Spaces of Creativity Essays on Russian Literature and the Arts [Hardcover]

In the six essays of this book, Ksana Blank examines affinities among works of nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature and their connections to the visual arts and music. Blank demonstrates that the borders of authorial creativity are not stable and absolute, that talented artists often transcend the classifications and paradigms established by critics. Featured in the volume are works by Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Daniil Kharms, Kazimir Malevich, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.Ksana Blankis a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. She is the author ofDostoevskys Dialectics and the Problem of Sin(2010).As a collection of thoughtful essays on the ostensibly peripheral themes of several major authors, Blanks volume should hold interest for literary scholars in a number of fields, and it would also serve well as a textbook for interdisciplinary surveys of modern Russian literature.Note on Transliteration and Translation Illustrations Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1. Sex, Crime, and Railroads in DostoevskysIdiotand TolstoysKreutzer Sonata

Chapter 2. HorrorRed, White, and Square: Abstract Images in Tolstoy

Chapter 3. Dobuzhinskys Farewell to Petersburg

Chapter 4. Praising the Name: The Religious Theme in Daniil Kharms

Chapter 5. Nabokovs Nymphet and PushkinsWater-Nymph

Chapter 6. Captain Lebyadkins Poetry in Shostakovich and Dostoevsky

Index Addressing the minor themes in great writers, Ksana Blank demonstrates her talent for telling fascinating stories with surprising conclusions. She achieves the effect of theoretical estrangement: what seemed all too familiar in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Nabokov, reveals its paradoxical side. This book shows that the art of defamiliarization is no less important for literary studies than for literature itself. Blank demonstratl“r