eSamizdat. Rivista di culture dei paesi slavi / Journal of Slavic Cultures / Журнал славянских культур

Introduzione

Emilio Mari — 2024-02-01

Introduction and preliminary remarks by the editors of the section “Literary Microhistories”.

"L'arte di leggere lentamente": dialogo con Carlo Ginzburg

Carlo Ginzburg — 2024-02-01

Interview with Carlo Ginzburg.

Microhistory and Cultural Memory: The Afterlife of J.A. Rosenstrauch’s An Evangelical Pastor’s Experiences at Deathbeds

Alexander M. Martin — 2024-02-01

In 1833, a small Baltic German periodical published observations on death and dying by a Lutheran pastor in provincial Ukraine named J.A. Rosenstrauch. Over the next seven decades, this text was published in German, Russian, and other languages, and was cited in debates about social reform, conservative ideology, antisemitism, nationalism, and other preoccupations of 19^th century culture. Rosenstrauch himself remained an obscure figure, however, allowing readers – including Vasilii Zhukovskii, Nikolai Gogol’, and Nikolai Leskov – to imagine him as they saw fit. The afterlife of Rosenstrauch’s text sheds light on three major themes of microhistory: the role of non-elite individuals as intermediaries between centers and peripheries and between different cultures; the unreliability of texts, which can hide as much as they reveal; and the dialectical relationship between texts and life – how people construct the meaning of their lives through the texts they read and through those they write.

Tra Hegel e Fourier. Indagini su "La padrona"

Guido Carpi — 2024-02-01

The present essay aims to assess the efficacy of hermeneutical principles developed by Italian microhistory scholars in the analysis and interpretation of Russian culture during the Imperial era, both in its individual facets and in the overarching perspectives that emerge from them.

The example under examination is Dostoevskii’s povest’ The Landlady (Khoziaika, 1847). It is dissected as a juncture between diverse political and intellectual currents: on one hand, the Fourierist utopianism, and on the other, the idea of liberating human personality as advocated by Russian Westernizers influenced by Hegel’s philosophy of history. This intersection of ideologies, both familiar to the young Dostoevskii, enables us to fathom the metaphorical construct of the povest’, which would otherwise remain rather enigmatic. It also allows us to define its overarching meaning: an acknowledgment that, given the social and political conditions prevailing in Russia at the time, every attempt at progress is destined for futility.

Testis unus, testis nullus: l’istituto della famiglia attraverso i casi giudiziari russi di fine XIX secolo

Iris Uccello — 2024-02-01

In this article I will conduct a microhistorical analysis of two of the most resounding cases in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Kairova and Kronenberg cases. The trials interested the intellectual élite, including writers such as F. Dostoevskii and M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, because they touched on important topics of that time: family, childcare and women’s roles. The judicial case is a cultural palimpsest and a facilitated microhistorical subject, since it clearly shows the unique and the exceptional in history. The defendants act against the norm, creating an opposition that showcases the limits of the norm and allows for a deeper understanding of the macro context (social norms) in relation to the micro context (breaching of the norm). Through the study of archival, publicistic and literary sources regarding the judicial cases I will discuss the ideas of family, gender and constituted power which was changing in fin-de-siècle Russia.

Two Views on Ukrainian Culture of the late 1910s-early 1920s in Two Open Letters from the Year 1960

Maria Mayofis — 2024-02-01

In this article, I analyze two open letters published in 1960 in “Literaturnaia Gazeta”. In the first letter, Maksim Ryl’skii, a renowned Soviet Ukrainian poet and two-time winner of the Stalin Prize, accuses the famous writer (and his former friend) Konstantin Paustovskii of making unacceptable errors in describing Ukrainian culture of the late 19^th-early 20^th century in the third and fifth volumes of his memoirs, and Paustovskii answers him in a week in the same periodical. I propose reconstructing the key contexts that may explain the harsh polemic between these two former friends, pointing to the very different assessments of Ukrainian culture of the late 1910s and 1920s characteristic for both writers in the late 1950s, as well as to the hidden tensions within the Soviet writers’ milieu that made Paustovskii feeling particularly vulnerable.

