Babel in Russian and Other Literatures and Topographies: The Tower, the State, and the Chaos of Language [Hardcover]

This study analyzes the biblical Tower of Babel story, a cautionary tale that accounts for the diversity of languages and peoples, in Russian literature and other topographies. The author pursues its linking of language, architecture, and society as well as its relevance in art and literature over centuries. To come to terms with a perceived disorder in the realm of language, alternative explanations and projects for remediation abound. The disorder and diversity themselves find expression in art, literature, and philosophical reflection and caused the emergence of a historical linguistics. The ambition of the builderswith its social and organizational premisereemerges in both political and material form as cities, states, and monumental constructions. Utopian aspirations and linguistic claims permeate both revolutionary notions of universality and the romantic essentialism of the nation state. These in turn provoke dystopian critique in literature and film. As Martin Meisel reveals in this study, the wrestle with language in its recalcitrant instability and imperfect social function enters into dialogue with the celebration of its diversity, elasticity, and creativity.Martin Meisel is Brander Matthews Professor Emeritus of dramatic literature at Columbia University.

[A] richly rewarding pendant volume. . . . Babel in Russians horizon is modern Russian literature and culture, but its scholarly contribution finally has more to do with the wealth of information it collects and constellates than an argument that begins with Nimrod and ends with A. R. Ammons. The overriding effect of the intricate web of connections Meisel weaves in Babel in Russianis to suggest that the realization of the sublimity the Tower was intended to embody is finally to be found not in the imagined edifice but in its ongoing reception in Western culture. Modern Philology

This is a lucid and erudite study of one of the defining myths of western culture. Martin Meisel is a l#.