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Full Description
Scholars have long noted the deeply rooted veneration of the power of the word - both the expressive and communicative capacities of language - in Russian literature and culture. In her ambitious book Silence and the Rest, Sofya Khagi illuminates a consistent counternarrative, showing how, throughout its entire history, Russian poetry can be read as an argument for what she calls 'verbal skepticism.'
Although she deals with many poets from a two-century tradition, Khagi gives special emphasis to Osip Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, and Timur Kibirov, offering readings that add new layers of meaning to their work. She posits a long-running dialogue between the poets and the philosophers and theorists who have also been central to the antiverbal strain of Russian culture. Unlike its Western counterpart, the Russian philosophical and theological doubt of the efficacy of the word still grants the author, and literature itself, an ethical force, the inadequacies of language notwithstanding.
Contents
Introduction. Silence and the Rest
Verbal Skepticism and Existential Arguments
1. Theological Ineffability
2. (Pre)-Romantic Inexpressibility
3. Absurdist Logophobia
Russian Contributions to Verbal Skepticism
Western Philosophy versus Russian Philosophy versus Russian Poetry
Chapter 1. Initiating the Paradigm: The Inexpressible in Russian Romanticism
Romantic Inexpressibility
Batiushkov, Zhukovsky, Venevitinov: Inexpressible Ideality and Incommunicability
1. Batiushkov
2. Zhukovsky
3. Venevitinov
Tiutchev: Ontology of Otherness and the Operative Paradox
Baratynsky and Lermontov: Incommunicability, Silence, Nihilism
1. Baratynsky
2. Lermontov
Chapter 2. Osip Mandelstam's Many-Voiced Silentiums
(Pre)-Modernist Verbal Skepticism: Fet, Symbolism, and Post Symbolism
Silentium of "Silentium"
Other Shades of Silence
From Silver Silentium to Iron Silence
Chapter 3. A Figure that Leaves You Speechless: Joseph Brodsky on Death and Language
Residence Permit for Heaven: Divine Ineffability and Its Discontents
Linguistic Lunacy
A Slice of the Monotone of Infinity
The Condition We Call Exile and the Death of the Author
Chapter 4. "A Poet Is Less Than a Poet": Timur Kibirov's Merry Logophobia
L(aughing) O(ut) L(oud): The Conceptualist Lineage of Verbal Skepticism
Kibirov's Mechanics of Verbal Subversion
Like Rotten Fish: Beyond Laughter in Kibirov
Bad Infinity and Eternal Recurrence
Conclusion. Logophobia in the Land of Logos
Specificities of the Russian Paradigm
Dichten and Denken
Widening the Space of Ineffability
Notes
Notes to Introduction
Notes to Chapter 1
Notes to Chapter 2
Notes to Chapter 3
Notes to Chapter 4
Notes to Conclusion
Bibliography
