Svetlana Garziano (Université Lyon 3, France)

Abstracts (Literature)
Svetlana Garziano (Université Lyon 3, France)
Взгляд эмиграции первой волны на единственность/двойственность русской
литературы XX века
В выступлении рассматривается взгляд эмигрантской критики первой волны на
литературные процессы, происходившие в русской литературе после Октябрьской
революции. Доклад затронет три темы: критика советской литературы, критика
эмигрантской литературы и принцип «нового» в русской литературе с точки зрения
эмигрантской критики. В докладе сравниваются критические статьи и эссе следующих
авторов: М. Цетлин, К. Мочульский, В. Вейдле, М. Осоргин, Г. Иванов, С. Черный, В.
Ходасевич, З. Гиппиус, Г. Адамович, Д. Святополк-Мирский. Автор выступления
исследует вопросы : существует одна или две русские литературы? существует ли
разделение по топографическому принципу? что такое новое и традиционное в
литературе? Предполагается также проанализировать развитие литературных
процессов и появление новых литературных талантов и гениев, а также эстетические
критерии и роль культурного наследия в эмигрантской и советской литературах.
The view of the first wave of Russian emigration at the unity/duality of the Russian
literature of the 20th century
The presentation considers the émigré critics’ opinions on the literary processes occurring in
Russian literature after the October Revolution and studies three topics: émigré critics on the
“new” in twentieth-century Russian literature, émigré literature’s criticism and Soviet
literature’s criticism. The author compares critical essays of different émigré critics: M.
Cetlin, K. Močul’skij, V. Vejdle, M. Osorgin, G. Ivanov, S. Černyj, V. Xodasevič, Z.
Gippius, G. Adamovič, and D. Svjatopolk-Mirskij. The speaker explores the following
questions: are there one or two Russian literatures? Is there a divide based on the
topographical principle? What is new and what is traditional in literature? The presentation
analyzes the development of literary processes and the emergence of new literary talents and
geniuses, as well as the role of aesthetic criteria and cultural heritage in exile and in Soviet
literature.
Ben Dhooge (Ghent University, Belgium)
Embracing Reality: Revolution, Civil War and European Life in Émigré Poetry
Much like other diasporic cultures, Russian émigré culture is characterized by an increased
awareness of issues of identity and memory. The loss of the homeland and the Russian
empire and being expelled by an ideology that was opposed to much of what constituted prerevolutionary Russian society, culture and, hence, identity, fed the émigrés’ wish to
remember and safeguard – or even (re)invent – their identity. This resulted in an increased
attention to all things “Russian”, from language to arts and history and to memories of “truly
Russian” (i.e., pre-revolutionary) life.
One of the things to remember and to write on, one would think, were the events that forced
the émigrés to leave their homeland. These events, however, did not become a major literary
topic, despite the émigré community’s obvious interest in them (hence the many non-literary
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writings on the topic). The same goes for European reality. Most writers seemed to live in a
realm of their own, in isolation from the European societies they found themselves in. This
talk will examine a few examples of émigré literary texts that do narrate the events of 19171922 and European reality, and the critical discourse on them. At the center of this there will
be Aleksei Masainov’s ‘Lik Zveria’ (1924) and the poetry and poetic views of the members
of Skit Poėtov, in particular of Viačeslav Lebedev.
Wim Coudenys (KU Leuven, Antwerpen, Belgium)
Pushkin in the House of Mirrors: The 1937 Centennial Celebrations in Belgium and the
Squared One-or-Two-Cultures-Paradigm
The centennial of A.S. Pushkin’s death in 1937 was met with pomp in both the Soviet Union
and Russia Abroad. In Belgium, as in other countries, the contradictory representation of
Russia’s national poet as a signboard of former (tsarist) Russia, as well as a precursor of
Soviet culture, caused considerable confusion. The Russian émigré community in Belgium
boasted the presence of Nikolai A. Pushkin, the poet’s grandson, and had direct access to the
conservative press. The Soviets, on the other hand, used the celebrations to lure sympathizing
intellectuals into believing that the iconoclast period in Russian culture (and politics?) now
belonged to the past.
The confusion was further enhanced by the specific Belgian situation, in which two
literatures, Flemish (Dutch) and French, co-existed next to each other. As both literatures
were increasingly becoming autonomous and developing reception models of their own, this
led to an even more confused image of Pushkin and Russian culture, émigré as well as Soviet.
In my paper, I intend to focus on the attempts of both Soviets and émigrés to influence the
‘Belgian’ public, without being aware of the dynamics that was at play within the ‘Belgian’
literary system(s). As a result, these attempts misfired and further blurred the image of
Pushkin in/and Russian culture. On a theoretical level, I want to present the concept of the
squared one-or-two-cultures-paradigm, i.e. the idea that the issue of ‘one or two cultures’ is
not restricted to the ‘issuing’ side (émigrés & Soviets), but also applies to the ‘receiving’ end
(in this case: Belgium).
Anna Fortunova (HMTM Hannover, Germany)
Переходя границы: образ утерянной Родины в поэтическом, музыкальном и
журналистском творчестве русских эмигрантов в Берлине 1920х годов.
На неоднородность первой волны русской эмиграции с точки зрения политических и
религиозных взглядов ее представителей, их социального статуса, финансового
положения, этнического происхождения и т.д. недвусмысленно указывают, к примеру,
многочисленные источники, связанные с феноменом первой массовой эмиграции
двадцатого века. Так, шансонье Александр Вертинский рисует следующий словесный
портрет публики одного из его берлинских концертов 1920х годов: «Тут были люди
самых различных ‘убеждений’ и ‘взглядов’, коих в русской колонии собралось великое
множество, – ‘белые’, ‘петлюровцы’, ‘махновцы’, ‘самостийники’, грузинские
‘меньшевики’, всевозможные ‘союзы спасения России’, ‘кадеты’, ‘черносотенцы’,
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‘монархисты’, ‘младороссы’ […]». Ни это выступление артиста в европейском
мегаполисе, ни сам Берлин, называемый в начале третьего десятилетия прошлого века
и «мачехой русских городов», и «второй столицей России», с точки зрения различий
между эмигрантами исключением среди городов «зарубежной России» не был.
Возможно ли найти нечто общее на духовном уровне, что, кроме внешнего факта
нахождения за пределами их Родины, объединяло два миллиона русских эмигрантов
первой волны? Вертинский в своих воспоминаниях дает конкретный ответ и на этот
вопрос: «Но шли [на концерты Вертинского] все. Потому что каждый из них
представлял себе родину такой, как он хотел… а я ведь пел о Родине»! Любовь
эмигрантов к «их» навсегда утерянной России, разлука с которой причиняла им
зачастую нестерпимые душевные страдания, легла в основу коллективной
национальной идентичности русской межвоенной эмиграции. Это чувство, важными
гранями которого были, к примеру, состояния ностальгии, меланхолии или отчаяния,
переходя границы стран, языков, континентов и всего того, что отдаляло этих людей
друг от друга, духовно связало их всех. Автор планирует сконцентрироваться в своём
докладе на примерах выражения чувства патриотизма русской эмиграции первой
волны в поэзии В.В. Набокова, музыке Б.Л. Собинова и музыкальной критике Ю.В.
Офросимова в Берлине 1920х годов.
Über Grenzen hinweg: die Gestalt der verlorenen Heimat im poetischen, musikalischen
und journalistischen Werk russischer Emigranten im Berlin der 1920er Jahre.
