The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin 9780691187037, 069106976X

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T H E FIRST H U N D R E D YEARS OF MIKHAIL

BAKHTIN

T H E FIRST H U N D R E D YEARS OF M I K H A I L B A K H T I N

Caryl Emerson

PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

P R I N C E T O N , NEW

JERSEY

Copyright © 1997 by Princeton University Press P u b l i s h e d by P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 4 1 W i l l i a m Street, P r i n c e t o n , N e w Jersey 0 8 5 4 0 I n the U n i t e d K i n g d o m : P r i n c e t o n University Press, C h i c h e s t e r , W e s t Sussex A l l R i g h t s Reserved T h i r d p r i n t i n g , a n d first paperback printing, 2 0 0 0 Paperback I S B N 0 - 6 9 1 - 0 5 0 4 9 - X

T h e Library o f C o n g r e s s has cataloged the cloth edition o f this b o o k as follows Emerson, Caryl. T h e first h u n d r e d years o f M i k h a i l B a k h t i n / p.

Caryl E m e r s o n ,

cm.

I n c l u d e s bibliographical references and index. I S B N 0-691-06976-X

(cl : alk. paper)

1. B a k h t i n , M . M . ( M i k h a i l M i k h a ï l o v i c h ) , 1 8 9 5 - 1 9 7 5 . 2. C r i t i c i s m — R u s s i a (Federation)—History. PG2947.B3E49 8 0 1 ' .95 ' 0 9 2 — d c 2 1

I . Title.

1997 97-12451

T h i s b o o k has been c o m p o s e d in Galliard T h e paper used i n this publication meets the m i n i m u m requirements o f A N S I / N I S O ( R 1 9 9 7 ) (Permanence

of

Z39.48-1992

Paper)

http : / / p u p .princeton. e d u P r i n t e d i n the U n i t e d States o f A m e r i c a 3

5

7

9

10

8 6 4

I n his

time,

Chesterton divided h u m a n k i n d into

three large categories: and

simply people, intellectuals,

poets. Simply people

are able to feel b u t t h e y

are n o t able t o express t h e i r feelings;

intellectuals

are able t o despise t o p e r f e c t i o n t h e feelings the

simply people,

to ridicule t h e m a n d to

of

root

o u t those s a m e feelings i n themselves; b u t the poets, i n c o n t r a s t , are g r a n t e d the ability to e x p r e s s a d e q u a t e l y w h a t e v e r y o n e feels b u t w h a t n o o n e c a n say. A c c o r d i n g t o t h i s c l a s s i f i c a t i o n , B a k h t i n belongs i n the ranks o f the

poets.

{Sergei Averintsev, "Lichnostf i talant uchenogo")

Contents

ix

Acknowledgments

xiii

Abbreviations Introduction East Meets West i n the Ex-USSR

3

PART O N E : EAXTHHOBEJJEHHE, E A X T H H H C T H K A , E A X T H H O J I O f H H : B A K H T I N STUDIES, BAKHTINISTICS, BAKHTINOLOGY

29

Chapter One The Russians Reclaim Bakhtin, 1975 to the Jubilee The Three Worlds of Mikhail The Post-Stalinist

Revival

The 1990s: The Russian

31 35

Bakhtin of the Russian

Bakhtin

Literary

Industry

Profession

Takes Stock

39 48

Chapter Two Retrospective: Domestic Reception during Bakhtin's Life Dostoevski Dostoevsky, Rabelais

73

I (1929)

75

I I (1963)

84 93

and Folk Culture

The 1975 Anthology: Posthumous:

The First

107

Essays on the Novel Manuscripts

and Final

Essays

120

P A R T T W O : L I T E R A T U R E FADES, P H I L O S O P H Y M O V E S T O T H E FORE ( R E W O R K I N G T H R E E P R O B L E M A T I C AREAS)

123

Chapter Three Polyphony, Dialogism, Dostoevsky Can Polyphony

Exist?

Unsympathetic

Case Studies

The

of Dialogue":

Torments

127 130

If So, Does It Apply? and Suspicious In Defense

Close Readings

of Bakhtin

134 149

Chapter Four Carnival: Open-ended Bodies and Anachronistic Histories Pro: Carnival

as Incarnation,

Eucharist,

Sacral

Myth

162 172

viii

Contra:

Demonization,

Neither

For nor Against:

CONTENTS

179

Stalinization Carnival

as Analytic

Device

195

Chapter Five BHCHaxo JJHMOCTL: "Outsideness" as the Ethical Dimension o f A r t (Bakhtin and the Aesthetic M o m e n t ) Belatedly

Finding

Outsideness:

Bakhtin

242

of Form

of Aesthetic

208 220

What It Is and Is Not

The Problem The Logic

a Place for the Very Early

207

Form and "Consummation

as a

Type of Dying"

250

Afterword One Year Later: The Prospects for Bakhtin's HHOHayKa [inonauka], Index

or "Science i n Some Other Way"

265 289

Acknowledgments

A PARADOXICAL tension exists between Bakhtin's celebration o f dialogic and carnival relations and his own modest, reluctant, self-effacing practice of them. H e wrote very few personal letters and disliked the genre (whereas the "monolithically monologic" Leo Tolstoy exchanged literally thousands o f letters and exposed himself at every turn); he avoided the telephone and was made acutely uncomfortable by formal interviews; he left no diary or written memoirs whereby others could piece together his life. He rarely spoke on his own initiative about his personal experiences. I n a group, apparently, he favored restraint and "single-voiced" behavior: the role o f featured speaker or o f bemused and tolerant listener. Even with close friends he remained on formal terms o f address. His style i n the classroom—if we are to credit reminiscences by his former students— was that o f an impassioned, authoritative lecturer before whom others sat silent and i n awe; i n seminars he remained very much the leader, never functioning as therapist i n the guise of pedagogue. Talking about feelings was not his strong suit. For Bakhtin, who prided himself on his philo­ sophical rigor, interrelations within the world o f the text came first; to revoice its ideas i n one's own intonation and to assume a responsible position toward those ideas was, i n his opinion, a sufficiently challenging and delicate task. The emotions and anxieties that fill our own immediate lives (lived i n what Bakhtin called the realm o f "Small Time") should be visited upon that text only with the greatest humility and self-discipline. Nor did Bakhtin make a fetish out o f that category o f academic dia­ logue we call "scholarly apparatus." The first major essay he prepared for print contained only the scantiest documentation. As he put the matter dismissively i n his opening paragraph—in what was, for a junior scholar, an astonishingly cavalier tone—excessive footnoting was unnecessary for the competent reader, and for the incompetent reader, useless. He never entered debates over his own work i n print, which, as this study shall demonstrate, routinely received harsh reviews. Physically crippled for the second half o f his life, the mature Bakhtin was increasingly immobile, i l l , and (voluntarily or no) reclusive. One woman from Rustanai (the region in Kazakhstan where the Bakhtins were exiled i n the early 1930s) does recall, however, a younger Mikhail Mikhailovich, pacing back and forth in the small office where he was employed as a bookkeeper, talking to himself. Clearly Bakhtin's most important dialogues were with ideas. He read in them before he felt compelled to share of them. Most often these ideas

X

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

were attached to specific personalities (living or deceased); on occasion, we must suppose, Bakhtin altered his own adamant opinions by submit­ ting them to others' judgment. But given the pace o f change around him—he lived through every major Soviet cataclysm—Bakhtin changed his mind and his topics with exceptional slowness. A t the end o f his life he returned, his lexicon scarcely altered, to the questions o f his youth. He remained stubbornly a man o f the book. A n d he valued, above all, two things that twentieth-century life (and certainly the postmodernist climate) has lost affection for: depth and duration. Both are required, he felt, i f we are to develop the ability or the desire to linger over something long enough to know i t ; this lingering was the first prerequisite for "aes­ thetic love." Most o f the time, as far as we can tell, Bakhtin lived i n the category he called "Great Time." These virtues o f Bakhtin's method could not be reflected i n the present book. As with all cults built up around reticent, private persons who have become valuable commodities, the Bakhtin industry has known its share o f gossip, turf wars, unsubstantiated rumor, dialogue i n bad faith, nos­ talgic fantasy, and willful misreadings. These "cultic" judgments, coexist­ ing alongside superior scholarly commentary produced under often ap­ palling conditions, are part o f the fabric o f this project. The image o f the man and his thought that results is o f course o f my own assembling, everywhere subjected to the pressure o f my paraphrase and selection o f materials. But the basic inspiration for this image was the Russian com­ munity o f scholars, and what I have taken to be its most fruitful lines o f thinking on Bakhtin up to the centenary Jubilee i n 1995. As such, this study owes a huge debt to a large number o f Russian colleagues, credited in a cumbersome apparatus. O f them, I owe special gratitude to Vitaly Makhlin, Konstantin Isupov, Sergei Averintsev, Oleg Osovsky, Natalia Bonetskaia, Mikhail Ryklin, Igor Solomadin, Mikhail Girshman, Nikolai Pan'kov, Vladimir Turbin, Alexei Lalo, Leonid Batkin, Liudmila Gogotishvili, Elena Volkova, Mikhail Gasparov—and, o f course, the three founding Bakhtinians to whom we are indebted for the initial pre­ servation o f Bakhtin's word: Sergei Bocharov, Vadim Kozhinov, and Georgii Gachev. I n this country my debts are also profound. The work o f Michael H o l quist and Katerina Clark, authors o f the pathbreaking 1984 biography Mikhail Bakhtin and pioneers i n the editing, translating, and explicating o f Bakhtin's texts i n English, remains foundational to the field. Clinton Gardner organized "Bakhtin sessions" i n connection with meetings o f his Transnational Vladimir Solovyov Society from 1993 to the present, which facilitated Western interaction with Russian Bakhtin scholarship at a crucial moment i n the interaction o f our two academic worlds. Several dozen Princeton students, graduate and undergraduate, startled me with

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xi

their insightful "outsiderly" perceptions about Bakhtin i n our seminars on his work, and I thank them for this experience. The intellectual sup­ port o f the following colleagues has been especially helpful: David Bethea, Natalia Reed, Thomas Pavel, Alexandar Mihailovic, Donald Fanger, Deborah Haynes, Gary Saul Morson, Robert Louis Jackson, Richard Taruskin, William Mills Todd, Amy Mandelker, Mikhail Epstein, Brian Poole, Anna Tavis, Clare Cavanagh, Randall Poole, Robin Feuer Miller, and Charles Townsend (to whose wisdom I owe the initial insight, i n the afterword, on Bakhtin and competitive sports). Thomas Cunningham provided the index and indispensable technical expertise. Princeton U n i ­ versity Press, and especially the intelligent midwifery o f Mary Murrell, Molan Chun Goldstein, and Rita Bernhard, made the final stages o f fix­ ing the text i n print a consummate pleasure. M y parents, husband, and larger family have graciously put up with this unendable project, absolv­ ing and sustaining its author for longer than any o f us wish to remember. A special dialogue o f the threshold was born within a highly irritable chronotope, which began with the line: "Bakhtin doubtless had some­ thing to say about that too, but I do not want to know i t . " This book is dedicated to the lifesaving notion that no matter how our efforts or words may weigh i n on the scales o f Bakhtin's Great (or even Small) Time, all is not yet said, done, lost.

Abbreviations

A&A

90

Bakhtinologiia

95

BsbI90

B sb I I 91

B sb I I I 97

DKKhy DKKh, DKKh,

DI

no. 1 (92); no. 1(2) (93); nos. 2-3 (93); etc

Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Edited by M i ­ chael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Translation and notes by Vadim Lia­ punov. Austin: University o f Texas Press, 1990. Contains "Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity" ( " A & H " ) . Bakhtinologiia: Issledovaniia, perevody, publikatsii [Bakhtinology: Research, transla­ tions, publications]. Edited by K. G. Isupov et al. Sankt-Peterburg: Aleteiia, 1995. Bakhtinskii sbornik I [Bakhtin anthology]. Edited by D . Kujundzic and V L . Makhlin. Moscow: L i t . Inst. i m . Gor'kogo (Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet [Moscow State Pedagogical University], or M G P U ) , 1990. Bakhtinskii sbornik I I : Bakhtin mezhdu Rossiei i zapadom. [Bakhtin anthology I I : Bakhtin between Russia and the West]. Moscow: "Kollektiv avtorov" [Authors' collective], 1991. Bakhtinskii sbornik I I I . Edited by K. G. Isupov, V. L . Makhlin and O. E. Osovskii. Moscow: Labirint, 1997. Dialog Karnaval Khronotop. General edi­ tor, N . A. Pan'kov. Vitebskii pedinstitut, Vitebsk, Belarus'. Maiden issue, 1992; last issue incorporated into this study: no. 2 (1996). The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Edited by Michael H o l ­ quist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University o f Texas Press, 1981. Contains the major essays in M . M . Bakhtin, Voprosy litera-

xiv

Est MMB i sov 89

Fil MMB i etika 92

MB: FP 90

MMB:

ENS 92

MMB MMB

ifil kul XX, 1 (91); i fil kul XX, 2 (91)

ABBREVIATIONS

tury i estetiki: Issledovaniia raznykh let [Questions o f literature and aesthetics: Research from various years]. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1975. Est etika M. M. Bakhtina i sovremennost* [The aesthetics o f M . M . Bakhtin and the present day]. Edited by A. F. Eremeev et al. Sixty theses prepared for the first Bakhtin lecture series, 16-19 October 1989, Saransk, by the Depart­ ment o f Aesthetics, Mordovia State U n i ­ versity, 1989. Filosofiia M. M. Bakhtina i etika sovremennogo mira [The philosophy o f M . M . Bakhtin and the ethics o f the contempo­ rary world]. Edited by R. I . Aleksandrova and O. V. Breikin. Saransk: IzdatePstvo Mordovskogo universiteta [Publishing House o f Mordovia State University], 1992. Mikhail Bakhtin: Filosofiia postupka [ M i k h ­ ail Bakhtin: The philosophy o f the act]. Edited by V. L . Makhlin. I n the Znanie series "Filosofiia i zhizn'," no. 6 (1990). M. M. Bakhtin: Esteticheskoe nasledie i sovremennost' [ M . M . Bakhtin: His aes­ thetic legacy and the present day]. Edi­ ted by A. F. Eremeev et at. 2 vols. Saransk: IzdatePstvo Mordovskogo uni­ versiteta, 1992. M. M. Bakhtin i filosofskaia kuVtura XX veka: Problemy Bakhtinologii [M. M. Bakhtin and philosophical culture o f the twentieth century: Problems o f Bakhtinology]. Edited by K. G. Isupov. 2 vols. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet imeni A. I . Gertsena; IzdatePstvo "Obrazovanie," Kul'turnyi fond SSSR, S.-Peterburgskoe otdelenie Bakhtinskogo obshchestva; S-Peterburgskii fond shkoly; Maloe gosudarstvennoe nauchnoproizvodstvennoe predpriiatie "Vnedrenie."

ABBREVIATIONS

MMB MMB

i gum mysh I (95); igum mysh I I (95)

MMB

i met 91

MMB

i PGN 94

MMBkak

filosof92

MMB:

PNN 92

MMB:

ss 5 (96)

XV

M. M. Bakhtin i gumanitarnoe myshlenie na poroge XXI veka [ M . M . Bakhtin and thinking in the humanities on the threshold o f the twenty-first century]. Edited by N . I . Voronina et al. 2 vols. Precis from the Third Saransk Inter­ national Bakhtin Readings, October 1995. M. M. Bakhtin i metodologiia sovremennogo gumanitarnogo znaniia [ M . M . Bakhtin and methodology in the humanities to­ day]. Theses o f talks by participants o f the second Saransk lecture series, 2 8 - 3 0 January 1991. IzdatePstvo Mordovskogo universiteta. Saransk, 1991. M. M. Bakhtin i perspektivy gumanitarnykh nauk [ M . M . Bakhtin and future per­ spectives for the humanities]. Materials from the Bakhtin conference held at the Russian State University o f the Human­ ities, 1-3 February 1993. Edited by V. L. Makhlin. 1994. Prilozhenie k zhurnalu Dialog Karnaval Khronotop. Seriia Sobytie v nauke. IzdateP N . A. Pan'kov. Vitebsk, Belarus', 1994. Publication real­ ized with the financial help o f the fund "Kul'turnaia initsiativa" in cooperation with the Saint Dmitry Orthodox Broth­ erhood, Vitebsk. M. M. Bakhtin kakfilosof[M. M . Bakhtin as philosopher]. Edited by L . A. Gogotishvili and P. S. Gurevich. Institut filosofii, Rossiiskaia Akademiia nauk. Moscow: Nauka, 1992. M. M. Bakhtin: Problemy nauchnogo naslediia [ M . M . Bakhtin: Problems o f the scholarly legacy]. Edited by S. S. Konkin et al. Saransk: IzdatePstvo Mordovskogo universiteta, 1992. M . M . Bakhtin: Sobranie sochinenii v 7-i tomakh [Collected works in seven vol­ umes], 1996-. Vol. 5 (Works o f the 1940s to the beginning o f the 1960s).

xvi

MMB

v S 89

MMB

v zerk 95

NLO

PDP

Prob p&ist

lit 73

Prob n nasi MMB 85

SpG

TPA

ABBREVIATIONS

Moscow: Russkie slovari, 1966. General editor, Sergei Bocharov. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin v Saranske: Ocherk zhizni i deiatePnosti [Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in Saransk: A sketch o f his life and activity]. Edited by G. B. Karpunov et al. IzdatePstvo Saratovskogo universiteta, 1989. M. M. Bakhtin v zerkale kritiki [ M . M . Bakhtin in the mirror o f criticism]. Edi­ ted by T. G. Yurchenko. Moscow: Labirint, 1995. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie [New literary review]. Edited by Irina Prokhorova. Moscow. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics [1963]. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota Press, 1984. Problemy poetiki i istorii literatury (sbornik statei) [Problems o f poetics and the his­ tory o f literature (a collection o f essays)]. Edited by S. S. Konkin et al. Festschrift for Bakhtin's seventy-fifth birthday. Sar­ ansk: Mordovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1973. Problemy nauchnogo naslediia M. M. Bakhtina [Problems o f M . M . Bakhtin's scholarly legacy]. Edited by S. S. Konkin et al. Festschrift for Bakhtin's ninetieth birthday. Saransk: Mordovskii gos­ udarstvennyi universitet, 1985. M . M . Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Austin: University o f Texas Press, 1986. M . M . Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Translation and notes by Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University o f Texas Press, 1993.

T H E FIRST H U N D R E D YEARS OF MIKHAIL

BAKHTIN

I N T R O D U C T I O N

East Meets West in the Ex-USSR

W H O WAS Mikhail Bakhtin? As the centennial year drew near, generated its promised mass o f material and then receded, this question appeared ever more complicated. Although the restoration o f lost or suppressed biographies has long been routine i n postcommunist Russia, the obsta­ cles to understanding Bakhtin's life are not the usual Soviet ones. This matter was addressed on the brink o f the Jubilee year, i n the December 1994 issue o f the journal Voprosy filosofii [Questions o f philosophy], by I . N . Fridman. Bakhtinian terminology has been fashionable now for twenty-five years, Fridman notes; i n fact, Bakhtin's name is already some­ where between a classic and a cliché. But no clear sense o f his intellectual place i n the history o f Russian thought has yet emerged. Similarly con­ fused cults had accompanied other post-Stalinist rehabilitations—of the great film theorist Eisenstein, for example, or the persecuted philosopher Aleksei Losev—but i n those cases, the reasons for the obscurity were more straightforward: savage times, tyranny, disobedient genius targeted by the state and duly punished. Once the tyrant dies, sooner or later the records are unsealed and the lives are filled i n . However shamefully de­ layed, eventually a slot is found for the thinker i n Russian cultural history. 1

But with Bakhtin, nothing o f that sort has happened. Although his life was indeed darkened by politics, we cannot blame political suppression for the lacunae i n his biography—nor would Bakhtin, who was com­ pletely alien to a victim mentality, ever wish us to do so. We are now free to fill his life i n , and yet, Fridman writes, "Bakhtin remains homeless and unattached. I t is unclear where he came from (the philosophical tradition that nourished h i m is yet to be clarified), where or how he lived (there is still no biography i n Russian), or even who, i n fact, he is (it turns out that Kanaev, Medvedev, and Voloshinov are also Bakhtin). Such a state o f affairs is most auspicious for the growth o f scholarly rumors." Fridman is 2

1

I . N . F r i d m a n , "Karnaval v o d i n o c h k u . " Voprosy filosofii, n o . 12 ( 1 9 9 4 ) : 7 9 - 8 9 . Q u o t a ­

tions are o n page 7 9 . 2

B y 1 9 9 4 , this was n o t strictly true. T h e authoritative 1 9 8 4 C l a r k - H o l q u i s t biography,

w h i c h h a d l o n g circulated a m o n g R u s s i a n scholars i n unofficial translation, was supple­ m e n t e d i n 1 9 9 3 by a d o c u m e n t a r y biography a u t h o r e d by t w o o f B a k h t i n ' s colleagues, a father-and-daughter team at the U n i v e r s i t y o f Saransk; see S. S. K o n k i n a n d L . S. K o n k i n a , Mikhail

Bakhtin

(Stranitsy

zfoizni

i

tvorchestva)

(Saransk:

Mordovskoe

knizhnoe

izdatel'stvo, 1 9 9 3 ) . T h e K o n k i n biography itself played into the legacy wars over B a k h t i n ; see chapter 1 o f the present study, pages 5 8 - 5 9 .

4

INTRODUCTION

certainly correct. The appeal o f a "homeless and unattached Bakhtin," unfinalized i n the spirit o f the novels he so loved, a thinker who appears not to have needed the secure points o f reference that the rest o f us require, has given rise on Russian soil to some paradoxical portraits. T w o will suffice. Their composite features will become leitmotifs i n the chap­ ters that follow. The first is by Vitaly Makhlin, professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University, host o f the 1995 International Centennial Conference, and a central figure in the Bakhtin industry o f the capital. The essay, which appeared in 1992 in an anthology entitled M. M. Bakhtin as Philosopher published by the Institute o f Philosophy o f the Russian Academy o f Sci­ ences, deals with Bakhtin's legacy i n the context o f Western postmodern­ ism. Makhlin asks how we might explain the "grotesquely anachronistic 'influence' o f Bakhtin's thought, which ripened at the beginning o f the century, i n the West o f the postmodernist epoch." The contours o f his philosophy coincide with no major twentieth-century movement. Bakh­ tin was—and Makhlin enumerates—a non-Marxist, non-Formalist, nonFreudian, non-Structuralist, nonexistentialist, noncollectivist, nonutopian, nontheologian; " i n a word, a non-modernist." Makhlin then surmises that Bakhtin's popularity today owes something to the fact that modern­ ism, with its hierarchical and universalizing impulses, was at base monologic, whereas the postmodern temperament finds something congenial in Bakhtin's insistence on noncoincidence, incompatibility, and otherness \irugost\ But Makhlin admits that the bakhtinskii boom o f the 1980s and 1990s must have been motivated by more than the appeal o f frag­ mentation and centrifugal energy, by then a commonplace. For Bakhtin is no postmodernist either. I n fact, rather the contrary is true. As Makhlin concludes i n his later and lengthier review essay "Bakhtin and the West" in Voprosy filosofii (1993), critics either get Bakhtin wrong from the start by equating the carnival impulse with political resistance, ressentiment, or ethical relativism (all o f them, i n Makhlin's view, "alternative monologisms"); or else they find, to their dismay, that the inner contradictions and unsatisfying aspects o f "postmodernist theory" are most perfecdy highlighted when we attempt to integrate Bakhtinian ideas into them or to explicate Bakhtin through them. The second portrait—by far the more eccentric—is also constructed out o f what Bakhtin is not. Its author, the culturologist and literary histo­ rian Georgii Gachev, is one o f the most colorful senior Bakhtin hands i n 3

4

3

V . L . M a k h l i n , "Nasledie M . M . B a k h t i n a v kontekste z a p a d n o g o p o s t m o d e r n i z m a , " i n

MMB 4

kak

filosof92,

2 0 6 - 2 0 , esp. 2 0 6 , 2 0 9 - 1 0 ,

219.

V . L . M a k h l i n , " B a k h t i n i Z a p a d (opyt o b z o r n o i orientatsii)," Voprosy filosofii, n o . 3

( 1 9 9 3 ) : 1 3 4 - 5 0 , esp.

135-37.

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H E EX-USSR

5

the capital. A t the Bakhtin panel o f an international conference on Rus­ sian philosophy held in Moscow i n March 1993, he delighted and ap­ palled the audience with a spirited refutation o f almost all the papers (Russian as well as foreign) that had been delivered on the subject o f the friend o f his youth, Mikhail Mikhailovich. There is altogether too much sober scholarly talk about who Bakhtin is or what he could do, Gachev insisted. Better that we concentrate on what he could not do, on those aspects o f reality that his particular angle o f vision walled out. Bakhtin had no feeling for, nor knowledge of, the natural world; no living Eros (Gachev is among those disciples convinced that Bakhtin never consum­ mated his marriage); no children; no dogs (only cats, Gachev obscurely remarked, "mystical and untrustworthy"); no daylight. "They sat around the table all night and smoked and talked, smoked and talked." I n the process, Bakhtin destroyed the vertical dimension; everything was subli­ mated and spread out flat along a loving, horizontal " I - t h o u " axis where the ever present possibility o f benevolent communication among equals supplanted—or at least kept at bay—the anxieties that would later define the bleaker landscapes o f Western existentialism. I n place o f God, Bakh­ tin deified the everyday interlocutor. A creature made neither for prayer nor for parenting, he reigned i n a world o f philosophical conversations carried out over endless tea and cigarettes i n small rooms i n the dead o f night. Bakhtin was a mezhdusoboinik (a "just-between-you-and-me-nik"). For him, the intimate voice and the chamber space was all. Gachev im­ plied that such thinkers, or talkers, can be the source o f brilliant isolated insights about literature and much spiritual uplift for their » audiences— but they cannot be taught i n school, cannot themselves form "schools," and are rarely forthcoming with a reliable methodology or an easily appli­ cable theory. Such academic and institutional matters, sooner or later, require discipline, organization, verification procedures, and some con­ straining hierarchies. To be sure, negative theology o f this sort (defining a revered object by what it is not so as to respect its power or impenetrability) has a place in all mystifications and cults. As regards his own person, Bakhtin contrib­ uted to this state o f affairs. He rarely spoke o f himself and kept most contemporary schools o f thought at a bemused distance; his tendency was to look at the world, discern two unacceptable poles functioning in it, and then posit an idea or method that would mediate or dissolve the opposition. He was always careful, however, to distinguish between the 5

5

T r a n s n a t i o n a l Institute E a s t - W e s t C o n f e r e n c e o n " R u s s i a n P h i l o s o p h y a n d the Russia o f

T o d a y , " M o s c o w , 1 5 - 1 9 M a r c h 1 9 9 3 , c o s p o n s o r e d by the Institute o f P h i l o s o p h y o f the R u s s i a n A c a d e m y o f Sciences and the H u m a n i t i e s R e s e a r c h C e n t e r ( P U T ' ) i n M o s c o w ; panel o n B a k h t i n , 16 M a r c h 1 9 9 3 .

6

INTRODUCTION

strength and importance o f an idea, its internal coherence and ability to influence other ideas productively, and what he considered the much smaller importance o f his own attitude toward i t (an exemplary instance being his attitude toward Freud). According to Sergei Bocharov, a close friend and disciple, Bakhtin considered himself neither a religious thinker nor a philosopher i n the professional sense ( " I was carried away by the Marburg school," Bakhtin remarked; "that says i t all."). I n Bakhtin's view, philosophy was a strict science—and much o f what passed for Rus­ sian philosophy was, i n his opinion, mere "thought mongering" [svobodnoe myslitePstvo]. As this study will show, however, philosophizing, i n the loose interdisciplinary sense, is precisely what many o f Bakhtin's most ardent followers consider his most valuable contribution to scholarship. The local task o f water-tight literary theory or a satisfying!/ whole expli­ cation o f artistic texts and authors had never been Bakhtin's primary con­ cern. He tended, rather, to invoke literature as illustration o f his princi­ ples or strategies for living and thinking. 6

7

During an interview held i n the spring o f 1973, the Mayakovsky scholar Viktor Duvakin asked the aged Bakhtin: "So [ i n the 1920s] you were more o f a philosopher than a philologist?" "More o f a philosopher," Bakhtin answered promptly. " A n d such have I remained until the present day. I am a philosopher. A thinker." By Bakhtin's own testimony, then, his certified profession (philology, the academic field o f linguistics and 8

6

A c c o r d i n g to oral testimony at the e n d o f his life (see n . 8 ) , B a k h t i n a d m i r e d F r e u d as a

great innovator, an "otkryvatel' " or one w h o o p e n e d up n e w w o r l d s , w h o s e w o r k unfor­ tunately h a d "no serious c o n t i n u a t i o n o n R u s s i a n soil"; but w h e n p u s h e d toward a personal assessment, B a k h t i n admitted that w i t h his K a n t i a n orientation he f o u n d the F r e u d i a n ap­ p r o a c h "alien to h i m . " " [ F r e u d ] d i d n o t exercise a direct, u n m e d i a t e d influence o n m e , " B a k h t i n r e m a r k e d . " B u t all the same, there was a great deal that was n o t direct, that was rather m o r e general; like every discovery o f s o m e t h i n g new, even t h o u g h one is n o t directly studying that n e w t h i n g , all the same it has i n s o m e w a y b r o a d e n e d the w o r l d , e n r i c h e d m e w i t h s o m e t h i n g . " " R a z g o v o r y s B a k h t i n y m [ V a g i n o v i d r u g i e ] , " Chelovek,

no. 4

(1994):

188-89. 7

See the portrait i n S. G . B o c h a r o v , " O b o d n o m razgovore i v o k r u g n e g o " [ A b o u t a n d

a r o u n d a certain c o n v e r s a t i o n ] , NLO, The

essay has appeared i n E n g l i s h ,

n o 2 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 7 0 - 8 9 . Q u o t e d material is o n page 8 1 . abridged a n d w i t h s o m e i m p r é c i s i o n s ,

as Sergey

B o c h a r o v , " C o n v e r s a t i o n s w i t h B a k h t i n , " trans. S t e p h e n B l a c k w e l l a n d V a d i m L i a p u n o v , PMLA

1 0 5 , no. 5 (October 1994): 1 0 0 9 - 2 4 .

T h e r e the t e r m svobodnoe

myslitcVstvo

is

rendered "unconstrained philosophizing" ( 1 0 1 9 ) . 8

O v e r a l l , D u v a k i n taped eighteen h o u r s o f conversations a n d reminiscences w i t h B a k h t i n

i n February a n d M a r c h 1 9 7 3 . Selections f r o m the transcript o f these tapes have been seri­ alized i n the j o u r n a l Chelovek,

1 9 9 3 - 9 5 , a n d were p u b l i s h e d i n b o o k f o r m i n 1 9 9 6 (see c h .

1, n n . 1, 2 ) . F o r the discussion referred to above, see " R a z g o v o r y s B a l d i t i n y m : S e m ' i a i g o d y u c h e n i i a " [ C o n v e r s a t i o n s w i t h B a k h t i n : F a m i l y a n d student y e a r s ] , Chelovek, ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 1 3 6 - 5 2 , esp. 1 5 2 .

no. 4

EAST MEETS WEST I N T H E

EX-USSR

7

literary scholarship) served him somewhat as a refuge and cover. He never disowned his work on Dostoevsky or Rabelais. But i n the early 1960s he remarked to Sergei Bocharov ("with a grimace," Bocharov tells us) that much o f what he had written on Dostoevsky remained "mere literary criticism . . . and there must be a way out to other worlds." What might those worlds have been toward which Bakhtin was striving? The present study will suggest some possible answers to that question, as i t examines the shifting boundaries and paradoxes i n Bakhtin's reconstituted Russian image now that he has passed his hundredth year. This project was prompted by several factors. O n a world scale, o f course, there was the collapse o f the Soviet U n i o n and the concomitant explosion o f enthusiasm among Russian intellectuals for reclaiming, recomplicating, and "de-ideologizing" their recent cultural heritage. There was also the temptation to sum up the work o f a world-class thinker during his centenary Jubilee; the Russian Bakhtin boom generated dozens o f lecture series, monographs, pathbreaking essays, conference volumes, and specialized periodicals, all still virtually untranslated. A n d then there was my private conviction, after twenty years' work with these texts, that the person and philosophy o f Mikhail Bakhtin could serve as an excellent test case and foil for Russia's "postcommunist postmodern­ ism"—a postmodernism that is now being realized and evaluated along lines quite different from those followed by late-twentieth-century theo­ ries o f culture in the West. Before we embark on Bakhtin, however, it might be helpful to the nonspecialist i f this reclamation project were placed i n some context and its major difficulties mapped out, for the political and literary culture that had shaped Bakhtin throughout his creative life is no longer intact. By the mid-1990s the unspoken codes that had conditioned Bakhtin's genres o f self-expression had changed beyond recognition. The end o f Soviet Communism was only the most recent parameter. For six centu­ ries the ideal o f centralized control had officially held sway i n Russia (an ideal indifferently implemented i n some eras and i n others with vicious efficiency); Russia's cultural life was then freed o f state supervision almost overnight. The nation became legally pluralist. Writers, philosophers, and religious thinkers, banned or crippled under Soviet rule, were revived enthusiastically and then risked becoming illegible i n the space o f several years. Such creative diversity and attenuated memory was exhilarating— but i t was accompanied by an understandable anxiety. The new freedom, although i t did serve to open Russia up, also created generation and liter­ acy gaps more profound than at any time i n modern Russian history— 9

9

B o c h a r o v , " O b o d n o m razgovore i v o k r u g n e g o , " 7 2 n . 7.

8

INTRODUCTION

except, perhaps, during the reforming decades o f Peter the Great. Amer­ ica has been a poor reader o f this shift. Raised on Cold War slogans, many assumed that Communism had been merely an obstacle, not a worldview with its own languages, rationales, rewards, and economies. Once the obstacle o f Communism had fallen away (or so many thought), Russian culture would begin to see clearly, get back on our track, and endorse values that made sense to us. That this convergence is not likely to occur rapidly and easily—if at all—had become clear by the mid-1990s. The present study is designed as a contribution to that sobering discovery. For i t is my conviction that Russian twentieth-century thinkers, and especially those o f Bakhtin's stat­ ure who have been widely and successfully translated, stand to lose a great deal i f detached wholly from their original contexts. The focus o f this book, then, is Bakhtin's reception by his own culture—undertaken by an outsider to that culture. M y outsideness brings both losses and benefits. Inevitably a non-Russian will assess evidence and assign value differently than natives and eyewitnesses. Russians researching their own past, for example, have been powerfully tempted to see residents o f that prior oppressive regime as either martyrs or collaborators. Bakhtin was neither. He was a survivor. A n d i n order to survive, both morally and physically (that is, i n order to avoid causing harm to others and avoid sacrificing himself to no purpose), he had mastered certain protective skills and evasive tactics. I t is unlikely that students o f Bakhtin's life and work will ever know definitively to what extent these survivor skills de­ formed, or informed, his major ideas and texts. But interested parties, both East and West, should make an effort not to forget the pressures— and at times the exaltations—of working for one's whole life within such a language environment. Here, then, are the major "classical" features o f that rapidly changing environment. For most o f Russian culture (from the tenth through the twentieth century), the printed word was viewed as sacred, and i t was, i n varying degrees, unfree. To outwit the unfree authoritarian word, nu­ merous strategies were developed i n the nineteenth century—among them "Aesopian language," a hermeneutic device perfected by Russia's radical intelligentsia. Designed to work under combat conditions, Aesopianism assumes that the world is allegory, that no one speaks or writes straight, and that every officially public or published text (by definition, censored) has a "more honest," multilayered, hidden subtext that only insiders can decode. Ever since the birth o f modern Russian literature i n the eighteenth century, Russia's greatest writers have been alert to the dangers o f Aesopian thinking and at the same time fatally drawn to in­ dulge i n it. I n the words o f two prominent American students o f Russian contemporary culture, Russian literary language was "the antithesis o f

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H E EX-USSR

9

'plain-speak'; instead, i t was a kind o f culturally institutionalized and rev­ ered 'oblique-speak.'" Aesopian language and the prerequisites for reading it correctly would be mere academic chatter, a glass-bead game, were it not that literature and criticism has always filled a wider slot in Russian culture than has its equivalent discipline i n the United States. I n successive Russian empires, omnipresent censorship o f real-world events tended to make literature the best refuge o f honest ideas—and for at least the last 150 years, pro­ gressive Russian readers were trained to see nonfictional referents be­ neath every fictional surface. This was a very mixed blessing. N o t only were writers taken as prophets (and often proved to be very poor ones), but those who interpreted literary art—the critics—assigned themselves an altogether inflated task. The "nurturing critic" became a mainstay and lodestar o f Russian nineteenth-century intellectual life. As one such critic put the case confidently i n 1870: " A l l our artists would wander off along various paths, were it not for the critic-journalists who show them the way. Who guided our novelists—Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Goncharov . . .? They were guided by Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev [contem­ porary radical or nihilist critics]. Novelists merely collect the firewood and stoke the engine o f life, but the critic-journalist is the driver." 10

11

12

This situation might appear to mimic the politically correct American campuses o f the 1990s, except for one thing. Russian literary critics, as a rule, have not been seen as residents o f a self-contained academic caste on the margins o f society, whose operating procedures are parodied by outsiders from the "real world" to the amusement (and disdain) o f the general public. O n the contrary, Russian literature was the real world, and 10

N a n c y C o n d e e a n d V l a d i m i r Padunov, "Pair-a-dice L o s t : T h e Socialist G a m b l e , M a r k e t

D e t e r m i n i s m , a n d C o m p u l s o r y P o s t m o d e r n i s m , " paper delivered at the third meeting o f the W o r k i n g G r o u p o n C o n t e m p o r a r y R u s s i a n C u l t u r e , M o s c o w , 1 5 - 1 9 J u n e 1 9 9 2 . 11

T h e best discussion o f this p h e n o m e n o n remains D o n a l d F a n g e r , " C o n f l i c t i n g I m p e r a ­

tives in the M o d e l o f the R u s s i a n Writer: T h e C a s e o f T e r t z / S i n y a v s k y , " in Gary Saul M o r s o n , e d . , Literature

and History:

Theoretical

Problems

ford: Stanford U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 6 ) , 1 1 1 - 2 4 .

and Russian

Case Studies (Stan­

F a n g e r opens w i t h several lapidary ut­

terances by R u s s i a n writers a n d bureaucrats o n the status o f the w o r d , i n c l u d i n g the nine­ teenth-century M i n i s t e r o f P u b l i c E d u c a t i o n U v a r o v ( " A m o n g the rights o f the Russian subject, the right to address the public i n w r i t i n g is not i n c l u d e d " ) ; T r o t s k y ("Reality began to live a s e c o n d life i n R u s s i a , in both the realistic novel a n d c o m e d y " ) ; a n d Pasternak ( " A b o o k is a squarish c h u n k o f hot, s m o k i n g c o n s c i e n c e — a n d n o t h i n g else!")

(111-12).

" R u s s i a n writers have always w o r k e d w i t h relation to a large i m p e r a t i v e — c o g n i t i v e , social, and

ethical," F a n g e r remarks. " W h e t h e r they have p r o c l a i m e d , accepted, resisted or re­

j e c t e d it, a considerable part o f the m e a n i n g a n d importance o f their w r i t i n g has derived directly from that relation" ( 1 1 3 ) . 12

N i k o l a i Shelgunov, " D v o e d u s h i e esteticheskogo konservatizma" [ T h e two-facedness o f

aesthetic conservatism], i n Delo, n o . 10 ( O c t o b e r 1 8 7 0 ) , cited i n C h a r l e s M o s e r , Esthetics as Nightmare

( P r i n c e t o n , N . J . : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 9 ) , 2 9 .

10

INTRODUCTION

Russian readers were raised to expect that literary criticism would provide the key to it. Critics assumed that their work would have important soci­ etal repercussions. When Maxim Gorky laid down the Socialist-Realist "rules" for creative literature i n the Stalinist 1930s, and when Mikhail Bakhtin, then i n political exile i n Kazakhstan, wrote hundreds o f pages that refuted those rules by invoking as exemplary different genres and different authors, both men were acting wholly within the tradition o f Russian literary culture. For unlike America i n much o f its modern phase, literary accomplishment and criticism i n Russia has mattered. You could get arrested and killed for i t ; thus educated society revered its poets and considered literary progress to be a bellwether o f its own. Such a fate for literary artists and critics has long proved both discom­ fiting and dazzling to free-world watchers o f Russian culture. As David Remnick described this dilemma: "None [ o f the Western writers who visited Russia during the Communist period] were foolish enough, o f course, to want to trade places with their mythic counterparts, but there invariably came a moment when a Western writer found himself wonder­ ing, painfully, why democracy necessarily meant a marginal place for se­ rious writing and totalitarianism an impossibly exalted one." I t was this special status granted to writing and to writers that lost its official sup­ port—and its officially sanctioned torment—in the Russian Press Law o f August 1990. That law abolished Glavlit, the censorship agency whose approval stamp had to be present on everything with printed words on i t ; o f equal importance, the statute legalized the whole idea o f "autonomous publishing." Before 1990 a publishing venture or periodical i n Russia had to be an "organ" o f some other official body: the Writer's U n i o n , a gov­ ernment ministry, an academic institution, the Communist Party. After that date, i t become legally possible to register officially as independent, a move that would have been an absolute oxymoron under the old, that is, the Communist, regime. I n place o f the old polarity—in which the nau­ seating bland mush o f official documents was answered by the often hys­ terical righteousness o f underground dissident prose—one could hear the beginnings o f a shared, neutral civic language. Thus Aesopian language began to have a rival i n the public sphere, and lawful public discourse began to emerge that, for the first time i n recorded Russian history, did not require the prior assumption o f a lie. These developments were enor­ mously healthy for the growth o f civic consciousness. But so novel an attitude toward the printed word had its inevitably dislocating effects. 13

14

1 3

D a v i d R e m n i c k , " E x i t the Saints" [ L e t t e r f r o m M o s c o w ] , New

Yorker,

18 July 1 9 9 4 ,

5 0 - 6 0 , esp. 5 0 . 1 4

F o r this story see Jamey G a m b r e l l , " M o s c o w : T h e F r o n t P a g e , " i n The New

Review

of Books, 8 O c t o b e r 1 9 9 2 ,

56-62.

York

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H E EX-USSR

11

Held captive, the word was believed to contain the truth. Once freed, i t was supposed to work miracles. Instead o f this miracle, language began to devolve into the same loose and indifferent thing that we i n the West have long known the commercially public word to be. The end o f state censorship brought other paradigm shifts. There was the unhappy loss to literature o f all those disciplines that, i n more oppres­ sive times, had invaded fiction because they had not been free to consti­ tute themselves as professionally autonomous fields o f study. " I n Russia, criticism always played the role o f an absent philosophy, sociology, culturology," one contemporary critic remarked, i n a forum entitled "Critics on Criticism" that appeared i n Voprosy litemtury at the end o f 1996. " I t was higher than ideology, higher than the censorship, because i t dealt with great literature. I n Russia, criticism is a reflex toward life, not to­ ward the text. But life is too ambivalent, huge, diverse, and thus criticism deals with literature as a mediated form o f life's mode o f existence. The way a physicist needs an ideal gas for theoretical constructs." Freedom put an end to literature as the ideal laboratory science. When philosophy, theology, economics, politics returned to their rightful homes—that is, when Russians gained the right to talk openly o f God, idealism, real-life murderers and state swindlers—there was less need to invoke the names o f such literary heroes (or antiheroes) as Raskolnikov, Chichikov, a Rus­ sian Lady Macbeth. What, many wondered, would be left to literature, except the naked, free, and now devalued word? 15

Then there was the oft-heard, more practical complaint from profes­ sionals that "the literary process had disappeared." By this people meant that all sense o f proper sequence or organic evolution i n the production o f literature had died out. A n d indeed, with the collapse o f government controls and the return o f Russian émigré literature to its homeland, ev­ erything appeared at once: the Gospels, the Talmud, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, the Mar­ quis de Sade. Literary texts, stripped o f their original contexts and genesis, were crammed into a sort o f supersaturated space. I n a culture accustomed to a great deal o f regimentation from above and a quasireligious mission attached to literature from below, this overload tempo­ rarily paralyzed writers and disoriented their readers. I t resembled Bakhtinian carnival—but with this difference: there was no promise o f any reimposition o f the hierarchy, nothing stable i n the background that might reassert traditional order and thus guarantee participants the recur­ ring pleasure o f violating it. As one young hopeful put i t to me: H o w can the ordinary writer hope to compete "with Christ crawling out the win1 5

" K r i t i k i o k r i t i k e , " i n Voprosy litemtury

T h e critic is D m i t r i i Bykov.

(November-December

1 9 9 6 ) : 3 - 5 7 , esp. 4 0 .

12

INTRODUCTION

dow and Lolita walking i n the door?" Clearly the time and need for Aesopian language had passed. But passed on to what? This study will sample Bakhtin's role i n this dizzying shift from cen­ tripetal Marxism-Leninism to the centrifugal currents o f neo-humanism, neo-nationalism, and postmodernism. The émigré literary critic Mikhail Epstein provided early guidelines for understanding the transition i n his 1991 essay entided "After the Future: O n the New Consciousness in Literature." I n previous eras, Epstein notes, literature—both official and unofficial—tended to be distributed i n categories o f pro- and anti-, "our own" versus "outsiders" [svoi versus chuzhoi]. After the collapse o f Com­ munism, however, things were suddenly no longer anti- but simply post-. Without the certainty o f a single totalizing standard that one could either endorse or resist, i t became much more difficult to get one's bearings. Epstein sketches a terrain where, once the old politicized binaries began to soften, Bakhtin's dispersive, centrifugal values, his carnival grotesque, his delight i n authors who design their heroes to resist and outgrow their worlds, would have manifest relevance and appeal. 16

Epstein suggests that during those protracted years o f collapse the great Hegelian plot (plot i n all senses o f the word) was thoroughly dis­ credited i n his homeland. The linear trajectory that Communism fixed for a culture or for a life—cradle-to-grave welfare, cradle-to-grave slogans, all o f which sealed up the present and handed it over to a radiant fu­ ture—went down i n defeat, and with i t , the very idea o f epic plots and heroic leaps into tomorrow. Progressive sequence itself had become sus­ pect, wherever i t might be found. The immediate result was a flurry o f new literary movements and sensitivities that favored modesty, fragmen­ tation, interruption, residue, parts o f things rather than purported wholes: phenomenalism, conceptualism, the rear- as opposed to the avant-garde, necro-realism, the metaphysics o f garbage. This overtly postmodernist agenda glorified transitoriness and deadpan parody; i t ad­ vocated a special style o f writing whose aim, Epstein writes, was "not to proclaim but to stutter." Although a certain minimal metonymy might keep objects i n a holding pattern, "there is no center i n the city o f the text, . . . i t consists entirely o f outskirts." As he develops this idea further: "Even belonging to a definite genre, like having a set number o f pages, could be perceived as the guard towers o f an aesthetic Gulag, where the prisoners are to be distributed by zones and strut about with numbers on their backs. Smashed into hundreds o f dully glimmering prisms, the spec-

16

M i k h a i l E p s t e i n , "After the F u t u r e : O n the N e w C o n s c i o u s n e s s i n L i t e r a t u r e , " i n South

Atlantic

Quarterly

9 0 , n o . 2 ( S p r i n g 1 9 9 1 ) : 4 0 9 - 4 4 . Q u o t e d material is o n pages 4 3 4 a n d

4 3 6 . I n this article E p s t e i n also notes the "supersaturation o f literary space" a n d the disap­ pearance o f the literary process m e n t i o n e d above.

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H EEX-USSR

13

ter o f postcommunism wanders over the most recent prose: the backbone o f history—the plot—has been broken up into a multitude o f vertebrae . . . The century is ending. I n place o f a hard-pawed and relentless preda­ tor, there are tender bugs that flash i n different directions. . ." The search i n Russia for alternative literary models took place, then, against an almost Kafkaesque background o f radical experimentation and decay. I n its initial stage, verbal messages collapsed into visual ones; the literary market was flooded with how-to manuals, pornographic litera­ ture, videos, comic books. Powerful "postmodernist" forces seemed to be de-verbalizing culture, making i t blunt, immediate, non-contempla­ tive, non-Aesopian. But equally powerful forces i n Russian culture con­ tinued to work against a full embrace o f the postmodernist spirit. (As another émigré scholar, Dmitry Khanin, has noted with some irritation, the postmodernist mood o f "jovial pessimism" and "ahistorical, inconsis­ tent, and generally confounding claims about history lying i n ruins" at times appeared brazenly to take credit for the fact "that the Berlin Wall actually is in ruins") " O f course, the interval o f play did its deed," the critic Irina Rodnianskaia acknowledged i n the journal Novy mir i n 1993. " I t did a good job o f emancipating authors who had become overly se­ rious. . . . [But] how they broke their spears over the so-called instructive principle o f Russian literature! H o w many head-spinning turns were ac­ complished . . . to make the Russian classics, which taught 'truth' rather than 'play,' into the guilty parties i n all our historical misfortunes!" While welcoming the new pluralism, Rodnianskaia warned that the turn away from the "instructional" classics could give rise to graver dangers: cults, totalitarian sects, facile national myths, the loss o f the concrete human being as a measure for art, flight into an irresponsible, unauthored, "abstract-utopian space." 17

18

By 1996 "the postmodern condition" had lost its shock value and be­ come itself a platitude. For many commentators, focus had shifted to the reasons that Russian critics found i t difficult to take this noisy interna­ tional phenomenon with the sustained seriousness o f Western theorists. Surveys and critical samplings o f the major thinkers (French, German, American) had become routine i n the Russian press but were performed 1 7

D m i t r y K h a n i n (a M o s c o w - t r a i n e d aesthetician, later at C o l g a t e U n i v e r s i t y ) , " T h e

P o s t m o d e r n P o s t u r e , " i n Philosophy and Literature

14 ( 1 9 9 0 ) : 2 3 9 - 4 7 , esp. 2 4 1 , 2 4 0 . F o r

a bewildered discourse o n the c o n t i n u e d appeal o f Marxist w o r l d v i e w s i n the W e s t , see also K h a n i n ' s later piece, " W i l l Aesthetics B e the L a s t S t r o n g h o l d o f M a r x i s m ? " Philosophy Literature 1 8

and

16 ( 1 9 9 2 ) : 2 6 6 - 7 8 .

I r i n a R o d n i a n s k a i a , "Plaster W i n d : O n P h i l o s o p h i c a l I n t o x i c a t i o n i n C u r r e n t L e t t e r s , "

i n " W h a t A i l s R u s s i a n L e t t e r s T o d a y ? " Russian

Studies

in Literature

(Summer 1995):

5-

4 4 , esp. 8 - 9 , 2 3 - 2 4 (originally appeared as " G i p s o v y i veter" i n Novyi mir 12 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 2 1 5 31 [translation adjusted]).

14

INTRODUCTION

somewhat dryly, without excitement. One senior scholar, Nikolai A n astasiev, summed up the Russian mainstream position in an issue o f 19

Voprosy litemtury

(Summer 1996) i n the following way:

Postmodernism, briefly put, is a revolt against any hierarchy a war of the outskirts against a center which should not exist, a war of freedom against authority, of the act against metaphysics, of practical experience against any form of knowledge that strives to generalize that experience in any way. . . . in sum, if postmodernism affirms anything, it affirms absolute freedom and an equivalent boundless toleration, for the sake of which it is willing to sacri­ fice even itself. This is splendid, and for us—people raised under a total­ itarian regime, for us, captives for so many years to every sort of ideological cliché, . . . for us, such a position should be especially close and compatible. But here an extremely unpleasant circumstance presents itself. The irre­ proachable pluralists and liberals unexpectedly reveal a hidden, yet still mani­ fest tendency toward aggression and even toward that same intellectual ter­ ror against which they direct all their inspired battle. This is noticeable even in the democratic West [references follow to Paul de Man and Lyotard] . . . The quest of postmodernism is a quest for failure.

20

Mikhail Epstein has taken the case further. I t was no coincidence, he argues, that i n Russia a postmodernist fad followed so hard upon the demise o f communism. The two ideologies have much i n common. Both celebrate "hyperreality"—similacra behind which there is no auton­ omous reality—and perpetuate themselves through citation, eclectic bor­ rowing, cultural recycling, oxymorons, and (when a cutting edge is re­ quired) violent and absolute negation o f all other possible positions. I n both, the line between elite and popular culture is erased Both are sus­ picious o f any claims to free will or self-determination on the part o f the individual subject. I n Epstein's view, the only major difference between the postmodernist spirit and bombastic, overripe Soviet ideology is that the latter did not play or laugh (it is here, o f course, that Bakhtin's carni­ val corrective proves so subversive). "Communism," Epstein writes, "is postmodernism with a modernist face that still wears the expression o f ominous seriousness. . . . I n the 1970s and 1980s, when intellectuals in 21

1 9

See, for example, V . K u r i t s y n , " K sitsuatsii p o s t m o d e r n i z m a , " i n NLO,

197-23.

n o . 11 ( 1 9 9 5 ) :

K u r i t s y n isolates four characteristics o f postmodernism: replacement o f vertical

hierarchies by the h o r i z o n t a l a n d a rejection o f linearity a n d binary oppositions; the "vir­ t u a l l y " o f the w o r l d a n d "doubled presence"; "otherwiseness," the interface a n d intertextuality; a n d attention to context, marginal practices a n d genres, a n d crises o f authorship. 2 0

N . Anastasiev, " ' U slov dolgoe e k h o , ' " Voprosy litemtury

(July-August 1996):

3-30.

Q u o t e d material is o n pages 6 - 7 ; the final t w o sentences are o n page 3 0 . 2 1

Mikhail

Epstein, "Postmodernism,

C o m m u n i s m , and S o t s - A r t , " i n M a r i n a

N a n c y C o n d e e , a n d E v g e n y D o b r e n k o , eds., Endquote: Soviet Literature

Sots-Art

and

the Dilemma

( E v a n s t o n , 111.: N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y Press, f o r t h c o m i n g ) .

Balina, of Post-

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H EEX-USSR

15

the West were still deadly serious i n their left or right sympathies/antipa­ thies, when they still defended the truth o f their modernist heritage and fought for various projects for the rational reshaping o f the world, i n Russia a postmodern réévaluation o f all values, a conceptualist game with all known ideological and cultural codes, was already i n full swing." Can it surprise us that our novelty strikes Russian intellectuals today as impos­ sibly familiar and old? I n the realm o f cultural criticism, post-Soviet Russian intellectuals are anything but naive. They have benefited from the invigorating effects o f delayed reception and ideological "backwardness." I n a situation that re­ calls the imperial, cosmopolitan Russian eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when upper-class Russians read and spoke every European lan­ guage because no one yet translated them, the highly educated urban elite i n Russia today finds perfectly natural a cynicism toward all received dogma that the American scholarly community can only dimly appreci­ ate. A n d thus the newest ideas o f the past several decades, which have generated true believers i n the countries o f their origin, are released into Russian academic discourse already accompanied by their own parodies and trenchant critiques. The best o f Russia's "postcommunist literary theorists" combine Structuralism, post-Structuralist skepticism and "play," a rich store o f resurrected spiritual values, and an impeccable knowledge o f the canon; i n addition, they are still able to draw on the familiar privilege o f cultural leadership that Russian readers have long granted, almost by reflex, to their critics. 22

2 2

T h e d e b u n k i n g phase set i n early. " T h e w o r d ' p o s t m o d e r n i s m ' remarkably quickly lost

its seductive g l i m m e r o f originality i n o u r c r i t i c i s m , " O . V . V a i n s h t e i n r e m a r k e d d u r i n g a 1 9 9 3 roundtable o n " P o s t m o d e r n i s m a n d C u l t u r e . " " U n d e r the sign o f p o s t m o d e r n i s m n o t only c a n one p u t o n performances o r write poetry but also c o o k pancakes, w e a r extrava­ gant outfits, m a k e love a n d quarrel, a n d recruit as one's predecessor any author one likes from the p a n t h e o n o f w o r l d culture: the M a r q u i s de Sade, Sasha C h o r n y i , Saint A u g u s t i n e . D e s p i t e the manifest triviality o f this widespread t e r m , the c o n c e p t itself paradoxically re­ mains i n the highest degree foggy a n d indeterminate . . . W h a t is important [to p o s t m o d ­ e r n i s m ] is n o t d e p t h or intensity b u t sliding over the surface, a n extensive c h o o s i n g a m o n g various signifiers. P r o f o u n d l y postmodernist i n this sense is the image o f rapidly flipping t h r o u g h television channels w i t h the help o f a r e m o t e - c o n t r o l s w i t c h , d u r i n g w h i c h the viewer's pleasure consists largely i n the very process o f pressing the b u t t o n s — a n activity w h i c h gives a pleasant feeling o f p o w e r over the picture o n the screen, a n d i n the sphere o f visual aesthetics promises u n e x p e c t e d m o n t a g e effects." O t h e r scholars i n the f o r u m specu­ lated o n reasons for R u s s i a n impatience w i t h postmodernist p r o d u c t i o n : a general nervous­ ness t o w a r d -isms ( 8 ) ; a l o n g - s t a n d i n g preference for realism i n art ( a l t h o u g h n o longer "socialist") ( 7 ) ; a reluctance to endorse "the total insincerity o f events a n d texts" ( 1 3 ) . H o w e v e r , s o m e participants d i d admit the value o f v i e w i n g art as an o p e n , dispersible e v e n t — e v e n t h o u g h the feeling was widespread that deconstruction w o u l d r e m a i n foreign to R u s s i a n sensibilities, w h i c h were better attuned to structuralism or to ethical criticism. " P o s t m o d e r n i z m i kul'tura: Materialy 'kruglogo stola,' i n Voprosy filosofii, n o . 3 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 3 16. T h e q u o t e is o n pages 3 - 4 .

16

INTRODUCTION

Watching the domestic Russian scene from the diaspora, Epstein him­ self quickly moved beyond post-. His whimsical pronouncements began to suggest the wholesale replacement o f linear time with the more gen­ erous image o f coexistent options i n space. "Posthumanism, postcommunism, postmodernism—the river o f time has entered an ocean and lost its fluency altogether," he remarked i n an interview in 1993. "The concept o f postmodernism is beginning to sound absurd. . . . Instead o f such a proliferation o f posts, I would suggest defining the current epoch as 'proto.' 'Before the next' is a more appropriate definition o f uncertainty than 'after the last.'" Epstein proposes that we call this new, more posi­ tive cultural attitude "proteism": "Utopians have taught us to fear the future, even though it is presented as an inevitable paradise. I n order to overcome utopianism, it's not enough to be anti-utopiart or even postutopian; one has to restore one's love o f the future, not as a promised State, but as a state o f promise, as expectation without determination." To live i n a "state o f promise," where we expect something productive o f the world but are not determined by that product, might be said to sum up Bakhtin's vision o f healthy literary consciousness and the healthy self. As one St. Petersburg scholar expressed the matter at the Third I n ­ ternational Bakhtin Readings in Saransk (October 1995) in a paper en­ titled "Bakhtin as a way out o f contemporary crises in the philosophy o f culture": 23

The philosophy of postmodernism—of poststructuralism, deconstruction, hermeneutics—contributed a great deal toward destroying the old "classical" picture of the world, which resembled a system, an ordered whole. Post­ modernists have demonstrated the fundamental ambivalence of culture, the absence within it of a single code, the fluidity and mutually transformative quality of all its elements. But to see in culture merely a field of play and transformation of meanings, to reveal the role of latent factors—of silence and of absence—is not enough. Constructive motion is also necessary. With­ out it, the philosopher of culture remains in the position of a photographer who holds in his hands a negative and does not know how tc< turn it into a positive. The most fruitful [way out of the crisis] has been that of M . M . Bakhtin. . . . Bakhtin's main methodological innovation was a transition from dialectics to dialogue. But this transition turns out to be not that sim­ ple; in order to accomplish it, one must learn how to listen. . . . the method Bakhtin proposed for studying culture was not visual, but auditory. One can not just see a culture, one has to be able to hear it. 2 3

" P o s t c o m m u n i s t P o s t m o d e r n i s m — A n Interview w i t h M i k h a i l E p s t e i n , " c o n d u c t e d by

E l l e n E . Berry, K e n t J o h n s o n , A n e s a M i l l e r - P o g a c a r , Common 1 9 9 3 ) : 1 0 3 - 1 8 , esp. 2 4

24

Knowledge

2 , no. 3 (Winter

117-18.

V . V . P r o z e r s k i i , " K r i z i s s o v r e m e n n o i filosofii kul'tury. D i a l o g i k a M . M . B a k h t i n a kak

p u t ' v y k h o d a i z k r i z i s a , " i n MMB

igum

mysh II (95):

134-35.

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H E EX-USSR

17

This image o f Bakhtin as "one who listens," and thus as one who can restore a dialogic core to a moribund dialectic, presents a peculiar chal­ lenge. O n one plane, we are rapidly losing the literacy necessary to un­ derstand Bakhtin's generation; the fears and pressures that shaped his life have largely dissolved, and thus the feel o f his life, the Aesopian texture o f his "survivorly" writings, will become increasingly remote. His patient ear is an anachronism in a world increasingly impatient, deafened, visually stimulated. I n another sense, however, Bakhtin is quite at home in the contemporary climate. He is an optimistic proteist i n precisely Epstein's understanding o f the word; we need only recall his famous passage i n Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, where he assures us that "nothing conclu­ sive has yet taken place i n the world, the ultimate word o f the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future and will always be i n the future." Bakhtin offers something for every camp. Neo-humanists detect i n him a liberal spirit and a patron saint o f the new plurality and tolemntnost\ philoso­ phers o f religion have discovered a "vertical hierarchy" i n his thought and a commitment to absolute values; Russian nationalists locate his roots i n Orthodox spirituality. Even nostalgic Marxist-Leninists, disillusioned by Russia's postcommunist slide into chaos, have found reassurance i n the fact that the corruption and disintegration o f daily life has also been named by Bakhtin, incorporated into a model, and thus rendered transi­ tory and manageable—for do not these ugly everyday phenomena recall the "debasings" and "decrownings" o f carnival? W i t h Bakhtin's help, it seemed, one could get outside any disaster and analyze it. I n this plethora o f literary and sociocultural philosophies, only one group ap­ pears to remain beyond the pull o f Bakhtin's categories: Russian converts to hard-core deconstruction. Unlike many o f their colleagues in the West, they tend to find i n Bakhtin—who did not acknowledge a void anywhere—an ungrateful, intractable, and uninteresting presence. 25

26

Let us pursue this final incompatibility. Western ways are everywhere 2 5

B a k h t i n , PDP,

2 6

V . V . P r o k i n , a scholar f r o m P e r m , r e m a r k e d at the 1 9 9 5 Saransk R e a d i n g s that the

166.

Soviet-era faith i n spiritual progress a n d socially responsible literary achievement h a d given w a y to w o r l d decay, mass c o m m e r c i a l m a n i p u l a t i o n , disinformation, the political lie, "a n e w counter-ideological r e w o r k i n g o f m i n d s a n d h e a r t s " — b u t this sorry fact only further justi­ fies the p l a c e m e n t o f "the powerful intellectual figure o f B a k h t i n at the very center o f contemporary R u s s i a , or m o r e precisely, o f all civilization. . . . T h e anti-Soviet a n d antisocialist revolution i n R u s s i a a n d i n other countries includes significant elements o f 'carnivalization,' the radical debasing o f national, patriotic, a n d m o r a l values traditional for the U S S R , [replacing t h e m w i t h ] ideals o f grotesque ridicule 'from above' a n d 'from below' o f authorities a n d heroes from all ranks a n d spheres, the l a u g h i n g - d o w n o f tsars a n d leaders, the t u r n i n g inside o u t o f all systems o f coordinates for m e a s u r i n g a n d assessing every type o f idea a n d act" ( V . V . P r o k i n , "Sotsial'naia filosofiia M . M . B a k h t i n a i sovremennost'," MMB

igum

mysh I (95):

1 1 8 - 2 2 , esp.

119-20).

in

18

INTRODUCTION

mimicked on Russian streets and i n Russian classrooms o f the 1990s. I t might be helpful, therefore, to note what aspects o f our various postmodernisms have been absent, or present only in very weakened form, in the post-Soviet context. What has tended not to be there? First and most understandable, there is little enthusiasm among intellectuals for neoMarxism in any form. Although "Gorbachev nostalgia" was still a factor at the beginning o f the decade—the fantasy o f a cleaner, more responsi­ ble Marxist socialism as an alternative to dirty politicking, a crime-ridden economy, and the disappearance o f shared cultural values—and although more orthodox communism made a comeback as well, most Russian aca­ demics o f my acquaintance continue to find remarkable the existence of, say, a Fredric Jameson or Terry Eagleton, productive scholars who have demonstrated considerable skill in building careers for themselves within their respective bourgeois establishments, who nevertheless i n good con­ science appear to take Marx and Engels seriously. I n economic and politi­ cal matters, that pair are simply charlatans in the eyes o f Russians who have lived through seventy years o f their applied science. O n questions o f art the verdict is kinder: those two men were well-read nineteenth-cen­ tury European intellectuals and thus not wholly dismissed. But that the debased Leninist and Trotskyite versions o f Marxist aesthetics can still command attention i n Britain, France, and the United States at the end o f the twentieth century is an almost impossible fact to communicate to our Russian colleagues. This credibility gap was felt with some acuteness during the Fifth I n ­ ternational Bakhtin Conference—held i n Manchester, England, in July 1991—the first that could boast a respectable showing o f delegates from Bakhtin's own homeland. I n a Russian review o f that conference and the volume o f essays that issued from it ("Bakhtin: Carnival and Other Sub­ jects"), the Saransk scholar Oleg Osovsky remarked on some reasons for this failure to connect. I n part it was caused by "the language barrier, since the majority o f Western Bakhtinians are not Slavists"; i n part i t was owing to the "clash o f different academic cultures, at times confusing but exceptionally fruitful"; but "most serious . . . was the non-coincidence o f our fundamental postulates about the nature and aims o f theoretical re­ search as a whole and Bakhtinistics i n particular" (172). With some justi­ fication and to varying degrees, the non-Russian delegates, many o f them politically left-wing, were upset when their post-Soviet colleagues gave them to believe that for "professional and ethnic reasons they were 27

2 7

O . E . O s o v s k i i , "Karnaval'nye siuzhety M a n c h e s t e r a " ( B a k h t i n : C a r n i v a l a n d other

subjects; A m s t e r d a m - A t l a n t a [ 1 9 9 3 ] , 3 0 3 p p . ) , in DKKh,

no. 4 (95):

1 7 1 - 7 7 , esp.

172-

7 3 . T h e v o l u m e is edited by D a v i d S h e p h e r d , w h o currently directs the B a k h t i n C e n t r e in Sheffield, E n g l a n d .

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H E EX-USSR

19

doomed to an untrue perception and image o f Bakhtin and his ideas." The Russian delegates, supported by the occasional old-fashioned North American Slavist, could not understand how "any connections could ex­ ist" between the idiosyncratic, individualizing Bakhtin and the conform­ ist, group-driven, "absolutely discredited discourses" o f Marxism and feminism. This mutual incomprehension is likely to persist until Soviet Communism passes from living memory. Bring up the likelihood o f any benevolent Marxist-Leninist influence on culture i n the twenty-first cen­ tury, especially i n a society that is free to select other starting points, and Russian academics simply laugh i n disbelief. What other postmodernist moves have passed the Russians by? Despite a flurry o f attention i n the journals and a multitude o f textbooks designed to introduce postmodernism into Russian schools, two other fashionable ideas have not caught on i n the post-Soviet era: the death of the author and the disappearance of the subject (tenacious metaphors made famous by Roland Bardies and Michel Foucault). This is so not only because Russians have a long tradition o f dead—really dead, that is, murdered— authors and disappeared subjects; they also have an altogether more pro­ tective, some would say obsessive, relationship with their literary canon. Even in those agitated decades when Russian nihilists or Futurist poets insisted that "boots were more important than Shakespeare" and that "Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy must be dumped overboard off the ship o f modernity," the very aggressiveness o f the manifesto was testi­ mony to its being the flip side o f a cult. For too long, as I have sug­ gested, Russian literature has been the real world—and when other iden­ tities begin to slip, Russians tend to recite all their Pushkin by heart. To this day (although who knows how long the practice will survive), schoolchildren are raised on a diet o f memorized classics. Such intimacy is not easily cast off. I n fact, Russian culture has been more prone to constructing creator cults (what one scholar has called, affectionately, "icon envy") than to suffering an anxiety o f influence. 28

What, finally, can we say o f the whole multiculturalism movement i n the West, what we call "postcolonial studies," and the various academic groups pressuring to make the marginal more central? Here, too, Russian 2 8

G r e g o r y F r e i d i n , " B y the Walls o f C h u r c h a n d State: Literature's A u t h o r i t y i n Russia's

M o d e r n T r a d i t i o n , " The Russian

Review

5 2 ( A p r i l 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 4 9 - 6 5 , esp. 1 6 2 . I n his o p e n i n g

pages F r e i d i n makes the i n t r i g u i n g c l a i m that R u s s i a , as a "weaker n e i g h b o r i n g n a t i o n , " was "forced to c o m p e t e w i t h countries that h a d greatly benefited from the scientific revolu­ t i o n , rationalization o f polity, a n d c o n c o m i t a n t social development,"

a n d f r o m Russia's

disadvantaged perspective "the historically singular Western w a y t e n d e d to l o o k like a set o f normative principles w i t h a claim to universal validity" ( 1 5 0 ) . F r e i d i n ' s p o i n t is that

Russia,

n o t the W e s t , is the global n o r m — a p o i n t w e i n the West s h o u l d n o t forget, for it helps to explain w h y Russia's inferiority c o m p l e x periodically erupts into messianic fervor.

20

INTRODUCTION

scholars are frequently confused and dismayed. What comes to their minds, o f course, are the ubiquitous propaganda campaigns and grandi­ ose political posters proclaiming "Mir i druzhba" "Peace and Friend­ ship," that littered Russian public space during the Stalinist years and then the Brezhnev stagnation—symbolizing, with an expanse o f grin­ ning, black and brown "natives" i n comic book style, Soviet imperial pretensions to save other cultures they barely understood, often deeply resented, and could scarcely afford to take on. This delicate topic was raised by Vladimir Maliavin, Russian Orientalist and culturologist, at a 1992 conference, held at Dartmouth College, on the Renewal o f Russian spiritual life. I n a paper entitled "Russia Facing East and West," Maliavin suggested that the transition to pluralism and a free market has been difficult for Russians because, despite the opening o f borders and dissolv­ ing o f boundaries, Russia is fated to remain superficially the land o f "un­ realized Americanism." I t is a nation drawn to see salvation in Western procedures but one that remains unable to embody them. I n Maliavin's opinion, the reasons for this are linked to traditional Russian ways o f addressing human inadequacy. I n Russia, he notes, wrongdoing has been perceived as moral sin, as an act to be continually foregrounded, pon­ dered, repented. But such behavior has not necessarily been viewed as bad policy, as an event or an attitude to be confronted and modified for pragmatic reasons. O n the contrary, "being in sin" is an interesting and tolerated state, quickly forgiven, often compassionately indulged. Sin­ ners might transcend the sin or be transfigured by i t , but most viably on an abstract or symbolic plane; payment is not cast in the prosaic terms o f a legal code or compensation to the victim or a compromise settlement. As Maliavin explains in a later essay, "Russia Between East and West: A Third Way?" (1996), the most enduring psychological trait o f the Rus­ sian people has been repentance for sin followed by a cosmic receptivity to all sides. "The elevating force o f repentance freed up in Russia the 29

30

31

2 9

V l a d i m i r M a l i a v i n , " R u s s i a F a c i n g E a s t a n d W e s t , " T h e T r a n s n a t i o n a l Institute C o n f e r ­

ence o n " T h e R e n e w a l o f R u s s i a n Spiritual L i f e , " h e l d at D a r t m o u t h C o l l e g e , H a n o v e r , N e w H a m p s h i r e , 8 - 1 1 July 1 9 9 2 , w i t h cooperation f r o m the Institute o f Philosophy o f the R u s s i a n A c a d e m y o f Sciences, P U T ' in M o s c o w , a n d the " O p e n C h r i s t i a n i t y " m o v e m e n t in St. Petersburg. 3 0

O t h e r R u s s i a n culturologists have made similar observations about the paralyzing ef­

fects o f religiously based m o r a l i s m o n the d e v e l o p m e n t o f a R u s s i a n civil society; see esp. M i k h a i l Y a m p o l s k i i , "Iznasilovanie p o k a i a n i e m " [ R a p e by means o f r e p e n t a n c e ] , noe obozrenie,

no. 8 ( 1 9 9 1 ) : 8 9 - 9 6 .

Litemtur-

Y a m p o l s k y argues that the reflex o f indiscriminate

repentance d u r i n g the perestroika years actually p r o l o n g e d totalitarian structures: w h e n all are guilty for everything endlessly, t h e n n o single p e r s o n takes responsibility for any individ­ ual act n o r believes that he or she c a n influence its course. 3 1

V . Maliavin,

Rossiia

mezhdu

Vostokom

i Zapadom:

Tretii

put'?,

INOE

(Moscow:

K h r e s t o m a t i i a n o v o g o rossiiskogo samosoznaniia, 1 9 9 6 ) , i n the series "Rossiia kak ideia," esp. 16.

EAST

M E E T S WEST IN

T H E EX-USSR

21

immense energy o f selfless devotion, gave palpable form to the moral principle i n a human being," he concludes, but the practical results o f this cultural impulse i n the civic sphere have been sobering. Traditionally Russian culture has denigrated comfortable, nonheroic, and "Philistine" values i n favor o f the extremes o f the moral spectrum—and has tended i n equal measure to "rejoice i n the spiritual exploit and sympathize end­ lessly with human feebleness." To the extent that Maliavin is correct, Bakhtin's "first philosophy" o f a modest "architectonics o f the act" pro­ vides a corrective to this national trait. I n contrast to Russian fascination with sin and compassionate forgive­ ness, one o f the telltale signs o f the Western philosophical tradition, Ma­ liavin asserts, is a rational, aggressive, rather cold-blooded attack on itself. I n this reflex to idealize the other—what we might call the illusion o f the "tender barbarian," from Tacitus to Rousseau—one can see a trademark o f Western thought: to be radically critical o f its own contributions to world culture and to assume that true virtue can be found only some­ where else, usually in a more "primitive" place. Maliavin intimates that recent fads i n the United States for deconstruction, anticolonialism, multiculturalism, making the marginal central, all reflect the same automat­ ized gesture o f the American intellectual today: " I f it comes from us, i f it is authored by us, then i t must be meaningless, out o f control, corrupted or corrupting." Here again, Bakhtin offers his own world-weary, postimperialist Russian intellectuals (and perhaps our theorists as well) a plaus­ ible alternative to the ennobled savage syndrome. Bakhtin is a moral phi­ losopher and culturologist, not a multiculturalist. Utterly unsentimental about cultural difference, on guard against the illusion that to act eth­ ically we need only decide to despise the time and place we personally occupy i n the world, and convinced that we cannot (in any case) shed our accumulated selves and still remain responsible agents i n the world, Bakhtin has no patience with generalized guilt or abdicated positions. 32

I n short, Bakhtinians and ex-Soviet intellectuals o f Vladimir Maliavin's cast o f mind are not sympathetic toward the justice-and-equality argu­ ment that fuels much multicultural work i n the West. I n part their suspi­ cion stems from the conviction that this is Western social philosophy at its weakest: patronizing and idealistic toward poorly understood cultures (the other), and casually contemptuous toward that which i t knows best and answers for most directly (the self). I n part i t might be because So­ viet Communism also justified itself by such ecumenical mottoes—and brought i n its wake massive inequality, universal impoverishment, and a monstrous legacy o f flattening out cultural particulars, both good and evil. What many Russians tend to see i n multiculturalism as an ideology, 3 2

F o r a n elegantly argued W e s t e r n statement o f Maliavin's p o s i t i o n , see J o h n M . E l l i s ,

" T h e O r i g i n s o f P C , " i n The Chronicle

of Higher

Education

( 1 5 January 1 9 9 2 ) , B l - 2 .

