Selected Essays: Viacheslav Ivanov

by Viacheslav Ivanov, Robert Bird, Michael Wachtel

Overview

Winner of 2002 AATSEEL Award for Best Translation into English

A poet, critic, and theoretician during the Silver Age of Russian poetry, at the turn of the Twentieth century, Viacheslav Ivanov was dubbed "Viacheslav the Magnificent" by his contemporaries for his erudition, sumptuous and allusive poetry, and brilliant essays. He provided Russian Symbolism with theoretical underpinnings based on classical and biblical mythology, the aesthetics of music, philosophy ranging from Plato and Kant to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and a profound knowledge of classical and modern European poetry.

​In choosing material for this volume of essays, Robert Bird and Michael Wachtel have covered a broad range of Ivanov's interests: the aesthetics of Symbolism, theater, culturological concerns, and on such influential figures of the period as Nietzsche, Solovyov, Tolstoy, and Scriabin. Also included are extensive notes on the essays in which classical, biblical, and poetic citations and allusions are identified, the aesthetic and theoretical contexts are clarified, and certain translation problems are briefly discussed. This volume provides valuable insight into the theory of Symbolism as it developed in Russia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810115224
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2000
Series:	Studies in Russian Literature and Theory
Edition description:	1
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

VIACHESLAV IVANOV (1866-1949) is considered the preeminent thinker of Russia's Symbolist movement and an influential figure in prerevolutionary Russian culture. While abroad as a scholar, Ivanov met Lidia Dimitrievna Zinovieva-Annibal, the woman who would inspire much of his work, and gave up a career in academia to be a poet. In 1924 he left the USSR and settled in Rome, where he died in 1949.

ROBERT BIRD is an assistant professor of Russian Literature at the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous articles on the literature and thought of Russian modernism, and of a forthcoming study of Viacheslav Ivanov entitled The Russian Prospero.

MICHAEL WACHTEL is a professor in the Slavic department at Princeton University and the author of The Development of Russian Verse: Meter and Its Meanings and Russian Symbolism and Literary Tradition: Goethe, Novalis, and the Poetics of Vyacheslav Ivanov.

Table of Contents

	Editor's Introduction	vii
	List of Abbreviations and Translations	xix
Part I.	Symbolism
	The Symbolics of Aesthetic Principles	5
	Two Elements in Contemporary Symbolism	13
	The Testaments of Symbolism	36
	Thoughts on Symbolism	50
	Manner, Persona, Style	59
	On the Limits of Art	69
Part II.	The Games of Melpomene
	Presentiments and Portents: The New Organic Era and the Theater of the Future	95
Part III.	On Cultural History
	On the Joyful Craft and the Joy of the Spirit	113
	On the Russian Idea	128
	Ancient Terror: On Leon Bakst's Painting Terror Antiquus	144
	On the Crisis of Humanism: Toward a Morphology of Modern Culture and the Psychology of Modernity	163
Part IV.	Pilot Stars
	Nietzsche and Dionysus	177
	The Religious Task of Vladimir Solovyov	189
	Lev Tolstoy and Culture	200
	Scriabin's View of Art	211
	Notes	229
	Bibliography of Works in English by Viacheslav Ivanov	319
	Index	321

Editorial Reviews

"Robert Bird and Michael Wachtel deserve to be congratulated for the enormous amount of careful work that has gone into this volume. Northwestern University Press should also be commended for undertaking to produce a work of such quality so beautifully. This book offers far more than a translation of Ivanov's essays; it is a valuable scholarly edition, which supercedes previous efforts. It can be highly recommended to students and specialists alike, as well as to anyone with an interest in the genesis and formation of Russian modernism." —The Russian Review


"Those who know little Russian or who are specialists in other literary traditions will now have access to the works of Viacheslav Ivanov, which encompass much of Russian Symbolism. While they clearly will benefit from the appearance of this book, even those who have studied Symbolism for years will enjoy not only rereading the essays, but will also delight in the scholarly excellence of the introduction and notes that accompany them." —Slavic and East European Journal

From the Publisher