Zahlreiche Quellen, die mit der ersten Welle der russischen Emigration verbunden sind,
zeugen eindeutig von ihrer Heterogenität bezüglich der politischen und religiösen Ansichten
ihrer Vertreter, aber auch im Hinblick auf ihren sozialen Status, ihre finanzielle Situation,
ihren ethnischen Ursprung usw. So zeichnet beispielsweise der Sänger Aleksandr Vertinskij
folgendes Bild vom Publikum eines seiner Berliner Konzerte der 1920er Jahre: „Hier waren
Menschen unterschiedlichster „Gesinnung“ und „Ansichten“, aus denen sich die große
Vielheit der russischen Kolonie zusammensetzte: „Weiße“, […], georgische „Menschewiki“,
alle möglichen „Unionen zur Rettung Russlands“, „Kadetten“, „Erzreaktionäre“,
„Monarchisten“, „Jungrussen“ […]“. Weder der Ort des Auftrittes des Künstlers in der
europäischen Metropole, noch Berlin insgesamt, das am Anfang des dritten Jahrzehnts des
vergangenen Jahrhunderts auch „Stiefmutter der russischen Städte“ und „zweite Hauptstadt
Russlands“ genannt wurde, bildeten unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Unterschiede zwischen den
Emigranten eine Ausnahme unter den Städten „Russlands jenseits der Grenzen“. Gibt es
etwas Gemeinsames auf geistiger Ebene, das zwei Millionen russische Emigranten der ersten
Welle verbindet, abgesehen von dem Umstand, dass sie sich außerhalb der Grenzen ihrer
Heimat aufhielten? Vertinskij gibt in seinen Erinnerungen eine konkrete Antwort auch auf
diese Frage: „Doch alle kamen. Weil sich jeder von ihnen die Heimat so vorstellte, wie er
wollte... und ich sang ja über die Heimat“. Die Liebe der Emigranten zu „ihrem“ für immer
verlorenen Russland und die häufig unerträglichen seelischen Qualen, die der Abschied von
der Heimat verursachte, bildeten die Grundlage der kollektiven nationalen Identität der
russischen Emigration zwischen den Weltkriegen. Eben dieses Gefühl, das sich aus
Nostalgie, Melancholie oder Verzweiflung speiste, das Ländergrenzen, Sprachen, Kontinente
und alles, was diese Menschen voneinander trennte, überwand, verband sie alle seelisch. Die
Autorin konzentriert sich in ihrem Vortrag auf Beispiele des Ausdrucks von Gefühlen des
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Patriotismus der russischen Emigration der ersten Welle in der Poesie Vladimir Nabokovs,
der Musik Boris Sobinovs und der Musikkritik Juri Ofrosimovs im Berlin der 1920er Jahre.
Anna Norris (Michigan State University, USA)
From Russia to France: Irène Némirovsky’s Emigration Novels
The Kiev-born Jewish writer Irène Némirovsky became a well-respected French novelist in
Paris of the interwar period, whose works fell into oblivion until the posthumous publication
of her novel Suite française in 2004. Many of her texts portray emigrants from eastern
European countries, who are settling in France and always struggling to integrate themselves
into the French society. This presentation will center on her three Russian emigration novels
published in the 1930s, Les mouches d’automne, L’affaire Courilof, and Le vin de solitude. In
the first part of the presentation, we will discuss the exoticization of Russia and Russians for
French readers presented in these novels, as it was commonly presented in émigré literature
published in Paris at that time. We will also discuss by which aspects the three texts may
differ from the émigré literature. Secondly, we will see how, through the portrayal of the
Russian émigrés evolving in the French upper society, these novels serve as a cruel criticism
of the French bourgeois and aristocratic social class, a recurring theme in all Némirovsky’s
other writings until her posthumous novel Suite française.
Olga Chervinskaya and Yulia Vilchinskaya (Chernivtsi National University,
Khmelnytskyi Pedagogical Academy, Ukraine)
Борис Поплавский и Евгений Маланюк, типология изгнанничества (факторы
культурной аллотропии)
Экзистенциальные акценты экзиля представляют собой не вполне сфокусированный
объект. Существуют факторы в истории культур, которые легче понять, исходя из
актуальной действительности: присутствие определенной культуры в иной культурной
структуре, когда творческая личность стоит перед необходимостью
самоидентификации (мотивация философской платформы Юлии Кристевой – эссе
1988 года «Сами себе чужие»). В культурологическом аспекте любая из условно
однородных культур (или, подхватывая выражение П. Сорокина, «социокультурных
тел») в контекстах своего развития неизбежно сталкивалась, сталкивается или еще
столкнется в будущем с ситуацией, когда эта однородность перестает быть очевидной.
В частности, опыт распада целостной, на первый взгляд, культуры Российской
империи, дает очень показательные примеры, связанные с фактором так называемой
аллотропии (понятие практически отсутствует в литературоведческом лексиконе, хотя
вполне уместно вооружиться этим старинным научным термином, содержащем
известные общенаучные греческие корни ἄλλος - другой, τρόπος - поворот, свойство).
Речь идет о тех многообразных формах, в которые вылилось существование
представителей отдельных национальных культур России после Октябрьского
переворота и которые генерировали возникновение различных известных на сегодня
диаспор – таких, например, как армянская, русская, украинская и пр. На обозначенном
синхроническом срезе представляет интерес период становления таких диаспор
(первая волна эмиграции), главным пунктом которого становится генерирование
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соответствующей идеологической крепы. В этом смысле интересно проследить
типологические образцы на наиболее показательных примерах.
Рассматривается творчество двух поэтов-эмигрантов: Бориса Поплавского (русская
диаспора) и Евгения Маланюка (украинская диаспора). Речь идет о типологически
полярных трансформациях биографического опыта в перспективе идеологии
диаспоры.
Boris Poplavsky et Yevhen Malaniouk : typologie d’exil (facteurs d’allotropie culturelle)
Les accents existentialistes de l’exil représentent un objet assez flou. L’histoire des cultures
abonde en facteurs qui sont plus faciles à comprendre à partir de l’actualité, c’est notamment
le cas de la présence de la culture définie en une autre structure culturelle où l’artiste affronte
la nécessité de l’auto-identification (la motivation du programme philosophique de Julia
Kristeva dans l’essai Étrangers à nous-mêmes, 1988). Dans l’aspect culturel chacune des
cultures homogènes de convention (ou d’après P. Sorokin, des «corps socioculturels») dans
les contextes du développement rencontrait / rencontre / rencontrera inévitablement la
situation où cette homogénéité cesse d’être évidente. Notamment l’expérience de la
désagrégation de la culture de l’Empire russe, intègre, au premier abord, donne des exemples
très suggestifs liés au facteur de la soi-disant allotropie (la notion manque pratiquement dans
le vocabulaire de la critique littéraire, mais ce serait bien le moment de se munir de cet ancien
terme scientifique contenant les racines grecques ἄλλος – l’autre, τρόπος – le tour, la
propriété). Il s’agit des formes diverses de l’existence des représentants des cultures
particulières nationales de la Russie après la révolution d’Octobre et qui généraient
l’apparition de diverses diasporas, connues aujourd’hui, telles, par exemple, comme
arménienne, russe, ukrainienne etc. Dans cette couche synchronique la période de formation
de telles diasporas est surtout intéressante (la première vague de l’émigration) dont le point
principal devient la génération de l’axe idéologique. En ce sens il est intéressant d’observer
les modèles typologiques aux exemples les plus suggestifs.
Nous nous concentrons sur l’oeuvre de deux poètes émigrés : Boris Poplavsky (diaspora
russe) et Yevhen Malaniouk (diaspora ukrainienne). Il s’agit des transformations opposées de
l’expérience biographique à terme d’une idéologie de la diaspora.