Niels Bohr by Daniil Danin and Changes in the “Rules of the Game” in the Editorial Office of Lives of Remarkable People Series (1969-1978)

Maxim Lukin — 2024-02-01

This paper presents a microhistorical investigation of the conflict that arose in the editorial office of the series of biographies Lives of Remarkable People (Zhizn’ Zamechatel’nykh Liudei) during preparation for the publication of Daniil Danin’s book Niels Bohr (1978). Based on Danin’s extensive correspondence with the editors, the paper reconstructs the stages of the conflict between 1969 and 1978, including the nature of editorial claims and the author’s disagreements. The publication conflict regarding Niels Bohr allows the author to examine the shifting ideological agenda and evolving perceptions of working relationships within the editorial office of the series during the transitional period between the Thaw and Stagnation eras in Soviet history. Microhistorical optics also shed light on the less apparent involvement of the USSR Writers’ Union functionaries in resolving this conflict and the attitudes towards modern science and scientists among conservative circles of the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1970s, marking the evolution of late Soviet culture and society.

“Kazus”: di cosa si tratta?

Jurij Bessmertnyj — 2024-02-01

The paper describes the main ideas of the almanac “Kazus”, the situation in historiography that brought about its appearance, and the specific features of the ‘case approach’ the published papers are based upon. Without diminishing the role of mass regulations in determining people’s behaviour in different historical periods, we are trying to comprehend in what way – in different circumstances – mental stereotypes and individual experience interacted, and in what way that interaction influenced the free will of the acteurs. The present paper analyzes the relation of the ‘case approach’ to the Italian microhistory, the German Alltags geschichte, and the historiographical trend of “Les Annales” of the 1990s.

I molti volti della storia (il problema dell’integrazione degli approcci micro e macro)

Jurij Bessmertnyj — 2024-02-01

The article investigates various means of combining micro- and macro- analysis in historical studies. Each of the two approaches plays an equally important role in comprehending the past. At the same time, neither of the two can be incorporated into the other one, as they can only be combined as complementary principles.

Uno e centomila percorsi di ricerca sulla modernità. A margine degli scritti di Jurij Volčok

Maurizio Meriggi — 2024-02-01

The text presents to the Italian public the two-volume collection of writings by Iu. Volchok – architect, historian and theorist from Moscow active since the 1970s in the most prestigious research and training institutions of the USSR first, and then of the Russian Federation. His writings are presented following the thematic areas touched on in the book – from the history of building structures and the history of art and architecture to the problems of preserving the legacy of the avant-garde and modernity in Russia. The introduction to his theoretical research is accompanied by a chronicle of the author’s personal experience of collaborating with Iu. Volchok from 1993 to 2020 in a series of exhibition projects and publications on the Soviet avant-garde and its legacy. The chronological narrative of the projects witnesses the vicissitudes and the development of scientific interest in the architectural culture of the Soviet avant-garde in Russia and Italy over the last thirty years.

Angelo Maria Ripellino letto da giovani studiosi: due tavole rotonde per il centenario

AA. VV. — 2024-02-01

The event “A. M. Ripellino seen through the eyes of young scholars” was held on the 15^th of December 2023 at the Sapienza University of Rome, thanks to the collaboration of the doctoral students of the international program Germanic and Slavic Studies and the coordination of Emilio Mari. It was conceived as an occasion to reflect on the scholar’s legacy and his relevance to the youngest generation of scholars. Adhering to a dialogical approach, the day was divided into two round tables.

The first roundtable, “Legacy and Canon”, featured four speeches. Luca Veronesi presented Ripellino’s essays dedicated to Gavriil Derzhavin, emphasising the anomaly of the scholar’s interest in an author belonging to eighteenth-century Russian literature. Rukya Mandrile analysed the implications of adopting the formal method in Ripellino’s literary domain in response to the guidelines dictated by socialist realism, considering Vladimir Maiakovskii, Evgenii Evtushenko and Václav Havel as examples. In a joint speech, Angela Mondillo and Marta Belia showed the specificities of Ripellino’s contribution to Czech Studies, exemplified through his interest in the Czech poets František Halas and Vladimír Holan.

