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Introduction: Beyond Pushkin as Dogma
- University of Wisconsin Press
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3 Intro duc tion Be yond Push kin as Dogma Alyssa Dinega Gillespie Rus sian poet Al ex an der Push kin (1799–1837) was a man deeply of his own coun try and era, but he has come to be seen as a fig ure out side place and time. Though he was reared on the En light en ment ideals of the eigh teenth cen tury, his play ful ar tis tic meth ods and sen sibil ities en deared him to the mod ern ists and post mod ern ists of the twen ti eth cen turyandcon tinuetomakehimat trac tivetowrit ersofthe twenty-first cen tury. Twice ex iled from Russia’s cap i tal cit ies and viewed with sus pi cion by both govern ment au thor ities and his own as so ciates, he was the un likely pro gen i tor of Russia’s na tional lit er ary and cul tural tra di tion. Yet his art was founded on the crea tive pil fer ing, im i ta tion, and as sim i la tion of other nations’ lit er ary forms and ideas; his lit er ary gen ius emerges from a prin ci ple of lively ar tis tic syn cre tism that runs coun ter to the gen eral Rus sian ten dency to ward con ser va tism and mono logic con struc tion of truth and, thus, stands in a par a dox i cal—and often anxiety-producing—re la tion to the status he has been ac corded as the most per fect ex em plar of Russia’s unique na tional spirit. In deed, the fact that he has been con tin u ally forced into this heav ily de mand ing role (which has, at cer tain pe ri ods, bur geoned in scope and sig nifi cance be yond all rea son able human ex pec ta tion), com bined with the pa thos 4 Introduction of his early death, has con trib uted to the sense that he is a sort of mes sen ger from an other di men sion: “Push kin him self lived on a sort of un in hab ited is land, but his man u scripts, sealed in the bot tle of time, floated on the waves into the fu ture and are still out there.”1 This book rep re sents a col lec tive ef fort to re cover some of the mes sages that have re mained sealed in the bot tle of time, whether be cause of overt po lit i cal and so cial pro hi bi tions on read ing and dis cuss ing them, be cause of scholars’ own squeam ish ness at ven tur ing into un charted and often un com fort able realms, or be cause the very ex is tence of the mes sages has sim ply re mained un known and un de tected until now. Fo rays into Pushkin’s own writ ings lie at the cen ter of our pro ject, and these are flanked by in ves ti ga tions into the two kinds of con text that form an es sen tial frame work for our under stand ing of the sub stance and re cep tion of his lit er ary work: the bio graphic and the schol arly. But be fore we open the bot tle, let us sur vey the shoals of taboo that lit ter the ocean in which it has been float ing. Push kin as Taboo In Freud’s foun da tional work Totem and Taboo, the con cept of “taboo” is linked on the one hand with the sa cred and the ex traor di nary and on the other hand with the un canny, the dan ger ous, the for bid den, and the un clean.2 The am biv a lence sur round ing the taboo re flects both its de sir abil ity and the risk of im i ta tion—and thus con ta gion—in her ent in its vi o la tion; as a re sult, the prin ci ple of the taboo is, in Freud’s terms, “not a neuro sis but a so cial in sti tu tion,” a “cul tural crea tion” whose trans gres sion “would quickly lead to the dis so lu tion of the com mu nity” and that there...