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Ludmilla A. Trigos Appendix A: Creativity and Blackness—a Note on Yury Tynianov’s “The Gannibals” Yury Tynianov (1894–1943), Russian formalist critic, scholar, and film scenarist , brought to his writing of historical fiction extensive scholarship and a profound understanding of Russian literature and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tynianov had studied under the famous professor S. N. Vengerov and had at an early point in his career carved out his territory in the study of early nineteenth-century literature, specifically concentrating on Pushkin and his contemporaries to illustrate his theory of their interactions (as “literary battles”) in the development of Russian literary language and style. Though he shifted his focus from formalist literary studies per se to historical prose in the mid-1920s, he continued his scholarly work up until his death, writing articles on literary evolution, genre, and his favorite triad of authors —Alexander Pushkin, Vilhelm Kiukhel’beker, and Aleksandr Griboedov. He concurrently served as editor and member of the editorial board for a variety of publications, including the “Poet’s Library” series (Biblioteka poeta), until the beginning of the 1940s. Tynianov began writing the novel “The Gannibals” (“Gannibaly”) in July 1932, three years before he commenced work on his biographical novel about Alexander Pushkin. In December 1932 he confided to his close friend, Kornei Chukovsky, his plan to write a novel about Pushkin’s ancestors, but it remains a little-known fact that Tynianov originally intended to portray Pushkin’s ancestors at all.1 “The Gannibals” was to serve as an “epic prologue” to the biography of Pushkin that Tynianov had planned.2 The fragments of the “Gannibals” novel remained unpublished until the 1960s; the introduction finds its first English translation in this volume. He completed outlines, a draft of the first chapter, and a lyrical “author’s introduction” before putting the text aside.3 By the spring of 1933, Tynianov had already moved on to work on the Pushkin novel. One of Tynianov’s students, N. Stepanov, speculated that Tynianov ’s decision to shift his focus to Pushkin himself (rather than devote an entire novel to his Gannibal forefather) can be explained by the author’s de369 clining health (that is, he chose to concentrate his remaining energies on his primary focal point, Pushkin). Stepanov also suggests that the Pushkin text made the Gannibal volume superfluous.4 It is our misfortune that Tynianov did not manage to complete more than the fragments we have, since they show tremendous artistry and promise. In his work, Tynianov counters the construction of an “official Pushkin,” a process that Soviet critics undertook in the 1920s; this tendency became especially apparent after 1922, when Tynianov wrote his article “Sham Pushkin” (“Mnimyi Pushkin”) attacking not only the already existing mythic image of Pushkin, but also the lack of a critically rigorous approach of many Pushkinists in their attribution of newly discovered poetry to him, as well as in their analysis of his oeuvre.5 Most of all, Tynianov objected to the blurring of the boundary between literary scholarship (which must be precise and rigorous and focus on the works themselves) and the study of the personality and psychology of the author, more appropriate to fictional representations of authors .6 Both Monika Greenleaf and Angela Brintlinger have noted Tynianov’s use of Pushkin as a background in his scholarly work on Pushkin’s contemporaries ; Brintlinger also points out that Pushkin served as “a foil” to the other characters in Tynianov’s fiction.7 Indeed, scholars have long commented on the close and interdependent relationship between Tynianov’s scholarly research and his fictional works. I would argue here that Tynianov’s earlier combating of a “sham Pushkin” shades into the realm of his historical fiction. Tynianov continued his lateral approach to Pushkin with the introduction to his fictional project on Pushkin’s African ancestor. This work served as a bridge— from his earlier assays in the genre of biographical novel where Pushkin played a minor, though important role—to his later unfinished novel, dedicated specifically to Pushkin. In “The Gannibals,” Tynianov provides the reader with a revivified version of Pushkin by exploring the influence of “Gannibality” (gannibal’stvo, as I am translating it here) on Russian cultural history. For Tynianov, “Gannibality ” serves as a life force, a positive, creative energy which invigorates the stultifying elements of Russian culture and life. The lyrical introduction thus postulates crucial links between creativity and blackness in Pushkin’s...

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