BookReviews 935

TheGothic-Fantastic
in Nineteenth-Century Ed. Neil Cornwell.Studiesin
RussianLiterature.
SlavicLiteratureand Poetics,vol. 33. Amsterdam:Rodopi, 1999. 293 pp. Notes. Bib-
liography.Index. $55.50, paper.

This volume is based on the proceedingsof a symposiumon Russian gothicheld at the

University of Bristolin 1997. Even thoughthe essaysdifferin theirscope, methodology,
and theoreticalconcerns,each has somethingto offer.Regardlessof theindividualessays'
strengths, however,thecollectionas a whole does not cohere,since neithertheeditor'sin-
troduction,whichoutlinesthe historyof the genre and summarizestheworkof itsEuro-
pean and Russianpractitioners, nor thefineand thoughtful essaybyRichardPeace, which
tracesthe metamorphosisof pagan gods into the gothicPandemoniumof devils,provide
thevolumewiththe unityit needs. The situationcould have been partiallyremediedbya
comprehensiveintroductory essayaddressingthe cultural,social,and psychologicalissues
thatthe gothicgenreprovedsuch a perfectvehicle to explore and exploit.Besides such a
theoreticalessay,thevolume should have also included a more thoroughtreatmentofin-
dividualRussianromantics(thereis nothingin thevolume on AntoniiPogorel'skii,Orest
Somov,MikhailLermontov,or earlyNikolai Gogol') and the studyof Russiansymbolists.
Both Cornwelland Peace referto the flourishingof Russiangothicin theworksof Fedor
Sologub, DmitriiMerezhkovskii, and Andrei Belyi,yet the volume containsnothingon
theseauthors.Grantedthatthe editor'sfocuswas on the nineteenthcentury, the omission
of symbolisttexts-even thoughsome were produced in the twentiethcentury-never-
thelessdistortsthe pictureof the Russiangothic.
The essaysincluded in the volume can be dividedinto twogroups.The first,explor-
ing pre-Pushkintexts,seems to be guided bythe philologicalresearchon Russianroman-
ticismcarried out by Vadim Vatsuro (an excellent Russian scholar,recentlydeceased),
while the second group is inspiredbyTsvetanTodorov'sworkon the fantastic.Derek Of-
ford'sessayon Nikolai Karamzin,AlessandraTosi's studyof Nikolai Gnedich, and Roger
Cockrell'sanalysisof VladimirOdoevskii's "Cosmorama,"all informative, nuanced, bal-
anced, and intelligent, provideexamplesofVatsuro'shistorico-philological approach. Of-
fordoffersa sophisticatedanalysisof Karamzin'sanxietiesas theyinformhis gothicnarra-
tive,"The Island of Borgholm"(1792). Accordingto Offord,Karamzin'ssentimentalism,
conservatism, and pessimism,reawakenedas theywere bythe eventsof the FrenchRevo-
lution,found a perfectvehicle in the complex moral visionof his tale. Tosi sketchesthe
historyof the earlyRussian involvementwithgothic,while arguingconvincingly for the
primacyof Gnedich's Don Carrado de Gerrera(1803), both withinthe historyof Russian
gothicand ofRussia'sdemonic characters,whose psychological,moral,and philosophical
anticsfoundtheirearlyexpressionin the arch-villain, Don Carrado.While unravelingthe
literarybackgroundof Cosmorama,Cockrellapproaches Odoevskii'stextas "a synthesis of
theromanticand rationalimpulseswithinOdoevsky"(143) and providesa convincingex-
positionof the text'smoral,ontological,and epistemologicalconcerns.
Michael Pursglove'sessayon VasiliiZhukovskiiis ratherdisappointing,since he does
not avoid the pitfallthatawaitsany philologicallyorientedscholar:an attemptto deter-
mine whethersome text,whose literaryvalue is farfromclear, fitsinto some not easily
definedgenre. Pursglovesummarizesand profuselyquotes fromseveralof Zhukovskii's
ballads and narrativepoems, onlyto maintainthatthe majorityof themare more senti-
mentalthangothic,while others(the 1831 ballad "Donika,"forexample) can indeed be
characterizedas Russian gothicin verse.As scholarsare stillunclear about the shape of
preromanticism, romanticism, and the genresthattheseperiodsgenerated,the compari-
son of various attributesand definitionswould seem to be futile.It is also unclear why
PursgloveignoresZhukovskii's versetranslationof Friedrichde la MotteFouque's Undine,
a textthatcaptured the imagination,not onlyof Zhukovskii,but of such diversefigures
as Gogol', Lermontov,PetrChaikovskii,AleksandrBlok, and Marina Tsvetaevain Russia,
Thomas Carlyleand WalterScott in England, Richard Wagnerin Germany,and Edgar
Allan Poe in the UnitedStates.
The issue of Undine should have also resurfacedin CynthiaRamsey'sdiscussionof
VladimirOdoevskii'stale,"The Salamander."Ramseyignoresthisimportantsubtext,even

