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The Vortex That Unites Us: Versions of Totality in Russian Literature

Online ISBN:
9781501769405
Print ISBN:
9781501769382
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

The Vortex That Unites Us: Versions of Totality in Russian Literature

Jacob Emery
Jacob Emery
Indiana University
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Published online:
21 September 2023
Published in print:
15 May 2023
Online ISBN:
9781501769405
Print ISBN:
9781501769382
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

This book is a study of totality in Russian literature, from the foundation of the modern Russian state to the present day. Considering a diversity of texts that have in common chiefly their prominence in the Russian literary canon, the book examines the persistent ambition in Russian literature to gather the whole world into an artwork. It reveals how the diversity of totalizing figures in the Russian canon—often in alliance with ideologies like the totalitarian state or enlightenment reason—strive for the frontiers of space and time in order to guarantee the coherence of the globe and the continuity of history. The book explores subjects like romantic metaphors of supernatural possession; Tolstoy's conception of art as a vector of emotional contagion; the panoramic ambitions of the avant-garde to grasp the globe in a new poetic medium; efforts of Soviet utopians to harmonize the whole of social life along aesthetic lines; Mandelstam's evocation of writing as a transcendental authority that guarantees a grandiose historical rhythm even when manifested as authoritarian repression; and the mass market of cultural commodities in which the exiled Vladimir Nabokov found success with his novel Lolita. The book reveals a common thread in the disparate works it explores, bringing into a single horizon a variety of typically siloed texts and aesthetic approaches. In all these cases, the medium of totality is the body, inspired by artistic vision and compelled by aesthetic response.

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