In the second roundtable, entitled “Poetics and Stylistics”, there were three speeches. Martina Mecco proposed an analysis of Ripellino’s essayistic style, comparing two canonical texts in the reception of Czech literature and culture in Italy, Storia della poesia ceca contemporanea and Praga Magica. Alessandro Pulimanti focused on Praga Magica, emphasising the passages that best describe the Bohemian capital’s dreamlike, almost imaginary character. Finally, Riccardo Mini analysed Ripellino’s translations of Aleksandr Blok’s poems, relating the translation solutions to elements emerging from his essays dedicated to the poet.

“Zuboskal”: No Criticism Allowed! Practices in the Methodology of Rehabilitation

Sergey Bondarenko — 2024-02-01

The article analyzes the texts in and about the magazine “Zuboskal” (literally – “The Sсoffer”), self-published in 1934 by its author, 26-years-old engineer Leonid Molchanov. The magazine was used as physical evidence against Molchanov and his readers, a small circle of friends and neighbors from Saltykovka, a village near Moscow.

Molchanov’s file from 1935 is kept in the State Archive of the Russian Federation among the materials on rehabilitated Muscovites and residents of the Moscow region. In 2018, the research group discovered his work and has since been trying to determine how to proceed: should it be republished in its original form?

Can the investigative material serve as its commentary? Or, on the contrary, are the texts of the magazine themselves a commentary on the work of the investigation? How can a critical and microhistorical analysis of both texts be arranged? Is the new phase of the “Zuboskal”’s life, after the revision of the results of the political investigation, a form of rehabilitation?

Donne, figlie, madri. Voci di memoria dal Novecento russo

Barbara Ronchetti — 2024-02-01

The essay is aimed at offering a reflection on family stories reconstructed along the female line of the family memory. Intertwining the reading of memories with the contemporary debate around the mother-daughter relationship, this essay analyses the memories left by two ‘daughters’ of the Russian 20^th century: Elena Bonner and Vera Politkovskaia. These extraordinary witnesses of Russian history decided to collect their memories to react to a painful distance: Bonner, at a mature age, seeks a suspended and lost dialogue with her mother, after she passed away in 1987; Politkovskaia, a woman in exile after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that disrupted her family, remembers her mother (murdered in 2006).

Through the investigation of the female line of family memory, the relationship between mother and daughter – a crux of women’s biography and a leading theme of women’s literature – may become a utopian model of a story that involves such persons. By refusing emotional distance in writing, the memories of Bonner and Politkovskaia can suggest a horizon within which to build a cultural and literary history of Russia. This, in turn, should be capable of welcoming the questions that female voices have raised about that same history.

Vita da vampiro nella ‘città di N’. La serie tv russa "Vampiry srednej polosy" tra (sopran)naturalismo e transfer culturale

Francesca Lazzarin — 2024-02-01

In this paper we provide an analysis of the first season of the TV series Central Russia’s Vampires, which was a great success in Russia at the beginning of 2021, both for audiences and critics. In particular, the series will be compared with other products of the horror and fantasy genres that were devoted to vampires in Russian and Western literature and cinema. In addition, its similarity to a certain tradition of Russian magic realism and grotesque will be emphasized, with a special focus on the role of the city of Smolensk and its history. Our aim is to show that Central Russia’s Vampires, thanks to its cultural references and its hybridity of drama and comedy, is a faithful mirror of Russian society and mentality at the turn of the 2010s and 2020s.

I motivi biblici nella poesia di Sergej Stratanovskij

Giada Scanu — 2024-02-01

This article aims to analyse the biblical motifs in Sergei Stratanovskii’s poetry. Starting with a brief mention of the religious poetry in the Leningrad underground, to which Stratanovskii belonged, the analysis goes on to compare a series of selected poems to the biblical passages they are related to. Since most of the poems are rewritings of biblical episodes, this comparison enables the changes made by the author to the language, the characterization of the characters and the overall meaning of the text to emerge clearly. The way the poet dialogues with the Bible partially changes throughout his long career. This article attempts to briefly retrace this evolution as well.