Ivo Pospíšil (Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic)
Russian Emigration as a Methodological Problem: A Case Study of Sergii Vilinsky,
Roman Jakobson and Evgeniy Lyatskiy and Their Relations to the Czech Environment
The author of the present contribution deals with the problem of Russian émigré scholars and
writers. The words „emigration“ and „emigrant“ have always had a political connotation in
the East, officially pejorative. In a more narrow sense of the word, it symbolized a sort of an
opposition to the official, communist régime. Sometimes it also meant all those who left their
countries on different grounds, i.e. diaspora, dispersion. Sometimes it might also mean
anybody who left the country and decided to keep the citizenship of his or her former country
– often for quite a long time (Roman Jakobson in interwar Czechoslovakia). The case of
Sergii Vilinsky was a special one. He became a professor at Masaryk University in 1923 after
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he left Russia (where he was a professor at Novorossijsk University in Odessa, once even a
deputy vice-chancellor), Turkey and Bulgaria. He gave lectures in modern Russian literature
even though he was a medievalist (in Odessa he taught on Mikhail Bakhtin during the winter
semester in 1913). The contribution analyzes his „Czechoslovak“ writings and his
participation in the cultural life of Moravia, especially the modern Catholic movement. His
influence upon the Czech perception of Russian literature, although not immense, was
nevertheless quite strong (e.g. his book on Saltykov-Shchedrin with the commentaries on his
poetics anticipating some modernist elements, the literature of the grotesque and the absurd).
Michael Meylac (Université de Strasbourg, France)
“Russia and the West: A Transparent Membrane?”
The lecture is an attempt to reveal some anthropologic, cultural, religious and literary aspects
of (e)migration and diaspora, involving such motives as isolation, homesickness, and many
others The stories of Adam and Eve, expelled from the Paradise which was ever since lost for
humanity, and of Cain condemned to wandering (with the forthcoming legend of the Errant
Jew), might be quoted as the earliest Biblical examples. However, self-retraction from the
world may become a positive experience in a spiritual quest, as is the case with Biblical
prophets, early Christian or Buddhist hermits, and finally in all kinds of monasticism. The
fundamental opposition of what is proper to what is foreign nourishes the self-created literary
myths of Ovid, Dante, or Nabokov, with their respective longings for Rome, Florence and St.
Petersburg. However, Dante defies it, claiming to belong to the worldwide community of
illuminated people and cursing Florence at its actual state. Nabokov does something very
similar by creating his personal myth of “Paradise Lost”, i.e. of his paradisiacal childhood in
Russia which does not exist any more, and speaking of America as of his “adopted country”.
Another interesting inversion may be found in the notion of Russian/Soviet “home émigrés”
(inner émigrés: внутренние эмигранты), condemned to keep a very low profile and forced
to stay in their motherland which treated them like the step-mother did Cinderella.
Nataliya Gavrilova (Graduate Center, CUNY, USA)
Joseph Brodsky’s Anti-Romanticism and T.S. Eliot’s Critical Tradition
The paper intends to explore the impact of American literary criticism on Joseph Brodsky’s
literary views and principles of poetics. Although the poet got assimilated in the new culture
more than any other Russian man of letters from the third wave of immigration, the role of
American literary criticism, scarcely available behind the Iron Curtain but necessarily
influential for the poet who became a university professor and a literary critic in the US, has
never been consistently discussed by scholars exploring Brodsky’s career. I argue that it
played an important role in the development of Brodsky’s views of the literary canon and
poetics that increasingly took an anti-romantic direction.
Brodsky’s principles of poetics formulated in his writings after emigration in 1972 were
informed by T.S. Eliot’s critical heritage, which had been the mainstream of literary theory in
the American academy in the 1940s-1960s. In the essays “Catastrophes in the Air,” “On
‘September 1, 1939’ by W.H. Auden,” and others, Brodsky looks to debunk the principles of
Romanticism originated in the conception of man as the measure of all things. Defining man
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as innately evil and criticizing Rousseauistic ideas, Brodsky follows the logic of antiromantic theories publicized by Eliot and his mentors Irving Babbitt and T.E. Hulme.
Brodsky’s poem “1972,” interpreted here as a manifesto of new, anti-romantic, poetics, is
shown to use depersonalization strategies from Eliot’s early poetry. Ultimately, late
Brodsky’s requirements of neutrality, objectivity, and impersonality in poetry can be seen as
the echo of the Age of Eliot.
Elena Neznamova (University of Essex, UK)
Omne solum vati patria est, ille incola mundi: Joseph Brodsky’s Internal and External
Emigration and His Endless Psycho-Political Journey
In Soviet Russia where Joseph Brodsky spent half of his life, he composed poems that
reflected his desire to understand an internal world of the individual, full of suffering and
happiness. One of Brodsky’s persistent and most cherished ideas was that literature, poetry in
particular, might play a tremendous role in an individual’s development, in the awakening of
his self-awareness. Being passionately devoted to poetic language he believed that poetry can
liberate humanity’s creative potential. By means of his poetry Brodsky was able to open a
dialogue between the conscious and unconscious and explore what is unknown and uncertain.
Using Stein’s words, Brodsky has ‘an open attitude toward the “alien other” and a
willingness to engage in dialogue with that foreign element. This draws out also the foreign
element in ourselves, the repressed, the shadowy, the frightening and the forgotten’. All
Brodsky’s works as well as his lifestyle, were formed through ‘ceaseless hybridization, crossbreeding and foreign-born’ (the term is Mandelstam’s) influences that were perfectly
combined with Russian literary tradition. I suggest that Brodsky’s political strength interplays
with his poetic symbols that came from deep levels of the psyche that Jung called ‘collective
unconscious’. These symbols that ‘have a force and power of their own’ and go beyond the
time and space, appear in Brodsky’s verses. I assert that Brodsky’s poetry contains archetypal
material, elements of collective images, and cultural symbols that could free an individual
from any form of political delusion, or using Jung’s terminology, from ‘psyche epidemics’. In
his moment of physical isolation, Brodsky produced poetry that was truly universal. His
haunting poetry, written in his time of internal exile as well as his reflections on the Soviet
reality written during his external exile, show Brodsky’s ability to estrange himself from a
physical relation to a place or time in order to portray eternal truth, universal realities.
Speaking in Jungian terms, I argue that Brodsky was a poet, ‘a vehicle and moulder of the
unconscious psychic life of mankind’ who did not want to restrict his creative energy and
subordinate his talent to the historical and political necessity of one nation. Brodsky’s
external exile, his extensive travels and residence abroad accompanied by his individual
endless psychological journey towards individuation, made him a ‘citizen of a multicultural
universal world’.
Robyn Jensen (Columbia University, USA)
Photographs That Speak: Word and Image in Nabokov, Brodsky, and Shteyngart
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In this paper, I focus on autobiographical works by Russian/Soviet émigré writers that
incorporate photography, considering both the actual photographs included in the text and the
use of photography as metaphor/metonymy for the exilic condition. As Michael Seidel begins
his book Exile and the Narrative Imagination, “An exile is someone who inhabits one place
and remembers or projects the reality of another” (1986, ix). I read photographs as a crucial
component of the exile’s creative remembrance or projection of his former home. Drawing on
theories of photography, autobiography, trauma, and memory, I argue that writers such as
Nabokov (Speak, Memory), Brodsky (“In a Room and a Half”), and Shteyngart (Little
Failure) attempt to use photography as a means of re-establishing a connection with the lost
time and space of their homeland. In so doing, I shed light on the complex relationship
between language and photography in communicating the experience of memory for these
exiled writers. The photographic medium seems to offer the promise of transcending
language; however, these writers still need language to explain the images’ significance, to
translate them, as it were, for their English-speaking audiences. Ultimately I argue that by
focusing on the relationship between photography and narrative, we see that the various types
of “border crossings” – between media, languages, and cultures – are creatively productive
for the émigré writer.