22

INTRODUCTION

then, is not its desire for justice and equality but its fascination with power. A n d here, o f course, Russian cultural survivors are real connois­ seurs. They are totally fed up with power, and with the way power-cen­ tered thinking can rob literature (or any cultural act) o f its essence. For some time now, Russian intellectuals have been experiencing a general and very sensible revulsion against politicized group-think—which, after all, had brought them to the edge o f an abyss. They argue that there is no greater honor than to be genuinely marginal, out o f the way, not part o f a powerful institution, your own person, alive. Just such a "centrifugal," out-of-the-way person was Mikhail Bakhtin. As shall become clear, Bakhtin's outlook on the world was most defi­ nitely "politically incorrect"—by the standards o f his time as well as our own. From his earliest youth on, he was suspicious o f organized political activity and shunned the mass event. I n March 1917 he already mourned the end o f the monarchy, attended no political meetings, and sat home reading his books before burning them for fuel during the ghastly winter months o f the Civil War. Being, as he put i t , "utterly apolitical," he de­ spaired at the onset o f a noisy, maximalist regime that brutalized the human act and cheapened the word. I t could be argued, i n fact, that the most enduring lesson Bakhtin offered his Soviet era was this: D o not conflate the ethical with the political. N o t , o f course, because politics has no ethical dimension, but for the time-honored reason that the ethical realm, i f politicized, is prevented from functioning as an autonomous check on the political. Viewed i n this way, Bakhtin's ethical position could be seen as an alternative both to the moral neutrality o f the Formalists and to the overtly political commitment o f the Marxists. 33

Curiously—and o f some relevance to the present study—not only Bakhtin's writings but also his lived experience have become for many Russians a prototype o f apolitical integrity and spiritual purity. As Elena Volkova, philosophy professor at Moscow State University, noted in 1990, Bakhtin founded no coherent school o f thought, for "to become a true follower o f Bakhtin" one cannot merely develop his ideas but must repeat his "moral deed—and this is not within everyone's power to do." What was this "moral deed"? I n part i t was his boldness i n posing, from within his corrupt and bloody epoch, such wondrous concepts as "aes­ thetic love," "participatory autonomy," laughter as liberation from terror, and personal death as a gift o f wholeness to the other. I n part, surely, i t was surviving arrest, exile, and re-integration during the Stalinist period 34

3 3

See B a k h t i n ' s reminiscences about the revolutions o f 1 9 1 7 i n " R a z g o v o r y s B a k h t i n y m :

N e v c l ' . V i t e b s k . " Chelovek, 3 4

nos. 4 - 6 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 1 5 8 - 7 2 , esp.

E . V . V o l k o v a , " E s t e t i k a M . M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Znanie

tetika" series, M o s c o w , 6 4 p p . , esp. 7 a n d 8.

159-61. n o . 12 ( D e c e m b e r 1 9 9 0 ) ; " E s -

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H E EX-USSR

23

without compromising himself or endangering others, without hunger­ ing after higher professional rank or a Lenin Prize, and without giving i n to the vanities o f victimhood ("Never," Volkova writes, "is there the slightest hint that his own fate, as a human being and a scholar, kept him from expressing his ideas"). Many have found irresistible Bakhtin's appar­ ently instinctive disgust at official hierarchy and at defensive, protective attitudes toward one's professional domain. ( I n the Duvakin interviews o f 1973, reminiscing about his gifted and wholly nonconformist friend, the conceit pianist Maria Yudina, Bakhtin remarked that her most wonderful trait, which others mistakenly viewed as eccentricity, was her continual straining "toward something higher that could not be fit into the frame of any profession, any professionalism . . . not poetry, or music, or philos­ ophy . . . She was a person who was absolutely not official. . . . Like me, by the way; I too cannot endure any crass officialness [ofitsiaFsh china].") Surely Bakhtin's reluctance to attach any special significance to his own lived biography has played a role i n others' eagerness to canonize him. But i n the half-decade since Volkova's comment, o f equal importance to Bakhtin's image i n this saint-building culture has been an enhanced un­ derstanding o f what constitutes ethically acceptable survival. 35

As more archival material becomes available on Bakhtin's "officially public" years—primarily his quarter-century at Mordovia State Teachers' College i n Saransk—the nature o f his "moral deed" becomes clearer. Bakhtin considered himself a philosopher, although he made his living as a teacher o f literature. "Literary scholarship," he is reputed to have said, "is an interim profession; [when practicing i t ] one must be either an artist or a philosopher" i n order to "invest oneself wholly," to "devote one's entire soul." Bakhtin's special talent on this interim ground was perfect pitch as regards the realness o f an addressee; within that context, he made words work for him. H e was willing, i f conditions required i t , to work up a lecture on "The Language and Style o f Literary Works i n the Light o f I . V. Stalin's Linguistic Studies" and "Applying the Teachings o f I . V. Stalin on Language to Questions o f Literary Scholarship" (Bakhtin delivered both i n October 1950, i n his capacity as chair o f a Foreign Literature Department); such words and genres did not carry authentic meaning and, more important, had no specific addressees. But Bakhtin would not use words to disadvantage or disable concrete, identifiable others—which, i n his official position, meant that he would not check up on the content o f his colleagues' courses nor insist on a unified program 36

35

" R a z g o v o i y s B a k h t i n y m : M a r i i a V e n i a m i n o v n a Y u d i n a , " Chdovek,

no. 1 (1995): 165,

169. 3 6

R e m i n i s c e n c e o f V a d i m K o z h i n o v , cited by I . V . K l i u e v a ( S a r a n s k ) , i n her " F e n o m e n

B a k h t i n a i k u P t u r n a i a missiia filosofa," i n MMB tional page references i n text.

igum

mysh II (95): 6 6 - 6 9 , esp. 6 7 . A d d i ­

24

INTRODUCTION

for the department. He hoped that this practice would slide by un­ noticed. Evidence suggests that i f rebuked for i t , however, Bakhtin de­ fended his behavior. A n intriguing glimpse into this ethical balancing act was provided i n 1996, when the report o f an official, two-week government inspection o f Bakhtin's academic department carried out i n March 1951 was exhumed from the Saransk archives and published. A t the time, the faculty o f Foreign Literature at the teachers' college consisted o f two members: Bakhtin and one young female assistant. The commission praised Bakh­ tin's hard work, the scope o f his courses, the above-mentioned public papers on Stalin, and Bakhtin's "masterful lecturing style" and "lively and emotional" delivery (69). But the department was also reprimanded on seventeen counts, several o f which applied directly to Comrade Bakhtin. He did not sufficiently control the curriculum; he settled matters i n the department through informal discussions (besedy) with his one junior col­ league rather than through a formal meeting with resolutions fixed i n minutes and procedures; he had not implemented the guidelines from the Ministry o f Higher Education (they had not yet reached the prov­ inces); he routinely failed to sum up his two-hour lectures with "wellfocused conclusions emphasizing the ideological content o f the lecture, including the class profile o f the writer and his work, its evaluation by the classics o f Marxism-Leninism" (74). He had not visited a single lecture by his assistant, Comrade Estifeeva, during her first half-year o f teaching and apparently did not monitor her materials. O n a practical daily level, as teacher and administrator, Bakhtin clearly had no talent for hierarchy and no special interest i n exercising authority. 37

I n fact, the impression we receive from all Bakhtin's work, and from his personal behavior, is that power—whether understood as prerogatives embedded i n an institution, i n official rank, or as rights won and then concentrated i n a besieged self—has little to do with knowledge, free­ dom, literary insight, and spiritual growth. Bakhtin had neither the public manner nor the physical vigor to fight power i n melodramatic ways. His temperament was not that o f a testifier or witness. H e worked largely

3 7

"Arkhivnye materialy o prepodavatel'skoi rabote M . M . B a k h t i n a v M o r d o v s k o m p e d -

institute," ed. a n d w i t h an i n t r o d u c t i o n by V . B . Estifeeva (the junior colleague i n the department at the time o f the g o v e r n m e n t r e v i e w ) , i n DKKh,

no. 1 (96):

63-78.

The

c o m m i s s i o n r e c o r d e d the response o f the faculty m e m b e r s to its reprimands. W h e n crit­ i c i z e d for his m e t h o d o l o g y (supervision o f p r a c t i c u m s ) , for example, the report notes that "the chair o f the department M . M . B a k h t i n h e l d to an incorrect p o i n t o f view, that s u c h questions [ o f m e t h o d o l o g y i n the delivering o f lectures] d i d n o t properly b e l o n g to the purview o f the department, since i n his o p i n i o n a lecture was a strictiy individual p h e n o m e ­ n o n a n d it c o u l d n o t be r e d u c e d to any template p r o v i d e d by the department" ( 6 7 ) . A d d i ­ tional page references i n text.

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H EEX-USSR

25

with attitudes and responses, not with policies or events. Among the matters for which he was reproached i n 1952 by the Academic Council o f his teachers' college was a lecture, delivered at a local conference com­ memorating Stalin's birthday, on the topic o f art—which Bakhtin inter­ preted as "the fruit o f our great longing for a better future" (77, 78). While this position was not quite reactionary (the triumph o f Commu­ nism did, after all, glint through i t ) , still there was a mournful feel to the phrase. I t was noted i n the official minutes that the lecture by Comrade Bakhtin contained a "mistaken notion o f art," an "idealistic, mistaken notion expressed by pessimism: i t dooms people to passivity and does not emphasize a struggle for what is progressive." The Academic Council was not wholly wrong. As I shall attempt to show i n the chapters that follow, Bakhtin was indeed "pessimistic" as regards progress achieved through struggles o f that sort. His position, for all its overt Christian motifs and its obvious Kantian origins, recalls the intensely difficult, contemplative, minimalist ethical program o f those Hellenistic philosophers—Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans—who must have been part o f his undergraduate classics major at Petrograd University. There, i n the ancient world after the Age o f Socrates, we might seek the fundamentals o f what Volkova called Bakhtin's "moral deed." Those Greek thinkers also lived during an era when the polis was i n disarray; as Epicurus preached, a man would do well to fashion an upright and in­ conspicuous life for himself out o f the conventions o f his time, since heroic martyrdom o f Socrates's sort would not register on a diffuse and corrupt body politic. A n individual's primary moral responsibility was per­ sonal integrity realized through a withdrawal from public life (Epicurus and his Garden), a commonsensical acceptance o f death, and, to what­ ever extent possible, the removal o f pain. For several thousand years, such philosophy has been belittled for its selfishness and lack o f social conscience. Bakhtin's resonance with i t , I suggest, is one index o f his distance from mainstream Russian revolutionary activism. This facet, 38

3 8

A l t h o u g h a c o n n e c t i o n between B a k h t i n a n d this w i n g o f H e l l e n i s t i c p h i l o s o p h y has

n o t b e e n p u r s u e d by R u s s i a n B a k h t i n i a n s — n o r by R u s s i a n classicists, w h o , like their aca­ d e m i c counterparts i n the W e s t , r e m a i n wary o f B a k h t i n ' s incursions into their philological t e r r i t o r y — t h e integrity o f B a k h t i n ' s life, as w e l l as the values he celebrates i n the n o v e l , are surprisingly compatible w i t h the p h i l o s o p h y o f mature S t o i c i s m . F o r a m o d e r n survey o f these thinkers, w i t h a b u n d a n t citations that suggest i n t r i g u i n g points o f contact w i t h B a k h ­ tin's lived a n d p r e a c h e d philosophy, see R . W . Sharpies, Stoics, Epicureans Introduction

to Hellenistic

and Sceptics:

An

Philosophy ( L o n d o n : R o u t i e d g e , 1 9 9 6 ) , esp. c h . 5 , " H o w C a n I

B e H a p p y ? " a n d c h . 6, " W h a t about O t h e r People?" I t is n o t accidental, I believe, that M a r t h a N u s s b a u m , arguably the m o s t prolific A m e r i c a n theorist o f "the nineteenth-century n o v e l as ethical p h i l o s o p h y by other m e a n s , " devoted a lengthy study to just these philoso­ phers; see M a r t h a C . N u s s b a u m , The Therapy Ethics

of Desire:

Theory and

Practice

in

Hellenistic

( P r i n c e t o n , N . J . : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 4 ) . I t h a n k R . B r a c h t B r a n h a m for

26

INTRODUCTION

too, has entered contemporary portraits o f Bakhtin. "Philosophy is a spe­ cial sort o f chosenness, a sort o f spiritual aristocratism," one scholar re­ marked i n her centennial tribute. " N o t by chance does one sense i n Bakhtin a great respect for the nobility." Paradoxically, this aristocratic and disengaged image (at first denounced, then secretly admired, then openly exalted) is one o f the shadowy constants i n Communist Russia's reception o f Bakhtin. I n the Soviet Union, then, that most politically harassed and ha­ rangued o f modern states, Bakhtin counseled his compatriots (with the necessary Aesopian tact) to begin their search for agency and personhood elsewhere, not with political consciousness. Such a stance on power and individuality is so alien to our era's most prominent postmodernist an­ alysts—prolific thinkers like Foucault, Lyotard, and Bataille-—that i t takes some effort to assimilate it. For Bakhtin starts on quite other ground: with the assumption (not, o f course, original with him) that genuine knowledge and enablement can begin only when my " I " consults an­ other " I " and then returns to its own place, humbled and enhanced. I n its curiosity and charity, this model is immensely attractive, especially as a counterweight to some o f the shrill excesses o f cultural politics familiar i n the West. I t is possible, however, that such a reading o f Bakhtin—al­ though true to the man and spiritually irresistible—is, In the Russian context, as much part o f the problem as i t is part o f the solution. For one could argue that i n Russia, a nation whose history has been so very defi­ cient i n happy political experience, a pragmatic working-out o f responsi­ ble and differentiated power relations should be the first priority o f the day. I n this respect, Bakhtin shares perhaps too much with his friendly rival and frequent negative example, the Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy 39

The present book is i n two parts. The first is chronological: a selective account o f recent, and then more distant, reception o f Bakhtin's work i n his homeland. Part 2 is thematic, presenting three areas where recent Russian—and, on occasion, non-Russian—rethinkings o f Bakhtin as phi­ losopher have been especially provocative: polyphony and dialogism (largely as they relate to Dostoevsky); carnival and the problem o f openendedness (of both bodies and time); and "outsideness" as an imperative in ethics as well as artistic form. I n a brief afterword, I speculate on the future shape o f Bakhtin studies—as Bakhtin's inonauka, "scholarship [or science] i n some other way," becomes an established field o f inquiry.

his c o m m e n t s o n notions o f the m o r a l life a m i d a decaying polis (see R . B r a c h t B r a n h a m a n d M a r i e - O d i l e G o u l e t - C a z é , eds., The Cynics [Berkeley: U n i v e r s i t y o f California Press, 1 9 9 6 ] ) . 3 9

I . V . K l i u e v a , " F e n o m e n B a k h t i n a i kul'turnaia missiia filosofa," i n MMB

(95): 6 6 - 6 9 , esp. 6 8 .

igum

mysh II

EAST MEETS WEST IN T H EEX-USSR

27

Bakhtinian method is not modest: i t will tell you how to teach, write, live, talk, think. A n auxiliary goal o f this study is to consider potential roles for the cultural critic. Is a national tradition best served by intellectuals who pro­ vide a mirror, an apology, or a skeptical corrective to their culture's most stereotyped and unforgiving extreme? The question is not a trivial one, for over the past ten years Russians have been subjecting their own radi­ cal intelligentsia, the pride o f previous regimes, to a blistering self-cri­ tique. Cultural critics, once revered as national prophets, are being held responsible for the absence on Russian soil o f a "normal life"—the short­ hand phrase Russians apply to societies that appear to get by without heroics, horrendous sacrifices, and Promethean goals. Alongside this réévaluation o f the revolutionary mystique has been a parallel campaign to demystify, and perhaps even dismantle, that most oppressive and dis­ torting o f binary oppositions for organizing Russian culture: "East versus West," or worse, "a virtuous, victimized Russia versus the rest o f the hostile world." 40

Here Bakhtin studies, with their vigorous cosmopolitan base, have proved to be a useful test site. I n an overview o f the Moscow Centennial Conference, one participant remarked on the unfortunate administrative decision to register all Russian delegates with white name tags, non-Rus­ sians with yellow ones. "By this innocent gesture," she notes, "a sharp distinction was drawn between ours and not-ours, one which, we must presume, had not entered into the organizers' plans." A n d why, she asks, do we continue to divide Bakhtin studies into "Western" and "Russian" wings at all? There is now as much diversity i n the one as i n the other. A n intellectual spectrum stretching from traditional philology to postmoder­ nist fantasy can be found i n both—and Russian scholars are no less "na­ tional" for being so diverse. The old Cold War lumping practices can 41

4 0

See, for example, the lengthy article entitled " K o m u sluzhat intellektualy?" [ W h o m d o

intellectuals serve?], i n Rossisskie

vesti, 2 2 July a n d 3 0 July 1 9 9 4 , by the political theorist

Aleksei K i v a : " N o r m a l development,

w i t h o u t revolutionary shocks, is i n practice always

tragic for the intelligentsia. . . . T h e s y n d r o m e is that age-old R u s s i a n idealism, u t o p i a n i s m . . . a n d a certain d e t a c h m e n t f r o m life; i n intelligentsial heads, m e a n w h i l e , all sorts o f schemes for ideal social constructs are h a t c h i n g . . . ideal democracy, ideal government"; B o l s h e v i s m , too, "was based o n the principle o f a non-acceptance o f reality." K i v a c o n ­ tinues: [ T h e intelligentsia is g o v e r n e d b y ] "the s y n d r o m e o f the u n t r a n s c e n d e d slave, or, w h a t sounds m o r e e u p h o n i o u s , the R u s s i a n serf. A slave does n o t k n o w the G o l d e n M e a n . " A n d he concludes: "So w h o m does the R u s s i a n intelligentsia serve? 1) its o w n

age-old

errors; 2 ) its o w n m y t h i c , messianic, p r e d e t e r m i n e d mission; 3 ) routine 'great shocks'; 4 ) its o w n corporate interests; 5 ) the social c o m m a n d ; 6 ) its o w n m o n e y - p o u c h ; 7 ) society; 8 ) n o one at all; 9 ) its o w n demise." 4 1

I r i n a B a l a b a n o v a , "Beloe

ferentsiia," i n NLO

& Joltoie: S e d ' m a i a m e z h d u n a r o d n a i a bakhtinskaia k o n -

15 ( 1 9 9 5 ) : 4 2 8 - 3 0 , esp. 4 2 9 , 4 3 0 .

28

I N T R O D U C T I O N

only perpetuate that "morose and short-sighted opposition Russia/West ('white'/'yellow,' ours/not-ours)." I n a retrospective statement on the Moscow conference i n a mid-1996 issue o f Voprosy litemtury, Vitaly Makhlin concurred. For all the language barriers and differences i n ideological experience, the primary divide had ceased to be "Russia versus the West." More significant tensions could now be registered, Makhlin writes: those caused by a shift i n generations (the "founders" who knew Bakhtin personally and are known for their reminiscences about him, and then scholars a decade or more younger, who apply his thought); and by the rift between literary scholarship and philosophy, each speaking its own professional language and each side acting at times "as i f 'the other' did not exist, as i f 'the other' were occupied with an uninteresting and manifestly useless matter." 42

I n a word, well into the first post-Soviet decade i t is probably time to stop reinforcing the Brezhnev-era fiction o f "East versus West" i n the cultural landscape o f the ex-USSR. Those categories were never unitary, and they are already eroded beyond repair. Bereft o f the cruder forms o f Aesopian language, Russian thinkers are now freer than ever before i n living memory to make judgments that are empirical and autonomous rather than politically reactive; they need no longer view outsiders through a "for and against" or "good and evil" lens. Russia can return to the values o f hybridization, amalgamation, wclusivity—always, i t could be argued, her native strengths as a country located at the' crossroads o f so many cultures. These are Bakhtin's strengths as well. For against the unsettled backdrop o f Russia at the century's end, how much richer, more frightening, and more interesting do her own great tliinkers appear. 4 2

V . M a k h l i n , " B a k h t i n i s o v r e m e n n o e literaturovedenie," Voprosy litemtury

1 9 9 6 ) : 6 5 - 6 7 , esp. 6 7 .

(May-June

C H A P T E R

1

The Russians Reclaim Bakhtin, 1975 to the Jubilee

As P A R T O F the opening plenary session at the Bakhtin Centennial Con­ ference i n Moscow i n June 1995, delegates were treated to "the living word o f Mikhail Bakhtin." Thus had the event been listed i n the pro­ gram—and the playing o f this scratchy stretch o f conversation taped i n the early spring o f 1973, between the sixty-four-year-old Soviet literature specialist Viktor Duvakin and the ailing, seventy-eight-year-old Bakhtin, was at once intimate and majestically solemn, almost to the point o f awk­ wardness. Our host institution, Moscow State Pedagogical University, had decked out the stage o f its main auditorium w i t h baskets o f flowers and a huge commemorative portrait. The living word o f Bakhtin inten­ sified this nostalgic spirit. 1

Bakhtin died two years after this interview; Duvakin himself died i n 1982. A n accomplished Mayakovsky scholar, Duvakin had begun his am­ bitious oral history project on early Soviet culture i n 1966, after Moscow State University stripped him o f his right to teach i n retaliation for his support o f a former student, Andrei Sinyavsky, at the time on trial for literary treason. I n fifteen subsequent years o f devoted work, Duvakin recorded more than six hundred conversations with three hundred per­ sons. His six meetings with Bakhtin, eighteen hours i n all, took place i n Bakhtin's Moscow apartment i n February and March 1973. Bakhtin had been widowed fourteen months earlier. The loss o f his wife—they had been inseparable—had clearly been traumatic: photographs indicate that Bakhtin lost half his body weight i n two years, and during the sessions with Duvakin he revealed acute embarrassment when, apparently for the first time in his life, his powerful memory began to fail him. Profoundly out o f touch with the present, the discussions breathe the spirit o f a wholly other epoch. They open on recollections o f childhood (Bakhtin was born into a large, close, materially comfortable banker's family), con1

V. D . Duvakin (1909-1982)

was o f the proper age a n d academic status to p u t his

septuagenarian interviewees at ease; the p u b l i s h e d transcripts indicate a flexible, decentered q u e s t i o n i n g style that appears to have stimulated the often fragile a n d finicky subjects to m a x i m u m recall. See the p r é c i s by V . F . T e i d e r ( M o s c o w State U n i v e r s i t y ) , " Z h i v o e slovo M . M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Proceedings

of the Seventh

International

Bakhtin

Conference,

Moscow

State Pedagogical University, 2 6 - 3 0 J u n e 1 9 9 5 , B o o k 2 , 3 0 4 - 7 . See also the portrait o f D u v a k i n by V . R a d z i s h e v s k i i ( " B e s k o n e c h n y i V i k t o r D m i t r i e v i c h . . . " ) i n Besedy V. D. vakina

s M. M. Bakhtinym,

1 0 - 1 4 (see n . 2 , b e l o w ) .

Du-

32

CHAPTER ONE

tinue with Bakhtin's university years during World War I (where he was a fastidious, somewhat reclusive student), go on to discuss the revolutions o f 1917 in the capital (Bakhtin opposed them both), and end with por­ traits o f close friends and fellow scholars i n the oudying towns o f Nevel, Vitebsk, and then Soviet Leningrad, mostly from the 1920s. "You've given me a splendid portrait," Duvakin remarked appreciatively at the end o f the sixth and final session. " D o you plan to write your memoirs?" "Certainly not," Bakhtin answered. "What sort o f memoirs could I possi­ bly have?" Throughout 1993-95 a transcript o f these taped interviews was seri­ alized i n the Russian journal Chelovek, with some delicate content edited out but scrupulously preserving their meandering shape (the fully re­ stored and annotated text appeared in book form in 1996). Despite its published status, the librarian-archivist V. F. Teider, in charge o f present­ ing the conference delegates with a brief segment, spoke anxiously for half an hour about the propriety o f broadcasting this "conversation" to a large hall full o f strangers, when "Mikhail Mikhailovich, a very old man, was speaking informally with a colleague in a domestic setting"—and all his lapses o f memory, slips o f the tongue, shufflings, distractions caused by the cat and deep drags on his cigarette were so very audible. (These archivists, raised in a climate o f reverence toward their cultural heroes, were faced with a very Western-style dilemma: when the ikon becomes a human being, the traits that make it accessible are also what make it imperfect.) As a public product o f the Soviet era, the recording was i n ­ deed extraordinary. I n the segment we heard (the final minutes o f the final session) it was immediately apparent that this was genuine dialogue, with speech tics, coughs, and digressions intact—in itself memorable un­ der a regime where most "interviews" were staged i n advance and then cleansed. Equally unexpected, Bakhtin was present i n a mode not often 2

2

F o r the six conversations in seven edited installments, see " R a z g o v o r y s B a k h t i n y m , " in

Chelovek, n o . 4 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 1 3 6 - 5 3 ( " S e m ' i a i g o d y u c h e n i i a " ) ; n o . 5 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 1 3 1 - 4 3 ("Peterb u r g . U n i v e r s i t e t " ) ; nos. 4 - 6 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 1 5 8 - 7 3

("Nevel, V i t e b s k " ) ; n o . 3 ( 1 9 9 4 ) :

169-82

("Salony i k r u z h k i " ) ; no. 4 ( 1 9 9 4 ) : 1 7 8 - 8 9

("Vaginov i d r u g i e " ) ; n o . 6 ( 1 9 9 4 ) :

154-72

("Mariia Veniaminovna Yudina"); and no.

1 (1995):

Y u d i n a " [ c o n t . ] ) . Q u o t e s in the text are f r o m Chelovek,

156-76

("Mania Veniaminovna

no. 1 (1995): 173, 176.

Fully

transcribed at three h u n d r e d pages, the text o f the interviews was p u b l i s h e d as Bescdy V. D. Duvakina

s M. M. Bakhtinym,

edited a n d prepared by m e m b e r s o f the professional library

staff o f M o s c o w State University, V . B . K u z n e t s o v a , M . V . Radzishevskaia, a n d V . F . T e i d e r , w i t h brief essays by S. G . B o c h a r o v , V . V . R a d z i s h e v s k i i , a n d V . V . K o z h i n o v ( M o s c o w : Progress, 1 9 9 6 ) . T h e text is being translated a n d annotated by B r i a n P o o l e for U n i v e r s i t y o f Texas Press. T h e actual tapes c o n t a i n inconsistencies, evasions, a n d sophisticated sto­ rytelling techniques that the edited portions printed i n Chelovek specifically mask. W h e r e a s B a k h t i n was apparently scrupulously h o n e s t — a n d g e n e r o u s — i n his recollections o f others, he tended to fib w i t h regard to himself.

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

33

in evidence i n his novel-centered written texts, namely, as a connoisseur o f poetry. W i t h only ten minutes o f tape time left, Duvakin suggested to Mikhail Mikhailovich that he read (which for Russians means, recite) some verse. Bakhtin demurred ( " I t should have been before . . . then I had a voice . . . I did that so endlessly long ago"); he hesitated, mumbled something to himself, and then, i n quick succession, recited i n a vigorous and reso­ nant voice the Russian lyric " N i g h t " by Afanasy Fet, followed by the dedication to Goethe's Faust in German, a short poem by Rilke—"Mir zur Feier"—and then, in French, i n a single exultant breath, Baudelaire's "La mort des amants." He launched into several lengthy passages from Pushkin but broke off. "There simply aren't the words to thank you, Mikhail Mikhailovich," Duvakin said, switching off the machine. "But there's nothing to thank me for," Bakhtin said. "Izvinite menya, chto ya tak neskladno vse vremya" [Excuse me for having been so incoherent all this time]. Russians in the audience took Bakhtin's love o f poetry for granted, as they did the fact that cultured people carry several languages and literary traditions around in their heads. Western delegates, who often had trou­ ble following the crackling Russian on tape, watched the Russians listen­ ing. I t was a moment to remember. Through memoirs recorded in the 1970s about the distant 1910s and 1920s, our Russian counterparts in the 1990s were living in to Bakhtin's multilingual, still thoroughly Europeanized world. Those fifty hateful, shameful Stalinist and Brezhnevite years i n between had simply dropped away. Miraculously, Bakhtin was simultaneously a survivor and a ^?r£-Bolshevik. This striving o f the Russians to recuperate a less tainted part o f their own past was felt strongly during the five days o f conferencing that fol­ lowed. The foreigners' presentations tended to be at the theoretical cut­ ting edge and "outside" Bakhtin's lived experience; several were recog­ nizably postmodernist, some were feminist and deconstructive in their approach, quite a few were critical o f Bakhtin's formulations. Others were imaginative expansions o f his thought into genre theory, translation practice, and the visual arts. We outsiders, i t seemed, were forever grasp­ ing a small amount o f Bakhtin and then applying i t to concerns within our own fields o f expertise. For the majority o f Russian delegates, in contrast, Bakhtin himself was the field. A large portion o f their papers were archival, pedagogical, closely argued philosophical investigation, at times simply reverent paraphrase. Textological problems were cleared up, details o f Bakhtin's biography filled in. Enticing paradoxes from within Bakhtin's own thought—for example, those two oxymorons so beloved by Bakhtin, "autonomous communion" and "open wholeness"—were lovingly scrutinized. I f the Russians were at times burdened by reverence

34

CHAPTER ONE

toward their source and made somewhat timid by it (such are conven­ tional reflexes at a Russian jubilee), then the scholars from abroad, i n turn, were often obliged to pay for the virtues o f our creative imagination by getting the simplest things wrong, and by an unseemly scrambling after facts and documents with which to validate our "outsiderly" ideas. But validation was itself one o f the issues that divided us. I n America and Europe we have long been comfortable with the revisionist hypoth­ esis that historical narrative is a "construct," that historical sources might turn out to be merely "stories," and that individual interpretation is our natural birthright. Such ideas, after all, cost us very little to entertain. Our cultures permit professional humanists to live in an academic environ­ ment with considerable security and few constraints; imagination is re­ warded, the future is open, and past political events quicldy crowd one another out and are forgotten. Russian scholars o f the 1990s, who still keenly remember state censorship and for whom yesterday's history books were not cultural constructs but simply lies, are understandably concerned lest such corrosion o f potentially knowable facts be carried too far or into too many disciplines. This aspect o f Western academic practice makes the best o f them apprehensive. For much is at stake. Sociologists concur that until the 1990s the So­ viets were probably the most "reading people" in the world. Printed texts and their heroic genesis were a serious matter, not to be treated casually or undone by a pun or current trend. A t the 1995 Bakhtin Conference I was struck, as foreign academics so often are i n that country, by the sense that for its own communicants Russian culture is such a huge, rich, be­ loved, and intimately familiar homeland that—despite Bakhtin's well-ad­ vertised passion for multiple boundaries and "outsideness"—Russians hardly need the outside. Their papers at the panel sessions were saturated with unidentified quotes to Russian and world classics (it would have been an insult to the audience to identify them); these scraps o f poetry and literary lore were the common denominators o f a tightly knit profes­ sion. Their literary canon is still largely unquestioned and intact. By and large, the Russian delegates listening raptly to Bakhtin's voice i n that hall in June 1995 were uninterested in a hermeneutics o f suspicion. I t became clear at the Jubilee, with its participants from twenty different countries, that the stage had long been set for a new Bakhtin—but he was coming into focus i n his homeland according to the same familiar, reverent rules. As suggested i n the introduction to this study, the Russian intellectual establishment observes our "crises in criticism" and "culture wars" with a mix o f amusement, intense curiosity, and dismay Bakhtin's legacy has been claimed by all sides. O n what ground will the Russian- and Englishspeaking worlds come together? The task o f the present chapter is histor­ ical in the simplest sense: to provide some chronological background to

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

35

the posthumous reclamation o f Bakhtin i n his homeland, a rich and dif­ fuse process that has developed i n several stages over the past twenty years.

T H E T H R E E WORLDS O F M I K H A I L B A K H T I N To orient ourselves i n these debates over the legacy, i t might be helpful at the outset to offer a brief capsule o f the three major concepts that Bakhtin developed during his long life. The first might be called prosaics, his starting point for a theory o f novelistic prose. I n such prose—with its voracious incorporation o f genres and its proliferation o f voices—Bakhtin detected a type o f energy that was likely to create more options (and thus produce more freedom) than could ever be realized i n the hierarchically arranged genres o f a classical poetics. A prosaic worldview, I hasten to add, does not reject poetry as an art form. Bakhtin first made that dis­ missive rhetorical gesture i n his essays o f the mid-1930s, when the spirit o f poetry and epic functioned for him briefly (if colorfully) as the bad boy and discredited alternative to his beloved novel—which, at the time, was well on its way to becoming for Bakhtin the world's only freedom-bear­ ing literary form. The remarks he made i n that context are no index o f his appreciation o f poets or poems. Bakhtin knew poetry well, loved i t deeply, lectured on i t continually—but rarely chose to analyze poetic worlds professionally or on their own terms. The challenge o f the prosaic world came to occupy him wholly; i t was so much more difficult to dis­ cover the rules that prose lives by. 3

4

Prosaic reality is the very opposite of, say, the compositional constraints o f a sonnet, or o f conspiracy-theory thinking, or a five-year plan. A t their ideal extreme, those structures all assume concrete parameters, a fixed set o f options, an effective ending point, and—in the case o f the latter two examples—a mean, lean world full o f efficient agents. Prosaic thinking, i n 3

T h e s e three global concepts are discussed at l e n g t h , a l t h o u g h w i t h s o m e w h a t different

c o n t e n t a n d emphasis t h a n they receive here, i n Gary S a u l M o r s o n a n d C a r y l E m e r s o n , Mikhail

Bakhtin:

Creation

of a Prosaics

(Stanford: Stanford U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 0 ) , esp.

part 1, c h . 1. 4

W h e n he

d i d analyze

a poem—as

i n his close

reading o f P u s h k i n ' s 1 8 3 0

lyric

" R a z l u k a " — B a k h t i n ' s interest lies i n voice zones a n d points o f view, n o t i n technical pros­ ody. I n B a k h t i n ' s r e a d i n g , the various r o u g h drafts o f the lyric's o p e n i n g lines ( " F o r the shores o f y o u r native l a n d , y o u a b a n d o n e d this foreign r e g i o n " ) indicate h o w

sensitive

P u s h k i n was to the "svoi/chuzhoi" distinction ("what is one's o w n " versus "what is some­ one else's"); the w o m a n addressed i n the p o e m is i n t r o d u c e d as speaking from an already displaced chuzhoi position a n d quitting it to r e t u r n to h e r s e l f / h e r o w n h o m e . I n general, B a k h t i n considered s u c h a shift essential for any consciousness o f the self to emerge. See " A u t h o r a n d H e r o i n Aesthetic Activity" i n A&A

90, 2 1 1 - 3 1 , esp. 2 1 1 - 1 7 .

36

CHAPTER ONE

contrast, is more predicated on slack, asymmetry, unexpected interrup­ tion, variety, distraction. This is not to suggest that a prosaic world is necessarily careless or anarchic. Patches o f order most definitely exist i n it. But such patches, Bakhtin would have us believe, are rarely simply "discovered": they are not essences but rather evidence o f hard uphill work and complex pressures, at best holding patterns, the result o f con­ tinual compromise and negotiation among several competing voices or worldviews. O n the whole, prosaic order—or prosaic harmony—is ac­ cretive and temporary. I t values slow, open processes, and i t rewards those who are successful at developing, over time, flexible, particularized, nonrepeating relations among differentiated parts. Such relations, Bakh­ tin felt, are more fundamental to human experience than are systems, dialectics, or rules. The literary form that best expresses prosaic values i n art (and, as Bakhtin saw i t , i n our lives as well) is, o f course, the novel. N o t surprisingly, Bakhtin spent a good part o f his life studying novels. 5

The second concept crucial to Bakhtin's universe is dialogue—or, as he first argued this position i n the 1929 Dostoevsky book, the doublevoiced "dialogic w o r d . " By dialogue, Bakhtin meant more than mere talk. What interested him was not so much the social fact o f several peo­ ple exchanging words w i t h one another i n a room as i t was the idea that each word contains within itself diverse, discriminating, often contradic­ tory "talking" components. The more often a word is used i n speech acts, the more contexts i t accumulates and the more its meanings prolif­ erate. Utterances do not forget. A n d by their very nature, they resist unity and homogenization—two states that Bakhtin, a close student o f biology, considered akin to death. Understood i n this way, dialogue becomes a model o f the creative process. I t assumes that the healthy growth o f any consciousness depends on its continual interaction w i t h other voices, per­ sonalities, or worldviews. Although the youthful Bakhtin experimented w i t h metaphors taken from other aesthetic media (music, visual imagery, sculpture), by the end o f the 1920s—and most forcefully i n the Dos­ toevsky book—he had come to believe that the toughest, most elastic and trustworthy medium i n which to store and share other people's worldviews was words. 6

5

F o r a fine extension o f this principle, see the discussion o f prosaic "threshold c h r o n o -

topes" i n L i s a E c k s t r o m , " M o r a l P e r c e p t i o n a n d the C h r o n o t o p e : T h e C a s e o f H e n r y J a m e s , " i n A m y M a n d e l k e r , e d . , Bakhtin

in Contexts

across the Disciplines

( E v a n s t o n , 111.:

N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 5 ) : 9 9 - 1 1 6 . 6

I n an interview w i t h t w o P o l i s h correspondents granted near the end o f his life, w h e n

asked to s u m u p the achievements o f D o s t o e v s k y a n d the p o l y p h o n i c n o v e l , B a k h t i n re­ m a r k e d : " I n general I t h i n k that any closure, even the closure o f a great w o r k o f art, smells a bit o f d e a t h . " See M i k h a i l B a k h t i n , " O polifonichnosti r o m a n o v D o s t o e v s k o g o , " i n V i t torio Strada, e d . , Rossiia/Russia,

v o l . 2 ( T o r i n o , 1 9 7 5 ) : 1 8 9 - 9 8 , esp. 1 9 3 .

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

37

I n addition to prosaics and dialogue, Bakhtin also endorsed a third virtue, what he called "nezavershennosf" unfinalizability. I n an unfinalized world, everything (even a bad thing) can change (even i f only a little)—and i n the process, i t gives birth to something new. This new thing, simply because i t is different and increases our repertory o f re­ sponses to the world, is, by definition, positive. Bakhtin had little pa­ tience with people who did not wish to increase their options i n life, and he insisted that human potential, even i f unrealized, was always real. I t is, o f course, under the hopeful rubric o f "unfinalizability" that carnival en­ ters Bakhtin's thought. The grotesque body functions for him (somewhat paradoxically) as a sign o f the materialization of openness. Under carnival conditions, a human body is valuable not so much for its ability to talk but for its ability to incorporate other bodies, to swallow up an outside thing or leak some inside thing out—to serve, in short, as a conduit between a human organism and the world o f natural, cyclical processes that provide i t with unexpected potentials. For Bakhtin, these exchanges (quite counterintuitively, one could argue) always lead to fertilization and growth. True to its foundations i n folklore and myth, the carnival econ­ omy is rooted i n a fairy-tale world o f miracle harvests and Utopian pleni­ tude. The fullest exposition o f the carnival worldview is found i n Bakhtin's book on Rabelais, defended as a doctoral dissertation i n 1946. But carni­ val is present as a loophole and an inspiration throughout Bakhtin's work. I n 1963 he inserted into the revised Dostoevsky book an entirely new sixty-page chapter on the role o f carnivalization and menippean sat­ ire i n the development o f the polyphonic novel. Nikolai Gogol's fictional worlds, i t turns out, are largely carnival. Alexander Pushkin's great works o f drama and narrative prose are also "carnivalized." Clearly the idea remained dear to Bakhtin—and apparently he considered it no threat to dialogue nor to the rigors o f religious faith. Bakhtin's right-hand man for the final ten years, Vladimir Turbin, remembers Bakhtin saying i n Saransk (in a delighted whisper): " A n d the Gospels are carnival too!" Psychologically, carnival has much to recommend it. I n the hungry, godless 1930s, faith i n an unfinalized, always potentially bigger, freer, and better nourished future must have been an immensely attractive countercosmos to the disappeared pluralism and phantom prosperity o f the Stalinist years. As a working principle, o f course, carnival could never be the basis for a responsible politics, just as "unfinalizability" cannot. 7

8

7

See B a k h t i n , PDP,

1 5 9 : " I n addition to G o g o l , m e n t i o n m u s t be made here o f the

h u g e influence exercised o n D o s t o e v s k y by the m o s t carnivalized w o r k s o f P u s h k i n : Boris Godunov, 8

the Tales of Belkin,

Little

Tragedies,

See V . N . T u r b i n , " I z n e o p u b l i k o v a n n o g o

n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 5 ) : 2 3 5 - 4 3 , esp. 2 4 3 .

a n d Queen

of

Spades"

o M . M . B a k h t i n e ( I ) , " i n Filosofskie

nauki,

38

CHAPTER ONE

But as noted i n the introduction to this study, Bakhtin was not a political thinker. His concepts o f dialogue and polyphony, like his concept o f car­ nival, are free o f all constraining (and defining) codes, hierarchies, one­ way conversions, prohibitions, subversions that really subvert or compul­ sions that really compel—in fact, free o f everything associated with the practice and distribution o f power. This alone should give us pause when considering his image o f Dostoevsky, a writer i n whom the sense o f power relations was cruelly and excruciatingly precise. Prosaics, dialogue, and unfinalizability are concepts isolated not by Russians but by Americans working on Bakhtin. Indeed, up until the Gorbachev years ( 1 9 8 5 - 9 1 ) , most o f the large-scale writing on Bakhtin had taken place outside Russia. Monographs and biographies appeared here, not there. Starting i n Canada i n the early 1980s, meetings o f the International Bakhtin Society were held throughout the Western and Central European world (Italy, Israel, Croatia, and Serbia)—but without Soviet delegates. As mentioned earlier, this awkward absence o f scholars from Bakhtin's homeland was remedied only i n the summer o f 1991, at the Fifth International Bakhtin Conference i n Manchester, England. Given the traditionally high visibility and status o f Russian literary criti­ cism within its own culture, i t is not surprising that Russian academics were embarrassed—although surely not to blame—for contributing so little to the international boom that followed immediately upon the mas­ ter's death i n 1975. 9

Bakhtin's reemergence i n Russia is best understood, however, not against the background o f our appropriations but i n the context o f the larger drama within Soviet culture during Communism's twilight de­ cades. From the early 1950s on, Russian literature underwent, albeit fit­ fully, a process o f de-Stalinization. Perhaps less well known is the parallel

9

D i s t r i b u t i n g credit for "resurrecting B a k h t i n f r o m obscurity" has b e c o m e a sore p o i n t

o n R u s s i a n soil, a n d m a n y native bakhtinisty

resist an apologetic stance v i s - à - v i s the West.

A s one aging colleague o f B a k h t i n ' s at the U n i v e r s i t y o f Saransk r e m a r k e d petulantly i n 1 9 9 2 : " O n e s h o u l d talk about the c o n t i n u a t i o n , n o t the beginning,

o f large-scale w o r k ; one

m u s t n o t ignore w h a t has been d o n e a n d imagine oneself a R o b i n s o n C r u s o e o n an u n i n ­ h a b i t e d island at a time w h e n n o small n u m b e r o f roads have already been laid d o w n , w h e r e there are other markers o f h u m a n activity, w h e r e there are even h u m a n beings." A . F . E r e m e e v , " O t ' s o b y t i i a ' — k ' s o - b y t i i u ' " [ F r o m 'event' to ' c o - b e i n g ' ] , i n MMB: ENS 92, 1 9 . E r e m e e v ' s c h i e f domestic target is V i t a l y M a k h l i n , w h o o p e n e d his sixty-page p a m p h l e t o n B a k h t i n ' s early ethical p h i l o s o p h y ( 1 9 9 0 ) w i t h the following

"embarrassed" statement:

" T h e life a n d w o r k o f M i k h a i l M i k h a i l o v i c h B a k h t i n . . . has been little studied, a n d is even less familiar to the general reader. I n the W e s t , m o n o g r a p h s alone o n B a k h t i n n u m b e r e d ten i n the 1 9 8 0 s , a n d i n o u r h o m e l a n d there was n o t a single one; Soviet citizens have n o t participated i n the c o l l o q u i a o f the ' I n t e r n a t i o n a l B a k h t i n Society' . . . w e m u s t make sense o u t o f all this w i t h o u t resorting to the usual explanations a n d rhetorical accusations." V . L . M a k h l i n , MB:FP

90, 3.

THE

RUSSIANS RECLAIM

BAKHTIN

39

movement among Soviet literary professionals to de-Stalinize the tradi­ tional "conscience o f Russian culture": literary criticism and theory. I n this process, the Bakhtin revival played a significant role. A brief survey o f the major ebbs and flows o f this movement will set the stage. 10

T H E POST-STALINIST REVIVAL O F T H E RUSSIAN L I T E R A R Y PROFESSION By Stalin's death i n 1953, literary studies (like most areas o f intellectual pursuit i n the Soviet Union) were shackled and terrorized. Over the next thirty years efforts were made to rehabilitate the profession along several lines. A t first, literary debates centered around what Russians called "the struggle between physicists and lyricists." O n one side were the gifted, somewhat heretical "physicists": young, high-tech linguists who advo­ cated cybernetics, computer modeling, machine translation, and imperso­ nal quantification as the coming future o f literary science. O n the other side were the "lyricists," old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist humanists who insisted that the worst abuses o f Socialist Realism had been venial, not mortal, sins; they clung to the hope that the "party method" for litera­ ture could be cleansed o f its Stalinist perversions and returned to its ideal mission, which was to reflect the human being whole within a humane society. The "physicists" considered this goal hopelessly U t o p i a n . As his­ tory had cruelly shown, human-centered methodologies—by virtue o f their very softness—were dangerously open to distortion by outside forces, especially i n a society where art mattered so centrally and ideolog­ ical regulation was the norm. One o f the original "physicists," D m i t r i Segal, has strenuously insisted on just this point i n his memoirs on the period: that the Structuralist approach to literature, far from being a scientistic straitjacket for ideas and values, was widely perceived at the time as liberationist. I n Russia, he argued, the malleable, ethical component 11

12

10

T h e battle for the rights o f creative literature was carried o u t largely i n the journalistic

press, b e g i n n i n g w i t h V l a d i m i r Pomerantsev's famous article " O n Sincerity i n L i t e r a t u r e " that appeared i n Novy mir i n 1 9 5 3 . M y discussion i n this chapter w i l l be l i m i t e d to the strictly professional side o f the reclamation: the evolution, w i t h i n the academy, o f m o r e flexible, 11

pluralistic theories o f literature a n d culture.

T h e fullest a c c o u n t w e have o f this "academic" process, albeit partial to the Structural­

ist side o f the debate, is Peter Seyffert, Soviet Literary

Structuralism:

Background,

Debate,

Issues ( C o l u m b u s , O h i o : Slavica, 1 9 8 5 ) . P r o c e e d i n g literally m o n t h by m o n t h a n d article by article ( w i t h large translated inserts o f actual texts), Seyffert traces the local disputes a n d evolving professional positions o f d o z e n s o f Soviet literary scholars. 12

" T h e semiotic m e t h o d is the m o s t appropriate for d e m o n s t r a t i n g the artificiality o f all

n o r m a t i v e , ideological, a n d ethnocentric categories created by m a n , " D m i t r i i Segal wrote i n 1 9 9 3 , i n his m e m o i r s o f the 1 9 6 0 s . " T h a t is w h y semiotics h a d s u c h influence precisely i n

40

CHAPTER ONE

in cultural criticism had always been too easily subsumed by an absolutist politics. Only an objective methodology like cybernetics (and later, semi­ otics) was equipped to demonstrate the conditioned nature o f cultural value and competent to urge individual thought toward its "search for universal inner freedom." Scholars trained i n this discipline were thus able to resist the "iron laws o f history"—as well as other politically i m ­ posed paradigms and death-dealing myths—without risk o f a collapse into nihilism or trivial relativism. The key to honest scholarship i n the humanities, Segal reasoned, lay i n a dispassionate "semiotic historicism," that is, i n the reconstruction (not the imposition) o f norms. Segal's defense o f a "dispassionate semiotics," initially invoked against Marxist-Leninist literary practice and then refurbished as a bulwark against the excesses o f Bakhtin's dialogism, is a recurring theme o f the present study. With the opening moves i n that momentous debate brew­ ing, a major symposium on semiotics was held i n Moscow in 1962. Argu­ ing for a methodology i n the humanities that was specifically nauchnyi (the Russian word means both "scientific" and "scholarly" but assumes stricter standards for falsifiability than is usually required of humanist crit­ icism i n the American academy), the "physicists" took their inspiration from Hjelmslev's universal semiotic law, which taught that for every pro­ cess there is a corresponding system by which that process can be an­ alyzed. The old-style humanists came under attack for their subjectivity, their reluctance to abstract and codify, and their refusal to relinquish their obsession with "things" i n favor o f the more universal category of func­ tions.

Anyone acquainted with the history o f literary criticism i n America will recognize here the familiar tension i n the humanities between soft and hard methodologies. But i n the Russian context there was an additional, extremely important subtext. That subtext, which constitutes the second important post-Stalinist "direction" i n the rehabilitation o f the literary profession, was the fate o f Russian Formalist criticism. Russian Formal­ ism, i n spirit and doctrine somewhat akin to our later New Criticism but aligned with Russian Futurism and thus much more receptive to technol­ ogy, had flourished i n the experimental climate o f the early 1920s. Its most aggressive spokesman, Viktor Shklovsky, had stunned traditional lit­ erary critics at the time with his call for the autonomy o f the literary

the Soviet U n i o n a n d i n the countries o f the former socialist c a m p . T h e r e the destructive p o w e r o f those forces was especially strong. . . . T h e discovery that the 'iron laws o f his­ tory,' critical a n d Socialist R e a l i s m , a n d even m a n y 'historical facts' were only

semiotic

codes liberated us f r o m the yoke o f the c o m m u n i s t dictatorship." See D m i t r i i Segal, " ' E t i n A r c a d i a ego' vernulsia: Nasledie M o s k o v s k o - T a r t u s k o i semiotiki segodnia," i n NLO, ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 3 0 - 4 0 , esp.

31-32.

no. 3

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

41

function, a downplaying o f content, and a simplification (even an elim­ ination) o f complex, ethically marked authorial sentiment. I n the inter­ ests o f professionalizing the practice o f literary scholarship, he had pro­ posed a "scientific" vocabulary o f mechanical devices and defamiliarization that focused attention on art as something separate from life. Formalism as a movement was cut short when Stalinist controls were extended to literature after 1929; its advocates had been more or less banned i n the Soviet U n i o n ever since. But i n the early 1960s several events made i t again possible for Russians to draw officially on this rich heritage. First was the reappearance, on the Russian scene, o f Roman Jakobson. This great paradigmatic Formalist, who had emigrated from the Soviet state to Prague i n the early 1920s and later established himself i n the bourgeois West as the century's best-known structural linguist, became a rallying point for Russian literary scholars o f the "physicist" persuasion. After Jakobson's visit to Moscow i n 1956, his works became selectively available i n his homeland. To be sure, the O l d Guard "lyricists" hastened to discredit the celebrated émigré—pointing out that the very concept o f "literary autonomy" was non-Marxist, indifferent to history, and dismiss­ ive o f class struggle; i n a less ideological vein, they complained that exces­ sive quantification o f critical method would undermine the integrity o f the literary personality. Where i n Russian Formalism, they asked, could one find love, intuition, social justice, the humanistic horizon o f art? What about those aspects o f literature that simply could not be "seg­ mented" and systematized? The battle lines were drawn. This two-camp configuration was soon complicated—and skillfully mediated—by the pathbreaking achievements o f the Moscow-Tartu school o f semiotics. Centered i n Soviet Estonia, this gifted scholarly col­ lective has since become famous i n the West through the work o f Boris Uspensky and especially the late Yuri Lotman. A t the time o f its forma­ tion i n 1961, its members (many o f them "physicists" by temperament) were united by little more than the desire to break out o f a dead, clichéridden past. As Boris Egorov, a scholar o f Lotman's circle i n Tartu and later Petersburg and a legendary storyteller o f Russian literary follies, wrote much later i n his memoirs: "The party-minded orthodox were still dubious about Structuralism, and we were afraid that the new term semi­ otics wo\Aà provoke even more fears. We began to reason by [Saltykov-] Shchedrin's Aesopian principle: ' H o w might all this be expressed more obscurely?' Then the Moscow mathematician V[ladimir] A . Uspensky in­ vented a splendid term, secondary modeling systems. Clever, and incom­ prehensible." 13

The ruse worked, but these creative, highly productive thinkers soon 1 3

B . F . E g o r o v , " U istokov T a r t u s k o i shkoly," i n NLO,

n o . 8 ( 1 9 9 4 ) : 7 8 - 9 8 , esp. 9 7 .

42

CHAPTER ONE

made o f i t much more than a ruse. The Tartu semioticians were "spe­ cifiers" and "segmenters," completely at home with quantification; i n this sense their origins can be traced to the Formalists o f the 1920s. But important differences obtain between them and hard-core early Formal­ ism (as well as the more technically oriented Structuralists o f a later day). The Tartu scholars were quantifiers who had been raised i n a socialist ethos, however disfigured by Soviet practice. N o t surprisingly, they in­ sisted from the start that any sensible Structuralist approach to art also attend to thematic and social dimensions, that is, to authentic communi­ cation between real people within a cultural continuum. Thus, while re­ taining a certain mechanical nauchnyi vocabulary and a fondness for bi­ nary constructs, they came i n time to focus less on internally autonomous systems o f signs (as these signs functioned, say, within a work o f art or within a series o f artworks) and more on the dynamic interplay o f codes— that is, complex bundles o f behavioral signs that provide the ground rules for personal honor, exchange o f goods and values, and the reciprocal trust binding individuals within a society. This approach eventually gave rise to an impressive body o f work on cultural and behavioral semiotics, both purely theoretical and (in the case o f Lotman's superb studies o f Karamzin and Pushkin, as well as his work on the Romantic canon), biographical. For all its reliance on models and codes, then, and for all its fierce eclecticism and independence, the research o f the Tartu school seemed to many Russians o f the 1960s and 1970s reassuringly close to familiar Marxist-humanist concerns, both i n its search for a materialist aesthetics and i n its careful attention to sociohistorical questions. I t promised the rigor o f Formalism without any embarrassing neglect o f content or social responsibility—that is, i t promised "Structuralism with a human face." H o w does this changing landscape for literary criticism i n the academy relate to the fate o f Mikhail Bakhtin i n his homeland? By the mid-1960s Bakhtin was i n poor health and i n his final decade. He had become fa­ mous. His "rediscovery" is now the stuff o f legend: i n the late 1950s several graduate students from Moscow's prestigious Gorky Institute o f World Literature (among them Vadim Kozhinov and Sergei Bocharov, later to become Bakhtin's literary executors) happened upon Bakhtin's 1929 book on Dostoevsky. They assumed that its author—like the au­ thors o f so many valuable pre-Stalinist things—had long ago perished. Their shock and delight was considerable, then, when they discovered that Bakhtin was still alive and even i n academic harness, teaching Rus­ sian and world literature at a teacher's college i n the provincial city o f Saransk. The Gorky Institute group made numerous pilgrimages to Sa­ ransk throughout the 1960s, begged the kindly, ever phlegmatic Bakhtin to rework his Dostoevsky book for a new edition, helped him to get his

THE

RUSSIANS

R E C L A I M

BAKHTIN

43

dissertation on Rabelais out o f the files and into print, eased him through many disillusioned moments, and fostered, through their personal devo­ tion, the initial phase o f the Bakhtin cult. Surely to his own great sur­ prise, Bakhtin witnessed the reshaping o f himself from a marginalized, invalided intellectual, a former political exile teaching i n the provinces, into a vigorous mainstream academic—and then into a celebrity with a burgeoning world reputation. I n 1970 the leading Soviet literary journal Novy Mir sought Bakhtin's advice on the current state o f literary criticism. Indirectly, the probe was also intended to elicit this senior scholar's opinion on the "lyricists versus physicists" debate. Cautious and sanguine as ever, Bakhtin saw potential in both approaches. He singled out for praise Yuri Lotman and the emi­ nent medievalist D m i t r i Likhachev, but at the same time he noted that the "specifiers" (that is, the Formalist-leaning critics) were often neg­ ligent o f literature's larger ties with the history o f culture. "Narrow spe­ cification," Bakhtin remarked, "is alien to the best traditions o f our scholarship." Clearly he associated "narrow specialization" and specifi­ cation—recall his defense o f the eccentric, passionate, "unofficial" Maria Yudina—with a narrowness o f soul, contrary to the spirit o f philosophy and fatal to those who would grasp the workings o f genuine creativity. He recognized i n Lotman's early work the very best that a "physicist" could offer the humanities. 14

Such evenhandedness i n the debate was both characteristic and pru­ dent o f Bakhtin—for his own person was soon to become yet another route o f "reclamation" explored by the new generation o f Soviet literary critics. But much i n this appropriation still confounds us. H o w did this theorist o f the novel, this patron saint o f open dialogue and openly rebel­ lious carnival, who never evinced any interest i n Marxism and who spoke categorically against Structuralism and its fondness for codes, come to offer all post-Stalinist parties something to their ideological taste? The story is an intricate one. The initial Russian rediscovery o f Bakhtin, which occurred while he was still alive, remained for some time binary along the familiar lines. The Gorky Institute group was not without its own agenda. Politically Vadim Kozhinov began to evolve into a neonationalist, ostentatiously Russian Orthodox i n religious orientation while remaining i n aesthetic matters an ambitious, conservative "lyricist." I n 1965 Kozhinov published an essay entitled "Is a Structural Poetics Possible?" that attacked the entire idea o f a linguistic-based methodology for literary studies. To give authority to his views, he evoked those friends

1 4

B a k h t i n ' s c o n t r i b u t i o n to the Novy Mir literary roundtable is available i n B a k h t i n , SpG,

1 - 7 . F o r B a k h t i n ' s letter i n larger context, see Seyffert, Soviet Literary 300.

Structuralism,

295-

44

CHAPTER ONE

and colleagues o f Bakhtin, until recently under ban, who had written against Formalism i n the 1920s. W i t h this move, Kozhinov began the practice—soon to become endemic—of selectively deploying the writ­ ings o f Bakhtin and his circle, culled from archives available solely to him and other select disciples, i n the struggle against the "physicists" and the Tartu school. The Tartu semioticians rose to the challenge. By that time several o f their members had become enthusiastic about Bakhtin's work, too, and began to claim him as an honored predecessor i n the field o f "metalinguistics." I n spirit, they pointed out, Bakhtin is not so anti-Formalist. He was, after all, a technician, a generator o f typologies, a thinker who had always resisted the simple "reflection theory" o f literary analysis i n favor o f more complex theories o f cultural refraction. Like the Formalists, he celebrates craftsmanship and analysis; he constructs his literary theory not out o f subjective categories such as genius or intuition but out o f concretely observable devices (his "dominant" just happens to be a hero's consciousness rather than a work's literariness). He had specifically lim­ ited his Dostoevsky book to a discussion o f the formal functioning o f ideas and words i n the polyphonic novel, disregarding the suspicious ide­ ology or content that fill them. I n sum, the Tartu scholars insisted that Bakhtin, despite all the nonquantifiable aspects o f his thought, was still a "scientist"—and to be scientific, nauchnyi, did not mean to dehumanize or de-historicize. Scientific criticism is dehumanized, Lotman intimated archly, only when i t repeats itself, stuffs itself with stock phrases, and labels writers reactionary or progressive according to preestablished crite­ ria. 15

16

By the time o f Bakhtin's Novy mir letter (1970), the success o f Soviet semiotics was attracting world attention. I t had a journal, Trudy po znakovym sistemam [Studies on semiotic systems] and its own annual summer workshops. I n 1973 the Tartu school devoted an issue o f Trudy to Bakhtin i n honor o f his seventy-fifth birthday; its lead article, an ad­ dress delivered by Vyacheslav Ivanov i n 1970, made Bakhtin embar­ rassingly central to a vast number o f intellectual enterprises, from struc-

15

See SeyfFert, Soviet Literary

Structuralism,

2 0 4 - 8 . A s his m e n t o r s , K o z h i n o v m o s t of­

ten m e n t i o n e d V o l o s h i n o v ( n o t yet republished) a n d the classics V i n o g r a d o v a n d V i n o k u r . K o z h i n o v ' s c o m p l a i n t was the familiar " h u m a n i s t " case against linguistics, b u t w i t h a F o r ­ malist bent: w h y d i m i n i s h literary science by r e d u c i n g the laws o f literature to the (simpler a n d m o r e predictable) laws o f language? S h o u l d w e n o t find precise analytic devices that apply to literary structures? 1 6

T h e s e several p o i n t s — e m b e d d e d

i n a critique o f "material aesthetics" that is only

partly contra F o r m a l i s m — a r e i n d e e d made by B a k h t i n i n his 1 9 2 4 essay " T h e P r o b l e m o f C o n t e n t , M a t e r i a l , a n d F o r m i n a V e r b a l W o r k o f A r t , " first p u b l i s h e d i n R u s s i a n only i n 1 9 7 5 . See the translation by K e n n e t h B r o s t r o m i n B a k h t i n , A&A

90,

257-325.

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

45

tural anthropology to Eisenstein's filmmaking. Over the next decade, the Tartu Structuralists devoted much space i n their journals to tidying up Bakhtin's unruly ideas. They attempted, for example, to draw bound­ aries between shapeless, open, real-life dialogues and the highly orga­ nized dialogic relations that obtain i n art (a line Bakhtin refused to draw), adding discrete levels o f structure across whose boundaries "cod­ i n g " and "recoding" could take place. This ideological annexation did not pass unnoticed. To many skeptics i t seemed that such an effort to stratify polyphony into discrete layers eviscerated Bakhtin's critical method. Under semiotic conditions, i t was pointed out, analysis is lim­ ited to the residue (what Bakhtin referred to as the "sclerotic deposits") o f a dialogic exchange—and thus i t obscures the main thing, the human impulse that gave rise to the dialogue and the human potential that might result from it. Any attempt to remove this dialogic aura—what Epstein would later call the sense o f "living i n a state o f promise"—was to remove everything that was indispensable to the model. Were the semioticians really recuperating and explicating Bakhtin or were they transforming him into something else? The question is not trivial. For although good reasons can be found for desiring more preciseness i n Bakhtin's thought, his entire phenomenology and discursive cast o f mind appear to resist it. 17

18

19

I n fact the very ideas o f modeling and coding were causing consider­ able backlash among more traditional Russian critics, now rallying to re­ enter the fray. This group included both the Marxist-Leninist brand o f official "lyricist" as well as the neo-nationalist, mystical-religious brother­ hood that had begun to cluster around the aging and now seriously ailing Bakhtin. As a forum for their views, the nationalists founded a counter1 7

See

Trudy

po znakovym

sistemam

6

(Tartu)

( 1 9 7 3 ) ; a n d esp. V y a c h . V s . Ivanov,

" Z n a c h e n i e idei M . M . B a k h t i n a o z n a k e , vyskazyvanii i dialoge dlia s o v r e m e n n o i semiotiki," 5 - 1 4 4 . T r a n s l a t e d as Vyacheslav Ivanov, " T h e Significance o f the Ideas o f M . M . B a k h t i n about S i g n , U t t e r a n c e , a n d D i a l o g u e for M o d e r n S e m i o t i c s , " i n H e n r y k B a r a n , e d . , Semiotics 1967), 1 8

See, for example, P. K h . T o r o p , " S i m u l ' t a n n o s t ' i d i a l o g i z m v poetike

i n Trudy po znakovym 1 9

( W h i t e Plains, N . Y . : I n t e r n a t i o n a l Arts a n d Sciences Press,

and Structuralism

310-67. sistemam

17 (1984):

Dostoevskogo,"

138-58.

F o r a m o d e l rebuttal o f this T a r t u S c h o o l "extension" o f B a k h t i n ' s t h o u g h t , see the

penetrating review by I . R . T i t u n i k , " B a c h t i n a n d Soviet Semiotics ( A C a s e Study: B o r i s U s p e n s k i j ' s Poetika Kompozicii),

i n Russian

Literature

10 ( 1 9 8 1 ) : 1 - 1 6 . " N e i t h e r B a c h t i n

n o r Volosinov, i n any o f their studies o f w h i c h U s p e n s k i j m a d e use, ever operated via a system o f discrete levels o f structure," T i t u n i k observes. " I n d e e d , b o t h argued against just the sort o f abstracting that w o u l d be n e e d e d to p r o d u c e s u c h a system" ( 5 ) . See also M i c h a e l H o l q u i s t , Dialogism:

Bakhtin

and His World ( L o n d o n : R o u t l e d g e , 1 9 9 0 ) ,

o n the T a r t u school's distinction b e t w e e n literature a n d life as one o f quality verbal o r g a n i z a t i o n , rather t h a n B a k h t i n ' s criterion o f quantity c o n t i n u u m m o r e "gradualist a n d historical."

85-86,

o f internal

o r density o f the o r d e r i n g , a

46

CHAPTER ONE

or antisemiotic journal, Kontekst, i n the early 1970s. W i t h or without Bakhtin's knowledge and consent, the editors o f Kontekst—who were also the guardians o f Bakhtin's chaotic, uncatalogued literary estate— began dribbling bits o f his early and late unpublished manuscripts into print. Naturally they favored those parts where Bakhtin's distaste o f fixed codes and mechanical modeling combined with quasi-mystical, although often Aesopian, references to Christianity. ( I n their reading, for example, the brief but provocative comments on Christ that Bakhtin ascribes to Dostoevsky in his book on that writer—Christ as the model for a free, dialogically oriented consciousness—become by extension Bakhtin's own personal convictions.) Meanwhile, potshots at the quantifiers continued. The politics o f Kontekst became so inflexible and obscurantist that in 1982 even Pmvda, a paper not known for its pluralism, reprimanded the journal's editorial board for intolerance. A t the time a quip circulated i n Moscow: "Bakhtin i n the context o f Kontekst is a bad joke." Which side had the sounder claim? Taken as a whole, i t must be said, Bakhtin's extant writings lend more support to an anti-Structuralist view. I n the early 1920s Bakhtin argued vehemently against abstraction and systems building o f all sorts (what he called "theoretism"); similar senti­ ments are reflected i n the notebook jottings o f his final half-decade. "Semiotics deals primarily w i t h the transmission o f ready-made commu­ nication using a ready-made code," he noted i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , i n a passage that has since been much quoted. " A context is potentially unfinalized; a code must be finalized. A code is only a technical means o f transmitting information, i t does not have cognitive, creative significance. A code is a deliberately established, killed context." To be sure, we should not make too much o f this startling remark, a casual private jotting o f Bakh­ tin's whose implications he nowhere works out. But it is also, o f course, not true; codes can be cognitively and creatively significant to an enor­ mous degree. For whatever reason, during fifty years o f scholarly activity Bakhtin chose not to deepen or make more sophisticated his understand­ ing o f signs, codes, and their interaction with more inchoate human ma­ terial—as so many contemporary semioticians and socio-ethnographers (including Yuri Lotman himself) have done. Znak, "sign," remained for 20

21

2 0

" F r o m N o t e s M a d e i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " i n SpG,

2 1

See A l l e n R e i d , " W h o I s L o t m a n a n d W h y I s B a k h t i n S a y i n g T h o s e N a s t y T h i n g s

a b o u t H i m ? " i n Discours

Social/Social

Discourse

147. 3 , nos. 1 & 2 ( 1 9 9 0 ) : 3 2 5 - 3 8 . A c c o r d i n g

to R e i d , B a k h t i n flattens o u t L o t m a n ' s theory o f c o d i n g : he reduces to mere m e c h a n i c a l "internal r e c o d i n g " even those instances o f c o m p l e x , "external multiple r e c o d i n g " that L o t m a n i n t e n d e d — a s far back as the 1 9 6 0 s — t o be flexible i n ways fully compatible w i t h B a k h t i n ' s requirements for an interaction o f contexts. F o r a m o r e temperate discussion, see P. G r z h i b e k [ G r z y b e k ] , "Bakhtinskaia semiotika i Moskovsko-tartuskaia s h k o l a , " i n M . L . G a s p a r o v et a l . , eds., Lotmanovskii

sbornik,

no. 1 (Moscow: ITs-Garant, 1995): 2 4 0 - 5 9 . I t

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

47

Bakhtin the rather crude, binary Saussurean instrument that had been criticized by his circle i n the 1920s. As we shall see i n chapter 5 o f this study, Bakhtin's reluctance to ac­ knowledge the creativity o f codes left a profound mark on his mature understanding o f form. For i t is noteworthy, I think, that Bakhtin never seriously entertained the ways in which a personality—and especially the poetic (not the prosaic) personality living i n a highly "conventiondriven" era—might actually be weakened and made more desperate by endlessly renegotiable dialogue; nor, conversely, how such a personality might become more creative, more capable o f initiative and honorable activity, when confronted with the challenge o f manipulating many vig­ orous codes. For this reason, one might argue, Lotman became a great Pushkinist, whereas Bakhtin, although not without his own wisdom on the Russian Romantic era, tended to "read backward" from his beloved Dostoevskian novel into earlier periods o f literature, even those periods governed by manifestly different dominants. 22

The static, somewhat archaic role Bakhtin allotted to signs and codes could well be connected with the larger difficulty he had with any nuanced discussion o f authority. I n his work, authority most often functions as a dull and impoverishing force: as centripetality, as the grim monolith o f officialdom opposed to sunny carnival, as the dead epic. Authoritative political power \ylast\ avtoritet] was heavy, simple, homogenous, onesidedly "serious"—and it was bureaucratic, always pressing down from above on something more valuable and vulnerable than itself. We might even say that for Bakhtin (as for many o f his marked generation), vlast\ institutionalized political power, appears to have been a distanced, some­ what demonized "untouchable," not without its fascination but better exiled from the kingdom than dispassionately explored. There was no flex to it. A n d not surprisingly, to counter such an unforgiving force Bakhtin is t e m p t i n g to speculate h o w B a k h t i n w o u l d have responded to L o t m a n in his post-binary phases, w h e r e L o t m a n investigates s u c h concepts as the biosphere, semiosphere, a n d the creative potential o f the "intersection" [peresechenie] phase, see Y u . M . L o t m a n , KuVtura 2 2

and "explosion" [pzryv] (for that final

i vzryv [ M o s c o w : G n o s i s / P r o g r e s s , 1 9 9 2 ] ) .

A comprehensive study o f B a k h t i n and L o t m a n in their respective intellectual evolu­

tions is yet to be attempted. F o r an excellent discussion o f this one aspect—the juxtaposi­ tion o f B a k h t i n ' s "dialogue" a n d L o t m a n ' s "codes" as they service literary biography—see D a v i d M . B e t h e a , " I u r i i L o t m a n in the 1 9 8 0 s : T h e C o d e a n d Its R e l a t i o n to Literary Biography," i n A r n o l d M c M i l l i n , e d . , Reconstructing

the Canon:

Russian

Writing

in the

1980s ( L o n d o n : H a r w o o d , f o r t h c o m i n g ) . See also the preface to the Polish-language edi­ tion o f L o t m a n ' s biography o f P u s h k i n , w h e r e L o t m a n explains h o w the interaction o f codes c a n increase the individuality a n d creativity o f a poet's personality: Y u . M . L o t m a n , " \ A l e k s a n d r Sergeevich P u s h k i n . Biografiia pisatelia.' Predislovie k p o l ' s k o m u i z d a n i i u , " in M.

L . G a s p a r o v et a l . , eds., Lotmanovskii

85-88.

sbornik

no.

1 (Moscow: ITs-Garant,

1995):

48

CHAPTER ONE

needed a global vision and the highly dispersive, individualizing ideas o f dialogue, prosaics, and unfinalizability. The scholars o f the Tartu school, one generation younger, were spared the fate o f whole careers lived out under Stalin's special brand o f vlast\ Perhaps for that reason they seemed less haunted by the question o f power. Indeed, their first academic contributions were i n the "organ­ ically" authoritative realms o f myth, religion, and folklore, as well as i n theories o f social ideology and law. Unsentimentally, as scientists, many o f them were interested i n the sort o f individuation that occurs through submission to larger imperatives and social structures, not only—as was the case with many o f their parents' generation—in personality formation brought about solely through resisting, outwitting, or (more kindly) re­ arranging authoritative utterances into "internally persuasive words." The Tartu scholars were curious about the interaction o f impersonal mecha­ nisms with personal opinion. But Bakhtin, almost sixty when Stalin died, had a relationship to power that was more visceral, superstitiously eva­ sive, and metaphorical than analytical. Rather than study i t , he turned away. Till the end o f his life, he remained an enthusiast o f Friedrich Schelling (a passion o f his youth), whose ideas on "objectivity as intersubjectivity" and on nature as a developing, living organism inclined him toward philosophical idealism and Romanticism. His interest i n science appears to have been largely biological; i n narrative, he focused not on static or spatial features but on everything that was developing through time. Bakhtin's patience with political commands and with the purely mechanical i n the universe was extremely short. A n d he sensed mecha­ nisms at work i n signs and codes. As Communism moved into its final decade, then, it seemed that Bakhtin had been won for the "lyricists"—a motley band o f traditional­ ists, anti-Jakobsonians, antisemioticians, religious revivalists, and Russian nationalists. What had not yet been attempted was an impartial study o f Bakhtin's life and texts relatively free o f the reclamation wars. That task seemed to be under way with much more vigor abroad. So when borders began to open, Russian researchers hastened to compare notes with their foreign colleagues and to assess the extant properties o f their best-selling author. I t became clear that a great deal o f groundwork remained to be done.

T H E 1990s: T H E RUSSIAN B A K H T I N INDUSTRY TAKES S T O C K Most necessary to scholars was a decent database and an inventory o f primary research materials: memoirs, archives, biographies, bibliogra­ phies. The first category, memoirs, was rich and varied—but somewhat

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

49

profligate. I t reflected the tensions o f rival discipleships and o f Bakhtin's own apparent determination (even i n his darkest moods) to be a san­ guine, positive-minded mentor to the junior colleagues who had rescued his work from the dead; i t had also been compromised over the years by the magnetic force o f the Bakhtin cult. Indeed, one o f the more attrac­ tive weaknesses o f cultured Russians o f the older generation—as many o f us sensed at the centennial—is a tendency to construct "creator cults" around literary and cultural figures, heroic men and women who then become, i n effect, secular saints with exemplary biographies that contain canonized truths. The survival and resurrection o f Mikhail Bakhtin fits that pattern well. What stress lines had emerged to divide the faithful by the summer o f the Jubilee? First and somewhat awkwardly, the 1995 conference was thinly at­ tended by that group o f caretakers who had known Bakhtin personally and over the longest period. The founding disciples—Kozhinov, Boch­ arov, Gachev, Melikhova—chose not to participate. "Bakhtinology," i t appeared, was getting on their nerves. Some made i t clear that they did not need the industry because they had known the man: "To you he is Bakhtin; to me, Mikhail Mikhailovich." Valuing themselves as "khmniteli" preservers o f the legacy, they had come to believe that the young, feeding any which way off these theories now that they had become fash­ ionable and free o f risk, were simply opportunists or dissipaters. Ko­ zhinov, i n particular, felt keenly that today's readers made little effort to understand Bakhtin i n his own context. Perhaps this is understandable; the orphaned era o f their own youth had offered few role models for literary scholars, and their personal attachment to this dignified pre-Bolshevik intellectual, to w h o m they had rendered such hazardous and indis23

2 3

K o z h i n o v prefaces almost all his n e w releases from the B a k h t i n archive d u r i n g the

1 9 9 0 s w i t h i n j u r e d commentary. See, for example, his introductory remarks to the publica­ t i o n , i n 1 9 9 3 , o f the u n c e n s o r e d version o f R . M . M i r k i n a ' s student notes taken at B a k h ­ tin's lectures o n R u s s i a n literature ( i n V i t e b s k a n d L e n i n g r a d ) d u r i n g the 1 9 2 0 s : " T h e r e is a widespread n o t i o n that M . M . B a k h t i n ' s interests were entirely t u r n e d t o w a r d the past, as i f he d i d n o t w a n t contact w i t h the 'trivial hustle a n d bustie' o f the present day," K o z h i n o v writes. " B u t I c a n attest that even i n his advanced years M i k h a i l M i k h a i l o v i c h (at least u n t i l the onset o f his fatal ailments) t o o k a lively interest i n everything that was h a p p e n i n g i n R u s s i a a n d i n the w o r l d as a w h o l e . . . Y e s , n o w w e c a n make p u b l i c the [full] text o f the notes o f these lectures, b u t it is n o t difficult to predict that m u c h c o n t a i n e d i n t h e m w i l l be received by certain circles o f readers w i t h b e w i l d e r m e n t a n d even w i t h acute dissatisfaction [his c o o l o r negative assessments o f E h r e n b u r g , T y n i a n o v , a n d Z o s h c h e n k o ] . . . . A g a i n I c a n bear witness to the fact that M i k h a i l M i k h a i l o v i c h , even at the e n d o f his life, d i d n o t change his attitude t o w a r d those a n d similar p h e n o m e n a o f literature i n the twenties. A n d I myself, almost completely sharing M . M . B a k h t i n ' s opinions, r e m a i n deeply c o n v i n c e d that i n the not-too-distant future these assessments w i l l b e c o m e generally accepted, even c a n o n ­ ical, i n R u s s i a n literary t h o u g h t . " V . V . K o z h i n o v , "Predislovie" to " I z n e o p u b l i k o v a n n y k h rabot M . M . B a k h t i n a , " DKKh,

no. 1(2)

(93): 9 0 - 9 1 , esp. 9 0 .