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936 Slavic Review

thoughshe is aware thatOdoevskiiwas workingon his ownversionof "Undine."Further-

more,Ramseymistakenlyclaims thatOdoevskiiinitiallyconceived "The Salamander" as
consistingof three parts,the last one being "Undine,"when in factOdoevskii planned
"Undine"as a separate tale, the thirdin his trilogyabout elementalspirits("The Sylph,"
"The Salamander,"and "Undine"). "The Salamander,"withitswaveringmale protagonist
and devotedand forgiving(to a certainpoint) female,is much closerto La MottFouques
Undinethan to the twosubtextsthatRamseyidentifiesand spends half of her essayre-
telling:TheKalevala and MaryShelley'sFrankenstein. RamseymaintainsthatOdoevskii's
textis preoccupiedwithissuesoforigins,engendering,culturaltransmission, and thecon-
flictbetween fathersand sons. This may be so, yet neitherher unconvincingsubtexts
nor the confusedargumentationhelp the reader to see how theseissuesreallyoperate in
the text.
The group of Todorov-inspired,theoreticallyconcerned studiesof gothic includes
Claire Whitehead'sessay on "The Queen of Spades," which tracesAleksandrPushkin's
technique of unsettlinghis readers and plantinghesitationin theirminds. This tech-
nique includes,accordingto Whitehead,an overabundanceof incompleteinformation,
an unidentifiednarrator,extensiveuse of indefinitepronouns,and frequentswitchesin
point of view.Whitehead thus concentrateson how Pushkin'snovella becomes the very
paradigm of the fantastic,as defined by Todorov. This useful studyis couched, how-
ever, in prohibitively obscure terminology, borrowedfromGerard Genette and other
theoreticians,and thus takes a rathercircuitousroute to make several fairlystraight-
forwardobservations.CarolynJursaAyersis also drivenbytheory,even thoughher essay
on Elena Gan is straightforward and lucid. Ayerstriesto square the concept of "female
gothic"withGan's literaryproduction,her tale "Society'sJudgement"(Sud sveta)in par-
ticular.While not directlyconfrontingthe gothicdimensionof the tale itself,Ayersdis-
cussion of the interplaybetweenfemaleidentity, power,and sexualityhighlightsvarious
literarystrategiesand predicamentsof both Gan and otherfemaleRussianwritersof the
period.
The main purpose of Ignat Avsey'sfree-wheeling, deliberatelyunanalytical,yetfre-
quentlywitty essay,"The Gothicin Gogol and Dostoevsky" is to tiethequintessentialgothic
novel,Horace Walpole's TheCastleofOtranto, not onlyto itsBritishheirs,such as Walter
Scott,CharlesMaturin,or MaryShelley,but also to Gogol' and Fedor Dostoevskiiand their
characters,such as Chichikov,Pliushkin,Fedor Karamazov,and Smerdiakov.It is hard
to disagreewithhim here, althoughone could add the names of Svidrigailov, Stavrogin,
PrinceValkovskii, and Kleopatra,as Dostoevskiiimaginedher, to the listof Dostoevskii's
quasi-gothicvillains.
In her insightful"SupernaturalDoubles: Vii and TheNose,"PriscillaMeyerfocuses
on parallels between two seeminglyquite differentstories by Gogol', exploring how
the supernaturalof the firsttale is reduced, condensed, and "recostumed"(209) in the
St. Petersburgsettingof the lattertale. Accordingto Meyer,"profounduncanniness,the
featurethatis so hard to locate in thePetersburgstories"(209), transports "The Nose" be-
yond a comic parodyof the supernaturaltale into the unrealizedtranscendentworld,the
presenceofwhichis intimatedthroughthe tracesof "Vii"in "The Nose."
Leon Burnett'sessay,vaguelytitled,"The Echoing Heart: Fantasiasof the Female in
Dostoevskyand Turgenev,"concentratesprimarilyon Ivan Turgenev'sshortstory"Faust"
(1856). Burnettobservesthatthe Unknown,whichcontrolsthe eventsof the story, getsits
powerfromeitherthe projection(of the participants)or fromthe actual coercivepower
of possession (251). This is an intriguingthesisthatthe authorunfortunately failsto de-
velop,optinginsteadfora fancifulpursuitof otherissues,such as thevarioustranslations
of a particulartermin TheBrothers Karamazov.A similarfailureto develop a relevantthe-
sis, while pursuingvarious secondaryconcerns,mars Ann Komaromi'sessay on Anton
Chekhov's"BlackMonk."Komaromisuggeststhatgothicawe is experiencedhere bythe
tale'sreadersratherthanitsprotagonistsand is caused not so muchbyKovrin'ssupernat-
uralvisionsas bythe overwhelming destructioncaused bythe banal, everydaydramasthat
theprotagonistsinflictupon each other.These twolastessaysalso seem to share a certain
refusalto engage the criticalliteraturegeneratedbyboth "Faust"and "BlackMonk."
All in all, the collectionprovidesan interestingangle fromwhichto examinevarious