Maksym Klymentiev (Kyiv Institute of Philosophy, Ukraine)
Re-emigration: The Case of Natalia Il’ina (1914-94)
The life and literary output of the well-known Soviet writer and literary figure Natalia Il’ina
(1914-1994) was anything but ordinary – born into an aristocratic family shortly before the
revolution, she followed her relatives into emigration to Kharbin, China, where she spent the
years of her youth and started her literary career as a short prose writer and feuilletonist
before re-emigrating to the USSR in 1947. First, Il’ina had to adapt to the new canon of
Socialist Realism – by attending The Gorky Literary Institute and then by publishing a twopart autobiographical novel “The Return” (with the two parts appearing in 1957 and 1965,
respectively). However, it was her short satirical prose published in a number of Soviet
journals that won her real fame with the Soviet intelligentsia readership in the 1960-70s.
Il’ina’s critique of the Soviet reality and the Socialist-Realist literary and aesthetic
conventions proved to be so effective and scathing that her re-emigration to USSR emerges in
my report as a deliberate act of her generation’s ultimate revenge on the political regime
which once deprived them of their future and their motherland.
Julia Titus (Yale University and CUNY, USA):
The Theme of Memory in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Nabokov’s Speak,
Memory!
Although Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory! was written much later than Proust’s novel,
and belongs to a different genre, it shares many affinities with Proust’s masterpiece. Echoing
Proust’s novel, Nabokov indicates in the title that at the center of his work there are memory
and time – time that he attempts to reconstruct or retrace through the “faintest of personal
glimmers” and “flashes” that exist in his mind. However, unlike Proust who concluded his
work with a volume titled Time Regained, Nabokov warned his readers in the very first
chapter that his journey proved to be unfulfilled and the lost past can never be recaptured: “I
8
have journeyed back in thought – with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went – to remote
regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is
spherical and without exits”. These lines of inability to fully recapture the past that stays in
“the prison of time” can be interpreted as a corollary of Nabokov’s tragic personal experience
as an exilé who lost everything in his native land (and even lost his father, who was shot by
the Bolsheviks) to a political turmoil in Russia. For Nabokov, the author living in exile and
the narrator of the memoirs, “one is always at home at one’s past”, and for that reason
memory proves for him the magical means of holding on to one’s past and to one’s own
identity and roots. Through the prism of close reading, the paper will examine the theme of
time and nostalgia in Nabokov’s memoir and compare Nabokov’s treatment of these motives
to Proust’s in his novel.
Soelve Curdts (HHU Duesseldorf, Germany)
Nabokov’s The Gift: History and A Critique of Realism
This paper reads inter-texts in Nabokov’s novel The Gift as a conscious valorisation of
ornamental(ist) as opposed to realist prose. In its deliberate literariness, Nabokov’s text also
contributes to reading the Russian “classics” from Pushkin to Tolstoy in an ornamental rather
than a realist key. Furthermore, by means of insertions, such as the polemical “biography” of
Chernyshevsky, The Gift not only re-valuates an entire literary tradition, but also provides a
means for critique of the emerging Soviet literary and scholarly productions which draw on
Chernyshevsky as precursor, and eventually culminate in the tenets of Socialist Realism. If,
as Nabokov suggests in his English foreword, the hero of this novel is indeed “Russian
literature”, The Gift is not merely a nostalgic farewell (Дар was the final novel Nabokov
wrote in Russian), but rather a critical project enabling reflections on contemporary political
and philosophical currents by means of literary (inter)texts. Thus, for all its celebration of
aesthetic autonomy, the novel ultimately articulates ways of relating to history including the
events that produced Russian Émigré Culture in the first place. This paper will read various
intertextual gestures in The Gift as expressions of a counter-realism whose acknowledgement
of “the nightmare of history” consists precisely in engaging with it at a distance.
Kristina Naumann (CAU Kiel, Germany)
Die Stadt Berlin als „Russkij Berlin“ in Vladimir Nabokovs „Putevoditel’ po Berlinu“
und Mašen’ka.
Zu einem weltberühmten Vertreter der ersten Emigrationswelle zählt Vladimir Nabokov,
dessen Erzählung „Putevoditel’ po Berlinu“ (1925/26) sowie sein Roman Mašenka (1926) im
Zentrum der russischen Emigration spielen. Als solches gilt nämlich Berlin für die Jahre
1920-1923 (Vgl. Zimmer, Dieter E., Nabokovs Berlin. Berlin 2001, S. 116f). Es gab 87
Emigrantenverlage in Berlin und allein im Jahre 1924 wurden 19 russische Buchläden
gezählt. Berlin ist daher nicht von ungefähr als „Stiefmutter der russischen Städte“
(Chodasevič) oder als „Russkij Berlin“ (Schlögel), „Russland außerhalb Russlands“ (Franz)
und als „Berlinograd“ (Heidemann) bekannt gewesen. Ich möchte mich in meinem Vortrag
mit den oben genannten Texten von Nabokov auseinandersetzen, weil in ihnen die damalige
Situation der Exilanten deutlich zu Tage tritt und weil sie darüber hinaus literarisch als ein
Zeugnis für die Erfahrungsgeschichte und für die Lebensentwürfe von Migranten fungieren.
Das literarische Ich thematisiert in den genannten Werken sein Fremdsein und auf diese
Weise avanciert Berlin zu einer Art „Zwischenraum“ respektive „third place“ und damit zu
9
einem Ort der Konfrontation zwischen Heimat und Fremde, an dem sich Prozesse der SelbstTransformation und Akkulturation in Gang setzen.
Irina Rebrova (University of Salzburg, Austria)
Between Tradition and Innovation: Contemporary Émigré Journals on the “Other
Shores” of Virtual Space
Within the framework of diaspora studies, this paper examines the following Russian émigré
literary journals which appear both in print and online: Drugie Berega (Italy 2004-2007),
Inye Berega (Finland), Novyï Bereg (Denmark), Émigranskaya Lira (Belgium), Zarubezhnye
Zadvorki (Germany), Literaturnyï Evropeets (Germany), Mosty (Germany) and Novyï
Zhurnal (USA). It compares the main sections of these journals, their editorial positions on
language, culture and the Russian diaspora as well on Internet communication. It identifies
common characteristics that attest to the preservation of the publishing traditions of the first
wave of emigration, which are primarily seen in the special relation to language, Russian
language and Russian classical literature, as well as in the practice of open dialogue and the
publication of a plurality of views. Furthermore, a number of journals continue the tradition
of literary journals published during the third wave of emigration, in particular, that of
Kontinent and the policies of the dissident movement (Literaturnyï Evropeets and Mosty).
At the same time, this comparative paper identifies new tendencies and innovations resulting
within the system of coordinates “author – text – addressee” from the relations between the
critic and the reader on the Internet. The Internet provides the possibility of making hypertextual and intertextual connections between articles/reviews and of establishing the
Weltanschauungen of the “Russian intelligentsia” as a social group, which attest to the
existence of the “our/other” opposition within one ethnos.