50

CHAPTERONE

pensable service, was great. But the generational conflict was further darkened by professional rivalries, Russian patriotism, and anti-Semitism. The O l d Guard, our immediate source for most memoir material, had long been breaking up from within. O l d Saransk hands resented the higher visibility and status o f Muscovites; the latter group disputed among themselves trivial details that poorly concealed larger struggles for territory. One illustration will suffice. I n 1988 Vadim Kozhinov recalled one o f the 1960s pilgrimages to Sar­ ansk, including this colorful detail. After fifteen minutes in Bakhtin's pres­ ence, a member o f their group, Georgii Gachev (the culturologist whose vivid portrait o f Bakhtin opened this study) fell on his knees i n rapture and implored: "Mikhail Mikhailovich, tell us how to live so that we can be­ come like you!" Gachev himself later expanded on this bout o f reverence in an interview he provided for one o f the new Bakhtin journals: "Bakhtin himself . . . became for us something like a living church," Gachev re­ marked. "From him and from [his wife] Elena Aleksandrovna there radi­ ated a holiness, a nobility o f spirit, a certain martyrdom. . . . We all clus­ tered about him, and each brought some unripened thing o f his own to talk out. Bakhtin personally was silent; it was enough for him simply to be an ear and listen, for when you have tuned up such an ear in yourself, you have tuned yourself up to your own optimum." Gachev was not alone among the O l d Guard in mythologizing Bakhtin's reticence to initiate dis­ cussion and his willingness to remain silent on the subject o f his own biog­ raphy. "He was, I repeat, a person who profoundly did not like outpour­ ings o f a personal nature," Kozhinov wrote in 1991. "Only now and then would individual phrases about his origins or his life accidentally burst forth. I did try several times to draw him into conversation, asked him to tell me something about himself, but each time I heard the same answer: it's not yet time, not yet time. . . . Yes, this man had his own aura." 24

25

26

2 4

See V a d i m K o z h i n o v , " T a k eto b y l o , ' " i n Don,

n o . 10 ( 1 9 8 8 ) : 1 5 6 - 6 0 . I n his collec­

t i o n o f portraits o f R u s s i a n thinkers from P u s h k i n to L o s e v entitled Russkaia

Duma

cow: N o v o s t i , 1 9 9 1 ) , G e o r g i i G a c h e v begins his sketch o f B a k h t i n as follows: B a k h t i n — t h i s is the C i t y ( a n d n o t N a t u r e ) , Peopledness,

multi-voicedness

(Mos­

"3.04.88.

( a n d not si­

l e n c e ) , dialogue (not a unified L o g o s ) , p o l y p h o n y ( m u l t i - s o u n d e d n e s s ) , pluralism a n d not unity, strong tea (not birch tree j u i c e ) , a n d a n o c t u r n a l seminar until m o r n i n g . . . N o t G o d , but y o u r neighbor, that was the accent" ( 1 0 5 ) . 2 5

" T a k , sobstvenno,

zaviazalas' u z h e

tselaia istoriia' ( G e o r g i i G a c h e v vspominaet

i

r a z d u m i v a e t o M . M . B a k h t i n e ) " [ I n this way, actually, the w h o l e story got started ( G e o r g i i G a c h e v reminisces a n d reflects o n M . M . B a k h t i n ) ] , interview w i t h G a c h e v c o n d u c t e d by I v a n L a p i n , i n DKKh, 2 6

no. 1(2)

(93):

1 0 5 - 8 , esp. 1 0 6 .

" K a k pishut trudy, ili p r o i s k h o z h d e n i e n e s o z d a n n o g o avantiurnogo r o m a n a ( V a d i m

K o z h i n o v rasskazyvaet o sud'be i lichnosti M . M . B a k h t i n a ) , " interview w i t h K o z h i n o v c o n d u c t e d by N i k o l a i Pan'kov, D e c e m b e r 1 9 9 1 , i n DKKh, material occurs o n pages 1 1 1 - 1 2 .

no. 1 (92):

109-22.

Quoted

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

51

As Bakhtin's image became an increasingly valuable commodity, genre scenes such as Gachev at Bakhtin's feet—and others o f similar hagio­ graphie cast—became themselves a point o f dispute. I n 1993 Bocharov upbraided Kozhinov i n print: " I don't recall Gachev on his knees in front o f Bakhtin. We were either sitting, or perhaps someone was standing. It's unpleasant to admit to oneself that one could forget such a prominent fact. But Gachev doesn't remember i t either; I asked him. I ' m not casting doubt on Kozhinov's communication. I fully admit that he alone might remember what the two o f us do not remember." Tactfully, Bocharov then questioned the whole ethics o f eyewitness memoirs and the urge o f the memoirist to fill out the story with fantasies. 27

Meanwhile, the backlash was gathering strength. Outsiders to the Bakhtin industry—newly minted converts to Freud, Derrida, and a hermeneutics o f suspicion—began to resist the entire hagiographie enter­ prise. To some o f these moderns, Bakhtin's fame, his seeming benevo­ lence, and his reluctance to join the twentieth century in his literary tastes were being exploited quite simply as face-saving nostalgia. Vadim Linetsky, for example, opens chapter 8 o f his 1994 tract Anti-Bakhtin: The Best Book on Vladimir Nabokov with the following declaration: "It's good that Bakhtin exists. N o w we can hide our creative infantilism behind someone else's broad shoulders, we can refer to him, point our finger, nod our heads: Bakhtin. I f Bakhtin weren't there, it would be awful to imagine how nowadays we could look i n the face the civilized world that surrounds us. Seventy years o f barbarism, cretinism, degeneration. But— we managed to get by. I n a Saransk storeroom, on a faraway shelf, they found him, exhumed h i m , shook off the dust, shoved him forward— look, envy us: Bakhtin." 28

The picture is further complicated by the role Bakhtin came to fill for subsequent, and culturally quite distinct, Soviet generations. The first memoir accounts to be published were written by members o f the O l d Guard who were, o f course, very young i n the early 1960s; by the time o f their formal reminiscences, they remembered Bakhtin in the grateful way that impressionable junior scholars revere an older mentor. Intimacy with Bakhtin—a man o f reserve and formally correct relations—was difficult to achieve; it was only natural that a certain rivalry as regards services rendered would break out among his aides. Competitive saint's lives were composed. Vladimir Turbin (1927-1993), Bakhtin's personal aide for 2 7

S. G . Bocharov, " P r i m e c h a n i e k m e m u a r u , " i n NLO

2 8

V a d i m L i n e t s k i i , Anti-Bakhtin —Luchshaia

y

a

v

kniga

n o . 3 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 2 0 9 - 1 0 , esp. 2 0 9 . o Vladimire

Nabokove

(Sankt Pe-

terburg: T i p . i m . K o t l i a k o v a , 1 9 9 4 ) , 5 8 . T h e final line is a paraphrase from Mayakovsky's hectoring

propaganda p o e m

"Chitaete,

zaviduite:

"Verses a b o u t

ya—gmzhdanin

c i t i z e n o f the Soviet U n i o n ! ] .

a Soviet

sovetskogo soyuza!"

Passport" ( 1 9 2 9 ) ,

which

ends:

[ H a v e a look, envy me: I a m a

52

CHAPTER ONE

twelve years i n Saransk and Moscow and a respected literary scholar i n his own right, was touchily proud o f his status as kamerdiner, or "valet," to Bakhtin's daily bodily needs; at the time o f his own death, Turbin left behind a sacralized memoir entitled "The Famine and Pain o f Mikhail Bakhtin." Semyon Konkin, Bakhtin's colleague at Mordovia State Teacher's College from 1936 to 1959 and Turbin's bitter foe, produced his own counterbiography o f Bakhtin, i n which he roundly abuses Turbin for peddling a misty image o f Mikhail Mikhailovich as "not o f this world," as a "'secret' peering into our contemporary world from 'over there,' " as a heroic figure left starving and friendless i n the poorly provi­ sioned Russian provinces and thus i n need o f being rescued by big-city Moscow intellectuals. Such possessive moves on the Bakhtin "icon" became common i n the inner circle. But then more neutral reminiscences by Bakhtin's own con­ temporaries and co-survivors from the Stalinist period began to appear. Especially interesting i n this regard is the testimony o f Leonid Pinsky (1906-1981)—Renaissance scholar, author o f a classic text on Shake­ speare, former Gulag inmate—who knew Bakhtin and his wife well i n the 1960s and 1970s. I n his correspondence with Pinsky, Bakhtin expressed more undisguised pessimism than he ever allowed himself to display with the disciples half his age. I t was Pinsky, for example, who mentioned to a fellow literary scholar, Grigory Pomerants, that i n 1974 he had asked "one o f the most noble o f Russian minds [Bakhtin was meant] whether or not good would eventually triumph"; and Bakhtin's answer had been, " ' N o , o f course n o t . ' " ( I n reporting this exchange, Pomerants remarked 29

30

31

2 9

See V l a d i m i r T u r b i n , " G o l o d i b o l ' M i k h a i l a B a k h t i n a " i n Literamrnaia

J u n e 1 9 9 3 ; see also " O B a k h t i n e , " i n V . N . T u r b i n , Nezadolgo

gazeta,

15

do Vodoleia ( M o s c o w : R a -

diks, 1 9 9 4 ) , 4 4 3 - 7 0 . T u r b i n stresses the ever present fear o f h u n g e r that a c c o m p a n i e d the B a k h t i n s u n t i l o l d age, the painkillers he was continually requested to p r o c u r e , the exile that saved the couple from starving i n the cities; a n d he called for a "poetics o f biography" w h i c h c o u l d a c c o m m o d a t e a "biography o f the saint's-life type" that B a k h t i n i n fact repre­ s e n t e d — a n d that "repeated i n n o small part the biography o f the R u s s i a n people" ( 4 4 9 ) . 3 0

S. S. K o n k i n a n d L . S. K o n k i n a , Mikhail

Bakhtin

(Stranitsy

zhizni

i tvorchestva)

(Sar­

ansk: M o r d o v s k o e k n i z h n o e izdatel'stvo, 1 9 9 3 ) , 1 7 . " I n the grocery stores o f Saransk i n the 1950s-1960s

there was n o shortage o f foodstuffs," the K o n k i n s remark w i t h s o m e irrita­

t i o n . " O n e w o u l d n ' t even have to write about this, i f it w e r e n ' t for the strange reminis­ cences o f certain friends o f M . B a k h t i n that have appeared i n recent years. I n particular w e have i n m i n d the series o f article-reminiscences by V . T u r b i n " ( 2 7 0 - 7 1 ) . 3 1

" I z s e m e i n o g o arkhiva L . E . P i n s k o g o (publikatsiia i predislovie N . A . P a n ' k o v a ) , " i n

DKKh,

no. 2(7)

(94):

5 5 - 1 1 8 . T h e editor N i k o l a i P a n ' k o v points o u t i n his preface that

B a k h t i n ' s " m o n u m e n t a l o p t i m i s m " was i n fact "the consequence o f a strong c o n c e n t r a t i o n o f w i l l " for the benefit o f his y o u n g intellectual charges ( 5 5 ) ; but that to Pinsky, B a k h t i n h a d n o p r o b l e m r e m a r k i n g o n his illness, his anxieties, a n d the "depressed c o n d i t i o n o f his s o u l " ( f r o m a letter o f 2 1 February 1 9 6 3 ) , 5 8 .

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

53

that thinkers like Bakhtin, who have pondered deeply the nature o f time and process, rarely speak o f "triumph" or victory; those were the words o f the Apocalypse, not o f Christ.) Pinsky considered Bakhtin a philoso­ pher o f European scope and existential depth. But such an assessment was not to everyone's post-Stalinist taste. Kozhinov, for one, confessed to having discovered native Russian culture through Bakhtin; i t had been a breath o f revivifying air after the fraudulent internationalism o f Commu­ nist rhetoric. Throughout the 1960s quarrels broke out between Pinsky (an old-school, Russian-Jewish intellectual) and the much younger Ko­ zhinov, emerging chauvinist, who revered "Mikhail Mikhailovich as one o f the greatest incarnations o f Russia." This generation gap between Bakhtinists survived well into the 1990s— to be visited on a new layer o f scholars, the first never to have known the master personally. Bocharov politely detached himself from the fray, de­ voting himself to editing the Collected Works. Gachev turned his attention to culturology and the typology o f nations. A n d i n a 1992 essay, Ko­ zhinov unceremoniously dismissed Makhlin and other younger scholars who had been bold enough to acknowledge the influence o f non-Russian ideas on Bakhtin and the legitimacy o f non-Russian Bakhtin scholarship. Insisting that Western consciousness was "monologic i n principle" and thus unable to grasp the principles o f genuine dialogism, Kozhinov con­ sidered foreigners' fascination with Bakhtin to be little more than a fad filling the post-Structuralist void. W i t h their superior financial resources, Western intellectuals had bought up Bakhtin and had begun to publish 32

33

34

3 2

As mentioned

by G r i g o r y P o m e r a n t s i n " ' D v o i n y e m y s l i ' u D o s t o e v s k o g o , "

P o m e r a n t s , Otkrytost* bezdne:

Vstrechi

s Dostoevskim

( M o s c o w : Sovetskii pisatel',

in G . 1990),

225-26. 3 3

2(7)

See K o z h i n o v ' s remarkably unembarrassed testimony to N i k o l a i P a n ' k o v i n DKKh (94):

no.

1 1 2 - 1 8 , esp. 1 1 6 . B a k h t i n ' s Russianness, a c c o r d i n g to K o z h i n o v , was manifest

i n his r e c o m m e n d a t i o n to his disciples that they read Vasily R o z a n o v ( w h o "opened

up

R u s s i a i n all its d e p t h , fullness, a n d contradictoriness"); whereas P i n s k y a n d P o m e r a n t s are vaguely aligned w i t h (a p r e s u m a b l y c o s m o p o l i t a n )

"Soviet p a t r i o t i s m " that d i d n o t ac­

k n o w l e d g e " R o z a n o v , B a k h t i n , even Dostoevsky, a n d that 'accepted' P u s h k i n a n d T o l s t o y only i n a r e d u c e d a n d lab-prepared f o r m . " 3 4

V a d i m K o z h i n o v , " B a k h t i n i ego chitateli" [ B a k h t i n a n d his r e a d e r s ] , Moskva

1 9 9 2 ) : 1 4 3 - 5 1 ; repr. i n DKKh

nos. 2-3

(93):

120-34.

(July

T h e essay is n o t e w o r t h y for its

aggrieved tone a n d its gratuitous, ad h o m i n e m insults to M i c h a e l H o l q u i s t ( w h o , K o z h i n o v claims, reneged o n a dedication to h i m a n d collapsed i n the face o f "Western pressure" to m o d i f y — t h a t is, to q u a l i f y — h i s original image o f B a k h t i n as primarily a R u s s i a n O r t h o d o x t h i n k e r ) . K o z h i n o v ' s reminiscences c a n also, o n o c c a s i o n , be persuasive, flexible, a n d n o n ­ partisan—qualities m u c h m o r e i n evidence w h e n he grants interviews to A m e r i c a n scholars. See, for example, his w i d e - r a n g i n g discussion o f authorship, religion, intellectual roots, a n d relativism i n N i c h o l a s R z h e v s k y , " K o z h i n o v o n B a k h t i n , " i n New Literary (Spring 1994): 4 2 9 - 4 4 .

History

2 5 , no. 2

54

CHAPTER ONE

books on him—while Russia lay impoverished. Kozhinov also claimed that Bakhtin's dialogism had been inspired not by cosmopolitan outsiders and pan-Europeanists such as the eminent German-Jewish neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen (a thinker whom Bakhtin greatly admired), but rather by the fifteenth-century Transvolga hermit and mystic, Saint N i l Sorsky I n the same spirit he argued that the sources o f Bakhtinian carnival should be sought not in Rabelais's corrupt Catholic West but in the purifying laughter o f the Byzantine holy fool. All who remember Bakhtin during his final two decades, however, gen­ erally agree on his public personality. By the mid-1990s the canonized image was that o f a self-effacing, chain-smoking, bemused old man, not given to polemics, congenial and yet (unless pressed for details in a for­ mal interview) indisposed to talk about himself. He was a man more o f Chekhov's temperament than o f Dostoevsky's or Tolstoy's. A moving glimpse was left by one academic acquaintance who visited Bakhtin in his final year, 1975: In Bakhtin's little apartment, an unhurried discussion was going on among the guests, who were literary scholars (the host, as usual, preferred to listen). And suddenly, quite unexpectedly, apologizing for not having forewarned their host (Bakhtin did not have a telephone), two correspondents from the Polish press walked in and began to interview Mikhail Mikhailovich in a most lively way. Bakhtin smiled miserably, begged their mercy, promised to send written answers in a day or two, but the newspaper men were not to be put off, they quickly set up their microphone apparatus, shoved a mike almost into Bakhtin's mouth and showered him with questions, which he answered slowly, wearily, aloofly, laconically. In the world of newspaper correspondents and the spinning of microphones, Bakhtin looked ancient, outdated, lonely, lost.

35

The centennial year called forth a flood o f further commemorative por­ traits. Bocharov began to publish long past—but now acutely recalled— conversations with Bakhtin that purported to settle uncertainties about disputed authorship, religious belief, and political convictions. Such reminiscences have enriched and complicated Bakhtin's image, but they are not, o f course, neutral. 36

3 5

B . F . E g o r o v , "Slovo o M . M . B a k h t i n e , " in B sb I 90, 4 - 6 . A transcript o f this P o l i s h

interview was p u b l i s h e d as M i k h a i l B a k h t i n , " O polifonichnosti r o m a n o v Rossiia/Russia 3 6

Dostoevskogo,"

2: 1 8 9 - 9 8 (see n . 6, a b o v e ) .

S. G . B o c h a r o v , " O b o d n o m razgovore i v o k r u g nego," NLO,

no. 2 (1993):

70-89;

see also the a b r i d g e d , s o m e w h a t imprecise translation by S t e p h e n B l a c k w e l l and V a d i m L i a p u n o v as Sergey B o c h a r o v , " C o n v e r s a t i o n s w i t h B a k h t i n , " PMLA 1994): 1 0 0 9 - 2 4 .

109, no. 5 (October

M o s t recently, see Sergei Bocharov, "Sobytie bytiia: O M i k h a i l e M i k -

hailoviche B a k h t i n e , " Novyi

mir, n o . 11 ( 1 9 9 5 ) :

211-21.

THE

RUSSIANS RECLAIM

BAKHTIN

55

Even more enigmatic than the genre o f the Bakhtin memoir is the Bakh­ tin archive. I n Russia as elsewhere (but perhaps more intensely i n Russia where distrust toward official documents is matched by an enthusiasm for sacralized biography and relics), scholars with access to personal papers have tended to sit on them and trickle out their contents piecemeal to select petitioners. I n the case o f Bakhtin, inventory and access have been sporadic. For years manuscripts and personal belongings were scattered throughout Moscow and Saransk, i n cardboard boxes, i n the private apartments o f a handful o f disciples. The preservation o f these papers has been an act o f love under archaic conditions. (Computer backup is only now becoming routinely available to Russian textologists, so the crum­ bling school notepads that Bakhtin covered with his commentary have been deciphered and painstakingly recopied by hand, often onto equally perishable material. To the despair o f archivists and present-day transcri­ bers, till the end o f his life Bakhtin wrote exclusively with a sharpened lead pencil o n soft paper.) Previously unpublished material, none o f i t too startling, continues to appear i n the journals: theater reviews and working notebooks from the Saransk years; references to Bakhtin i n fam­ ily archives (the Kagans and Pinskys); notes taken by colleagues during Bakhtin's lectures i n Leningrad i n the mid-twenties; the full stenographic transcript o f Bakhtin's dissertation defense i n 1946; portions o f the Rabelais dissertation (focusing on Shakespeare) that had been excised while editing for the book. The modest fund o f Bakhtin's own extant personal letters is slowly being published. Brian Poole, a Canadian 37

38

39

3 7

K o n k i n a n d K o n k i n a , Mikhail

3 8

I n 1 9 9 2 Voprosy filosofii [ Q u e s t i o n s o f p h i l o s o p h y ] printed several d o z e n pages o f B a k h ­

Bakhtin,

270.

tin's "additions a n d changes" to the Rabelais project; see M . M . B a k h t i n , " D o l p o n e n i i a i i z m e n e n i i a k ' R a b l e , ' " Voprosy filosofii, n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 3 4 - 6 4 . T h e s e " A d d i t i o n s " are i n ­ c l u d e d , w i t h detailed a n d highly professional commentary, i n MMB: ss 5 (96), 473-92.

80-129,

T h e text, prepared by L e o n t i n a M e l i k h o v a , deals w i t h the question o f official

versus unofficial seriousness, carnival echoes, the role o f gesture i n Shakespeare's dramas ( i n c l u d i n g a F r e u d i a n r e a d i n g o f Hamlet

as a displaced Oedipus

Rex),

the n a m e

(lofty/

sacred) versus the n i c k n a m e ( l o w / p r o f a n e ) , a n d makes insightful, i f s o m e w h a t disjointed, c o m m e n t s o n G o e t h e , H e i n e , Dostoevsky, a n d D a n t e . T h e excerpt has been translated by H a r o l d D . B a k e r a n d is i n c l u d e d i n his v o l u m e The Unknown 3 9

Bakhtin

(Ardis, 2 0 0 0 ) .

T h e first d o c u m e n t s to be p u b l i s h e d were the B a k h t i n - M a t v e i K a g a n correspondence,

i n c l u d i n g seven letters by B a k h t i n from 1 9 2 1 , largely relating to his p o o r health a n d possi­ bilities for e m p l o y m e n t ; see " M . M . B a k h t i n i M . I . K a g a n ( P o materialam s e m e i n o g o arkhiva)," e d . K . Nevel'skaya [ I u d i t K a g a n ] , Pamiat\

n o . 4 ( 1 9 7 9 , M o s c o w ; 1 9 8 1 , Paris):

2 4 9 - 8 1 . A p p r o x i m a t e l y this same selection was reprinted i n DKKh,

no. 1 (92):

60-88.

V l a d i m i r T u r b i n made available letters B a k h t i n wrote to h i m i n the 1 9 6 0 s , all brief a n d inconsequential (cf. V . N . T u r b i n , " ' N i p r o i z v e d e n i i , ni o b r a z o v D o s t o e v s k o g o

. . . i v

p o m i n e net': P i s ' m o M . M . B a k h t i n a ot 19 ianvaria 1 9 6 3 g o d a , " i n B sb II 91, 3 7 1 - 7 3 . A modest set o f letters to L e o n i d Pinsky was p u b l i s h e d i n DKKh,

no. 2(7)

(94): 5 5 - 6 2 . F o r a

56

CHAPTER ONE

scholar working i n Marburg, Moscow, and Berlin, spent several years tracking down the full, seven-hundred-page proto-text o f Bakhtin's mag­ num opus on the Bildungsrornant (The page proofs for this massive volume perished when a bomb hit the Moscow publishing house where it was i n production during World War II—after which Bakhtin, i n a story that has become so famous i t was repeated, somewhat garbled, in the mid-1990s by the chain-smoking hero o f the American film Smoke, "smoked away" four-fifths o f his back-up copy, that is, used it for ciga­ rette papers during the lean war years.) Bakhtin's sources for his other more ambitious works have also been partially assembled. As we await the full Collected Works, however, no comprehensive catalogue or inven­ tory o f extant archival holdings exists. The final category o f source material on Russian soil—annotated scholarly editions, bibliographies, and biographies—is in a somewhat happier state. The first bibliography (ninety-five pages) o f works by and about Bakhtin i n Russian and Western languages was published in Sar­ ansk i n 1989; i n 1995 this list was updated in a comprehensive centenary bibliography o f recent work (from 1988 to 1994, more than one thou­ sand entries) covering Russian and the major European languages. By the millenium, i f work goes according to plan, the occasional sporadic reprint will have been superseded by the authoritative M. M. Bakhtin: Sobranie sochinenii [Collected works] i n seven volumes (1996-99), on­ going under Bocharov's editorship, with thoroughly updated commen­ tary and textology. Volume 5, the first to be published, appeared i n 41

42

g o o d sense o f the courteous, resigned tone the elderly B a k h t i n sustained w i t h y o u n g e r colleagues, the m o s t interesting set o f letters i n print are those between

Kozhinov and

B a k h t i n , 1 9 6 0 - 6 5 , mostly o n the D o s t o e v s k y a n d Rabelais books but w i t h c o m m e n t s o n S o l z h e n i t s y n , K o z h i n o v ' s o w n scholarship, a n d so o n ; see " I z pisem M . M . B a k h t i n a , " Moskva 4 0

(November-December 1992):

175-82.

B r i a n P o o l e , t h e n in the G e r m a n a n d C o m p a r a t i v e Literature department at the U n i ­

versity o f M a r b u r g , spent t w o years ( 1 9 8 9 - 9 1 ) in M o s c o w researching Bakhtin's lost b o o k (only seventy pages o f w h i c h were p u b l i s h e d ) . A m o n g the seven h u n d r e d pages o f "pre­ paratory material" for the Bildungsroman

project that Poole e x a m i n e d i n B o c h a r o v ' s B a k h ­

tin archive was a detailed (thirty-page) plan for the book, w h i c h c o n t a i n e d a close analysis o f G o e t h e as well as an impressively full bibliography o f w o r k s that B a k h t i n consulted. 4 1

T h e p i o n e e r i n g w o r k was G . V . K a r p u n o v , L . S. K o n k i n , a n d O . E . O s o v s k i i ,

Mikhailovich

Bakhtin:

Bibliograficheskii

ukazateV

Mikhail

(Saransk: M o r d o v s k i i gosudarstvennyi

universitet, 1 9 8 9 ) ; the centennial update is "Bibliographia B a c h t i n i a n a : 1 9 8 8 - 1 9 9 4 , " in T . G . Y u r c h e n k o , é d . , M. M. Bakhtin

v zerkale

kritiki,

part 4 ( M o s c o w : L a b i r i n t , 1 9 9 5 ) ,

114-

8 9 . T h e m o s t recent comprehensive bibliography i n E n g l i s h o f w o r k s by a n d o n B a k h t i n — i n c l u d i n g interviews, lecture notes, translations, dissertations, a n d special journal issues— has been c o m p i l e d by H a r o l d D . Baker ( U n i v e r s i t y o f California, I r v i n e ) , 1 9 9 6 . 4 2

P u b l i s h e d by " R u s s k i e slovari," M o s c o w . A n n o t a t i o n s a n d textological scholarship o n

the Collected

Works are being d o n e by major B a k h t i n scholars o f the older generation: S. G .

Bocharov, L . A . G o g o t i s h v i l i , L . V . D e r i u g i n a , V . V . K o z h i n o v , N . I . Nikolaev, L . S.

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

57

1996; i t contains more than twenty texts from the Saransk years (1940s1960s), the majority o f them previously unpublished and unknown. Several journals devoted exclusively to Bakhtin's legacy, with a reliable distribution network and multinational editorial boards, are now well launched. O f these, the most ambitious have proved to be the Bakh­ tinskii sbornik [Bakhtin anthology], based i n Moscow-Saransk and begun in 1990 as an annual publication; the quarterly Dialog Karnaval Khronotop (established with Soros funding in 1992 i n Vitebsk, now in Belarus', Bakhtin's refuge during the Civil War), which fills four twohundred-page issues a year with archival material, reviews, interviews, and translations o f non-Russian work; and a series specializing i n Bakhtin as philosopher, M. Bakhtin i filosofskaia kuVtura XX veka (St. Petersburg, 1991). These are the large-scale projects—and by 1997, i t should be noted, all three faced severe financial crisis and possible collapse for want o f sponsors. But there has been an abundance o f more modest provincial publications, proceedings, and conference series that tell their own in­ triguing story. That story is worth sampling, for the role o f the provinces in the Bakhtin reclamation project is part o f a larger cultural shift. 43

Between 1985 and 1995—that transitional decade during which So­ viet Communism was destabilized and then dethroned—a great deal was written in the Russian and Western press about "discrediting the center." Although usually deployed politically, the phrase had an academic and cultural aspect to i t as well. Under the Soviet system, higher education and publishing had been highly centralized: books appeared with an un­ ambiguous " M . " [Moscow] or " L . " [Leningrad] to mark the place o f publication, and the prestigious universities o f those cities were greatly coveted. A t the expense o f the countryside, urban populations were guar­ anteed the best provisioning, both o f commodities and culture. But once the command economy collapsed, the center lost its priority funding and the ability to enforce its fearful mandates. The provinces (a term that in Russian has implied not only "provincial" but also primitive, scarcely civi­ lized, without the benefit o f material or intellectual progress) began to

M e l i k h o v a , a n d I . L . P o p o v a . A c c o r d i n g to the editor's note prefacing v o l u m e 5, material i n future v o l u m e s will be distributed as follows: v o l . 1, philosophical aesthetics o f the 1 9 2 0 s ; vol. 2 , Problems

of Dostoevsky's Creative

Art

( 1 9 2 9 ) , a n d an a p p e n d i x — " L e c t u r e

N o t e s o f B a k h t i n ' s C o u r s e o n R u s s i a n L i t e r a t u r e , " by R . M . M i r k i n a ; vol. 3 , theory o f the n o v e l ( 1 9 3 0 s ) ; v o l . 4 , the b o o k o n Rabelais a n d material relating to it ( 1 9 4 0 - 7 0 ) ; vol. 5 , w o r k s o f the 1 9 4 0 s to the beginning o f the 1 9 6 0 s ; v o l . 6, Problems

of Dostoevsky's

Poetics

( 1 9 6 3 ) and w o r k s o f the 1 9 6 0 s to the 1 9 7 0 s ; a n d vol. 7, w o r k s o f " B a k h t i n ' s circle." 4 3

F o r a review o f Dialogue.

Carnival.

Chronotope

in E n g l i s h , see A n n a M a t z o v , " D i a l o g

Karnaval K h r o n o t o p , " i n Scott L e e and C l i v e T h o m s o n , eds., Le Bulletin Bakhtin

Newsletter,

Bakhtine/The

n o . 5 ( 1 9 9 6 ) (Special Issue: " B a k h t i n A r o u n d the W o r l d " ) : 2 1 1 - 2 3 .

58

CHAPTER ONE

hold on to their goods and come into their own. I t was as i f Bakhtin's famous model o f the centralizing "centripetal" forces i n a given culture undermined by its dispersing "centrifugal" forces had finally come home to erode his own domestic monolith. For Bakhtin, we must not forget, was most definitely a creature o f the outlying regions, a man at home on society's margins. Born i n Oryol, raised i n Odessa, jobless i n the late 1910s to the early 1920s on the western fringes o f the USSR (now Belarus'), unemployed i n Leningrad, exiled i n mid-life to distant Kazakhstan, his first (and only) secure job was at a modest teacher's college i n Saransk, two hundred miles south­ east o f Moscow. As Bakhtin's academic home for almost twenty-five years, this institute—upgraded i n 1957 to Mordovia State University, with an active publishing house o f its own—inaugurated an annual lec­ ture series i n honor o f Bakhtin i n 1989; i n that year, an all-Russian Bakh­ tin Society was founded there as well. From the start o f the boom, enthusiasm ran high i n provincial centers with a "Bakhtin connection." I glimpsed this new balance o f power i n the early phases o f the postcommunist transition i n Moscow, May 1991, during a discussion with Leontina Melikhova, Bakhtin's student and personal aide during his final years and currently one o f the archivists for the Collected Works. She was staunchly on the side o f the urban saviors o f Bakhtin. " H o w is morale among the Russian BakhtinistyV I asked. " I n Moscow right now, it's bad," she replied. "Everyone is fearful, we're running out o f food, out o f paper, out o f jobs." " A n d i n Saransk?" I asked. "There, everyone is very optimistic," Melikhova remarked with a good-humored shrug. "After all, there was never any sausage i n Saransk." 44

I n our slow reconstitution o f Bakhtin's "Russian face" we should at­ tend first o f all to the provinces. Although other Bakhtinian locales have not been silent (Odessa, Makhachkala i n Dagestan), the most valuable o f the "provincial"—non-Moscow/Petersburg—contributions to Russian Bakhtin studies have come from Vitebsk i n Belarus', site o f Bakhtin's intellectual apprenticeship, and Saransk, the "academic" hometown o f his mature years. Festschrifts, anthologies, conference papers, archival pub­ lications, and fresh dissertations are clustered i n those two places. By 1996, at both locations, Bakhtin Centers were projected or operative, with varying degrees o f official sanction and funding. A n d after a decade 4 4

T h e first B a k h t i n lecture series was a n n o u n c e d i n a press bulletin, "Pervye saranskie

bakhtinskie chteniia," 1 6 - 1 9 oktiabria 1 9 8 9 (Saransk: M o r d o v s k i i gosuclarstvennyi universitet), 16 pp. A " B a k h t i n Society" was f o u n d e d i n Saransk a n d i n c o r p o r a t e d i n 1 9 9 1 w i t h by-laws, a governing p r e s i d i u m , a n d local branches t h r o u g h o u t the country; see the sevenpage p a m p h l e t " U s t a v O b s h c h e s t v a M . M . B a k h t i n a " [Statutes o f the B a k h t i n Society] ( M o s c o w : M o s k o v s k i i gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1 9 9 1 ) . Plans were a n n o u n c e d i n for an I n t e r n a t i o n a l B a k h t i n Society centered i n M i n s k .

1996

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

59

o f dependence on the pioneering Clark-Holquist biography (which has long circulated i n unofficial translation), in 1993 Russian readers were treated to the first full-length domestic biography o f Bakhtin, written by his colleagues at the university, the father-and-daughter team Semyon and Larisa Konkin. Published by Mordovia State Book Press and entitled, Soviet-style, Mikhail Bakhtin: Pages from His Life and Creative Work, i t is a workmanlike, reverent, fiercely pro-provinces monograph that makes little effort to conceal its contempt for the big-city Bakhtin industry. Unsurprisingly, reviews have been mixed. The shift i n emphasis, content, and reception o f these Saransk publications over the last twenty years can serve as an index to the "re-imaging" o f Bakhtin from local pedagogue to international guru and spiritual guide. I n the first Saransk anthologies (mid-1970s to mid-1980s), Bakhtin was invoked conventionally as an academic philosopher and historian o f literature. The earliest collection (1973), a routine festschrift, covered a wide and uncoordinated number o f topics. A decade later, another modest set o f essays appeared, prefaced by the obligatory editorial noting Gorbachev's appreciation o f the Russian intelligentsia and the Party's support for socialist art. I n this 1985 volume, which appeared on the very cusp o f perestroika and o f Bakhtin's runaway international fame, the Bakhtinian legacy to world culture already seemed to have an uneasy, potentially destabilizing open-endedness about it. Nervously the editors remark that "the name o f Bakhtin is often uttered i n vain, used i n in­ stances and for purposes far from literary and not at all scholarly" (4). 45

46

47

4 5

K o n k i n a n d K o n k i n a , Mikhail

Bakhtin,

3 9 7 pp. (see n . 3 0 above). T h e biography

incorporates m a n y n e w d o c u m e n t s , especially o n B a k h t i n ' s arrest a n d o n his teaching years i n Saransk (along w i t h m u c h u n d i s t i n g u i s h e d paraphrase o f B a k h t i n ' s ideas). A m o n g the biography's m o s t unforgiving critics has been V a d i m K o z h i n o v , w h o reacted strongly to w h a t he alleges are konkinskaia u

lozh " y

[ K o n k i n i a n l i e s ] , that is, self-serving anecdotes to

slander the M o s c o w B a k h t i n group a n d to benefit the Saransk professoriat. K o z h i n o v espe­ cially resented the K o n k i n s ' p u r p o r t e d removal from the 1 9 7 3 festschrift o f an essay by V l a d i m i r F y o d o r o v , a gifted y o u n g B a k h t i n scholar from the city o f G o r k y , w h e n the y o u n g m a n was harassed by the K G B for possession o f samizdat materials. " K o n k i n immediately threw the essay out of the collection"

K o z h i n o v remarks w i t h disgust. " A n d for i n c l u d i n g

F y o d o r o v ' s article i n the b o o k , the w o r s t that c o u l d have h a p p e n e d to K o n k i n i n the 1 9 7 0 s w o u l d have been s o m e rebuke from a petty party c o m m i t t e e . " K o z h i n o v challenged K o n k i n publicly for this, a n d , K o z h i n o v notes placidly, "understandably, K o n k i n began to m e . " See V a d i m K o z h i n o v , " O b o d n o m DKKh, 4 6

no. 1 (95):

'obstoiatel'stve'

1 5 1 - 6 0 , esp. 1 5 5 , 1 5 6 .

T h e festschrift i n c l u d e d essays o n the carnivalesque image, ancient R u s s i a n laughter,

R u s s i a n translations o f Shakespeare's Richard o f Candide.

III, E d g a r A l l e n Poe's stories, a n d the poetics

T h i s first c o m m e m o r a t i v e v o l u m e celebrated B a k h t i n ' s seventy-fifth birthday

a n d fiftieth anniversary o f the onset o f his scholarly career ( K o n k i n , Prob p&ist 4 7

hate

zhizni M . M . Bakhtina," in

K o n k i n , Prob n nasi MMB

lit

73).

85. T h i s v o l u m e m a r k e d B a k h t i n ' s ninetieth birthday a n d

the tenth anniversary o f his death.

60

CHAPTERONE

By 1989 national pride and then Communism itself had begun to dis­ integrate. Endorsement by the Party or by the general secretary had be­ come irrelevant, and retrofitting Bakhtin to past culture was clearly no longer sufficient; the needs o f the present were too compelling. Russian intellectuals confronted a political and spiritual void. A second generation o f Bakhtin scholars, trained philologists and philosophers rather than per­ sonal aides and intimates, had matured i n Saransk (Oleg Osovsky, Vlad­ imir Laptun, Nikolai Vasiliev) and i n Vitebsk (Nikolai Pan'kov); accord­ ingly, Bakhtin was provided with a new genealogy. For some time the Soviet press had been nourishing a renewed public interest i n prerevolutionaiy Russian ethical thinkers. Especially popular were the turn-of-thecentury idealists, humanists, and religious disciples o f Vlaciimir Soloviev, as well as the émigré philosophers Nicholas Berdyaev and Semyon Frank—philosophers who in their youth had tasted, then rejected, Marx­ ism. I n a flurry o f publications Bakhtin began to be assimilated, at first gingerly and then more boldly, to this neo-humanist, non-Marxist group. One native son wrote, "1989 i n Saransk can with full justice be called the Year o f Bakhtin." The first Bakhtin bibliography was followed by a booklet, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in Saransk: A Sketch of His Life and Activity which provided fresh details about Bakhtin's university career and pointedly linked him with the new revolution (or rather the undoing o f the Revolution) then at its peak. The authors resolutely em­ phasized Bakhtin's resistance to Stalinism. Far from being the passive and accommodating jester some accounts made o f him, Bakhtin is shown to have suffered major difficulties during the purge year o f 1937. During that hazardous period, and again i n the early 1950s before Stalin's death, the so-called bourgeois objectivism o f his teaching almost cost Bakhtin his job ( 8 - 9 ) . As noted earlier, recently published materials make i t clear that this reputation was not a later fabricated martyrology. Testimony from several generations o f students during these marathon teaching years in Saransk reveals Bakhtin to have been an unruly, stubbornly inde­ pendent pedagogue, impatient w i t h political controls on literature and dangerously devoted to teaching the primary literary text. Yet another Saransk publication from 1989, The Aesthetics of M. M. Bakhtin and the Present Day provided even more inspiration for coura­ geous, right-minded living. The hour o f the placid festschrift was over. This little booklet—a compilation o f sixty proposals by scholars through­ out the Soviet Union—was intended as guidelines for an annual Bakhtin 48

49

50

4 8

4 9

W i t h these w o r d s A . F . E r e m e e v opens his "Predislovie" to MMB: ENS 92, 3 . K a r p u n o v , B o r i s k i n , a n d Estifeeva, MMB

v S 89. T w o o f the three authors k n e w B a k h ­

tin intimately (one lived i n the same apartment c o m p l e x ) , a n d all three have p u b l i s h e d widely o n B a k h t i n i n scholarly forums a n d local papers. 5 0

E r e m e e v et a l . , Est MMB

i sov 89.

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

61

lecture series to be held each October i n Saransk, and i t attached the master's voice to increasingly anxious questions. I n fact the single most popular focus had become Bakhtin's early writing on moral philosophy and the hope i t held out for a practical ethics o f everyday life and thought. By 1992, the second winter o f Russia's discontent, this ethical message became more insistent—and Bakhtin's ribald, carefree, non-cost-ac­ counting carnival side had all but disappeared from view. Since Bakhtin's early writings on ethics have existed i n English for a relatively short time (Art and Answerability [1990]; Toward a Philosophy of the Act [1993]) and since they began to be widely used i n the West only i n the mid1990s, i t might be helpful to illustrate this shift toward moral philosophy with some specifics from the Russian press. We say "press"—but the written record here is perilously transitory. The publications i n question, dating from Russia's early post-censorship years, range from snappy pa­ perbacks to scratchy bound typescripts i n tiny print runs, barely legible and only one cut i n quality above the old illicit samizdat. The profusion o f these flimsy, perishable booklets—many i n the genre o f "conference volume" and soon superseded by sturdier, computer-processed, better subsidized publishing ventures—allow us to glimpse the postcommunist Russian Bakhtin industry i n the making. Take, for example, the conference volume that emerged from the sec­ ond Saransk lecture series held at Mordovia State at the end o f January 1991, entitled Bakhtin and the Methodology of Contemporary Knowledge in the Humanities} As before, Bakhtin is credited as a good reader o f literary texts and a respected scholar o f Dostoevsky, Rabelais, and the eighteenth-century novel. But far more important, he is now seen as the source for a model o f the world that is purposefully opposed to "scientific socialism" and its schematic visions. Over half the sixty-five entries i n this booklet concern the dynamics o f building an individual personality (in art and i n life) that is sensitive to, but not enslaved by, its social environ­ ment. Meditative i n tone, only marginally about literature, the recurring topics are confession, the crisis o f the moral deed, art as a form o f dia­ logue, and the relationship between knowledge and communion. Several o f the essays expand on Bakhtin's distinction between explanation and understanding, one o f the enduring divides i n his thought. 1

52

5 1

S u k h a r e v et a l . , MMB

i met 91. T h e entries are divided into three sections: ( 1 ) " B a k h ­

tin's creative w o r k a n d general m e t h o d o l o g i c a l p r o b l e m s o f k n o w l e d g e i n the humanities"; ( 2 ) " B a k h t i n a n d p r o b l e m s o f m o r a l philosophy"; a n d ( 3 ) "Investigating multiple ways o f assimilating B a k h t i n ' s aesthetic legacy." 5 2

I n MMB

i met 91, see G . I . R u z a v i n ( M o s c o w ) , " P r o b l e m a interpretatsii i p o n i m a n i i a

tektstov v t r u d a k h M . M . B a k h t i n a , " 1 6 - 1 8 , esp. 18; a n d V . V . K a s h i n ( O r e n b u r g ) , " M . M . Bakhtin ob urovniakh ponimaniia," 2 0 - 2 2 .

62

CHAPTER ONE

This binary pair is not, o f course, original with Bakhtin. Das Verstehen, "the sense o f a thing i n its meaningful context," is a god-term i n the philosophy o f Wilhelm Dilthey, founding theorist o f the modern human­ ities and a thinker to w h o m Bakhtin was cautiously indebted. But Bakh­ tin considered Dilthey too "monologic" (unfortunately the charge is not elaborated), perhaps because the German philosopher, for all his rich, empirical, fragmented exposition, was ultimately devoted to dividing the world into formal disciplines. Bakhtin everywhere prefers the homelier, more habitual scenario. Explanation is monologic. I t is based on the as­ sumption that I "come to know something first" and then explain what I have learned to others afterward. As a mental process, then, explanation is abstract and i n principle independent o f its addressee; i t need acknowl­ edge only one active subject, the person who grasps a concept and then proceeds to explicate i t to someone else. But to grasp the meaning o f a thing internally, for itself and for one's own self, is not, Balditin insists, to understand i t . Genuine understanding is always dialogic: I come to un­ derstand something only, and for the first time, while I am attempting to explain i t to you. I n the process you must respond, resist, develop i t i n your own way, fail to get i t — i n short, become yourself, just as I become myself, through the exchange. Neither party should seek "essences" (there are none), nor perfect reconstructions o f a past context, nor full consensus. A n d at no point does either side know anything for sure. 53

As a model for the way words work i n novels—and as therapy for intimidated or silenced personalities—Bakhtin's understanding o f under­ standing is enormously attractive. Reminiscent o f John Dewey's enlight­ ened pedagogy, the notion has little shock value on North American soil; after all, debates i n the open and a renegotiation o f opinion are the sin­ gular pride o f a liberal democracy's self-image. But i n post-Soviet society it had the ring o f the radically new. Officially, political consensus had been by decree. Even unofficially, i f measured against intuitivist or Ortho­ dox Christian notions o f "communality," Bakhtin's ideal o f ever abiding uncertainty and outsideness seemed strange and daringly short on faith. For many Russians o f that old regime, both dissident and establishment, Bakhtin's countermodel was overwhelming. As one contributor to the Saransk volume put i t gratefully, Bakhtin arranges the world so that the very act o f understanding becomes "an affirmation o f one's own self and 5 3

T h r e e references to D i l t h e y o c c u r i n the late w r i t i n g s , all laconic: a remark to the effect

that the assumption by D i l t h e y a n d R i c k e r t that the natural a n d h u m a n sciences are sepa­ rated by an "insurmountable barrier" h a d itself been s u r m o u n t e d ( " F r o m N o t e s M a d e i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " SpG, 1 4 5 ) ; a n d t h e n t w o b r i e f m e n t i o n s i n " A M e t h o d o l o g y for the H u m a n ­ ities": the sentence fragment " D i l t h e y a n d the p r o b l e m o f u n d e r s t a n d i n g " (SpG,

161), and,

m o r e enigmatically, " D i l t h e y ' s m o n o l o g i s m has n o t been completely s u r m o u n t e d " 162).

(SpG,

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

63

. . . a right to one's own point o f view." W i t h the addition o f a spiritu­ alized vocabulary, some refinement i n philosophical terminology, and a growing interest i n placing Bakhtin among other European thinkers, that ethical focus has remained i n force to the present day. Thus did these early Russian conference volumes open up sides o f Bakhtin that have been less i n evidence for an Anglo-American audi­ ence—perhaps because for us they are less strikingly new. Our own cur­ rent fascination with group identity (paradoxically nourished, i n the work o f some scholars, by Bakhtinian notions o f dialogic community and collectivist carnival) tends to obscure the self-reliant, individualizing side o f Bakhtin. Precisely that privatizing aspect o f our American heritage, to­ ward which ex-communist societies turned with such hopeful relief when their tyrannical economies first fell, has been under attack for some time by theorists who would deconstruct the "bourgeois Enlightenment sub­ ject." But i f due process, litigation, private property, and the language o f contracts come easily to us, thoroughly familiar i n all their positive and nasty aspects, more difficult for our tradition, perhaps, has been to justify an absolute value judgment passed on the content and outcome o f a dialogic process. Here a dialogue between former East and current West over Bakhtin's understanding o f dialogue has much to offer both sides. The following example is illustrative. 54

55

What, we might ask, can dialogic process reasonably be expected to do? Chapter 3 is devoted wholly to this question as it relates to literary texts—but we might prefigure the issue here i n light o f the ethical as­ pects o f the Bakhtin "industry" just reviewed. Bakhtin has appealed to hardcore relativists i n part because the polyvalent and polymorphous inclusivity o f his ideas, along with his insistence on the validity o f every concretely positioned point o f view, suggests that i n a dialogic universe there is no truth. A l l talk, i t is said, offers some valid thing. American social critics writing on the new pragmatism today, however, have be­ come acutely aware that "allowing discussion to proceed" and "giving all parties their say"—as virtuous as these processes are—is no substitute for rooting out lies or for resolving a conflict morally. Russian theorists inter­ nalized this lesson with exceptional quickness. Sensitized to the potential 5 4

M . V . L o g i n o v a (Saransk) i n MMB

i met 91: " D i a l e k t i k a p o n i m a n i i a i vyrazitePnosti v

sisteme kul'tury," 2 4 . 5 5

T h e final collection o f conference papers surveyed for this s t u d y — t h e T h i r d I n t e r n a ­

tional B a k h t i n R e a d i n g s i n Saransk, w h i c h t o o k place w i t h i n a w e e k o f B a k h t i n ' s h u n d r e d t h birthday i n O c t o b e r 1 9 9 5 a n d was p u b l i s h e d i n t w o v o l u m e s u n d e r the title M. M. and

Thinking

in the Humanities

on the Threshold of the Twenty-first

Century—followed

Bakhtin the

pattern o f earlier proceedings, w i t h m o r e t h a n 1 5 0 entries distributed equally across the fields o f ethics, culturology, m o r a l philosophy, a n d socially i n f o r m e d aesthetics (MMB mysh / a n d IT).

igum

64

CHAPTER ONE

for abuse when truth is made endlessly negotiable, they tend to prefer the more old-fashioned stance that there is a truth, yes, and dialogism visà-vis that truth means no more than what is meant i n democratic coun­ tries by minority rights, namely, that you and I have equal rights to seek it. The reasons for this convergence are curious. O n Russian soil, for a host o f historical reasons, habits that encourage independence o f thought and civic autonomy ("liberal values") were championed, at the turn o f the last century, by philosophical idealism. The "hands-on" radical activists, most o f them devoted materialists, were Utopians and ambitious social experimenters who brought on the bloodletting o f revolution; i t was the sober, no-nonsense metaphysical idealists so influential on Bakhtin's cir­ cle—religious philosophers and neo-Kantians—who insisted on individ­ ual "oughtness" [Sollen, dolzhenstvovanie\ on pragmatic, step-by-step personal growth i n a compromised (but ultimately responsive) world, and on the concrete "non-alibi for existence" as a way out o f moral con­ fusion. The eminent philosopher Sergei Bulgakov addressed this issue i n 1902, i n a passage from his essay i n Problems of Idealism that closely recalls Bakhtin two decades later: 56

The moral law, notwithstanding the absolute nature of its dictates, is realized only through concrete goals, in concrete life. This sets a new task for moral life—to fill the empty form of absolute "oughtness" with concrete relative content, to find a bridge from the absolute to the relative. . . . As with every­ thing relative, reason travels a precarious path here: ideas of good and evil are disputable, mistakes are possible, only the very concept of good and evil that unites all people is beyond dispute. A human being, to the extent that he has succeeded in achieving an understanding of reality . . . selects from the boundless sea of evil precisely that which can and should be: eradicated at this very moment by his own particular efforts; he selects that upon which it is appropriate for him to concentrate his struggle at this given moment.

57

Is Bulgakov's ethical position here that o f a Jamesian pragmatist or an idealist? Bakhtin would locate i t outside those categories altogether and insist that i t is simply the position o f an "understanding person," a per­ son committed to answer for the reality o f an immediate context. That context is expected to talk back. Such a scenario, so against the grain o f 5 6

See, for example, the discussion s u r r o u n d i n g this issue i n B a k h t i n , P D P , 2 8 5 : " W h a t

m o n o l o g i s m is, i n the highest sense. A denial o f the equal rights o f consciousness v i s - à - v i s truth ( u n d e r s t o o d abstracdy a n d systemically)." 5 7

S. Bulgakov, " O s n o v n y e p r o b l e m y teorii progressa" [ B a s i c p r o b l e m s o f the theory o f

progress],

in

I.

P.

Novgorodtsev,

ed.,

Problemy

Idealizma

(Moscow:

Moskovskoe

psikhologicheskoe obshchestvo, 1 9 0 2 ) , 1 - 4 7 , esp. 3 9 . I d r a w o n ( a n d s o m e w h a t adjust) the excellent translation b e i n g prepared by R a n d a l l P o o l e for the first scholarly translation into E n g l i s h o f this important anthology, f o r t h c o m i n g f r o m Yale U n i v e r s i t y Press.

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

65

Promethean or Utopian thinking, is now being eased out o f Bakhtin's early ethical writings by Russian scholars invigorated through contact with pre-Soviet thought on the nature o f moral obligation. I t is a healthy corrective to Bakhtin's more loosening effects on moral theory i n the West. Russian Bakhtinists are thus at a philosophical watershed. The extant primary texts are largely i n print. Russians are more weary o f the cult than we. They, too, desire to peel away ideological accretions and discourage facile, lazy applications o f Bakhtin's key terms. For not all things that interact or lie side by side are dialogic; not every inversion or comic act o f defiance is carnival, and just because Bakhtin believed i n the restorative effects o f laughter and i n the freedom implicit i n open-ended texts does not mean he was a relativist or that we should laugh away his paradoxical formulations and take his words to mean anything (or nothing) at all. Impatience with imprecision and inflation is felt both by advocates who wish to "cleanse" Bakhtin (thus restoring his usefulness and authority) as well as by detractors who would like to diminish his influence. 58

The problem was well expressed i n a 1993 essay by A . M . Ranchin, "The Bakhtin Temptation." We turn Bakhtin's ideas into banalities when we confuse their message with their mode o f argument, Ranchin insists. Bakhtin might advocate "play" and unfinalizability i n narrative, but the analyses he offers are not apologetic, jesting, or illogical. Bakhtin was no prophet, no "carrier o f a secret," no creative writer, and—al­ though he could employ Aesopian language when necessary, like any se­ rious intellectual working under Soviet conditions—he was neither tenta­ tive nor particularly accommodating toward his critics. He owned his own word (albeit not a final one), and this critical word, as far as the record reveals, suffered little self-doubt. 59

By 1995 such criticism had gained momentum, the predictable under­ tow moving against what many considered to be a profligate Bakhtin tidal wave. I t soon acquired terminological sophistication and even a journalistic home: the Moscow-based Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie [New literary review], or NLO, i n which Ranchin's essay appeared. NLO, foun­ ded in 1992, had become the vanguard post-Soviet "thick journal" for high-quality, serious integration o f Western theory with Russian primary texts and philological traditions. O n the terrain o f literary politics, i t 5 8

A s early as 1 9 8 9 there was c o n c e r n about the dilution o f B a k h t i n ' s categories. " I n o u r

country," the editor o f the first v o l u m e o f Saransk lectures ruefully notes, "for all the mass use o f B a k h t i n ' s n a m e i n practically every p r i n t e d text a n d m a n u s c r i p t . . . w e m o r e often e n c o u n t e r mere play w i t h the terms ' c h r o n o t o p e , ' serious m e t h o d o l o g i c a l

i z u c h e n i i a estetiki B a k h t i n a , " i n MMB 5 9

'outsideness,' 'insideness,' t h a n w e

do

application o f t h e m . " See A . F . E r e m e e v ( S v e r d l o v s k ) , "Rezervy i sov 89, 5.

A . M . R a n c h i n , "Iskushenie B a k h t i n y m , " i n NLO,

no. 3 (1993):

320-25.

66

CHAPTER ONE

tended toward a pro-Structuralist, Tartu school line; for several years i t had been running articles unsympathetic to Bakhtin and relentless i n their search for flaws or contradictions i n his method. Late i n 1995 sev­ eral pieces appeared i n the spirit o f a necrologue to the centennial. Yuri Murashov's essay "The Revolt o f the Voice against Writing: O n Bakhtin's Dialogism" might serve as exemplary. Irritated by Bakhtin's bias against Structuralism, Murashov conducts his own postmortem on Bakhtin's late essay "Toward a Methodology for the Humanities." His special target is that essay's oft-cited distinction between the doublevoiced "depth" o f the humanities and the impersonal, single-voiced "pre­ cision" o f the harder sciences (in effect, the "understanding" versus "ex­ planation" distinction noted above). Why, Murashov wonders, has the term precision [tochnosf] become one o f abuse? By opposing the act o f "getting to know another personality" (presumed to be complex, deep, unresolved, unproblematically good) to the supposedly more primitive act o f "getting to know a thing" (simple, quantifiable, limited, dead), Bakhtin implies that Structuralist scholars, to the extent that they trust the "thing-like" traces o f artistic intention, are i n some mortifying way hostile to the interests o f the creating author or the living; text. Bakhtin does not bother to "penetrate into the 'undefined' or 'infinite' depths o f the structuralist text" (26), Murashov notes, nor is he curious to see those things o f beauty—however mute or fixed—that might be revealed by such analysis. 60

But there are more serious deficiencies i n Bakhtinian method, we learn. W i t h some malice, Murashov proceeds to probe them. Bakhtin indicts the "collective o f literary professionals" for pursuing "personal, merely practical interests," and "to this egoistic voice o f the literary professional or Structuralist, Bakhtin opposes his own voice" (27). Bakhtin would have us believe this voice is magnanimous and open-minded. Unlike the structuralizers' voice, i t is "uninterested i n any conclusions that might be drawn from its own theory." I t is outside time, space, and history, floating somewhere i n that vague but highly privileged "great time." Murashov then asks why Bakhtin "so cleverly conceals his own personal egoism as a theorist and a literary scholar, his own pretenses to truth i n his own final word, his own individual monologism?" (28). I n response to that rhetorical question, Murashov deploys a move fa­ miliar to us from deconstructionist critique. The real culprit and foe for Bakhtin, he claims, is writing itself, the status o f print as a "thing." Bakh­ tin links "monologism with writing and dialogism with the oral or voiced form o f language, with its bodied-ness" (29); his pro-voice prejudices 6 0

Y u r i i M u r a s h o v , "Vosstanie golosa protiv p i s ' m a , " i n NLO,

F u r t h e r page references are given i n text.

n o . 16 ( 1 9 9 5 ) :

24-31.

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

67

incline him to bear a grudge against all inscribed traces. To be sure, Murashov's indictment squares poorly with the reality o f Bakhtin the singer o f novels, who celebrates the ability o f precisely the written word to resurrect whole worlds across distant and alien millennia. But passions can run high and indiscriminate on the pages o f NLO. I n the tradition o f the Russian "thick journal," it sustains itself through controversy—and the Bakhtin cult has become one o f its recurring irritants. The same 1995 issue carried a review article by A. T. Ivanov entitled "Bakhtin, Bakhtinistika, Bakhtinologiia," ostensibly covering a number o f centennial productions—journals, anthologies, and monographs. A l ­ though scarcely touching on the seven items under review, Ivanov does dwell on a distinction that sums up well the tensions sensed among readers o f Bakhtin. I t is expressed in a struggle o f suffixes. Competition has arisen, he notes, between "Bakhtinistics" and "Bakhtinology." The former (favored by the Tartu school) has modest, reclamatory, philologi­ cal aims. I t asks such questions as these: H o w can a literary text be better understood using Bakhtin's categories? Can these categories be refined and tightened? H o w might a scholar utilize Bakhtin to facilitate access to the languages o f a past age? Ivanov regrets that this service function has lost currency in an era o f inflated critical personae. (Apparently i t was Yuri Lotman himself who, at a Tartu conference in 1969, remarked pro­ phetically and without enthusiasm that "soon we shall become witness to the birth o f a new science: Bakhtinology.") With the advent o f -ology, Bakhtin began to be abstracted, "de-philologized," metaphysicized, can­ onized as a mystical "Russian thinker"; the question became not how to read texts with precision but rather "how salvation is possible with the help o f Bakhtin" (334). "The Bakhtin o f Bakhtinology was not a philolo­ gist or literary scholar and not even a philosopher," Ivanov remarks, "but a wise man, a teacher, an ethical mentor who evaluated all o f culture from a position o f higher knowledge." 61

62

According to Ivanov, practicing Bakhtinologists are essentially cultists who engage in a series o f highly suspect intellectual moves. First they identify Bakhtin's ideas with his biographical life. Then they assume that every event in that life (which becomes a "text") must therefore be sig­ nificant. Next follows a "spiritual askesis": to enter the significant world o f Bakhtin's life—to "receive the right to enter"—ordinary readers must "do something with themselves," "consciously reject their own past ex­ perience," alter their "thinking body." Then comes the most dangerous

6 1

A . T . Ivanov, " B a k h t i n , Bakhtinistika, B a k h t i n o l o g i i a , " i n NLO,

n o . 16 ( 1 9 9 5 ) :

333-

3 7 , esp. 3 3 4 - 3 5 . 6 2

A s reported by K o n s t a n t i n U s u p o v i n his prefatory note from the editor, " O t redakt-

sionnoi kollegii," i n MMB

i fil kul XX,

1 (91),

5-6.

68

CHAPTER ONE

step o f all: the Bakhtin o f Bakhtinology "can only be understood i n his own personal language" (335). Since that language is not to be found i n impersonal—and thus accessible, verifiable, falsifiable—textual mecha­ nisms but only i n some purported "dialogue" set up by the Bakhtinologist, inevitably more attention is paid to the self-expressive fantasies o f the critic than to Bakhtin's own writings (not to mention any primary literary texts). Bakhtinologues, i t turns out, are always i n crisis, chron­ ically anxious (as their guru had never been) over what cannot be (or has not yet been) expressed. Yet paradoxically, time and room can always be made for expressing one more o f their own speculations or doubts. Such critical production i n the postcommunist era, Ivanov concludes with some exasperation, is not a revival o f literary scholarship* and not the cutting edge o f anything. I t is a "neoconservative revolution i n the hu­ manities" plain and simple (336). Unsympathetic as i t is, this centennial retrospective o f the "Bakhtinological t u r n " on the pages o f Novoe litemturnoe obozrenie gives an outsider's perspective—and perhaps not wholly inaccurate—on the complexity o f Russian attitudes toward Bakh­ tin that have been traced i n this chapter. There will be occasion later i n this study to amplify further its unkinder sides. 63

6 3

I n the heated context o f these NLO diatribes, one can appreciate the sane c o m m e n t s o f

L y d i a G i n z b u r g , w h o offered a n enlightened c o m p r o m i s e i n the debates over tochnostf [pre­ c i s i o n ] i n the humanities. T o u c h i n g o n B a k h t i n i n a 1 9 7 8 i n t e r v i e w — s h e was appreciative o f his m e n t a l energy b u t wary o f his m e t h o d s — G i n z b u r g r e m a r k e d : " I t h i n k that the h u ­ manities has its o w n type o f precision. P r e c i s i o n o f a specific sort. A n d it w i l l avenge itself i f it is forgotten. T h i s precision has various levels. A t the base o f everything lies factual a n d d o c u m e n t e d precision, the accuracy o f the apparatus. . . . a n d alongside this, as it w e r e , material precision, there is the logic o f explication, the precision w i t h w h i c h the devices o f synthesis a n d analysis are applied. A n d finally there is the i n n e r precision by w h i c h a given concept

is constructed, a n d its accurate expression i n the w o r d " ( " R a z g o v o r o liter-

aturovedenii" [ 1 9 7 8 ] , i n L i d i i a G i n z b u r g , O starom

i novom [ L e n i n g r a d : Sovetskii pisatel',

1 9 8 2 ] : 4 3 - 5 8 , esp. 4 8 ) . G i n z b u r g , T y n i a n o v ' s m o s t gifted student a n d perhaps the best representative o f Soviet "Structuralism w i t h a h u m a n face" after Y u r i L o t m a n , h a d this to say further o n B a k h t i n : " A n d w h a t is truth i n literary scholarship? T a k e a p h e n o m e n o n s u c h as B a k h t i n . L e t ' s say, his idea o f p o l y p h o n y i n D o s t o e v s k y . . . by n o means d o all agree that an ultimate authorial w o r d is absent i n Dostoevsky. I also d o n o t share m a n y o f B a k h t i n ' s ideas ( n o t to m e n t i o n their automatic application i n w o r k s by m a n y o f his imitators). B a k h ­ tin is remarkable n o t because he said things that were irreproachably true but for quite another reason. F o r his h u g e spiritual energy, his strength o f t h o u g h t , a tirelessly w o r k i n g m i n d that along the w a y gave rise to s u c h fertile concepts" ( 4 9 ) . See also V . Baevskii's diary entry f r o m N o v e m b e r

1 9 8 6 , w h e r e G i n z b u r g ' s o p i n i o n o f B a k h t i n is given a s o m e w h a t

different slant: " T h e formal m e t h o d was very b r o a d , " G i n z b u r g is reported to have said. " A n d like every b r o a d p h e n o m e n o n , it i n c o r p o r a t e d into itself even those w i t h w h o m it quarreled. S u c h was the case w i t h B a k h t i n . H i s n o t i o n that i n D o s t o e v s k y the idea b e c o m e s the flesh o f the text, a n element o f artistic f o r m , coincides w i t h the ideas o f the formal s c h o o l . T h e n he became fashionable, everywhere people saw carnival a n d polyphony.

He

h i m s e l f was partly guilty for this. F i r s t he p o i n t e d to p o l y p h o n y i n Dostoevsky, a n d that was

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

69

To grant Bakhtin the courtesy o f a final responsive word i n the Bakh­ tinology debates (and one that luminously illustrates his own category o f "understanding"), we might draw on a reminiscence by the director o f the Moscow Dostoevsky Museum, Galina Ponomareva. I n a 1994 inter­ view she recalled numerous discussions with the aging Bakhtin on the subject o f Yuri Lotman. "When I said that Lotman's Structuralism seemed to me unproductive . . . M . M . agreed—and at the same time disagreed. He agreed that such self-sufficiency was dangerous, but on the other hand he immediately corrected himself: 'But o f course, Lotman himself fully understands that!'" 64

D o the competing images o f Bakhtin i n his homeland submit to a single generalized portrait? Can this portrait be put to work? The task i n Russia, it appears, is less and less a matter o f making Bakhtin immediately appli­ cable to crisis conditions. Bakhtin's own indifference to the noisy political panaceas crowding i n on him during most o f his mature life has always been part o f his huge appeal. As suggested above, Russians read Bakhtin as a culturologist rather than a politically acute multiculturalist. A n d when real-life problems begin (that is, when Western multiculturalists become most irritable and activist), Russian culturologists, Bakhtin in­ cluded, tend to take a benignly Formalist turn, becoming specifiers, spec­ ulators, and theorists rather than engaged social critics. They are profes­ sional academic humanists i n the most bookish sense o f that word. As such, present-day culturology represents a departure from main­ stream Russian radical thought and its mystique o f revolution. The elitist Bakhtin pointedly resisted that mystique. His notions o f progress, as well as the goals he posited for interpersonal dialogue, were unambitious. As Vitaly Makhlin has observed o f these early dialogic models, the most in­ novative debates o f the 1920s occurred not within "theories claiming to be revolutionary" but among people o f a "new traditionalist conscious­ ness, . . . a new radical conservatism": conservative "because i t involved a dialogue with humanist and Christian tradition and not their dialectical 'removal' "—and thus a dissenting voice within the extremist tradition o f the Russian intelligentsia. A n d Makhlin adds: "[Bakhtin's] was a conser­ vatism more radical than any sort o f superficial revolutionism." I n this sense, the reviewer Ivanov from Novoe literuturnoe obozrenie was quite 65

very interesting.

T h e n he extended the idea to the novel i n general, a n d it n o

w o r k e d . I t all fell apart" ( V . Baevskii, " D v e stranitsy i z d n e v n i k a , " i n Isupov, e d . , tinologiia 6 4

tine)

Bakh­

95, 1 1 .

G . B . P o n o m a r e v a , " V y s k a z a n n o e i nevyskazannoe . . . ( V o s p o m i n a n i i a o M . M . B a k h [interview from N o v e m b e r 1 9 9 4 ] , DKKh,

references i n text. 6 5

longer

V . L . M a k h l i n , MB: FP 90, 2 0 .

no. 3 (95):

5 9 - 7 7 , esp. 7 3 . F u r t h e r page

70

CHAPTER ONE

correct i n his impatient remark that Bakhtinian method constitutes a "neoconservative revolution i n the humanities." Indeed, many Russian intellectuals today would consider such an old-fashioned return to op­ tions that were alive and debated i n the 1920s a great good fortune for Russia's future. Chapter 2 will move back to that very decade and survey the reception of Bakhtin's work during his own career i n print (1929 to 1975)—a journey to a land and culture that seems increasingly sealed i n a glass jar. We might pose one final question as preparation for this retrospective glance. H o w did Bakhtin react to the Revolution that defined the life o f so many i n his generation? I n his discussions with Viktor Duvakin, fifty years after the event, Bakhtin insisted that he was dismayed by the fall o f the monarchy and irreconcilably opposed to the Bolsheviks from their very first days i n power. But what o f the testimony o f Bakhtin's actual texts i n their own time? Was there an implicit politics to his philosophy as he worked i t out from the 1920s through the 1970s? The question o f revolution focuses much o f what is most confusing i n Bakhtin. There is i n his life and writings a manifest absence o f rage, o f despair, o f radical stops and clean starts. He almost never took offense— and that alone separates him from much o f today's ideological criticism. He had the highest respect for Western literary traditions, both canonical and noncanonical, and the deepest reverence for authors and "subjects," of whose death he had not heard and would not have acknowledged. Although as a very young man he had planned to write a treatise on the ethics o f politics, i n his extant work almost no attention is devoted t o practical political action as a beneficial organizing force i n society. The closest he comes t o political radicalism is probably his idea o f carnival. But the politics o f Bakhtinian carnival—that irreverent, unfinalizable ma­ terial Utopia fantasized during years o f famine and terror by a deeply nonutopian thinker—is (to say the least) highly peculiar. Its participants could never be disciplined or marshaled into any centripetal event such as "class struggle," coherent rebellion, or effective legislation on behalf o f social change. As a provisional answer to this complex question o f Bakhtin's politics, I suggest that he be called an "antirevolutionary." N o t "counter-," just "anti-": a person who viewed the dynamics o f the world within quite other parameters. He rejected from the start the binary logic at the base of the most successful revolutionary thinking o f his time, that is, the Marxist-Leninist model. That model, we must now make an effort to remember, was dialectical and linear to a rigidly "efficient" degree. I t taught its converts that i n order to make sense out o f change, one must analyze i t into a system. Whatever does not fit that system is relegated to the realm o f "spontaneity" or anarchy—to be cast out, brought under

THE RUSSIANS RECLAIM BAKHTIN

71

control, or annihilated. What does fit the system is made abstract, gen­ eral, arranged dialectically, and called (again to use the Leninist category) "consciousness." Only this consciously systematic component was deemed real and worthy o f work; for its sake, the future mattered more than the present and sacrifice was valued over individual survival. Bakhtin—a consummate and not too badly compromised survivor— understood consciousness i n an entirely different way. To such binary paradigms he would have responded that the world is simply not set up as a battleground between system and chaos. N o life even remotely famil­ iar to us from our everyday experience offers those two options i n any clean or useful way. A n d thus Bakhtin rejected both poles: the first, a "Hegelian" (and later a semiotic or a Freudian) extreme that assumes "everything means something and is going somewhere"; the second, a relativist (and later poststructuralist) view that assumes "nothing can mean anything and thus we cannot go anywhere." As an alternative to that grim fantastical choice, Bakhtin believed that the world, as we are thrust into i t , is a world o f potential form. But the realization o f form is never instantaneous, i t is not an "uncovering" o f some préexistent thing. Patches o f form arise as the result o f intelligence, work, and moral choice; to survive, they require a nurturing environment. I t would seem that discrediting the absurd dichotomy between "system or nothing," which eliminates duration and devalues individual effort, was the single major task o f Bakhtin's long life. Ex-Soviet intellectuals, who are undoing their Revolution and at the same time reconfiguring Bakhtin, read this challenge to "system-or-nothi n g " thinking as a protest against the political thought that had defined their age. For what a system-or-nothing grid eliminates first o f all is free­ dom; as the next step, i t eliminates the experience o f real time. A t stake here is not so much political freedom—fate has not been generous to Russia i n that realm, and Russians have managed to produce phenome­ nally free thoughts under the most imprisoned circumstances. The free­ dom is spiritual: the sense that the human psyche is, by definition, free to shape its own development; that i n this project i t has access to unex­ pected potential; that i t is conscious; and that, as Bakhtin put i t , this "consciousness is much more terrifying than any unconscious complexes" because, unlike the unconscious, i t is obliged to choose and to answer for its own responses. When, during the centennial, i t was remarked that "Bakhtin was a free man," the word was used i n this sense. What might such freedom mean i n the realm o f literary interpretation and the word? Here, too, Bakhtin is profoundly "antirevolutionary." A u ­ thors and critics, he insists, are bound together by aesthetic love. Theirs 66

6 6

Bakhtin, P D P , 288.

72

CHAPTER ONE

is an endlessly parenting function (the real lesson to be learned from all those hopeful, fertile carnival bodies), and the ground for this activity must be constantly monitored. For whatever the role o f truth and faith i n Bakhtin's thought—and on those central matters, the verdict is still out—there can be no question that Bakhtin would be quite helpless without trust. That trust begins between an author and a reader. Casual toward his own written legacy, reverent toward the literary work he had chosen to study, Bakhtin would most certainly side with that dean o f Anglo-American literary critics, Frank Kermode, i n his struggle against a hermeneutics o f suspicion. "The success o f interpretive argument as a means o f conferring or endorsing value," Kermode writes, "is not to be measured by the survival o f the comment but by the survival o f its object. O f course, an interpretation or evaluation may live on i n the tradition on which later comment is formed, either by acceptance or reaction; but its primary purpose is to provide the medium i n which its object survives." 67

Bakhtin expressed a similar ideal i n an archival fragment first published in 1994 but jotted down i n the early 1960s, on the virtues o f soglasie [agreement; literally, so-glasie (co-voicing)]. We might consider i t Bakh­ tin's normative statement for the "aesthetic love" o f criticism. Like dia­ lectics, dialogue requires firm boundaries; but unlike dialectics, i t requires neither opposition nor even transitory resolution. I n Bakhtin's words: "Co-voicing [agreement] as the most important dialogic category. . . . Agreement is never a mechanical or logical identity, and i t is not an echo; behind i t there is always a distance transcended, a drawing close (but not a fusing). Its 'co-soundings' are infinitely distant and barely detectable. I n agreement there is always an element o f the unexpected, o f the gift, o f the miracle, because dialogic £0-voicing, by its very nature, is free—that is, i t is not predetermined, not inevitable." H o w a philosopher-critic o f this temperament fared i n the polarized climate o f Soviet Russia is the subject matter o f the following chapter. 68

6 7

F r a n k K e r m o d e , " D i s e n t a n g l i n g K n o w l e d g e f r o m O p i n i o n , " i n his Forms

of

Attention

( C h i c a g o : T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f C h i c a g o Press, 1 9 8 5 ) , 6 7 . 6 8

B a k h t i n , M . M . , < K pererabotke k n i g i o D o s t o e v s k o m . I I > , ed. V a d i m K o z h i n o v , i n

DKKh,

no. 1 (94): 7 0 - 8 2 , esp. 7 0 . T h i s essay, w h i c h represented B a k h t i n ' s initial a n d m u c h

m o r e ambitious plan for revising the D o s t o e v s k y b o o k , was superceded by the m o r e m o d e s t set o f guidelines ( a n d even those, unfortunately, were n o t fully i n c o r p o r a t e d into the s e c o n d edition) translated as A p p e n d i x 2 i n PDP, tated i n MMB: ss 5 (96),

2 8 3 - 3 0 2 . T h i s passage is amplified a n d a n n o ­

"Dostoevskii. 1 9 6 1 , " 3 6 4 ,

668-78.

