Reading for next Tuesday (9/3)

Here is the reading for next class.

Victory Day Fail

Q: What could be stranger than brandishing a Victory Day poster with aliens dressed up like Soviet soldiers?

A: Creating Victory Day banners that depict heroic Nazis – capturing Soviet tanks.

English Russia has the scoop.

Dostoevsky’ Petersburg: Sennaia Ploshchad’

The majority of the action in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment takes place in the region of Sennaia Ploshchad’, or “Haymaker Square,” which was a well-known den of iniquity in the mid-19th century, featuring all the pubs and brothels a former student in rags could ever want. But be careful: the place was so chaotic, it’s probably not the best locale for any kind of murder plot, especially if you have a high fever.

And what exactly did it look like?

Well, first, let’s get the location down. Sennaia Ploshchad’ is located south of Nevsky Prospekt, meaning it’s on the southern side of the Neva. From metro station “Nevsky Prospekt” (generally considered the Stephen’s Green of Petersburg in terms of city orientation), it’s about kilometer walk. Here’s the googlemaps take:

View Larger Map

Cool. but what does the place itself look like?

Let’s go back to the 1820s for this first one. This painting is by A. Briullov. I particularly like it because you can see how the masses of humanity managed to create a lane in the middle for carriages and carts. It’s down such a lane that I imagine the drunk man being hauled in the 6th paragraph of C&P. Watch out for the little dog, though!

And now on to the 1830s. This one actually looks like an older portrayal to my eyes, and yet it comes after the innovative Briullov. Whatever the year, it seems that artistic representation has not quite advanced to the stage of being capable of depicting the place in all its wretched glory:

Doesn’t look too bad – though when you start thinking about it as a red light district, it does start looking a little creepier.

Here’s another image, this one contemporaneous to the novel, from the 1860s. Here’s where the place starts to look like it could be the setting of a Dostoevsky novel. We’ve got the crush of humanity, the chaos of the crowd (what happened to that perfect lane we had in the 1820s?), hawkers of all sorts, and people everywhere carrying different kinds of booze.

Here’s a snapshot, from sometime in the 19th century (couldn’t get a more precise date on it). While it looks post-Dostoevsky, it gives a better sense of the place. And it confirms that, indeed, hay was sold there:

Wikipedia says this next one is from 1900 on the button, but let’s take the cautious route and call it “early 20th century”.

Finally, let’s take a look at old Sennaia today. You’ll notice it looks disappointingly pulled-together. A shiny series of shops replace the “panorama of such (crazy) subjects” – and where do you go for your hay these days then?

18th century Russian landscape painting

Not only did Russian artistic tradition break from tradition in the post-petrine era (the time after Peter the Great) and import Western aesthetic models, but the dominant artistic mode at the time demanded imitation. It was called “neo-Classicism,” and it was based upon imitating genres and aesthetics from ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Both of these factors led to a fascinating moment in the history of Russian art, because Russian artists could not but depict their own space as though it were an extension of England or Switzerland.

We can recall Christopher Ely’s comments on the painter Martynov for some historical context:

Martynov’s work is full of enthusiasm about the scenery of the Urals and Siberia, but his enthusiasm is expressed in the only aesthetic language he knew. About Krasnoiarsk, for example, Martynov wrote, “both in the city and in its environs, at every step on encounters views meriting the brush of an artist remembering delightful Switzerland.” The resulting landscapes, probably painted after his return home, exhibit a gentle placelessness as reminiscent of England as it is of Siberia

Here is one of the painting Ely has in mind:

This second painting is another attempt to represent Russia, by the artist Semyon Shchedrin in 1796. Not only are the gardens landscaped to imitate Western taste, but the landscape itself is more evocative of Western Europe than the Baltic seaboard.

Representations of the Monarch

Last week, I mentioned that Peter the Great ushered in a new era for Russia in a number of different realms: politically, militarily, socially, and artistically.  Russia’s government recruited foreigners to staff civil service and military posts.  Russia’s government also became involved in the internal politics of Europe, as Peter married off family members to European royal families.  In addition, the very architecture of St. Petersburg shows a distinctly Western style.  Russia’s military also took a decisively Western turn when Peter introduced shipbuilding to the previously landlocked tsardom.

But we also note a distinct turn to the West in artistic production.   Here is Peter the Great’s father, Alexis I:

The style here is reminiscent of Russian icon painting. More importantly for our purposes here, Alexis is portrayed in a traditional tsarist outfit, include his fur-lined hat and regal robe. He is also depicted in a religious setting.