Maria Gatti Racah (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy)
“A Jewish Question and a Russian Answer”: Émigrés’ Reflections on Exile and
Diasporic Solidarity
In the multi-national and multi-confessional Russia Abroad, the Jewish component consisted
of what can be called a “diaspora within the diaspora”, characterised by a hybrid identity, a
double political and cultural allegiance, both Russian and Jewish. Jews played a leading role
in the lively émigré cultural milieu (see the multi-volume work edited by M. Parchomovskij,
1992-2002), with bonds of solidarity based on a common spirit and a shared socio-cultural
heritage. This collaboration, however, had its problematic sides, too. Active Jewish
participation in civic life was accompanied by an increase in anti-Semitic pressure, connected
partly to the wider European drive in this direction and partly to specific features of Russian
history – in particular, the charge levelled against Jews at the time of having brought about
the Russian tragedy on account of their considerable involvement in the revolutionary
movement (see especially V. Šul’gin, 1929). These two poles set the field for complex
negotiations of identity between Russians and Russian Jews within the context of the
diaspora, which served as a testing ground for reflecting upon the nature and destiny of the
fallen Empire and its heirs. This paper analyses texts by Amfiteatrov, Osorgin, Rennikov
among others, in which authors asserted the existence of parallels between Russians and
Jews, namely the condition of exile for which Jewishness provided an archetype, and aims to
10
show how Jewish discourses on the Russian diaspora serve as a mirror to reflect upon
Russian identity.
Susanne Marten-Finnis (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Russian Art Goes Global: The Ballets Russes, Concepts – Trajectories – Negotiation
Strategies
Only a few years ago, the centenary of the Russian Seasons in Paris refocused public interest
on the Russians negotiating their art with a Western European public. What happened a
hundred years ago? A small group of exceedingly clever and progressive Russians arrived in
Paris to challenge conventional art forms: the Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev
whose troupe revolutionized the nature of the ballet, scenic artist Léon Bakst whose décor
changed Paris’ haute couture and London’s savoir vivre, and the young Igor Stravinsky
whose music was referred to as “the most iconic moment of European Modernism”. No other
group established the Russian presence in Western Europe so emphatically. What was so
spectacular about their art that it simply blew away traditional standards? The proposed paper
revisits the moment of their arrival in the West. It explores the integrative approach to art
originating from the St.Petersburg World of Art group (Miriskussniki), together with its
migration to Paris, its unfolding in the new environment and the negotiation strategies of their
principal agents Diaghilev, Bakst and Stravinsky.
David Markish (writer, Israel)
Поверх оценок. Русско-еврейская литература или собрание литераторов?
Массовая эмиграция (начиная с культурной её составляющей) из СССР-СНГ явилась
феноменальным явлением, оказавшим определённое влияние на Западное сообщество.
Известные русские писатели и в XIX веке охотно покидали любезное отечество и
вполне вольготно себя чувствовали вдали от родимых пределов: Гоголь в Италии,
Тургенев в Германии и во Франции; но было бы ошибкой отнести их к эмигрантам.
Не то случилось в наше время. Замечательные русские писатели, в силу политических
обстоятельств, эмигрировали в Европу и Америку: Солженицын, Бродский, Аксёнов,
Владимов, Войнович, Максимов. Этими именами не ограничивается ряд великолепных
литературных эмигрантов.
Израиль, в своём роде, представляет собой навершие названного феномена. По
количеству наименований книг, издаваемых здесь на русском языке, он упрямо
удерживает второе место в мире – после России. Авторы этих книг – русские писатели,
по большей части этнические евреи, зачастую придерживающиеся бытовых и
духовных установок ортодоксального иудаизма. Их много – и светских, и
религиозных, их куда больше, чем в какой либо другой стране «ближнего или дальнего
Зарубежья», а, может, и во всех этих странах, вместе взятых. Они объединены в
несколько конфликтующих между собою израильских Союзов русскоязычных
писателей и литературных объединений, они группируются вокруг наших толстых
журналов и альманахов – городских и региональных. Они пишут и печатают прозу,
стихи, пьесы, эссе и мемуары. Я не ставлю своей задачей оценивать их литературные
11
усилия, я намерен обрисовать общую картину того культурного явления, которое
выглядит как несколько деформированное ответвление русско-еврейской литературы,
родившейся в России почти два века назад.
Вместе с тем можно утверждать, что собрание русско-еврейских израильских
писателей не является литературой в её развитии, а лишь оттиском живой
литературной жизни. И этот феномен оказывает значительное влияние на израильскую
культурную среду.
Above Evaluations. Russian-Jewish Literature or a Collection of Littérateurs?
Mass emigration (starting with its cultural component) from the USSR-CIS has been a
phenomenal happening which had an impact on Western society. Famous Russian writers
used to leave their beloved motherland in the 19th century, too, and yet they felt just fine
away from their homeland: Gogol in Italy, Turgenev in Germany and France; but it would be
a mistake to regard them as emigrants.
However, the story has been very different in our time. For political reasons, wonderful
Russian writers, such as Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Aksenov, Vladimov, Voinovich, Maksimov,
to name but a few, emigrated to Europe and America.
Israel, in a sense, crowns the aforementioned phenomenon. By the number of Russian titles
published there annually, it maintains the second place in the world, after Russia. The authors
of these books are Russian writers, mainly ethnic Jews, who often adhere to the ideas of
Orthodox Judaism, both at the spiritual and mundane level. There are many of them – both
secular and religious; many more than in any other country of either ‘near’ or ‘distant’
abroad, or in all of these countries put together. They are united in several conflicting Israeli
Unions of Russian speaking writers and literary groups, they gather around our big journals
and almanacs – both urban and regional. They write and publish prose, poetry, plays, essays
and memoirs. It is not my task here to assess their literary efforts. My aim is to draw a
general picture of that cultural phenomenon which looks as a somewhat deformed branch of
Russian-Jewish literature which was born in Russia almost two centuries ago.
At the same time we can assert that a collection of Russian-Jewish Israeli writers is not
literature in its development, but only an imprint of a living literary life. And this
phenomenon has a real bearing on Israeli culture.
Anna Arustamova (Perm State University, Russia)
The Russian Theme in the English-language Prose of Russian Émigré Authors in the
USA (Maria Moravsky’s Firebird and Olga Ilyin’s The Saint Petersburg Affair)
Émigré Russian Literature draws a lot of attention in contemporary literary studies. And yet,
some texts of this tradition remain relatively unexamined. Literary institutions of Russian
emigration to Harbin, Shanghai and Paris are the focus of scholarly attention, whereas those
in New York and San Fransicso are outside of the scope of active research. One of the most
fascinating characteristics of the texts published in the US is their bilingualism. Some authors
wrote in Russian, since they considered their language to be the basis of their national
identity and culture, as well their only remaining tie to their lost motherland. Others tried to
become part of the contemporary American literary process and to publish in English. After
12
the years they lived in the US, Petr Balakshin, Maria Moravskaia (Marussia Moravsky), Olga
Ilyin, Nina Fedorova and others became truly bilingual writers, interested in addressing both
Russian and English speaking readers.
In the proposed paper, I will examine two bilingual texts of the émigré Russian literature in
the US: Maria Moravsky’s Firebird and Olga Ilyin’s Saint Petersburg’s Affaire. Switching to
a new language meant also employing a different cultural code in their text: describing prerevolutionary and revolutionary Russia, they also had to explain Russian culture to their
English readers. In my presentation, I consider how these two authors deal with this problem
in their text, and how, therefore, the conceptual opposition of my own/other’s structures the
plot of Moravsky’s novel and becomes an indispensable key to reading Ilyin’s work. Since
the two novels are set in Saint Petersburg, I will also address the issue of the intersection of
the classical literary tradition and the formal devices of modernism in these texts, and I will
also define them as a part of the literary tradition of Russian “Petersburg texts”.