"Dolgota dnej" di V. Rafeenko. Esplorazioni identitarie di un autore (russofono) ucraino

Maria Gaia Ruggiero — 2024-02-01

This article explores the life and prose of Ukrainian author Vladimir Rafeenko (ukr. Volodymyr Rafeyenko, Donetsk, 1969), with a focus on his latest russophone novel, Dolgota dnei [The Length of Days, 2017]. Rafeenko’s personal and professional trajectory is examined in its complex dialogue with the Russian and Ukrainian sociopolitical contexts, in order to highlight the close interrelation between extra-literary factors, identity reflection and linguistic practices in the author’s literary experience. Specifically, Dolgota dnei is interpreted as a manifesto of the national consciousness developed by the author following the outbreak of the conflict in Donbas. In the novel, Rafeenko deconstructs the linguistic determinism promoted by political discourse, proposing an alternative perspective on Russian language and culture and a new, civic and multilingual conception of ‘Ukrainianness’.

Il superamento dell’alienazione: antologia di poesia russofona kazaka oggi

Massimo Maurizio — 2024-02-01

The anthology of poets from Kazakhstan aims to present twelve Russian-speaking writers, in order to provide a vision – partial, as with any anthology – of the lively cultural environment of the country, in a decolonial perspective, in spite of the idea that Russian-speaking poetry is mainly that produced in Russia. In many of the former Soviet republics there is instead an extremely interesting cultural ferment, which mixes local characteristics with an openness to world cultures. The anthology collects poems of Selina Taysengirova, Amangel’dy Rakhmetov, Ramil’ Niyazov, Oral Arukenova, Kanat Omar, Ravil’ Autkaliev, Zair Asim, Pavel Bannikov, Mariya Vil’koviskaya, Kseniya Rogozhnikova, Yury Serebryansky and Aleksey Shvabauer.

La produzione artistica dell’individuo e la collettività (traduzione di Matteo Annecchiarico)

Jurij Meženko — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of Tvorčist’ indyviduuma i kolektyv by Iurii Mezhenko.

O. Potebnja e la letteratura ucraina (traduzione di Serena Buti)

Ijeremija Ajzenštok — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of O.O. Potebnia ta ukrainska literatura by Ieremiia Aizenshtok.

Norme elementari di versificazione (traduzione di Rossella Caria)

Majk Johansen — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of Elementarni zakony versyfikatsii by Maik Iohansen.

A proposito di uno dei compiti più urgenti della scienza storico-letteraria. Lo studio della storia del lettore (traduzione di Noemi Albanese)

Oleksandr Bilec’kyj — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of Ob odnoi iz ocherednykh zadach istorikoliteraturnoi nauki. Izuchenie istorii chitatelia by Oleksandr Bilec’kyj.

Verso una nuova teoria (traduzione di Anna Cavazzoni)

Jurij Meženko — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of Na shliakhakh do novoi teorii by Iurii Mezhenko.

Verso una storia obiettiva della letteratura ucraina. La "Storia della nuova letteratura ucraina" di Mykola Zerov in prospettiva storica (traduzione di Olga Trukhanova)

Ahapij Šamraj — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of Na shliakhakh do ob’iektyvnoi istorii ukrains’koho pys’menstva by Ahapii Shamrai.

Ševčenko e il romanticismo (traduzione di Yaryna Grusha)

Pavlo Fylypovyč — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of Shevchenko i romantyzm by P. Fylypovych.

Vent’anni di nuova poesia ucraina (1903-1923) (traduzione di Francesca Lazzarin)

Oleksandr Bilec’kyj — 2024-02-01

Italian translation of Dvadcjat’ rokiv novoji ukrajins’koji liryky by Oleksandr Bilec’kyj.

Potebnja e noi (traduzione di Anna Mangiullo)

Ijeremija Ajzenštok — 2024-02-01

Italian translation from Ukrainian of the article Potebnia i my by Ieremiia Aizenshtok.