_ CHAPTER 2 _

Retrospective: Domestic Reception during Bakhtin's Life

I F ONE FOLLOWS only written traces and official reviews, Bakhtin's schol­ arly profile i n his own country exhibits a strange curve. H e broke into print i n 1919 w i t h a tiny six-paragraph essay, " A r t and Responsibility," in a provincial journal. N o t h i n g further appeared under his own name until 1929, when the publication o f Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art coincided w i t h its author's arrest and exile. Although Bakhtin wrote copiously throughout the 1930s and during the war years, defending a doctoral dissertation i n Moscow i n 1946, he formally reentered the w o r l d o f published scholarship only i n 1963, w i t h the revised edition o f his book on Dostoevsky. From that year on, waves o f increasingly early material filled i n the lacunae. The dissertation on Rabelais was reworked as a book i n 1965; a collection o f essays w i t h the indeterminate subtitle "From Various Years" (largely 1924 to 1 9 4 1 , but w i t h some interpola­ tions as late as 1973) appeared i n 1975, the year o f Bakhtin's death. Only between 1979 and 1986 did manuscript materials crucial to any informed study o f Bakhtin's mature work at last see the light o f day: philosophical writings from the early 1920s, packaged together w i t h his (also unfinished) very last essays. For those interested i n the genesis o f Bakhtin's ideas, primary material was published backward. Fame un­ folded around texts for which Bakhtin's early readers—as well as his early translators—were frequently unprepared and caught without basic vocabulary. This publication history has also shaped Bakhtin's professional image. Although the young Bakhtin began his intellectual career working in the areas o f ethical philosophy and psychology (on which he lectured and wrote extensively, but published nothing), because the book on Dos­ toevsky remained his only published work for more than thirty years, and because his dissertation—a minor academic scandal—had focused on François Rabelais, Bakhtin's reading public knew him exclusively as liter­ ary scholar and critic. As we now know, Bakhtin preferred the more com­ prehensive status o f myslitel\ "thinker." I n Russian parlance, that word designates an intellectual with eclectic interdisciplinary interests and a philosophizing bent. Bakhtin, as shall become clear, was a thinker who

74

CHAPTER TWO

not so much utilized his thought to illuminate literature as he utilized literature, quite selectively, to illustrate the course o f his thought. Along such a reception curve, with its bulges and fallow stretches, offi­ cial feedback tended to cluster around two poles. A t one end was the 1920s, specifically 1929; at the other, the 1960s-1970s. These were the opening and closing decades o f Bakhtin's intellectual biography. I n a realm as sensitive to politically correct readings as the Soviet literary pro­ fession was obliged to be, "reception clusters" like these can take on ominous internal coherence. Since Bakhtin's present fame is such an es­ tablished fact, i t might come as a surprise that the reviews o f his work, taken as a whole, were unenthusiastic. Part o f the coolness, to be sure, was owing to academic turf wars and to Soviet political constraints—as well as to the conservative, soberly "philological" traditions o f Russian literary scholarship. But Bakhtin also attracted serious, independent readers who raised cogent objections to his major operating assumptions. The present chapter discusses several o f the more durable knots o f con­ troversy, concentrating on those reviews that set a pattern for later read­ ings (as well as misreadings) o f major concepts i n Bakhtin's world. I t is 1

2

1

I n a m e m o i r — n o t o r i o u s l y u n r e l i a b l e — f r o m the m i d - 1 9 8 0 s , B a k h t i n is reported to have

d r a w n a distinction i n his final years between p h i l o s o p h y ("a special realm o f h u m a n k n o w l ­ edge, like mathematics") a n d t w o other m o d e s o f t h o u g h t often confused w i t h it: w i s d o m [mudrost*]

generated by wise m e n , a n d r u m i n a t i o n [razmyshlenie]

practiced by thinkers.

Socrates was a wise m a n ; Berdyaev, Shestov, a n d Sartre were thinkers; the greatest (perhaps the o n l y ) p h i l o s o p h e r o f the twentieth century, a c c o r d i n g to B a k h t i n , was M a r t i n B u b e r . See M a i i a Kaganskaia, " S h u t o v s k o i k h o r o v o d , " i n Sintaksis,

n o . 12 (Paris, 1 9 8 4 ) :

139-90,

esp. 1 4 1 . 2

W h e n the "official reception o f B a k h t i n " began is n o t easy to resolve. T h e so-called

disputed texts that appeared u n d e r the names o f B a k h t i n ' s associates, V o l o s h i n o v a n d M e d vedev, between 1 9 2 6 a n d 1 9 2 9 d i d attract considerable critical attention, b u t o n this issue G a r y S a u l M o r s o n a n d I endorse a non-conflationist position (see o u r Creation

of a

Pro-

saics, c h . 3 , 1 0 1 - 1 9 ) , preferring to treat these w o r k s as the property o f their signatories a n d respecting B a k h t i n ' s formal unwillingness to reclaim t h e m . M o r e recently, i n 1 9 9 3

and

1 9 9 4 , respectively, Sergey B o c h a r o v ( " P r i m e c h a n i e k m e m u a r u , " 7 1 - 7 9 ) a n d V a d i m K o ­ z h i n o v ( R z h e v s k y , " K o z h i n o v o n B a k h t i n , " 4 3 3 , 4 3 8 - 3 9 ) have restated the counter-case, that B a k h t i n dictated these texts to their signatories. W i t h rare exceptions ( N i k o l a i Vasiliev a n d M e d v e d e v ' s heirs i n P e t e r s b u r g ) , R u s s i a n Bakhtinists agree w i t h this latter view. T h e disputed texts are n o w b e i n g reissued i n R u s s i a n i n a n e w paperback series edited by V . L . M a k h l i n entitled Bakhtin

under

a Mask

[Bakhtin

v o l . 1 i n the series is V o l o s h i n o v ' s Freudianism,

pod maskoi]

(Moscow: Labirint, 1993);

v o l . 2 is M e d v e d e v ' s Formal

Method; v o l . 5 ,

n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 6 ) contains shorter articles p u b l i s h e d u n d e r the names V . N . V o l o s h i n o v , P. N . M e d v e d e v , a n d I . I . Kanaev. M a k h l i n calls this strange "gifting" o f a b o o k a " p h e n o m e n a l culturological experiment," a "paradoxical interaction o f author a n d h e r o " n o t i n the liter­ ary r e a l m b u t — a m u c h rarer t h i n g — i n literary scholarship. B a k h t i n ' s motives, a c c o r d i n g to B o c h a r o v , r a n g e d f r o m intellectual generosity, despair at the fate o f his o w n essays i n the marketplace after 1 9 2 4 , a n d the fact that "they were m y friends, they n e e d e d b o o k s , a n d I

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

75

perhaps appropriate that the first three decades o f Bakhtin's scholarly reputation were linked closely with Fyodor Dostoevsky, a writer whose own twentieth-century rehabilitation was as precarious and controversial as that o f his most accomplished critic.

DOSTOEVSKY, I (1929) We begin, then, with 1929 and the critical reaction to Problems of Dos­ toevsky's Creative Art. (This first edition, which does not exist i n English, differs from the expanded 1963 version i n many details but especially i n its tiny chapter 4—which, i n the second edition, was expanded into a lengthy discussion o f genre theory, menippean satire, and carnivalization.) The Dostoevsky book was published after Bakhtin's arrest. Its best-known review, rumored to have played a crucial role i n commuting Bakhtin's death-camp sentence i n the Far North to a much more benign exile i n Kazakhstan, was written by Anatoly Lunacharsky, prominent Bol­ shevik and later Commissar o f Enlightenment. The fame o f this review, and the fact that i t was on balance sympathetic to Bakhtin, has obscured two realities. First, Lunacharsky, i n many ways an astute and informed critic, was indeed sympathetic to Bakhtin but by and large for the wrong reasons—out o f political caution or because he simply misread the text. Second, o f the remaining half-dozen professional responses between 1929 and 1930 that are worth taking seriously, most were unambigu­ ously hostile to Bakhtin's interpretation o f Dostoevsky. To get a feel for this premiere critical climate, we shall consider briefly the commissar's pioneering review and then two much less charitable discussions. 3

4

Lunacharsky's review o f Bakhtin, " O n Dostoevsky's 'Multi-voicedness,' " appeared i n the October 1929 issue o f Novy Mir. I t opens on 5

still i n t e n d e d to write m y o w n " [from a discussion o f 2 1 N o v e m b e r 1 9 7 4 ] . E v e n B o c h a r o v , however, argues that the names o f the p u r p o r t e d authors are an essential part o f the books as dictated. F o r these a n d related reasons, the present chapter w i l l n o t i n c l u d e discussion o f the reception o f the V o l o s h i n o v / M e d v e d e v texts. 3

M . M . B a k h t i n , Problemy

tvorchestva

Dostoevskogo

( L e n i n g r a d : P r i b o i , 1 9 2 9 ) . F o r syn­

opses o f the reception history o f b o t h editions, see O . E . O s o v s k i i , Chelovek.

Slovo.

Roman.

(Saransk: R I K " T r i o , " 1 9 9 3 ) , c h . 4; a n d the six-volume history o f twentieth-century D o s ­ toevsky criticism by Y u . G . Kudriatsev, c o m p l e t e d i n 1 9 7 9 , excerpts reprinted as " B a k h t i n i ego kritiki ( O t r y v k i i z s h e s t i t o m n o g o issledovaniia ' V o k r u g D o s t o e v s k o g o (k kharakteristike v r e m e n i ) ' , " i n DKKh, 4

E m e r s o n , Creation 5

no. 1 (94):

111-39.

F o r a b r i e f discussion o f the differences between the t w o editions, see M o r s o n a n d

'mnogogolosnosti'

84-86.

of a Prosaics,

T h e review is frequently

anthologized.

Dostoevskogo

Cited

here

from A . V . Lunacharskii,

(po p o v o d u k n i g i M . M . B a k h t i n a Problemy

"O

tvorchestva

76

CHAPTER TWO

Bakhtin's strengths. He is applauded for his discovery o f the "extraordin­ ary autonomy and full-weightedness o f each Voice'" i n Dostoevsky's novels and for perceiving behind those fictional voices richly developed "convictions" or "points o f view on the world." Lunacharsky then tem­ pers this suspiciously idealist position by emphasizing Bakhtin's insis­ tence—in contrast to discredited Formalist doctrine—that Dostoevsky was preoccupied with real-life ideological dispute, not only with ques­ tions o f literary craft. M u c h space is devoted to the connection between Dostoevsky's world and the ugly social reality o f early capitalism (a point stressed far out o f proportion to Bakhtin's transitory and cosmetic men­ tion o f it). Then Lunacharsky turns to the flaws. Bakhtin, he argues, is narrow i n his definition o f polyphony, too eager to give pride o f place to Dostoevsky as an absolute innovator. A committed Marxist, Lunacharsky prefers to see great creative principles arise out o f concrete socio­ economic conditions—and ideally, out o f conditions that can be shown to recur i n other European cultures, each maturing i n its own time but according to universal criteria. Contrary to Bakhtin, therefore, who ar­ gues that Dostoevsky as novelist breaks conceptually new ground, Luna­ charsky insists that a vigorous, early-capitalist-era polyphony governs the distribution o f voices i n Balzac's novels and, at an appropriately earlier stage for England, i n Shakespearean drama as well. Shakespeare, i n par­ ticular, is singled out as one o f the most stylistically diverse and deliber­ ately "impersonal" o f authors, "maximally untendentious and thus ex­ tremely polyphonic." Lunacharsky is also vexed by Bakhtin's overall image o f Dostoevsky as social moralist and thinker. He considers this image altogether too openended, indifferent to resolution, and stripped o f that "colossal striving toward god" and cosmic harmony that all readers intuitively sense i n the great writer. But here the commissar adroitly rescues Bakhtin through what might be called the "Lenin defense." ( I n several appreciative prewar essays, Lenin had defended Leo Tolstoy—aristocrat, landowner, pacifist, moral idealist—as a genius who, although flawed ideologically, was nev­ ertheless acceptable to the radical Marxist pantheon because his inner tensions reflected, as i f i n a mirror, the contradictions that: culminated i n the Bolshevik Revolution.) Dostoevsky, too, had held some unfortunate personal beliefs: monarchism, faith i n Orthodox Christianity, aggressive and imperialistic chauvinism, disgust at the nihilism o f B.ussia's nascent revolutionary intelligentsia. But such a personality has exemplary educa-

Dostoevskogo)"

i n A . A . B e l k i n , é d . , F. M. Dostoevskii

v russkoi kritike:

sbornik

statei ( M o s ­

cow: G o s I z d a t K h u d L i t , 1 9 5 6 ) , 4 0 3 - 2 9 . A m e d i o c r e E n g l i s h translation has been p u b l i s h e d u n d e r the title "Dostoyevsky's 'Plurality o f V o i c e s , " ' i n A . L e b e d e v , c o m p . , Anatoly charsky: On Literature

and Art

( M o s c o w : Progress, 1 9 7 3 ) ,

79-106.

Luna­

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

77

tional value for socialist Russia, Lunacharsky argues, because Dostoevsky, like the "crippled titan" Tolstoy, reflected i n his divided soul the contra­ dictions typical for his epoch. A n d although he was, o f course, technically able at any time to wave his "conductor's baton" and restore order, Dos­ toevsky as novelist chose not to integrate his fictional worlds into one triumphant whole. Such a whole was unavailable to Dostoevsky because the man "was not master o f his own home." Lunacharsky concludes that the novelist's fragmented consciousness and compassion for the down­ trodden continued to suggest "principles o f materialistic socialism" as an alternative to the avowed, politically reactionary convictions that are a matter o f record. However energetically the great writer spat on, humili­ ated, and exiled this socialistic alternative to his private Underground, i t would return again and again to haunt him i n polyphonic confrontations. What can be said o f this reading o f Bakhtin's monograph? First and most obvious, Lunacharsky does not take the book on its own "Formal­ ist" terms. As Bakhtin put the matter i n his foreword: "The present book is limited to theoretical problems o f Dostoevsky's creative art . . . We have had to exclude all historical problems. . . . [Our topic is solely Dos­ toevsky's] revolutionary innovation i n the realm o f the novel as an artistic form" ( 3 - 4 ) . Lunacharsky undermines this attempt on the part o f Bakh­ tin to keep his treatment o f Dostoevsky prudently distanced from history, religion, and politics. To him i t was simply not acceptable, within the Russian critical tradition and his own ideological system, to ignore a writer's moral judgment on life or to evaluate literary achievement inde­ pendent o f socioeconomic determinants. Evoking the hideous social effects o f the Orthodox Church and Russia's embryonic robber-baron capitalism, Lunacharsky concludes on the confident statement that "Dos­ toevsky has not yet died among us or i n the West because capitalism has not yet died." 6

Even where he does acknowledge the importance o f form, Luna­ charsky discerns i t but dimly. Most damaging o f all—for i t sets tenacious precedent—he misreads polyphony. Lunacharsky defines polyphonism variously as an absence o f authorial tendentiousness, as "extreme objec­ tivity," as the "absolute autonomy o f characters," and thus as the "lack o f a whole." Polyphony, he writes, "is an orchestra not only without a con6

W h e n B a k h t i n revised his b o o k i n the early 1 9 6 0 s he i n c l u d e d a review o f L u n a -

charsky's review, gently c h i d i n g the c o m m i s s a r for these misgeneralizations ( P D P , 6 3 , 3 2 3 6 ) . D r a m a — e v e n the great S h a k e s p e a r e ' s — c a n c o n t a i n only "embryonic polyphony," B a k h t i n argues, for a l t h o u g h d r a m a c a n be multileveled, it c a n n o t c o n t a i n multiple w o r l d s . A n d to L u n a c h a r s k y ' s suggestion that p o l y p h o n y is the result o f a historical e p o c h (early capitalism) o r o f individual b i o l o g y / b i o g r a p h y , B a k h t i n remarks: " G r e a t h u m a n discoveries are m a d e possible by external conditions, but they d o n o t die along w i t h the epochs that gave t h e m birth."

78

CHAPTER TWO

ductor but also without a composer whose score some conductor might conceivably perform." Lunacharsky indeed gets polyphony wrong; but i n justice to h i m , this key concept (which Bakhtin, as late as the 1960s, confessed had been widely misunderstood) is only now being untangled. The intense, subtle degree o f authorial self-control and risk required to make polyphony work can really be grasped only with the help o f those early self-other scenarios that Bakhtin elaborated i n his initial period as a philosopher, i n manuscripts that lay unpublished until the 1970s and 1980s. Overall, Lunacharsky's account o f Bakhtin's book did the fledg­ ling scholar an enormous service. Modestly enthusiastic, politically cor­ rect, perhaps even cunningly naive, i t was instrumental i n saving Bakh­ tin's life. I n spirit, i t has little i n common with the intellectually more rigorous and infinitely less generous hatchet work o f his fellow reviewers in the Party, two o f whom we will now consider. 7

The first o f these reviews, by I . Grossman-Roshchin, appeared i n 1929 in Na literaturnom postu [ O n literary guard], a short-lived (1926-32) but influential journal o f leftist criticism and theory associated with the U n i o n o f Proletarian Writers. As did Lunacharsky, Grossman-Roshchin seizes on those rare pages i n Bakhtin that mention capitalism and hint at class struggle. But unlike the well-disposed commissar, this second re­ viewer exposes Bakhtin's strategy immediately. Thus, one can argue, he gets more o f Bakhtin right. Suspicious o f opportunistic Marxist window dressing, Grossman-Roshchin is quick to grasp the "unscientific" and eclectic nature o f Bakhtin's literary sociology. Bakhtin's description o f the literary artwork—the product o f multiply refracted social evaluations—is castigated as "a strange, slippery, ambivalent formulation." Indeed, this sociology has no firm grounding i n social class nor are its contradictions organized into stages or struggles. "There's not a whiff here o f the Marx­ ist principle o f objective cognition," the reviewer notes darkly. Grossman-Roshchin's most serious reservation (and perhaps clearest insight) comes with Bakhtin's theory o f Dostoevskian character. If, he argues, Dostoevsky does i n fact strive to draw all external reality into the hero's self-consciousness—if he does empower his heroes to speak their own "fully weighted" personal truths on their own individual behalf— then "outside forces" i n his novels cannot be said to exist autonomously or to condition human consciousness i n any reliable way. This possibility unnerves the reviewer. "After all," he argues from a materialist perspec8

7

B r i e f discussions o f these early unfriendly reviews c a n be f o u n d i n K o n k i n a n d K o n k i n a ,

Mikhail 8

Bakhtin,

1 6 6 - 7 0 ; a n d O s o v s k i i , Chelovek.

I . G r o s s m a n - R o s h c h i n , " O 'sotsiologizme'

tvorchestva D o s t o e v s k o g o ' " lems

of

Dostoevsky s }

Slovo. Roman., M . N . [sic]

55-60.

B a k h t i n a , avtora ' P r o b l e m y

[ O n the "sociologism" o f M . N . [sic] B a k h t i n , author o f Prob­

Poetics],

in

the

section

k h u d o z h e s t v a p r o s h l o g o , " Na literaturnom

"Dni

nashei

zhizni:

postu 4 , n o . 18 ( 1 9 2 9 ) :

o

5-10.

poznavaemosti

DOMESTIC

R E C E P T I O N

79

tive, "the sociohistorical process sometimes does go on 'behind the back' o f heroes, even heroes o f Dostoevsky's type!" I t is not given to human beings to be conscious o f all things at all times. Thus, while praising Dostoevsky's goals, Bakhtin allots too much respect to an individual's initiating and synthesizing powers in a world that Marxist ideology de­ fines as highly determined, a world more likely to induce i n its inhabit­ ants "false consciousness" than self-consciousness. (As we shall see i n chapter 3, this angle o f objection to Bakhtin's Dostoevsky will later be­ come a staple o f Marxist-bred critics, even passionately dissident ones like Yuri Kariakin.) O n balance, Grossman-Roshchin would classify Bakhtin with such nineteenth-century populist critics as Pyotr Lavrov and Nikolai Mikhailovsky: unscientific, sentimental, subjective, who did not analyze Dostoevsky's technique as much as pander to readers' tastes by psycho­ logizing the characters and lamenting his "cruel talent." Bakhtin's error, to be sure, is not emotional voyeurism o f this sort but its opposite ex­ treme: he assumes that consciousness is always attainable and everywhere its own positive reward. Equally offensive to Grossman-Roshchin is Bakhtin's celebration o f the "adventure plot." Here, the reviewer assures us, Bakhtin "finally shows his hand." This plot type, which Bakhtin (in the first edition o f his mono­ graph) makes so fundamental to Dostoevsky, can provide no more than a skeleton on which to hang melodrama and freewheeling dialogue, expose human relations beyond time, space, and social class, and multiply crisis situations in which characters—to their own and others' surprise—can be born anew. As such, adventure plots are irresponsible and profoundly non-Marxist constructs, hardly socialized or historicized at all. But, Grossman-Roshchin notes peevishly: "Try to reproach Bakhtin for ignor­ ing the social-class aspect o f things! Bakhtin will answer: I beg to differ, on page such-and-such, did I not talk about capitalism, did I not say that the structure o f the novel is defined by social existence? A n d then?— Then he can calmly proceed to declare that the hero is not predeter­ mined and not delimited by social environment. A n d the wolves o f Marx­ ism are satiated and the lambs o f idealism are whole." Russian idealists always avoid open battle, Grossman-Roshchin concludes. But in Bakhtin, "Yes, idealistic roots are deep." Several anonymous reviews in fellow journals repeated these charges, although with even less nuance and patience. "What social groups are the 'carriers' [ o f value] i n Dostoevsky's works? Where is the class leitmotif? We find out nothing about such things in Bakhtin." These complaints are summed up i n our final signed review from this early period: Mikhail 9

9

F r o m an u n s i g n e d review i n Oktiabr\

kritiki," 1 1 8 .

no. 11 ( 1 9 2 9 ) ; see Kudriatsev, " B a k h t i n i ego

80

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Starenkov's "Multi-voiced Idealism," which appeared i n an issue o f Liter­ ature i marksizm i n 1930. N o t only is Bakhtin faulted therein for a methodology that reveals nothing new ("Marxists have already resolved the problem o f the relationship o f art to reality"); his whole mechanism for linking author to hero to world is shown to be corrupt. By insisting that Dostoevsky designated the self-consciousness o f heroes as his artistic dominant—and the dominant concern o f his novels as well—Bakhtin effectively "drives out reality, leaving only consciousness." Citing Feuerbach and Georgy Plekhanov (the time was still to come when one would have to quote Lenin and Stalin on these matters), Starenkov gives the lie to the ancient idealist theme that "the world is [but] a representation o f the w o r l d " through an analysis o f Makar Devushkin, hero o f Dos­ toevsky's short maiden novel Poor Folk. Devushkin's lonely lot as a petty clerk is painfully real, Starenkov insists, regardless o f what one thinks about it. Bakhtin's views to the contrary, "consciousness remains part o f reality and not the other way around." 10

Bakhtin is no more successful, i n Starenkov's opinion, with that most radical o f Dostoevskian narratives, Notes from Underground. The attempt to depict a hero entirely "from w i t h i n " is by definition doomed—and not only for the commonsensical reason that consciousness must be reg­ istered as an inside reaction to an outside stimulus, o f which here there is none. I n addition, such a project is too formalistic, too dominated by questions o f pure function (the "how" stripped o f " w h o " and "why"). Badly simplifying Bakhtin's text but nevertheless on to a kernel o f truth, Starenkov suspects that Bakhtin's passion for "self-consciousness as the dominant" is an attempt to insulate his method against causality, genesis, ideological systems, and external reality—the stuff o f life, i n other words, and the stuff o f a genuinely progressive literary science as well. (This criticism, too, will be revisited i n chapter 3 i n greater and harsher detail.) Bakhtin's enthusiasm for the "adventure plot" is again decried as a coverup for pursuing an ahistorical Dostoevsky Concentrating; as he does on the workings o f language and on ideas voided o f specific content, Bakh­ tin, in Starenkov's view, advances an understanding o f the word that is "just as autotelic as that proclaimed by the Futurists and Formalists." A n d yet Bakhtin resists organizing these words or ideas into any hier­ archical, impersonal system (above all, the author's), for then these words would become "no one's" and thus, i n his terms, invalid. By 1930, Sta­ renkov reminds us, even the most stubborn and doctrinaire Formalists had abandoned such "historyless," "contentless" paradoxes. 1 0

M . Starenkov, " M n o g o g o l o s y i

i d e a l i z m (o knige M . M . B a k h t i n a ' P r o b l e m y tvor­

chestva D o s t o e v s k o g o ' ) , " i n Literatura

i marksizm,

no. 3 (1930): 9 2 - 1 0 5 .

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

81

I n sum, the "immanentist" Bakhtin, i n his analysis o f Dostoevsky, res­ urrects what was least persuasive about both Formalism and Idealism. He then compounds that sin by drawing no distinction between a philosoph­ ical and an artistic resolution to the many impoverishing ideas (monologism i n all its guises) that confront our era. Starenkov considers all talk on Bakhtin's part about the "social character" o f ideas to be a deliberate mystification, a show o f "idealistic pluralism" that conceals mere "ideo­ logical mimicry." Or, as he puts i t i n his conclusion: "Our scholar has entered a concert hall, heard a multi-voiced sound, and failed to discern a unity i n that sound. To visit concert halls is a pleasant and innocent activ­ ity—but one that falls outside the tasks o f contemporary Marxist literary scholarship, for whom the time o f the carefree Mozarts has passed; its future belongs to the Salieris." As critics o f Bakhtin's Dostoevsky, Grossman-Roshchin and Staren­ kov—the Salieris o f their epoch—do not impress us today. N o r do they impress Russian literary historians from later, less fettered decades. But in two areas, surely, these early critics saw more clearly than those theor­ ists i n Europe and America who continue to mine Bakhtin's thought for its radical materialism and "Marxism." First, these hostile, politically cor­ rect Bolshevik reviewers from the 1920s immediately discarded the possi­ bility o f any serious Marxian orientation in Bakhtin's book—as did, o f course, Bakhtin himself. Second, Starenkov is right on the mark i n his observation that Bakhtin, although displaying a certain susceptibility to Formalist methodology, at the same time fails to distinguish between a philosophical and an aesthetic solution to some highly complex ideas. N o t only does Bakhtin "fail to distinguish"; he outrightly insists that techniques o f art, to be aesthetically legitimate, must be capable o f ex­ tending and refining philosophical problems that cannot be resolved— that cannot even be conceptualized—in any other way. Thus does this philosopher-critic's notion o f polyphony, and later his idea o f the novel as a genre, become "philosophy by other means." Starenkov certainly did not intend his observation as a compliment. But i t was shrewd all the 11

11

K u d r i a t s e v is extremely impatient w h e n discussing this p e r i o d a n d these critics ( " B a k h ­

tin i ego kritiki," 1 2 7 - 2 9 ) : " T h e task o f these activists is n o t to explain, n o t to prove, b u t to pass sentence.

S o Starenkov says that B a k h t i n ' s approach 'has n o t h i n g to d o w i t h a

Marxist explication o f the idea . . .' S o it doesn't. S o what. Y o u go live w i t h y o u r M a r x i s m , a n d w e ' l l live w i t h o u t it. S o any B a k h t i n i n any free society w o u l d have answered. B u t y o u c o u l d n ' t answer like that i n o u r country. . . . Starenkov properly u n d e r s t o o d B a k h t i n a n d did n o t try to hide his u n d e r s t a n d i n g . H e grasped the essence o f the b o o k , w h i c h was directed against the m o n o l o g i s m o f t h o u g h t that h a d r o o t e d itself i n society. H o w percep­ tive o f h i m . . . . S u c h a n assessment was logical. T h e entire path o f the n e w society a n d n e w literary scholarship l e d u p to it. E v e r y t h i n g that is authentically artistic is pluralistic. O n l y w h a t is official is m o n o l o g i c . T h e latter tries to u p r o o t the former."

82

CHAPTERTWO

same; for he scarcely could have had access to those hundreds o f unpublished pages o f early writings on ethics and aesthetics in which Bakhtin worked out this wonderful idea. Responses to Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art written by Russians but published outside Soviet Russia constitute a separate, .although lesser category. The émigré press was cautious but on balance positive. Overall it saw i n Bakhtin a welcome alternative both to the "narrow Formalistic approach" and to the "so-called 'Marxist method,'" the two wings o f radical critical thought that had come to dominate their former homeland. I n a 1934 survey o f Soviet Dostoevsky scholarship undertaken for a German literary journal published in Leipzig, the well-known Dostoevsky scholar Vasily Komarovich—Bakhtin's contemporary in Leningrad, fellow arrestee and political exile—provided what is perhaps the exemplary "intrinsic" (as opposed to crudely ideological) critique o f the book from this early period. His reservations were to surface in the 1960s and again i n the 1990s. Polyphony, Komarovich asserts, advertises itself as an alternative way o f viewing the structure o f the great novels. But i n fact polyphony illustrates only local dynamics, not structure at all, and even those insights draw largely on the shorter works. Such dynamics o f consciousness are not unique to Dostoevsky i n any event, being adaptations o f the familiar European genres o f the confession and epistolary 12

13

14

12

See O . O s o v s k i i ' s c o m m e n t a r y i n " K n i g a M . M . B a k h t i n a o D o s t o e v s k o m v otsenkakh

literaturovedeniia russkogo z a r u b e z h ' y a , " in B sb II 91, 13

379-85.

Q u o t e s i n the text are f r o m the most positive review from the diaspora, by R

Pletnev,

w r i t i n g from Prague. B u t Pletnev has his reservations. " R e a d i n g the b o o k for the first time, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the author has his hands o n the key that opens all doors leading to the secret i n n e r c h a m b e r s o f artistic creativity. B u t in fact far from everyt h i n g fits u n d e r the formula o f multi-voicedness." Pletnev mentions s u c h w o r k s as from

the House

of the Dead,

The Gambler,

The Village

of Stepanchikovo,

a n d the

Notes single-

v o i c e d m o n o l i t h i c w o r d o f M a k a r D o l g o r u k y , the elders T i k h o n a n d Z o s i m a , Prince M y s h kin, a n d (surprisingly) "that typical, monolithically single-voiced

figure,"

Razumikhin. I n

the great novels, Pletnev asserts, m o n o l o g i c segments clearly e c h o , intersect, and interact w i t h dialogic ones; " B a k h t i n , " he concludes, Pletnev's review, see " K r i t i k y a referaty," Slavia: (Prague, 1 9 3 0 - 3 1 ) , 8 3 7 - 4 0 .

"is better at parts t h a n at wholes." F o r filologii

[annual] 9

T h e b o o k was also n o t e d appreciatively by the

Dostoevsky

Ùasopis

pro slovanskou

scholar P. M . Bitsilli i n a 1 9 3 0 Paris review o f a Dostoevsky anthology p u b l i s h e d in Prague and edited by the psychoanalytic critic A . L . Bern; Bern h i m s e l f wrote a review for Rundschau,

Slavishche

n o . 1 ( B e r l i n , 1 9 3 0 ) , i n w h i c h he admires B a k h t i n for providing a "finished

system" but regrets his reluctance to see an authorial " t h i r d " at w o r k i n the novels guaranteeing unity, a n d his exaggeration o f the "inner sociality" o f the w o r d . F o r translations into R u s s i a n o f Bern's a n d K o m a r o v i c h ' s reviews, w i t h excellent c o m m e n t a r y by Vitaly M a k h l i n in defense o f B a k h t i n , see MMB 14

v zerk 95,

67-92.

V . K o m a r o v i c , " N e u e P r o b l è m e der D o s t o j e w s k i j - F o r s c h u n g 1 9 2 5 - 1 9 3 0 ,

Zeitschrift

fur

slavische Philologie,

part 2 , in

B d 2 , V2 ( L e i p z i g , 1 9 3 4 ) , 2 2 7 - 3 4 . F o r a translation into

R u s s i a n o f the relevant portions o n B a k h t i n , again superbly annotated by Vitaly M a k h l i n , see MMB

v zerk 95,

74-92.

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

83

novel. Furthermore, the "idea" cannot be said to be the hero i n Dos­ toevsky's works. Human fates are the hero—and both catastrophe and resolution are o f the utmost moment. Thus Bakhtin's insistence that the major heroes i n Dostoevsky are heard rather than seen misreads a great deal, and most particularly the natures o f Prince Myshkin and Stavrogin, two characters marked more by the image than by the word. "Bakhtin provides no firm grounding for the form o f the 'polyphonic' novel," Komarovich concludes (83). The relative virtues o f a visual versus an audi­ tory reading o f a cultural act—an issue, as was noted i n the introduction, still being discussed i n the centennial year—were raised early i n the de­ bates over Bakhtin's work. A t home and abroad, then, Bakhtin's book on Dostoevsky was consid­ ered eccentric. Its contrary originality and stubborn methodology, so against the grain o f its time, put i t (in the view o f most reviewers) be­ yond the pale o f the profession. Sergei Bocharov is probably correct when he writes, " A t the time, i t was read through by very few; time passed i t by"; what academic reviews o f it there were tended to be "inat­ tentive and careless"; i n short, the book did not "become an event." 15

Several constants might be noted i n this first period o f reception. First, the finer points (indeed, even the blunt contours) o f polyphony as a psy­ chology o f self-other relations or as a radical new strategy for writing fiction are wholly ignored. Second, critics understood Bakhtin's innova­ tive concept o f the "idea as hero" and his belief i n the open potential o f dialogic words neither as modes o f freedom for the protagonist nor as creative flexibility for the author. These concepts were seen as philosophi­ cal heresy, pure and simple, or as the critic's willful usurpation o f the primary author's rights—a transgression as counterintuitive as the notion that characters can be autonomous o f their author. (Which is to say: regardless o f his self-protective attempts to hide behind literature, all the same Bakhtin was being read as a philosopher.) A n d finally, Bakhtin is faulted for his unclassifiable method. He was neither fully a Formalist—a known and identified foe—nor entirely a literary critic i n the mold o f Russian nineteenth-century Dostoevsky criticism. That tradition, whether it praised its heroes or buried them, shared a common ground with pro­ gressive Marxist scholarship, being tendentious itself and prone to define "tendencies" i n others. A certain irony obtains, then, i n this retrospective look at the reviews that first introduced Bakhtin to his reading public. As we have seen, among postcommunist Russian intellectuals i n the 1990s the regnant i m ­ age o f Bakhtin is that o f a pluralist unthreatened by multiplicity but 15

Sergei B o c h a r o v , " O b o d n o m razgovore i v o k r u g n e g o " [ A b o u t a n d a r o u n d a certain

c o n v e r s a t i o n ] , i n NLO,

n o . 2 ( 1 9 9 3 ) : 7 0 - 8 9 , esp. 8 5 .

84

CHAPTER TWO

aware that "many paths lead to the church" —that is, a pluralist for whom the vertical axis o f "transcendent value" is as essential as the horizontalizing moves o f interpersonal dialogue. I n 1929 Bolshevik critics such as Grossman-Roshchin and Starenkov saw this idealist vertical axis clearly; they understood that "with his reservations and hedgings Bakhtin was being cunning, covering his traces, keeping the bloodhounds off his track." A n d they condemned these maneuvers as reactionary. Western academic theory thus becomes the last bastion o f an even partially Marx­ ist and materialist Bakhtin. This dual trajectory is one o f the repeating paradoxes o f the present study 16

17

DOSTOEVSKY, I I (1963) Bakhtin revised his Dostoevsky book for a second edition i n the early 1960s. By that time, the self-righteous and militant rhetoric that had permeated domestic reviews o f the 1929 edition—a first book by a vul­ nerable, untried, virtually unknown scholar—had retreated nationwide, and i n any event could no longer be applied i n so crude a form. Bakhtin's name had been mentioned by Roman Jakobson during the eminent lin­ guist's first trip back to his homeland i n May 1956; one year later Viktor Shklovsky, the aging Formalist critic, was bold enough to refer i n print to the Dostoevsky book. Soviet graduate students i n literature sat up and took notice. Bakhtin's name was known i n Moscow, where his disserta­ tion on Rabelais, defended i n 1946, had attracted considerable attention and even some notoriety; he had become the respected head o f an aca­ demic department at a solid provincial university. Russian literary criti­ cism, having survived terrors undreamed o f by Marxist critics i n the twen­ ties, was now blander and more cautious. Independence o f mind was no longer an absolute risk. A n d , according to some Dostoevsky scholars seasoned enough to re­ member the advent o f both editions, Bakhtin's 1963 revision had also grown more cautious, more politically correct. Its tone was more concil­ iatory; its historical base was inflated with Russian folklore, and i t ges­ tured respectfully toward acknowledged authorities. All the same, mov18

1 6

F o r a brief a n d characteristic s u m m a r y o f the confusions a n d possible m e d i a t i n g g r o u n d

between dialogic a n d m o n o l o g i c procedures, see A . F . E r e m e e v , " S k o l ' k o z h e d o r o g vedet k khramy? ( O 'spore' m e z h d u tak n a z y v a e m y m i dialogistami i m o n o l o g i s t a m i ) , " MMB gum 1 7

mysh II 95,

i

47-51.

Kudriatsev, " B a k h t i n i ego kritiki," 1 2 1 . " O n e c o u l d n o t call G r o s s m a n - R o s h c h i n stu­

p i d , " K u d r i a t s e v remarks. " H e understands everything perfectly. . . . O n l y he evaluates ev­ erything differendy f r o m B a k h t i n . " 18

T h u s does Y u r y Kudriatsev, i n his 1 9 7 9 survey o f D o s t o e v s k y scholarship d u r i n g the

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

85

ing the resuscitated book into print was a risky, time-consuming, and delicate task. Vadim Kozhinov recalls the three years he spent collecting prominent signatures, daring to make the list public (to the chagrin o f the apprehensive signatories) when editors proved cowardly. I t was diffi­ cult for a young academic to elicit any show o f support on behalf o f an unrehabilitated author, even from the decent-minded senior profes­ sionals; by then establishment figures were wholly unaccustomed to inte­ grating private convictions with public actions and did not like being called on i t . The book's appearance, therefore, was felt by many to be an enormous spiritual victory. But the polemic that developed over the second edition was disappointingly familiar. To sample the post-Stalinist atmosphere into which Bakhtin was "reborn" for the Russian public, i t is sufficient to consider one representative cluster o f reviews and counterreviews that appeared i n Litemturnaia gctzeta during the summer o f 1964. The opening salvo was an essay by Aleksandr Dymshits entitled "Monologues and Dialogues." "Again the book has been read through," he begins. " I read i t for the first time thirty-five years ago." Although the original 1929 Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art indis­ putably had become a classic, Dymshits nevertheless registers his "serious and principled disagreement" with Bakhtin over aesthetics and meth­ odology. Bakhtin's Dostoevsky "never comes to final conclusions"; his major heroes all find themselves i n "uninterrupted dialogues"; as a novel­ ist he is "all unfinalizability, undecidability, unclosedness . . . and this said about Dostoevsky, among the most tendentious o f writers!" What is more, the entire metaphysical opposition o f dialogic to monologic is false. N o t only does such a binary simplification distort the rich European 1 9

20

Soviet p e r i o d , evaluate the revised e d i t i o n — i n s i s t i n g , i n m a i n s t r e a m didactic Soviet style, o n r e a d i n g B a k h t i n as the conscience o f his time a n d thus as an " A e s o p i a n " social critic. K u d r i a t s e v frequently c o n c u r s w i t h B a k h t i n ' s hostile critics as regards D o s t o e v s k y but sup­ ports B a k h t i n ' s general thesis w h e r e it c a n be interpreted as a c o u r a g e o u s ,

camouflaged

anti-Stalinist p o l e m i c . T h e 1 9 6 3 edition, he writes, "had b e c o m e m o r e scholarly s o u n d i n g , intelligent i n its o w n w a y but less substantial. B a k h t i n was a b r o k e n m a n , as was D o l i n i n , a n d he n o w preferred the laurels o f a 'theoretician' to the laurels o f a 'warrior.' ' E t h i c s ' was traded i n for 'scholarliness' . . . B a k h t i n 'scienced u p ' his b o o k , h a v i n g w e a k e n e d its m o r a l charge . . . A s a general w o r k o f literary scholarship, this w o r k doubtless has value. E t h i c a l l y it is also valuable. . . . B u t i f the m o n o l o g i z a t i o n

o f life, a n d especially o f t h i n k i n g , h a d

increased extraordinarily a n d i n effect r e a c h e d its outer limit d u r i n g the quarter-century after the first edition appeared, t h e n B a k h t i n ' s b o o k i n its s e c o n d , expanded edition was w e a k e n e d i n its protest to the extent that its p r o b l e m - c e n t e r h a d b e e n e r o d e d " (Kudriatsev, " B a k h t i n i ego kritiki," 1 2 9 , 1 3 2 ) . 1 9

" ' Y a prosto blagodariu svoiu s u d ' b u . . .' ( V a d i m K o z h i n o v vspominaet o torn, kak

udalos' pereizdat' ' P r o b l e m y tvorchestva D o s t o e v s k o g o ' ) , " DKKh, 2 0

A l e k s a n d r D y m s h i t s , " M o n o l o g i i dialogi," i n Literaturnaia

no. 1 (94): gazeta,

104-10.

11 July 1 9 6 4 .

86

CHAPTER TWO

tradition o f Enlightenment, Romantic, and Utopian novel writing, but i t consigns to monologicity the Russian novel before Dostoevsky: beloved masterpieces by Pushkin, Gogol, Goncharov, Turgenev, Tolstoy As a concept, polyphony is incompatible with the theory o f social types put forth by Belinsky i n the 1840s and long canonized i n Russian criticism. I n fact, Bakhtin severs Dostoevsky from the Russian realistic tradition and from Realism i n general. A t fault here is the critic's overconcentration on consciousness; i n general, an amateurish passion for psychology in a literary scholar is unseemly and "subjective." Dymshits associates the above errors (or "myths") with another, more comprehensive error: Bakhtin's fondness for Russian Formalism. Invok­ ing the ominous phrase "Formalist perezhitki" (ideologically incorrect "carryovers" or survivals from an earlier era), he insists that Bakhtin "turns the process o f artistic creation on its head." Critics deluded i n this way need only posit a new device—in this case, a new mode o f artistic visualization—and wondrously, the primary author is granted access to new sides o f reality; form alone becomes a legitimate source o f new con­ tent. But it is not only Bakhtin's explanation o f Dostoevsky's creative method that irritates Dymshits and strikes him as formalistic. The huge new chapter 4, devoted to questions o f genre and menippean satire, suf­ fers from the same flaw. Dymshits complains that Bakhtin's unsubstanti­ ated faith i n the "self-development" o f genres throughout history gener­ ates all sorts o f "formalistic miracles." Dostoevsky is excavated for menippean themes, name piles upon name and source upon source, and "the real-life image o f Dostoevsky begins to disappear; i t becomes a sort o f a mosaic, i n no way resembling the man himself. . . . Enough! I n all this, the erudition o f M . Bakhtin is indisputable"—but the harmful ef­ fects o f Formalism take their toll. I n Bakhtin's Dostoevsky, nothing es­ sential is learned from observing "living life." Everything becomes the influence o f "genre." Finally, Dymshits suggests that Bakhtin's summons to his readers to "break out o f monologic habits" and assimilate Dos­ toevsky's formal discoveries without passing judgment on the content o f his ideas is contrary to approved method i n literary investigation. For "as Engels brilliantly demonstrated, there is no art without a tendency" I n fact—and on this the review ends—creativity itself starts with a "ten­ dency," that is, with a given writer's societally conditioned direction and purpose [obshchestvennaia opredelennosf]. The Dymshits essay terrified Bakhtin's wife. As i t happened, both el­ derly couples, the reviewer and reviewee with their spouses, were vaca­ tioning at Maleevka i n 1965. Elena Aleksandrovna, wholly devoted to her husband's well-being and alarmed that a negative review might com­ promise their precarious old age, was on edge all summer for fear they

DOMESTIC

R E C E P T I O N

87

might encounter the "terrible Dymshits" in the cafeteria. But Bakh­ tin—phlegmatic, prepared for anything, surprised at nothing—was not without support o f his own. The Dymshits review evoked a flurry in the academic community that lasted well into 1967. During that first sum­ mer, two letters appeared in the literary press directed against Dymshits (although not wholly in defense o f Bakhtin), and then the beleaguered reviewer rose to a rebuttal o f his secondary critics. Scarcely a decade out o f the Stalinist night, this tentative polemic among reviewers, although not yet evidence o f real critical pluralism, was all the same a harbinger o f more open debates to come. "Let's Get to the Bottom o f Things" appeared i n Literaturnaia gazeta three weeks after the Dymshits review. Its coauthors Vasilievskaya and Myasnikov note testily that Dymshits claims to be reviewing a classic text but then imparts to the curious reader almost nothing positive about the book. Whereas Lunacharsky in 1929 had found the courage to review Bakhtin's volume sympathetically " i n the very heat o f the struggle against Formalism" (and on the brink o f incalculably more dire struggles), now, during a much safer time, Bakhtin is cited out o f context and made to sound retrograde and unpatriotic. The authors challenge the review point by point. Most substantively, they insist that polyphony is tendentious (thereby initiating a series o f heroic attempts by Russian scholars to grasp one o f Bakhtin's most original and resistant concepts)—if by "having a tendency" one means sensing an active authorial purpose at work. A l ­ though, to be sure, polyphony is tendentious in a special way. 21

22

What is this way? Bakhtin's approach to literature, these reviewers claim, is not so much Formalist as i t is functionalist. The position o f an author i n polyphony is dynamic, procedural, dialogic; i t "coalesces only in the process o f shifting about autonomous and contradictory images." "To the Formalist, form is dead," they write cautiously. "For Bakhtin, form is socially signifying. . . . i t is itself a category o f content." Dymshits errs, therefore, when he suggests that Bakhtin is unwilling to analyze the idea-content o f things. A polyphonic point o f view on the world is valu­ able precisely because i t assumes that sort o f multiple burden so eagerly, because i t enables so many different ideas and ideologies to be authored side by side within a single text. Thus polyphony is deeply humanistic; and thus, contrary to Lunacharsky, Dostoevsky's discovery o f polyphony will outlive capitalism. "For," our two critics conclude, "the human be-

2 1

See E . M . L y s e n k o [wife o f the Renaissance scholar L e o n i d P i n s k y ] i n interview w i t h

N i k o l a i Pan'kov, " D v a m o n o l o g a ob o d n o m dialoge," DKKh 2 2

no. 2(7)

(94):

111.

I . Vasilevskaia a n d A . Miasnikov, " R a z b e r e m s i a p o sushchestvu," i n Litemturnaia

zeta, 6 A u g u s t

1964.

ga-

88

CHAPTER TWO

ing will eternally remain the subject and aim o f art, which carries forward the best traditions from the deepest past into a legacy o f the harmonious and free personality i n communist society." Sentences o f the above sort do not go down well today, but i n the mid-1960s they still had meaning—and i t still mattered who was pulled into their vacuous orbit. Clearly a shift i n Bakhtin's ideological support base (not a trivial concern i n highly politicized Soviet culture) had come to pass. Let us review the distance traveled. The "proletarian" reviewers o f 1929-30 had unmasked Bakhtin as an idealist philosopher, an antiMarxist infected with pernicious Formalist habits. To Dymshits i n 1964, Bakhtin was (much less dangerously) a routine, discredited Formalist. To the coauthors o f this counter-review, Bakhtin had become a MarxistLeninist humanist. That Bakhtin might require no label or politically cor­ rect defense was not, o f course, a public option during those years. Liter­ ature and literary criticism were still too indispensable to Russian identity; official control over both was taken for granted. One week later, more support for Bakhtin arrived i n the form o f a second response to the offending Dymshits review. A collective letter to the editorial board o f Litemturnaia gazeta, signed by five prominent scholars (including Viktor Shklovsky), again took the sorely tried Dym­ shits to task for "irritating contradictions and unpersuasive conclusions." Why did Dymshits resent the exclusion o f classic Russian novelists from the polyphonic canon but neglect to mention Bakhtin's inclusion o f many o f them i n that canon (for example, the approved Chernyshevsky)? A n d rather than fault Bakhtin for flawed scholarly judgment or lack o f patrio­ tism, readers should be grateful to him for detaching Dostoevsky from his most egregious interpreters, from all those tendentious readings that link the great Russian novelist to "reactionary ideology." Such sorry associations are still widespread at home and abroad, reinforced by the Dostoevsky criticism o f Silver Age critics such as Merezhkovsky, Shestov, Rozanov— "books," the authors insist, "very popular i n the West to this day" As emotional and conceptually thin as this collective letter is, i t did add one vigorous, politically beneficial component to Bakhtin's rehabilitation. To grasp its impact at the time, we must recall the logic o f Socialist Realism as i t was preached during the Stalinist years. Socialist-realist stan­ dards for literary scholarship, in full force a mere decade earlier, were designed to be exceptionalist, distinctive, separate from the bourgeois West and thus protective o f Russia's "special path." This exceptionalism, which removed Russia altogether from potentially embarrassing competi­ tion with the West, was one powerful source o f the doctrine's appeal. To 23

2 3

V . A s m u s , V . E r m i l o v , V . Pertsov, M . K h r a p c h e n k o , a n d V i k t o r Shklovsky, " V r e d -

aktsiiu ' L i t e r a t u r n o i gazety,'" i n i b i d . , 13 A u g u s t 1 9 6 4 .

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

89

literary professionals during the 1960s thaw, however, i t was clear that such an aesthetic had brought not only difference but disaster. These now legendary shestidesiatniki, the "generation o f the [nineteen-] six­ ties," anxiously sought ways to restore their great ( i f ideologically sus­ pect) classical writers to freer fields o f inquiry, while at the same time respecting the party mandate to retain Russia's distinctiveness, even her incommensurateness, vis-à-vis the West. I n this struggle, secondary critics were often moved about as pawns to protect primary authors. Thus Rus­ sian Decadent and Symbolist critics o f the turn o f the century—tagged with the ill-boding phrase "popular in the West"—became, i n a deft Ae­ sopian move that all who mattered would understand, disposable fodder in a campaign to reclaim a more complete and integral Dostoevsky I n the worst instance, o f course, such a sacrificial move against one's fellow scholars and critics was ungrateful opportunism. I n the best instance, however, it was a genuine devotional gesture before literary genius that Russian scholars, ardent servitors o f their nation's culture under even the most desperate political conditions, would often willingly proffer. The same issue o f Litemturnaia gazeta contained a response from Dymshits entitled "Extravagant Praise or Criticism?" He repeated his earlier reservations about Bakhtin: that dialogism is too vague and "un­ closed" a principle to attach to Dostoevsky, admittedly a man o f many "social-moral ideas" but who nevertheless strove to propagate the "strong and healthy" ones; that menippean satire in Dostoevsky is greatly overstated by Bakhtin; and that the traditions o f Russian Realism are too facilely consigned to the monologic line. He observed, in addition, that Lunacharsky's review, for all its cult status and vital role i n establishing the "sturdy reputation o f Bakhtin's book as above reproach," was itself "far from uncontested." Dymshits's unsentimental interrogation o f so canonized a cultural figure as Lunacharsky did not yet constitute plural­ ism i n the realm o f criticism. But i t was an encouraging sign. A postscript to the entire exchange—and an attempt to rehabilitate somewhat the much-harassed Dymshits—was provided by the literary critic Boris Bursov a year later i n the journal October? "The problems connected with M . Bakhtin's book have a more general and methodo­ logical significance," Bursov writes, "so debate should definitely con­ tinue." The anti-Dymshits counter-critics had let loose many statements "backed up by no analysis at all"; "no small number o f doubtful conclu­ sions" had been arrived at i n an "extremely astute and clever but one24

5

2 4

A l . D y m s h i t s , "Voskhvalenie ili kritika?" in i b i d . , 13 A u g u s t 1 9 6 4 .

2 5

B . Bursov, " V o z v r a s h c h e n i e k p o l e m i k e " [ A return to the p o l e m i c ] , i n Oktiabr'l

ruary 1 9 6 5 ) : 1 9 8 - 2 0 3 .

B u r s o v reprints this essay i n his b o o k Realizm

vsegda i

(Feb­ segodnia

( L e n i n g r a d : L e n i z d a t , 1 9 6 7 ) , 2 4 9 - 5 8 , after a lengthy a n d peevish chapter o n "Dostoevsky and Modernism."

90

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sided way." Neither side i n the debate has yet clarified the connection between polyphony and dialogue. Bakhtin was not, o f course, above re­ proach. I n a new variant on a familiar theme, Bursov faults him for at­ tending exclusively to the rosy side o f dialogicity and for assuming that the act o f fashioning an inner consciousness is, on the whole, a benign and hopeful process. For i f Dostoevsky's heroes do indeed live by their worldviews alone, then the price they pay for this privilege is high. A l ­ ways probing the extremes with thought experiments and abstract, aso­ cial extensions o f an idea, these heroes live a life where the balance be­ tween words and deeds is often upset—as i t rarely is, say, in a realist writer like Tolstoy, for whom the developing consciousness o f his charac­ ters is always tightly bonded to productive real-life activity. Bursov then returns to the sensitive issue o f "Bakhtin, Dostoevsky, and the West." Without a doubt, he writes, Bakhtin "objectively provides some nourishment" to bourgeois literary scholarship. I n the West, Dos­ toevsky has long been celebrated not only for his art but also for his "alleged prophecies"—his mysticism, metaphysics, anti-rationalism. A n d perhaps Bakhtin, even though he neglects Dostoevsky's moral themes, unwittingly does feed this prophecy-fantasy when he hails Dostoevsky as the writer who "gave us the most perfect model o f the contemporary world." A n d is Bakhtin's model o f consciousness—made up wholly o f struggle, both inside words as well as outside o f them—really what the world needs? Bursov recalls the famous remark Leo Tolstoy made to his friend and publisher Nikolai Strakhov about Dostoevsky soon after the latter's death, that the world could not afford to place on a pedestal a man who was "all struggle." Endless dialogism is just such endless strug­ gle. To Bursov, there seemed no way to reconcile polyphony with the minimal requirements for that singular achievement and pride o f Soviet literature: the self-confident positive hero. Bursov's retrospective is interesting for us i n one final aspect. The pres­ ent study opened on the many things Bakhtin is not, on the schools into which he does not fit. So far i n this chapter we have seen Bakhtin la­ beled—albeit imperfectly—an idealist philosopher, a renegade Formalist, a problematic Marxist-Leninist humanist. Bursov assesses him otherwise: as a flawed historian. "The root o f the shortcomings in Bakhtin's book, in my opinion, is not so much its proximity to Formalism as its summary sense o f history," Bursov concludes. For although Bakhtin professes to value particularity and flow, he is prone to "absolutizing the poetics o f the novel." I n the process the particularities o f history are often swept away. Bakhtin employs historical evidence "not entirely concretely," whereas truth, Bursov insists, is always concrete. To illustrate his point, he brings forward Bakhtin's by now familiar—and, i n the Soviet context, eternally safe—remark that Dostoevsky's polyphonic novel had been nur-

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

91

tured by the tensions o f capitalist development i n Russia. But by the mid-1960s literary critics could be somewhat more flexible i n their man­ datory genuflection before the mystique o f Marxist stages. Bursov in­ vokes the remark as a negative instance o f Bakhtin's blurred sense o f historical process. " A l l o f that [Bakhtin's references to links between po­ lyphony and capitalism] is too general to serve as an actual explanation o f the uniqueness o f the Russian novel," Bursov writes. To understand Rus­ sian Realism one need only look carefully at the complexities o f Russian history—for i t provides sufficient impulses toward polyphony before the onset o f capitalism. We have thus come full circle. Bursov's overall read­ ing o f Bakhtin's monograph is uninspired. But his review rendered an important service: Bakhtin's original cosmetic reference to a Marxist piety had become again a dispensable cliché, with no political residue pro or contra for the conscientious literary historian. Thus did Bakhtin reenter Soviet intellectual life. I t was by no means a reverent reception, but i t was serious, at times substantive, and not de­ void o f drama. With the republication o f the Dostoevsky book, the path was cleared for Bakhtin's other works. For i n Russia's ideologically weary society o f the 1960s, where censorship was as much a matter o f inertia as o f positive control over content, the setting o f an official precedent (in this case, breaking back into print) was, for a former political exile not yet rehabilitated, the crucial first step. Bakhtin's coterie o f disciples pushed forward. The same year that Bursov's essay on the Dostoevsky book ap­ peared (1965), a second volume by Bakhtin was published: the reworked dissertation on Rabelais. The critical reception o f this new book, now the work o f an officially approved Soviet author, would take place on a more scholarly and less defensive plane. But there were fresh complications. Dostoevsky, for all his ideological unruliness, was nevertheless Russian and canonical; Rabelais was Western and indecent. Carnival laughter on the public square might be indeed "revolutionary" and " o f the masses"—points stressed repeatedly by Bakhtin during his thesis defense—but i t was also a good deal more dan­ gerous and potentially anarchic than the dialogic word i n the novel, a genre designed for solitary individual consumption. I f the Dostoevsky book had passed into academic limbo almost as soon as i t appeared, then Bakhtin's second book, i n contrast, had a trickling twenty-five-year his­ tory, controversial at every step. Bakhtin submitted his "Rabelais i n the History o f Realism" as a dissertation (although he never liked to refer to his book as such) to the Gorky Institute o f World Literature i n 1940, on the brink o f the war; he defended i t i n 1946, on the breaking edge o f a new wave o f H i g h Stalinist xenophobia. Notwithstanding a divided vote slightly i n his favor, he was eventually certified—in 1951, after a five-year

92

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delay—with the lesser academic degree o f kandidat rather than that o f doktor nauk. Before the dissertation could be approved and filed i n public libraries, Bakhtin was required to cleanse and rephrase those portions o f the text that made his work, i n the opinion o f the Higher Accrediting Commission, "crudely physiological," bawdy, and "ideologically de­ praved." (The published book was based on this cleansed version o f the dissertation.) The full stenographic transcription o f Bakhtin's 1946 de­ fense was published only i n 1993. This transcript o f the Ph.D. defense provides a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics o f Stalin-era academic life. I n a procedure that was far from routine for those years, independently minded colleagues within the in­ stitute took a bold stand i n defense o f their wayward candidate. Sound reservations were raised; absurd criticisms were hooted down. The stub­ born, outspoken, ill and exhausted Bakhtin, astonished at the tenacity o f his supporters, turned communist rhetoric to his own advantage and made a heroic showing against party-minded objections to his work. O f political naivete there was none. As we know from Bakhtin's personal correspondence with Leonid Pinsky, as late as 1960 Bakhtin considered his work on Rabelais and the history o f laughter still unpublishable. By the mid-1960s, however, conditions had changed. Although some o f the 26

27

28

2 6

T h e phrase here is "ideologicheski p o r o c h n o i " (guilty o f an ideological s i n ) . See the

m e m o i r by B a k h t i n ' s enthusiastic supporter E . M . E v n i n a , w h o , as a j u n i o r scholar d u r i n g these years, was r e q u i r e d to "remove from the m a n u s c r i p t o f her o w n b o o k o n Rabelais all citations a n d references to M i k h a i l M i k h a i l o v i c h ' s dissertation." T h e H i g h e r A c c r e d i t i n g C o m m i s s i o n ( Y A K ) criticized B a k h t i n ' s w o r k as " F r e u d i a n , " "pseudoscientific," "formalis­ tic," a n d disrespectful to the genius o f G o g o l ; B a k h t i n was required to make a n u m b e r o f changes i n the text before his degree was conferred. See " I z v o s p o m i n a n i i E . M . E v n i n o i , " appendix 3 , DKKh, 2 7

nos. 2-3

(93):

1 1 4 - 1 7 , esp. 1 1 7 .

See " S t e n o g r a m m a zasedaniia u c h e n o g o soveta instituta m i r o v o i literatury i m . A . M .

G o r ' k o g o : zashchita dissertatsii tov.

Bakhtinym na temu

noiabria 1 9 4 6 g.," annotated by N . A . Pan'kov, DKKh,

' R a b l e v istorii r e a l i z m a ' 15

nos. 2-3

(93): 5 5 - 1 1 9 . I n addition,

the issue includes a lengthy b a c k g r o u n d essay by P a n ' k o v ( 2 9 - 5 4 ) as w e l l as four appen­ dixes: the text o f B a k h t i n ' s formal dissertation prospectus, o r "tesizy"; a conversation w i t h the literary scholar V a l é r y K i r p o t i n ; a m e m o i r o n the fate o f B a k h t i n ' s dissertation after the defense by a fellow Rabelais scholar, E . M . E v n i n a , w h o was b a n n e d from citing it; a n d a brief statement ( 1 9 4 4 ) i n favor o f B a k h t i n ' s m o n o g r a p h by B o r i s Tomashevsky. I n fairness to academic p r o c e d u r e , however, it s h o u l d be n o t e d that the kandidat

degree was hardly

cruel a n d u n u s u a l p u n i s h m e n t ; it was the n o r m a l title awarded after a successful defense. T h e Stalinist academic s y s t e m — i n m o s t particulars m o d e l e d after G e r m a n y circa

1910—

h a d t w o levels o f P h . D . , a n d very few scholars m a d e it t h r o u g h to the s e c o n d stage, even experienced a n d favored servants o f the regime. I thank m y colleague T h o m a s Pavel for this a n d other helpful c o m m e n t s o n this chapter. 2 8

See B a k h t i n ' s letter to P i n s k y o f 2 6 N o v e m b e r 1 9 6 0 : "As regards m y w o r k o n Rabelais,

I a m n o t c o u n t i n g o n any possibility o f its p u b l i c a t i o n . W h a t is m o r e , it was finished twenty years ago a n d a great deal n o longer satisfies m e " ( " P i s ' m a M . M . B a k h t i n a k L . E . P i n s k o m u , " ed. N . A . Pan'kov, i n DKKh,

no. 2 (94):

57).

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

93

objections elicited by the Rabelais book are familiar from reviewers' re­ sponses to Dostoevsky's Poetics, their overall tone and scholarly orientation augured well for Bakhtin's return to a world o f Russian literary criticism that was worth taking seriously.

RABELAIS AND F O L K C U L T U R E For so long, and with such naive enthusiasm, have Bakhtin's ideas o f carnival and the grotesque been extolled by postmodernist readers in the West that i t takes some effort to relocate those ideas i n the conservative Soviet literary climate o f the mid-1960s—a straitlaced, starchy, infinitely more cautious landscape. The publication o f The Creative Art of François Rabelais

and

Folk

Culture

of the Middle

Ages and

in

the Renaissance

Moscow during 1965 was a major cultural event. Many senior aca­ demics still remembered the stormy dissertation defense two decades ear­ lier and considered the appearance o f a book based on that material to be a victory o f independent scholarship over the cowed (and cowardly) Stali­ nist-bred bureaucracy. Accidents o f timing also helped: i n the early 1960s, N . M . Liubimov's celebrated new Russian translation o f Gargan­ tua and Pantagruel appeared, which focused attention on Rabelais and, in the academic world, on the paucity o f recent Russian scholarship about the great French master. Two pillars o f the Russian literary estab­ lishment, Viktor Vinogradov and Konstantin Fedin, petitioned a state publishing house to move Bakhtin's study into print as soon as possible. Pinsky wrote a passionately supportive reader's report for the press. 29

30

Russian critical response to Bakhtin's Rabelais was abundant during its first decade and a half in print. O f this rich harvest, we will consider only four representative reviews. Underlying each is an approach to Bakhtin, to literary criticism generally, and to Russia's own recent past that remained vigorous throughout the de-Stalinization process. The first, a complex and discriminating appreciation o f Bakhtin's book by the Kharkov-based cultural historian Leonid Batkin, appeared as a review ar­ ticle in Voprosy filosofii at the end o f 1967. The second is a passing refer­ ence to Rabelais by one o f Bakhtin's contemporaries and fellow arrestees, the venerable philosopher Aleksei Losev (1893-1988), at the end o f his very long, late book Aesthetics of the Renaissance (1978); i t is the highly emotional testimony o f a classicist who was as appalled and disgusted by Bakhtin's vision o f carnival as Leonid Batkin had been open-minded and 2 9

M . Bakhtin,

Tvorchestvo

Fransua

Rable

i narodnaia

kuVtura

Srednevekov ia y

i

Re-

nessansa ( M o s c o w : K h u d o z h e s t v e n n a i a literatura, 1 9 6 5 ) . 3 0

F o r a short history o f these t w o pre-publication years, see K o n k i n a n d K o n k i n a ,

hail Bakhtin,

299-301.

Mik­

94

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intrigued. The third review, which i n the old Soviet context was the most comfortable, appears as the final chapter i n Vladimir Boriskin's little vol­ ume Atheism and Creative Art (1986)—a routine contribution by a Sa­ ransk academic on the brink o f glasnost to the curious, and now entirely defunct, discipline o f "scientific atheism." The last entry is by a scholar o f Bakhtin's generation who also survived to bridge pre- and post-Stalinist culture: Viktor Shklovsky's essay "François Rabelais and Bakhtin's Book," included i n his late (1970) anthology The Bow-String: On the Dissimi­ larity

of Similar

Things.

None o f these responses is unambiguously positive. A l l acknowledge methodological dangers and moral defects i n Bakhtinian carnival—and i n Bakhtin's reading o f Rabelais—that will be raised i n Western criticism only timorously, decades later. A n d most interesting, all the major argu­ ments pro and contra the dynamics o f carnival, the grotesque body and cultures o f laughter that we meet i n these reviews o f the 1960s and 1970s were first broached during Bakhtin's dissertation defense twenty years earlier—in which context Bakhtin himself had a chance (indeed, an obligation) to respond and defend his hypotheses. As a septuagenarian i n the 1960s, Bakhtin rarely bothered to rebut criticism (or court praise) when his works finally began to appear i n print. He considered himself either above, or to the side of, such dialogue. Thus his required response, at age fifty, to his opponenty (the formal examiners at his defense) is one of the few sustained self-reflections we have by Bakhtin on his own work. To be sure, this initial stage i n the reception o f Bakhtin's Rabelais project is "pre-publication"; but i t was official, public, and rapidly became part o f academic lore. We will therefore open our review o f "carnival criticism" with the 1946 Ph.D. defense. What were the major objections raised to Rabelais in the History of Realism at that time, and how did Bakhtin justify himself i n light o f them? I n many respects, Bakhtin's thesis was ingeniously appropriate for its time and place. Many clichés o f communism are realized in it: carnival, after all, could easily be linked with the "common people," the collective body, and a buoyant indifference to individual death. Carnival had the additional advantage o f being pro-materialist, anti-Church, disruptive o f fixed order, and vaguely "revolutionary" both on its own terms and visà-vis more humanistic, Western readings o f Rabelais. Although prim, op­ pressive Stalinist culture had long since ceased to live by those destabiliz­ ing Bolshevik slogans, as verbal tags they could still embarrass and deflect. When, for example, Comrade Teriaeva, an examine]* o f few schol­ arly qualifications but with rigid Stalinist convictions and a good nose for heterodoxy, accused Bakhtin o f not reflecting i n his dissertation (sub31

31

F o r a brief a n d exasperated professional biography o f M a r i i a Prokofievna Teriaeva, see

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

95

mitted i n 1940) the spirit o f Zhdanov's 1946 proclamation on partymindedness i n literature, and when she condemned his work for resem­ bling more "private research" full o f "superfluous references to Saturnalia and phallic cults" than an objective study o f class antagonisms, Bakhtin responded i n his final statement—with what must have been profound weariness—that his study dealt with one o f the world's most revolution­ ary writers, that he saw no reason to write "what had already been writ­ ten and spoken," that Comrade Teriaeva apparently wanted him simply to repeat "what she had already studied," and that " I , as a scholar, can be a revolutionary as well . . . I solved the problem [ o f Rabelais] i n a revolu­ tionary way." There were also responsible objections raised at the defense, however, by those who appreciated fully the value and originality o f Bakhtin's work. Where is the spiritually serious side o f humanism? Why is the great realist François Rabelais cast backward into the Middle Ages and not forward, progressively, into the Renaissance? O n what basis can the dissertator claim that medieval carnival or carnival laughter is so carefree and eternally "cheerful"? Why such simplistic binary thinking, which pre­ sumes that grotesque realism is solely the property o f the masses—when in fact all strata o f society (even those Bakhtin excoriates as "official") can be shown to have indulged delightedly i n it? A n d for that matter, why do the common people i n Bakhtin's account only laugh and cavort, when i n history they clearly broke their backs with work, suffered, and thirsted to believe? The entire hypothesis o f "reduced carnivalization" i n subsequent literary epochs struck some examiners as an artificial construct. Can one really leap unproblematically from Rabelaisian folkloric fantasy to Gogol's ambivalent humor or to Dostoevsky's tragic vision? 32

I n his final statement, Bakhtin addressed these reservations, although in no sense apologetically. His kindly, aristocratic demeanor—tolerant o f others because he was indifferent to their opinions—glimmers beneath the transcript. " I am an obsessed innovator," he admitted. "Obsessed innovators are very rarely understood." He was deeply gratified, there­ fore, by the support he had received and grateful for a chance to respond to objections. Yes, i n his thesis (far too short for the task he had i n mind) perhaps he had exaggerated and simplified cultural traditions as well as N . A . Pan'kov, " ' O t k h o d a etogo d e l à zavisit vse dal'neishee . . .' ( Z a s h c h i t a dissertatsii M . M . B a k h t i n a kak real'noe sobytie, vysokaia d r a m a i n a u c h n a i a k o m e d i i a ) , " i n DKKh,

nos.

2-

3 (93): 2 9 - 5 4 , esp. 4 7 - 4 8 . F o r m o r e o n these troubles, see N i k o l a i Pan'kov, " T h e Creative H i s t o r y o f B a k h t i n ' s Rabelais"

i n Face to Face: Bakhtin

in Russia

and

the West, eds. C a r o l

A d l a m , R a c h e l F a l c o n e r , Vitalii M a k h l i n , a n d Alastair R e n f r e w (Sheffield: Sheffield A c a ­ d e m i c Press, 1 9 9 7 ) : 3 2

Bakhtin's

196-202.

summary

statement

[zakliuchitel'noe

niia . . . , " 9 8 - 9 9 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

slovo],

"Stenogramma

zaseda-

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historical conditions. " I did not present Rabelais i n the atmosphere o f the French Renaissance. This is true. I did not do so, because i n that area so much has already been done, and I would have addressed you here as a mere compiler. A n d why is that necessary, when those materials are available to everyone? . . . To repeat [what is known] is to beat down an open door" (94). I n any future monograph, he assured his examiners, he would balance the record w i t h attention to Rabelais the humanist. But as he had testified i n his opening statement, the gothic and the grotesque had fared so poorly i n literary scholarship—always partial to forms o f "prepared and completed existence"—that in his study he had resolved to "catch existence i n the process o f becoming" (56) and consider the epoch solely from that "unofficial," as yet uncoalesced point o f view. As regards laughter, Bakhtin hastened to assure his audience: " I do not i n the least mean to imply that medieval laughter is cheerful, carefree, and joyous laughter" (97). I n carnival, laughter and death are intertwined; death and pain are everywhere to be found and are grimly real, only death never has the final word. "Laughter is a weapon, like fists and sticks." But unlike those latter two weapons, which can be wielded effec­ tively i n anger and i n dread, laughter must be absolutely fearless; and for precisely this reason i t is progressive, pointed forward toward the Renais­ sance. "Laughter liberates us from fear, and this work o f laughter . . . is an indispensable prerequisite for Renaissance consciousness. I n order to look at the world soberly, I must cease to be afraid. I n this, laughter played a most serious role" (98). N o , Rabelaisian realism is not degraded, dirty, or an insult to consciousness; i t is, on the contrary, a forerunner o f all objective critical consciousness. O f course the common people do not only laugh; they have many lives. "But this is the life that interested me, it is deeply progressive and revolutionary. . . . Excuse me i f I have not satisfied you with my answers, I am so exhausted, and i t shows" (100). Despite these assurances at the defense, Bakhtin did not alter the text o f his dissertation i n the "more balanced," humanistic direction indicated before seeking a publisher. I n fact, his first attempt to publish was i n 1940, soon after he submitted the text to the Gorky Institute. I n 1944 he tried a second time to publish the text, also unsuccessfully, although there survives from that period a long set o f notes, published for the first time in 1992 under the title "Additions and Revisions to Rabelais" indi­ cating the scope o f Bakhtin's ambitions for the larger project. Projected chapters were to deal w i t h official (that is, bad) versus unofficial (good) seriousness; with carnival as a universal theory o f "limbic" images; with carnivalized aspects o f Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and presumably 33

3 3

M . M . B a k h t i n , " D o p o l n e n i i a i i z m e n e n i i a k ' R a b l e ' " [dated 1 8 / V T / 4 4 ] , prepared for

p u b l i c a t i o n by L . S. M e l i k h o v a ; first p u b l i s h e d i n Voprosy filosofii, n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 2 ) : definitively annotated i n MMB: ss 5 (96),

80-129,

423-92.

134-64,

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

97

other Shakespearean drama; and there is some loose speculation on the relation o f carnival to nicknames and gesture. Regretfully, little o f this plan was realized. The sanitized late-1940s version required by the disser­ tation committee became the "canonical" text (Bakhtin's 1940 XJr-Rabelais is still i n the archives). A n d over twenty-five years, these various quasi-public presentations and resubmissions—each w i t h its own reader reports, local audience, and mythology—entered institutional memory. Apocryphal and carnivalized stories began to circulate, such as the (unconfirmed) account by one eyewitness at the doctoral defense that "at the culminating moment, Bakhtin shouted at his opponents: 'Ob­ scurantists! Obscurantists!'—and furiously banged his crutches on the floor." I n a word, by the time the typescript finally saw the light o f day, it had accumulated a whole shadow history. This shadow added texture and depth to the reviews i n print. 34

35

Leonid Batkin's review, "Panurge's Laughter and the Philosophy o f Cul­ ture," was among the most probing o f the academic responses to Bakh­ tin's Rabelais. Its title provides the clue. A n exemplary depoliticized discussion o f two texts (Bakhtin's and Rabelais's), each containing poten­ tially explosive political material, i t resembles the early reviews o f the Dostoevsky book i n this one feature only: i t does not approach Bakhtin's study o f Rabelais as traditional "philological" scholarship. Batkin appreci­ ates the work first o f all as culturology, as speculation on the psychology of fear, and as a meditation on the metaphysics o f laughter. I t is on this ground, he believes, that Bakhtin is at his most suggestive and should ultimately be judged. The review opens on the text's sociocultural merits. Bakhtin was among the first modern critics to understand that Rabelaisian "indecen­ cies" were not at all indecent for the sixteenth century. Thus Rabelais should not be read as we moderns tend to read h i m , as a complicated "protest" against ascetic pruderies (such prudery did not exist)—but more simply as a pleasurable, humorous, instructive book. A large part o f its humor lay i n a Renaissance worldview that could still grasp directly a spontaneous, contradictory carnal image as a unified whole, without logi­ cal or linear explanations. Bakhtin forces us back into this imagic think­ ing, so integral a part o f his author's world. He also focuses our attention on ambivalence itself, not to be confused with mere doubt (which is often paralyzing) or with "double meanings," too easy to factor out and 36

3 4

Pan'kov, " ' O t k h o d a etogo d e l à

3 5

T h e eyewitness was B . I . Purishev; the anecdote was related to P a n ' k o v by l u . M .

i n DKKh,

nos. 2-3

(93):

40.

K a g a n , M a t v e i K a g a n ' s daughter. See Pan'kov, " ' O t k h o d a etogo d e l à . . . , ' " 4 2 . 3 6

L . M . B a t k i n , " S m e k h P a n u r g a i filosofiia kul'tury," Voprosy filosofii, n o . 12

114-23.

