The Writer in Petrograd and the House of Arts

Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2527-8
Verlag: Northwestern University Press

Buch, Englisch, 750 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 1021 g

Reihe: Studies in Russian Literature and Theory

Founded by Maksim Gorky and Kornei Chukovsky in 1919 and disbanded in 1922, the Petrograd House of Arts occupied a crucial moment in Russia's cultural history. By chronicling the rise and fall of this literary landmark, this book conveys in greater depth and detail than ever before a significant but little studied period in Soviet literature.Poised between Russian culture's past and her Soviet future, between pre- and post-Revolutionary generations, this once lavish private home on the Nevsky Prospekt housed as many as fifty-six poets, novelists, critics, and artists at one time, during a period of great social and political turbulence. And as such, Hickey contends, the House of Arts served as a crucible for a literature in transition. Hickey shows how the House of Arts, though virtually ignored by Soviet-era cultural historians, played a critical role in shaping the lively literature of the next decade, a literature often straddling the border between fiction and nonfiction.Considering prose writers such as Yevgeny Zamyatin, Olga Forsh, the Serapion Brothers group, Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum, as well as poets including Alexander Blok, Nikolay Gumilev, Anna Radlova, Osip Mandelstam, and Vladislav Khodasevich, she traces the comings and goings at the House of Arts - the meetings and readings and lectures and, most of all, the powerful influence of these interactions on those who briefly lived and worked there. In her work, the Petrograd House of Arts appears for the first time in all its complexity and importance, as a focal point for the social and cultural ferment of the day, and a turning point in the direction of Russian literature and criticism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hickey, Martha Weitzel

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. The House of Arts: Foundations; Origins of the House of Arts; A New Venue for the Arts; 2. Petrograd: Contested Spaces (1919-1920); Petrograders in No Man's Land: Tensions at the Borders of Change; The City and the Museum: ""Is Petrograd Beautiful?""; 3. The Domains of Art; ""Two or 222 Russias?""; Extended Dimensions and the Return of a Poet; Fall Program, 1920; 4. House of Arts: A Published Image; Under Review: In the Shadow of Kronshtadt; New Configurations: The Literature of ""Today""; Summer Retreats: Kholomki and Petrograd; 5. Voice and Performance; The ""Living Word"" of Literature; The Writer and the Voice of the Performer; 6. Contested Figures: Image, Audience, and Authority; Judging Nekrasov: The Man and the Poet; Anxiety of Performance Before the Work; Contending for the Future: ""Nekrasov Days""; 7. An Elusive Renaissance; Comings and Goings; 1922: The House's Third Year Begins; A Defining Image?; Closing Movements; 8. The ""Third Way"": On the Borders of Fiction and Memoir; A Literary ""Business Club""; Outline of a Voyage; Coda: The House of Arts Reconsidered - In the Ship's Wake; Reflections and Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Martha Wetizel Hickey is an associate professor of Russian literature and director of international studies at Portland State University. She lives in Portland, Oregon.