The Irony of the Ideal : : Paradoxes of Russian Literature / / Mikhail Epstein.

• VerfasserIn: Epstein, Mikhail,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Ars Rossica
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (440 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Translator's Note --; Introduction --; Part I: The Titanic and the Demonic: Faust's Heirs --; 1. Faust and Peter on the Seashore: From Goethe to Pushkin --; 2. The Bronze Horseman and the Golden Fish: Pushkin's Fairy Tale-Poem --; 3. The Motherland-Witch: The Irony of Style in Nikolai Gogol --; Part II: The Great in the Little: Bashmachkin's Offspring --; 1. The Saintly Scribe: Akaky Bashmachkin and Prince Myshkin --; 2. The Figure of Repetition: The Philosopher Nikolai Fedorov and His Literary Prototypes --; 3. The Little Man in a Case: The Bashmachkin-Belikov Syndrome --; Part III: The Irony of Harmony --; 1. Childhood and the Myth of Harmony --; 2. The Defamiliarization of Lev Tolstoy --; 3. Soviet Heroics and the Oedipus Complex --; Part IV: Being as Nothingness --; 1. A Farewell to Objects, or, the Nabokovian in Nabokov --; 2. The Secret of Being and Nonbeing in Vladimir Nabokov --; 3. Andrei Platonov between Nonbeing and Resurrection --; 4. Dream and Battle: Oblomov, Korchagin, Kopenkin --; Part V: The Silence of the Word --; 1. Language and Silence as Forms of Being --; 2. The Ideology and Magic of the Word: Anton Chekhov, Daniil Kharms, and Vladimir Sorokin --; 3. The Russian Code of Silence: Politics and Mysticism --; Part VI: Madness and Reason --; 1. Methods of Madness and Madness as a Method: Poets and Philosophers --; 2. Poetry as Ecstasy and as Interpretation: Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandel'shtam --; 3. The Lyric of Idiotic Reason: Folkloric Philosophy in Dmitrii Prigov --; The Cyclical Development of Russian Literature --; Conclusion --; Works Cited --; Index of Subjects --; Index of Names
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781618116338
• DOI: 10.1515/9781618116338?locatt=mode:legacy
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Mikhail Epstein.

This book explores the major paradoxes of Russian literature as a manifestation of both tragic and ironic contradictions of human nature and national character. Russian literature, from Pushkin and Gogol to Chekhov, Nabokov and to postmodernist writers, is studied as a holistic text that plays on the reversal of such opposites as being and nothingness, reality and simulation, and rationality and absurdity. The glorification of Mother Russia exposes her character as a witch; a little man is transformed into a Christ figure; consistent rationality betrays its inherent madness, and extreme verbosity produces the effect of silence. The greatest Russian writers were masters of spiritual self-denial and artistic self-destruction, which explains many paradoxes and unpredictable twists of Russian history up to our time.