(1967):

98

CHAPTER TWO

pin down. Batkin finds a virtue—faindy Marxist—in Bakhtin's daring to construct an image o f the ordinary "man o f the masses" from a distant period; by and large, he writes, "we judge the culture o f people through people o f culture," and Bakhtin had the courage to construct an image from the bottom up. Such were the virtues o f the book. Its "inspirational style and fearlessness" were indisputable. As literary history and as a close reading o f the primary text, however, Batkin finds the study seriously flawed. His objections echo those o f Bakhtin's examiners i n 1946. First, the category o f "official culture" is impossibly broad, imprecise, unrelievedly authoritarian and monologic. The Catholic Church i n France o f that period was in fact diversified and divided; Bakhtin paints i t , anachronistically, as the Inquisition. Everything official is rendered wholly negative and oppressive: " I t is only the common people on the public square who laugh. Beyond the puppet-stalls, Gothic gloom spreads out thickly" Bakhtin declines to acknowledge that the common people could also be the source o f gloomy and repressive thoughts—fanaticism, cruelty, eschatological fantasies—or that clerics, knights and merchants, the privileged and commercial classes, also took part boisterously i n carnival. I n a related point, Batkin notes that Rabelais's humanism fares poorly i n Bakhtin's book. From the Abbey o f Thélème to a host o f other misprisions, Bakhtin simply does not see humanism as a value—it is only a "one-sided seriousness"—and this means he does not see Rabelais. I n fact, the image o f the author falls away entirely. I f the Dostoevsky book was perhaps too concerned with authorial device, then here, "The Rabelais in Rabelais is forgotten"; literary technique, structure, and creative intelligence are o f too little account. Bakhtin makes i t look as i f the elemental force o f laughter emerges and "moves along by itself." This is a serious matter, the reviewer argues, for in fact Rabelaisian laughter comes down to us i n an ancient and familiar literary genre, "the laughter that happens at table during a humanists' feast," the erudite, idle, witty, and often wicked talk o f educated skeptics. This table talk is ambivalent, Batkin concedes, but not i n an especially folksy way: "Laughing and serious tonalities constantly interact and exchange places, estranging one another." Batkin is further bothered by one "strange and embarrassing aftertaste": the fact that the grotesque is everywhere so privileged over the classical in this study that i t becomes a new and oppressive canon. I n this regard, Bakhtin appears to resist the passage o f time. The more modern, the worse. "Outside o f the grotesque there is no salvation," the reviewer notes—and thus everything after Rabelais is seen as an erosion and a falling away The error here, which Bakhtin avoids i n other areas o f his study, is to measure the nineteenth (or any other) century by seven-

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99

teenth-century standards. For there is no reason why the two historical periods should translate into one another at all; each has its own parame­ ters and truths, and between them "misunderstanding is normal" Batkin hints here at what is indeed a peculiarly Bakhtinian conundrum, also col­ oring reviews o f Dostoevsky's Poetics-, on the one hand, a passion for the speculative sweep o f history, for genres rooted i n an undocumentable, distant past, for vague and amalgamated tales o f genesis; on the other, insistence on difference, differentiation, and the possibility o f something being absolutely, creatively new. Batkin's final reservation is one that will ring constantly i n post-Soviet criticism o f Bakhtin—and most loudly, as we shall see i n chapter 4, among philosophers o f religion intrigued by links between carnival and Christianity. I n Rabelais's work, "not only is there the one-sidedness o f seriousness; there is also the one-sidedness of laughter, o f which M . Bakh­ tin does not write . . . I f D o n Quixote is helpless without his rogueish servant, then Sancho Panza, too, is worth very little when not jolting along on a donkey behind his master." The larger point is dialectical. I n Bakhtin's notion o f carnival, laughter is "negation pregnant with affirma­ tion." But i n any given ambivalent laugh, affirmation is relative—whereas negation, i t appears, is absolute: i n this is its power and fearlessness. Such fearlessness comes at a cost. Ambivalent laughter cannot be the main axis o f any cultural development, Batkin argues (somewhat i n the spirit o f Nicolas Berdyaev), because out o f a purely negative principle one cannot create, at best, negation can only liberate. Following Bakhtin's logic, the end result o f Rabelais and Folk Culture would have to be a "Renaissance that was at its zenith when i t did not take itself seriously." A n d although this might be a strong reading o f that period, i t is scarcely a correct one. Thus Bakhtin's book is best appreciated for its provocative impulse, for the "idea that moves through its historical material"—an idea that is inevitably more accurate i n its broad contours than i n any o f its narrower derivative formulations or close readings. Overall, then, Batkin considers Bakhtin's Rabelais a culturological rather than a philological monograph, stimulating i n its metaphysical concepts but disappointing i n its exaggeration and reductiveness. A t sev­ eral points, he remarks, "proofs are replaced by declamation about the people's wisdom"; when this happens, "there are no people, only the once-and-for-ever People, i.e., the Volkgeist, an abstraction." The rigor and cleverness o f humanist thought is either sacrificed outright or turned over to an unheeding crowd. Batkin hints at what will become familiar criticism by the 1990s: that many o f Bakhtin's most powerful, apparently universalizing ideas are i n fact more closely tied to the specific realities o f Stalinism than i t might at first seem—that is, they rely for their per­ suasiveness on reflexes bred i n the reader by the constant reality o f op-

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pression and terror. Under such conditions, a moment o f "liberation from fear" is by itself, and by definition, creative. Our second response to carnival, not by an intellectual historian but by a philosopher turned aesthetician and classicist, is less evenhanded. Aleksei Losev was known i n the 1920s for his non-Marxist work in logic, myth, music theory, and phenomenology. His biography to some extent parallels Bakhtin's: arrested i n 1930, sentenced to hard labor on the White Sea Canal, Losev scraped by on uncertain employment i n the provinces after his release and, like Bakhtin, was crippled i n midlife by a debilitating illness (in Losev's case, progressive blindness). Losev was resurrected i n print only i n 1953. His second career produced massive, i f highly subjective, volumes on the aesthetic thought o f the Ancient and Renaissance worlds. The Aesthetics of the Renaissance (1978), completed when Losev was a very old man, ends with a chapter on "The Decay o f Renaissance Aesthetics," o f which eight, almost wholly hostile pages are devoted to François Rabelais. "Rabelais was the greatest French humanist," Losev writes, "but he was also excessively submerged i n the chaotic variety o f human life . . . a man who drew too frank a picture o f life, unembarrassed by its naturalistic details" (586). Raised i n the Church and high culture o f his age, Rabelais, according to Losev, gives us an inversion, destruction, and parody o f Renaissance humanism, not its heroic realization. The Abbey o f Thélème—that anti-monastery where one neither prays nor works, which posits no guiding order at all, which has no visible means o f support, and yet where all is elegant, leisurely, and blooming—is, i n Losev's opinion, Rabelais's sober picture o f "the utter helplessness and impotence o f a comfortable illusion" (the assumption, apparently, that "the state will pay"). Likewise, the "titanism" that inspires those much admired hero-giants Gargantua and Pantagruel conceals the fact that they are simply "bohemians," "rabble," nothing more than coarse, grasping, cowardly, violent nihilists with no "truly durable perseverance to their natures" (588). Such heroes parody the ideal o f Renaissance humanism, which was driven by ideas, not appetites. Furthermore, Losev contends, "corporeality" i n Rabelais is far removed from the grace and proportionality o f the Renaissance body; Rabelaisian bodies are "idea-less, empty, devoid o f any content or artistry" (589). 37

38

Losev then comments on two well-known recent Soviet books on 3 7

F o r a useful b r i e f i n t r o d u c t i o n to A l e k s e i L o s e v ( w i t h incidental parallels d r a w n to the

life o f B a k h t i n ) , see Scanlan's prefatory essay to part 5, " F i n d i n g P h i l o s o p h y u n d e r Soviet R u l e , " i n James P. S c a n l a n , Russian sophical Heritage 3 8

Thought

under

Communism:

(Armonk, N . Y . : M . E . Sharpe, 1 9 9 4 ) ,

A . F . L o s e v , Estetika

references given i n text.

Vozrozhdeniia

The Recovery

of a

Philo-

187-94.

(Moscow: Mysl', 1978), 5 8 6 - 9 3 .

F u r t h e r page

DOMESTIC

R E C E P T I O N

101

Rabelaisian laughter, one by Bakhtin and the other by Leonid Pinsky. He faults Pinsky for his reluctance to see, i n Rabelais's contradictory and deceptive treatment o f the comic, a genuine satanism at work (this ques­ tion o f satanic laughter i n carnival will be taken up again i n chapter 4 ) . But i t is Bakhtin's book that receives the full force o f Losev's skepticism and scholarly wrath. He specifically cites Bakhtin to illustrate Rabelais's "vile and repellent aesthetics"—but, he adds, "without linking ourselves in the least to the theoretical or literary constructs o f that researcher, which often strike us as highly contestable and at times fantastically exag­ gerated" (589). Losev sees neither joyful material surplus nor release from terror as motivating Bakhtin's delight i n the "material-bodily lower stratum." I n Bakhtin's themes he detects only an infantile fascination with excrement, intoxication, and monstrous misshapen growth, all fol­ lowed by the hope that a folklore miracle would make i t right. "The realism o f Rabelais is the aesthetic apotheosis o f all vileness and ob­ scenity," Losev concludes. "Whoever wishes to consider such realism progressive, go right ahead" (591). Here, indeed, is an eccentricity to match Bakhtin's own. Losev's attack on Bakhtin's Rabelais—viewing it not only as one more apologia for a smutty book but as a misreading o f an entire epoch—is itself, o f course, a critique that Bakhtin predicted and had attempted to deflect. Dignified and darkened, Losev's argument will enter the 1990s debates about carnival, its receptivity to the mythography o f Stalinism, and the questionable potential o f laughter to nourish genuine spirituality. Vladimir Boriskin's monograph Atheism and Creative Art (Saransk, 1986), incorporates a review o f his colleague Bakhtin's monograph on Rabelais as its final chapter. Under the title "The Cheerful Universe (Problems o f Atheism i n Bakhtin's Book)," the essay is a routine product of a respectable Soviet academic discipline. I t presumes as self-evident the truisms o f scientific atheism: that a divine Creator would be i n competi­ tion, not cooperation, with human creativity; that God is jealous and grim whereas "the people" are spontaneously labor-loving, cheerful, selfreliant, and strive toward spiritual autonomy; and that faith i n a mate­ rialistic universe is a surer route to the realization o f humanistic ideals than any mystic or metaphysical alternative. Although Boriskin acknowl­ edges that religion can, on occasion, contribute to culture, as a profes­ sional i n his field he must hold that "creativity, by its very nature, is incompatible with dogmatism and passivity, traits especially characteristic o f religious consciousness" ( 5 - 6 ) . Such obstinate parameters almost dis­ qualify Boriskin as a serious reviewer o f Bakhtin's monograph. But i t is o f 39

3 9

V . M . B o r i s k i n , c h . 4 , "Veselaia vselennaia," i n Ateizm

i tvorchestvo

(Saransk: M o r -

dovskoe k n i z h n o e izdatePstvo, 1 9 8 6 ) , 9 3 - 1 0 8 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

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some interest to the present study, I believe, that Bakhtinian carnival, with its abundance o f schematic binaries—"official"/"unofficial," "the authorities"/"the people," "one-sided seriousness"/"cheerful relativ­ ity"—alongside its often unstoppable slide toward mindlessness, can be fit with such ease into these standard party-minded norms. I t helps to explain the exceptional survival record o f the carnival idea, which has proved to be, i n widely differing political environments, among Bakhtin's most cunning, malleable, and robust concepts. As Boriskin reads the work o f his Saransk colleague, The Creative Art of François Rabelais is thoroughly Soviet i n content and spirit. Aleksei Losev was wrong to despise Rabelaisian aesthetics, Boriskin writes; fur­ ther, Losev's impetuous "opinion" concerning Bakhtin's so-called fantas­ tically exaggerated reading o f Rabelais i n terms o f the lower bodily stra­ tum is simple evidence that opinion is no match for a "clearly expressed concept" ( 9 6 - 9 7 ) . Whereas Losev, with his ill-tempered "opinion," can merely discredit i n a negative spirit, Bakhtin's concept permits him to look on life's processes cheerfully and optimistically His monograph is thus precious to the antireligious cause, because i t documents Rabelais's success at achieving an artistic (not merely a rational or intellectual) rep­ resentation o f atheism and its humanistic fruit. Boriskin cannot, o f course, claim the same "concept" for Rabelais him­ self, a man raised i n the Church and, as a fictional artist, deeply commit­ ted to pursuing a dialogue—however daring i n its comic irreverence— between secular and sacred forms. ("True," Boriskin admits, "Rabelais's [actual] relationship to religion has so far been assessed very cautiously" [ 9 9 ] ) . But the formal claims o f art or Church occupy Boriskin very little, in Bakhtin's monograph as well as i n Rabelais's original. " M . M . Bakh­ tin's concept makes i t possible to draw some conclusions about the uninterruptability of atheistic traditions i n human culture," he writes (95), with the facility o f a mind well trained at linking official slogans into dull bland chains. " A t the base o f this concept lies the teaching o f historical materialism on the deciding role o f the popular masses i n history. The common people are always the creator o f history, even during the gloom­ iest epochs, since they are the main productive force o f society, its main builder o f material and spiritual values. The laboring activity o f the peo­ ple is always to some degree a creative act. . . . The people laugh not only because they need a break from labor, a rest, a relaxation; they laugh from a spontaneous sense o f their own real strength" (95). Working within his formulas, Boriskin nevertheless takes some care not to distort outrightly "Bakhtin does not identify Rabelais's worldview with atheism," he admits; "first, because that worldview is directed not only against religion but against the entire value system o f feudal soci­ ety," and second, because i t is not negating but "life-affirming, striving

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103

toward the future." Atheism is "only one side o f Rabelais's naively materialistic and spontaneously dialectical worldview" ( 9 7 - 9 8 ) . Boriskin alludes vaguely near the end o f his review to a "contemporary understanding o f atheism" that is more flexible and spiritually uplifting than the "insufficient, limited nature o f purely rationalistic atheism" (98). The advantage o f this more up-to-date definition, apparently, is that i t requires no firm stand on the question o f God. A l l that is needed is a popular base, a belief i n communal labor, reverence toward physical matter, and optimism i n the face o f death. O n these grounds, Boriskin concludes, both "Rabelais's novel and M . M . Bakhtin's book are permeated practically on every page with the ideas o f atheism" (99). There are two reasons, I suggest, for keeping Boriskin and his rote Marxist science i n mind. Both will resurface when we consider the fate o f Bakhtin's carnivalesque i n the post-Soviet period. First, like Batkin before him, Boriskin grasps clearly that Bakhtin cannot be read as a literary critic or as a historian o f carnival i n the narrow sense o f the word. Apply those standards (as, say, Viktor Shklovsky does in our next entry) and imprécisions and contradictions will abound (97). For the moment o f carnival that Bakhtin celebrates is not so much a social phenomenon or a fixed date on the church calendar as i t is an attitude, a holiday attitude—and by "holiday" [pmzdnik] is meant any peak point or threshold that is (in Boriskin's words) valued for the aspect " o f change and renewal i n i t , its striving toward the future" (105). Carnival is not an institution, nor can it be judged by any o f its (often nasty) material traces. I t is simply a name given to that moment o f enablement—inevitably transitory—during which the self feels itself to be an agent i n the world, that moment when a human being no longer feels helpless, nor prays, nor begs. As Bakhtin writes i n his Rabelais, this enabling moment is the "victory o f laughter": "not only a victory over the mystic terror o f God, but also a victory over the awe inspired by the forces o f nature, and most o f all over the oppression and guilt related to all that is consecrated and forbidden . . . This truth was ephemeral; it was followed by the fears and oppressions o f everyday life, but from these brief moments another unofficial truth emerged . . . Laughter is essentially not an external but an interior form o f truth. Carnival, therefore, does not and cannot hope to change the world; i t can only change our inner relationship to that world. (Near the end o f his life, Bakhtin himself would j o t down a similar sentiment as regards consciousness expressed through the word: words free my " I " from the necessity to act upon the world by transforming that I into a witness or 40

4 0

M i k h a i l B a k h t i n , Rabelais

and His World, trans. H é l è n e I s w o l s k y ( B l o o m i n g t o n : I n d i -

ana U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 4 ) , 9 0 - 9 1 , 9 4 .

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a judge.) Unlike the vigilant Bolshevik critics who condemned Bakh­ tin's Dostoevsky book for its philosophical idealism i n 1929, Boriskin does no more than gesture lamely at this profoundly anti-Marxist conclu­ sion. The second reason for attending to state-sponsored atheism is more generic. Boriskin's facile assimilation o f Bakhtin's "concept" is good evi­ dence that the carnivalesque, like the rogues and fools o f the entr'acte, is an adaptable, pliable, immortal creature. The virtues that Boriskin claimed for "contemporary atheism" within his appreciative but pedes­ trian critique were precisely the ones that had saved Bakhtin during his embattled dissertation defense. A n d they are the same virtues being claimed, i n the postcommunist era, by thinkers sympathetic to a Chris­ tian outlook and eager to affix Bakhtin to it. That carnival, one o f the great liminal moments i n human culture, can literally justify and generate anything has fueled the search for some deeper principle to which i t might be attached. 41

One final response remains to be considered. Viktor Shklovsky's "Fran­ çois Rabelais and Bakhtin's Book," surely the best-known review to be written by one o f Bakhtin's own contemporaries, is cast: i n that pathbreaking Formalist's trademark aphoristic style. Shklovsky on Bakhtin is a curiously illuminating dialogue. Focusing on the categories o f menip­ pean satire and carnivalization as Bakhtin employs them i n both his Rabelais and Dostoevsky books, Shklovsky finds fault with a great deal. This i n itself is instructive. As a very young man i n the 1910s and 1920s, Shklovsky had launched his own precocious career with sweeping mani­ festo-like statements o f the sort he now finds unprofessional i n Bakhtin. What are his major complaints? First, Shklovsky regrets that Bakhtin fails to document the target o f Rabelais's parody, namely, the Bible and Holy Writ. For Rabelais mal­ treats these texts i n a masterfully crude and cavalier way, deliberately re­ ducing their authority to that o f pagan Greek or Roman myth. Bakhtin's research on Rabelaisian devices is "interesting and significant," Shklovsky admits, but he is bothered that i n Bakhtin's account no one seems partie 42

4 1

" T h e reflection o f the self i n the empirical other t h r o u g h w h o m one m u s t pass i n order

to r e a c h I-for-myself.

. . T h e absolute freedom o f this I . B u t this freedom c a n n o t change

existence, so to speak, materially ( n o r c a n it w a n t t o ) — i t c a n change only the sense o f existence (to recognize it, to justify it, a n d so forth); this is the freedom o f the witness a n d the j u d g e . I t is expressed i n the word. A u t h e n t i c i t y a n d truth inhere n o t i n existence itself, b u t o n l y i n existence that is a c k n o w l e d g e d a n d uttered" ( " F r o m N o t e s M a d e i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " i n SpG, 4 2

137-38).

V i k t o r Shklovskii, " F r a n s u a R a b l e i k n i g a M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Tetiva:

O neskhodstve

skhod-

nogo ( M o s c o w : Sovetskii pisatef, 1 9 7 0 ) , 2 5 7 - 9 6 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

105

ularly insulted or threatened by any o f it. "Rabelais's carnival was pointed and offensively parodie . . . i t parodies the church, the courts, war, the illusory right o f some people to oppress others." Bakhtin, however, pre­ sents these matters as benevolent folklore carnival—reversible, timeless, Utopian; "he does not point out precisely against whom the parody is directed" (264). Shklovsky's dissatisfaction here is understandable; with his lifelong enthusiasm for parody as the prime mover o f political as well as literary consciousness, he could hardly be expected to endorse Bakh­ tin's philosophically quite dissimilar understanding o f carnival laughter. For Bakhtin, true laughter was always ambivalent and two-way, a vehicle o f freedom for all sides and thus unencumbered by practical politics, a settling o f scores, or the residue o f real historical events. Shklovsky's other reservations are more substantive. The familiar observation that Bakhtin loses sight o f Renaissance hu­ manism is again repeated. But true to his Formalist inclinations, Shklov­ sky emphasizes the strictly literary dimension o f this oversight. A key mediator for Rabelais was Aristophanes and ancient Greek comedy (al­ most unremarked by Bakhtin). A n d overall, Shklovsky notes, Bakhtin's treatment is so partial to the lower body and its palpable mute functions that i t fails to transmit a sense o f the "literariness" o f the audience, that "the participants i n a given carnival spectacle were extraordinarily edu­ cated men who presumed that their readers would be ironists and eru­ dites" (259). Such bias against high culture creates a host o f problems. Among them, Shklovsky intimates, is the whole "carnivalization" thesis, a problem i n the Rabelais study as well as i n the inserted chapter on menippean satire i n the Dostoevsky book. By what logic can one call the postRabelaisian carnival impulse degraded or "reduced"? Dostoevsky, after all, was a reader, a writer, a novelist. But for Bakhtin, who tends to equate all contradictoriness and parodie complexity i n novels with the menippean spirit—so much so, i n fact, that "the concept o f 'menippea' encompasses almost all o f literature" (293)—the Russian novelist "is, as it were, explained by carnival" (268). For Shklovsky, such an equation is an offense against literature. Bakhtin should have made the genres o f epic and tragedy more central to Rabelais's and Dostoevsky's art; he also should have acknowledged that participation i n a carnival spectacle is en­ tirely alien to the private experience o f reading a book. Since reading requires such very different skills than life on the public square, no novel­ ist o f genius would wish to transpose its effects directly—nor would he consider any reduced ability to do so a special handicap. The indiscriminate maw that "menippean satire" becomes i n Bakhtin's vision o f the world prompts Shklovsky to his final criticism. I n both the Dostoevsky and Rabelais books, real history (and real literary evolution) is too often dissolved i n myth. Taken abstractly, carnival indeed does

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repeat; but i n human experience, "utopia and satire are historical" (270). N o t every conflict is a carnival one. Bakhtin's books, however, are marked by a "generalizing o f conflicts, [a tendency to understand their dynamics] outside a pattern o f conscious shifts i n literary forms. . . . Bakhtin fuses repetitions into immobility" (271). He thus unwittingly repeats the mistake o f Freudian psychoanalysis—in which an obsessive attention to "the most ancient and conservative instincts" renders "abso­ lutely incomprehensible the historical development o f art" (287). Curi­ ously, i n his review o f Bakhtin on Rabelais, Shklovsky's suiviving Formal­ ist sensitivities are both incited and at the same time laid bare. I n the 1920s, we recall, Bakhtin and members o f his circle wrote and lectured copiously against the impersonal schema, ahistoricism, and mechanistic devices so dear to early Formalist critics. Shklovsky was their most polem­ ical mouthpiece. Now, half a century later, Shklovsky—who had long since mellowed into a traditional, less aggressive, and less imaginative literary historian—sees i n Bakhtin, and is inclined to censure, the excesses o f his own youth. Despite this cautious initial reception, Bakhtin's general hypotheses on folk laughter and the carnival grotesque quickly entered mainstream So­ viet scholarly discourse. By the early 1980s standard historical surveys— such as Aron Gurevich's Problems of Medieval Popular Culture—already referred to Bakhtin as an innovator and a classic. Bakhtin was "a name linked with a decisive revolution i n the study o f the popular culture o f the Middle Ages," a scholar who understood, as his predecessors had not, that a palpable sense o f the period had to be built from the bottom up, however unpracticed scholars might be i n handling such "unsublimated" material. Bakhtin is still faulted for his one-sided treatment o f official culture, which is denied any complex dynamics o f its own; he is still called to task for ignoring the fact that carnival inversions must al­ ways reinforce—and thus respect—that which they mock; and Gurevich notes that Bakhtin's emphasis on urbanized ("public-square") carnival fails to account for the vast, more shapeless peasant component. But Bakhtin is not Curtius, Gurevich reminds us. He is not an annotator o f details but an innovator, a stimulus, a prompt. "After B-akhtin's works appeared, i t became difficult to study medieval culture from the old posi­ tions—even i f we admit, as we must, that Bakhtin sooner fixed our atten­ tion on the problem o f popular culture i n the Middle Ages than solved i t " (273). 43

4 3

A . I a . G u r e v i c h , Problemy

srednevekovoi

narodnoi

kuVtury

(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1 9 8 1 ) ,

esp. 2 7 2 - 7 3 . I n a f o r u m m a r k i n g the fiftieth anniversary o f the dissertation defense, G u r e ­ v i c h called carnival a "scholarly m y t h . " DKKh,

no. 4 (96): 5 - 4 5 , esp. 14.

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

107

Bakhtin himself expressed litde interest in the critical turmoil around his two major works o f literary scholarship, in print at last. I n the occa­ sional personal letter to a friend he would remark on his growing weari­ ness, or on the difficulty o f arguing his ideas with the force they deserved; but, as with the scandal over the kandidett degree, he habitually shrugged off dissent and dissuaded those who wished to lobby on his behalf. Ac­ cording to Kozhinov, Bakhtin was capable o f such equanimity because he did not consider himself a literary scholar at all but a philosopher—and, as Bakhtin himself had quipped, "a philosopher must be no one, because as soon as he becomes someone, he begins to adjust his philosophy to his professional obligation [dolzhnost']." Bakhtin did not live to see the bulk o f his intact philosophical writings transcribed, cleared for publica­ tion, and entered into public debate. He barely survived to the pageproof stage o f his most wide-ranging and influential essays, the fruit o f the exile years: his work on the history and theory o f the novel. 44

T H E 1975 ANTHOLOGY: ESSAYS O N T H E N O V E L The five-hundred-page Voprosy litemtury i estetiki. Issledovaniia raznykh let [Problems o f literature and aesthetics: Studies from various years] was published posthumously in Moscow in 1975. This omnibus anthology, covering a half-century o f literary activity, gathered together several shorter projects and fragments, two important lectures, and two booklength texts: the ramblingly theoretical "Slovo v romane" [Discourse i n the novel; or better, " H o w words work in novels"] and an apparently incomplete history o f time-space relations ("chronotopes") in prose genres. As with the earlier two books, the content o f this volume was not wholly unfamiliar to the Russian academic community. The longer works, completed in Kustanai and Saransk by the end o f the 1930s, had been distributed to friends in manuscript. I n the fall o f 1940, Bakhtin delivered a paper at the Gorky Institute in Moscow on the prehistory o f the novelistic word; in May 1941 he read a paper on "The Novel as a Literary Genre," which appeared i n the 1975 anthology under the title 45

4 4

A s related by K o z h i n o v to N . A . Pan'kov, in " ' O t k h o d a etogo d e l à . . . , ' " in

nos. 2-3 4 5

M.

(93):

DKKh,

29.

Bakhtin,

Voprosy

litemtury

i

estetiki.

Issledovaniia

raznykh

let

(Moscow:

K h u d o z h e s t v e n n a i a literatura, 1 9 7 5 ) . T h e anthology includes all the programmatic essays translated i n The Dialogic

Imagination:

Tour Essays by M. M. Bakhtin

( A u s t i n : University o f

Texas Press, 1 9 8 1 ) , plus others. O n e important entry i n c l u d e d i n the 1 9 7 5 R u s s i a n v o l u m e ( o n pages 6 - 7 1 ) but o m i t t e d , because o f its c h r o n o l o g i c a l distance from the other essays, from the E n g l i s h edition is B a k h t i n ' s 1 9 2 4 essay p o l e m i c i z i n g w i t h the Formalists ( " T h e P r o b l e m o f C o n t e n t , M a t e r i a l , a n d F o r m i n V e r b a l A r t " ) . I t appeared in E n g l i s h only i n 1 9 9 0 , as an appendix in the L i a p u n o v edition o f Art

and

Answerability.

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"Epic and Novel." But the fact that these earlier, more theoretical works had their official debut i n print only after Bakhtin had been resurrected through two controversial "single-name" monographs (first on Dos­ toevsky's polyphony, then on Rabelais's carnival) tended to mute their reception. Compared to cultures o f laughter or words with a loophole, terms such as chronotope, dialogized heteroglossia, hybrid construction, voice zone, multi-lanpfuagedness, and materialist aesthetics sounded dry and abstract. (Unfortunately most o f these concepts were subsequently caught up i n the cult and moved quickly i n critical discourse from unex­ amined neologism into cliché.) Reviews o f the 1975 volume are distin­ guished by their somewhat sluggish attention to what, over time, would prove to be highly original and productive interpretative categories. Only later would i t be suggested that Bakhtin had wrought these terms out o f German nineteenth-century aesthetics reinterpreted i n the light o f the theory o f relativity. The lack o f depth or focus i n these early reviews was not the fault o f shortsighted or unappreciative critics. Quite the opposite; since Bakhtin died the very year the book appeared, and since the new volume con­ tained essays composed over a fifty-year period, reviews were cast i n a mixed intonation, obituary and eulogy competing with scholarly assess­ ment. Bakhtin was indeed celebrated. But i t was celebration with a lee­ way and an exempting edge, a sense that this was the work o f a highly gifted but eccentric outsider, whose recent passing made serious criticism unseemly and comprehensive overviews still premature. What is more, much i n the new volume simply did not fit within the existing conven­ tional frameworks for thinking about novels. Russian literary professionals had long discussed the newel as a genre biographically, philosophically, thematically, historically. But a rigorous "theory o f the novel" had not been put forward with any success. I n the opinion o f the Formalists who worked on prose, the novel was simply an "accretion," little more than a short narrative grown long by the inserted devices o f retardation, digression, and techniques o f estrangement. When Bakhtin turned his attention to the novel early in that decade, he found the prior research at his disposal scattered and unsatisfying. He fully 46

4 6

O n e attempt i n the s e c o n d h a l f o f the 1 9 2 0 s m u s t have been k n o w n to B a k h t i n : B o r i s

Griftsov, Teoriia romand

(Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia Akademiia khudozhestvennykh nauk,

1 9 2 7 ) . C e l e b r a t i n g the n o v e l as "the sole verbal artwork o f m o d e r n times," a "half-art" that c a n absorb any other form " w i t h n o theoretical prejudices" ( 1 0 ) , Griftsov admits that s u c h tolerance has m a d e the genre inaccessible to theorists. A s w i l l B a k h t i n , Griftsov finds fault w i t h m o s t o f his predecessors. T h e n o v e l d i d i n d e e d emerge f r o m rhetoric ( s u c h was G u s t a v Shpet's thesis), b u t only w h e n rhetoric h a d ceased to serve ethical goals a n d h a d already decayed into casuistry. Its evolution is difficult to demonstrate since one c a n n o t distinguish between imitation a n d convergence. A n d , a l t h o u g h F o r m a l i s t studies were t h e n the fashion,

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

109

appreciated the reasons. The novel's protean nature, its ability to incor­ porate self-parody without ceasing to be itself, and its openness to the "feel" o f the present (that is, its ability to invite into its own present tense any number o f readers from later times and make them feel at home, with something to say and contribute) made the very question o f an adequate theory o f the novel awkward for a literary tradition. Equally difficult for the anthology's initial audience was that Bakhtin's treatment o f the novel, to be properly grasped, had to be prefaced by an entire philosophy o f language. Problems o f individual style were revealed to be problems—or potentials—inherent i n the way words work, both i n novels and i n general. As Bakhtin argues i n "Discourse i n the Novel," even when a novelist strives to achieve a unified and authoritative voice, without distance, refraction, or reservations, the very fact that these words are deployed i n this genre means that they are not undisputed, that they must be overtly justified and motivated. A n d from this impera­ tive comes what the Saransk scholar Oleg Osovsky has called the "anthropocentrism" o f Bakhtin's theory o f the novel. Novels, like people, are living organisms; they "listen," "speak," and adjust to their environment. I f healthy, both novels and people strive toward the same thing: constant differentiation and a chance to defend their individual positions i n a world that knows neither absolute authority nor fixed plots. Both evolve toward an ever higher, more articulate consciousness. 47

Finally, it could be argued that these essays, while possessing the usual soporific and anesthetizing virtues o f straight theory, are no less subver­ sive i n the realm o f literary studies than Dostoevsky had been, stripped by Bakhtin o f his plots, or Bakhtin's Rabelais, reduced to joyful obscenities

Griftsov argues that novels are n o t w e l l served by t h e m since little attention is paid to the boundaries between prose genres (prose genres were assumed simply to "grow i n " to one a n o t h e r ) . N o t surprisingly, Griftsov's "several m e t h o d o l o g i c a l c o n c l u s i o n s " are almost all negative warnings ( 1 4 0 - 4 8 ) : do n o t tie the evolution o f the n o v e l to literary schools; d o n o t attempt an exhaustive typology, for there are never e n o u g h categories a n d n o list o f distinctive features w i l l ever be sufficient. A s regards i m m a n e n t principles, he c o m e s u p w i t h only one: " T h e n o v e l lives by controversy: by quarreling, by struggle, by a contradictoriness o f interests, by contrasts between w h a t is desired a n d w h a t actually exists" ( 1 4 7 ) . B a k h t i n w i l l pick u p w h e r e Griftsov ends. I n a F o r m a l i s t spirit, he w i l l specify a " d o m i n a n t for the n o v e l , " the primary feature defining its "literariness": this very m o t i f o f c o n t r a d i c t i o n a n d struggle. B u t he w i l l distance this struggle f r o m any crude identification w i t h real-life battle­ fields or social class. H e w i l l relocate it w i t h i n the novel's o w n professional m e d i u m : the contradictory, m u l t i - v o i c e d utterance. A n d language, thus u n d e r s t o o d , becomes a carrier n o t o f plot, e c o n o m i c pressures, or formal literary devices, but o f consciousness itself, i n ­ t e n d e d to benefit first a n d foremost the densely p o p u l a t e d , created

w o r l d o f the n o v e l a n d

n o t the creators a n d c o n s u m e r s o f that w o r l d (authors, readers, analysts). 4 7

See

O . E . O s o v s k i i , Chelovek.

Slovo.

Roman.,

ch. 4,

nekotorye p r o b l e m y i z u c h e n i i a r o m a n n o g o z h a n r a , " 8 3 - 8 4 .

"Teoriia r o m a n a B a k h t i n a i

110

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and indecencies on the carnival square. The first reviewers o f the 1975 anthology might have been hesitant and disoriented for this reason, too. Bakhtin's earlier books had offered rebelliously unconventional readings o f great (and unconventional) rebel-novelists; this new volume o f essays took on placid, canonized authorities who had long permeated Soviet culture and provided its basic terms o f reference. Among those chal­ lenged was Hegel, with his doctrine that the novel was a degradation, a prosaicization, and a falling off o f poetry and epic; Bakhtin was being quite heretical, therefore, when he argued that human personality i n the novel is more triumphant and heroic (although differently so) than i n the loftier genres. Closer to home, Bakhtin also took on his shadow rival i n Moscow, the dean o f Marxist critics Georgy Lukacs. Several decades ear­ lier Lukacs had preached (in Hegel's spirit) that the epic was the product o f an integrated world and the novel the genre o f "transcendental homelessness," fragmented, inward-looking, pessimistic. Seeking contacts i n the capital after his term o f exile was over, Bakhtin made a bid to displace this august predecessor i n the realm o f novelistic theory by reversing the ethical charge on Lukacs's categories. (For Bakhtin, o f course, the novel was happily fragmented; only multiplicity and open-ended surplus could guarantee a vigorous and socially informed whole that was flexible, out­ ward-looking and optimistic.) But the largest authority Bakhtin chal­ lenged, one could argue, was the ancient founder and canonizer o f all poetic forms. As Vladimir Turbin recalls: Bakhtin spoke and wrote very often about the rare opportunity that had fallen to the lot of our generations: to witness how the novel is created, a genre for which he predicted a fertile future. And this prognosis would have to be understood not "according to Aristotle," but . . . according to Bakh­ tin. . . . From the novel's point of view, the epic is monotonous, bombastic in an unlifelike way; from the epic's point of view, the novelistic world is unorganized, devoid of order. . . . [Bakhtin's] achievement, most probably, is not that he had the courage—in addition to all the other calamities he was called upon to endure—to contradict the methodology of a Dymshits. Dymshits is not at issue here; the issue here is Aristotle.

48

The task Bakhtin assumed, then, was to think about literary genre i n a way that would specifically benefit the novel—that is, define genre i n terms o f character rather than plot, and i n a non-normative way. Turbin remembers how Bakhtin, " i n the foggy twilights o f Saransk," would re­ peat "as something simple and long since resolved" that "we think not i n 4 8

V . N . T u r b i n , "Karnaval: R e l i g i i a , politika, teosofiia," i n B sb 190,

6 - 2 9 , esp. 18. O f all

B a k h t i n ' s students, T u r b i n has m a d e m o s t central to his o w n w o r k the idea that the w o r l d is arranged a n d perceived entirely t h r o u g h genres.

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

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words, but i n genres." The implications o f this statement are far-rang­ ing. Words are separate building blocks, versatile and polysemantic, marked by the intonation o f the individual who utters them. A genre is an orientation or "field," whose parameters are more or less fixed by an interpretive community that pulls words into its orbit and dictates how, in that context, they are to mean. By linking genre with inner mentation, Turbin suggests an analogy. Just as each " I " instinctively relates to its own thinking processes—and to its own individuality—as to a dynamic process that potentially can produce something unclassifiably new (that is, something "novel") and yet still recognizably "its o w n , " so each " I " should approach a given genre as i f i t were still alive, as i f i t were an energy rather than a form. Identity is achieved not by the end product, by the "material" or the repeatable rules that can be extracted from the form, but by how material is processed (how I create) and what I do with your response to me. With this "responsive" rather than referential defi­ nition o f genre i n place—a definition maximally distant from Aristotelian poetics and its hierarchy o f plots, formal features, and effects—suddenly all the drawbacks o f the novel become its singular advantage. Each o f the essays i n the 1975 volume contributes to this character-centered, pro­ cess-oriented, nonnormative task. I t is hardly surprising that Bakhtin's early reviewers could not make immediate sense o f it. To sample the range o f critical reactions to the anthology, we will consider three items: the most famous eulogy-obituary to be written on the occasion o f this book (and o f Bakhtin's death); one counter-eulogy i n response to i t ; and then a mainstream 1970s version o f the professional review. 49

"The Personality and Talent o f a Scholar," by the eminent classicist and philosopher Sergei Averintsev, appeared i n 1976. I t struck a rever­ ent, exceptionalist tone that hitherto had been rarely heard outside Bakh­ tin's own circle. As a specialist i n ancient literature and biography, Averintsev inevitably has a problem (as have many professionally trained classicists i n Russia and abroad) with some o f Bakhtin's more sweeping formulations. He is bothered, for example, by the huge role Bakhtin as­ signs to carnivalization i n Roman culture—a culture that i n Averintsev's opinion is "relatively naive" i n comparison with the "polyvalent irony, clever taunting, extremely subtle modulations and transitions between laughter and seriousness" characteristic o f the ancient Greeks (61). (A centennial memoir by one o f Bakhtin's former students, an undergradu­ ate at Mordovia State Teacher's College i n the late 1940s, reverses the 50

4 9

" V m e s t o w e d e n i i a , " i n V . N . T u r b i n , Nezadolgo

do Vodoleia

(sbornik statei)

(Moscow:

Radiks, 1 9 9 4 ) , 31. 5 0

S. Averintsev, " L i c h n o s t ' i talant u c h e n o g o , " i n Litemturnoe

ber 1 9 7 6 ) : 5 8 - 6 1 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

obozrenie,

n o . 10 ( O c t o ­

112

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impression Averintsev received from the published essays: the memoirist recalls that Mikhail Mikhailovich devoted "more than half the semester to Homer and only three or four lectures to Roman literature," which he considered "derivative and less important.") Averintsev has no intention o f pursuing these small matters o f balance or focus. I n the terms o f chap­ ter 1, he prefers to remember Bakhtin more as a lyricist than a physicist, and he measures him largely by "lyrical" criteria. Bakhtin, Averintsev writes, "is a wisdom lover [liubomudr] among the specialists" (59). Scholarship is wary o f this status, for precisely the reasons Turbin gives: i t is easier to think responsibly and professionally about normative features than about potentials. Bakhtin resists that greatest o f all hazards i n the humanities: stripping down reality into "planes" or "projections" that are then allowed to define our professional lives. Each scholar chooses a manageable and methodologically sound strip (or "projection") o f reality with which to work. I t then requires, Averintsev confides, 51

a huge spiritual effort to empathize with the ontological priority of reality over that projection. The net of coordinates, laid down solely in order to see the thing properly, takes on flesh, looms up harshly and precisely before the mind's eye, impressing the imagination with its intellectual rigor, and mean­ while the thing itself is forced to back off, retreat to the background, as if ashamed of its own imprecision, incorrectness, inappropriately enigmatic as­ pects. And then, one after the other, more or less professional works appear, marked by a scholastic correctness, at times even intellectual energy, and there is everything in them except the feeling that the historical event being examined actually took place in the world of human beings . . . [Before us and our students there is always] the threat of losing the object, the threat of a dehumanized humanities, humanities without a human being—which is a rather wretched joke.

I n place o f those dry inventions o f the conventional academy, Aver­ intsev writes, Bakhtin offers "philosophical anthropology," the "ability to see the literary word as a human w o r d " (60). Bakhtin's dominant was freedom but understood i n a peculiar sense: the freedom o f any thing to exit from its own prior identity. Far from presuming a fragmented, alien5 1

B a k h t i n "constructed his course o n ancient literature i n a very original way, different

from T r o n s k i i ' s textbook that w e were u s i n g , " the m e m o i r i s t recalled. " T h e m i d p o i n t o f the semester a p p r o a c h e d , b u t M i k h a i l M i k h a i l o v i c h was still reading H o m e r ; it was already almost the e n d o f the year a n d w e were still h e a r i n g about G r e e k literature. I n the entire c o u r s e , only three o r four lectures were d e v o t e d to R o m a n literature. M i k h a i l M i k h a i l o v i c h e m p h a s i z e d that R o m a n literature was secondary, a n d he was c o n c e n t r a t i n g his attention o n the m o s t i m p o r t a n t — a n d about the rest, w e c o u l d find out for ourselves from the text­ b o o k s . " See Y u . D . R y s k i n (b. 1 9 2 4 , by profession a literary scholar a n d b i b l i o g r a p h e r ) , " M o i v o s p o m i n a n i i a o M . M . B a k h t i n e , " i n MMB

v zerk 95, 1 1 1 - 1 3 , esp.

111-12.

DOMESTIC

R E C E P T I O N

113

ated, or incoherent universe, this exiting act positively requires the spatiousness o f a whole; i t cannot be confined to a predetermined "strip" or projection. A n d since such an exit will always increase individual respon­ sibility rather than diminish i t , freedom o f this sort has nothing i n com­ mon with license or anarchy. I t cannot, however, be contained i n the accepted institutionalized ways. Thus must Bakhtin resist the formal method, one-way satire, and Aristotelian frameworks—all o f which are demonstrably most at home with categories o f imposed identity: literary devices rather than consciousness, ridicule rather than reciprocal laughter, plot rather than character. As organizing principles, those modes o f thought are helpless before entities that can redefine themselves from within. But Averintsev, himself a meticulous philologist, must sooner or later confront the nature o f Bakhtin's approach to the scholar's task. His angle here resembles Gurevich's view o f Bakhtinian carnival: i t is not an answer for all time, and not every reader's preferred Rabelais, but as a stimulus i t is unparalleled. "Bakhtin's thought sought broad heuristic perspectives," Averintsev concludes, "but not 'scientific or scholarly results' i n the usual sense" (61): What was said by him was said not so that the reader trustingly accept his theses as "the final word of scholarship" or—vice versa—set about disputing and refuting them, but so that the very structure of the reader's mind, in the process of reading, somehow become different. Agree or don't agree, that's not at issue here: there are books after which it is simply impossible to work in the old ways (even though one cannot extract from them any ready for­ mula for working in a new way). There is no need to take Bakhtin at his every word, no reason to understand him too literally; his own weakest mo­ ments come when he is too inclined to take himself literally . . . The fact is, in Bakhtin's scholarly-philosophical prose the word is also, in its own way, not equal to itself. What, then, can one "borrow" from Bakhtin? One should and must learn his freedom. Let each of us learn from it to the extent of our powers.

Averintsev's review—part eulogy, part apologia, part exhortation—was followed i n the same issue by a rejoinder, bluntly entitled "The Real Content o f the Search," from the veteran establishment Dostoevsky scholar Georgii Fridlender. A n editorial note at the end o f the cluster assures the reader that neither entry pretends to "an exhaustive assess­ ment o f the anthology [under review], and even less o f Bakhtin's entire output as a scholar"; i t then adds, somewhat defensively, that Frid52

5 2

G . F r i d l e n d e r , " R e a l ' n o e soderzhanie p o i s k a , " Litemturnoe

1976): 6 1 - 6 4 .

obozrenie,

n o . 10 ( O c t o b e r

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lender's "methodologically more disciplined article" serves "as a supple­ ment and corrective" to some o f Averintsev's more "agitated" commen­ tary (64). Such is indeed the case. Fridlender objects to the condescen­ sion and intellectual disrespect implicit i n eulogies o f the sort Averintsev provides. Bakhtin, after all, had considered himself a scholar " i n the usual sense"—and would have wanted to be judged on the "istinnostf" [truth­ fulness] o f his ideas, not only on their ability to provoke and destabilize. (Again, i n the familiar terms o f this study, Bakhtin's constmcts might not be o f sufficient rigor to please the "physicists," but they were certainly not offered as poetry.) "Does not Averintsev, i n his review, speak more about Bakhtin himself than about the content o f the book?" Fridlender asks (61). To do so is a mistake, for although Bakhtin's ideas have be­ come faddish, excerpted, and applied out o f context, the memory o f the deceased is not served by blurring them further. Fridlender then indicates what he believes to be the salient scholarly contributions o f this new volume o f essays. Disappointingly, they turn out to be—if not wholly politically correct—then at least well within the approved parameters o f Brezhnev-era literary activity. The ever cautious Fridlender first welcomes Bakhtin's criticism o f the Formalist school and its hedonistic, materialist aesthetics. H e then marshals evidence to show that Bakhtin passed through a "serious Marxist school" (his proof: that Bakhtin, i n his work on Dostoevsky, approached the novel both as a structure and as a humanized system—as i f Marxism had a monopoly on those qualities); eventually Bakhtin arrived at a sociologically informed poetics that rejected both Symbolism and Idealism. His treatment o f the "alien w o r d " is both more flexible than the Formalist device and more subtle than the class-bound, crude "pseudo-sociologism" o f (the officially purged and discredited) Pereverzev. Fridlender regrets that the anthology did not include Bakhtin's prefaces to two volumes o f the Collected Works of Tolstoy (curious but mediocre commissioned pieces, written i n a Marx­ ist vein, on the dramas and the late novel Resurrection, which Bakhtin himself later disavowed), and predictably he finds the short piece i n ­ cluded there on Rabelais and Gogol (often criticized because i t was so counter to the canonized Soviet view) not persuasive. Overall, Fridlender considers the book o f essays "highly significant for the struggle against Formalism and against the anti-historicism o f bourgeois literary studies" (64). A non-Russian reader o f Fridlender's review would scarcely guess that the omnibus anthology Problems of Literature and Aesthetics contained any o f the essays made famous i n its later, somewhat abridged Englishlanguage version, which appeared under the far catchier title The Dialogic Imagination. None o f the pathbreaking theses are summarized; no i m ­ portant terms are explicated. I f Averintsev was wholly taken up with apol-

DOMESTIC

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ogetic eulogy for Bakhtin's "outsideness" to philology as usually prac­ ticed, then Fridlender is at pains to integrate Bakhtin as quickly as possi­ ble into the Soviet literary establishment, to re-create him as an insider to its tradition—with its litany o f government-issue friends and enemies. A year after this exchange, a lengthier review by D m i t r i Zatonsky i n Voprosy litemtury (1977) finally surveyed Bakhtin's accomplishment on its own terms. Zatonsky neither apologizes for his subject nor polishes up his image. But he does intimate that the outsider/insider distinction, so dependent on the vagaries o f politically driven Soviet norms for professionalism, is not a particularly fruitful one. More important by far, Zatonsky suggests, is to grasp Bakhtin's own integrity and coherence as a thinker, both over time and i n his own time—which, with this new anthology o f essays early and late, has at last become possible. Taken together with the previously published studies o f Dostoevsky and Rabelais, the new volume suggests the creative trajectory o f Bakhtin's life. For Zatonsky, most remarkable about the anthology is its "undatedness" and intellectual "wholeness." Most o f the essays are forty years old, he notes; very little was changed i n preparation for publication. Yet we do not sense these texts as " o l d " or outdated; they are innerly consistent to an astonishing degree, supplementing one another and coalescing into a recognizable voice. Bakhtin's two monographs, by now more than a de­ cade old, had been read by their initial reviewers as interpretations o f those two novelists. Naturally, complaints had abounded that there was more complexity and nuance to Dostoevsky and Rabelais than could be registered through the features Bakhtin often obsessively highlighted. As Zatonsky remarks, there is a "certain one-sidedness" i n Bakhtin, "con­ nected each time w i t h the bull's-eye aim he takes at the object he is investigating, his almost deaf and blind concentratedness on i t " ; he is not afraid to repeat a point, "varying i t only slightly, shifting his major propo­ sitions just a tiny bit to one side or the other, as i f hammering them i n place with nails" (258). Such a methodology has its advantages. "The tenseness, intensity, dynamism o f the search guarantees a forced entry into the heart o f the phenomenon"—even though one must constantly introduce correctives and point out arbitrary assumptions i n the method, since "its creator did not bother to do this" ( 2 5 8 - 5 9 ) . 53

The theoretical essays at last make i t clear that Bakhtin was not primar­ ily an explicator o f individual literary worlds. He was a genre theorist who made use o f individual writers to explicate a larger thought. A n d that thought, Zatonsky suggests, is itself powerfully centripetal and sys5 3

D . Z a t o n s k i i , " O b estetike, poetike, literature," Voprosy litemtury,

6 4 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

no. 4 (1977):

254-

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tematic. N o w that we have a clear exposition o f Bakhtin's guiding ideas, we can see that the "books on Dostoevsky and Rabelais, o f course, devel­ oped and affirmed the same Bakhtinian ideas" (256). We had assumed that those volumes were about The Brothers Karamazov or Gargantua and Pantagruel. "But that's not what they were for Balditin. For h i m , Dostoevsky and Rabelais were i n the first instance not creative individu­ alities but models, intersections o f the rule-bound regularities and laws o f genre. To be sure, this had been no absolute secret earlier. But a book like Problems of Literature and Aesthetics turns the hunch into a cer­ tainty" (257). M u c h i n the anthology is fragmented, unfinished, poorly worked out; not everyone is up to handling i t [ ne kazhdomu po plechu]. "But i t is Bakhtin at his most typical." Zatonsky then summarizes the genre laws Bakhtin claims to have un­ covered, emphasizing the most programmatic o f the essays, "Epic and Novel." Impressed with the three lapidary genre criteria, for the novel that Bakhtin lays out (its special use o f time, space, and utterance), he praises the "originality o f thought and the abundance o f new, unexpected foreshortenings" that permit Bakhtin to view frequently described objects in a unique way. But several aspects o f Bakhtin's thesis and exposition trouble Zatonsky. The chronotope essay is cripplingly open-ended. Bakh­ tin's repeated insistence that novels can be explained totally by the work­ ings o f the dialogic word is simply Formalist stubbornness, his own prosy equivalent o f their partiality to mechanistic or linguistic solutions. A n d in the realm o f historical poetics, Bakhtin's curious tendency to "operate on a scale o f centuries, not to say millenia"—and then to give more cred­ ence to factors buried deep within ancient traditions than to the immedi­ ate historical period during which a novel was written—can only raise suspicions (263). " I n some things Bakhtin erred, i n places he was incorrect," Zatonsky concludes, "but he was a discoverer." O n such slender identifying cre­ dentials, this reviewer—unlike the previous two—finds an appropriate place for Bakhtin i n the Russian tradition, locating him both inside and alongside it. Bakhtin belongs with the unclassifiable polymaths Veselovsky, Zhirmunsky, Likhachev, all three boundary-crossers in literature who were drawn to philosophy. Zatonsky is a wholly conciliatory critic. I n the end, he too prefers to generalize on the overall value o f innovation i n the humanities rather than examine, i f only i n a few select details, the bene­ fits and costs o f Bakhtin's framework for literary scholarship. A n d thus, although the fad for Bakhtin spread wildly i n the 1980s, the immediate reception o f these Russian essays could not match the later, rapid, almost unconsidered bestsellerdom o f The Dialogic Imagination i n Englishspeaking countries. Why this was so is a matter o f our respective academies. I n Russia

DOMESTIC

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Bakhtin had a history: he was a dissident, a non-cooperator, an outsider who had been largely ignored by the Soviet literary establishment (on balance a somber, unspeculative body) since the early days o f the regime. I n the West Bakhtin was a name. By the 1970s the triumph o f Structural­ ism—and, truth be told, a more modest and increasingly eccentric factual base among students o f literary history—had created a receptivity to the large scheme, the grandiose binary, the provocative, easily paraphrasable statement from an intellectual guru. Such indeed were the strengths and intonations o f Bakhtin's middle-period essays, as well as o f his Rabelais. Bakhtin is accessible. He is so suggestive and i n places so imprecise that he gives tertiary critics—you and me—a great deal to do i n our own voice, filling i n , refashioning, talking back. As we shall see repeatedly i n part 2 o f this study, i t is just this open invitation to the impetuous, underprepared reader that the anti-Bakhtinians most resent. I n the opinion o f the scholar who has become their unacknowledged dean, the eminent poetician and polymath Mikhail Gasparov, what Bakhtin most loved was to "expropriate others' words." Gasparov made this remark i n a tiny but trenchant essay from 1979, which launched the counter-cult. Expropria­ tion is a double-edged move, Gasparov argued: while i t could further one's freedom and widen one's options, i t could fatally compromise the scholar's task. Above all, Bakhtin believed i n "an active attitude toward the inheritance. Things are valuable not i n themselves, but for the use to which they have been put and, more important, to which they can be put. . . . The literary work is not made from words, but from reactions to words. But whose reactions? . . . Bakhtin is the mutiny o f the self-assert­ ing reader against the pieties imposed on h i m . " Gasparov's anxieties are those o f the professional guild. The Russian academy, Germanic i n its philological traditions, its best representatives superbly trained, and staffed largely by cautious, obedient ideologues, has resisted endorsing excessively "readerly" rights. Even when i t was willing to overlook Bakh­ tin's manifest indifference to political sloganeering, i t insisted on a proper deference to documentation, scholarly precedent, and textual detail. 54

Here Bakhtin is indeed vulnerable. I n his own way he was didactic, even pedantic. His generosity i n gifting his ideas to others was legendary. But he did not attend particularly to the ownership o f ideas, nor did he worry that his own strong critic's voice, intruding into a text, might inter­ rupt or unbalance it. Immensely well read himself, he was not always 5 4

M . L . Gasparov, " M . M . B a k h t i n i n R u s s i a n C u l t u r e o f the T w e n t i e t h C e n t u r y " [origi­

nally appeared i n L o t m a n , V y a c h . I v a n o v et a l . , eds., Vtorichnye

modeliruiushchie

( T a r t u , 1 9 7 9 ) , translated a n d w i t h notes by A n n S h u k m a n , Studies Literature

in Twentieth

sistemy Century

9 , n o . 1 ( F a l l 1 9 8 4 ) : 1 6 9 - 7 6 ] . I t s h o u l d be n o t e d that S h u k m a n ' s commentary,

inexplicably, interprets this manifestly a n t i - B a k h t i n d o c u m e n t as a "passionate defence the libertarian B a k h t i n " a n d a "rescue operation."

of

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wholly precise. His implied reader is that supremely knowledgeable, i n ­ terested interlocutor, neither above nor below the critic but his potential equal, who feels no need to test a new proposition by the old rules nor any pressure to take i t on faith—a reader who is secure enough simply to entertain a new idea and respond to it. As we noted at the beginning o f this study, Bakhtin's 1924 essay on "The Problem o f Content, Material, and Form," published for the first time i n Voprosy literatury i estetiki, opens on a remarkably self-confident note for an apprentice scholar: "We have freed our study from the superfluous ballast o f citations and refer­ ences," Bakhtin announces; "for they lack any direct methodological sig­ nificance i n studies o f a nonhistorical nature, while i n a compressed work o f a systematic nature they are entirely superfluous. For the qualified reader, they are unnecessary, and for the unqualified, useless." 55

This aristocratic tone runs like a shimmering thread through the whole o f Bakhtin's career. Recall again, for example, Bakhtin's comment to D u vakin on his friend Maria Yudina, who "could not be fit into the frame­ work o f any profession" for she was "absolutely not official . . . like me, by the way." Or recall Bakhtin's own fastidious reluctance ever to refer to his study on Rabelais as a dissertation and his assumption, during his defense, that disagreement with his thesis was because he had failed to present his case or because "innovators are rarely understood"—not be­ cause he might be wrong. Bakhtin did not judge others harshly, this is true. But by the same token he apparently felt little obligation to submit himself to the judgment o f others, especially corporate or "official" others—nor did he feel he had much to gain or lose by their approba­ tion. Such " O l d World" stubbornness was much remarked on during the Saransk teaching years, where ( i f we are to believe the: eyewitnesses) Bakhtin's indifference to party guidelines, his irritation at rote pedagogy, and his contemptuous dismissal o f required literary topics i n the class­ room stupefied and thrilled his students. I t is only natural that the offi­ cial literary profession moved slowly i n rehabilitating this wayward son. Let the last word on the reception o f this anthology belong, then, to Bakhtin himself—appropriately, perhaps, i n his role as appreciative critic o f another scholar's work. By the early 1960s Bakhtin's own pathbreaking essays on the novel had lain twenty years without hope o f publica­ tion; there would be another fifteen years to wait. Neither the Dostoevsky 56

5 5

" T h e P r o b l e m o f C o n t e n t , M a t e r i a l , a n d F o r m i n V e r b a l A r t , " i n B a k h t i n , A&A,

5 6

F o r m a t e r i a l — n o t necessarily o b j e c t i v e — o n B a k h t i n ' s teaching practice, b o t h at the

257.

h i g h s c h o o l a n d t h e n at the college level, f r o m personal Saransk archives, see K o n k i n a n d K o n k i n a , Mikhail

Bakhtin,

chs. 6, 7. F o r B a k h t i n as literature teacher i n a K i m r y h i g h

s c h o o l , 1 9 4 1 - 4 4 (where he s h o c k e d the students by refusing to read Mayakovsky, even t h o u g h that official poet was i n the obligatory " p r o g r a m " ) , see 2 2 9 - 3 0 ; for m e m o i r s by students at M o r d o v i a State T e a c h e r ' s C o l l e g e a n d later University, see 2 5 9 - 6 0 ,

264-66.

DOMESTIC RECEPTION

119

nor the Rabelais study had yet been resurrected. Fully anticipating trou­ ble for his unconventional approach, Bakhtin (who disliked letters and rarely revealed himself i n them) provided a summary o f his own longmaturing ideas about the novel i n an unexpected place: a personal letter to Vadim Kozhinov, dated April 1961, i n response to having read the latter's just completed manuscript, "The Rise o f the Novel." This "un­ official" or casual review, from the still unpublished master to his soonto-be-published disciple on nothing other than the passion o f the mas­ ter's life, is a poignant one. 57

Bakhtin is fulsome i n his praise o f his junior colleague. He declares Kozhinov's book (which duly appeared in 1963) to be almost epic—not novelistic—in its wholeness, "fashioned from one piece," without any "dead spots" or "material irrelevant to the thought or unnecessary for the thought," a "rare combination o f strict scholarly thinking and a genuine understanding o f art and artistic taste." But Bakhtin had several minor reservations, most o f them related to the role o f the "serious-comic genres" and to the actual historical starting place o f novelistic conscious­ ness. Kozhinov had elected to begin his survey in the second half o f the sixteenth century; Bakhtin would move much further back. He recom­ mends this backward shift because it is not so much the novel itself— almost unidentifiable as a formal category—as it is a "feeling" for the novel's use o f language that a scholar must trace. A n d when language is the object, Bakhtin writes, such a feeling [oshchushchenie, the palpable texture o f a thing] takes not mere generations but whole geological units of time to coalesce and become coherent. " A t the base o f novelistic lan­ guage," Bakhtin writes in his letter ( 1 7 7 - 7 8 ) : there lies an absolutely new feeling position

for the word

as artistic material, a new

for this word in relation to the depicted object, to the author him­

self, and to the reader. A novel depicts not only the human being and his life, but the fundamentally

speaking

human being and a multi-languaged,

ing life. The word here is not only the means

speak­

of depiction but at the same

time the object of depiction. . . . Such fundamental changes in the artistic function of the word, or so it seems to me, were prepared for throughout almost the entire Middle Ages, under conditions that favored an intense and complex play among the forces of language, in the most varied genres— artistic, quasi-artistic, not artistic at all—all of which prepared the language of the novel. Both of my comments, as I already said, do not touch the essence of your remarkable book. . . . And now you must, with full confi­ dence in the seriousness, significance, and necessity of your book, set about

5 7

" I z p i s e m M . M . B a k h t i n a " [ B a k h t i n ' s letters to V . V . K o z h i n o v , 1 9 6 0 - 1 9 6 5 ] , ed. V .

V . F y o d o r o v , in Moskva ( N o v e m b e r - D e c e m b e r 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 7 5 - 8 2 , esp.

177-78.

CHAPTER TWO

120

insuring its publication in its primordial [i.e., uncensored and unedited] form.

The Rise of the Novel was published as planned. But Kozhinov was so persuaded by Bakhtin's generous-spirited "correctives" to his monograph that he later rejected all requests by his own publisher to reissue it. To­ gether with Sergei Bocharov, Kozhinov continued his dogged, and often seemingly hopeless, efforts on behalf o f Bakhtin's long-forgotten work— efforts which, i n 1963, were on the brink o f their first success. By 1975, the year o f his death, Bakhtin himself had become a major player among the "intense and complex forces o f language" o f his own increasingly multi-languaged age.

POSTHUMOUS: T H E FIRST MANUSCRIPTS A N D F I N A L ESSAYS The posthumous appearance, i n 1979 and 1986, o f Bakhtin's earliest philosophical writings and latest ruminations on the humanities takes us beyond the framework o f the present chapter—back, i n fact, to the pre­ ceding chapter that covers the boom to the Jubilee. But several aspects o f the final publishing phase are worth brief attention i n light o f this recep­ tion history. Let us recall the patterns. From the early Bolshevik screeds to the Brezhnev-era reviews, Soviet critics overall were less sympathetic and more suspicious o f Bakhtin's "creative dismissal" o f previous can­ onized scholarship than were Western critics in response to any o f the Bakhtin best-sellers. Soviet reviewers were also quicker to see Bakhtin as a thinker who used literature to illustrate his philosophical principles— viewed by them variously as criminal, curious, enlightening, and liberat­ ing—rather than as a literary professional who drew on philosophy to illuminate a literary author or text. A n d lastly, the Russian reviews (even the most positive) were highly sensitive to the harmful effects o f a cult, 58

5 8

T h e r e were t w o m a j o r publications i n R u s s i a n , w h i c h i n E n g l i s h translation were dis­

tributed into three v o l u m e s (all p u b l i s h e d by U n i v e r s i t y o f Texas Press). T h e first anthology is M . M . B a k h t i n , Estetika

slovesnogo

tvorchestva

(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1 9 7 9 ) , containing

"Art a n d Answerability," " A u t h o r a n d H e r o i n Aesthetic Activity," " T h e N o v e l o f E d u c a ­ tion and Its Significance i n the H i s t o r y o f R e a l i s m " [the surviving f r a g m e n t ] , " T h e P r o b l e m o f S p e e c h G e n r e s , " " T h e P r o b l e m o f the T e x t i n L i n g u i s t i c s , Philology, a n d other H u m a n Sciences," " T o w a r d a M e t h o d o l o g y o f the H u m a n Sciences," jottings from 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , a n d the 1 9 7 0 o p e n letter to Novy Mir.

T h e latter h a l f o f the contents o f this v o l u m e

1 9 7 0 s ) was translated by V e r n W . M c G e e i n Speech Genres and

the material f r o m the 1 9 2 0 s was translated by V a d i m L i a p u n o v i n Art Early

Philosophical

Essays by M. M. Bakhtin

(1940s-

Other Late Essays ( 1 9 8 6 ) ; and

Answerability:

( 1 9 9 0 ) . A s e c o n d R u s s i a n installment o f prior

philosophical writings was p u b l i s h e d i n 1 9 8 6 as M . M . B a k h t i n , " K filosofii p o s t u p k a , " i n Filosofiia

i sotsiologiia

nauki

i tekhniki:

Ezhegodnik

1984-85

(Moscow: Nauka, 1986),

80-

1 6 0 . T h i s text was translated a n d expertly annotated as a separate v o l u m e by V a d i m L i a ­ p u n o v entitled Toward

a Philosophy of the Act

(1993).

DOMESTIC

R E C E P T I O N

121

where faddish citation or superficial application would replace a responsi­ ble examination o f Bakhtin's terms and method. Indeed, within literary studies and outside i t , Soviet experience offered sobering lessons on that score. By the 1980s, with the appearance o f Bakhtin's dense and difficult early writings on post-Kantian ethics, the necessary theoretical ground had been laid. Russian sociologists, aestheticians, cultural anthropolo­ gists, and moral philosophers began to read Bakhtin with increasing seri­ ousness. As Vitaly Makhlin correctly summed up this final phase: "Bakh­ tin's Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity [the 1979 volume, where the bulk o f the early work was first published], i n the form i n which i t has come down to the reader, [came to be seen as] the 'source and secret' o f his entire system." To close this chapter we shall sample only one review, by Vladimir Novikov, that appeared i n the literary magazine Novy Mir i n 1981. Ten years earlier, Bakhtin had been asked by the editorial board o f this same controversial, open-minded journal to comment on the future o f literary studies. Now, posthumously, his earliest and latest writings (along with some student notes taken during Bakhtin's lectures on literature i n the 1920s) were themselves being surveyed as foundational for a theory o f the humanities. Novikov's review, entitled "The Word and Glory" [ i n Russian, Slovo i slava] begins where Bakhtin himself began, with the problem o f the word as a phenomenon o f culture. Are words a "medium o f informa­ tion"? A "means for selecting and juxtaposing values"? Phatic material we utter back to assure others o f our presence? The word is all those things; when the tools and timing are favorable, words serve to stitch an individual voice into a culture. But as regards fame, Novikov notes that i t did not serve Bakhtin during his own lifetime. Rather, Bakhtin's fame served his readers. The works on Dostoevsky and Rabelais, forgotten or shamefully delayed, reappeared precisely when Soviet readers were ready for them, the 1960s: Stalinism was disintegrating, censorship was loosen­ ing its moronic grip, and literary scholarship was deeply needful o f liber­ ated thinking. "Bakhtin's fame helped to break down barriers that had separated literary scholarship from literature on the one hand, and from the reader on the other" (257). Then a trivializing counter-trend developed, which Novikov laments. "Insane citation-itis" and the extraction o f truisms became the rule: the irresponsible reader was born. "Bakhtin's name traveled far beyond the bounds o f professional literary circles. . . . A name that ought to have resounded as the decisive antithesis o f all frivolity and vulgarity was en59

60

5 9

V . M a k h l i n , " B a k h t i n i p r o b l e m y 'novoi n a u k i , ' " i n Voprosy litemtury,

2 1 3 - 2 1 , esp. 2 1 3 . 6 0

V I . N o v i k o v , "Slovo i slava," Novyi

mir, n o . 4 ( A p r i l 1 9 8 1 ) : 2 5 6 - 6 0 .

no. 8 (1987):

122

CHAPTER TWO

tered as a consumer item into every 'gentleman's toilette': a leather jacket, a ticket to the Taganka Theater, a few citations from Bakhtin . . . The time has come to consider our spiritual ecology." Oddly, considering that Bakhtin had become so famous, very little had been written on him beyond the scholarly preface or book review Here is a man whose entire life had been devoted to investigating consciousness and the creating per­ sonality—and yet his own personal style and approach to the word re­ mained curiously unexplored. The most valuable contribution o f Bakhtin's just published manu­ scripts will come i n precisely this realm, Novikov suggests. Although the essays—unprepared for print and thus untouched by the censor's pencil or editorial prejudice—are cast i n a formidable "scientific-philosophical style," overflowing with "cumbersome syntactical constructions and ram­ ifying, abstractly logical computations," the overall effect o f Bakhtin's critical prose is to create an "emotional, richly multivalent image of cre­ ativity" (258). By concentrating thus on the process o f creation, "Bakh­ tin provides his own solution to the riddle and secret o f inspiration: the artist creates a new other consciousness and attempts to grasp it fully, while not dissolving i n i t . " Novikov does not deny that this model has shortcomings. "Bakhtin taught us to believe i n the artist we were studying, to perceive every literary work as a unique unrepeatable event—in general, to relate to a creation o f art as i f it were a human being. But this human being lived i n a highly specific Bakhtinian w o r l d " (259). Despite Bakhtin's muchvaunted openness and tolerance, then, "the radiant lucidity o f his aes­ thetic glance is harnessed to the highly individual structure o f his own scholarly world. For Bakhtin, there were no gradations or degrees o f evaluation. Artistic systems that were innerly alien to him ended up, as i t were, in an outsiderly position vis-à-vis his own system. They simply can­ not be described adequately by Bakhtin's devices. Such, for example, happened with Leo Tolstoy . . . I f we are better to understand and ap­ preciate [Bakhtin's] world, we must clarify what is not worth our while seeking i n i t . " Novikov closes on the observation that scholars from var­ ious fields—cultural history, anthropology, Dostoevsky studies—had al­ ready begun to quarrel with Bakhtin and that this is a good thing, much better than thoughtless fame or citation-itis. I t would guarantee the re­ turn o f responsible readers. The subsequent fifteen years o f that polemic, which has constructed whole subsidiary disciplines out o f Bakhtin's strong ideas and probed unforgivingly into the weak, provides the subject matter for part 2 o f this study. " A n aesthetic idea is alive only as long as one can argue with i t , " Novikov remarks at the end o f his review. A t the time, no one could have predicted for that truism its actual tempestuous future.

Part I I LITERATURE FADES, PHILOSOPHY MOVES TO T H E FORE (REWORKING THREE PROBLEMATIC

AREAS)

DESPITE the political conformity and Aesopian language mandated by Communist conditions, the reception o f Bakhtin by Soviet critics was diverse, learned, and thoughtful. Has the collapse o f state censorship made the reclamation o f Bakhtin easier or has i t served to distance his thought even further from the tension-filled relations that gave rise to it? The question is complex. Certain Soviet-era constraints—the necessity to lie, the benumbing quota o f obligatory references to party-approved au­ thorities, omnipresent toadyism and intimidation, getting killed for what one wrote—were wholly bad. Other aspects were humiliating i n many instances but could also be reassuring, when they contributed to a sense o f intellectual continuity or spiritual community (for many, these bonds became all the more sustaining as the random repressions and depriva­ tions o f everyday life increased). The Russian critic's sense o f membership in a well-subsidized literary profession devoted to conservative textology on a stable literary canon was for many intellectuals their genuine "home­ land," and they enjoyed a general social consensus about the elevated status o f literature and the word. As state subsidies for the humanities disappeared i n the 1990s and the lowest cultural common denominators swarmed i n from the West, certain Soviet-era attitudes toward scholarship appeared to many, i n retrospect, to have been partial blessings. Bakhtin's adult life passed entirely i n the Soviet period, and he wrote constantly throughout its very worst years. By temperament, conviction, vagaries o f health, and accidents o f geography, he remained unofficial and on the "outside." But a recurring theme o f the present study is that Bakhtin was to a certain extent an outsider by choice and would prefer to be remembered as a survivor rather than a victim. Although periods o f bitterness and despair surely occurred, by all indications he was unwilling to view himself as compromised beyond recognition or driven into a realm where personal responsibility no longer applied. Protective colora­ tion was o f course essential. As we have seen, Bakhtin understood exactly

124

PART TWO

how to negotiate the routine obeisances to Stalin required o f any aca­ demic, and especially one i n his position o f pedagogue to future teachers o f the young. But he was gentle with those forced to use words i n ways beyond their control. As he wrote at the end o f the 1950s i n "The Prob­ lem o f the Text," i n a passage that has made some o f his readers uneasy, worse always than an untruth is a failure to respond. "Even a word that is known to be false is not absolutely false," Bakhtin wrote. " I t always pre­ supposes an instance that will understand and justify i t , even i f i n the form: 'anyone in my position would have lied t o o . ' " For all the risk o f such position-based ethics, however, the most present danger i n postSoviet reclamations o f Bakhtin is not to be found here. 1

A more serious temptation is the easy reflex o f flipping the sign. The fact that Marxism is now a discredited political and economic doctrine cannot serve as an argument for or against Bakhtin's interest i n that intel­ lectual movement. Because the Bolsheviks did not believe i n God and because they have now been exposed as liars and crooks is not i n itself proof for the existence o f God—nor does the fact that Bakhtin intensely disliked the atheism o f the Revolution transform him into a mainstream "Christian believer," or his work into a theology i n code. Because bor­ ders are now more open and ideas and goods flow across them more freely does not mean that Bakhtin was against the constraints, delimita­ tions, or restrictions that a border imposes. Quite the contrary, as we shall suggest: I t is Bakhtin's distinctively wise understanding o f limits that prevents him from becoming a fully reliable "theoretician" and thus sepa­ rates him from much Western postmodernist thinking. Although his cate­ gories often fall out into comfortable dyads (monologism/dialogism, car­ nival life/official life), in the details Bakhtin was not a particularly binary thinker. A n d thus signs—and even more so the flipped sign—have proved inadequate to the overall patterns o f his thought. Part 2 o f this study examines the fate o f three concepts i n Bakhtin's world where controversy has been so active, interesting, aiid evenly bal­ anced pro and contra that this danger o f merely "inverting the sign" is greatly diminished. I n their original exposition, these ideas arose i n con­ nection w i t h artistic matters: Dostoevsky's polyphony, the dialogism and heteroglossia o f the novel, Rabelais's carnival, and the obligatory "outsideness" o f all ethical and aesthetic positions. But—as was chronicled i n part 1—under the impact o f the early manuscripts, the posthumously published late essays, and Bakhtin's own admissions soon before his death, the ground for these "literary" judgments broadened as Bakhtin's image changed and deepened. 1

" T h e P r o b l e m o f the T e x t i n L i n g u i s t i c s , Philology, a n d the H u m a n Sciences: A n E x ­

p e r i m e n t i n P h i l o s o p h i c a l A n a l y s i s , " i n SpG,

127.

PHILOSOPHY MOVES TO T H E FORE

125

"There exists a widespread notion," wrote two Bakhtin scholars at Moscow State University i n 1991, "that Bakhtin was a philosopher only in his very first works o f the Vitebsk-Nevel period, when he was planning to compose a philosophy o f law, morality, and aesthetic activity . . . [ B u t ] Bakhtin remained a philosopher i n his philosophical-culturological re­ search as well, even i n his literary-historical study o f Dostoevsky" This is true, but it is not much o f a clarification. What was the relationship be­ tween literature and philosophy in Bakhtin's worldview? Galina Ponomareva recalls one discussion where, in response to her jesting remark that literary scholarship was a "secondary superstructure" erected over original creativity, Bakhtin answered "with his inimitable grin and puffing away on his cigarette, 'Yes, yes, yes, for after all, it is a parasitical profes­ sion.'" I n 1994 one Voronezh Bakhtinist remarked ruefully that al­ though "the philosophers have now definitely seized the initiative from the literary specialists" in explicating Bakhtin's thought and had suc­ ceeded in exposing an abundance o f "contradictions, miscalculations, and unclear spots i n Bakhtin's constructs," nevertheless "the most basic, pri­ mary questions associated with his legacy remain without an answer." As literary and cultural critic, Bakhtin was speculative, creative, controversial. As a philosopher, he was simply incomprehensible. 2

3

4

What is more, he had pretensions. Vadim Kozhinov recalls submitting for Bakhtin's approval a brief sketch, written about his mentor for a sev­ enty-fifth birthday festschrift, which summed up Bakhtin's intellectual project in the following way: an "organic fusion o f the systematicity, ob­ jectivity, and consistency o f German philosophical thought with the uni­ versal breadth and depth o f Russian spiritual creativity." Bakhtin, we are told, agreed completely with this formulation, adding (in Kozhinov's rec­ ollection) that he regretted the undisciplined state o f Russian philosophy, which so often chose to "squeeze its eyes shut and leap over abysses" rather than "look into them straight with a calm and fearless gaze." Ac­ cording to Kozhinov, ever since his youth Bakhtin had wished "to trans­ form Russian thought into a creative structure just as 'finalized' as Ger­ man thought." Was this consummate structure ever built, and—if it was—have Bakhtin's explicators been successful at uncovering it? As literature faded from view or became largely illustrative, the search for Bakhtin's elusive "first principles" began. Only recently have Russian scholars trained in the classical texts o f nineteenth-century European phi5

2

E . V . V o l k o v a a n d E . A . Bogatyreva, " V b o P s h o m v r e m e n i kul'tury: M . M . B a k h t i n , " in

Vestnik Moskovskogo

universiteta,

seriia 7: Filosofiia,

n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 1 ) : 4 8 - 5 8 , esp. 5 1 .

3

G . B . P o n o m a r e v a , " V y s k a z a n n o e i nevyskazannoe . . .

4

V

literatury X I X v e k a , " in V . L . M a k h l i n , e d . , MMB 5

DKKh,

no. 3 (95):

A . S v i t e f s k i i ( V o r o n e z h ) , " I d e i M . M . B a k h t i n a i sovremennoe i PGN

V a d i m K o z h i n o v , " B a k h t i n i ego chitateli," Moskva

66.

izuchenie russkoi

94, 1 1 8 - 2 3 , esp. 1 1 9 .

