Johnson's Russia List
#8030
24 January 2004
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A CDI Project
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#23
Moscow News
January 21-27, 2004
Russian Literature and American Readers
OLGA DUNAEVSKAYA talks with Professor MARK LIPOVETSKY of Colorado
University, critic and a compiler of the Dictionary .
We talked in Florence. We were sitting not far from the romantic Ponte
Vecchio; motorcycles were whizzing past carrying lovely young girls in
mini-skirts, but our subject was strictly scholarly, all about how the
Russian edition began, when it would be completed, and who the publisher was.
"The Dictionary of Literary Biography," says Mark, "was compiled by
Bruccoli Clark Layman and published by Gale Group noted for encyclopedic
editions. Volume One came out in 1978. Ours is number 285. The Russian
series was started in 2000; so far five volumes have appeared -- on early
19th century poetry and drama, The Age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, on
19th-century Realists, on prose writers between the World Wars, and ours
compiled by Professor Marina Balina of Illinois University and myself."
Whats your editions ideology?
The emphasis is on a writers biography -- this appears to be the only
hard-and-fast rule. Among the volumes already published there are books not
only on prose and poetry writers but also on literary bohemians,
scriptwriters, historians, philosophers, and journalists. The result is a
rich multi-layered portrait of a certain period, trend or genre. Actually,
I find this eclecticism rather attractive. By a quirk of alphabetical
order, entries on Realists and highbrow intellectuals alternate with those
on Postmodernists and mass culture writers, while emigres intermingle with
writers who never left their country.
Who determined the time frame and selected the names?
The title was not our choice, but oddly enough, the 1980s were the time
when lots of important things happened -- the invasion of Afghanistan, the
Metropol almanac of nonconformist writers, the emigration of movie director
Andrei Tarkovsky and of prominent authors Friedrich Gorenstein, Vasily
Aksyonov, Georgy Vladimov, and Vladimir Voinovich. In retrospect this looks
like the final stage of Soviet history. Many of the writers had been
working before the 1980s, but theirs did not become household names till
"our" period ? I am referring to Venedikt Yerofeev, Dmitry Prigov, Yevgeny
Kharitonov, Timur Kibirov, Sergei Gandlevsky, Vladimir Sharov, Lyudmi-la
Petrushevskaya, Mikhail Zhvanetsky, Igor Guberman.
While in Russia, you studied Russian Postmodernism. You think it is no
longer of interest?
Thats what many Russian critics appear to think because it is out of
fashion. But I dont view it in terms of fashion. Postmodernism game playing
aims at embracing anothers view, which implies deliberate undermining of
ones own rightness. Postmodernism in Russia is yet to tackle these
sensitive issues, so it remains topical and dynamic. Its techniques have
been incorporated into the fabric of modern literary language: Vladimir
Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin have influenced not just their fellow writers
but mass culture as well.
How does modern Russian literature appear to you from where you are across
the ocean?
I would least of all like to be a long-distance reader, as it were. I read
contemporary Russian literature with undiminished intensity. Todays
literary trend seems to be connected precisely with the imagined demise of
Postmodernism. Once it was in, it was exposed to the temptations of
popularity, and that engendered the very simplification one sees in the
latest books by Sorokin and Pelevin. But Postmodernism merely seems more
simplistic. In fact it uses mass culture stereotypes to its own end.
What modern Russian writers are being read in the United States?
University undergraduates read Venedikt Yerofeev, Sasha Sokolov, Lyudmila
Petrushevskaya, Vladimir Makanin, Viktor Yerofeev, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Nina
Sadur, Yevgeny Popov. This is arguably the best reader milieu. Its interest
is rekindled by the simple need to get a good grade, if nothing else. As
for bookstores catering for the "common reader," the best selling authors
there are Pelevin, Brodsky, Tolstaya, Aksyonov and Dovlatov -- in that
order. At present these stores are selling the first book by Boris Akunin,
Azazel (The Winter Queen in American translation).
Many Russian writers complain that their books gain in size after
translation, that is, the translator assumes the role of a commentator.
If you hoped that I would start berating Americans for not being up to the
complexities of Russian literature, you are mistaken. Dostoevsky is not a
set-reading author in the States, but there are probably as many willing
readers of his novels here as in Russia. And anyway, the average reader
within any culture would not be up to the subtleties of another culture. If
a translator knows how to incorporate unobtrusively a cultural commentary
in the text, you should be grateful, not critical.
Is there a chance of seeing the Dictionary in Russia and in Russian?
In my view it would be more sensible to launch a similar project in Russia
itself, with a similar international team of experts. Theres a whole new
lot of names now, and if there were an encyclopedia like ours on the 1990s,
it would be a great help to schoolteachers and university professors, to
undergraduates and high-school students.
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