920s.  In this fictional narrative, weencounter "obsessive collectors" of Leningrad at the time ofthe cultural crisis after the revolutions.  In Vaginov'swork, the defenders of the Petersburg dream during theSoviet period appear as marginalized collectors in themarginalized city.  In the late 1920s, what used to bePetersburg is neither the shrine of world culture, nor thecradle of revolution.  Leningrad, renamed after Lenin who sohated the city to move the capital to Moscow, is whatremains to embrace the scars of revolutionary history.  Inthe cemetery of world culture, the marginalized residents'efforts to protect the city of world culture and preserveits continuity result in the trash-like collection ofeveryday souvenirs - the fragments of the ruined city.In Satyr Song, Vaginov works in two ways to show thecontinuity of Petersburg literature and culture during thedifficult times when Russian writers could not express theirartistic visions in a direct and free manner.  Externally,the characters' so-called trash-collections seem to betrayand disrupt the continuity of Petersburg culture.  In fact,Vaginov achieves an expression of the post-modern version ofcontinuity, disguised as a break due to politicalcircumstances.  In the period of Stalin's culturaloppression when a genuine value system is overthrown, thetrash-like collections symbolize the struggling high culturethat is neglected and persecuted under the slogan ofSocialist Realism.

3.Zara Torlone, Miami U
 Title: Voicing Passions: Phaedra of Euripides and Marina Tsvetaeva
This talk analyzes Marina Tsvetaeva's play Phaedra and compares it with Euripides' treatment of the same classical myth in his tragedy Hippolytus.  What most likely provoked Tsvetaeva's interest in Euripides' play was Euripides' emphasis on the erotic theme, his "feminization" of the tragic genre and the binary opposition of masculine and feminine important for Tsvetaeva's  poetics.
It remains a question whether Tsvetaeva was aware of the first version of Euripides' Hippolytus where Phaedra makes her proposal of love directly and which Euripides had to revise, because the play outraged the audience. Tsvetaeva's choice of giving her Phaedra the power of voice was central for Tsveteava's interest in Phaedra's  articulation of love.  The speeches of the heroine in Phaedra seem to suggest that, despite its truth, feminine speech and writing are rejected or fatally misunderstood.  Phaedra is seen by Tsvetaeva as an embodiment of passion and is given a full voice to express it.
What forced Euripides change the original plot of his Hippolytus becomes for Tsvetaeva the forbidden but inevitably chosen fruit. Tsvetaeva wants to escape the ghosts of the predictable female discourse and resists her enforced literary identity as a "woman-poet" while embracing the femininity of her tragic heroine.

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