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BookReviews 937

Russiantextsor authors,even thoughit clearlyfallsshortof both of itsmodels,as it lacks

Vatsuro'sthoroughnessand range,and Todorov'stheoreticalsophistication.
VLADIMIR GOLSTEIN
Yale University

Dostoevsky's
The Devils: A CriticalCompanion.Ed. W.J. Leatherbarrow.Evanston:North-
westernUniversity
Press,1999. ix, 165 pp. Notes. Bibliography.$17.95, paper.

Das Prophetische
in DostojewskijsDamonen. Eds. Olga GroB3mannand Roland Opitz.
Weimar:Verlagund Databank ffirGeisteswissenschaften,
1998. 200 pp. Notes.Photo-
graphs.Figures.DM 29.00, paper.

The twobooks under revieware verydifferent. The Companion containsfourcriticalessays:

an introductionbythe editor,followedbyD. C. Offord'sarticleon the novel'scontempo-
rarycontext,M. V.Jones'sanalysisof itsnarrativetechniques,and R. M. Davison'spiece on
the role of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovenskii. In addition,the editorhas translatedrele-
vantextractsfromFedor Dostoevskii'scorrespondenceand providedthebook withan an-
notatedbibliography.
The German publicationis a miscellanyof eighteen papers given at a symposium
in Dresden in November1996. In additionto papersdirectlyconcernedwiththenovel,its
background,and itsreceptionin Russia afterthe fallof the SovietUnion, thisworkdeals
witha numberof different topics,such as Dostoevskiiand modern informationtechnol-
ogy (Vladimir Zakharov), the Dostoevskiimuseum at St. Petersburg(Natalia Ashem-
baieva), Dostoevskiiin Dresden (Erhard Hexelschneider),and the birthof Dostoevskii's
daughterin Dresden, withfacsimiles-published by Olga Grol3man-documenting his
daughter'sbirthand subsequentbaptismin the city'sRussian Orthodox churchon 12/
24 January1870, not in December 1869, the date givenbyDostoevskii'swifein her mem-
oirsand lateraccepted byDostoevskiischolars.
It is oftensaid about TheDevilsthatitiswell-nighinaccessibleto readerswithouta cer-
tainknowledgeof the "politicalrealia" thatservedas Dostoevskii'srawmaterial,especially
the destructiveactivitiesof Russian anarchistsin the 1860s. Scholars have traditionally
linkedthe main plot of TheDevils,culminatingin the murderof Shatov,withthe theories
of M. A. Bakunin and the conspiratorialpursuitsof his young disciple, S. G. Nechaev,
whichreached theirclimaxwiththe murderof the studentI. I. Ivanov on 21 November
1869. In the English companion, the novel's historicalcontext is discussed both by
Leatherbarrowin his introductory essayand, more extensively,byD. C. Offord,while in
the German collection,the theme is taken up by Gudrun Braunspergerin an essayon
Nechaev and powerin the serviceof the revolution.
Several of the Russian participantsat the Dresden symposiumhave chosen to read
TheDevilsas a propheticforeshadowing ofBolshevikterrorism and thelawlessnessofpost-
Soviet Russian society.This is by no means a new approach to Dostoevskii.But when
applied to today'ssocial problems,as in the contributionof the Moscow criminologist
NikolaiPenshin,itfailsto convincethe reader.Penshin'sattemptto explain the spread of
organizedcrime,the activitiesof Chechen rebels,and the shenanigansof Russianpoliti-
cians as a fulfillment of eventspredictedin Crimeand Punishment and TheDevilsis a rather
sad gloss on the stateof Russian criminologyand on post-SovietDostoevskiistudiesin
Russia. Moreover,Penshin is not alone in claimingthatthe disastersthathave befallen
present-day Russiaare theresultsofmodernatheismand theabandonmentof theOrtho-
dox faith.On the contrary, similarargumentsare typicalof thewayTheDevilshas been re-
ceived in Russia duringthe last decade (as iftherewere no crimeunder the Romanovs).
As shownin Karla Hielscher'swell-researchedpaper, TheDevilshas become a weapon in
the hands of people interestedin foregroundingthe reactionary, nationalistic,and anti-
Semiticstrainsof Dostoevskii'soeuvre.
If thisis the general trend,Igor Vinogradov'scomparativeanalysisof Shigalevin The

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