(July 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 4 3 - 5 1 , esp. 1 4 6 .

126

PART TWO

losophy begun to analyze the actual style and logic o f Bakhtin's "philoso­ phizing," its tissue o f unidentified quotations, voice zones, and hidden polemics. A t times the search has turned aggressive—and unkind—in its attempt to reconstitute, "after Bakhtin," the purported lost literary whole o f Dostoevsky or Rabelais. To some i t has seemed that Bakhtin's aes­ thetics, pared back to its roots and initial conditions, departs so pro­ foundly from what most o f us mean by "art" that we do him a service by ceasing to consider him an aesthetician at all. Such an anti-cult animus is most evident i n the opening chapter o f part 2, on recent rethinkings o f polyphony, dialogism, and the Dostoevsky book—although carnival has come i n for its share o f blows as well. This criticism would doubtless not have had the benefit o f Bakhtin's response, for by all accounts he was constitutionally unable to feel insulted or pricked to irate self-defense. But the vigor o f the debate would have delighted the man who provided the pretext. 6

6

See, for example, N . K . Bonetskaia, " O stile

filosofstvovaniia

M . Bakhtina," in

DKKh,

no. 1 (96): 5 - 4 8 . Bonetskaia pays special attention to B a k h t i n ' s p o l e m i c w i t h R i c k e r t a n d to the "I"-centeredness o f B a k h t i n ' s early p h i l o s o p h y (the necessary priority o f otsenka [eval­ u a t i o n ] over tsennosf

[value]).

C H A P T E R 3

Polyphony, Dialogism, Dostoevsky

L E T US RECALL the basic theses o f Bakhtin's book on Dostoevsky. I t be­ gins with a familiar Formalist complaint: that literary scholars, dazzled by Dostoevsky's contributions to theology, moral philosophy, psychology, and Russian nationalism, have failed to appreciate his even greater contri­ bution to literary art. This oversight Bakhtin intends to correct—with, however, a concept o f "literariness" that most Formalist critics would have found highly suspect. Whereas the Russian Formalists preferred to examine hard-edged mechanical or impersonal devices such as defamiliarization, retardation, parody, the "stringing" o f events and stepwise con­ struction i n an author's literary texts, Bakhtin focuses almost entirely on a single (and decisively soft) "device": human consciousness. I n order to examine degrees o f consciousness i n the aesthetic realm, Dostoevsky created—or perhaps discovered—polyphony. According to Bakhtin, this idea was so radical that i t caused a genuine paradigm shift, a "Copernican revolution," in the history o f the novel. I n the prior more "Ptolemaic" worldview, an author sits at the center o f things like Jeho­ vah, passing out bits o f consciousness piecemeal to the characters taking shape under the authorial pen, just enough to each person so that the cast o f characters could obediently act out its predetermined roles. But Dostoevsky, Bakhtin intimates, endorsed a more "New Testament" model o f authorship, one based on unresolvable paradoxes and parables rather than on certainties handed down as law. The rewards might appear unjust and the ends unclear, but the method increases the chances that both author and hero will genuinely learn from the process o f defining each other. Incarnation—which is delimitation—always means increased vul­ nerability. When polyphonic authors "come down to earth" and address their creations not vertically but horizontally, they are designing their characters to know, potentially, as much as authors know. Such authors frequently craft a hero o f whom they say: He has to do that, but I do not know w h y H o w might I encourage him to show me his reasons? To strengthen this reciprocal relation, Bakhtin claims, Dostoevsky de­ signs as the hero o f his novels not a human being destined to carry out a sequence o f events—that is, not a carrier o f some pre-planned "plot"— but rather an idea-hero, an idea that uses the hero as its carrier i n order to realize its potential as an idea i n the world. The goal then becomes to

128

CHAPTER

THREE

free up the hero from "plot," i n both the sinister and humdrum sense o f that word: from all those epiclike story lines that still clung to the novel with their routinized, and thus "imprisoned," outcomes, and also from events i n ordinary, necessity-driven, benumbing everyday life. For events— as the biographies o f both Bakhtin and Dostoevsky attest—rarely make you free (Bakhtin all but suggests that we leave this pleasant illusion to Count Leo Tolstoy, who loved life's delightful round o f rituals, could afford to lose himself i n i t , developed an anguish o f guilt about i t , and came so powerfully to distrust language). Instead o f events, Dostoevsky invites his heroes and his readers to experience the richer, more openended discriminations and proliferations o f the uttered word, i n a context where all parties are designed to talk back. I n choosing to structure works in this way, o f course, the polyphonic author is still authoring heroes and still "writing i n " their stories. But by valuing, above all, an open discus­ sion o f unresolvable questions, such an author writes them into a realm o f maximal freedom. Polyphony brings further benefits. Once the grip between hero and plot is loosened, and once a dialogue o f ideas (rather than a mass o f exotic adventures) becomes the common denominator between author, hero, and reader, more space opens up for the reader. Readers can partici­ pate actively—which is to say, non-vicariously, on an equal plane—in the narrative. I n a novel o f ideas, there is no "escapism"; willingly or no, we are all equal communicants. (Or, as Bakhtin seems to be suggesting, no matter how crippled, constrained, or impoverished our lives may be, we can all always listen i n and contribute a response.) I n terms o f their po­ tential to communicate on shared ground, ideas are simply richer than experiences. Dostoevsky's working notebooks testify to his continual sur­ prise at the turns his novels were required to take i n order to accommo­ date the unexpected growth in ideas that were carried—and verbally tested—by his characters. According to Bakhtin, the polyphonic hero was Dostoevsky's first great contribution to the art o f the novel. His second contribution was to a theory o f language. Inside every word, Bakhtin maintained, there is a struggle for meaning, and authors can adopt various attitudes toward this struggle. They can choose to cap or muffle the dialogue, discouraging all outside responses to i t , and thus employ the word monolqtrically. Or they can emphasize the word's so-called double-voicedness by exaggerating one side (as i n stylization); by pitting two or more voices against one another while rooting for one side (as i n parody); or, i n a special, highly subtle category Bakhtin calls "active double-voiced words," by working the debates inside a word so that the parodied side does not take all that abuse lying down but rather fights back, resists, tries to subvert. Dos-

POLYPHONY,

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toevsky was exceptionally skilled at portraying this final, crafty type o f word. These two innovations—the "fully weighted hero" who signifies alongside his creator and the "dialogic word within a polyphonic de­ sign"—make up the theoretical core o f the book on Dostoevsky. Bakhtin specifically declined to deal with the actions o f Dostoevsky's heroes—all those scandals, rumored rapes, suicides, murders, instances o f child abuse, as well as the sacramental moments o f conversion and transfigura­ tion. He also refused to discuss much o f the (often quite unsavory) con­ tent o f Dostoevsky's ideas, full o f paradoxical wisdom and extravagant generosity but also no stranger to sadism, Russian chauvinism, reaction­ ary politics, and psychic cruelty. Bakhtin sticks close to formal matters. "Miracle, mystery, and authority"—the three keys that will unlock the world, according to Ivan Karamazov's Grand Inquisitor—get no atten­ tion at all i n Bakhtin's book on Dostoevsky. Curiously, we do not know i f this elegant formal exegesis is i n fact the book that Bakhtin really wanted to write. Near the end o f his life he confessed to Sergei Bocharov that i n his work on Dostoevsky he had been unable to "speak out directly about the most important questions . . . the philosophical questions that tormented Dostoevsky his whole life, the existence o f God. I n the book I was forced to prevaricate, to dodge back and forth continually. I had to hold back all the time. The moment a thought got going, I had to break i t off." But however Aeso­ pian and self-censored the text might be i n its two editions, Bakhtin made his peace with the published versions and reconciled himself to being imperfectly understood. He tended, i n the words o f one colleague, to look at his own works i n print quite philosophically, "the way a soul might look down from on high at its own cast-out body." A t first polyphony was simply an enigma. H o w can created characters "create" themselves? Is not the polyphonic author abdicating respon­ sibility for the finished whole o f a literary work? As a literary strategy, polyphony was casually conflated with dialogism, heteroglossia, voice zones, chronotopic analysis—all those now fashionable catchwords that Bakhtin devised later, i n the 1930s, to apply to novels i n general, not to the prior (and much more restricted) subset o f polyphonic novels. But then there appeared on the scene, i n Russia and i n the West, critics who had studied carefully and claimed to understand both the dynamics o f 1

2

1

S. G . B o c h a r o v , " O b o d n o m razgovore i v o k r u g n e g o , " Novoe litemturnoe

obozrenie

2

( 1 9 9 3 ) : 7 0 - 8 9 , esp. 7 1 - 7 2 ; E n g l i s h v e r s i o n , 1 0 1 2 . 2

G . P o m e r a n t s , " ' D v o i n y e mysli' u D o s t o e v s k o g o "

s Dostoevskim

( M o s c o w : Sovetskii pisatel', 1 9 9 0 ) ,

[ 1 9 7 5 ] i n Otkrytost' bezdne:

225-34.

Vstrechi

130

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THREE

polyphony and the logic o f its later offspring, "dialogism," and did not like them at all—not for themselves, not as metaphors for human free­ dom, and not as insights into the workings o f Dostoevsky's novelistic masterpieces. This chapter is devoted to those reservations and to subse­ quent attempts to counter them.

CAN P O L Y P H O N Y EXIST? I F SO, D O E S I T APPLY? The first complaints against Bakhtin's image o f Dostoevsky concerned quite simply its appropriateness to its subject. Were polyphony and double-voicedness i n fact part o f Dostoevsky's design? D i d the novelist i n ­ tend the sort o f openness for his plots and autonomy for his heroes that Bakhtin claims? Many suspected not. There seemed to be a strong "au­ thority principle" i n Dostoevsky—especially in his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov—that pointedly resists the decentering impulse. To mention one critical response: I n 1989 Yuri Kariakin, Dostoevsky scholar and political gadfly o f Solzhenitsyn's generation, published a six-hun­ dred-page book entitled Dostoevsky and the Brink of the Twenty-first Cen­ tury, i n which he took his good friend Mikhail Mikhailovich gently to task. Polyphony is a faulty hypothesis, Kariakin argues, because i t con­ centrates solely on verbal dialogue and its current o f ideas, tending to ignore the effect o f fully embodied scenes. (Dostoevsky was a great mas­ ter at imagining the scene; i t is i n this sense, we might add i n support o f Kariakin's complaint, that he is a "dramatist," and not i n the trivial sense that his novels can be reduced or adapted effectively to the stage.) Words come and go, taking pleasure i n their own eloquence or ambiguity. But Kariakin insists that i n his major scenes, Dostoevsky always included a silent "finger pointing at the truth." The "double-voiced w o r d " (dvujjolosoe slovo), which Bakhtin recommends as an interpretive unit for the novel, should thus be replaced by a "triple-voiced w o r d " (trekhgolosoe slovo), w i t h the word's third "voice" assigned permanently to Dostoevsky as author and, as i t were, stage director. For Bakhtin is wrong, Kariakin contends, when he suggests that self-consciousness is the hero o f Dos­ toevsky's novels. Self-deception is the hero—and all that polyphonic ob3

4

3

F o r the classic R u s s i a n a r g u m e n t , see V . E . Vetlovskaia, Poetika

ramazovy"

romana

"Bratfia

interpreting that novel's structures o f faith a n d authority, see N i n a P e r l i n a , Varieties Poetic

Ka-

( L e n i n g r a d : N a u k a , 1 9 7 7 ) ; for a p i o n e e r i n g attempt to use B a k h t i n as a n aid i n

Utterance:

Quotation

in "The Brothers Karamazov"

of

( L a n h a m , M d . : U n i v e r s i t y Press

of America, 1985). 4

Y u r i i K a r i a k i n , Dostoevskii

i kanun

XXI

veka ( M o s c o w : Sovetskii pisatel', 1 9 8 9 ) , 6 4 9

pp. T h e "triple-voiced w o r d " is discussed o n pages 2 6 - 3 0 ; the case against consciousness a n d for self-deception as the " h e r o " o f D o s t o e v s k y ' s novels is e x a m i n e d o n pages 6 9 - 7 2 .

POLYPHONY, DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

131

fuscation, those thought experiments and endless proliferation o f alterna­ tives, all those compulsive storytellers and chatterers, are designed by their author not to provide the major heroes with invigorating, openended options but rather to thicken and darken the texture o f the work, to increase the obstacles, and to test the heroes on their conflicted way to the truth. Kariakin's reservations on the structural plane are one type o f com­ plaint against polyphony. Other skeptical readers have applied the acid test to which every strong critic must submit, namely, are the feelings and reactions we experience when reading Bakhtin on Dostoevsky at all com­ patible with our feelings while reading Dostoevsky himself? A t issue here are not merely morally repugnant scenes or themes. I n Problems of Dos­ toevsky's Poetics, to repeat, Bakhtin deliberately excluded considerations o f "content," limiting himself to the workings o f language. He remained consistently Formalist i n his reluctance to pass judgment on the ideology and virtue o f Dostoevsky's plots. But remarkably, given its focus on the word, Bakhtin's book also does not address any ethical or metaphysical problems i n the formal realm o f language. Consider, for example, his treatment o f Notes from Underground. The Underground, where con­ sciousness is everything and where words never stick to deeds, is a deconstructor's paradise by postmodernist criteria. Dostoevsky, as we know, considered i t a wholly godless place; he intended its chatter to be read not simply as misguided or futile but as demonic, and he lays bare its dynamics with ice-cold satire. Bakhtin does acknowledge that Under­ ground discourse is dead-ended, a perpetuum mobile and vicious circle. But ultimately that grim voided place contains for him some fundamentally positive principle, even i f taken i n this instance to unfortunate extreme: the principle o f "unfinalizability." For the logic o f the Underground guarantees all speakers who reside there the right to postpone the final 5

6

7

5

F o r a m o r e comprehensive discussion o f Dostoevsky and

the Brink

of the list

Century

a n d the reservations it raises about B a k h t i n ' s reading o f the novelist, see C a r y l E m e r s o n , " T h e K a r i a k i n P h e n o m e n o n , " Common 166-69, 6

Knowledge

5, n o . 1 ( S p r i n g 1 9 9 6 ) : 1 6 1 - 7 8 ,

esp.

173-75.

F o r t w o preliminary surveys, see C a r y l E m e r s o n , " P r o b l e m s o f Baxtin's Poetics," i n

Slavic and East European

Journal

32, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 5 0 3 - 2 5 ; and E m e r s o n , "Word

a n d I m a g e i n Dostoevsky's W o r l d s : R o b e r t L o u i s J a c k s o n o n R e a d i n g s T h a t B a k h t i n C o u l d N o t D o , " i n E l i z a b e t h C h e r e s h A l l e n a n d G a r y Saul M o r s o n , eds., Freedom sibility in Russian

Literature:

Essays in Honor

of Robert

Louis Jackson

and

Respon­

( E v a n s t o n , 111.: N o r t h ­

western U n i v e r s i t y Press a n d Yale C e n t e r for I n t e r n a t i o n a l a n d A r e a Studies, 1 9 9 5 ) : 2 4 5 65. 7

T h e best a c c o u n t o f the ideology o f Notes from

F r a n k , i n chapter 2 1 o f his Dostoevsky: The Stir

Underground

of Liberation,

remains that by J o s e p h

1860-65

(Princeton, N . J . :

P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 6 ) , 3 1 0 - 3 7 . I n a lengthy footnote (p. 3 4 6 ) , F r a n k notes his reservations about B a k h t i n ' s reading.

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verdict—and to deliver a supplementary word on themselves that others do not, and i n principle cannot, know. The Underground viewed not as trap but as "aperture" is only one peculiarity o f reading Dostoevsky through a Bakhtinian lens. Other critics have noted that Bakhtin's passion for the horizontally cast dialogic word often comes at the expense o f Dostoevsky's more vertical gestures, those leaps into iconic or transfigured time-space that provide the great novels with their crowning moments o f personal conversion or collective Apoca­ lypse. Bakhtin has little sense o f the sublime. W i t h equal fastidiousness he avoids absolute bliss and absolute horror. He never mentions Dos­ toevsky's quasi-fictionalized prison memoirs Notes from the House of the Dead, for example, nor does he make reference to that gallery o f tortured and silenced children that are so crucial a part o f Dostoevsky's symbolic universe. Part o f the problem, surely, is that those silenced victims can­ not, or do not, talk (although they can be talked about)', left solely with the ugly, silent material aftermath o f a violent event—a corpse, a suicide, an atrocity that leaves us speechless—Bakhtin as a reader o f Dostoevsky's world seems somewhat at a loss. What is strange here, we should note, is not Bakhtin's unwillingness to be mired down (as so many have been) in Dostoevsky's cruel, crowd-pleasing Gothic plots; such plots, after all, were the conventional and thus almost invisible raw material o f the nine­ teenth-century urban novel. More significant is that Bakhtin has also al­ most nothing to say about the centrally important, affirmative,"godly" dialogic situations—if they happen to be wordless. Among these crucial scenes are Raskolnikov and Sonya on the banks o f the Siberian River in the epilogue o f Crime and Punishment, Prince Myshkin's meaningless babble as he embraces a stunned Rogozhin over Nastasya Filippovna's corpse at the end o f The Idiot, and—most famously—Christ kissing the Grand Inquisitor after having listened, i n silence, to that brilliant and lengthy diatribe. I n Bakhtin's readings, however, only the interaction o f one verbal utterance with another verbal utterance can be adequate to the most subtle and multilayered messages. By definition, this interaction opens up new potentials. The possibility that verbal dialogue might actu8

9

10

8

See, for example, D a v i d M . B e t h e a , The Shape of the Apocalypse

Fiction

in Modern

( P r i n c e t o n , N . J . : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 9 ) , esp. "The

Idiot.

Arrives at the S t a t i o n , " 1 0 3 - 4 ; a n d M a l c o l m V . Jones, Dostoyevsky after Bakhtin: in Dostoevsky^s Fantastic 9

Realism

Russian

Historicism Readings

( C a m b r i d g e : C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 0 ) .

O n this topic, see Natalia R e e d ' s o n g o i n g w o r k o n scapegoating a n d violence i n D o s ­

toevsky ( a n d o n B a k h t i n ' s inability to address these issues); i n particular, her seventy-page G i r a r d i a n study, "Dostoevsky's ' T h e M e e k O n e ' : the M e t a m o r p h o s i s o f a T r u i s m " ( u n p u b l . ms., 1996). 1 0

L a t e i n life, however, B a k h t i n d i d make these suggestive jottings i n a passage

devoted

to Dostoevsky: " T h e u n u t t e r e d truth i n D o s t o e v s k y ( C h r i s t ' s kiss). T h e p r o b l e m o f silence. I r o n y as a special k i n d o f substitute for silence." " F r o m N o t e s M a d e in 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " 148.

SpG,

POLYPHONY,

DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

133

ally drain away value or flatten out a subdety or be so subject to terror and constraint that i t depreciates into outright fraud is not for Bakhtin a theoretically serious issue. O n principle, he seems reluctant to project a human being so evil, weak, indifferent, or exhausted that he or she can no longer listen to, or author, a useful word. Let us now move into even more critical and suspicious corners o f the Bakhtin industry. O n the occasion o f the thirtieth anniversary o f Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, the editorial board o f the Belarus' Bakhtin journal Dialog Karnaval Khronotop distributed questionnaires to two dozen em­ inent scholars, soliciting their opinions on the role o f the book and its author i n the history o f Russian thought. Returns began to appear i n 1994. Although the proper Jubilee praises were sung, several o f the scholars polled were clearly irritated at Bakhtin's single-minded pursuit o f polyphony into every cranny and at any cost. Polyphony was judged inad­ equate to Dostoevsky's complexity not only for the old reason—that the voice o f the author must always be firmer and more primary than that o f the created heroes—but for newly legitimated religious reasons as well. As one contributor put the issue bluntly, "The authoritativeness o f the author's word . . . relies on the authority o f Christian truths, whose con­ scious transmitter and preacher Dostoevsky was" ( 7 - 8 ) . (Unlike the ug­ lier ideologies o f the modern period, we are assured, religious faith "could not be a monologism.") Georgii Fridlender pursued the Christian line further. He classified the Dostoevsky book alongside works by Vyacheslav Ivanov and Nicolas Berdyaev as a prime text i n Russian Or­ thodox "personalism" (14)—although he added that Bakhtin was per­ haps too marked by the binary oppositions o f his era, which lent his work a structural elegance but also a certain rigidity. By so stubbornly insisting on polyphony, Fridlender notes, "Bakhtin, paradoxical as i t seems, was extremely monologic and didactic" (15). The genre theorist Vladimir Zakharov was even less accommodating. Bakhtin "wanted to think freely in a totalitarian society" and yet was destined to work out his major ideas in resistance to Stalinist oppression. Under those conditions, Bakhtin came up with some brilliant formulations—but whatever he did not wish to think about, no matter how central to literary study (Zakharov has i n mind his own area o f research, the Dostoevskian narrator), he simply ignored. "Without this resistance [to Stalinism], however, he would scarcely have been so original a philosopher . . . May the Bakhtinians not be offended by what I say," Zakharov concluded, "but i n many respects, Bakhtin already belongs to history" (9). 11

11

A n k e t a " D K K h " , " N a voprosy

redaktsii p o

povodu

30-letiia so v r e m e n i

vykhoda

v t o r o g o izdaniia k n i g i M . M . B a k h t i n a o F . M . D o s t o e v s k o m otvechaiut: B u d a n o v a N . F . , Z a k h a r o v V N . , P o n o m a r e v a G . B . , R e n a n s k i i A . L . , F r i d l e n d e r G . M . , " i n DKKh, (94):

5 - 1 5 . Page references given i n text.

no. 1

134

C H A P T E R

T H R E E

Zakharov's verdict, although addressed to a local forum o f specialists, cannot be wholly dismissed. A t the Bakhtin Centennial Conference not a single paper, by Russians or non-Russians, was devoted to Bakhtin on Dostoevsky. This did not seem to distress his followers. Many defended Bakhtin's admittedly lopsided reading o f the great novelist as simply " i l ­ lustrative" o f something more important—the way Freud, say, used the literary image o f Oedipus to illustrate his powerful discoveries about the human psyche; thus, i t was felt, Bakhtin had little to gain or lose from the grumbling o f literary specialists. Why reopen all that, they said; i t is old hat, a purely literary matter; the book is a classic o f criticism and part o f the canon. After all, Russian academics now i n their prime had duti­ fully memorized Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics as undergraduates during the early years o f the Bakhtin cult. Its precepts have long been considered as magisterial, grandfatherly, and uncontroversial as, say, those o f Wayne Booth, Wellek and Warren, or Northrop Frye. But let us push the critique further. For there is a group o f critics, i n Russia and i n the West, who find Bakhtin's whole model o f polyphony not only untrue to Dostoevsky's primary intentions as a novelist and a thinker, but also inconsistent and somewhat dishonest on its own terms—for psychological and linguistic reasons as well as for ethical ones. These critics are developing an argument that was made forcefully a de­ cade ago by Aaron Fogel, i n a fine book on Joseph Conrad entitled Coer­ cion to Speak. Fogel's point is that dialogue, as Bakhtin invokes i t , is not the normal human relation at all. Most human speech, he argues, is forced and under constraint; although dialogue, when i t does occur, can at times be a blessing and a relief, the task o f making i t happen between two people is difficult, dangerous, and (here is the scary, non-Bakhtinian part) often made worse when we try, against all odds and against the interests o f the participants, to "talk things out." A prime exhibit for this truth are the tortured protagonists i n Conrad's novels. However Bakhtin might package the matter, Fogel argues, i t is clear that much o f the time, for a large number o f human problems, dialogue is not & "talking cure." To sample why not, here are two recent polemics, one by a Russian and the other by a Russian emigre scholar, both deeply skeptical o f Bakhtin. 12

UNSYMPATHETIC CASE S T U D I E S AND SUSPICIOUS C L O S E READINGS I n 1994 a postmodernist work o f literary criticism was published i n St. Petersburg entitled Anti-Bakhtin, or the Best Book about Vladimir 1 2

A a r o n F o g e l , Coercion

to Speak: Conrad's

v a r d U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 5 ) .

Poetics of Dialogue

(Cambridge, Mass.: H a r ­

POLYPHONY,

D I A L O G I S M , DOSTOEVSKY

135

Nabokov. The book is mediocre and derivative (it figured briefly i n chapter 1, as exemplary o f the crasser sides o f the "Bakhtin backlash") but its author, Vadim Linetsky, does direct attention to one vulnerable area i n a dialogic poetics. Linetsky alleges that Bakhtin, i n his essay "Dis­ course i n the Novel," "reacts rather skeptically to dialogue i n the tradi­ tional understanding o f the w o r d . " By "traditional" Linetsky appears to mean all those situations where people simply talk back and forth i n good faith—in order to exchange information, give one another cues, reveal their immediate desires, clarify each other's intentions, i n short, try to tell the truth as each party understands i t at that moment—and thereby re­ solve, sooner or later, on a course o f real action. Linetsky observes that Bakhtin considers such ordinary, practical verbal exchanges to be rather flat and monologic, dismissing them as conceptually trivial and restricting their role to a "compositional" or merely "plot-related" function i n the work. Bakhtin does so, Linetsky suggests, because he does not really value practical real-life distance between one person and another—even though all genuinely embodied dialogic exchange must be based on it. Distance is a prerequisite for the effective working o f all addressed words, codes, controls, social hierarchies; i n fact, Linetsky insists, real distance is required for any "materialization o f power" i n real life. Without a good intuitive sense o f these parameters, none o f us would ever open our mouths. A n d we might add—as an old-fashioned gloss to Linetsky's faintly postmodernist casting o f this problem i n terms o f power—that distance between one person and another is also what enables indepen­ dence, privacy, and genuine acts o f giving, just as it makes inevitable both human loneliness and longing. u

Linetsky's reservation could be expanded. As we shall see i n chapter 5, Bakhtin builds both his ethics and his aesthetics around the virtues o f "outsideness." But one suspects that Bakhtin would prefer us to be not entirely outside, not all that distant from one another: we should hover around a shared boundary, different but not that different, curious about others but not threatened by them, speaking not ( o f course) the very same language but enough the same language so as to insure that others hear us and incline toward us—or, as Bakhtin put i t disarmingly near the end o f his life, "the more demarcation the better, but benevolent demar­ cation, without border disputes." This scenario is indeed inspirational: boundaries are to multiply, yet disputes are to wither away. But its dynamics apply to only a tiny fraction o f the heroes i n Dostoevsky's novels—and not, I wager, to the ones who excite us and strike us as the most deeply human, the ones whose maniacal inner workings we would 14

1 3

Vadim

Linetskii,

Anti-Bakhtin"—Luchshaia

a

kniga

Peterburg: Tipografiia i m . K o t i i a k o v a , 1 9 9 4 ) , 8 4 - 8 5 . 1 4

" F r o m N o t e s M a d e i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " i n SpG,

137.

o Vladimire

Nabokove

(Sankt-

136

CHAPTER

THREE

expect a literary critic to elucidate. A n d further: these trapped and mania­ cal heroes, more often than not, do not thirst after any fancy doublevoiced dialogism, which can create for them only more doubts and con­ founding options. From within their own unhappy unstable worlds, they simply want to believe i n something; they want to be understood; and they want to be loved. A n unsettling critique o f Bakhtin's image o f Dostoevsky can indeed be mounted along these lines. One place to ground i t would be i n Bakhtin's earliest philosophical writings, where he addresses the difference between ethical and aesthetic domains i n a work o f art. Although this problem will occupy us more fully i n later chapters, a preview might be useful here. A n event becomes "aesthetic," i n Bakhtin's world, i f there is an outside consciousness looking i n on the event and, as it were, embracing it, able to bestow on the scenario a sense o f the "whole." Such an exter­ nal (and thus aesthetic) position is available to spectators watching, to readers reading, and to an author "shaping." But from within the art­ work—that is, from the perspective o f the created character who is un­ dergoing the particular pleasure or torment i n question—events are o f course experienced as partial, unshaped, cognitively open, ethically irre­ versible, as matters not o f art but o f life and death. The hero—or at least the hero i n a realistic novel, always Bakhtin's genre o f choice—does not feel his own life to be a fiction. Let us apply this early distinction to some scenarios o f the Dostoevsky book. I t will help us glimpse the mechanism by which Bakhtin, working with such often desperate texts, arrives at his dialogic optimism. 15

Take, for example, death. Bakhtin turned to the topic often i n his writ­ ings, and usually i n a spirit o f benevolent gratitude: death is aesthetic closure, that point where creative memory can begin, the best means for making a gift o f my whole self to another. As one Polish scholar has summed up this position, Bakhtin devised not a neo- but a "post-human­ istic vision o f man": i f neo-humanism takes the individual personality as its reckoning point and thus regrets its passing, Bakhtin, with his insis­ tence that an " I " comes to exist only on the border between itself and someone else, provides us with a model o f death that is neither an insult to consciousness nor a blessing to it but, as an event, simply irrelevant. Only that which exists in itself can die. Those grimmer aspects o f death—its silence, nonnegotiability, unanswerability, aloneness—that so terrified other Russian writer-philosophers (say, Leo Tolstoy, to whose 16

1 5

See the o p e n i n g segments o f " T h e P r o b l e m o f the A u t h o r ' s Relationship to the H e r o "

a n d " T h e Spatial F o r m o f the H e r o , " i n " A u t h o r a n d H e r o i n Aesthetic Activity," 4-16, 31-46, 1 6

A&A,

73-75.

D r . J . W i z i n s k a , "Posthumanistic V i s i o n o f M a n i n the P h i l o s o p h y o f M . B a k h t i n , " i n

Yazyk i tekst: Ontolqgiia

i refleksiia

(Sankt P e t e r b u r g : E i d o s , 1 9 9 2 ) ,

320-22.

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137

anxieties Bakhtin seems singularly immune) seem to have persuaded Bakhtin that the whole procedure, being so wordless and so unavailable to my own ended consciousness (my death can exist only for others), is not worth taking seriously. This elegant resolution o f the problem o f our mortality—again recall­ ing the Hellenistic philosophers—Bakhtin graciously attributes to his own hero and scholarly subject, Dostoevsky. I n his 1961 notes for the revision o f Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Bakhtin remarks that death hardly signifies at all for the great polyphonic novelist. I n support o f this claim and i n contrast to Tolstoy, he points to the fact that "Dostoevsky never depicts death from within [the dying person]"; death is an event solely for another, as yet living consciousness, and thus i t "finalizes noth­ i n g " i n the larger realm o f the spirit. A n d why, indeed, should we fear extinction if—as Bakhtin put the matter movingly—"personality does not die. Death is a departure. . . . The person has departed, having spo­ ken his word, but the word itself remains i n the open-ended dialogue. . . . organic death, that is, the death o f the body, did not interest Dos­ toevsky." Perhaps i t did not. But, one might object, surely the death o f the body interests Dostoevsky's characters. A n d death obsesses precisely those characters who reside i n the novels Bakhtin skirts most widely: the totally ignored Notes from the House of the Dead; the novel Devils, w i t h its brutal arbitrary murders and its travestied Nativity scene (mother and son, Shatov's beloved family, die almost as an afterthought i n the wake o f his murder); The Idiot, with its horrifying incoherence over Nastasya Filippovna's dead body i n the final scene; and Dostoevsky's harrowing deathside monologue "Krotkaia" [The meek one], which unfolds—which could only unfold—over a corpse. I n fact, the only death story Bakhtin reads i n any fullness is the tiny throwaway tale "Bobok," a menippean satire about obscene graveyard conversations carried on by the dead who refuse to die or fall silent. Bakhtin's less sympathetic critics see something disturbing i n this pattern o f omissions. Is the man so committed to unfinalizable dialogue, to the good we can do others i f only we remain outside them and talking to them (or posthumously remembered as hav­ ing once talked to them), that he is indifferent to the ethical world as experienced by Dostoevsky's heroes, to its innerness and breaking points? For surely Dostoevsky, as author, did not intend his absorbed and capti­ vated readers to react with bland hope or benign resignation, relegating all those ultimate life-and-death questions to some ephemeral dialogue in the sky; he was counting on horror. The unfinalizability is only i n Bakhtin. 17

1 7

" T o w a r d a R e w o r k i n g o f d i e D o s t o e v s k y B o o k , " i n PDP,

290, 300.

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Death, then, is similar to aesthetic wholeness i n that i t , too, is the product o f a dialogic situation: i t requires an outsider, or a socium, to bestow it. I n Bakhtin's exegesis, this bestowal is simply not felt as mur­ der. I n fact, Bakhtin is as curiously untroubled by dying as he is by the possibility that outsideness will turn alien or hostile—although the best students o f Dostoevsky routinely have found these two anxieties central. Gary Saul Morson, for one, has argued cogently that for Dostoevsky, an astute student o f the fundamentally social vices, the state o f being "exter­ nal t o " and i n social relation puts one at great moral risk. As the novels demonstrate, we are indeed indispensable to one another—but for rea­ sons that give no cause for rejoicing. Sociality is scandal space, the site o f voyeurism. ( " I n Dostoevsky's novels," Morson writes, "suffering, shame, torture and death usually take place before a crowd o f spectators who indulge i n the quintessential social act o f gaping. I n Dostoevsky, the first sign o f our essential sociality is that we are all voyeurs. . . . Nobody had a deeper sense o f the social as an arena o f gratuitous cruelty.") Reacting to this truth, several American scholars are now supplementing Bakhtin's "aesthetic" interpretations o f Dostoevsky with darker ethical correctives that work with more than just words. Among the most useful o f the philosophers invoked is the late Emmanuel Levinas and his philosophy o f human obligation arising from eye-to-eye contact with a living, suffer­ ing—even i f wholly silent—face. 13

19

These final considerations bring us to the most sustained criticism yet raised against Bakhtin's reading o f Dostoevsky and against polyphony i n general: that by the literary scholar Natalia Reed. Reed approaches po­ lyphony from a Girardian perspective, insisting on its mimetic origins. She contends that the polyphonic model—and by extension dialogism as well—is rooted i n Bakhtin's desire to improve on the monologic creative 20

1 8

G a r y S a u l M o r s o n , "Misanthropology," New Literary

History

2 7 , no. 1 (Winter 1996):

5 7 - 7 2 , esp. 6 2 , 7 1 . 1 9

See Leslie J o h n s o n , " T h e F a c e o f the O t h e r i n Idiot"

Slavic Review

50, no. 4 (Winter

1 9 9 1 ) : 8 6 7 - 7 8 ; a n d V a l V i n o k u r o v ' s t r e n c h a n t critique a n d expansion f r o m a L e v i n a s i a n perspective i n his " T h e E n d o f C o n s c i o u s n e s s a n d the E n d s o f C o n s c i o u s n e s s : R e - r e a d i n g Idiot

a n d Demons

after E m m a n u e l L e v i n a s " ( u n p u b l . m s . , 1 9 9 6 ) . V i n o k u r o v writes o f

M y s h k i n : " T h e P r i n c e is simply profligate t o w a r d the face, a n d thus unable to live w i t h the politics, the agony a n d violence o f c h o o s i n g between faces that justice d e m a n d s w h e n I a n d the other are n o t alone i n the w o r l d . H i s departure is C h r i s t ' s failure o n earth. O n e s h o u l d n o t be too ready to fill i n the blank o f D o s t o e v s k y ' s doubts by insisting so wholeheartedly o n M y s h k i n ' s potential. T h e w o r l d does n o t fail M y s h k i n . T h e w o r l d cannot fail.

O n l y the

individual c a n fail against the resistance o f the w o r l d . H e c a n also, unlike M y s h k i n , suc­ ceed." 2 0

N a t a s h a A l e x a n d r o v n a R e e d , " R e a d i n g L e r m o n t o v ' s Geroj nasego vremeni:

Problems o f

Poetics a n d R e c e p t i o n , " P h . D . dissertation, H a r v a r d University, S e p t e m b e r 1 9 9 4 , esp. c h . 3: "Baxtin's T h e o r y o f the Other," 3 0 4 - 7 3 .

Polyphonic Consciousness: T h e Dialogue

o f Self without

POLYPHONY, DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

139

act and as such does not welcome real others at all. I t might welcome them for a moment, as a temporary stimulus or trigger, but i t rarely has the patience to orient outwardly toward another person's words and acts over time. I n fact, Reed argues, i f you consider the stories that Dos­ toevsky really tells (that is, i f you reject Bakhtin's hypothesis that the novelist did not care much about stories and plots but cared only about putting a mass o f "embodied ideas" into circulation), you will realize that double-voiced words, as Bakhtin claims to find them i n Dostoevsky, are not put to work i n a sustained "multi-perspectival" way at all. "Outside ness" is not much o f a value, either for the major novelistic heroes or for Bakhtin the critic. The dialogues that matter to Bakhtin are all already internalized, detached i n a trice from their original speakers, whose fur­ ther words and emerging needs i n their ongoing lives become irrelevant to the inflated, autonomous, curiously timeless consciousness o f the cen­ tral character. A n d this consciousness proceeds to generate plots that are ghastly. Let us expand on Reed via Bakhtin's analysis o f Raskolnikov's famous internal dialogue i n the opening chapters o f Crime and Punishment (PDP, 7 3 - 7 4 ) . This is the moment i n the novel when Raskolnikov, hav­ ing read his mother's letter with the details o f his sister Dunya's fate, Svidrigailov's attempted seduction, and the impending marriage to Luzhin, links these events with the drunkard Marmeladov's lachrymose story i n the pub and resolves to repudiate a world that has been thus arranged. Bakhtin calls this dialogized inner monologue a micro dialogue, one that "re-creates" the autonomous voices o f the participants; as Bakh­ tin writes, at this point "dialogue has penetrated inside every word, pro­ voking i n i t a battle and the interruption o f one voice by another" (75). Such microdialogues are said to have a markedly good effect on readers, who find themselves stimulated and open to new, multiple points o f view. "Every true reader o f Dostoevsky," Bakhtin concludes, "can sense [a] peculiar active broadening o f his or her consciousness, not [so much] i n the assimilation o f new objects . . . [as i n ] the sense o f a special dialogic mode o f communication with the autonomous consciousnesses o f others, something never before experienced, an active dialogic penetration into the unfinalizable depths o f man" {PDP, 68). But is this i n fact what occurs? To a certain extent, o f course, Raskolni­ kov reading his mother's letter and angrily debating its sentiments and intonations with himself is a model for mental activity i n general: we take events i n , set one voice against another, prod ourselves to respond, and in this way eventually manage to focus our own thoughts. But this pro­ cess should at no point be confused with communication. (Dostoevsky himself makes this fact clear about his hero six paragraphs into Crime and Punishment: Raskolnikov lapsed into oblivion on the street, "no

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longer noticing what was around him and not wishing to notice. He only muttered something to himself from time to time, out o f that habit o f monologues he had just confessed to himself.") As readers we might indeed want to talk with Raskolnikov—he is an interesting fellow. But is there any indication that he might wish to talk with us—or with anyone, for that matter—in the simple "traditional" sense o f dialogue, which at least admits the possibility o f hearing something new outside one's own system? Quite the contrary: the novel as published still bears traces o f its early draft i n first-person confessional narration, and Raskolnikov's selfobsessed consciousness continues to serve as the dominant fulcrum for its ideas and events. H o w does that consciousness actually work? Raskolnikov hears a ran­ dom story from a drunk i n a tavern or he receives a letter from his mother whom he has not seen for years, and suddenly he is off. Everyone i n the world becomes "a Sonya," "a Svidrigailov," "a Dunya." These voices i n Raskolnikov's inner speech come into "a peculiar sort o f contact," as Bakhtin puts i t , "one that would be impossible among voices i n an actual dialogue" (PDP, 239). Impossible, yes, because voices i n an actual dia­ logue would not tolerate contact on those terms. A n d is contact estab­ lished i n this way necessarily a good or honest thing? Does Dostoevsky intend this contact among ideas within the hero's consciousness to result in the authentically productive and spiritually broadening microdialogue that Bakhtin claims i t must become? The opposite case could easily be argued. When Bakhtin insists that Dostoevsky's world is fundamentally organized and visualized i n catego­ ries not o f evolution but o f coexistence and interaction (PDP, 28), we should be alert to the sinister and inhumane aspects of that scenario. What Bakhtin calls microdialogue might more closely resemble a lunatic inner monologue that has been—for lack o f genuine empathy, interest, or lived experience on Raskolnikov's part—simply embellished and exac­ erbated by other people's utterances. For the most powerful instinct i n Raskolnikov (considered as a human being, not just as a repository for ideas) is always to stop talking with "real others" as soon as possible, to detach the words uttered by those others from the experience or the truth that had given rise to them, and to start using those words to rearrange the world according to his own prior and fixed notions o f it. I t would appear that Dostoevsky was acutely aware o f this dynamic. He intended his gifted but appallingly self-absorbed Raskolnikov to be per­ ceived, i f anything, as thoroughly monologic because o f it. After all, Raskolnikov was created after the Underground Man and is a refinement on his type. Unlike that earlier, overtly grotesque and thus less threaten­ ing image, however, Raskolnikov has high intelligence, beauty, boldness, the ability to act. But he shares with his predecessor the inability to listen.

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Among those who might agree with this hypothesis is Bakhtin's slightly younger contemporary, Lydia Ginzburg. One o f Russia's best readers o f Rousseau, Proust, Herzen, and Tolstoy, Ginzburg was drawn to explicate literary worlds that were as hospitable to the Tolstoyan hero as Bakhtin's world was structured to wall that type o f hero out. Ginzburg is not sym­ pathetic to Bakhtin's notion that Dostoevsky's characters, being "ideapersons" i n pursuit o f higher concepts, are thereby less selfish. "Tolstoy discovered the first principles o f shared spiritual experience as i t relates to the contemporary person, and this person is not even aware that he con­ ceives o f himself in Tolstoyan terms, that in fact he has no other choice," she writes i n On Psychological Prose. "To be sure, this character might find i t more interesting to conceive o f himself i n Dostoevskian terms, since doing so would allow him to focus attention on himself." I n her exposé o f the "dialogue" that Bakhtin foists on Dostoevsky, Reed would agree. She argues that the consciousnesses o f others are not autonomous i n such "thought experiments" as Raskolnikov's internalized letter scenario (Reed, 370)—and neither there nor i n a host o f other socalled microdialogues is there anything resembling a reciprocal act o f communication. Thus when Bakhtin, explaining the essence o f dialogic discourse, states with approval that "to think about others means to talk with them" [PDP, 68; Reed, 315], Reed objects strenuously. To commu­ nicate with others is not, she insists, merely to think o f them, merely to carry on a mental conversation with them at one's own leisure and con­ venience. 21

I n short, Natalia Reed sees polyphony as a rapid, profound, and pro­ foundly selfish internalization of relationships—a removal o f human rela­ tions from the realm o f responsible outer actions (or interactions), in­ volving unpredictable unmanageable others, into the safer realm o f inner words and domesticated verbal images o f the other. We may expand Reed's comments into yet another realm. A t several points Bakhtin claims that polyphony i n a novel serves to "put the unfinalizable idea on trial." A n d i n ethical life, an ^ f i n a l i z e d thing cannot be tested or put on trial. Trials follow completed deeds; they have verdicts, sentences, punish­ ments. People are acquitted, locked up, shot. I n benign contrast to the real courtroom trial, ideas i n inner dialogue always have loopholes and a chance to be re-uttered. Again, i t is instructive to note which texts i n the Dostoevsky canon Bakhtin reads at length and with his most characteris2 1

L y d i a G i n z b u r g , On Psychological

Prose, trans, a n d ed. J u d s o n R o s e n g r a n t ( P r i n c e t o n ,

N . J . : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 1 ) , 2 4 3 (translation s o m e w h a t adjusted). I t seems plausible that this s o m e w h a t arch retort is G i n z b u r g ' s response to B a k h t i n ' s remark, i n Problems

of Dostoevsky's Poetics, that "all o f D o s t o e v s k y ' s m a j o r characters, as people o f a n

idea, are absolutely unselfish, insofar as the idea has really taken c o n t r o l o f the deepest core o f their personality" (PDP,

87).

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tic brilliance: Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, "The Meek One," "Bobok," "The Double," Ivan Karamazov and his D e v i l plots or scenes where one event, one moment o f crime or mental break­ down, is followed by a huge amount o f talking to oneself. Bakhtin does not have much to say about narratives that are devoid o f a single crisis or crime and its obsessive internalization (meandering novels like The Idiot) or a dark masterpiece like The Devils, where corpses explain nothing and dialogues remain largely on the outside, used by deluded men and women to deceive others or to declaim false truths—used for anything, one could argue, except to enrich the self with interesting and whole­ some options. Bakhtin, i t is true, intends the comparison between Dostoevsky's novel and polyphony as "a graphic analogy, a simple metaphor,''' nothing more (PDP, 22). But the term polyphony—which he often employs alongside another musical metaphor, counterpoint—is surely meant to evoke, at a minimum, the image (or sonority) o f a multiply harmonized texture, a fabric o f discrete interwoven strands receptive and inviting to others. As we have seen, skeptics would sooner call it a soliloquy o f the isolated, narcissistic self. Furthermore, i t is a soliloquy that, by its very dynamics and the doors it shuts behind itself, beckons the speaker toward violence. (A self thus conditioned must battle its way out i n blindness or in anger.) The revisionists also insist that Dostoevsky, who was not at all naive about the difficulties o f honest dialogue, would concur. What Dostoevsky was parodying, Bakhtin took for authentic coin. The novelist understood full well (in fact he devotes one small scene i n his novel The Adolescent to just this uncomfortable social truism) that a real other, a genuine inter­ locutor ( o f the sort you rarely meet i n the literary passages Bakhtin selects for analysis) is always free to walk i n on me at inconvenient times, walk out on me at w i l l , speak inpenetrable nonsense, ignore me altogether, abuse me i n ways I am not prepared for, even kill me off. I n contrast to such recognizably real-life dialogic scenes, the Bakhtinian microdialogue can be philosophically satisfying, open-ended, full o f the anguish and ar­ ticulation that is so electrifying to Bakhtin and stimulating to the reader because i t begins and ends on the thinker's terms. I t never leaves the terrain o f a single person's head. A n d because i t does not, because i t is not forced to tack back and forth i n "traditional" dialogic: exchanges for its nourishment, i t can have horrendous consequences—such as mur­ der—in other people's real worlds. Dostoevsky was a profound student o f such solipsism. He identified it with the pathology o f the Under­ ground. A n d it is worth noting that Dostoevsky prefers to bring his sal­ vageable heroes—Raskolnikov or Dmitry Karamazov—to public trial as a prelude to their ultimate resurrection rather than leave them muttering

POLYPHONY,

DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

143

to themselves, even as he condemned court procedures and despaired o f the law. Thus the anti-Bakhtinians distrust how Bakhtin interprets Dostoevsky's understanding o f language. Reed even intimates at several points i n her study that like most desk-ridden, reclusive intellectuals, Bakhtin—at least in his high polyphonic phase—unconsciously creates as the ideal inter­ locutor someone who responds to others' needs only when all that is left of them is their words: no deeds, no bodies, no one-way actions and irreconcilable conflicts, no stubborn deadlock that can be broken only by coercion. (According to Bakhtin, the genuine heroes o f a polyphonic novel are consciousness and ideas; thus the events that trigger the neces­ sary talk can be o f the most melodramatic and banal kind.) Bakhtin insists that plot per se did not matter to Dostoevsky. But i n fact any stripping away o f plot events would be quite a sinister move, Reed argues, when considered from the human perspective inside the text. I n her opinion, Bakhtin gets r i d o f Dostoevsky's plots not in order to "free the hero"— that is, to free up an epiclike character from his epithet, an Achilles from his heel, to take a closed biography and endow i t with new potentials— but i n order to free up the author, who can then transfer his own monologic torment to the hero, and at the hero's expense. I f Bakhtin had bothered to submit even one o f the novels to sustained structural anal­ ysis, or i f he had chosen to attend at all to the emotional world o f Dos­ toevsky's obsessively driven and unhappy cast o f narrators, he would have seen that this polyphonic "freeing up" is simply a fiction o f his own de­ vising. Bakhtin, these critics believe, overestimates the power o f language to rescue us. For h i m , an utterance will sooner work to multiply meaning and enrich mental options than to misrepresent, mislead, or misperceive reality. Thus Reed would sympathize (although for very different reasons) with those early Bolshevik reviewers o f Problems of Dostoevsky's Art who insisted that Bakhtin's polyphony, designed to absorb every significant thing into consciousness, is at base idealist, asocial, and fundamentally immoral. For the refusal to finalize any judgment is an escape from the consequences o f authentic residence i n the world. According to the revisionists, then, such polyphonic manipulation o f ethical choice—rendering i t reversible and always "inner"—cannot be the major mechanism at work i n Dostoevsky's novels. I t cannot, because Dostoevsky is himself a discriminating moralist who arranges matters i n his fiction so that major heroes are run not by ideas, as Bakhtin claims, but by doubt. These heroes do not wish to be polyphonically "free" o f commitment. Rather, the opposite is true: they want desperately to be­ lieve, and they cannot. They examine options i n order to be rid o f them, to move forward into the deed, not merely to elaborate more options.

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About passionate desire and passionate doubt—both fueled by the pur­ suit o f real, elusive people who change over time—Bakhtin, i n the opin­ ion o f these critics, hasn't a clue. Is this critique just? Again, it depends—quite literally—on one's point of view. For what Vadim Linetsky, Yuri Kariakin, Lydia Ginzburg, and others who take Bakhtin seriously but with a severely critical eye have done i n their analyses o f polyphony is to consider a given experience or event i n Dostoevsky's texts not "externally"—as a reader, a philosopher, a scholarly critic—but from the simple, trapped perspective o f the created hero, whose free-standing interests Bakhtin claims to champion (and whom Natalia Reed considers a victim o f Bakhtin's "surrogate plot," the great dialogue between author and hero). The method has merit, I might add, because ordinary, untutored readers o f novels (the audience for whom Dostoevsky actually wrote) identify i n this way instinctively; i t is one o f the great pleasures o f the genre. Put yourself in the hero's place. The first thing you will insist on is that consciousness alone does not make a biography. M y plot, after all, is my life. I do not want to be liberated from it. A n d least o f all do I wish to be liberated by an author who values only my verbal residue and my trail o f ideas, not my deci­ sions, unspeakable losses, and irreversible events. Dialogic communica­ tion, i f i t aspires to an ethical position, must mean more than simply "Leave me alone to think about what you just said." Dostoevsky, these critics insist, was fully aware o f the,solipsism in any "dialogue o f ideas" that only pretends to fulfill a communicative func­ tion. For dialogue is measured by many criteria—precision o f expression, proper timing, impact on the listener, subsequent modification o f behav­ ior—and makes use o f various instruments, o f which words are only one. (In 1996 one practicing psychotherapist i n the New Russia concluded an essay on Bakhtin and family counseling with a section whose title was surely inspired by Christ's response to the Grand Inquisitor: "Silence as the Heights o f Dialogue.") N o reader would dispute that novelistic worlds are reached through words. But once we are inside that world, the real power o f the genre is i n the interpersonal space, the scene called forth, the entire complex that we (along with the characters) see and feel, not only what we hear, speak, and think. Therefore, these critics do not agree with Bakhtin when he states, i n a passage written just before revis22

2 2

T . A . F l o r e n s k a i a , "Slovo i molchanie v dialoge," i n DKKh,

no. 1 (96):

49-62,

esp.

" M o l c h a n i e kak vershina dialoga," 6 0 - 6 2 . R e m a r k i n g o n the unexpected ability o f thera­ pists to sense quickly the sort o f language that w i l l penetrate the most recalcitrant subject and have an effect, she then notes that dialogue requires n o t verbal language per se but only an act i n w h i c h one's " d o m i n a n t orientation is t o w a r d the interlocutor"., only u n d e r c o n d i ­ tions o f "the most intimate spiritual closeness" is silence between t w o people, "understand­ i n g w i t h o u t w o r d s , " possible.

POLYPHONY, DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

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ing the Dostoevsky book, that "language and the word are almost every­ thing in human life." They sympathize, rather, with Alexei Kirillov, the monomaniacal, wierdly inarticulate nihilist i n Dostoevsky's The Devils and one o f that novel's few attractive, kindly, and honest figures, when he says to his would-be murderer in the final conversation before his suicide: " A l l my life, I did not want it to be only words. This is why I lived, because I kept on not wanting it. A n d now, too, every day, I want it not 23

to be

words."

24

Curiously, some centennial rethinkings o f the Dostoevsky book by phi­ losophers have endorsed this critique o f logos-centric dialogism—but in an effort to redeem, rather than to undermine, Bakhtin's interpretation o f Dostoevsky. I n a 1995 paper the Moscow philosopher Natalia Bonetskaia defended Bakhtin's second edition, and particularly its massive insert on menippean satire, as a belated discovery on Bakhtin's part that the 1929 study was indeed inadequate to the darker sides o f his subject. The rosy, sentimental-Romantic view o f reciprocal dialogue that governs the 1929 original version was simply too partial a picture to be allowed to stand, she argues; Bakhtin eventually wanted to "get at more than merely the poetics" (30) and felt obliged to address the real pathos and perverse intonation o f Dostoevsky's world. A n d what, Bonetskaia asked, could be more hysterical, chaotic, hellish, anti-dialogic than the spirit o f carnival? I f dialogue is "personality, reason, freedom, the realm o f meanings, the light o f consciousness and perhaps o f Logos," then carnival is the existen­ tial void, "the appearance o f Dionysian chaos, a darkening o f reason, and the triumph o f the elemental unconscious, the night o f human nature" (28). As shall become clear in the following chapter, such a reading— although ingeniously motivating the move from the first to second edi­ tion o f the Dostoevsky book—requires a demonic view o f carnival that Bakhtin's own demonstrably passionate attachment to the concept poorly accommodates. I n another attempt to tie Bakhtin's shifting image o f Dostoevsky to some rational pattern, the prominent sociologist Yuri Davydov reminds us that Bakhtin matured exceptionally early as a thinker: by his early twenties he had already absorbed (and criticized) Kant, Windelband, Simmel, Rickert, Scheler—and then began to seek out a creative intelligence broad enough to test this wisdom. Bakhtin "constructs his own sort o f philosophical cyclotron and finds the atom 25

2 3

" T h e P r o b l e m o f the T e x t i n L i n g u i s t i c s , Philology, a n d the H u m a n Sciences: A n E x ­

p e r i m e n t in Philosophical A n a l y s i s " ( 1 9 5 9 - 6 1 ) i n SpG, 2 4

F y o d o r Dostoevsky, Demons,

118.

trans. R i c h a r d Pevear a n d Larissa V o l o k h o n s k y ( N e w

Y o r k : K n o p f , 1 9 9 5 ) , part 3 , c h . 6 ( " A T o i l s o m e N i g h t " ) , 6 1 5 . 2 5

N.

K . Bonetskaia, " K sopostavleniiu

t o e v s k o m , " BMtinskie

chteniia,

d v u k h redaktsii knigi M . B a k h t i n a

o

Dos-

vyp. I (Materialy M e z h d u n a r o d n o i n a u c h n o i konferentsii),

(Vitebsk, 3 - 6 July 1 9 9 5 ) . V i t e b s k , Belarus': 1 9 9 6 .

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which i t splits. That atom is the literary art o f Dostoevsky." Husserlian phenomenology, not Raskolnikov's selfish internalizations or gratuitous unkindness, is the criterion by which the success o f Bakhtin's thought must be measured. Can a balance on dialogue be achieved between BakJitin's admirers and his detractors? By judging Bakhtin's account o f Dostoevsky negligent in this matter o f responsible relationships with real others i n real time, the anti-Bakhtinians raise substantial questions about the ethical center o f his entire enterprise. Does dialogism affirm self and other or does i t efface both sides? Scholars at work on Bakhtin's Silver Age context have hinted at links between his thought and Solovievian and Symbolist experiments of the Russian Decadent period—which were, after all, not that distant from the young Bakhtin i n Petrograd. Leading poets o f the prewar pe­ riod were experimenting with nonconsummated marriage, homoerotic Utopias, metaphysical equivalents o f the nuclear family, and extravagant projects for transcending death. Under the influence o f Platonic philoso­ phy, they advertised a wide variety o f self-absorbed, autonomous, sterile structures for intimate love. Can i t be said that Bakhtin's self-other paradigms belong to that company? 26

27

Let us turn to Bakhtin's own self-evaluation. I n the early 1960s he summed up Dostoevsky's major innovations i n the art o f the novel with the following three postulates. First, Dostoevsky is credited with struc­ turing a "new image o f a human being that is not finalized by anything (not even death)"—to which Bakhtin adds, with his customary inspira­ tional stoicism, that such a human image is unfinalizable because "its meaning cannot be resolved or abolished by reality (to kill does not mean to refute)." Second, Bakhtin claims that Dostoevsky devised a way to represent, through words, the "self-developing idea, inseparable from personality." A n d third, Bakhtin honors Dostoevsky as the writer who discovered dialogue "as a special form o f interaction among autonomous and equally signifying consciousnesses." We might inquire how much o f this three-part assessment is still intact. The first and third "discoveries" have come under sustained attack. The most articulate opponents o f Bakhtin today argue that Dostoevsky did indeed believe that "to kill was to refute"—and to neglect the impor­ tance o f all the killing that goes on i n his novels is simply to misread the 28

2 6

See the discussion o f D a v y d o v ' s paper at the O c t o b e r 1 9 9 5 B a k h t i n centennial read­

ings at the M o s c o w D o s t o e v s k y toevskogo," DKKh, 2 7

ory

no. 2 (96),

M u s e u m , i n N . A . Pan'kov, " B a k h t i n n a fone

F o r an excellent discussion, see O l g a M a t i c h , " T h e S y m b o l i s t M e a n i n g o f L o v e : T h e ­ a n d P r a c t i c e , " i n I r i n a P a p e r n o a n d J o a n D e l a n e y G r o s s m a n , eds., Creating

Aesthetic 2 8

Dos­

1 3 4 - 3 7 , esp. 1 3 7 .

Utopia

of Russian

Modernism

Life:

The

(Stanford: Stanford U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 4 ) , 2 4 - 5 0 .

" T o w a r d a R e w o r k i n g o f the D o s t o e v s k y B o o k [ 1 9 6 1 ] , " i n PDP,

184.

POLYPHONY, DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

147

novels. They have also argued that interaction within those novelistic worlds does not take place among "autonomous and equally signifying" voices: i t takes place between mortal bodies, and the interaction there is either deadly political and manifestly unequal, as when Raskolnikov as­ saults an old woman with an axe and Pyotr Verkhovensky stalks Kirillov with a gun, o r — i f we are dealing with polyphonic dialogue rather than with murder—the interaction, more often than not, is narcissistic, isolat­ ing, and indifferent to the real world (to death i n the first instance, but also to any vulnerability or desire coming from, or directed toward, a needful other). Dostoevsky saw this misuse o f language and parodied it. He was far more attuned to the healing effects o f nonverbal communica­ tion—silence, icons, genuflections, visual images—than he was to the alleged beneficent effect o f words. A n d thus, as regards the second achievement with which Bakhtin credits Dostoevsky—the "self-develop­ ing idea" fused to personality and freed from the distractions and humili­ ating constraints o f plot—many readers consider this more a recipe for monologue than for dialogue. I have my idea, you have yours, and we will feed them to each other without listening to each other until each o f our ideas has ripened and the novel is over. This critique has been taken—unjustly but provocatively—to an even more sinister extreme by one group o f Russian postmodernists, the Conceptualists. They see something suspicious and evasive i n the obsession with "dialogue" and "naming" that marks so many Russian philosophers, in whose ranks they now enroll Bakhtin. I n theory, they say, Bakhtin might have believed that "to exist [authentically] means to communicate dialogically," but i n practice this "dialogic Utopia" ends up as a "neurosis of incessant talk" that pretends to provide options for real people trapped in real places but i n fact makes it altogether too easy and attractive for us to separate words from any ordinary real-life referents. Conceptualists claim there is a venerable Russian tradition o f putting words i n circula­ tion for their own sake—and its genealogy reads like an honor roll o f Russian literature. The starting point is Nikolai Gogol, whose genius cre­ ated unprecedentedly palpable reality out o f waxy masses o f words and sounds that lacked any referent; the brooding talkers and dreamers o f Dostoevsky and his devoted servant Bakhtin are two intermediary steps; and the proud inheritor, they insist, is Stalinist Russia. For as the Con­ ceptualists' chronicler Mikhail Epstein has noted, the autonomy o f the 29

2 9

S p e a k i n g o f Dostoevsky, the conceptualist artist I l y a K a b a k o v has r e m a r k e d that the

incessant chatter that fills the novels does n o t "test an idea" at all; those endless debates succeed only i n d r a w i n g i n a n d i m p l i c a t i n g the reader to s u c h an extent that "the thread is lost," the chains o f debates g r o w to "monstrous l e n g t h , " a n d all parties forget w h a t is at stake ( I l ' i a K a b a k o v , Zhizn* 128).

mukh / Das Leben der Fliegen

[Kôlnischer Kunstverein, n.d.],

148

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uttered word i n Russia did not further the interests o f civil liberty or freedom. Instead, it has lent a sort o f voodoo authenticity to fantasy constructs, including those fantasies that could inflict a great deal o f pub­ lic harm: " I t was the hidden assumption o f the Soviet system, after all, to give the status o f absolute reality to its own ideological pronounce­ ments." The psychoanalytic critic Aleksandr Etkind provides a concrete exam­ ple. "Let us imagine Soviet interrogators, contemporaries o f Vygotsky and Bakhtin," he writes in Sodom and Psyche, his 1996 collection o f es­ says on the intellectual life o f Russia's Silver Age. "What they needed was the fact o f an accused person's confession, because the other extra-verbal reality did not exist. Whether or not the accused was lying, slandering himself, doing i t under threat or in order to bring an intolerable torture to an end—all that was unimportant, because something other than words was required in their account: feelings, acts, situations. . . . I n the Soviet person, there is nothing that is not expressed in words. Except for words, nothing exists." Thus do the Conceptualist critics and their ideological allies wish to de-Stalinize Russia by fighting against the prolif­ eration o f ecstatic, indestructible, floating words and ideas, the sort o f words that during the Communist period almost boasted their indepen­ dence from the world as i t really was. Such words, precisely because o f their immortal status, are exempt from judgment and can be irrespons­ ible, promiscuous, lie-bearing. Therefore the Conceptualists build up and smash images, analyze museums and bomb sites, compile lengthy trea­ tises documenting the life o f the housefly. Far more ethical than to work w i t h the ever renegotiable poetic word, they argue, is to acknowledge a perishable world full o f mortal, destructible, fully ordinary and thus pre­ cious events and things. We have now come full circle. The polyphonic Bakhtin, freedom fighter and champion o f the individual voice, has become solipsistic 30

31

3 0

E p s t e i n has thus argued the C o n c e p t u a l i s t case c o n t r a B a k h t i n , d r a w i n g o n one o f their

p r o m i n e n t practitioners, Ilya Kabakov: " F o r B a k h t i n , the dialogic relationship is the only g e n u i n e m o d e o f h u m a n existence: addressing the other t h r o u g h language. F o r Kabakov, this obsession w i t h dialogue bears witness to the lack o f any relationship between w o r d s a n d a c o r r e s p o n d i n g reality . . . K a b a k o v sees this inclination for verbosity as a s y m p t o m o f Russia's fear o f emptiness a n d the implicit realization o f its ubiquity. . . . F o r B a k h t i n , to exist authentically means to c o m m u n i c a t e dialogically, w h i c h allows us to interpret B a k h t i n h i m s e l f as a Utopian thinker seeking an ultimate transcendence o f h u m a n loneliness, aliena­ t i o n , a n d objectification. K a b a k o v advances a p o s t m o d e r n perspective o n this dialogical Utopia, revealing the illusory character o f a paradise o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n " ( M i k h a i l E p s t e i n , " T h e P h i l o s o p h i c a l I m p l i c a t i o n s o f R u s s i a n C o n c e p t u a l i s m , " paper delivered at the A m e r i ­ c a n A s s o c i a t i o n for the A d v a n c e m e n t o f Slavic Studies, W a s h i n g t o n , D . C . , O c t o b e r 1 9 9 5 ) . 3 1

A l e k s a n d r E t k i n d , Sodom

i Psikheia:

(Moscow: ITs-Garant, 1996), 296.

Ocherki

intdlcktuaVnoi

istorii

Serebrianogo

veka

POLYPHONY,

DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

149

Bakhtin, Stalinist fellow traveler. This is truly a monstrous trajectory. To soften its effects and do justice to the man, we now attempt, as we bring to a close this first problematic reassessment o f the legacy, a defense o f Bakhtin—who remains, after all has been rethought and resaid, one o f the most powerful thinkers o f our century.

"THE

TORMENTS OF

DIALOGUE": I N DEFENSE OF

BAKHTIN

I n a 1994 issue o f Filosofskie nauki, to honor the upcoming centennial, the literary scholar and philosopher R S. Gurevich published a lengthy (and rather negative) review o f leading American Dostoevsky scholarship under the title Muki dialog a—the torments o f dialogue. He considers much Western work that draws on Bakhtin rather primitive, i n part be­ cause i t "ignores the polyphonic nature o f polyphony i t s e l f and too of­ ten endorses some monologic slice o f an idea that is then allowed to regiment and dictate the whole. The polyphonic principle should not be viewed as simply one more method for analyzing artistic practices, Gure­ vich concludes. "Dialogue, polyphonism are passwords to a new cultural paradigm—which, with difficulty and through all the sluggishness, monologism, and torments o f communication, is cutting itself a path" (31). This sense o f dialogue's great difficulty, the enormous pressure and precision required to carry i t out honestly, is a useful preface to any reha­ bilitation o f Bakhtin's central concept. For the Conceptualists are wrong about Bakhtin and words. Although Bakhtin was certainly pro-language— he was, after all, a philosopher o f language, that was the subject o f his research—he did not share any o f the transfigurational attitudes toward the word endorsed by Symbolists, avant-garde Futurists, and later by the state-sponsored Socialist Realists. He did not believe that one could sub­ due nature through words; he was no proponent o f the theosophist doc­ trine that "naming could control the unknown" or that knowledge o f the sign permits one to manipulate reality. The sentiments underlying Andrei Bely's essay "The Magic o f Words," with its invocation o f a zvukovaia taina or a "secret to the very sound o f things," were wholly foreign to Bakhtin. Accordingly, he steered clear o f the theurgist, incantational, mystagogical, and occult theories o f language so i n vogue during his 32

3 2

P. S. G u r e v i c h , " K 1 0 0 - l e t i i u so dnia r o z h d e n i i a M . M . B a k h t i n a : M u k i dialoga," i n

Filosofskie Earth

nauki,

nos. 4 - 6 ( 1 9 9 4 ) : 1 5 - 3 1 . T h e scholars discussed are R . L . C o x

and Heaven:

Shakespeare,

B e l k n a p , The Structure Genre: Dostoevsky's

"Diary of a Writer" and

the Meaning

of "The Brothers Karamazov"',

Dostoevsky: The Tears of Ordeal, toevsky: Deliriums

Dostoevsky, and

Nocturnes.

Tragedy;

{Between Robert

G a r y S a u l M o r s o n , The Boundaries

and the Traditions

1850-1859;

of Christian

of Literary

Utopia;

a n d R o b e r t L o u i s J a c k s o n , The Art

F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

of

Joseph Frank, of Dos­

150

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THREE

youth. A n d o f course he had scant sympathy for the Symbolist and Futur­ ist concept o f time as millenarian, where empirical speech matters less than hieratic speech prophecy I n sum, for a Russian literary critic, Bakh­ tin was remarkably phlegmatic about the ability o f literary consciousness to transform the world. His / 0 ^ - c e n t r i s m , such as i t was, differed pro­ foundly from that o f his contemporaries. He was ambitious for the word in another way Let us suspend our reservations about Bakhtin's reading o f Dostoevsky, then, and consider an attempt to examine this "new cultural paradigm" at its root, i n one scholar's reconstruction o f Bakhtin's original context. Some o f the harsher objections to its later applications in literature might be mitigated or appear i n more sympathetic light. I n an essay published in the 1991 volume M. M. Bakhtin and Philosophical Culture of the Twentieth Century, Boris Egorov relates dialogism to the revolution i n scientific thought preceding and following the Great War. During that decade, he reminds us, the positivism, linearity, and "singularity" o f nine­ teenth-century thinking across a wide number o f fields (philosophy, polit­ ical economy, biology, and the natural sciences) gave way to new "plural­ ist" and multi-perspectival models, inspired by Einsteinian thought (15). The more strictly scientific fields made this transition with remarkable speed—and, Egorov notes, Bakhtin was determined that literary con­ sciousness not fall behind. The young, intellectually precocious Bakhtin was passionate about a global coordination o f paradigm shifts; a human­ ist, he poorly concealed his competition with the exact sciences. (This being so, Egorov finds rather odd the "hostile coldness" on Bakhtin's part toward the Russian Formalists, themselves self-proclaimed scientists and specifiers, and, i n turn, that group's "total indifference to the appear­ ance o f Bakhtin's book on Dostoevsky" [ 1 6 ] . The indifference could eas­ ily be explained, however, by the fact that the Formalists—such as re­ mained o f them by 1929—were i n no position to take a stand for anyone, least o f all a fellow scholar already under arrest.) 33

Bakhtin's determination to connect the principles underlying modern physics with the principles animating human culture reflected the maxi­ malist, unifying aspirations o f Russian thought i n general, to which Bakh­ tin was in no sense immune. (Here Egorov would sympathize with Gachev's suggestion that Bakhtin was more under the influence o f Soviet-style transfiguration fantasies than i t at first appears.) Such ambitions are al­ ways alluring and always dangerous, Egorov remarks. For natural science is obliged to reckon neither with memory nor faith—and i n any event cannot afford to legitimate itself through such factors—whereas human 3 3

MMB

B . F . E g o r o v , " D i a l o g i z m M . M . B a k h t i n a n a fone n a u c h n o i mysli 1 9 2 0 - k h godov," i n ifil

kul XX,

1 (91),

7-16.

F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

POLYPHONY, DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

151

culture (and especially culture as understood i n the religious circles that Bakhtin frequented throughout the 1920s) cannot afford to ignore them. Such postulates as "universal relativity, dialogic ambivalence, the insta­ bility or transitoriness o f all sensations and concepts," i f moved mechan­ ically from science into the humanities, could result i n a destruction o f "the very bases o f human culture: the durability o f traditions, ethical commandments and prohibitions, and other so-called eternal categories" (15). Principles o f relativity and ambivalence function differently among human beings than among particles o f the universe. During a scientific revolution o f such magnitude, only religious faith, with its a priori ideals and monologic dogma, "could offer a substantial counterweight to all the varieties o f subjectivism and relativism" that would otherwise spin out o f control. Bakhtin, a believer, presumed this counterweight to be i n place. Religious consciousness would provide the proper discipline for dialogic relations occurring under the newly "relativized" conditions. But as So­ viet history unfolded, cultural professionals i n Bolshevik Russia (begin­ ning with the atheistic Formalists) were increasingly incapable o f preserv­ ing, and soon even o f perceiving, this anchor o f Bakhtin's thought. H o w might Egorov's reminder help us to modify the severe judgment that Natalia Reed and others have passed on Bakhtin's polyphonic image o f Dostoevsky? Perhaps Reed is unjust when she detects only solipsism (and thus, presumably, a personality's craven desire to escape into silence or to safety) i n Bakhtin's readings o f those Dostoevskian heroes who appear to internalize dialogues instantly and dispense with real others. Such a reflex is no passage to safety and certainly no route to be con­ sciously preferred. For "persons o f the idea," the inner self is never an escape. I t is a trap. Real others, i f the afflicted hero can find them and hold on to them, are the escape. After all, Raskolnikov—plagued with "universal relativity," "dialogic ambivalence," the "transitoriness o f con­ cepts," all the latest legal, scientific, and atheistic ideas—manages to rid himself rather easily o f his immediate interlocutors (the pawnbroker, his best and most loyal friend Razumikhin, his devoted mother and sister); those are the people who could have offered him his only relief by tying him to the miracle o f real interactive life. Having thrown them over, he is at last free to experience the most excruciating torments o f dialogue— precisely when left alone with himself. (Only Sonya, note, will not be put off by his cruelty, and at times Raskolnikov hates her for it. His own family loves him i n much too normal a way to endure such treatment; his mother goes mad, and up until the very end his sister is i n anguish, seek­ ing "reasons.") Without a doubt, the lonely microdialogue that plagues Raskolnikov is not answerable or responsible. I t does not give real others the chance to intervene, talk back, offer help, pass condemnatory or mer­ ciful judgment, finalize an image. But the point to emphasize, i t would

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seem, is that obsessively inner dialogue—although a very bad habit—is not a coward's way out. The exclusive innerness o f dialogue does not alleviate a life situation, enrich a consciousness, or make one more cre­ ative. I t is a disaster. Raskolnikov knows this. And surely to demonstrate just how disastrous this reflex is, be i t vol­ untary or not, is part o f Dostoevsky's larger purpose. So Linetsky is wrong, I believe, when he suggests that Bakhtin does not appreciate or­ dinary dialogue, dialogue " i n the traditional sense o f the term." There is every indication that Bakhtin follows Dostoevsky closely i n his reverence for such crystalline moments, which are awarded to innocent children, to beloved elders, and to the state o f prayer. (Just such a dialogic moment descends on Raskolnikov when, after Marmeladov's death, he asks Sonya's stepsister Polina to love him and pray for "thy servant Rodion.") But i f the hero o f a novel functions not as a character acting out an uncomplicated plot function but as an idea-person [ideia-chelovek, a "per­ son born o f the idea" ]—that is, i f a person is run by living concepts rather than by biology, a detective plot, or grace—then such ordinary, declamatory, preciously wonderful dialogues are extremely difficult to conduct. Such is the natural logic, or pressure, o f polyphonic design. Sonya Marmeladova, almost wholly silent and rarely i n control o f her words, stands on the threshold between inner and outer acts. By contem­ plating her iconic image, Raskolnikov is driven forcibly over that thresh­ old back into real-life communication (to confession and public trial)— not out o f guilt, for he avoids acknowledging his guilt, but out o f weari­ ness and loneliness, for that reconciling step is the only relief possible from the cacophony o f unfinalized inner dialogue. 34

This "microdialogue w i t h i n " is a torment. But i t must be said, lest i t look like easy salvation is just around the corner, that macrodialogue i n the outer world—while more open to change and offering (as Porfiry Petrovich assures Raskolnikov) "more fresh air"—need not, by any means, be truth seeking or consolatory. Read Bakhtin carefully, and you will see that nowhere does he suggest that dialogue between real people necessarily brings truth, beauty, happiness, or honesty. I t brings only concretization (and even that is temporary), and the possibility o f change, o f some forward movement. Under optimal conditions, dialogue provides 3 4

See PDP,

c h . 3 , " T h e I d e a i n Dostoevsky": " I t is n o t the idea i n itself that is the 'hero

o f Dostoevsky's w o r k s , ' as E n g e l h a r d t has c l a i m e d , b u t rather the person born of that

idea.

I t again m u s t be e m p h a s i z e d that the h e r o i n D o s t o e v s k y is a p e r s o n o f the idea: this is n o t a character, n o t a t e m p e r a m e n t , n o t a social o r psychological type; s u c h externalized a n d finalized

images o f persons c a n n o t o f course be c o m b i n e d w i t h the image o f a fully

valid

idea. I t w o u l d be a b s u r d , for example, even to attempt to c o m b i n e ELaskolnikov's idea, w h i c h w e u n d e r s t a n d a n d feel ( a c c o r d i n g to D o s t o e v s k y an idea c a n a n d m u s t n o t only be u n d e r s t o o d , but also "felt") w i t h his finalized character" ( 8 5 ) .