Melissa Purkiss (University of Oxford, UK)
Gaito Gazdanov: “Литература в газетных статьях была совершенно неуместна”1
In this paper I focus on the intersection of literature and journalistic writing in the Russian
émigré context. I examine the extent to which the perceived neumestnost’ of Russianlanguage publications outside of Russia was counteracted by the umestnost’ of the so-called
‘unnoticed generation’ in interwar Paris. I pay particular attention to Gaito Gazdanov,
exploring the means by which the publication of his short stories, novels and articles through
journals such as Sovremennye zapiski and Chisla simultaneously uprooted them from the
national context and grounded them in a transnational space whose borders were linguistic.
Gazdanov’s attention to the wider apparatus within which language is situated emphasises its
dual function as aesthetic and socio-political tool, and he would ultimately synthesise both
roles in his work for Radio Svoboda.
A work such as Nochnye dorogi demonstrates Gazdanov’s linguistic and formal hybridity via
its fragmentary structure, documentary style and blending of argot, French and Russian.
Extracts of the novel were first published in 1939 and 1940 in Sovremennye zapiski but the
text was not published in its entirety until 1952, when it was levelled out linguistically with
the insertion of Russian translations for the argot components. The difference between earlier
and later publication forms exemplify the latent tension between the ‘émigré’ label and the
Russian readership that many exilic writers hoped their works might one day reach.
Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl (KFU Graz, Austria)
Narratives of Homecoming in Russian Literature of Emigration
Gaito Gazdanov, Prizrak Aleksandra Vol’fa in Romany (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura,
1990), p. 220.
1
13
In literature of exile, remembering lost homes and reflecting on possible or impossible returns
play a crucial role. However, the question of how the Russian literature of emigration
displays and narrates return has thus far been widely ignored, apart from Svetlana Boym’s
useful considerations in her seminal work The Future of Nostalgia (2001). This paper aims to
investigate Russian narratives of (real or virtual) return from the perspective of
intertextuality: it will examine the various ways in which these texts communicate with and
refer to each other. Milan Kundera’s (2000) assumption that the homecoming of exiles is
expected to be a “Great Return,” carried out in accordance with some pre-existing
“instruction manual” may serve as a starting point. In the common imagination of
homecoming, the hero, like Odysseus or the prodigal son, usually retrieves the comfort of the
secure and familiar and is reassured of his identity. However, homecoming can also be
represented as returning to a now-foreign land that essentially differs from that which one
once was forced to leave. Return narratives, then, are not circular; they call into question the
widespread notion of homecoming as helping to restore one’s “true” identity. By providing
analyses of selected works of First- and Third-Wave emigration, this paper explores how
Russian literature of exile negotiates the grand homecoming narrative and how it subverts
dominant models of narrating belonging, longing, and return.
Nora Scholtz (LMU München, Germany)
„Мы — реализации метафоры“ /“Wir sind die Realisation einer Metapher.“
Emigration als Verfahren und multiple Kompositionsstrukturen in Viktor
Šklovskijs ZOO ili pis’ma ne o ljubvi
Die „Affengesellschaft“ in Viktor Šklovskijs ZOO ili pis’ma ne o ljubvi steht stellvertretend
für das Postulat, in der Emigration auf keinen Fall heimisch werden zu dürfen. Das Leben der
russischen Künstler-Emigranten rund um den Berliner Bahnhof Zoo herum, an dem Šklovskij
von 1923 an teilnahm, ist geprägt von der Parallelschaltung aus Leben und Text, Faktualität
und Fiktion. Während für den Menschen der Verlust der Heimat und die Sorge um die eigene
Identität und Sprache vorherrschende Thematiken sind, ist das Leben in der Fremde für den
Künstler, zumal den Formalisten und Erfinder des nabljudatel’ so storony Viktor Šklovskij,
ein wahres Paradies des „fremden Blickes“. Die Welt ist Material und die Entautomatisierung
der Wahrnehmung zur alles beherrschenden Methode geworden; der Text dient der ständigen
Weiterverfremdung, was sich auch auf Genrefragen und nicht zuletzt die poetischen Mittel
auswirkt: Die Emigration ist zu einem Verfahren (priem ostranenija) der Kunst geworden.
Während die „Einheimischen“ und nicht zuletzt der Leser zu den eigentlich Fremden werden,
die dem Verwirrspiel aus Leben und Text, Fiktion und Faktizität hilflos ausgeliefert sind,
wird die „Künstlergesellschaft“ zu einer Bastion der Verfremdung in der Fremde. Der Beitrag
beschäftigt sich mit dem sujetlosen Text und den multiplen Kompositionsstrukturen in
Šklovskijs „Roman in Briefen“ als spezifischem Merkmal emigrantischen Schreibens.
Olaf Terpitz (University of Vienna, Austria)
Migration and the Semantics of Genres
The interwar migration to Berlin and Paris engendered, as is the case with any other
migration, various spatial, cultural, and emotional dislocations. Writers needed to re-evaluate
14
and re-align their set of references. I will discuss the role and position of prominent literary
genres that focus on the „I“, the individual.
Biographical Notes (Literature)
Svetlana Garziano is a senior lecturer (maître de conférences) of Russian literature at the
Slavonic Department of Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University (France), researcher at the André
Lirondelle Research Center of Slavonic Studies, and director of the House of Languages. In
2009 she defended her Ph.D. dissertation “Vladimir Nabokov’s Autobiographical Poetics in
the context of Russian and European Cultures”. She published scholarly papers on the émigré
culture, and organized three international conferences at her university: “Soviet culture and
literature’s refractions in Russian emigration” (2011), “Emigration and Russian classics”
(2012), and “Autobiographical poetics of the Silver Age and beyond” (2014). In 2013 she
organized a book donation project with the House of Russia Abroad.
Ben Dhooge wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Andrei Platonov’s language (2007). Later he
worked as a postdoctoral (visiting) scholar at the Institute of World literature (Moscow), the
University of Southern California, Ghent University and the University of California,
Berkeley. Now he is a research professor at the Department of Languages and Cultures at
Ghent University. He has been working on the reception of linguistic experimentation in
literature in early 20th century Russian émigré culture, on Vešč’, on Skit Poėtov, and on the
émigré literary reception of the Revolution and the Civil war during the interwar period.
Dr Wim Coudenys teaches Russian and European history and culture at the University of
Leuven (KU Leuven). He specializes in the relationship between Russia and the West and in
Russian historiography. Dr Coudenys has extensively published on the reception of Russian
literature (Poesjkin in Vlaanderen, 1999), Russian emigration history (Leven voor de tsaar,
2004, R. edition forthcoming) and the relationship between fact and fiction in the
representation of Russia in the interwar period. Recently he has turned to Russian
historiography (Het geheugen van Rusland, 2014) and the 18th century, notably the role of
translation in the emergence of Russian historiography.
Anna Fortunova studierte Musikwissenschaft, Kunstjournalismus und Musikdramaturgie an
der Staatlichen Akademie für Musik und Marketing an der Akademie des Staatsdienstes in
Nischni Nowgorod (Russland). 2004-2007 schrieb sie ihre Dissertation „Die Ballette von
Dmitri Schostakowitsch als kulturelles Phänomen der zwanziger und dreißiger Jahre“. Sie
erhielt als Studentin und Doktorandin verschiedene Stipendien und Preise. Seit dem
Wintersemester 2008 war sie Dozentin für Historische Musikwissenschaft an der Staatlichen
Universität für Pädagogik Nischni Nowgorod, in den Jahren 2009-2011
Forschungsstipendiatin der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. Im Rahmen dieses Projektes
untersuchte sie das Thema „Russisches Musikleben im Berlin der 1920er Jahre“ an der
Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. Anfang 2012 war Anna Fortunova
Forschungsstipendiatin des Forschungszentrums Musik und Gender an der HMTM Hannover
und danach wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im DFG-Projekt „Russisch-deutsche
Musikbegegnungen 1917 – 1933: Analyse und Dokumentation“ ebenda. Seit Mai 2014 ist
Anna Fortunova wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender.
