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NOSTALGIA FOR THE ABSOLUTE: SOVIET WRITERS
IN SEARCH OF TRANSCENDENCE
by
Yuliya Minkova
__________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES)
May 2007
Copyright 2007 Yuliya Minkova
Object Description
| Title | Nostalgia for the absolute: Soviet writers in search of transcendence |
| Author | Minkova, Yuliya |
| Author email | minkova@usc.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Slavic Languages & Literatures |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2006-12-18 |
| Date submitted | 2007 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2007-02-16 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Seifrid, Thomas |
| Abstract | This dissertation investigates how the Romantic perception of writing enriched by the logocentric culture of Russian modernism prompted Mandelstam, Platonov, and Bitov to use language as a stage where their nostalgia for the absolute may be resolved through the act of writing. This special type of literary nostalgia is the aesthetic counterpart to the controversy that stood at the heart of modernism, namely, how to reconcile historical progress with humanity's supreme values. The neo-Platonic notion that language, when used creatively, reflects a higher order of reality abounds in the works of the three authors, and places in a broader context their nostalgia to transcend such limits that divide them from the spiritual and cultural absolutes. The routes of transcendence include the rejection of time as a constitutive principle in art, life, and tradition and the perception of the primitive, the pre-conscious, and the pre-verbal as the spaces that unite the Cartesian subject and object.An aesthetic of timelessness prompts Mandelstam to use elements of nominative style in an early impressionist poem and to proceed by shifts of focus instead of narration while positing many subjects and objects in and outside of the text, in order to establish a connection with the absolute. He also recreates tradition by imagining it as a family circle rather than a line of succession while subverting the Soviet, linear mode of historical transcendence. Following the apocalypse of the revolution, Platonov's attempt in Chevengur to treat reality as if it had been transfigured in conformity with communist ideology demonstrates the failure of utopia, and the residual nostalgia for the absolute experienced by the characters highlights Fedorovian memory of the fathers as a link with the afterlife.; Bitov struggles with the occlusion of the literary language by the canonical Soviet readings of the Russian classics and suggests a version of empiricism as a means of positing meaning beyond the signs. While the historical trajectory seems to indicate that absolutization of language leads to epistemological self-consciousness and creative impotence, the artistic desire to create meaning invites nostalgia as a guarantee of the possibility of this endeavor. |
| Keyword | nostalgia and Soviet |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m276 |
| Rights | Minkova, Yuliya |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-Minkova-20070216 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume40/etd-Minkova-20070216.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | NOSTALGIA FOR THE ABSOLUTE: SOVIET WRITERS IN SEARCH OF TRANSCENDENCE by Yuliya Minkova __________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES) May 2007 Copyright 2007 Yuliya Minkova |
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