POLYPHONY, DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

153

options. But there can still be mutual deception, mountains o f lies ex­ changed, pressing desires unanswered or unregistered, gratuitous cruelty administered on terrain to which only the intimate beloved has access. By having a real other respond to me, I am spared one thing only: the worst cumulative effects o f my own echo chamber o f words. This being the case, one could argue that Kariakin, too, is only partially correct when he regrets the absence o f a "finger pointing toward the truth" i n Bakhtin's polyphony. For an ethical trajectory could be seen as inherent from the start i n this spiraling alternation between "polyphonic" internalization o f dialogue and then escape from its unbearable torments. Moral growth might even be inevitable i n novels o f the sort Dostoevsky designed, where the chief crime is not murder, not even psychic cruelty, but the drive for excessive autonomy and the human failing that fuels this drive, which is spiritual pride. I f I proudly internalize all dialogue so as "not to depend" on another's personality or body or service or idea—I will never be alone or at peace again. Inner dialogue will give me no rest: again, not because I feel guilty, repentant, or even interested i n another person's point of view (Raskolnikov was none o f those things, even at the end) but because only concrete external others, i n responding to me, can check the monstrous growth o f my own view o f things. Only the other can finalize my thoughts long enough for me to get outside them, assess them soberly, and thus stand a chance to tame or modify them. Since no major Dostoevskian personality can survive a state o f hyperactive inner dialogue for long, either suicide or some form o f religious conversion out of that solitary vortex is unavoidable. I n sum, critics o f dialogism and polyphony are correct that Bakhtin underestimates (as Dostoevsky never does) the sheer viciousness o f the criminal imagination. True, Bakhtin was thoroughly familiar with bodily pain, not surprised by cruelty, and not offended by death. He can also be faulted, i t seems, for a lack o f interest i n the negative emotions and venial sins that, for many readers, constitute the core attraction o f Dostoevsky's plots: lechery, lying, jealousy, greed, violence. To Gasparov's complaint that Bakhtin is too quick to encourage us to "expropriate others' words" and turn them to our own selfish use, Bakhtin would nod sadly i n agree­ ment: indeed, there is no reason why this process o f appropriation need be virtuous, happy, healthy, or just—but i t is universal. Although unim­ pressed by many o f the stimulants natural to novels, about the inescapability o f dialogue and the cost that dialogue exacts, Bakhtin is not naive. What are those costs, the risks and routine torments o f dialogue? To answer this question, we should leave the specifics o f Dostoevsky's crisisridden texts behind, for Bakhtin—as provocative as he is on that novel­ ist—did not find i n him an entirely conducive vehicle for his most pre-

154

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cious ideas. Dialogue is a risk precisely because i t is so ordinary, prosaic, undramatic. We risk dialogue whenever we take on a responsible, but provisional, commitment—which is continually. A n d here we might ex­ pand on one aspect o f Egorov's hypothesis that Bakhtin, an admirer o f those breakthroughs i n physics that revolutionized science during his ad­ olescent years, should be aligned with the physical scientists rather than the metaphysical Symbolists. A t issue is the concept o f relativity. I t is important not to confuse relativity with relativism i n disputes over the virtues o f dialogue, for the two words are not at all the same. Pre­ cisely because we live i n a universe governed by relativity, relativism, as a working principle for ethics, is so undesirable and dangerous. ( I t is o f some interest that Bakhtin's best friend and closest intellectual mentor, Matvei Kagan, a gifted mathematician and student o f neo-Kantian phi­ losophy in Berlin during the First World War, was apparently sought after in Berlin as a secretary by both Paul Natorp and Albert Einstein. The theory o f relativity was not perceived as incompatible with the teachings o f transcendental idealism.) Sensing the confusion between relativity and relativism still operative after forty years, Bakhtin added this sentence to his revised Dostoevsky book, almost as an afterthought: "We see no special need to point out that the polyphonic approach has nothing i n common with relativism (or with dogmatism)" (PDP, 69). 35

Why was i t important to Bakhtin that polyphony not be seen as relativistic? Because, we might suggest: I f there existed a single unitary stan­ dard by which all acts could be judged, i t would be easy to chart the moral (or immoral) life. But since there is no such single standard, every individual consciousness must define for itself local constraints; i t must pass its own judgment, take a stand even when blinkered, seek out and defend the truth as he or she sees i t . Much more inner discipline and 36

3 5

I n the early 1 9 9 0 s B r i a n P o o l e , n o w at the U n i v e r s i t y o f B e r l i n , w o r k e d several years

w i t h the K a g a n family i n M o s c o w ( M a t v e i Isaevich's w i d o w a n d daughter I u d i t M a t v e e v n a ) , h e l p i n g to prepare the r i c h K a g a n archive for p u b l i c a t i o n a n d researching B a k h t i n ' s h u g e , lost Bildungsroman

project. Unfortunately, little o f Poole's

superb, meticulously

scholarly w o r k is yet i n print i n any language, a l t h o u g h he is a c o n t r i b u t i n g editor to the Collected

Works of Bakhtin

a n d u n d e r contract to translate into E n g l i s h the B a k h t i n -

D u v a k i n interviews. I d r a w here o n his " R o i ' M . I . K a g a n a v stanovlenii filosofii M . M . B a k h t i n a (ot G e r m a n a K o g e n a k M a k s u S h e l e r u ) , " B sb III 97, 1 6 2 - 8 1 , esp. 1 7 6 , a n d later o n personal correspondence. 3 6

Sergei B o c h a r o v ' s irritation at the B a k h t i n industry a n d its proliferation o f schools a n d

rules is based o n just this c o n v i c t i o n about his mentor. A s he p u t it i n his N o v e m b e r

1995

centennial remarks at the M o s c o w D o s t o e v s k y M u s e u m : " I t seems to m e that the credo o f B a k h t i n ' s o w n m o r a l p h i l o s o p h y is c o n t a i n e d i n this proposition: that 'oughtness' is n o t m o r a l but singular. W h a t does that mean? I t means that 'oughtness' is m i n e , i.e., singular. A n o t h e r person has another 'oughtness,' i.e., w e always act a n d m u s t act at o u r o w n peril a n d risk, a n d n o t a c c o r d i n g to s o m e general r u l e — o f course c h e c k i n g o u t an overall general n o r m or code b u t each time interpreting it i n one's o w n way." Pan'kov, " B a k h t i n n a fone D o s t o e v s k o g o , " DKKh,

no. 2 (96),

132.

POLYPHONY,

DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

155

active articulation is required i n an Einsteinian universe than i n the more stable, straightforwardly anchored models o f the cosmos that preceded it. Once completed, each loop connecting one person to another i n a spe­ cific time and space takes on nonnegotiable importance—because each o f these loops is in principle negotiable; i n a world where no single God or "god-term" binds events together, i t is even more true that from each particularized vantage point "all is not permitted" and every side is not equally valid. ( H o w unpersuasive is Ivan Karamazov's remark: " I f God is dead, then all is permitted." O n the contrary, because God might well be dead, for that very reason all is not, and cannot be, permitted. N o w I must decide for myself what to forbid and what to permit, and the bur­ den o f a discriminating personal decision weighs much more heavily than any penalty for disobedience to a known law.) I n "Toward a Philosophy o f the Act," Bakhtin sketches such an individualized cosmos i n this way: "Rays o f light, as i t were, fan out from my unique singularity, which, passing through time, confirm the human way o f history." We sense i n such a passage Bakhtin's trademark preference for stating his truths i n a major key. But a confirmation o f the human way that relies on nothing more grand or authoritative than my own singular, tiny, local dialogic gestures, which may or may not be registered and elicit a response, re­ quires a great deal o f tolerance and patient work. 37

Bakhtin's notion o f architectonics (the "non-alibi i n existence") and later the ground rules he lays down for dialogue are predicated on just this reality. Individuation is impossible to avoid. Dialogue (both inner and outer) is extremely difficult, prone to distortion, but probably inesca­ pable. Despite these handicaps, however, individuals must be able to de­ fend each act they commit and each judgment they pass. To make any o f it succeed even minimally, the world requires trust—and because Bakhtin appears to presume the existence o f that trust, his "cleansing" o f Dos­ toevsky has come under special suspicion. Bakhtin is faulted as evasive, naive, complacent toward evil. The charge is all the easier to sustain be­ cause Bakhtin is not an especially astute visual witness; he does not dwell on the palpable results o f evil deeds and is not one to stumble over a dead body i n the middle o f the road. Perhaps because his methodology does not seek to "see" deeds—in the way that a Structuralist seeks to plot data on a field, with all the effects pinned into place—but rather concentrates on auditory points o f exchange, on the words and intona­ tions accompanying or describing these deeds, he is more inclined to presume negotiability, detect a double-voicedness, grant a second chance. What Bakhtin's ethical system will not tolerate, however, is relativism,

3 7

" T o w a r d a P h i l o s o p h y o f the A c t , " 6 0 ( L i a p u n o v translation adjusted). See also the

i n t r o d u c t i o n i n G a r y S a u l M o r s o n a n d C a r y l E m e r s o n , Rethinking Challenges

Bakhtin:

( E v a n s t o n , 111.: N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 9 ) , 2 4 ,

9-10.

Extensions

and

156

C H A P T E R T H R E E

when that principle is invoked to release us from the obligation to evalu­ ate and commit. Polyphony, I suggest, is Bakhtin's metaphor for the i n ­ creased burden dialogue must bear i n an Age o f Relativity. Let us now sum up the fate o f polyphony. Bakhtin was fascinated with scientistic models and—we are told—sought to establish a moral philos­ ophy rigorous enough to rival the Germans. He had come to maturity i n an era fascinated by numerical manipulation and classification: series, sets, groups, the emergence o f sociology as a profession. Numbers lent them­ selves to grids and structures. A n d much like Wittgenstein at a slightly later time, Bakhtin was concerned to preserve the principle o f relationalism without endorsing systematic structuralism (and why indeed should relationships, to be valid, organize themselves into a system?). Still, as the most thoughtful Bakhtin scholars now acknowledge, a pure and un­ alloyed polyphony challenges not just systematic thought but also the very integrity o f the personalities it pulls i n . Bakhtin himself returned to the ambiguities o f the method a half-century after he had coined the concept, in this note: "The peculiarities o f polyphony. The lack o f finalization o f the polyphonic dialogue . . . These dialogues are conducted by unfinalized individual personalities and not by psychological subjects. The somewhat unembodied quality o f these personalities (disinterested surplus)." Disinterested, perhaps even "somewhat unembodied," these "unfinalized individual personalities" who engage i n polyphonic dialogue constitute a wondrous population: secure, raised on the virtues, free o f embarassing dependencies. I t is not easy to see ourselves in it. A n d from 38

39

3 8

and

R u s s i a n philosophers have t h o r o u g h l y explored the shortcomings o f the dialogic m o d e l the danger o f taking B a k h t i n ' s ideal o f p o l y p h o n y too literally. A s L i u d m i l a G o g o -

tishvili paraphrased the familiar complaint i n her 1 9 9 2 essay o n the p r o b l e m o f Bakhtin's "evaluative relativism": " I f speech belongs i n t u r n first to m e , t h e n to the other, then to us, t h e n to some third, and there is n o superior possessor o f m e a n i n g w h o might cap this u n c o o r d i n a t e d c l a m o r o f voices w i t h its o w n centralizing w o r d , then it follows that the m e a n i n g o f speech i n Bakhtin's scheme o f things loses all its objective features. I f there is n o direct w o r d , that is, n o w o r d issuing forth f r o m a stable T

or 'we' and confidently

addressed to its object, it means that linguistic form cannot have any truth-significance at all. A s a matter o f principle, s u c h a w o r d c a n n o t contain in itself the truth o f the w o r l d " ( 1 4 5 ) . I n her attempt to answer this o b j e c t i o n , G o g o t i s h v i l i points to the o l d error o f a s s u m i n g that people are like things, that they c a n attach themselves to values w i t h n o w o r k or risk, a n d that a truth need be singular or eternal. Absolute

polyphony, she admits, is

impossible ( 1 5 2 ) . N o r is it desirable: the author's center m u s t remain the clearing house. But

p o l y p h o n i c aspirations are not for that reason fraudulent, reductive, or self-serving.

P o l y p h o n y is a generator. I t generates boundaries, w h i c h are required to keep individual voices vulnerable a n d distinct from one another. F o r "the absence o f a unified a n d singular direct w o r d . . . is w h a t protects the c u l t u r e d w o r d from barbarism" ( 1 7 2 ) . See L . A . G o g o t i s h v i l i , "Filosofiia iazyka M . M . B a k h t i n a i p r o b l e m a tsennostnogo reliativizma," i n MMB 3 9

kak

filosof92,

142-74.

" F r o m N o t e s M a d e in 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " SpG,

151.

POLYPHONY, DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

157

our outsiderly perspective, therefore, we must confirm that as a reader o f literary and real-life scenes there are certain things Bakhtin cannot do. First, as a rule, Bakhtin does not do beginnings and ends. He only does middles. Wholly committed to process and to the dynamics o f re­ sponse, Bakhtin concerns himself very little with how something starts (a personality, a responsibility) or how i t might be brought to an effective, well-shaped end. This neglect o f genesis and overall indifference to clo­ sure left a profound trace on his thought, imparting to his literary read­ ings their strange, aerated, often fragmentary character. The passion for the ongoing middle o f a text also separates him profoundly from his subject Dostoevsky, perhaps the nineteenth century's greatest prose poet o f original sin, Revelation, and Apocalypse. Second, Bakhtin cannot hear a fully self-confident monologue any­ where. As he matured, he became increasingly adamant on this point. I n his view, even language deliberately employed "monologically"—in ulti­ matums, categorical farewells, suicide notes, military commands—in fact wants to be answered; i t wants to be taken as only the penultimate word, and the person who utters such bits o f monologic speech is always hop­ ing that the person who hears i t will care enough (against all odds and linguistic cues) to answer back. Within such heightened fields o f expecta­ tion, a failure to respond is itself a response, giving rise to its own fully voiced anguish. As long as we are alive, we have no right to pull out on another person who addresses us i n need—and no right, apparently, to be left alone. N o single moment is ever wholly authoritative or closed for Bakhtin. Even dying, i t turns out, is no guarantee o f an escape from dialogue. 40

I n some jottings on "Dostoevsky's quests" written i n his working notebooks near the end o f his life, Bakhtin included this enigmatic little sequence: "The word as something personal. Christ as truth. I ask h i m . " Later i n the same passage, Bakhtin remarks without elaboration: "The juxtaposition o f truth and Christ in Dostoevsky" (150). Reference here is to the letter that Dostoevsky wrote from his Siberian exile to Madame Fonvizina i n March 1854, with its famous remark that " i f anyone could 41

4 0

W i t h o u t a d o u b t , beginnings a n d ends fascinated the novelist. T o be fascinated does

n o t m e a n to u n d e r s t a n d their causes, however. See, for example, these lines f r o m D o s ­ toevsky's essay " T w o Suicides": "We k n o w only the daily flow o f the things w e see, a n d this only o n the surface; b u t the ends a n d the beginnings are things that, for h u m a n beings, still lie i n the realm o f the fantastic" ( O c t o b e r 1 9 7 6 entry i n F y o d o r Dostoevsky, A Diary,

Writer's

trans. K e n n e t h L a n t z , v o l . 1 [ E v a n s t o n , 111.: N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 3 ] ,

6 5 1 ) . A l t h o u g h B a k h t i n r e m a r k e d o n several occasions that faith i n a "miracle" [chudo]

was

b o t h necessary a n d proper i n life, he was far less w i l l i n g than D o s t o e v s k y to theorize about "fantastical" o r mystical material. 4 1

" F r o m N o t e s M a d e i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " i n SpG, 1 4 8 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

158

CHAPTER

THREE

prove to me that Christ is outside the truth and i f the truth really did exclude Christ, then I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with the truth." H o w might Bakhtin have expanded on this juxtaposition? He would argue, I think, that Christ had come to seem "more true" to Dos­ toevsky largely because, by that time i n his life, Dostoevsky had put i n so much energy trying to understand H i m , had received so many varied "answers" within himself, had returned so often to the same beloved set o f parables and pondered them so deeply, that i t no longer mattered what issues had been resolved or concretely "proven" by the image and example o f Christ. For what matters ultimately to human beings and what generates value i n our lives rests on two factors: first, where we turn for help, and then, the time put in. Thus I should not ask such questions as "Who am I?"—an essentialist paradox that admits o f no answer—but rather, " H o w much time do I have to become something else?" The choice to spend time with another personality and to take its approach to the world seriously is itself the core and substance o f truth. 42

43

From this we might conclude that Bakhtin appreciated truth and reli­ gious faith i n his own somewhat secular, thoroughly dialogized way. He was, to be sure, a believer, active i n the underground Russian Orthodox Church; i n the 1920s he lectured on Kant and religion; his thought was never atheistic. But i f we take his corpus o f writings as a whole, Bakhtin seems to be saying: What I need to remain spiritually alive, what anyone needs, is not necessarily faith i n God. What I need and cannot do with­ out is the faith that someone else has faith i n me. This, surely, is what Georgii Gachev had i n mind when he opened his irreverent memoir on the master with the following observation: that while Bakhtin, i n the "prayer hall" and "cultural church" o f his nocturnal seminars, shared some traits with the proselytizing Baptists, there was "not much Russian Orthodox Christianity i n his religiosity": " N o t God but one's neighbor, that was his accent: 'Where two (dialogue!—G. G.) have gathered i n M y name, there am I also among you': love your neighbor and you realize God . . . I n Bakhtin's understanding o f sobovnosf [spiritual community],

42

Letters

of Fyodor Michailovich

Dostoevsky to His Family

and

Friends,

trans. E t h e l C o l -

burn Mayne ( N e w York: Macmillan, n.d.), 71. 4 3

I n a 1 9 9 5 m e m o i r Sergei B o c h a r o v recalls that B a k h t i n was i n the habit o f dividing

" t r u t h , " pravda,

into t w o parts: there was the "truth-miracle" (pravda-chudo),

w h i c h was

always u n e x p e c t e d a n d u n p r e p a r e d for, a n d t h e n there was the debased category o f "truth as force" (pravda-sila),

"totalitarian t r u t h . " B o c h a r o v recalls that very m u c h i n this C h r i s -

tological spirit B a k h t i n h a d often r e m a r k e d that "truth a n d force were i n c o m p a t i b l e " a n d that t r u t h therefore c o u l d never c o n q u e r o r t r i u m p h . I f present at all, it w o u l d always be i n a subordinated a n d h u m b l e d guise. See Sergei B o c h a r o v , "Sobytie bytiia: O M i k h a i l e M i k hailoviche B a k h t i n e , " i n Novyi

mir, n o . 11 ( 1 9 9 5 ) : 2 1 1 - 2 1 , esp. 2 1 3 , 2 1 5 .

POLYPHONY,

DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

159

everyone gazes not upward, toward heaven, nor forward, at the priest or the altar, but at one another, realizing the kenosis o f God, on the low horizontal level that is our o w n . " Such sectarian and communitarian emphases were not uncommon among Russian nineteenth-century novelists and might well have inter­ ested Bakhtin himself. But many readers feel uncomfortable—and prop­ erly so—when such a diluted notion o f the Christian faith is applied to Dostoevsky. As Gachev notes, in Bakhtin's cosmos "there is no Creation as a given, for the world is created each time—in communication, in an encounter, in our efforts to listen to each other . . . I n this sense Bakhtin is an anti-Hellene and anti-Platonist" (107). This overwhelming prefer­ ence on Bakhtin's part for Creation-in-process must temper our reading o f his book on Dostoevsky. The cautionary note sounded above prompts us to a third and final area where Bakhtin cannot be expected to perform. Somewhat like Dos­ toevsky's Idiot Prince Myshkin—and very unlike Dostoevsky himself— Bakhtin was temperamentally unfit for polemics. He would not condemn or exclude. All memoir accounts o f Bakhtin emphasize this aspect o f his mature personality: whether because o f tolerance, languor, aristocratic disdain, commitment to dialogue, carnival optimism, Christian meekness, or simply fatigue, chronic illness, and pain—there was, as one Jubilee memoirist put i t , a sort o f "lightness," kgkost\ to Bakhtin's person that made it absolutely impossible for him to take a firm or final stand on a question, to impose rigid constraints, or to endorse any form o f violence. This "lightness" has proved a serious obstacle to politicizing his thought. I t shaped his understanding o f dialogue in Dostoevsky as well. 44

45

Let us close this chapter not on a polemical "response to criticism" i n Bakhtin's own voice (such a response was never forthcoming) but on a juxtaposition o f worldviews at, as i t were, one critical remove. The parties involved—one anti-Bakhtinian and one Bakhtinian—are o f equally long and dignified standing. The dispute between them has larger implications for literary study than the eccentric, rather too crisis-ridden tableaus o f the Conceptualists might suggest. Speaking for the opposition is Mikhail Gasparov, a leitmotif o f the present study, who was already doing battle with the cult i n the late 1970s, lamenting Bakhtin's miserable written record o f hostility to poetry and challenging the popular comic nihilism

4 4

See G e o r g i i G a c h e v , " B a k h t i n , " i n Russkaia

duma:

Portrety

russkikh

myslitelei

(Mos­

cow: N o v o s t i , 1 9 9 1 ) , 1 0 5 - 1 8 , esp. 1 0 5 , 1 0 6 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text. 4 5

Sergei Averintsev, " V stikhii 'bol'shogo v r e m e n i , ' " Litemturnaia

N o v e m b e r 1 9 9 5 ) : 6.

gazeta,

no. 4 5

(15

160

CHAPTER

THREE

o f carnival. As we have seen, one o f his recurring targets is the aggres­ sive, self-assertive Bakhtinian reader, whom Gasparov considers an unduly privileged product o f a dialogic approach to the world. I n a 1994 article reviving the debate entided "Criticism as an End in Itself," Gasparov, w i t h his trademark bluntness and good humor, reiterated his dismay. I n that essay, Gasparov laments current habits i n the academy that en­ courage too loose and undiscipined a "dialogism" vis-à-vis one's object o f study. Across a wide range o f disciplines, he remarks, the desire has taken hold to make everything "speak to me, and on my own terms." This reflex leads to other bad habits from the Bakhtinian arsenal: a ten­ dency to place too much value on prosy paraphrase or "internally persua­ sive discourse" (with its assumption that my own groping words are al­ ways worth more than any text I might memorize intact or wish to recite, unaltered, from someone else); the concomitant celebration o f a codefree world; and thus the careless application o f the word dialogue to what should be delicate tasks o f scholarly reconstruction. Gasparov associates the solipsistic tendencies o f post-Structuralist criticism with the assump­ tion (silently laid at Bakhtin's door) that dialogue between a reader and a text is easy, pleasant, and for the critic to define the terms. Such critics proceed "from the assumption that i f I am reading a poem, then i t was written for me." But every step o f my life, Gasparov writes, persuades me that 46

47

nothing has been created or adapted for me in this world. . . . philology is in the service of communication. This communication is very difficult. I con­ sider unjustifiably optimistic the current metaphor which says that between a reader and a work of art (or between anything at all in the world) a dialogue is taking place. Even when living people converse, we often hear not a dia­ logue but two chopped-up monologues. As the dialogue proceeds, each side constructs an image of the other that is convenient for it. One could talk with a stone with equal success and imagine the stone's answers to one's questions. Few people talk to stones nowadays—at least publicly—but every energetic person talks with Baudelaire or Racine precisely as with a stone, and receives precisely the answers that he or she wants to hear. . . . When we read the ancient Conversations in the Kingdom of the Dead—between Caesar and Sviatoslav, between Horace and Kantemir—we smile. But when we our­ selves dream up a conversation with Pushkin or with Horace, we treat it 4 6

See M . L . Gasparov, " M . M . B a k h t i n in R u s s i a n C u l t u r e o f the T w e n t i e t h C e n t u r y , "

trans. A n n S h u k m a n , in Studies

in Twentieth-Century

Literature

its update by O P g a Sedakova in " D i a l o g i o B a k h t i n e , " Novyi

(Fall 1984): 1 6 9 - 7 6 , and krug,

n o . 1 (Kiev,

1992):

113-17. 4 7

M . L . Gasparov, " K r i t i k a kak samotseP," i n N L O , n o . 6 ( 1 9 9 3 - 9 4 ) : 6 - 9 . A translation

exists as " C r i t i c i s m as a G o a l in Itself," Russian Literary

Review)

3 1 , no. 4 (Fall 1995):

36-40.

Studies

in Literature

( A Sampling o f

New

POLYPHONY,

DIALOGISM, DOSTOEVSKY

161

(alas) seriously. We do not wish to admit to ourselves that the spiritual world of Pushkin is for us just as alien as the world of an ancient Assyrian or [Chekhov's] dog Kashtanka. Questions which are major for us did not exist for him, and vice versa. ( 8 - 9 )

Gasparov's critique o f lazy dialogue in the academy is wide-ranging. But his position has not gone unchallenged. I n a memoir that appeared late i n 1995, Sergei Bocharov, the most reliable o f that devoted group o f scholars who served the master i n his final decades, reviewed the case for Gasparov's "nonacceptance" o f Bakhtin. Responding to the essay "Crit­ icism as an End i n Itself," Bocharov remarked that the resistance to Bakhtinian method by Russia's most eminent poetician is based on a misreading. Gasparov despairs that we might ever enter into authentic dialogue with Pushkin or with Horace, Bocharov observes, because "Gas­ parov's position vis-à-vis a past culture (Horace or Pushkin or a scholarly book on Dostoevsky from the 1920s, it's all the same) is as if to a foreign language, which one must study as one does English or Chinese" (212). But Bakhtin was convinced that another's consciousness is not only a language. Once contact is made with i t , i t opens up i n ways that cannot be "learned" by any norm-driven grammar at our disposal. Indeed, the modernist move that reduces the world to linguistic paradigms was quite alien to Bakhtin, for w h o m language could never be reductive and con­ sciousness could never simply be "read." With all the humility i n the world, the "text" o f this consciousness cannot be recuperated or straight­ forwardly served—because i t does not exist as such before I approach i t . A dialogue o f cultures (or even a dialogue between you and me) will not yield up the lucid satisfactions o f a poem. 48

Dialogism uses language, but the "first philosophy" that underlies i t is not (in the usual sense o f the term) linguistic. I t relies on an interactive logic that strains words to the limit—encouraging them to take on into­ nation, flesh, the contours o f an entire worldview. The carnival world, i t has been argued, is even more interactive—and the role allotted to words in that world far more problematic. I t has an even longer, more distin­ guished record o f fanciful application and creative abuse. We will now sample that debate. 4 8

B o c h a r o v , "Sobytie bytiia: O M i k h a i l e M i k h a i l o v i c h e B a k h t i n e " (see n . 4 3

Q u o t a t i o n occurs o n page 2 1 2 .

above).

CHAPTER 4

Carnival: Open-ended Bodies and Anachronistic Histories

" M . B A K H T I N possessed a genuinely philosophical gift for broadening out problems." W i t h this sentence, E. Yu. Savinova opens her 1 9 9 1 essay entitled "Carnivalization and the Wholeness o f Culture"—and as evi­ dence o f this breadth, she brings forward the fact that Bakhtin's "research into the writings o f Rabelais resulted i n the discovery o f a completely new layer o f culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which, in turn, altered the entire picture o f the development o f human culture." Sav­ inova overstates, but in spirit she is correct. O f all Bakhtin's ideas, "the problem o f carnival" has proved the broadest, most appealing, most ac­ cessible, and most readily translated into cultures and times distant from its original inspiration. 1

This ready translatability has been both a handicap and a boon. The handicaps are o f the same variety that Mikhail Gasparov held against Bakhtinian dialogue: facile analogies, indiscriminately "open" documen­ tation, overgeneralization, a dismissal o f history, potential abuse o f power by the critic. But the boons brought to the academy by Bakhtin's carnival have also been very real. Three years after the Rabelais book was pub­ lished, an enthusiastic review article by a Soviet sinologist appeared i n the professional journal Narody Azii i Afriki [Peoples o f Asia and Africa] entitled, simply, "Reading Bakhtin." The body o f the article is devoted to the role played i n Chinese culture by holidays, festive processions, and folk wisdom i n anecdotes about Confucius. Its author credits Bakhtin for providing her with the scholarly precedent. Such irreverent celebratory rituals are underresearched i n a field like sinology, she notes, which has been dominated for so long by the study o f powerful, serious, duty-laden religions. Reading Bakhtin's book on a French writer opened up rich possibilities for her study o f China; in fact, she writes, "The 'popular laughing carnival culture' he discovered makes available a new, fruitful elaboration o f the two-cultures problem i n every national culture" ( 1 0 6 ) . Like Freud's fantasy o f a single family romance that unfolds in each hu2

1

E . Y u . Savinova, "Karnavalizatsiia i tselostnost' kuPtury," i n MME

i fil kul XX,

1

(91),

6 1 - 6 6 , esp. 6 1 . 2

L . D . P o z d n e e v a , " C h i t a i a M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Narody

1 0 6 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

Azii

i Afriki,

no. 2 (1968):

94-

CARNIVAL

163

man psyche without exception, Bakhtin's carnival idea has the thrill o f a cultural and biological universal. As a communication model, carnival dynamics has much to recom­ mend it. The suspension o f everyday anxieties during "holiday time" and "carnival space"—the specific locus being the vulnerable, yet superbly shame-free, grotesque body—rids both me and my most proximate neighbor o f the excessive self-consciousness that keeps both o f us lonely, our words insipid, and our outreaching gestures timid. (Remarkably, Bakhtin—a chain smoker and tea addict—attends almost not at all to the chemical side o f carnival, that is, to intoxication, addiction, and drunken­ ness, although any practical understanding o f holiday bawdiness or vul­ garity is unthinkable without i t . ) For the carnival self is not a wholly conscious entity. Its ideal is the open-ended irregular body, which has no need for visions o f symmetrical beauty, feats o f self-discipline, or acts o f genuine intimacy. I f the products o f the mind (words, verbal dialogue, polyphonic maneuvers) are fastidiously individualizing and take a great deal o f work to get right, then an imperfect body, by contrast, is some­ thing each o f us possesses by definition—indeed, almost by default. However we age, we will, in the natural order o f things, have more o f such a body, not less. To affirm i t , therefore, requires no special effort; i n fact, to affirm i t is an enormous relief. 3

I t follows that entry into the world and worldview o f carnival costs ridiculously little. Even without any special accent on the grotesque, we would all probably agree that much o f our basic physiology—what Bakh­ tin calls the "lower bodily stratum"—is identical, involuntary, nonnegotiable. Its processes and appetites can thus be said to constitute (in a metaphor popular with postmodern critics) a common "language," na­ tive to all humans. A n d yet, as Bakhtin describes i t i n his Rabelais, the common language o f bodies is o f a certain highly convenient sort. 3

O n this issue see M a r t y R o t h , " C a r n i v a l , Creativity, a n d the S u b l i m a t i o n o f D r u n k e n ­

ness," i n Mosaic

30, no. 2 (June 1997): 1 - 1 8

( U n i v e r s i t y o f M a n i t o b a Press). O n the

mystique o f a g o o d cigarette for B a k h t i n , see G a l i n a P o n o m a r e v a ' s remark that the first question B a k h t i n asked her d u r i n g their initial m e e t i n g was w h e t h e r she s m o k e d . A n s w e r ­ i n g i n the negative, she relates, "at that m o m e n t I discovered h o w important it was for h i m — I w o u l d n ' t w a n t to say it was a sacred ritual, but still—this c o m m u n i o n w h i l e smok­ i n g , even i f at times a wordless c o m m u n i o n . " V i s i t o r s c o u l d easily "sniff their w a y " to the B a k h t i n s ' totally fumigated apartment i n Saransk a n d M o s c o w . See G . B . P o n o m a r e v a , " V y s k a z a n n o e i nevyskazannoe . . . ( V o s p o m i n a n i i a o M . M . B a k h t i n e ) , " i n DKKh, (95):

no. 3

5 9 - 7 7 , esp. 6 1 . C o n s i d e r also the (by n o w apocryphal) c o m m e n t B a k h t i n made to

one o f his undergraduate advisees i n Saransk, w h o "always saw h i m sitting at his desk . . . a n d uninterruptedly s m o k i n g : as s o o n as one cigarette was finished he immediately lit up another. A cup o f strong coffee. T o r s o m e it is harmful to s m o k e , ' [ B a k h t i n ] often said; 'for others it is necessary to s m o k e . ' " See Y u . D . R y s k i n , " M o i v o s p o m i n a n i i a o M . M . B a k h ­ tine," i n MMB

v zerk 95: 1 1 1 - 1 3 , esp. 1 1 2 .

164 C H A P T E R F O U R Whereas verbal languages must be learned, internalized, teased out o f the mind—and even then they can be easily "misspoke," at the level o f form as well as intent—the body (and even more, the grotesque body) cannot make a misstep or a mistake. I t is already out o f step; i n any case a faux pas would not be noticed or remembered. This body is inviting and available to all without discrimination. Its energy and materia] structures are displayed on the surface and turned toward the outside world i n a frank, friendly way. Such communal baseness, the vigor o f "le bas corporel," is the foundation o f Bakhtin's carnival logic. Fueled by denunciation and aggressive rhetoric but apparently tainted by neither, its laughter is i n equal parts defiant and rejuvenating. Since the grotesque body costs nothing to keep up, does not care i f i t wears out, has neither vanity nor fear o f pain, cannot be self-sufficient, and is always "a body i n the act o f becoming," i t is guaranteed triumph over classical form, institutional oppression, and individual death. 4

The optimism o f all this is dazzling. Grounded i n Rabelais but not limited to h i m , Bakhtin's concept o f the grotesque body at home within smekhovaia kuPtura, a "culture o f laughter," has proved irresistible. I t is sensed by all as potentially subversive and yet, unlike so many subversions elaborated by intellectuals, i t is not elitist (for we are working here— literally—with the lowest common human denominators). N o wonder, then, that carnival and its corollary values moved with astonishing speed to inspire Paris 1968, British postcolonial theory, Latin American literature, continental and American feminist thought. O n Russian soil, however (as we saw i n chapter 2), Bakhtin's carnival idea had a difficult and suspicious reception from the start, indeed, from the very day o f the dissertation defense. This chapter examines some o f the recurring paradoxes and continuing fascinations o f Bakhtinian carnival as i t was discussed i n Russia during the early 1990s. By that time, the fundamental problems with the concept had long been acknowledged by detractors and enthusiasts alike. N o one doubted that Bakhtin's image o f carnival was U t o p i a n fantasy. I t had long been a matter o f record, stressed by cultural historians both East and West, that real-life carnival rituals—although perhaps great drunken fun for the short term—were not necessarily cheerful or carefree. I n its func4

See M i k h a i l B a k h t i n , Rabelais

and

His

World,

trans. H é l è n e I s w o l s k y ( B l o o m i n g t o n :

I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 8 4 ) , esp. c h . 5, " T h e G r o t e s q u e I m a g e o f the B o d y . " O n e unfortunate mistranslation i n this u n i n s p i r e d b u t serviceable E n g l i s h version is the r e n d e r i n g o f chrevo, R u s s i a n for the " b e l l y / w o m b " or generalized r e g i o n o f digestive a n d generative functions, solely as "bowels" (cf. 3 1 7 ) . T h e r e the grotesque body, forever o u t g r o w i n g a n d transgressing itself, allots an essential role to "those parts . . . i n w h i c h it conceives a n e w s e c o n d body: chrevo i fall bowels a n d the p h a l l u s " ) .

[the b e l l y / w o m b a n d p h a l l u s ] " ( n o t , as I s w o l s k y has it, "the

CARNIVAL

165

tion as society's safety valve, as a scheduled event that worked to domes­ ticate conflict by temporarily sanctioning victimization, medieval carnival in practice could be more repressive than liberating. Bakhtin's reluctance to highlight the crucial role o f violence during carnival baffled many o f his readers. A n d then there was the stiff binary nature o f Bakhtin's social history, which presented such a strange image o f popular appetites and o f upper-class taste. As one American critic put the matter i n a 1987 review, "Bakhtin and the World o f Rabelais Criticism": " I t is not surprising that Bakhtin, writing i n a Marxist society, defines popular culture by opposi­ tion to official or establishment culture, thus basing his definition on class distinctions. Even laughter is class specific: the culture o f the power es­ tablishment is serious; that o f the people essentially comic. Deprived o f power, folk culture appropriated laughter and made o f i t a powerful, lib­ erating, generative force." 5

Contrary to Bakhtin's vision, the reviewer notes, "the powerful, the wealthy, the learned were actually bi-cultural and did not consider the marketplace alien territory; popular culture was universal culture." Since Bakhtin, however, reads so much o f Rabelais's novel through the lens o f preliterate (and arguably Slavic) folklore and thereby de-historicizes the literary text, French medieval society appears rigidly, artificially stratified. Bakhtin functions here more as a mythographer than as a literary scholar or social historian. Many felt that mythography suited Bakhtin's scholarly intention as well, burdened as i t was with such Aesopian tasks. By sup­ plementing his schematicized, quasi-historical picture o f Rabelais's France with a fund o f timeless folk images, Bakhtin could preach to his immediate Soviet audience detachable, thinly disguised psychological universals that were relevant to any (and most persuasively, to his own) time. These reservations about Bakhtin's Rabelais were effectively summed up from a Russian perspective by the late Aleksandr Pankov i n his centen­ nial study The Key and Clue to M. Bakhtin. According to Pankov, Bakh­ tin's most repudiated value—traces o f which could be found at the nega­ tive pole o f every Bakhtinian binary—was ofitsioz, "officialese culture," the world as i t looks when approved and controlled from the political center. Repelled from his earliest years by ofitsioz wherever i t was found, Bakhtin "strove to extract from medieval ideology itself the principle o f cultural two-worldness [dvoemirie]; he subjected living material to a ty6

5

M a r y B . M c K i n l e y , " B a k h t i n a n d the W o r l d o f Rabelais C r i t i c i s m , " i n Degree

Second 2

( 1 9 8 7 ) : 8 3 - 8 8 , esp. 8 5 . M c K i n l e y is reviewing R i c h a r d M . B e r r o n g ' s ambivalent, but o n balance adversarial, Rabelais tagruel 6

and

Bakhtin:

Popular

Culture

in

"Gargantua

and

Pan­

( L i n c o l n : U n i v e r s i t y o f N e b r a s k a Press, 1 9 8 6 ) .

A l e k s a n d r Pankov, Razgadka

M. Bakhtina

ther page references given i n text.

(Moscow: Informatik, 1 9 9 5 ) , 1 5 7 - 7 3 . F u r ­

166 C H A P T E R F O U R pological cleansing . . . and at times the material clearly resisted" (168). Bakhtin's "body o f the people" lost all historical or literary reality, be­ coming directly mythological and populist (but i n the nineteenth-century Russian, rather than medieval French, sense o f that word). The folk, narod, were invested with a Romantic, "metaphysical vital value"; al­ though presented as wholly spontaneous, self-absorbed, and un-self-reflecting, this folk also functioned for Bakhtin as a progressive mechanism that could move history (171). W i t h such a romanticized "people" i n place, official culture could then be reinterpreted negatively as an "artifi­ cial construction, genetically 'alien,' " an imposition and a burden; Bakh­ tin's social history could unfold i n a quasi-fictional realm that "at times began to recall the Wall between 'city' and 'nature' i n Zamyatin's [dys­ topian] novel We" ( 1 7 1 - 7 2 ) . Pankov's reading echoes much recent American criticism o f Bakhtinian carnival. Other Russian responses to smekhovaia kuVtura, however, have been particular to Bakhtin's own homeland. Inspired perhaps by the universalism o f Bakhtin's claims—and by the obvious infusion o f Russian folklore into his analysis o f this foreign culture and foreign literary text— some Russian cultural historians began to explore the "transposability" o f Rabelais-style grotesquerie into specifically Russian history. I n 1976 the great medievalist D m i t r i Likhachev, i n collaboration with A . M . Panchenko, published a controversial volume entitled The "World of Laugh­ ter" of Early Russia. The two authors drew suggestive parallels between the Bakhtinian-Rabelaisian phenomenon o f carnival laughter and Russian medieval theatricals, literary parody, Ivan the Terrible's terror-guard oprichnina, and holy foolishness. Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspensky, on the alert during this maiden season o f the Bakhtin cult for just such spec­ ulative academic folly, responded with a lengthy, thoughtful rebuttal i n Voprosy literatury a year later. The Tartu school scholars asserted that the Likhachev-Panchenko team had read Russian medieval behavior out o f context. Although an intrigu­ ing thesis within Western European cultures, Bakhtin's principle o f am­ bivalent, tolerant, two-way laughter "lies outside the severe religious and ethical constraints imposed on the behavior o f a [Russian] person o f that time." Russian life was governed by a different, more rigid binary, the opposition o f sanctity and Satanism ( 1 5 3 - 5 4 ) . A medieval Russian sub­ ject could seek success i n life either through prayer or through black magic. But i n neither route was a belly laugh or guffaw an ambivalent 7

7

Y u . L o t m a n and B . Uspenskii, "Novye

Voprosy literatury,

aspekty i z u c h e n i i a k u P t u i y D r e v n e i R u s i , "

n o . 3 ( M a r c h 1 9 7 7 ) : 1 4 8 - 6 6 . A flawed translation by N . F . C . O w e n c a n

be f o u n d i n J u . M . L o t m a n a n d B . A . U s p e n s k i j , The Semiotics

of Russian

Culture,

ed. A n n

S h u k m a n ( A n n A r b o r : M i c h i g a n Slavic C o n t r i b u t i o n s N o . 1 1 , 1 9 8 4 ) , 3 6 - 5 2 . F u r t h e r page references given i n the text are to the R u s s i a n edition.

CARNIVAL

167

gesture: robust laughter was always unambiguously blasphemy, a tool o f Satan. Medieval theatricals, likewise, were not participatory, quasi-"carnivalized" events carried on without footlights or spectators; they were di­ dactic, judgmental, quite often tyrannizing. H o l y fools, too, were much more complex than carnival jesters. Their outrageous behavior was meant to humiliate, i n imitation o f Christ, either the spectator or the fool; but such behavior was not meant—as Bakhtin's carnival laughter manifestly was—to liberate or to empower. I n short, Lotman and Uspensky argue that i n medieval Russian culture, laughter and the inversion o f sanctioned values (even when institutionalized by codes or rituals) were understood by those who partook o f them not as emancipated behavior but as antibehavior. Freedom did not figure into the picture at all. I n a lengthy footnote to their rebuttal, Lotman and Uspensky sound a warning. "We are witnessing more and more often the tendency not to develop Bakhtin's ideas or devise sensible arguments out o f them, but to extend them mechanically into areas where their very application should be a subject o f special concern," they caution. "Taking on the functions o f a scholarly ornament, Bakhtin's thought, complex and controversial, has been oversimplified and made too comfortable" (153). The Tartu scholars were seasoned skeptics. Even for a committed and disciplined Bakhtinian critic, however, the idea o f carnival presents a dilemma. I t both fits, and radically does not fit, the other god-term i n Bakhtin's cosmos, which is dialogue. To be sure, some blunt parallels are easy to draw: verbal dialogue works with the dvugolosoe slovo, or double-voiced word, and carnival interaction takes place between dvutelye obmzy, or double-bodied images; both value exchange over stasis or essence. But beyond that point, so much i n the two worlds appears mutually contra­ dictory. Dialogue individuates, carnival absorbs and effaces; the speaking person is mortal, the grotesque body immortal; the perfect home for maximally dialogic language is the privately consumed novel, whereas Bakhtin's version o f the public square—for all its excellence as the site o f carnival—is a place o f monosyllabic obscenities and hawkers' cries, more suited to a Dionysian book burning than to sedate book reading. (Is the carnival body even literate?) But let us assume, as evidence suggests, that Bakhtin was not wedded to the historical truths o f carnival practice. The concept o f carnival was precious to him more as a spiritual attitude, as a "loophole" for the psyche, and as a concrete manifestation o f hope i n a world that otherwise knew little o f it. Grotesque bodies, precisely because they are imperfect, require supplementation and reach out to others i n a climate o f trust; thus they are analogous to needy dialogic words. Have Russian students o f Bakhtin successfully sustained this analogy? Several attempts have been made to do so, usually at a high level o f abstraction, with mixed results. I n one typical discussion, A. P. Bondarev

168

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FOUR

links dialogue and carnival through Bakhtin's mega-image o f the chrevo or " b e l l y / w o m b , " that vague overlapping realm i n the lower torso that digests, excretes, and reproduces. Carnival events "are fraught or preg­ nant [chrevaty] . . . The culture o f laughter is built on oppositions, on the unity o f analogies and contradictory juxtapositions." Bondarev sug­ gests that this unity is equivalent—albeit i n "a logic o f images" [obraznaia logika]—to the dialogic multiplicity inherent in words. Since the "unexpected mosaiclike combinations" o f the grotesque image resemble the irregularities o f ongoing conversation, Bondarev is prompted to con­ clude that "carnival and dialogue, Bakhtin's ontology and logic, form a correlative pair." Just as carnival continually disrupts organized space, so dialogue "seethes w i t h 'provocative' questions, deprives its participants o f spiritual comfort and intellectual well-being, reduces everything to naught, ridicules, devalues, annihilates everything that has been laid away or stored up, undoes all the usual protective arguments that have worked so smoothly up to this time" (60). 8

I n Bondarev's reading, what these two concepts share are the (very broad) virtues o f destabilization and anti-entropy. For the analogy to work, carnival must be equated with creative potential i n general—not merely with sanctioned ritual inversion—and dialogue must be reduced to constant réévaluation and erosion o f certainty, ignoring its role i n the positive accumulation o f a complex identity. Only, i t would seem, by interpreting carnival as maximally pluralistic and dialogue* as maximally nihilistic can Bondarev bind these two god-terms together. Such analo­ gies are o f questionable usefulness. A far more persuasive argument for linking carnival and dialogue i n Bakhtin's thought has been made by the American scholar Alexandar Mihailovic. He pursues the matter along another axis altogether, through the incarnational, eucharistie, and Christological metaphors common to both. I n his view, Bakhtin intended his monograph on Rabelais to be read by his fellow Russians not only as viable scholarship but also as a literary and spiritually informed work i n its own right, laced with Aesopian references both to Johannine biblical doctrine and to Sta­ linist reality. (Mihailovic provides an important service to non-Russian readers by pointing out where the standard English translation o f Rabe­ lais and His World blunts the imagery, reiterated puns, phonetic play, and 9

8

A . P. B o n d a r e v ( M o s c o w ) , " K a r n a v a l / D i a l o g : O n t o l o g i i a i logika M

V . L . M a k h l i n , é d . , M. M. Bakhtin

i perspektivygumanitarnykh

nauk

M . Bakhtina," in

(Vitebsk: I z d a t e l ' N .

A . Pan'kov, 1 9 9 4 ) , 5 5 - 6 2 , esp. 5 8 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text. 9

A l e x a n d a r M i h a i l o v i c , Corporeal

Words: Mikhail

Bakhtin's

Theology of Discourse

(Evan-

s t o n , 111.: N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 7 ) , esp. c h . 5, " C a r n i v a l a n d E m b o d i m e n t i n Rabelais

and His World"

a n d c h . 6, " T h e W o r d M a d e a n d U n m a d e : Rabelais, B a k h t i n , a n d

S t a l i n . " F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

CARNIVAL

169

hyperbole o f Bakhtin's Russian text. I n the original, the effect o f this rhetoric is less embarrassing and more incantational.) The carnival imag­ ery o f Rabelais is related to the almost coterminous essay "The Word [Discourse] i n the Novel" as matter is related to spirit. I t is that word "made flesh." I n Mihailovic's view, Bakhtin intended us to take this incarnational metaphor absolutely literally. The analysis o f a burlesque anecdote from the German Renaissance scholar Schneegans, developed by Bakhtin i n his chapter on "The Grotesque Image o f the Body" (Rabelais, 304-10), strikes him as key: the grotesque body o f a stutterer, butted i n the stom­ ach by the Harlequin's head, gives birth to the word. Utterances are born out o f a body made grotesque i n the labor o f generating them—and the comic intervention o f an impatient second party is indispensable midwife to the event. The word, then, originates as something material, theatri­ cal, inevitably assisted by others, "ejected" beyond its boundaries, all o f which mimics i n a strange way the position o f the Third i n a trinity: "the offspring o f the body during the comic or carnivalesque moment" (151— 52). Mihailovic interprets Bakhtin's extended attention to this scene as indication o f his enthusiasm for comic debasements o f incarnation and as Aesopian commentary on the Chalcedonian ideal o f consubstantiality. Additional "carnal" analogies are uncovered i n Bakhtin's text as well: the material benefits o f sexual over asexual reproduction, the parallel physi­ ological reliefs o f laughter and o f birthing, and the absolute need o f every uttered word for an embodied answering word. "Bakhtin's literary uni­ verse," Mihailovic writes, "is completely intolerant o f parthenogenesis" (179). Against this general background, we might distribute Russian re­ sponses to Bakhtinian-Rabelaisian "cultures o f laughter" into three groups. There are those scholars who would redeem carnival and inte­ grate i t into Bakhtin's thought, often—as Mihailovic has done—in an overtly Christian context. A t the other pole are those who are opposed to Bakhtinian carnival and appalled by i t , as Aleksei Losev was i n his Aes­ thetics of the Renaissance. These critics wish to expose i t , together with its cast o f grotesque criminal bodies, as destructive both o f humanism and (in the post-Soviet context) o f Russia's nascent liberalism—upon which, they feel, rest all fragile hopes for a rule-of-law state. The anti-carnival group, i n turn, contains several factions, not always easy to distinguish. One wing maintains that Bakhtin himself, i n his Rabelais book, was being satirical and Aesopian. I t takes for granted that Bakhtin was suspicious o f carnival ecstasy and fully alert to the ghastly parallels between a collective body sustaining itself on individual deaths and the coterminous rhetoric o f Stalinist Terror. (As we shall see below, Mikhail Ryklin, while pru­ dently ambivalent about Bakhtin's own intent, reads the lessons o f carni-

170

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FOUR

val along these lines. A n d Mihailovic, i n this spirit, points out convincing analogues between the Show Trials o f the late 1930s and Bakhtin's os­ tensible celebration o f "praise/blame" [khvala/bmn*] on the public square [ploshchad^ ploshchadka]—the latter term doubling for the execu­ tioner's block [ 1 9 9 - 2 0 3 ] . ) Archival material recently unearthed lends some credence to this darker position. Deeply pessimistic jottings Bakhtin made (during the war years (1943-46), transcribed from crumbling notebooks and published only i n 1992, suggest that he was quite willing to submit the wholesale corruption o f images and words surrounding him to the rigors o f theory. I n these wartime notes, for the first time we glimpse a Bakhtin for w h o m "image-bestowing" and "form-shaping" instincts are not benign. When he invokes the problem o f the image [obraz] i n these notes, he clearly has in mind not the blessed icon or the sunlit, inflated folkloric masses o f carnival time-space but rather the vast, flat, evil, hectoring poster art o f the Stalin era. I n this negative space, words and images express destructiveness i n different ways. The evil peculiar to images is inert, a deadening "thing-ness," a "today-ness" that is deceptively "always ready to pass i t ­ self o f f . . . as a servant o f the future" (154). I f imposed from above (as these public images were), at a distance, secondhand and without love, an image always bears traces o f its origin i n violence. I n contrast, the desecration peculiar to language is energetic: the lie. "The lie is today's most ever present form o f evil," Bakhtin writes. "The word does not know w h o m i t serves. I t emerges from the dark and does not know its own roots. Its serious link with terror and violence. The authentically kind, unselfish, and loving person has not yet spoken, he has realized himself i n the spheres o f everyday life, he has not attached himself to the official word, infected with violence and the lie; he is not becoming a writer" (155, 154). 10

Thus have random archival finds and unexpected primaiy sources fed a second, less bucolic portrait o f Bakhtin. I t now competes with the sunny, cheery relativity o f the Rabelais book, completed during those very years, overcasting i t with parody and double meaning. But scholars less charita­ ble to Bakhtin would dismiss this dark wartime testimony as transitory and incidental. These critics hold that Bakhtin was overall so enamored o f his Utopian carnival idea, so i n need o f its spiritual balm and convinced o f its salvific qualities, so (perhaps) even conditioned by the lies that fueled the rhetoric o f his era that he was taken i n by the deceptions o f carnival and remained blind to its potential for abuse.

1 0

M . M . B a k h t i n , " I z c h e r n o v y k h tetradei," ed. V a d i m K o z h i n o v , texts transcribed by V .

I . Slovetskii, i n Literaturnaia

ucheba, bks. 5 / 6 (September, O c t o b e r , N o v e m b e r , D e c e m ­

ber 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 5 3 - 6 6 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

CARNIVAL

171

Exemplary o f this group is the emigre culturologist Boris Groys. I n his 1989 essay "Between Stalin and Dionysius," Groys insists that we look soberly at the political implications o f Bakhtin's theories, preferably i n the spirit o f his own inquiry into the totalizing fantasies o f the 1920s Russian avant-garde. We will detect the same enthusiasms, the same danger signals. "Liberalism and democracy i n their usual understanding," Groys writes, "evoke acute antipathy i n Bakhtin." A n d he continues: 11

They are synonymous for him with automatization, self-enclosed individu­ ality, rupture from the unified cosmic life and, consequently, reasons for the emergence of seriousness, moralizing, and the collapse of humor and carnival . . . One should not even speak of democracy here: no one is given the democratic right to shirk carnival, to not take part, to remain on the side­ lines. O n the contrary, precisely those who try to do so are the first to be subject to well-deserved "cheerful vilifications and beatings." According to Bakhtin, this nightmare is transformed into carnival thanks to the laughter that accompanies it. . . . This laughter is born of the faith that the folk is something materially larger than a gathering of individuals and that the world is something more than all the things in it, which is to say, this laugh­ ter is born of a faith in totalitarianism.

12

Thus do some students o f carnival make common cause with those postmodernist anti-dialogians who, as we have seen, hold Bakhtinian /o^-centrism i n criminal regard. Bakhtin, i n their opinion, should be considered part o f the problem o f Stalinism, not part o f its unmasking. A final group o f scholars prefers to investigate carnival and its mecha­ nisms more neutrally. For them, as for the Tartu school semioticians i n the ideal instance, the role o f scholarship is not to "apply" an idea but to analyze i t , to inquire where i t might be helpful i n organizing other data gathered independently o f i t , and—especially important when one is dealing with gurus and cults—to fix limits to i t , to determine at what point i t falsifies material or fails to fit. I n their opinion, Bakhtin's thought is misused when read as theological or political commentary. Whatever a 1 1

G r o y s is best k n o w n for his thesis that Soviet totalitarian art (Socialist R e a l i s m i n its

m o s t r i g i d phase) is a natural e x t e n s i o n — n o t

an a b e r r a t i o n — o f principles that governed

the R u s s i a n avant-garde, m o s t especially its disgust for the natural w o r l d as w e are cast into it a n d a passion for c o s m i c re-creation regardless o f h u m a n cost. See B o r i s G r o y s , samtkunstwerk

Stalin:

Die gespaltene

C h a r l e s R o u g l e as The Total Art

Kultur

of Stalinism:

in der

Avant-garde,

Ge-

( M u n i c h , 1 9 8 8 ) , trans.

Sowjetunion

Aesthetic

Dictatorship,

and

Be­

yond ( P r i n c e t o n , N . J . : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 2 ) . G r o y s is a controversial player i n the B a k h t i n industry, c o m i n g i n o n the dark side o f the ledger; he is o p p o s e d w i t h s o m e heat by scholars m o r e compassionate t o w a r d B a k h t i n ' s intellectual position, s u c h as V i t a l y Makhlin. 1 2

B o r i s G r o y s , " M e z h d u S t a l i n y m i D i o n i s o m , " i n Sintaksis

esp. 9 5 . See also B . G r o y s , " T o t a l i t a r i z m K a r n a v a l a , " B sb III

25 (Paris, 1 9 8 9 ) :

(97):

76-80.

92-97,

172 C H A P T E R FOUR concept might have meant for its founder, subsequent scholars should treat i t objectively, as an explanatory or historiosophical principle. I n the case o f carnival, the concept can be shown to interact over time with other Bakhtinian principles, most instructively the dialogic or polyphonic. Only such patterns are a scholar's proper concern. To get some feel for this most famous (and most curious) o f Bakhtin's legacies, these three categories o f response to carnival will now be sampled.

PRO: C A R N I V A L AS I N C A R N A T I O N , EUCHARIST, SACRAL

MYTH

We begin with the varied group o f redeemers and integraters. These critics welcome carnival laughter and its grotesquerie as positive virtues, considering them o f one piece with Bakhtin's other teachings and valu­ able to philosophy independent o f any local Russian subtexts. They are inclined to interpret Bakhtin's lifelong enthusiasm for carnival and its special brand o f body dialogue as more or less "single-voiced"—that is, as a direct expression o f an affirmative value system that nevertheless re­ quired a degree o f camouflage during the Soviet years. I n their opinion, the appeal o f carnival for Bakhtin was less social than spiritual. Although none has given the topic Mihailovic's detailed and dispassionate treat­ ment, most associate this spirituality with the Russian Orthodox faith. The connection between Bakhtin and Christian (and Judeo-Christian) thought is touched on throughout this study, but nowhere discussed i n detail. I t might be helpful, therefore, to provide some background here, in the context o f carnival, noting the scope o f Russian research i n this realm. Systematic investigations into Bakhtin's relation to twentieth-cen­ tury religious philosophers i n Western Europe (largely German: Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Ferdinand Ebner), undertaken by Vitaly Makhlin and others, are at last beginning to appear. Parallels—albeit at a high level o f abstraction—have been drawn between Bakhtin and such Orthodox religious philosophers as Pavel Florensky and Nikolai Lossky. Russian scholars o f a neo-nationalist bent have been quick to point out that Bakhtin condemned not Christianity i n general but only the insti­ tutionalized Catholic Church o f Rabelais's time; i n opposition to that Roman fallacy, with its worldly power and cult o f violence, the Eastern 13

14

1 3

See, for a n initial research p l a n , the graduate seminar lectures p u b l i s h e d as V . L .

M a k h l i n , Ta i drugoi

(Istoki

filosofii

'dialoga'

XX

veka)

( S a n k t - P e t e r b u r g : R u s s k i i khris-

tianskii gumanitarnyi institut, 1 9 9 5 ) . 14

(94):

See, for example, V . V . B a b i c h , " L o s s k i i i B a k h t i n : O p y t sravneniia," i n DKKh,

no. 4

3 4 - 5 7 ; for a brief general overview o f compatibilities, see D o n a t e l l a F e r r a r i - B r a v o ,

" M o r e o n B a k h t i n a n d F l o r e n s k y , " i n Critical

Studies

2 , n o . Vi ( 1 9 9 0 ) [Special Issue o n

" M i k h a i l B a k h t i n a n d the E p i s t e m o l o g y o f D i s c o u r s e , " ed. C l i v e T h o m s o n ] : 1 1 1 - 2 1 .

CARNIVAL

173

Orthodox liturgy can incorporate without strain all the tangible, partici­ patory, self-humbling aspects o f carnival behavior. As we see from the following passage by the eminent contemporary Greek theologian Christos Yannaras, Bakhtin's "carnival complex" o f values—the embod­ ied word, the grotesque body, the legitimacy and redeemability o f mat­ ter, interpersonal contact as definitive o f life—all find ample expression within such a worldview: The eucharistie liturgy has its own aesthetics, stemming from the same on­ tology of the Church's truth and ethos. This has nothing to do with the conventional aesthetics of harmonious proportions, with the categories of beauty and ugliness or symmetry and asymmetry, nor with arbitrary individ­ ual devices meant to be impressive or imposing. The aim of Orthodox church art is not to delight the senses or the mind, but to reveal to both the truth and the inner principle or "word" of things: the personal dimension of matter, its capacity to manifest the personal operation of God the Word, to give flesh to Him who is without flesh and to contain Him who cannot be contained. . . . I n the Orthodox eucharist, nothing is theory, autonomous doctrine, or abstract reference: all is action, tangible experience, and total, bodily participation.

15

I n a pathbreaking 1991 essay entitled "Carnival and Incarnation: Bakhtin and Orthodox Theology," the Canadian scholar Charles Lock noted additional compatibilities. Unlike the Western Church (which de­ moted and exiled the flesh as sinful) and unlike Western philosophy from Descartes on (which preached a separation o f body and mind), Eastern Orthodox theology never endorsed those Neoplatonist divisions and di­ chotomies. The Incarnation had rendered such distinctions invalid. Lock suggests that Bakhtin, i n his work on Rabelais, pursued an Orthodox reverence for matter under the convenient rubric o f approved MarxistLeninist materialism. For this task, the great French novelist (also no prim Neoplatonist as regards the body) was the perfect academic subject: for i n "incarnational Christology," Lock reminds us, "there can be no privileging within matter; even the excremental can be sacramental" (73). Thus the incarnated world, expressed with maximal compactness i n the lower bodily stratum, cannot be equated with degradation or dissipa­ tion. I t is the harbinger o f an ideal. Such a body is heroic i n times o f deprivation and is always granted a Resurrection. Since deprivation—famine and pain—was Bakhtin's experience over 16

1 5

C h r i s t o s Yannaras, The Freedom

of Morality,

translated f r o m the G r e e k by E l i z a b e t h

Briere ( N e w Y o r k : St. V l a d i m i r ' s Seminary Press, 1 9 8 4 ) , 9 5 - 9 6 . 1 6

C h a r l e s L o c k , " C a r n i v a l a n d I n c a r n a t i o n : B a k h t i n a n d O r t h o d o x T h e o l o g y , " Journal

Literature text.

and

of

Theology 5, n o . 1 ( M a r c h 1 9 9 1 ) : 6 8 - 8 2 . F u r t h e r page references given i n

174

C H A P T E R

FOUR

long stretches o f his life, the bread and wine exchanged during H o l y Communion took on an elevated, albeit everyday, meaning. As Lock writes: "For Bakhtin, food is always festal. . . . For the Neoplatonist, hunger is a humiliating reminder o f the body's lack o f self-sufficiency; for the Orthodox, it is an affirmation o f the body's connection, through ori­ fices and apertures, with the cosmos" (74). Then Lock makes a summa­ rizing point, which marks off his own Christianized reading o f Bakhtinian carnival from some o f the later, more suspicious criticisms on Russian soil: It should hardly need to be said that in his celebration of the body Bakhtin does not advocate a return to the bestial, is not nostalgic for the unselfconsciousness of animals—a nostalgia or temptation not unknown to Tol­ stoy, Rousseau and others. The carnival is not a given of nature, nor can it be achieved by will: it must be officially sanctioned—produced and tolerated by what is not carnival—and temporally circumscribed. Bakhtin's lament is that these conditions no longer obtain, and especially and most regrettably could not obtain in the Soviet Union. There the dictatorship of the proletariat meant that folk culture was imposed and decreed from above as the only culture. I f folk culture is hegemonic there can be no carnival, no rebellion from below, no celebration of the lower bodily stratum, because there is no axis to provide degrees of comparison. (75)

Lock's hypothesis is plausible—and a great deal more palatable, I sug­ gest, than Boris Groys's ironclad linkage o f carnival vision with total­ itarian practice. Bakhtin was indeed apprehensive about democratizing and secularizing processes that could erode a feel for boundaries or en­ feeble the sort o f transfigurations possible only during carnival moments within a faith community. Evidence for this anxiety i n his texts is muted because Bakhtin, as a rule, is not an anxious writer. Beyond the occa­ sional working notebook, we have no detailed autobiographical record o f his life or thoughts during the most stressful Stalinist decades, when the carnival idea was ripening (Bakhtin's oral memoirs break off i n the late 1920s). But Vladimir Turbin has testified at length to his mentor's uneas­ iness on this matter o f carnival's passing. "Bakhtin often remarked that 'we were entering a non-carnival era,' " Turbin wrote i n one o f his several emotional memoirs on those years. "Life had made Bakhtin witness to a planned, comprehensively thoughtout destruction o f carnival. . . . this anti-carnival took place on the ruins o f churches, for without a church, carnival is impossible: a person during carnival is a person who is again undergoing rebirth. He leaves the build­ ing o f the church, and, having departed, finds himself on the threshold, 17

1 7

" O B a k h t i n e , " i n V . N . T u r b i n , Nezadolgo

7 0 , esp. 4 5 9 , 4 6 1 .

do Vodoleia ( M o s c o w : R a d i k s , 1 9 9 4 ) , 4 4 3 -

CARNIVAL

175

as i t were on the border between two worlds: the higher world, symbol­ ized by the cathedral he has left behind but cannot fail to remember, and the lower, material world. . . . Carnival is an interpretation o f the mate­ rial world from the point o f view o f the spiritual, nonmaterial world." Such a threshold position was psychologically indispensable for Bakhtin, Turbin argues elsewhere, because Bakhtin's long life was governed by two constants to which a carnival worldview was the only reliable an­ tidote: pain and hunger. Turbin senses a nostalgia i n Bakhtin's for­ mulations about carnival, even when embedded i n the most scholarly contexts. Only carnival, it appears, held out hope o f resurrection to hope­ lessly flattened matter and thus could arrest the desacralization o f the world. 18

Such speculation on the connection between Bakhtin's ideas and Christian faith is now routine in Russia. (So much so, in fact, that the theme "Bakhtin and the Divine" has no risk left to it at all; in the mid-1990s, a counterwave against the excessive theologizing o f his thought was already being felt.) But the topic could not be investigated openly—much less dismissed openly—until the end o f state-sponsored atheism. A t that time i t became the fashion to mine once dissident, now redeemed Russian thinkers for Christian subtexts. I n assimilating Bakh­ tin, Russian theology proved itself marvelously elastic. Carnival emerges as a sort o f "church in reverse," an Orthodox site for metamorphosis and miracle i n opposition to the Latin heresy o f hierarchies, military orders, and corrupt officialdom. Such a reading had the advantage o f answering both to Bakhtin's aversion to ofitsioz and to his anxiety about our entry into a "non-carnival era"—a dystopian nightmare where the state be­ comes all there is. I n part because the Orthodox Church has been associ­ ated with ultra-nationalist politics, however, carnival understood as Com­ munion has been slow to receive in Russia the impartial treatment given it by Western scholars. What is more, a certain nervousness about carnival in practice—its potential for anarchy and victimization—has tended to encourage a demonization o f carnival rather than a celebration o f its pos­ sibly sacral roots. Many Russians would concur with Natalia Reed's wary remark i n response to Turbin's (obviously exultant) recollection o f Bakh­ tin's insistence that the Gospels were carnival, too: "Indeed they are. U p to and including the mob-lynching o f Christ." "Christianized" interpretations are not, however, the sole conduit for 19

18

V . N . T u r b i n , "Karnaval: R e l i g i i a , politika, teosofiia," i n B sb I 90, 6 - 2 9 , esp.

1 9

A s one speaker put it at the T h i r d Saransk International B a k h t i n Readings in O c t o b e r

10-13.

1 9 9 5 , " S o m e people say that the 'primary author,' the 'highest instantiation' for B a k h t i n , is G o d . I t is h a r d to agree w i t h that statement. Significantly, even w h e n talking o f Dostoevsky a n d his understanding o f faith, B a k h t i n gives a purely culturological definition

o f that

faith." See L . A . Z a k s ( E k a t e r i n b u r g ) , " ' U m i r a est' smysP ( D u k h o v n o e mirozdanie M . B a k h t i n a ) , " in MMB

igum

mysh II (95),

5 4 - 5 7 , esp. 5 6 .

176

CHAPTER

FOUR

sympathetic Russian readings o f carnival. There is also a less inflammatory tradition o f inquiries into pre-Christian, pagan "holiday time" as the ritu­ alistic core o f every carnival worldview. I n such an approach, the sacraliz­ ation o f matter need not result i n any "theologizing" o f reality—that is, reality need not be transformed into an illustration o f divine intent or process. Scholars o f this persuasion argue that Bakhtin, as a student o f folklore, was after larger game. He desired to integrate laughter into a more archaic worldview, one markedly pre-Platonic, where the very dis­ tinction between Creator and created, noumenon and phenomenon, was dissolved—or perhaps not yet drawn. Russian scholarship is strong i n such theorists. Among Bakhtin's contemporaries writing i n the 1930s and 1940s, for example, was Vladimir Propp, the great Soviet folklorist and Formalist, who demonstrated i n several controversial studies that rit­ ual laughter frequently accompanied death and magically transformed i t into new birth. The founding text for reading Bakhtin i n this tradition appeared i n 1968—a review essay on the Rabelais book by Grigory Pomerants, published as a companion piece to the sinologist's "Reading Bakhtin" i n the journal Peoples of Asia and Afriea. Entitled " 'The Carni­ val' and 'the Serious,' " Pomerants's essay adopts an intellectually satisfy­ ing strategy that later proved very effective i n other confused areas o f Bakhtin's legacy Pomerants welcomes the fact that Bakhtin's book on Rabelais—like his earlier volume on Dostoevsky—was a best-seller and a cultural event. But he admits that close scrutiny by specialists has revealed both books to be insufficient to the complexity o f their subject and, to some extent, inter­ nally inconsistent. I n Bakhtin's defense, Pomerants argues that the Rabe20

21

2 0

P r o p p notes, for example, that laughter, a u n i q u e l y h u m a n reflex, was routinely p r o ­

scribed i n the K i n g d o m o f the D e a d (living interlopers c o u l d be identified by their l a u g h ­ ter). I n a discussion o f the other death-defying qualities o f the laughter reflex, P r o p p de­ votes s o m e attention to the classic example o f "so-called sardonic laughter," researched by his G e r m a n colleagues: " A m o n g the very ancient people o f Sardinia, w h o were called Sardi o r S a r d o n i , it was customary to kill o l d people," P r o p p notes.

" W h i l e killing their o l d

people, the Sardi l a u g h e d l o u d l y T h i s is the o r i g i n o f n o t o r i o u s sardonic laughter, n o w m e a n i n g cruel, malicious laughter. I n light o f o u r findings things begin to l o o k different. L a u g h t e r accompanies the passage f r o m death to life; it creates life a n d accompanies birth. C o n s e q u e n t i y , laughter a c c o m p a n y i n g killing transforms death into a n e w birth, nullifies m u r d e r as s u c h , a n d is an act o f piety that transforms death into a n e w birth." ( O n e c a n see w h y a scholar o f G r o y s ' s cast o f m i n d , sensitive to totalitarianism's drive to legitimate itself t h r o u g h the archaic folk, m i g h t be m a d e uneasy by s u c h naturalization o f the links between laughter a n d m u r d e r . ) See V l a d i m i r P r o p p , " R i t u a l L a u g h t e r i n F o l k l o r e ( A p r o p o s o f the T a l e o f the Princess W h o W o u l d N o t L a u g h [ N e s m e j a n a ] , " i n P r o p p , Theory and History Folklore,

of

trans. A r i a d n a Y . M a r t i n , R i c h a r d P. M a r t i n , et a l . , ed. A n a t o l y L i b e r m a n ( M i n ­

neapolis: U n i v e r s i t y o f M i n n e s o t a Press, 1 9 8 4 ) , c h . 9 ( 1 2 4 - 4 6 ) , esp. 1 3 4 . 2 1

G . S. P o m e r a n t s , " ' K a r n a v a l ' n o e ' i ' s e r ' e z n o e , ' " i n Narody Azii

1 0 7 - 1 6 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

i Afriki,

no. 2 (1968):

CARNIVAL

177

lais book is not necessarily, and certainly not solely, about Rabelais; i t is stronger than its own argumentation and point o f departure. A "carnival sense o f time is a much later rethinking o f holiday rituals that arose con­ siderably earlier, i n the atmosphere o f another culture more primitive, more integral, more emotional" (107). Although the structure, organiza­ tion, and titling o f Bakhtin's monograph urge us to misread i n this way, carnival should not be measured by its Renaissance manifestation first and only afterward, i n order to obtain the necessary "proofs," traced back in time to its possible sources. I f read i n that retrograde way, carnival will inevitably be understood in a sixteenth-century European manner—as a suspension o f duties, a "rest from work," an interval and interruption between fixed ticks o f the clock. But such a picture, Pomerants intimates, is already a degeneration. For genuine holiday time cannot be part o f the everyday world and is not an intellectual construct. Archaic holidays knew rhythms and pulsa­ tions, but not a "concept o f time" i n the sense Bakhtin implies. Thus holiday consciousness cannot be understood as merely hydraulic, as a moment o f release or a loosening o f strictures laid down by oppressive institutions. I t is a psychological, biological, perhaps even a spiritual ne­ cessity, intuitively grasped by organic societies and sanctioned not socio politically but by "another sphere o f existence" altogether, the "world o f ideals" (107). "The essence o f the holiday is liberation from the practical [delovoi] orientation o f the mind, liberation from the dismemberment o f the world into north and south, big and small, past and future; i t is an experience o f the world as a unity, as an 'eternal present'" (108). Euro­ peans, tethered to time even as they seek to construct for themselves an exit out o f it, have lost this fullness o f holiday consciousness. Interestingly, this "holiday" moment, sensed by Pomerants in the 1960s as crucial to the carnival idea o f the 1930s and 1940s, might have much earlier origins i n Bakhtin's thought. According to the Kagan family archivist Brian Poole, among the more durable legacies o f the Marburg school i n the 1910s ( o f which Bakhtin, through his close friend Matvei Kagan, had become an avid student) was Paul Natorp's notion o f "breath," "the breathing o f the cosmos," "rest" [otdykh], a "break from labor" [peredyshka]—all words that i n Russian are related to dukh, spirit. For Natorp, art and life met on the boundary between labor and rest, be­ tween (metaphorically) inhaling and exhaling. Kagan himself, i n a 1924 essay on the meaning o f art, describes just such a creative peredyshka in terms that closely parallel Bakhtin's meditations, much later i n the Rabelais book, on the "breathing space" o f carnival. A n d so, Pomerants suggests, to explore the truth o f Bakhtin's carnival 22

2 2

B r i a n P o o l e , " N a z a d k K a g a n u , " DKKh,

no. 1 (95): 3 8 - 4 8 , esp. 4 2 - 4 4 .

178

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idea we must begin not with the Renaissance French writer Rabelais but with a more archaic, "cosmically breathing" source. For this purpose he recommends African cultures—which, until exposed to the doctrine o f "development" and "European efficiency" [delovitosf] in the twentieth century, did not suffer from a time fetish (116). Holiday consciousness was highly developed i n these cultures as a variety o f the sublime: "verti­ cal" i n orientation, worshipful, and serious. We should not; take Bakhtin's strictures against "one-sided seriousness" too quickly to heart, Pomerants counsels us. They are clearly a later overlay, a response to institutions and political constraints that Bakhtin himself found oppressive, for "reverence is just as human and natural as are laughter and dissipated behavior" (109). To understand the roots o f carnival, such binary oppositions as "laughter/seriousness" or "atheism/religion" are reductive and mislead­ ing. A more valid opposition is between pmzdnik and budni, the myth­ opoetic creative holiday versus the efficiency-driven weekday (110). I f a balance is not achieved between these two modes, Pomerants con­ cludes, the results for individuals and cultures can be dire. Either "a new, unhealthy dialogue inevitably arises, between the efficient, rational con­ sciousness and an 'underground' irrational unconscious," or, on a na­ tional scale, the result can be fascism. "For i f a European o f the nine­ teenth century could point with reproach to Africa's isolated, not very numerous instances o f cannibalism, then the traditional African o f the twentieth century could point with some reproach to Europe's Hider" (116). Such ruminations over the distortions and repressions o f the carnival impulse, formulated on the boundaries between anthropology, myth, and national guilt, will become common i n the post-Soviet period. To be sure, domestic self-criticism o f Stalin will replace the obligatory Soviet-era reference to Hider; some critics will link the "immortal, laughing body o f carnival"—co-opted by the state, stripped o f any authentic or sponta­ neous sense o f "holiday time," and associated with the Grinning Lie—to the worst abuses o f their own prior regime. To these 1990s readings we shall turn presentiy. I n Pomerants's conventionally Soviet-style discussion o f holiday consciousness from the manacled year 1968, i t suffices to note that Bakhtin is presumed to embrace pre- and non-Christian folklore straightforwardly, not as an Aesopian cloak for banned religious symbols. Bakhtinistics i n this descriptive, ethnographic vein has continued to the present day, a counterpart to the positive influence o f Bakhtin on folklore and folklife studies i n the West. 23

2 3

I n one centennial essay, for example, "holiday culture" is e x a m i n e d as an essential,

healthy ritual, validated b o t h biologically ( h u m a n biorythms that dictate periodic rest for the b o d y ) a n d cosmically. A u t h e n t i c a l l y p o p u l a r — n o t state-sponsored—holidays

always eel-

CARNIVAL

179

Even when dealing with morally neutral categories like "liminality" and "cyclicity," however, Russian ethnographers acknowledge a tension between carnival consciousness and religious (or moral) culture. W i t h a Freudian anxiety that contrasts sharply with Bakhtin's own less burdened conscience on these matters, these scholars are prone to apologize for this tension. The Saransk Bakhtinist Oleg Breikin, paraphrasing a famous line from Pushkin's dramatic narrative "Mozart and Salieri," states bluntly that "civilization and carnival are incompatible things"; "carnival must die for the social life o f the tribe to triumph." I f i n primordial mythological consciousness good and evil were fused, then under condi­ tions o f our modern "utilitarian consciousness"—which attempts (Breikin would say, unsuccessfully) to duplicate that earlier and irretriev­ able state—"carnival very quickly degenerates into naked hedonism or, worse, into a Satanic witches' sabbath that leads to the degradation o f personality" ( 7 2 - 7 3 ) . 24

CONTRA: D E M O N I Z A T I O N , STALINIZATION We now leave the realm o f the Church and pagan reenactments o f Cre­ ation for the far other shore: carnival as negative and degenerative en­ ergy, as a "Satanic witches' sabbath." The association is not new. We sampled one such response i n chapter 2 (Losev's disgust at Rabelaisian aesthetics and at Bakhtin's celebration o f it); also, passing reference was made i n the present chapter to another skeptical critique, Lotman's and Uspensky's rebuttal o f a scholarly monograph that had identified a "laughing culture" i n Russia's own medieval past. This anti-carnival side o f the debate has been fueled by two scholars whose contribution to Bakhtinistics, i n different ways, strives to tighten and discipline the leg­ acy. The first is the prominent philosopher o f religion Sergei Averintsev, whose sympathetic attitude toward Bakhtin's "humanism for nonspecialists" we have already encountered. H e appears i n this chapter as an auebrate the reenactment o f the p r i m o r d i a l m o m e n t o f C r e a t i o n o u t o f C h a o s , d u r i n g w h i c h "everyday, profane space-time becomes sacralized." See L . S. D m i t r i e v a , "Teoreticheskie p r o b l e m y p r a z d n i c h n o i kul'tury v r a b o t a k h M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Bakhtinologiia:

27-31,

esp.