15
Anna Norris is Associate Professor of French at Michigan State University. Her research
interests center on prison writings, trauma, literature, and war. She is the author of L’écriture
du défi : les textes carcéraux féminins du 19e et du 20e siècles. Entre l’aiguille et la plume.
(Summa, 2003) and co-edited with Frédérique Chevillot Des femmes écrivent la guerre
(Editions Complicités, 2007). She has published essays and book chapters on the writers
Marie Capelle Lafarge, Madeleine Pelletier, Irène Némirovsky, Charlotte Delbo, the artist
Camille Claudel, and the filmmakers Marcel Ophüls, Jean Rouch, Marceline Loridan-Ivens
and Anne-Claire Poirier. She is presently working on oral and written testimonies given by
women death camp survivors who were children during WWII, and is completing a book
manuscript on Marie Capelle Lafarge.
Ольга Червинская – доктор филологических наук, профессор, заведующая кафедрой
зарубежной литературы и теории литературы Черновицкого национального
университета имени Юрия Федьковича (Украина), главный редактор научного издания
«Вопросы литературы» (http://pytlit.blogspot.com/). Автор книг «Акмеизм в контексте
Серебряного века и традиции» (1997), «Пушкин, Набоков, Ахматова: метаморфизм
русского лирического романа» (1999), «Рецептивная поэтика» (2001), «Аргументы
формы» (2015). «Поэтика мистического» (2011, составитель, соавтор), «Императив
Провинция» (2014, составитель, соавтор).
Olha Chervinska : Docteur ès lettres, professeur des universités, chef du département de la
littérature étrangère et de la théorie de la littérature de l’Université Nationale Yury
Fedkovych de Chernivtsi, Ukraine, rédacteur en chef de l’édition scientifique «Questions de
la littérature» (http://pytlit.blogspot.com/). L’auteur des livres «Acméisme dans le contexte
de l’Âge d’argent et la tradition» (1997), «Pouchkine, Nabokov, Akhmatova : le
métamorphisme du roman russe lyrique» (1999), «Poétique de réception» (2001),
«Arguments de la forme» (2015). «Poétique mystique» (2011, coordination, coauteur),
«Impératif la Province» (2014, coordination, coauteur).
Юлия Вильчанская – преподаватель кафедры зарубежной литературы и
культурологии Хмельницкой гуманитарно-педагогической академии, аспирант
кафедры зарубежной литературы и теории литературы Черновицкого национального
университета имени Юрия Федьковича (Украина).
Yuliia Vilchanska : Enseignante au département de la littérature étrangère et de la
culturologie de l’académie humanitaire et pédagogique de Khmenytskyi, Ukraine, doctorante
du département de la littérature étrangère et de la théorie de la littérature de l’Université
Nationale Yury Fedkovych de Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
Ivo Pospíšil is Head of the Institute of Slavonic Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk
University, Brno, Czech Republic, chairman of the Czech Association of Slavists, member of
the Research Boards of the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno, of the Faculty of
Arts of Palacký University in Olomouc, of the Faculty of Central European Studies,
University of Constantine the Philosopher, Nitra, of the Slavonic Library in Prague, chairman
of the Society for Literary Criticism of the Czech Republic, chairman of the Frank Wollman
Society for Slavonic Studies, chairman of the editorial board of the journal Opera Slavica,
editor-in-chief of Slavica Litteraria and Novaya Rusistika. His research interests and
expertise include Slavonic literatures, the Russian novel, poetics, comparative literature,
genre and area studies. His contributions appeared in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia,
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Czech Republic, France, Spain, Serbia, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Ukraine, Belorussia, etc.
Author of 25 books.
Michael Meylac, Professor at the University of Strasbourg, France, is a poet, philologist and
art historian. He has conducted extensive research on Russian/Soviet poetry and on the poetry
of the French troubadours. He has discovered and published the works of Russian post-futurist
‘OBERIU’ poets (1929-1940), notably Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky; partly for
this activity Meylac was arrested and became a political prisoner at a GULAG in the Perm’
area in 1983-1987. His translations into Russian include medieval “Lives of the Troubadours”
and Nabokov’s novels and short stories. His latest books include a two-volume collection of his
interviews with outstanding Russian ballet dancers, musicians, cinema and theatre actors and
artists living in Russia and abroad, entitled Evterpa, ty? Meylac was Nikolay Khardzhiev’s
close friend for more than 30 years, and collected and edited a book of articles on the Russian
avant-garde in memoriam of Khardzhiev (2000); he also published his correspondence with his
friend and various articles about him.
Nataliya Gavrilova received her BA in English language and literature at Tomsk State
University in 2003, and a doctorate in Russian literature at Tomsk State University in 2007.
Currently, she is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Comparative Literature at the
Graduate Center, City University of New York (USA). She is working on her dissertation
titled “Forbidden Attraction: Russian and American Poetic Encounters during the Cold War.”
Elena Neznamova earned a candidate of science degree and reader (associate professor)
certificate in Russia, following an education in law. This qualification allowed her to work as
an associate professor in Moscow (2001 – 2009). Her profound interest in the interplay
between the human subjectivity, literature and psychoanalysis led her to study at Birkbeck,
University of London (MA Psychosocial Studies program, School of Social Science, History
and Philosophy) (2012-2013). Before studying at Birkbeck, she worked as a research fellow
at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., and then at
American University (Washington College of Law, Washington D.C.). Currently she is a
PhD student at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK.
Robyn Jensen is currently a PhD candidate (ABD) at Columbia University. She received her
MPhil (2015) and MA (2013) from Columbia University, and her BA (2010) from Barnard
College, all in Russian Literature and Language. Jensen’s dissertation focuses on
autobiographical writings by 20th-century Russian émigrés that incorporate photography as a
device for narrating the exilic condition and exploring the attendant concerns of memory,
nostalgia, and trauma.
Maksim Klymentyev is a Slavic literary scholar and philosopher from Kyiv, Ukraine. He
holds an MA in Slavic literatures from SUNY Stony Brook, NY, and an ABD in Slavic
literatures from University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA. He is the author of
"Creating Spices for the Mind: The Origins of Western Perfumery" (Senses and Society
7/2014; 9:2), “Taking History by the Wig: the Legacy of Peter the Great and Russia’s
Cultural and Historical Diversity in Alexander Pushkin’s ‘The Captain’s Daughter’” (Acta
Slavica Iaponica Vol. 27, 2009), “The Dark Side of ‘The Nose’: the Paradigms of Olfactory
Perception in Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Nose’” (Canadian Slavonic Papers Vol. 51 Nos.2-3,
2009); and “The First Two Hundred Years of the Gogol World” (Novaia Rusistika n.1, 2010).
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Julia Titus teaches at Yale University at the Slavic department and is completing her
dissertation in Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of City University of New
York. Her research interests focus on Russian and French literature of the nineteenth century,
bilingual writers and translation studies.
Soelve Curdts holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton, where she won the
biennial award for the best dissertation. She is currently a junior professor at Heinrich-HeineUniversität Düsseldorf. She has published on Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Turgenev,
Dostoevsky and T.S. Eliot (among others), and is currently at work on two book projects, one
on intertextuality in Eliot’s The Waste Land, the other on figurations of modernity in
Dostoevsky’s work, especially The Brothers Karamazov. She regularly attends national and
international conferences, and has recently presented a paper at the MLA session of the
international Vladimir Nabokov Society.