This artistic style can be seen in an early depiction of Peter, from the 1670s:

Let us compare these 17th century Muscovite paintings with an image of Peter that appeared in 1698:

This represents a radical break from the previous images in a number of ways – all in the span of a single generation:
1. Peter is pictured in shining armor, as a Western-style king.
2. While his father Alexis was portrayed in a religious setting, Peter is pictured in a Western-style building, with a window looking out the the sea.
3. Through the window, a number of ships are visible – indicating the navy that Peter had only just constructed.
4. Peter is pictured without his traditional garments and without the fur-lined hat.
5. Peter is also beardless.

If the portrait of Alexis shows us how the tsars were expected to be portrayed, Peter’s shows just how much had changed during even the early stages of his reign. Particularly significant is the fact that not a single element of Alexis’s regal style has been retained – the setting, the background, the light, the theme, the style, and the dress all represent complete breaks with tradition.

Reading for next week

Here is the reading for next week’s class:

c&p_one

Stasov on Russian Art

In class on Tuesday (16 Feb) we are looking at extracts from an article by the influential art and music critic V. V. Stasov on the impact of the peredvizhniki («Двадцать пять лет русского искусства. Наша живопись») – here is a link to access the full text of Stasov’s essay: http://bibliotekar.ru/krasskazy/3.htm. This site has texts of other essays by Stasov as well as more material about him.

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2010

This Festival begins 18-28th Feb 2010 in Dublin. This year there is a Russian cinema section which contains 9 Russian Films.

1. Hipsters – wed 24th Feb, Light house cinema, 6.30pm. Director Valerity Todorovskiy will be in attendance at the screening.

2. The Island – Sat 20th Feb, Light house cinema, 6.30pm.

3.  Mermaid – Sun 21st Feb, Screen 1 cinema, 1.30pm.

4. Morphia – Tues 23rd Feb, Light house cinema, 8.15pm.

5. One war - Mon 22nd Feb, Light house cinema, 6.30pm, Director Vera Glagoleva will be in attendance at this screening.

6.  Room and a Half - Thurs 25th Feb, Light house cinema. 6.15pm, Director Andrey Khrzhanovskiy will be in attendance at this screening.

7.  Ward No.6 – Fri 19th Feb, Light house cinema, 6pm, Director Karen Shakhnazarov will be in attenance at this screening.

8. The Weather Station – Sat 27th Feb, Light house cinema, 8.30pm, Director Johnny O’Reilly will be in attendance at this screening.

9. Wolfy – Sun 21st Feb, Light House Cinema, 6.30pm.

For more film information or booking check out  www.jdiff.com

The Triumphant Return of George Eliot

It’s interesting how much George Eliot is popping up these days.  I mentioned her in the last class as a comparative point to Russian literature, and now she is returning to us in the form of an OED citation.

The question that arose at the end of the last class was when the term “Nihilist” gained traction in Europe.

According to the OED, “nihilist”, defined as, first appeared in Eliot’s translation of Feuerbach.  Here are the first three citations.

1854 ‘G. ELIOT’ tr. L. Feuerbach Essence Christianity 28 We must say with the oriental nihilist or pantheist.

a1856 W. HAMILTON Lect. Metaphysics (1859) I. xvi. 294 Philosophers..are divided..into Nihilists or Non-Substantialists [etc.].

1876 J. PARKER Paraclete II. xviii. 290David Hume..has been correctly described as a nihilist; he denied everything and affirmed nothing.

The Essence of Christianity, in turn, was written in 1841, according to marxist.org (which I am sure is a reputable scholarly source).

One final note to make is that the OED distinguishes this first definition of nihilist from the second sense:

A supporter of a revolutionary movement in 19th-cent. and early 20th-cent. Russia, which rejected all systems of government, sought the complete overthrow of the established order, and was willing to use terrorism to achieve this end. Also (in extended use): a terrorist, a revolutionary. Now chiefly hist.

So, while “nihilism” appeared in Continental Europe in 1841 and in England in 1854, Turgenev not only coined the term in Russian, but created another meaning in the English as of 1868:

1868 AUG. BOBORUIKIN Nihilism in Russia in Fortn. Rev. 4 133 If he is a Nihilist, he should profess exclusively negative and abolitionary doctrines.

Karolina Pavlova

Last class I mentioned one of the few female writers of the 19th century, Karolina Pavlova.

Her novel, A Double Life, is interesting both in terms of being one of the few Russian novels about women by women, but also since it mixes prose and poetry in its exploration of the characters.

The book can be found here, and her wikipedia bio is here.