Literature

This Festschrift is presented as a mark of esteem and appreciation to Anna Lisa Crone in recognition of her considerable contributions to Slavic Studies as a scholar, teacher, dissertation adviser, and colleague. In three books and numerous articles, Professor Crone has demonstrated her ability to envision first, how literary works are made, and second, how that craftedness contributes to our understanding of vexing philosophical problems faced by their authors. The volume includes studies of Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, the Silver Age, Derzhavin, and the myth of St. Petersburg — all established subjects of Professor Crone's teaching and writing. In addition, there are articles about Polish drama, Belarusian literature, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Rozanov, and even Flaubert. The forty-one essays in Poetics. Self. Place. represent substantial contributions to the fields of Slavic Studies and literary criticism as a whole by an impressive array of colleagues, former students, and fellow scholars.

Vladimir Makanin impels the Russian tradition at once in two established directions: back to its sympathy for the "little people" in al their social exigencies and forward into a new life fraught with doubt, bad memories (and bad teeth), and yet the need for self assertion and new forms of expression. In terms of fiction, his works, whatever the precise historical contexts, are experimental and philosophical, with stressful lines leading to immediate questions, even about the works themselves and the forceful act of writing "fiction." Long praised by Russia's major critics, including Irina Rodnyanskaya of Novy Mir and Natalya Ivanova of Znamya, as a "living classic" and a perennial favorite writer among the intelligentsia, Makanin remains little known in North America, even among Slavists. Co-edited by Slavists Byron Lindsey and Tatiana Spektor, this collection of essays with its multiple points of view, scholarly and critical analyses of subtexts, and full bibliography, provides both an introduction to Makanin as one of Russia's most independent contemporary voices and a guide to his genuinely circuitous routs, equally as a writer and a creative witness to Russia's historical tensions in the 20th century. His epic novel Underground, or a Hero of Our Time, set in the contiguous Soviet/postSoviet period, receives special focus. The critical essays receive valuable augmentation by Makanin's own autobiographical profile and a revealing new interview conducted by St. Petersburg scholar Vladimir Ivantsov. Byron Lindsey (Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of New Mexico, Emeritus) is a specialist in contemporary Russian literature with an emphasis on its historical and comparative cultural contexts. He has translated a variety of fiction from the period, including works of Makanin, Pelevin, and Evgeny Shklovsky, co-edited the two-volume collection of late Soviet literature "Glasnost" and "The Wild Beach" (Ardis, 1990, 1992) and written widely on Soviet "underground" art. Russian Orientalism and its impact on the cultures of the Caucasus is the new focus of his research for a monograph on the classical lyric poetry of Dagestan (eighteenth-twentieth centuries). Tatiana Spektor is a specialist on the fiction of Yuri Trifonov (1925-81) with a Ph.D. dissertation (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Kansas, Lawrence, 1997) on the Christian subtext in his "Moscow Stories. She was a Fulbright scholar to the Moscow State Pedagogical University in 2002, and has played a pro-active role in the American community of Slavic scholars. Previously a professor of Russian at Iowa State University, Ames, she is currently affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and resides in France.

День без вранья (A Day without Lying) draws readers into the everyday existence of a twenty-something Muscovite who has decided to live a single day without telling any lies. Yet the events of this day - from his unruly French class to the evening he spends with his girlfriend and her parents - seriously challenge his resolve to avoid lying. Through the protagonist's wry, ironic reflections about himself and his world, the reader gains insight into the human condition and the specific challenges of living in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

Viktoria Tokareva (b. 1937, Leningrad) launched her writing career with the publication of the story День без вранья in the journal Молодая гвардия (Molodaia gvardiia) in 1964. Since that time she has written countless stories and novellas about the fate of men and women trying to get by in contemporary Russia. Widely read in Russia and Europe, her works combine humor and psychological insight into everyday characters and situations. William J. Comer is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Kansas, where he coordinates the Russian language program and prepares graduate students to teach in the language classroom. His areas of scholarly specialization include Russian language pedagogy and Russian culture.

Additional Material

The companion website for this edition offers additional materials for both teachers and students.

Winner, 2010 AATSEEL Award for Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy (American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages)

Yiddish Modernism: Studies in Twentieth-Century Eastern European Jewish Culture is a presentation of what enters into the construction of Yiddish modernism, with “Yiddish modernism” being a working term. In 25 articles published over the course of more than three decades of research, Seth L. Wolitz engagingly illustrates the renaissance of Jewish plastic arts, literature, poetry, drama, and music through a critical study of comparative literature, history, art theory, and linguistics. This tome is rich with insights regarding the Golem, the Dybbuk, Walpurgisnacht, expressionism, Art Nouveau, contemporary play construction, and love. Wolitz demonstrates how the artists reached for and joined the cutting edge of twentieth-century Western culture—and achieved in specific cases pure abstraction in the plastic arts, music, and poetry—by crafting yidishkayt in a modernist approach.

Seth L. Wolitz is Marie and Edwin Gale Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

This book is Volume 3 of the series New Approaches to Russian and East European Jewish Culture.

The poetry of Georgia, a country of ancient culture in the South Caucasus, is the crown jewel of its exceptionally rich literary heritage. Secular poetry, having emerged from the fusion of folk poems and religious hymns and homilies of the early Christian era over a thousand years ago, remained a dominant genre of Georgia literature well into the twentieth century. Even today poetry is held in the highest esteem as a particularly noble form of art, not just a domain of academic studies, but a part of daily life…. Poetry is indeed the key to understanding Georgian culture. The present anthology offers the English-speaking reader a first-rate collection of Georgian poems in translation, a valuable glimpse into the treasures of Georgian poetry.… (Lyn Coffin) has shaped the material into poems in English, while maintaining the distinctive voice and flavors of the originals, and staying as true to their forms as possible. Although the selection of poems is limited to the works of a handful of the most outstanding names, every single one of these poems is a masterpiece… — Dodona Kiziria, from the introduction to Georgian Poetry: Rustaveli to Galaktion. A Bilingual Anthology I praise and thank Lyn Coffin for bringing us these Georgian poets in such finely polished translations. — Sam Hamill, Poets Against War Lyn Coffin is a widely-published American poet, fiction writer, playwright, and translator. In 2007 she was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the World Academy of Arts and Culture (UNICEF) “for poetic excellence and her efforts on behalf of world peace.” Lyn teaches literary fiction at the University of Washington (Department of Professional and Continuing Education), and leads translation seminars at the Shota Rustaveli Institute (Tbilisi) in the summer. Thirteen volumes of her poetry and translations have been published, and her plays have been presented in Singapore, Off-Off-Broadway theaters, and elsewhere. Many of her short stories have been published: one appeared in the collection Best American Short Stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates. A bilingual collection of her fiction is set to appear in 2013. She is currently working on a translation of Rustaveli’s The Knight in the Panther Skin. In 2014, Lyn will present her translations of Mohsen Emadi at the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs in Seattle. See her website at http://lyncoffin.com