Kristina Naumann: wissenschaftliche Tätigkeit seit 10/2013: wissenschaftliche
Mitarbeiterin und Beginn der Promotion am Lehrstuhl für slavistische Kultur- und
Literaturwissenschaft an der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel; Lehre: regelmäßige
Durchführung und Leitung von Übungen und Proseminaren in russischer und polnischer
Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft; universitäres Engagement: Organisation und Teilnahme
an: IX. und X. internationale slavistische Konferenz „Junge Slavistik im Dialog“ 2014 und
sowie 2015 slavistische Konferenz „Russische zeitgenössische Satire“ 2014.
Dr Irina Rebrova is a senior lecturer in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University
of Salzburg, Austria and a graduate of Saint Petersburg State University, Russia. In 2000, she
defended her dissertation on the language of Russian literary reviews that were written by the
first-wave of Russian émigrés and appeared in the newspaper Rul’ in the 1920s. She has
published 75 articles and contributions to books on the topics of Russian emigration,
language culture and intercultural communication, and participated in numerous projects on
textual typology.
Maria Gatti Racah graduated in Russian Language and Literature from Ca’ Foscari
university of Venice in 2008, after having spent time in Russia and Paris, studying RussianJewish Literature and then concentrating on poets of Jewish origin among the molodoe
pokolenie in emigration and their representations of exile. After that she received a PhD grant
at the same university and began to research émigré periodicals (mainly in the Klementinum
archive in Prague, but also in Israel), concentrating on debates about the Jewish question in
the Russophone press of the 1920’s. She completed her PhD in 2014.
Susanne Marten-Finnis is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at the School of Languages
and Area Studies of the University of Portsmouth. Her areas of expertise include Russian and
Jewish literary activities in Central and Eastern Europe, Russian cultural production abroad,
and the study of Russia’s position between Europe and Asia. She is an honorary research
associate of the Department for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University College London
and a fellow of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’ at the new
Institute for Advanced Studies at Heidelberg University (Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural
Studies), Germany.
Давид Маркиш родился 24 сентября 1938 года в Москве, в семье классика еврейской
литературы Переца Маркиша. Тринадцати лет, вместе с матерью и братом, получил
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десять лет ссылки как «член семьи изменника родины (ЧСИР)». Образование:
Литературный институт имени Горького, Высшие Курсы сценаристов и режиссёров
кино. Первые две книжки вышли в 1957 году (поэтические переводы). В 1972 году
репатриировался в Израиль. Его книги (около двадцати в оригинале) переведены с
русского на иврит и на иностранные языки и вышли в свет в Северной и Южной
Америке, Европе и Азии. Лауреат израильских и зарубежных литературных премий.
Возглавлял Союз русскоязычных писателей Израиля, редактировал газеты и журналы
на русском языке, вёл ежедневные часовые радиопередачи на русском языке.
David Markish was born in Moscow on 24 September 1938, to the family of the classic of
Jewish literature Peretz Markish. At the age of thirteen, with his mother and brother, David
was exiled for ten years as a ‘family member of a traitor of the motherland’. Education:
Literary Institute named after Gorky, Higher courses of playwrights and film directors. His
first two books (poetry translations) came out in 1957. In 1972 he emigrated to Israel. His
books (about twenty in the original) have been translated into Hebrew and other languages,
and published in both Americas, Europe and Asia. He is a laureate of Israeli and worldwide
literary awards. David was the head of the Union of Russian speaking Israeli writers, edited
Russophone newspapers and journals, and hosted daily radio programmes in Russian.
Anna Arustamova, PhD, is Professor of Russian Literature at the Department of Russian
Literature, Perm State University (Perm, Russia), author of the book “American Dialogue in
the XIX century: Historical, Cultural and Literary Aspects”, Perm University Press, 2008 and
of a number of articles devoted to Russian émigré literature in the USA after 1917.
Melissa Purkiss is a D.Phil student in Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. Her
research focusses on Gaito Gazdanov and Franco-Russian linguistic hybridity and
intertextuality within his works. She received her BA in Modern Languages (French &
Russian ab initio) from Oxford in 2014. In 2015 she completed an MSc in Modern Languages
at Oxford, with a focus on Russian modernist writing both at home and abroad and Russian
twentieth-century drama. She has written on Vladimir Nabokov’s treatment of space, Marina
Tsvetaeva’s Krysolov, and Gazdanov’s intersections with French modernist writers such as
Gide and Céline.
Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl is Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Studies at
the University of Graz, Austria. She specializes in literary and cultural studies with a focus on
20th‐century Russian literature, gender, and aging studies. In her PhD thesis (2002) she
analysed representations of women’s aging in Russian literature. Her current research project
focuses on narratives of homecoming in Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian literature of
exile. Recent publications: Repräsentationen weiblichen Alterns in der russischen Literatur,
Hamburg 2014; “Altern und Exil in der russischen Emigrationsliteratur,” in: Zink, A.;
Koroliov, S. (eds.): Unterwegs-‐Sein. Figurationen von Mobilität im Osten Europas,
Innsbruck 2015, 255–266.
Nora Scholz, Dr. phil., wurde 2014 mit einer Arbeit zu nondualen Elementen im Prosawerk
von Vladimir Nabokov promoviert. Studium der Russistik und slavischen Philologie in
Berlin, Moskau, Kaliningrad, Novi Sad und München. Gegenwärtig ist sie akademische Rätin
am Institut für Slavistik der LMU München und arbeitet an ihrer Habilitation zu Identität und
Zeichenhaftigkeit in der russischen zeitgenössischen Literatur. Weitere Projekte beschäftigen
sich mit Fragen südslavischer Identitätsbildung und narrativen Kategorien in ost- und
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südslavischen Gegenwartsliteraturen sowie der russischen Moderne. Monographie: „essence
has been revealed to me...“ Umkreisungen des Nondualen im Prosawerk von Vladimir
Nabokov. Berlin: Frank&Timme, 2014.
Olaf Terpitz is based at the University of Vienna, Institute for Slavonic Studies; DK
Galizien. He received his doctorate in 2006, after completing his PhD studies in Leipzig
(Germany) at the Centre for Advanced Studies, and Haifa (Israel) at the Bucerius Research
Institute. His research interests involve European Jewish literatures and cultures with focus
on Eastern Europe, Migration, translation/ transfer, memory, language culture, comparative
studies. His selected publications include Die Rückkehr des Štetl. Russisch-jüdische Literatur
der späten Sowjetzeit, Göttingen 2008; An Enclave in Time? Russian Jewish Berlin Revisited,
in: Wagstaff, Peter / Jörg Schulte & Olga Tabachnikova (eds.), The Russian Jewish Diaspora
and European Culture (1917-1937), Leiden/Boston Brill 2012, 179-199; (zusammen mit
Susanne Marten-Finnis) Sprachmittlung und Migration. Zur Vorläufigkeit translatorischer
Diskurse. Zwei Momentaufnahmen aus Berlin und Warschau (1919-1929), in: Kalverkämper,
Hartwig/ Larisa Schippel (Hgg.): „Vom Altern der Texte“. Bausteine für eine Geschichte des
interkulturellen Wissenstransfers, Berlin 2012, 321-351; Klavdia Smola/ Olaf Terpitz
(Hgg.) Jüdische Räume und Topographien in Ost(mittel)europa, [Harrassowitz 2014].
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