Essays on Gogol: Logos and the Russian Word

1. The Face of Recent Gogol Scholarship

Introduction Susanne Fusso and Priscilla Meyer 1. THE FACE OF RECENT GOGOL SCHOLARSHIP IN HIS valuable 1974 essay on the history of Gogol criticism, Robert A. Maguire described a situation that has since changed in at least two respects. First, Maguire noted that "the distinguishing mark of criticism in this century ... has been specialization as against generalization, the diorama as against the panorama."l Since the mid 1970s a number of important surveys have appeared that attempt to view GogoI's works as a whole and to define the general laws of his artistic universe (Karlinsky; Mann, Poetika; Peace). Donald Fanger's Creation of Nikolai Gogol, in particular, brilliantly summarizes the critical work that preceded it and presents a welldefined reading of GogoI's life and art that subsequent scholars have found it necessary either to build on or to react against. One aspect of the reaction may be a turn back toward the specialization that Maguire viewed as the hallmark of the twentieth century, a return to detailed concentration on individual works rather than global surveys of the entire oeuvre (see, e.g., Mann, V poiskakh; RancourLafferiere , Overcoat; Smirnova; Woodward, Dead Souls). Even more significant is the change that has taken place in the years since Maguire was able to make the following statement: "Generally speaking, [Soviet] critics since [the publication of the Academy of Sciences edition of GogoI's works, 1937-52] have trodden the well-worn paths of socialist realism."2 Fortunately, it is no longer true that the Western critic turns to Soviet Gogol scholarship only for the wealth of its resources in literary history and textual criticism while maintaining a healthy skepticism toward its ideological and theoretical underpinnings. Now, thanks to the work of the Tartu structuralists and semioticians, the ongoing rediscovery of the Bakh1 Susanne Fusso and Priscilla Meyer tin legacy, and the highly original studies by Iurii Mann and Sergei Bocharov, Western scholars are finding inspiration in Soviet theory above all.3 Soviet stereotypes about Western scholarship (at least in print) may be more difficult to dismantle. An extremely interesting review of Western Gogol scholarship begins by lamenting that "few Western Gogol scholars exceed the limits of the circle formed by the names Merezhkovskii, Rozanov, Belyi, the early Eikhenbaum, Gippius, and, finally, Nabokov."4 (One might counter that this is not such a bad circle to be trapped in.) Western Gogol scholars are predictably scolded for "primitive Freudianism" and "repetition of the old precepts of Formalism."5 Still, the very fact that a detailed fortythree -page discussion of Western critical works has appeared in a Soviet publication is a sign of change. A change in the attitudes of the Soviet literary-critical establishment can also be observed in the planning of a new Complete Works of Gogol at the Gorkii Institute of World Literature in Moscow. The editor in chief, Iurii Mann, and the assistant editor, Sergei Bocharov, have stated the principle that the commentary, which is to constitute about forty percent of the text of the edition, must take into account Western scholarship on Gogol. In connection with work on the edition, they plan to publish a series, Gogolevskii sbornik: Materialy i issledovaniia, to include Russian translations of works by Western scholars. In the past ten years both Soviet and American scholars, as well as the emigres who form an important link between the Russian and American traditions, have been continuing, expanding, and modifying the major approaches to Gogol that have long dominated the field. 6 New life has been injected into one of the oldest approaches, literary history, by Mann, who leaves no document unexamined, no memoir unread, in his endeavor to illuminate the genesis, evolution, and reception of Dead Souls (see his V poiskakh). Gogol's biography and his possible sources continue to attract scholarly attention (Kjetsaa ; Shapiro; Shustov; Zolotusskii), and the venerable genre of "Gogol and ___ " is still alive. We have not only the traditional comparisons with Pushkin, Dickens, Walter Scott, Belyi, Bulgakov, and Nabokov but also comparisons with St. Paul, Thomas Pynchon, and Malcolm Lowry (see, respectively, Makogonenko; Cox, "Writer as Comic"; Urnov; Altshuller; Keys; Papernyi; Chebotareva; Chudakova; Milne; Bowie; Keil; Weisenburger; Hadfield). The tracing of folkloric motifs in GogoI's works has long been a favorite pursuit of scholars, and it continues to provide material for new interpretations and insights (Ivanov; Oinas; Shapiro, "Transformation "; Voropaev). The "deep" unconscious structures revealed in 2 Introduction GogoI...