2 9 . See also T . Y u . K r y l o v a , " P r o b l e m a sootnosheniia karnival'nogo i khristianskogo m i r o v o z z r e n i i a , " MMB

i gum

mysh I (95),

1 6 9 - 7 0 , w h e r e "pre-logical m y t h " is seen to link

the t w o w o r l d s . 2 4

O . B . B r e i k i n , "Karnaval kak element mifologicheskogo s o z n a n i i a , " i n MMB

i PGN

94,

7 2 - 7 4 , esp. 7 3 . I n a related ( u n p u b l i s h e d ) paper entitled " T h e P r o b l e m o f the C o r r e l a t i o n o f C a r n i v a l C o n s c i o u s n e s s a n d R e l i g i o u s C u l t u r e , " B r e i k i n opens w i t h the question: " I s it possible to find a p o i n t o f intersection between C h r i s t i a n morality a n d the carnivalistic type o f t h o u g h t ? " — a n d c o n c l u d e s that it is not.

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thority on Russian attitudes toward laughter within the context o f medi­ eval Christian culture. The second, Konstantin Isupov, is an intellectual historian from St. Petersburg and editor o f its major Bakhtin festschrifts. Isupov updates the Losev-Bakhtin polemic over carnival by returning to Bakhtin o f the 1920s and placing his thought in Old—not New—Testa­ ment subtexts. His speculations on the underside o f carnival are more unnerving than those discussed earlier by Boris Groys or Alexander Etkind, manifestly secular philosophers with extensive experience both in the West and with Western texts. Isupov's work, as we shall see here and in chapter 5, is permeated by a certain dread and mystery; he, too, reads Bakhtin as a "Russian thinker," but not at all as our sacralizers are wont to do. Having passed the midpoint o f the present study, however, we might pause on these two scholar-critics and take stock. Averintsev and Isupov are exemplary "Russian critics o f critics." Both have been profoundly in­ fluenced by Bakhtin, and both are made anxious by this influence—al­ though not in the Bloomian sense. (Russian cultural tradition tends to be agglutinative and embracing, more likely to idolize forerunners than to annihilate them. Although competition does o f course take place among peers over the meaning o f the legacy, personal rivalry with one's own mentor or object o f study plays no fundamental role in the story o f Bakh­ tin's reclamation.) Nevertheless, Averintsev and Isupov are each troubled by the degree and quality o f critical energy that Bakhtin has released into the field o f ideas—in this case, through that most accessible concept, "carnival laughter"—and made uneasy precisely by the effect on the field as a field, that is, on the sorts o f questions that will subsequently be asked, or overlooked, within i t . Their treatment o f Bakhtin reflects this anxiety. Among the carnival revisionists, Averintsev is a curious case. Sensing a profound moral principle in Bakhtin's teachings and yet confronted with carnival's indisputable profligacy as an ethical framework, Averintsev sets out, i n the two essays discussed here, to test that apparent: contradiction. The results are uncertain; he is distracted from a critique o f the ideas by the image and appeal o f Bakhtin's life. Although Averintsev has not left any detailed memoirs, scattered references in the work o f others to his relations with Bakhtin suggest a personal affinity that goes deeper than scholarly debt and respect. Apparently Bakhtin confessed to Averintsev at one point, sorrowfully, " I was not better than my time.'' The dignity and pathos o f that remark, made by a scholar-survivor o f Bakhtin's gener25

2 5

" Y a byl ne luchshe svoego v r e m e n i . " Natalia Bonetskaia relates this c o m m e n t ,

which

Averintsev h a d passed o n to her. See N . K . Bonetskaia, " Z h i z n ' i filosofskaia ideia M i k h a i l a B a k h t i n a , " Voprosy filosofii, n o . 10 ( 1 9 9 6 ) : 9 4 - 1 1 2 , esp. 9 5 .

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181

ation, moved Averintsev profoundly; the "detour into the human" that one senses i n Averintsev's essays is surely linked to the Christological appeal Bakhtin had for an academic o f his keen spiritual orientation. I n his 1988 essay "Bakhtin, Laughter, Christian Culture," Averintsev addresses the ancient question o f whether Christ laughed. Would an answer i n the negative cast doubt on the existence o f a "culture o f laugh­ ter" within Christian societies? Ingeniously, Averintsev approaches the problem through physiology. Smekh [laughter], he points out, is not a steady state like smiling, cheerfulness, or humor. I t is a burst, "a pro­ foundly dynamic event—at one and the same time a movement o f the mind and a movement o f nerves and muscles: a rupture and an impet­ uous explosion . . . not an enduring condition but a transition, whose entire charm and meaning lies i n its momentariness" (8). Timing, tempo, and impermanence is all. A prolonged act o f laughter, Averintsev ob­ serves, is immediately felt as intolerable, unnatural, even grotesque, as something exhausting for the body and senseless for the spirit. What, then, are the ethical and philosophical implications o f this mgnovennostf—the mandatory "instantaneousness"—of laughter? 26

Citing Bergson, Averintsev addresses this issue by considering, first, how a transition differs i n value from a duration. Laughter is always expe­ rienced as movement "from a certain unfreedom to a certain freedom," which is to say that laughter is "not freedom, but liberation." As such, there is an inevitable mechanical and involuntary aspect to i t , the initiat­ ing gesture o f a person who is not yet free; i f there is any reason to believe that Christ did not laugh, i t was because He was, at all times and as a steady state, completely free. " A t a point o f absolute freedom, laugh­ ter is impossible for i t is superfluous" (9). I f liberation is the end point o f laughter, however, we must ask further: freedom from what? For Bakhtin, laughter enables not rebellion against the material givens o f the world but freedom from "social masks, imposed on a frightened person by 'offi­ cial culture' " ; its target was not so much another person as i t was "physi­ cal difficulty" and "human weakness" i n general. The relevant image here is that o f the Christian martyrs, laughing at their executioners to keep up their courage: laughter is "a solemn vow directed [internally] toward the powerlessness that a person is forbidding himself to feel" (10). The laughter Bakhtin sees i n Rabelais, then, is not the literary con­ struct o f an individual mind but a "universal philosophical and anthro­ pological paradigm," the "laughter o f a hero over the coward i n his own self." Such self-ridicule [samoosmeianie] presumes a bifurcation o f the self within the laughing person. W i t h its biblical parallel i n the man who 2 6

S. S. Averintsev, " B a k h t i n , s m e k h , khristianskaia k u l ' t u r a " [ 1 9 8 8 i n Rossiia/Russia,

6 ] , repr. i n MMB kak filosof 92, 7 - 1 9 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

no.

182

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"believes, and entreats God to help him i n his unbelief," i t is an ancient means by which "the conscious and the unconscious unceasingly provoke each other and exchange roles" (11). Averintsev admits that Bakhtin's vague, abstractly ecstatic treatment o f Rabelaisian laughter can easily ap­ pear U t o p i a n and naive. But for Bakhtin, again, laughter does not de­ scribe a state o f being (and much less a state o f reality); i t is a line o f defense, a state o f mind, or rather the threshold between two states o f mind. Contrary to the reading Isupov provides below, such laughter is not necessarily o f the devil. I t is wholly prior to distinctions o f good versus evil, functioning more as a p r i m o r d i a l e l e m e n t that detaches us temporarily from the world as we were thrust into i t , thus restoring us to strength. Although laughter is not demonic or evil i n its essence, i t can—and will—be utilized to serve evil. Averintsev closes his essay with a discourse on the terror o f laughter. Bakhtin's categorical statement that "violence never hides behind laughter" strikes him as utterly odd, since "the whole o f history literally shrieks against that statement"; after all, the mocking o f Christ on the cross was itself "a return to the very sources o f a popular culture o f laughter" (13). Blood is at the base o f every carnival ization. A n d i f Rabelais's heroes do not go out o f their way to shed that blood, this is not because popular laughter is peace-loving or benevolent but because "Rabelais was a humanist, with the mentality of a humanist" (14). Examples to contradict Bakhtin's benevolent understanding o f laughter abound closer to home. I n Russian history, Ivan the Terrible was a great fan o f jesters and o f vicious, ambivalent rituals o f humiliation; likewise, "the Stalinist regime simply could not have functioned without its own sort o f 'carnival.'" Averintsev intimates that such regimes find their ideal raw material i n bodies that are needful, disorganized, and gro­ tesque (despite, we might add, today's fashion for considering the effi­ cient, glossy, autonomous body the "fascist" one): "Totalitarianism has always known the value o f the unfinished, the unclosed, the malleable," Averintsev notes, and it is expert at exploiting these qualities for its own purposes. The subjects o f authoritarian regimes "must be unfinished and adolescent, in a state o f becoming, i n order for them to be educated, reeducated, 're-forged'" (16). 27

A l l the same, Averintsev insists that Bakhtin's carnival idea is internally consistent, pure i n both spirit and intent. Problems arise only when this idea is historicized and attached too literally to a single author—Rabe-

2 7

T h e reference is probably to this passage i n B a k h t i n ' s n o t e b o o k s f r o m 1 9 7 0 to

1971:

" I r o n y ( a n d laughter) as means for t r a n s c e n d i n g a situation, rising above it. O n l y d o g m a t i c and authoritarian cultures are one-sidedly serious. V i o l e n c e does n o t k n o w laughter" 134).

(SpG,

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lais—or to a single book. Then the charge can indeed be brought that Bakhtin "absolutized laughter" and mistakenly applied to the late Middle Ages the term official culture (in fact suitable only for "mature absolut­ ism") (17). But such simplifications are a reflection o f Bakhtin's years o f exile and silence; isolated, unpublished, Bakhtin nourished himself on philosophical universals. A n d whereas "concepts can be disputed, the ex­ perience o f the soul cannot." I n a second, briefer essay, "Bakhtin and the Russian Attitude Toward Laughter," Averintsev is less the philosopher and more the cultural histo­ rian. He opens with an observation about language: i n folk sayings and proverbs, laughter [smekh] is constantly rhymed with sin \jjrekh]. This semantic connection, he argues, is part o f a larger network o f linkages and taboos. I n Russian, for example, i t is quite impossible to say, "The saint told a joke"—that is, the sentence can be uttered, but like an oxy­ moron i t produces no living image; i t falls apart because jokes, like laugh­ ter, are the realm o f the devil. Averintsev then speculates on possible reasons for this cultural fact. Western Catholicism made an effort to "tame laughter, domesticate i t , integrate it into its own system" (342). This integration was achieved with the help o f the calendar; there were specific, delimited days or zones where "the forbidden" became "the possible." But i n Russian culture, such a line was never clearly drawn. Laughter remained an unregulated and dangerous primordial element— and smekhotvorstvo, breaking into laughter or causing others to laugh, remained a sin at all times. Even the iurodivyi, or holy fool, did not act foolishly for laughter's sake. A lighthearted or boisterous response to holy foolishness was sinful; i t would not do to "laugh when we should sigh, weep, and tremble" (342). However, the popular association o f smekh with grekh does not mean that Russians are grim or disinclined to laugh. "Rather the contrary," Averintsev observes—and not entirely happily Be­ cause o f its demonic connotations, laughter was perceived as license, as a reaction to the world that could not be monitored within any agreed-on limits. Thus i t lacked internal calibration and moral discrimination; even a little bit o f i t was wholly bad. "There was always a huge amount o f laughing going on i n Russia, but to laugh there was always more or less forbidden . . . This is a very Russian problem, the conflict between comic genius and Orthodox conscience; i t literally drove Gogol into his grave" (343). 28

The solution that Bakhtin devised to this problem was also, i n Averintsev's opinion, very Russian. The monograph on Rabelais, as is proper for 2 8

S. S. Averintsev, " B a k h t i n i russkoe otnosheniie k s m e k h u , " i n Ot mifa

Sbornik

v chestf Eleazara

Moiseevicha

Meletinskogo

3 4 1 - 4 5 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

k

literature.

( M o s c o w : Rossiiskii universitet, 1 9 9 3 ) ,

184

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FOUR

an academic work on a foreign author, relies largely on non-Russian pri­ mary material and documents. But everywhere Russian folkloric motifs, nature worship, and pre-Christian sensibilities penetrate and condition the whole. Most significant, Bakhtin slotted "Rabelaisian" laughter into Russian categories o f time, more open-ended and unmonitored than their French counterparts. (Throughout his study, Averintsev avers, Bakhtin "insufficiendy appreciated" the "calendar limits" and "conven­ tionality" o f Western laughter.) Bakhtin's image o f carnival laughter i n Renaissance France is not conditioned by the moderate, civilizing social norms o f the Western Church but instead possesses the Russian attributes o f a force all-powerful, out o f bounds and out o f control. Thus we arrive at the peculiar "purity" o f the illusory Utopia that rises out o f Bakhtin's book on Rabelais. A Russian would appreciate, far more acutely than a native o f Rabelais's own homeland, the "nowhere-ness" o f this Utopia, which i n the Russian context is not only a desired future ideal but a miraculous illusion, a "union o f what cannot be unified." Such a "utopia of Laughter w i t h a capital L"—laughter with no demonic overtones— could only be imagined within a Western society sensed as entirely "other" to Russia. But powerfully for its Russian audience, the raw mate­ rial o f this laughing Utopia is permeated by an energy and illicitness o f East Slavic origin. Thus Averintsev intimates that Bakhtin's book on Rabelais is marked by a curiously compact "outsideness" and "otherwise-ness" [inakovost']. Its mix o f alien and domestic perspectives, making i t "other" to Russian experience and "other" to medieval France as well, has contributed to its astonishing popularity and transposability and also to its vulnerability as literary history. I n closing, Averintsev quotes Leonid Pinsky on Bakhtin's passion for juxtaposing and intersecting cultures. "The idea o f person­ ality, supposedly a Western idea, is demonstrated by Bakhtin through the work o f the Russian writer Dostoevsky [Pinsky noted]. A n d the idea o f communality, supposedly a Russian idea, through the work o f the West­ ern writer Rabelais" (344). Konstantin Isupov, trained as an intellectual historian rather than a classicist or philosopher o f culture, is nowhere near as generous to Bakh­ tin. H e is repelled by those who would assimilate Bakhtiri to the more obscurantist recesses o f "Russian national-religious thought" (such as Kozhinov) and suspicious o f "spiritual" parallels that smooth over logical contradictions and attempt to soften their practical consequences. Seek­ ing to uncover the now distant questions that Bakhtin's ideas were de­ signed to answer, Isupov has labored to reconstruct the intellectual envi­ ronment that surrounded Bakhtin i n the 1920s. His reconstruction supplies the religious dimension that Egorov, i n his elaboration o f Bakh­ tin and the scientific revolution, had taken for granted.

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Centrally important to Bakhtin at the time was a community o f socio religious thinkers, among whom Isupov singles out Aleksandr Meier (1875-1939). Arrested i n 1928 alongside Bakhtin i n the "Resurrection Affair" and awarded a ten-year sentence i n the death camp at Solovki, Meier belonged to that gifted group o f philosophers i n Petersburg who, having tasted Marxism i n their youth, sought i n their maturity to pro­ mote a peculiarly Russian fusion o f socialist collectivism with early Chris­ tianity. Isupov concentrates on Meier's—and Bakhtin's—enduring enthusiasm for salvific models o f self-other relations. These models origi­ nated with the Symbolist generation, were made famous i n the classroom by Bakhtin's professor o f philosophy at Petrograd University, Aleksandr Vvedensky, as "the problem o f another person's T ' " [problems chuzhogo ya], and were widely discussed i n the 1910s and 1920s i n both secular and spiritual circles. Their unifying motif was the interrelated Christian and apocalyptic theme o f Eros, Heart, and Sacrifice. I n Meier's version o f this triad, what shapes and saves us is the other—the other's voice, presence, worldview—to whom anything o f our own must constantly, and gratefully, be sacrificed. 29

30

Here Isupov sees a problem, the same one that troubled critics o f dia­ logue and polyphony i n the previous chapter. What, ultimately, can be meant by "ours" and "others,"' when two parties continually defer to each other i n authority and content? Where can we look for a point o f origin and locus o f responsibility? Self and other hold each other hostage. I f the other can at any time be raided to feed an arbitrary succession o f "I's," then the integrity o f the other will always be insecure or swallowed up, i n cruel symmetry and endless regression. (The identity o f each " I , " as other to another, is o f course no more secure.) "Bakhtin highly valued the Christian mythologeme o f the sacrificial victim [zhettva] as the ideal norm," Isupov writes. "But i n fact i t is the other who turns out to be sacrificed i n his model, an other i n whom any approaching T finds its own authentic contours and the unity o f its personality. The actual fate o f the 'other' i n the finale o f this procedure does not interest Bakhtin" (65). As Isupov draws out its implications, Bakhtin's self-other paradigm ap­ pears quite hopeless. Eschewing all sentimentality, he classifies i t as one o f "those nostalgic monsters that emerged from the autumn twilight o f the Russian religious renaissance." I n an intimate chamber-room con31

2 9

O n M e i e r , B a k h t i n , a n d the "Voskresenie" g r o u p , see N . P. Antsiferov, " T r i glavy i z

v o s p o m i n a n i i , " i n Pamint : 3

Istoricheskii

sbornik,

n o . 4 (Paris 1 9 8 1 ; M o s c o w

1979):

55-

1 5 2 . See also K . G . Isupov, " O t estetiki z h i z n i k estetike istorii (traditsii russkoi filosofii u M . M . B a k h t i n a ) , " i n MMB 3 0

kak filosof 92,

68-82.

See K . G . Isupov, " M i k h a i l B a k h t i n i A l e k s a n d r M e i e r , " i n MMB

i fil kul XX,

6 0 - 1 2 1 , esp. 6 1 - 6 6 . F u r t h e r page references given consecutively i n text. 3 1

Isupov, " M i k h a i l B a k h t i n i A l e k s a n d r M e i e r , " 6 5 .

2

(91),

186

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FOUR

text, Isupov admits, the scenario might still work to everyone's benefit. I n a climate o f trust, among close friends, gestures o f mutual "sacrifice" and local adjustment are attenuated, concrete, kept i n check by shared experience and habits o f reciprocity. The danger comes when "Bakhtin's act o f humility before a sacrificial victim" is transformed, under pressure o f Stalinist maximalism, into abstract rhetoric and an idealization o f carnival relations. For i n carnival we do not know who the other is—indeed, this is part o f carnival's appeal—and thus everything really is sacrificed: "The personal voice drowns i n carnival laughter . . . The carnival crowd, organized into a laughing judgment on both past and future: this is not an alternative to wretched existence and wretched social conditions but simply a yearning for the mythology o f an eternal return Bakhtin's concept o f carnival, for all its indisputable attractiveness and fascination, is essentially tragic, for the human being is forgotten i n i t " (66). Isupov's criticism o f carnival can now be attached to the polemic introduced i n chapter 2 between Bakhtin's book on Rabelais and Aleksei Losev's profoundly negative reading o f that novelist—and o f Bakhtin's book—in the final pages o f his Aesthetics of the Renaissance. I n an essay entitled "The Bakhtinian Crisis o f Humanism," Isupov reviews that controversy. This minor quarrel between two philosophers is o f more than literary interest, he insists. I n fact, i t provides a retrospective glance at the entire tradition o f Russian thinking about "humanism, mangodhood, the satanic relativizing o f all sacral values . . . [and] the experience o f the rise and fall o f the human being as the central value i n God's w o r l d " (127). Since Bakhtin's book on Rabelais is so often reprimanded for its neglect o f Renaissance humanism, Isupov's strategy here is o f some interest. He places Losev's anti-Rabelaisian zeal i n the context o f Russian models o f humanism (he sees three: Promethean competition with God, creative cooperation with God, and a tragic tension between the demands o f the human and the divine). A n d he insists that Bakhtin gave us solely the carnival underbelly o f Rabelais's text and world, "leaving out the familiar high-cultured side o f the picture," not because that high-culture aspect was already well researched and known to all (as the defendant had claimed during his dissertation defense) but because the wholesale elimination o f genuine, value-bearing humanism was essential for Bakhtin's carnival to work at all. H o w did the trajectory o f Bakhtin's thought lead to an apotheosis i n carnival? I n the 1920s, Isupov reminds us, Bakhtin and Meier, enamored o f a "liturgical-sacrificial ethics o f service," strove for a "community o f 'others' " i n which "worldwide orphanhood" would be successfully tran32

3 2

K . G . Isupov, "Bakhtinskii krizis g u m a n i z m a (materialy k p r o b l è m e ) , " B sb II91,

5 5 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

127-

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scended "by an aesthetics o f salvation and consummation" (132). Bakh­ tin's humanism, therefore, had a strong religious coloration from the start. I n such a quest Bakhtin did not perceive individual consciousness and identity to be at risk, because the personalist and intuitivist traditions o f Eastern Orthodoxy taught that within a Christian community, the full priorities o f each individual " I " would be preserved (133). W i t h the dis­ covery o f the dialogic nature o f language—a crucial step—this abstract and somewhat impractical scenario was stabilized and brought into the immediate grasp o f every human being. "Liturgical-sacrificial ethics" could be justified from both an individual and a societal perspective by the process o f remembering [pamiatovanie]. Since human memory is stored nowhere as accurately and efficiently as i n language, through working with words we can come to know what we must answer for, what is "our o w n " [5T0z].

What happens, however, under carnival conditions? Time and memory cease to function as components o f personality. There is an abrupt loss o f personal language, o f any sense o f "one's o w n , " and a regression to preEdenic innocence, helplessness, and incompleteness. As Isupov charts the prehistory o f Bakhtin's carnival vision, the path o f the "Bakhtinian Adam" moves from an initial competence to finalize another's " I , " through a (largely Utopian) positing o f the personality's autonomous value within a chorus, to the book on Rabelais, where " i n general, the T simply falls out o f the field o f Bakhtin's vision, i t ceases to be a problem, and instead dissolves itself in a poetics o f socialized agreement. N o t only does Bakhtin, i n his analysis o f Rabelais's prose, part company with the problem o f the author. Important is the fact that for Bakhtin, all princi­ pled distinction between [a singular] T ' and the T o f a chorus has now disappeared" (134). Isupov insists that this shift to carnival is more radical than the shift to polyphony accomplished earlier i n the Dostoevsky book—where the con­ cept o f "one's o w n " [svoi] is boldly extended from author's voice to hero's voice but still coheres as a concept. With carnival, the concept o f svoi collapses altogether. A n d when this occurs, the emphasis on blame and responsibility that marks the early writings (the "non-alibi i n exis­ tence") is transformed "into the laughing alibi o f the crowd, which is always right simply because i t is the crowd and because i t is laughing." Its cultural memory is no longer temporal-historical but has become blindly spatial, eternally returning to the same place. A n d "humanism, having gazed on the far side o f personality, found there a demonic facelessness and the relativized judgment o f the m o b " (135). Isupov concludes by asking why Bakhtin might have departed so ut­ terly from his earlier Christian anthropology (139). His answer all but suggests that Bakhtin himself came under the spell o f an unclean spirit.

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The new choral " I " no longer needed justice or personality: " I t is immanently vindicated, beyond the realm o f sin." Bakhtin effectively returns the conscious " I , " a fallen and thus an articulate Adam, to a prelapsarian state where i t neither knows nor cares about Good and Evil; mutely, i t reenters a "carnivalized Eden." But such an Eden could just as easily be understood as Hell. After all, the only resident within the Garden w i t h any real knowledge is the Serpent. Its laughter is neither humanizing nor humanistic but, ringing out boldly and facelessly on the Edenic equiva­ lent o f the public square, simply satanic. (At this point we are reminded o f Averintsev's dictum that i n Russian traditional culture, laughter— however beneficently employed and whatever its happy results—is, by definition, o f the devil.) I n the absence o f any individualizing principle, Isupov concludes, this "demonic humanism" must be judged Rabelais's proper legacy. Thus the body warmth, fertility, and indiscriminate cele­ bration so much a part o f Bakhtin's family-holiday approach to Rabelais's text are wholly deceptive. The proper fruits o f carnival, Isupov suggests i n closing, are not to be found i n Rabelais. They are the voided spaces o f Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal. That most unsentimental o f poets adopted none o f the conven­ tional decadent poses—"singer o f sin, o f erotic suicide, the intolerable voyeur"—but attempted the most difficult thing o f all for an artist: "to enter into the very heart o f Evil" (141). 33

Thus do Sergei Averintsev and Konstantin Isupov raise old-fashioned textological and ethical questions about Bakhtin's interpretation o f Rabelais. Both have tasted o f Stalinism and both worked long years—as did Bakh­ tin himself—within Soviet academic structures. Although neither is blind to the postcommunist crisis and its anarchic-carnivalesque potential, their critiques do not sound "modern" at all (not to mention "post-"); al­ though free to do so, they do not exploit post-Soviet literary strategies or terminology i n their discussion. N o r do they "biographize" the intellec­ tual passions o f their subject (so easy to do, as Vladimir Turbin has shown) by connecting Bakhtin's loss o f a leg w i t h his glorification o f the grotesque body or his constant hunger with his praise o f the carnival feast. Respecting the integrity o f the scholar's voice and the privacy o f his life, both scholars do homage to the fact that Bakhtin—whatever his 3 3

Interesting i n this regard is Baudelaire's o w n theory o f laughter, w h i c h may or may n o t

have been familiar to B a k h t i n : " L a u g h t e r is satanic; it is thus profoundly h u m a n . I t is the c o n s e q u e n c e i n m a n o f the idea o f his o w n superiority. A n d since laughter is essentially h u m a n , essentially contradictory: that is to say that it is at o n c e a t o k e n o f a n infinite grandeur a n d an infinite misery . . . I t is f r o m the perpetual collision o f these t w o infinites that laughter is struck." See C h a r l e s Baudelaire, The Painter

of Modern

Life

and

Other

Essays, trans. J o n a t h a n M a y n e ( L o n d o n : P h a i d o n , 1 9 6 4 ) , c h . 6: " O n the E s s e n c e o f L a u g h ­ ter," 1 5 3 - 5 4 .

CARNIVAL

189

personal travail—lived by ideas; thus they conceive their task, as fellow scholars, to be an inquiry into the logic and appropriateness o f those ideas on their own terms. Our final "anti-carnival" response, by the post­ modernist cultural critic Mikhail Ryklin, is quite another phenomenon. Ryklin's career and prospects represent an authentic paradigm shift, not only for Bakhtin studies but for the larger Russian academic estab­ lishment. As an update to chapter 1 o f this study, which surveyed the reclamation o f literary scholarship i n the post-Stalinist period, we might pause briefly on the general shape o f that career. Born i n 1948 and awarded the Ph.D. i n 1978, Ryklin is o f a generation whose academic— and, we might add, life—experience at no point overlap Bakhtin's. He came to maturity as a member o f the dissenting intelligentsia, one o f several gifted and restless students to gather around the remarkable phenomenologist, philosopher o f culture, and Proust scholar, Merab Mamardashvili. Then, during glasnost, i n a move that almost has the ring o f carnival about i t , Ryklin found himself sponsored by Gorbachev's revi­ sionist state apparatus. Influenced by French models, a scholarly section had been set up within the Institute o f Philosophy o f the Soviet Academy o f Sciences under the title "Laboratory o f Post-Classical Studies." I t en­ joyed the support o f those reformers i n government circles who were anxious lest Russian state-subsidized scholarship i n the humanities, once opened up to the West, reveal itself as pinched, naive, crippled by the accumulated silliness o f six decades o f Marxist-Leninist ideology, and des­ perately out o f date. Ryklin was among those recruited to staff the labora­ tory. These young researchers were granted access to what had once been the Soviet Index: the canonical texts and reigning authorities o f the con­ temporary European and American literary-critical scene. Commanding French, English, and German, Ryklin translated into Russian major works by Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Gadamer, Adorno, the Marquis de Sade. He answered for the entries on Blanchot, Bataille, and Tel Quel i n the Dictionary of Contemporary Philosophy published i n Moscow i n 1990. But Ryklin was more than a conduit through which luminaries o f conti­ nental thought could reach the newly liberated and vulnerable East. He emerged as an energetic organizer and commentator, integrating the lat­ est literary categories into the (by then) rapidly pluralizing Soviet scene. I n 1989 he helped to bring Jacques Derrida to Moscow (which resulted in a book o f commentary and interviews, Jacques Derrida in Moscow: Deconstruction, Travels); for the next three years, Ryklin himself was a visit­ ing fellow at French and American universities. I n 1992 his essays on 34

3 4

M . K . R y k l i n , e d . , Zhak Derrida

v Moskve: dekonstruktsiia,

puteshestviia

(Moscow: R I K

" K u l ' t u r a , " 1 9 9 3 ) , p u b l i c a t i o n financed by the F r e n c h Ministry o f F o r e i g n Affairs a n d the A m e r i c a n firm " E a s t - W e s t T o u r s a n d T r a v e l C o n s u l t i n g . "

190

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"speech vision," Roland Barthes, French theory, and post-Soviet deconstruction were collected into an anthology, Terrorologiki ("Terrorologics"), published alongside the Derrida book in the Tartu-Moscow series Philosophy at the

Margins?

s

The pace and depth o f this change i n Russian critical vocabularies defy comparison with our earlier "stages." Within ten years Ryklin's genera­ tion "at the crossroads" accomplished a task that would have struck Bakhtin as novelistic to the core: the incorporation o f alien literary vocab­ ularies and worldviews into long-ossified, time-sanctioned official genres o f speech. A n element o f willful subversion was not wanting in all this. But that, o f course, was also in the spirit o f Bakhtin—who, recast into the vague, mind-boggling syntax o f postmodernist discourse, became a key player i n Ryklin's deconstruction o f the Soviet regime. Ryklin's major contribution to the Russian debate over carnival comes in an essay, "Tela terrora" [Bodies o f terror], which appeared in the pi­ oneer issue o f Bakhtinskii sbornik (Moscow, 1990) and subsequently in English i n New Literary History (1993). Abstract, theoretical, in parts quite unreadable, the argument is pursued i n such a way that the con­ crete body and documented life o f Bakhtin the man are effectively ab­ sent. But i n keeping with the norms o f much postmodernist criticism, intimate psychological terms are applied, as it were, to Bakhtin's "virtual body." I n the text o f Rabelais and His World, Ryklin uncovers both a "self-therapeutic" aspect and the unconscious reflexes o f "trauma." Bakhtin is said to have discovered i n Rabelais a "convenient site" for the traumatized intellectual's response and resistance to Stalinism (to be sure, a trauma conditioned by "the unconscious o f someone superlatively in­ telligent" [ 5 5 ] ) . With the help o f a carnival worldview, this trauma could be enacted and partially exorcized—which explains, perhaps, Bakhtin's abiding passion for the idea. "The Rabelais book," Ryklin asserts, "is indirectly dedicated to the terror and dictated by i t " (63): "Rabelais and His World is one o f the key texts that help us understand the radically changed situation o f a member o f the new society's intelligentsia, who has lost his status as a courier for the whole o f society and received i n exchange the fate o f a hostage. . . . [By attending to the multicolored kaleidoscope o f the "lower bodily stratum" and folk speech patterns,] the traditionally trained intellectual could maintain for himself the appear­ ance o f cultural continuity and could also distance himself from the more 36

3 5

Mikhail Ryklin,

ginalem/ Filosofiia cc

3 6

po

Terrorologiki

( T a r t u - M o s c o w : E i d o s , 1 9 9 2 ) , in the series Ad

Mar-

kraiam.

v

M . K . R y k l i n , " T e l a terrora (tezisy k logike nasiliia)," in B sb I 90, 6 0 - 7 6 . T r a n s l a t e d

into E n g l i s h by M o l l y W i l l i a m s W e s l i n g a n d D o n a l d W e s l i n g as "Bodies o f Terror: T h e s e s t o w a r d a L o g i c o f V i o l e n c e , " New Literary

History

2 4 , n o . 1 ( W i n t e r 1 9 9 3 ) : 5 1 - 7 4 . Page

references are to the E n g l i s h text, adjusted w h e r e necessary for accuracy.

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dramatic, tragic aspects o f the new culture that made intellectual life i m ­ possible" (55). To argue this thesis, Ryklin offers a dynamic theory o f the logics—or, as he prefers, the "ecstatics"—of terror. Terror is marked precisely by the "insignificance o f causes i n the face o f effects . . . [unfortunately,] we have not yet learned to analyze this enormous priority o f effects, and from habit we continue to seek the 'right' causes. But terror is a pure logic o f effects . . . a theater that transforms itself into an orgy o f effects" ( 5 6 - 5 7 ) . Traditional scholarship, working from the bottom up, cannot possibly grasp this logic or incorporate i t intellectually into a canon. Nec­ essary, rather, is some emotional intonation closer to a "violent ec­ statics"—precisely the tone (which Mihailovic called "incantational") that Bakhtin strikes i n his Rabelais. This "ecstatics," Ryklin claims, has more i n common with vision than with speech. Watching something, being watched, creating a sculptured image: here, i n categories o f vision, we have the most powerful tool o f any terror-culture. Terror relies on a paralysis o f normal life processes. The world is frozen i n a single glance—immediate, available for simula­ tion, iconic, indifferent to dialogic feedback, tolerant o f absolute silence and death. Static visions are the perfect receptacle for the lie. To illustrate his thesis, Ryklin selects the murals, mosaics, and statuary o f the classic Moscow Metro stations, constructed as "people's palaces" during the Stalinist years. The proletarian and peasant figures that adorn these un­ derground stations—inconspicuously huge, vacant, fertile, rejoicing, and everywhere redundant, "a dense piling up o f bodies"—function, i n Ryklin's view, as vampires or zombies, storing up death in themselves. Alone or i n groups, they radiate not the "catastrophic excesses" that were in fact occurring (collectivization, the terror-famine, violent urbaniza­ tion) but "the perfect innocence o f primary intentions" (58). For "collec­ tive corporeality" is always imperial. I t feeds indiscriminately; the buxom bodies ripen on their own, all blankly alike and all unfaltering. When an authoritarian empire begins to crumble, however, when demands for in­ dividual rights or personalized expression can no longer be effectively resisted, such gross and self-confident embodiment becomes an anachro­ nism. I n a decadent transitional age (Ryklin is writing i n 1990, on the edge o f the end o f the Soviet Empire), it loses its inner logic and be­ comes emaciated, nostalgic, sentimental, wantonly violent. Ryklin intimates that imperial Moscow Metro art, i f considered i n so­ ber retrospective, is a requiem for the individual body. Your body, my body, had become incidental, disposable, mute—and in its place, the col­ lective body o f the people was granted all the reproductive and rhetorical rights. It cannot die, so its component parts were set free to kill the individual you. The anesthetizing monumentality o f this art was so pri-

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meval and depersonalizing that no one dared look at it. Collective cor­ poreality, after all, is not meant to be perceived by individuals, all the individuals are already inside i t (with what organs might that gaze be accomplished? What sense organs do you have left?). Dare to look, and you will be struck blind. Ryklin closes his essay on the grotesque literary miniatures o f Yuri Mamleev, a Russian writer long i n emigration who is so bewitched by collective bodies, communal apartments, coprophilia and necrophilia that his characters literally consume themselves and have no eyes left to see with (they see with their lower body parts). The craftsmanship o f Mamleev, who i n Ryklin's hands plays something o f the carnival fool to Isupov's Baudelaire invoked earlier, "sinks lower than any literary waterline" (73). Mamleevian grotesquerie does indeed recall the Rabelaisian world that so disgusted Losev and Isupov with its incipient "Satanism." What can be said o f these various successive readers o f carni­ val grotesque? Bakhtin, by all accounts, was delighted by its products. Isupov was repelled. Ryklin and Mamleev coolly observe. I n his fascination with state power and his shift o f emphasis from the ear to the eye, from auditory message to visual stimulus, Ryklin brings Bakhtin as close to the "postmodern condition" as any critic we have yet considered. Yet for all its theoretical detachment, Ryklin's reading is highly partisan. He suggests that Bakhtin (consciously or not) came to align the image o f a terrorized, collectivized Soviet folk with the basic components o f a "carnivalistic" worldview, conveniently extracted from Rabelais. This parallel unfolds i n Rabelais and His World i n discrete stages. First, Bakhtin "inverts the logic o f terror" by removing real-life bodies from his purview and filling his discussion with "the archetypal pure essence o f folk-ness" (53). Then, by permeating his readings with joyous, carefree, impulsive acts that entail no consequences, terror is "ousted to the periphery"; "the folk finds itself deprived o f [even] the right to transgressive ritual." Finally, Bakhtin's wholly visual, outsiderly approach to corporeality results i n the individual body becoming "an ide­ ally replaceable, synthetic body"—a body i n which denunciation (an ex­ ternal, lie-bearing form) can take the place o f confession (an internal, truth-seeking form) without a tremor. Ideally, speech stops altogether. Or, as Ryklin expresses it i n his own weirdly roughened prose, speech "closes in on itself and gives itself over to a sublime self-devouring. The reality o f the denunciation and the shuddering o f suffering bodies, con­ fessing their fictiveness under torture, is replaced by the coming-intobeing o f speech body-giants, gazing as i f from the sidelines at the tor­ ments o f their chance individual incarnations" (54). The invisibility o f real everyday bodies and the blind—literally blind—faith i n Utopia that accompany such Rabelaisian hero-giants were essential for the "ecstasy o f terror" to work.

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We might now inquire: I n this exposé o f carnival, does Ryklin himself pursue humanizing ends? Whose side, blundy put, is he on? Such ques­ tions are not easy to ask o f postmodernists. Their critical stance, which fears naive sentimentalism most o f all, is designed to avoid i f at all possi­ ble any embarrassing localization along an ethically exposed border. (Ryklin hates Stalinism, but his style shares nothing w i t h Solzhenitsyn's no-nonsense Gulag realism.) Ryklin does not remark on the fact that many o f Bakhtin's comments about the body, ominous as they are when read i n a Stalinist context, also characterize bodies as Bakhtin represents them i n more distant eras—the ancient world, the Middle Ages—in his writings from the early 1920s, long before the Great Terror. Most sur­ prising, however, given the modish diction and cutting-edge French the­ ory o f his essay, is how very old-fashioned Ryklin turns out to be within the Russian critical tradition. Ryklin accepts unquestioningly the elevated role o f the prophet-critic. Literature—even i n its comic mode—serves social and political life, and it must expose and censure the abominations o f that life. Literary schol­ arship (such as Bakhtin's on François Rabelais) is consequently an Aeso­ pian practice, an "oblique-speak" that morally alert outsiders will grasp but the people i n power will not understand. Most old-fashioned about Ryklin's critique, however, is its view o f Bakhtin as a "thinker" i n Russian society. The energy behind Ryklin's image o f Bakhtinian carnival as "en­ coded Stalinist terror" appears to originate not i n the oppressed folk and not i n the oppressing state but rather i n the anxiety o f that time-hon­ ored, privileged social class—the Russian intelligentsia, to which Ryklin himself belongs—now faced with the specter o f being shoved aside. Ac­ customed to enjoying the centrality o f a Tolstoy or a Solzhenitsyn i n the life o f its people, at home with the idea o f sacrifice for the common good, this cultured class, too, is being forced to resituate itself i n postSoviet reality. I t surfers not so much from repression (which was its past burden and banner o f glory) as from fears o f irrelevance, fears that it might lose influence and audience. As we have seen elsewhere i n this study, the self-absorbed theorizing and inflated fantasies o f the Russian intelligentsia have come under considerable attack i n the postcommunist period. I n his essay, with its talk o f exorcism and the unconscious, Ryklin appears to assign this routine "intelligentsial" anxiety to Bakhtin—al­ though there is every indication that the aristocratic Bakhtin was just as untouched by this aspect o f his reception as by any other. I t is o f some interest, then, to note Alexandar Mihailovic's thoughtful, but on balance dissenting, review o f Ryklin's essay from a religious per­ spective. We recall Mihailovic's "Christological" reading provided earlier in this chapter: that for Bakhtin, carnival and grotesquerie do not de­ grade the spirit but instead serve to elevate matter, i n imitation o f the

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Incarnation and Eucharist. Thus Ryklin's reading, which claims (in M i hailovic's paraphrase) that the grotesque body is an "ultimate totem o f ideological monotheism," motivated not by trust or love but by an ances­ tral "fear o f the cosmos," one that "demands the periodic lustration and self-abnegation o f the many for the sake o f one," is judged by Mihailovic to be "highly idiosyncratic" (191). " I n [Ryklin's] article," he concludes, "the carnivalesque becomes the expression o f something very much like thanatos" N o t tethered by Ryklin's imported terminology or secular framework, Mihailovic further points out that while transubstantiation i n fact abounds i n Ryklin's image o f a grim Stalinist carnival, Ryklin moves it i n a direction opposite from Bakhtin's intent, that is, toward increasing msubstantiability and vacuousness. As centerpiece o f his critique, Mihailovic comments on Ryklin's awk­ wardness, his suspicion, almost his criminalization o f individualized "breakaway bodies." He contrasts this traditionally Russian discomfiture in the presence o f the isolated or free-standing person with Bakhtin's own much less anxious view, and with the high value Bakhtin everywhere places on individuating chronotopes. Attending closely to Bakhtin's text, Mihailovic concludes that, contra Ryklin, "Bakhtin actually emphasizes the absorption o f the cosmos into the individual, rather than the suicidal merging o f the latter into the former" (192). But in Ryklin's more sinis­ ter interpretation, as Mihailovic reads i t , "the individual body only has substance when i t cleaves itself unto the corporate guilt o f the collective body; therefore informing [denunciation] becomes the communicative equivalent o f bodily assimilation whereas individuation is tantamount to separation from the body. . . . The body that is not identical to others and does not consume or merge with them is tortured for its exclusionariness . . . Sentience belongs to the breakaway bodies, not to the ones that inform on and cannibalize one another; the latter are virtually inert, even inanimate" (194). Mihailovic concedes that Ryklin's dark reading is a needed corrective to the naively ecstatic reception o f Rabelais and His World. But he notes that Ryklin never takes into account Bakhtin's manifestly positive enthusiasm for the carnival worldview nor does he entertain a collec­ tivity that might respect, rather than violate, the boundaries o f person­ ality. (Epstein might well be correct i n pointing out spiritual affinities between communism and postmodernism.) The question o f Bakhtin's own ethical position—whether he endorses or parodies this material— cannot be resolved, Mihailovic observes, i f carnival is envisioned solely as "a demonic Otherworld" (195). O n balance, Ryklin and his fellow transmitters must be credited for bringing these "foreign bodies" o f cultural criticism to bear on their famous, still somewhat insulated elder compatriot. But i n his motivation and method, Ryklin remains

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more at home than he suspects. A n outside perspective still offers the more evenhanded verdict.

N E I T H E R FOR N O R AGAINST: CARNIVAL AS ANALYTIC DEVICE Our final category o f response to carnival is neither sacred nor demonic nor defensively protective o f humanist values. I t is—or attempts to be— neutral and disinterested scholarship. These critics admit that the carnival cluster o f images and values was precious to Bakhtin, however he might have deployed i t ; but they also hold that the "carnival grotesque" is a principle, an option, whose dynamics can be investigated independently o f its application to Rabelais's novels or to Stalinist politics. The partisan history o f carnival reception has tended to discourage needed research into the metaphysics o f carnival-holiday thinking—and even to obscure the contours o f the idea itself. This state o f affairs was summed up well by Vitaly Makhlin i n 1991, in an essay for the second issue o f Bakhtinskii sbornik entitled "'Laughter Invisible to the World': the Carnival Anatomy o f the New Middle Ages." A t first we were all enchanted by ambivalent laughter, Makhlin notes o f Bakhtin's reception i n his homeland; now we are all disillusioned with the "cheerful gravedigger." So wide a swing over such a short period has given rise to the desire "to take revenge on Bakhtin, to expose laughter itself as corrupt . . . O n the sociopolitical plane, the 'laughing chorus o f the people' is understood—at best—as allegory and as a schizoid-analyti­ cal substitution o f 'bodies o f terror,' and at worst as an expression o f Russian fascism and Russian Nietzscheanism. O n the religious plane, i t is taken as an expression and reflection o f the 'demonic,' Luciferian princi­ ple" ( 1 5 9 - 6 0 ) . Such polarized reactions are part o f an inevitable back­ lash, Makhlin remarks. The world o f criticism is currently poorly struc­ tured to appreciate a position o f "outsideness" toward another person that is not solipsistic, parasitic, or formalistic. According to Makhlin, Bakhtinian laughter can better be grasped as an illustration o f a larger principle—one connected, at base, with how we see. But unlike Ryklin's postmodernist use o f vision, with its arsenal o f terms contemporary only to the critic (simulacrum, repression, trauma, "the gaze"), Makhlin draws largely on philosophers familiar to, or contempo­ rary with, Bakhtin himself. I n his own time, Makhlin argues, Bakhtin challenged those naive, classical definitions o f vision that hold witnessing to be autonomous, authoritative, monologic—definitions that lend legal 37

3 7

V. L . Makhlin,

"'Nevidimyi miru

s m e k h . ' Karnaval'naia

anatomiia n o v o g o sred-

nevekov'ia," i n B sb II 91, 1 5 6 - 2 1 1 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

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credence, say, to the status o f "eyewitness." For Bakhtin believed that we could often "true u p " our vision more honestly by laughter than by see­ ing. Along with theorists o f comedy and anti-utopians before and since, Bakhtin understood laughter as a detaching, humbling, individuating force that helps us to define our properly modest place i n the world o f other subjects: that o f "laughing outsideness" [smekhovaia vnenakhodimost*] (194). As such, it is one o f the "visible forms and roots o f dialogism" (166): I laugh at myself, at my own suffering, at my absurd position i n the world, because I cannot know or see the whole picture and someone else is obliged to tell me where I fit. M y " I " is a singularity, but one that nevertheless acknowledges itself as only a part; laughter helps us to ac­ complish that most difficult task, to see ourselves as very minor players i n a multitude o f other people's plots. Laughing forms are, above all, par­ ticipatory forms. That is their primary and fully serious function. 38

Thus we err when we forget that for Bakhtin, the comic was always the "serious comic." "Laughing outsideness" is not necessarily a mind­ less grin or an irresponsible guffaw, nor need i t idealize ugliness and formlessness [bezobrazie]. I n fact, properly applied, "laughter sobers down Utopian, aestheticized 'seriousness,' " which is always too ecstatic, always threatening to shut up the world w i t h its stiff theories and hu­ morless arrests (195). Further, Bakhtin never intended that his favorite phrase veselyi smekh, "cheerful laughter," be taken to mean that all laughter is cheerful; that would be ridiculous, Utopian, perhaps even sadistic (200). Bakhtin implies only that the best sorts o f laughter are cheerful—because cheerfulness is a prerequisite for openness and an unencumbered mind (201). Finally, Makhlin readdresses that point which, ever since the disserta­ tion defense, has plagued readers o f Bakhtin's Rabelais project. Why was no effort made to account for Renaissance humanism? Even to suggest i n what ways it might coexist productively with a culture o f laughter? Makhlin's answer draws neither on Stalin nor the Devil but on straight academic and literary history. He conjectures that Bakhtin had con­ cluded, on the basis o f his research i n the 1930s, that most scholarly authorities on the Renaissance constructed a retroactive and anachronis­ tic image o f humanism that was "nothing other than an aestheticized myth, created by the individualistic culture o f the nineteenth century," a companion piece to the "Romantic-utopian myth o f an 'organic' Middle 3 8

" I a m capable o f seeing outside myself, seeing other people a n d other things, only

because I a m already seen, a c k n o w l e d g e d , a n d accepted" ( 1 6 8 ) ; that is, the sense o f w h o l e ­ ness I derive f r o m m y o w n acts o f feeling a n d seeing is also every other person's experience, a l t h o u g h a different w h o l e is achieved for every person. E l s e w h e r e , M a k h l i n c o m m e n d s this act o f "finding oneself as an other" for its "ontological modesty a n d dignity." See V . L . M a k h l i n , " ' D i a l o g i z m ' M . M . B a k h t i n a kak p r o b l e m a g u m a n i t a r n o i kul'tury X X v e k a , " i n B sb I 90, 1 0 7 - 2 9 , esp. 1 0 9 .

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Ages" (203). Such scholarly mythmaking—or "intelligentsial fiction" \intelligentskaia vydumka]—was always offensive to Bakhtin, regardless o f the worthy values such a myth might cany. The stamp o f officialness was too much upon it. A n d Bakhtin's reaction, i n this instance, was to bring the whole weight o f carnival to bear against that image. He was not especially concerned w i t h balance. For unlike the academic world o f "ready scholarly results" and unlike postmodernist constructs that focus on power (and also, we might add, unlike any construct where justice and memory are indispensable), the "mental energy" o f carnival could never become bitter (204). Thus i t was impossible to defeat. Makhlin's route—carnival as a metaphysics o f "laughing outsideness"—is one o f the more successful neutral approaches to this most controversial concept. We conclude our "nonpartisan" approaches to Bakhtinian carni­ val w i t h one equally theoretical, but more tied to literary history and to problems i n the evolution o f genres. For that reason, perhaps, i t arose on the boundary between carnival and dialogue, and as an aftermath to Bakhtin's massive insertion o f what some have felt to be exaggerated carnival motifs into the revised Dostoevsky book. Can the incompatible theses o f polyphony and carnival be effectively combined? Does the new fourth chapter on genre traditions o f menippean satire contradict the spirit o f Bakhtin's original theses on Dostoevsky? Some readers, nostalgic for the Soviet order, openly despised the carnivalesque insert i n Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. They used i t to lash out at the twin evils o f an anarchic Russian present and an irresponsible past (including that morbid scandalmonger Dostoevsky himself, under ban for much o f the Soviet period). More sophisticated attempts were soon 39

40

3 9

S a u l M o r s o n a n d I have offered an "opportunistic" hypothesis: I n the early 1 9 6 0 s

B a k l i t i n still saw n o chance o f getting his dissertation o n Rabelais i n t o print. H e m i g h t have t h o u g h t it p r u d e n t to i n t r o d u c e some o f those ideas u n d e r the guise o f a "revision" o f a n earlier b o o k , even at the expense o f internal logic a n d at the risk o f exaggeration (i.e., " B o b o k " is a m i c r o c o s m o f all o f Dostoevsky's w o r k ) . See M o r s o n a n d E m e r s o n , Bakhtin:

Creation

Mikhail

of a Prosaics, 4 5 6 - 6 0 . Since that w r i t i n g , evidence for B a k h t i n ' s lifelong

pro-carnival sympathies has persuaded m e that o p p o r t u n i s m c a n n o t be the w h o l e o f it. B a k h t i n l o v e d this idea a n d was eager that scholars w h o m he respected approve his applica­ tion o f it to the m o s t diverse realms. See, for example, his letter o f 2 3 N o v e m b e r 1 9 6 3 to L e o n i d Pinsky: " I a m n o w o c c u p i e d w i t h renovating m y 'Rabelais' . . . I w o u l d very m u c h like to receive f r o m y o u even the briefest c o m m e n t s o n the fourth chapter o f m y b o o k o n D o s t o e v s k y ( i f y o u have h a d the chance to acquaint y o u r s e l f w i t h i t ) . T h i s is very i m p o r t a n t for m y w o r k o n ' R a b e l a i s . ' " DKKh, 4 0

no. 2(7)

(94):

60.

E x e m p l a r y here is A . A . I l i u s h i n , w h o s e essay, "Apropos o f 'Carnivality' i n Dostoevsky,"

appeared i n a 1 9 9 2 Saransk anthology. T h e "carnivality" o f the 1 9 6 3 revision is inappropri­ ate a n d u n - R u s s i a n , I l i u s h i n remarks, an entirely W e s t e r n concept. C a r n i v a l is supposedly j o y o u s a n d universal, b u t D o s t o e v s k y is dreary a n d g r i m . I s D o s t o e v s k y therefore tragic? N o t really: he is n o t lofty e n o u g h . D o s t o e v s k y is merely sadomasochistic. T h e w h o l e o f Dostoevsky, i n fact, is one "Feast d u r i n g the P l a g u e " — a n d " n o w that plague is everywhere

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undertaken by scholars determined to "make carnival fit"—without, however, endorsing i t i n all its Dionysian literalness—into Bakhtin's overall thought and into literary history as a whole. These' critics accept the presence o f carnival i n Bakhtin's vision o f Dostoevsky, and even jus­ tify i t within bounds. But they resist tying carnival to outside, nonliterary causes—as Russian civic critics, from Belinsky to Isupov and Ryklin, have been so fond o f doing—and resist as well any facile evocation o f inner, psychologized categories such as "trauma." Instead, i n the pro-system spirit o f late Formalism, these critics believe that any manifestation o f art, while neither isolated nor disinterested, can be studied as a relatively au­ tonomous realm o f culture. Thus they seek reasons for Bakhtin's shift from polyphony to carnival i n the very nature o f his categories, i n the dynamics inherent to them, and i n the alternations and correctives built in to any culture's literary process. Representative o f this group is the prominent Moscow philosopher Liudmila Gogotishvili. Her lengthy essay i n Voprosy filosofii (1992), with its faintly Formalist title—"Variants and Invariants i n Bakhtin"—made a substantial, sobering contribution to the increasingly heated debate be­ tween Bakhtin's Christianizers and his demonizers. Her thesis is as fol­ lows. The "fulcrum" o f Bakhtin's thought has been difficult to find, she writes, because "the inferences to be drawn from his various works (for example, the books on Dostoevsky and Rabelais) are at times not i n hid­ den, but i n naked, contradiction" (116). This fact should not dismay us, however, but impel us to seek deeper for the point o f their joining. Ac­ cording to Gogotishvili, the "regulative idea" governing Bakhtin as he emerged from his Kantian period was the search for "the particularization o f one's own moral reality"—that is, for a point o f view on oneself that is singular i n the world, that exists authentically and carries absolute value, but that all the same is not "given," that permits itself to be posited and molded as an individual task. Within that task, among the most persistent invariants she identifies i n Bakhtin is his personalistic dualism (117). By this term she means his commitment to the ^0^fusion, or eternal separateness, o f self and other. I n his early writings on the structure and growth o f personality, Bakhtin restates the problem as the juxtaposition between an "I-for-myself ' (how my inner potential looks and feels to my 41

a n d w e are n o t d o i n g m u c h feasting, w e u n d e r s t a n d all o f this differendy: life has ceased to be feast-like a n d carnivalesque, this is n o t the era for it" ( 8 6 ) . F a r i n g p o o r i y o n the ruins o f C o m m u n i s m b u t still v i e w i n g the w o r l d t h r o u g h the distorting lens thai: Soviet pedagogy h a d t u r n e d o n the great nineteenth-century R u s s i a n classics, I l i u s h i n is disappointed by both B a k h t i n a n d Dostoevsky. See A . A . I l i u s h i n , " P o p o v o d u 'karnivaPnosti' u D o s t o e v s k o g o , " i n MMB: PNN 4 1

92, 8 5 - 9 1 .

L i u d m i l a G o g o t i s h v i l i , "Varianty i invarianty M . M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Voprosy filosofii, n o . 1

( 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 1 4 - 3 4 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

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own consciousness), an "I-for-the-other," and "the-other-for-me" (how others experience my "outerly" completed acts, and I theirs). According to this paradigm an "unbridgeable chasm" exists between the experience and perspectives o f an " I " and an "other." (Such a discon­ tinuity, Bakhtin argued i n the 1920s i n his lectures on the philosophy o f religion, is unshakable and nonnegotiable for the believing Christian. Gogotishvili, too, recommends that we understand Bakhtin's theories o f "otherhood" i n religious terms.) Despite the current fashion for theories o f alienation, this "chasm" is no cause for despair. O n the contrary, i n a happy paradox, unbridgeability does not disqualify or disable us i n our need for others but heightens and refines that need (117). Orthodox doctrine acknowledges no absolute void i n the sublunary world. Person­ ality \lichnost% no matter how inarticulate and helpless i t might prove vis-à-vis an abstract idea or the laws o f nature, can always define itself creatively against another personality. I t follows that a healthy self is not one to which other personalities are fused or fixed i n permanent rela­ tions, but one that retains the ability to negotiate among changing and competing claims. I f either the " I " or the "other" comes to dominate a given horizon wholly, monologism results. 42

43

Gogotishvili then suggests that Bakhtin's attitude toward literary his­ tory, and toward the evolution o f aesthetic form within that history, was conditioned by this inviolate distinction between the world o f my " I " and the world o f others, elaborated very early i n his career. As Bakhtin gradually came to model i t , literary form evolves i n a cyclical pattern, alternating between the polar monologisms o f a triumphant "I-for-myself" (where solely my own inner perspectives are real) and a triumphant "I-for-others" (where I am worth only what others see, value, and need in me) ( 1 1 8 - 2 1 ) . A t each extreme, dialogue collapses into monologue. Each pole has its strengths and its peculiar distortions. The greatest lia­ bility o f I-monologism is its idealism; introspection and abstract ideas be­ come all, everything is arranged along a vertical axis o f fixed values, the lonely "I-for-myself attempts the impossible (which is to do without others), and the inevitable result is the revolt o f the hero. Other-monolog­ ism is precarious i n other ways: its Achilles' heel is "parasitism," the ten­ dency to consider itself forever incomplete, and thus the temptation peculiar to i t is to hand the whole o f itself over to another (a horizontal4 2

See the basic distinction i n " A u t h o r a n d H e r o i n Aesthetic Activity," A&A

90, esp.

22-25. 4 3

kak

"Problema obosnovannogo filosof92,

p o k o i a ( d o k l a d M . M . B a k h t i n a ) " [July 1 9 2 4 ] , i n

MMB

2 3 4 - 3 6 . T h i s essay, cast i n sacrificial r h e t o r i c , deals w i t h the genres o f prayer,

ritual, repentance, a n d hope as peculiarly singular

dialogic forms r e q u i r i n g the orientation

t o w a r d a transcendent T h i r d as addressee. B a k h t i n exemplifies the " c h a s m between self a n d other" as "the cross for m y s e l f a n d happiness for others" ( 2 3 5 ) .

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ization o f life's relations). Literary selves built in this environment often suffer from an excess o f materialism or naturalism, as well as from a defi­ ciency o f personal voice. I f the crisis associated with I-monologism is a revolt o f the hero, then characteristic for other-monologism is a crisis o f the author. A t this point the outline o f Gogotishvili's analysis becomes suggestively clear—and although she does not take her thesis this far, one is tempted to provide a capstone. The closeted, obsessive, rebellious Raskolnikov is trapped i n the vortex o f an I-monologism, whereas the grotesque, gen­ erous Gargantua and Pantagruel (at least as Bakhtin reads those giants) approach the irresponsible fantasy o f other-monologism. As anchors at either end o f this spectrum, Bakhtin's twinned enthusiasm for these two fantastical authors, Dostoevsky and Rabelais, makes good sense. M i g h t not this spectrum suggest another way out o f the harsh judgment that Natalia Reed, Fridman, Kariakin, and others have passed on Bakhtin's overly benevolent polyphonic readings—which, i n their opinion, turn Dostoevsky into an armchair parlor game, a talk show where there is nothing at stake but words? Looked at not as a routine operating pro­ cedure for dialogue but as only one extreme, intrinsically unstable pole, polyphonic consciousness can begin to answer for the most exaggerated states o f loneliness, anger, crisis. The pathology Bakhtin exiles from his interpretations is thus invited back home—and properly so. For i f po­ lyphony does provide some heroes with multiple options and does lead some sinners to grace, most o f the time, we would probably agree, Dos­ toevsky's world is manifestly not experienced as a free or friendly place for the driven, ungrateful individuals residing i n i t . Its psychological norm is a "lonely I-for-myself ' " forever tensing toward its environment, making o f everything a task and taking nothing as a gift. C

Gogotishvili does not explicitly locate, along this spectrum, Bakhtin's two "incompatible" monographs on those literary masters. (Although, to strengthen her separation thesis, she does ignore the "carnivalization" chapter i n the revised Dostoevsky book.) She emphasizes, however, that this spectrum is not static but multi-planar and dynamic. Distance is al­ ways being collapsed and then reestablished between the two extremes, within literary history and within a single text as well. "Strivings toward the monologic," o f both the carnival and the polyphonic sort, switch direction, prove each other inadequate, break each other down, liberate each other. Each new resolution occurs on a higher plane and with ad­ justments unforeseen i n earlier epochs. Here Gogotishvili displays some o f the positivistic (Hegelian) faith i n linear histories we sense operating in Bakhtin's chronotope essay. She hypothesizes that Bakhtin's two pioneering monographs (the lost study o f Goethe is not discussed) can be linked in the following way. Rabelais

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201

broke down the "I"-dominated monologism o f the Middle Ages, which had been idealistic and vertical. But his success inevitably encouraged various "other"-dominated monologisms to proliferate on the ruins (ma­ terialism, a worship o f matter for its own sake, a restriction o f life to its horizontal dimension). This domination by other-monologism was over­ come only by the advent o f Dostoevsky's polyphony, rooted i n the ideaperson and the word: i t was carnival's necessary corrective and antidote. But the lessons o f matter were not forgotten nor were the gains o f earlier idealistic stages cast aside. I f there were no vertical axes i n Dostoevsky's polyphonic world, there would be nothing around which the heroes could construct a dialogue (126). 44

I n this connection, Gogotishvili refers us to the refinements o f the carnival idea that Bakhtin provided i n his 1941-44 text, "Additions and Changes to Rabelais''' (published for the first time i n 1992, together with the "Variants and Invariants" essay). I n those notes Bakhtin himself in­ vestigates the intersection o f polyphonic and carnivalistic principles at close range and on the basis o f individual texts. Dostoevsky's carnival side, reduced to a dot or a line, is represented i n Bakhtin's readings by the novelistic threshold: this boundary is at work i n the ambivalence o f Zosima's bow to Mitya Karamazov, i n Raskolnikov's paralyzing visual contact across doorjambs, and i n the increased sense o f potential mystery at precisely those points where one should be saying one's final, depart­ ing, finalizing word (153). ( I n supplementing himself with these notes, 45

4 4

T h u s does G o g o t i s h v i l i explain h o w p o l y p h o n y reestablished the " I / o t h e r " balance

and corrected the "parasitism" o f o t h e r - d o m i n a t e d m o n o l o g i s m : " C h a l l e n g i n g the 'pure' form o f m o n o l o g i s m [telesnyi

monologizm]),

o f the opposite tendency (at the time this was a

body-monologism

D o s t o e v s k y reestablishes a vertical picture o f the w o r l d [i. e., cross-

sections m a r k e d by coexistence a n d interaction],

but n o longer i n its static variant [i.e., as i n

D a n t e ] b u t i n c o r p o r a t i n g also the temporal factor . . . I f Rabelais s u r m o u n t e d the bodily loneliness o f medieval m a n , t h e n D o s t o e v s k y s u r m o u n t e d the b o d y totalitarianism o f n a t u ­ ralistic, biological, sociopolitical ideas, c o u n t e r p o s i n g to t h e m the n e w l y r e b o r n idea o f the i n n e r ' I - f o r - m y s e l P . . . . B u t the i n n e r ' I - f o r - m y s e l f i n D o s t o e v s k y is different t h a n it was i n the M i d d l e A g e s a n d different t h a n it was for the R o m a n t i c s — w h o , a c c o r d i n g to B a k h t i n , were the first i n m o d e r n times to o p e n u p the i n n e r infinity o f the subject against the b a c k g r o u n d o f the infinity o f the external w o r l d as o p e n e d up by Rabelais. D o s t o e v s k y strives to o v e r c o m e the loneliness o f the i n n e r T , ' severed b o t h f r o m the 'spiritual' value o f the vertical a n d f r o m its 'clan b o d y ' [rodovoe

telo]." U n l i k e earlier attempts at synthesis,

however, D o s t o e v s k y gives his heroes full-bodied personalities, n o t only a b o d y a n d a soul b u t also a spirit [dukh]

o f their o w n , a private " I " that c a n be a " t h o u " to others a n d a site

o f dialogue. T h i s restricts his o w n authorial prerogatives, that is, it creates the g r o u n d for p o l y p h o n y : " A l l the author's coalitions (either w i t h the reader o r w i t h the h e r o ) have fallen apart," a n d thus the hero is available for a u t o n o m o u s , m o r a l c o - b e i n g w i t h other " I ' s " (126). 4 5

M . M . B a k h t i n , " D o p o l n e n i i a i i z m e n e n i i a k R a b l e " [written 1 9 4 1 - 4 4 ] ,

losofii, n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 3 4 - 6 4 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

Voprosy fi-

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we might add, Bakhtin addresses those critics who charge him with ig­ noring "silent dialogue" i n his treatment o f Dostoevsky. ) A carnival sense o f death—that is, a disregard for death—is shown to animate even as grim a murder mystery as Crime and Punishment. "Raskolnikov's room," Bakhtin writes, "is a coffin, i n which Raskolnikov passes through a phase o f death i n order to be reborn as a renewed man. . . . But it is charac­ teristic that life and death here are given exclusively on the internal plane, they touch only the soul, physical death does not threaten any o f the major heroes, the battle between life and death on the earthly plane is altogether absent; the heroes live i n an absolutely safe w o r l d " (146). That there is something "safe" about Dostoevsky's metaphysical di­ lemmas, which touch "only" the soul, might strike us as a strange post­ script to the unanswerable, ultimate questions that constitute the "heroes" o f a polyphonic novel. I t is a curiously moving comment to come out o f the darkest and most dangerous years o f the Second World War, where bodies were so terribly under threat—and was motivated, perhaps, by Bakhtin's nostalgia for the pure idea-battles still possible in a pre-Stalinist world. Gogotishvili's hypothesis—that Bakhtin intended carnival and polyph­ ony as alternating literary principles that condition each other along a historical continuum—is borne out by archival fragments from the Sa­ ransk period now being brought to light in the Collected Works. I n one notebook entry, Bakhtin remarks that the carnival worldview i n Dos­ toevsky can no longer be naively joyful, affirmative, or externalized as it was i n Rabelais; it cannot forget the lessons o f its own epoch. "The psychologization o f the material-bodily lower stratum in Dostoevsky," Bakh­ tin jotted down. " I n place o f the sexual organ and buttocks we have sin, the sensuous thought, corruption, crime, double thoughts, inner cyni­ cism; the sanctity o f the great sinner (a fusion o f high and low, o f face and buttocks; going in circles; the devil as Ivan wrong side out; the prob­ lem o f the double)." Judging by the several surviving plans, Bakhtin had in mind a much greater "darkening" o f Dostoevsky (and precisely along the carnival seam) than i n fact occurred i n the revision; the working plans 46

4 6

T h e fragment continues: " T h e carnival foundation o f Smerdyakov's image: the c o u p ­

ling o f a sinner w i t h a holy fool (a saint) . . . the ambivalent nature o f Smerdiashchaia's ["Stinking L i z a ' s " ] image, stinking sanctity, stinking death a n d resurrection. T h e carnival nature o f the parricide p r o b l e m i n the novel: G r u s h e n k a as the prostitute saint ( w h o , inci­ dentally, seduces-saves A l y o s h a — T h e O n i o n ' ) ; Z o s i m a , the stinking saint. . . . E v e r y r o o m in D o s t o e v s k y . . . is a c h u n k o f the public square (a c h u n k o f hell o r heaven, a c h u n k o f G o l g o t h a , a c h u n k o f carnival s q u a r e ) , w h e r e they crucify or torture, tear the Tsar-jester to pieces." " K istorii tipa ( z h a n r o v o i r a z n o v i d n o s t i ) r o m a n a D o s t o e v s k o g o " b o o k , 1 9 4 0 s - 1 9 6 0 s ] , i n MMB:

ss 5 (96),

4 2 - 4 4 , esp. 4 2 - 4 3 .

[ u n d a t e d note­

CARNIVAL

203

are as full o f the coarse violence o f carnival as the Rabelais book was indifferent to it. For Gogotishvili, a textologist thoroughly familiar with the notebooks for both the Rabelais and Dostoevsky projects, crucial to any objective rehabilitation o f carnival are Bakhtin's attempts to make laughter more nuanced and responsible. As a corollary, "seriousness" emerges as less one-sided and monologic, less a term o f abuse. "According to Bakhtin, not every seriousness leads to terror," she emphasizes (129). Or rather, "official seriousness" is bad—but not because i t is ordered or hierarchical per se. I t is bad because i t intimidates. "Unofficial seriousness," on the other hand, is fully positive, expressed i n human compassion for suffering and weakness (135). I n general, seriousness is not a vice except where i t refuses to accept sttmovlenie ["becoming" or coming into being], that is, when i t overinvests i n the eternity o f things. The polar opposite o f carni­ val laughter is not seriousness but stasis and terror. I t is important to note that Gogotishvili, like other Russian moral phi­ losophers who have taken up Bakhtin, distances herself (and her subject) from any implication that carnival behavior on its own terms is a value i n Dostoevsky—or a pleasure for Bakhtin. She categorically denies that amoralism, voyeurism, or carnival license is ever celebrated by Bakhtin i n the scenarios he selects to illustrate his principles (despite Bakhtin's sev­ eral indications to the contrary; i n his inflated affection for such nasty little menippea as "Bobok," for example). I n her view, laughter serves Bakhtin solely to restore a balance to "personalistic dualism." Carnival does not need (although i t does not necessarily reject) a Christian scaf­ folding i n order to fulfill a moral function. Even i n its secular guise, i t is the opposite o f what Isupov, Ryklin, and others o f the "demonic/Stalinist" school presume i t to be. Along with Makhlin, Gogotishvili insists that Bakhtin urges us toward laughter to replenish our inner " I , " not to lose i t on the public square. There is no need to choose between carnival and polyphony, two o f the sturdiest principles i n Bakhtin's world. Prop­ erly grasped, they can highlight each other's shortcomings and provide energy for literary evolution. Let us now sum up the fortunes o f carnival. The three main lines o f its rethinking—as sacralized ritual, as demonized or Stalinized allegory, and then the more neutral attempts to see i t as an analytic device i n literary history—are evidence indeed o f Bakhtin's "philosophical gift for broad­ ening out problems." What scholars still dispute is Bakhtin's own per­ sonal investment i n carnival and laughter as part o f a survivor's philoso­ phy. Why was he so devoted to the idea? I n the light o f this chapter, and the accumulating weight o f memoiristic testimony, two reasons might be

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offered: one cognitive, the other sociopsychological. Neither is depen­ dent on Stalinism for its coherence or validity. First, we cultivate laughter as a route to knowledge. This was Bakhtin's point at his dissertation de­ fense: you laugh, you cease to be afraid, you can then investigate, and there is no surer path to a self-confident humanism and control over one's resources, both inner and outer, than this. Second and more pressingly autobiographical is the relationship between regret, disappoint­ ment, anger, and laughter. Anger is always ridiculous to the party that is not angry, and Bakhtin was too proud to wish to appear ridiculous. When disillusioned he would be silent—or recommend laughter. Such options are absolutely i n keeping with everything we know about his personality and relations with the world: respectful, distanced, dignified, apolitical to the extent this was possible, nonresponsive to criticism, ungoadable, and honorable i n the old-fashioned, condescending sense that he expected little self-control or discipline from others but large amounts o f i t from himself. Under stress, words explicate and thus obligate; laughter (a much more private and impenetrable reflex) can confound and liberate. I n closing, we might attempt a balance among these richly contradic­ tory evaluations o f carnival energy by returning to the thoughtful centen­ nial essay by I . N . Fridman, "Carnival i n Isolation," on which the Intro­ duction to this study opened. Fridman attaches carnival (as does Gogotishvili) i n a complex weave to its apparent opposite, polyphony— and more generally, to the " I - t h o u " relation that Bakhtin celebrates i n dialogue. But he imparts a darker cast to the whole, tying i t more tightly to the pressures o f Soviet ideology. He interprets both polyphony and carnival i n light o f the major realignments i n Bakhtin's thought—and i n Soviet politics—at the end o f the 1920s. The dynamics o f polyphony, he suggests, reflect Bakhtin's waxing Utopian hopes for what openness alone could do to keep creativity and consciousness alive. The quality o f "com­ pletion" [zavershenie]—previously valued as full o f grace, lovingly bestowed, pragmatically necessary i n order that personality function properly and that a work o f art emerge i n our disorderly world—is rein­ terpreted as "closure" or "enclosedness" [zatnknutost*]. I t becomes a de­ structive force that behaves like "a robber on the high road," stealing up on us and attacking from behind (85). This shift strikes Fridman as fatal, not just for Bakhtinian aesthetics but for any aesthetics; for i n his view, once "aesthetic pleasure" and "catharsis" have been exiled from the work o f art, the boundary between life's processes and art's products cannot be sustained. According to Bakhtin's new understanding, ideas and forms 47

4 7

I . N . F r i d m a n , "Karnaval v o d i n o c h k u , " Voprosy filosofii, n o . 12 ( 1 9 9 4 ) : 7 9 - 9 8 . F u r t h e r

page references given i n text. A similar trajectory is suggested i n M o r s o n a n d E m e r s o n , Creation

of a Prosaics, part 1, c h . 2 .

CARNIVAL

205

(along with their human carriers) do not naturally desire consummation or resolution. Thus heroes, readers, and authors are never taken down off the rack. The instability and psychic distress that accumulates in such a model eventually triggers the move from polyphony to carnival. For i f the polyphonic image is "a 'world symposium' headed by an insane Chairman whose sole concern is that dialogue never end" (86)—Fridman's unkind paraphrase—then the only way Bakhtin can avoid this trav­ estied extreme is to wrap the whole dialogic process in an anesthetizing Utopian envelope. Within that envelope, the "second life" o f the mind in dialogue is like the laughing holiday, deeply authentic but suspended i n both space and time. According to Fridman, Bakhtin's polyphony and his carnival are equally Utopian constructs. I f the Dostoevsky book creates out o f that novelist's world a personalist Utopia, then the Rabelais book is its mirror opposite, a hymn to the rodovoe [clan-based] body (86). The two are connected, Fridman suggests, i n the new fourth chapter on genre in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, through Bakhtin's eccentric concept o f "genre mem­ ory" (87). This "memory o f the genre" is really a sort o f "fore-memory" [pm-pamiat^ that combines elements o f a collective preconscious with prerogatives o f the conscious individual. Its one determining characteris­ tic is that it seems to remember only what everyone else forgets. Bakhtin avoids the (consciously acknowledged) classics in the art o f the novel "like a danger zone"; when he invokes genuine carnival forms, he lets i t be known that any attempt to incorporate them into literature must re­ duce and distort them almost beyond recognition. For this reason, Frid­ man is reluctant to call Bakhtin an aesthetician at all. "The subject o f Bakhtin's aesthetic theory," he writes, "its authentic substrate, are the peripheral zones lying on the threshold, on the border that divides art from pre- or supra-art, anything but art itself. . . . [Both the dialogic novel and the model o f carnival] provide a definition o f art—but only i n the specific Bakhtinian sense o f 'delineating the limits' o f something, and even so, not from within but from ' w i t h o u t ' " (88). Fridman's comments lead us to the edge o f that most fraught area i n which Bakhtin has been rethought, the theme o f our next chapter, vnenakhodimost' [outsideness]. The term refers both to the cardinal value Bakhtin placed on external perspective, as well as to Bakhtin's own multi­ ple identity as literary scholar, culturologist, and ethical philosopher, out­ side each discipline and native to none. With their competing meth­ odologies and different validating logics, are these various professions eroded when combined i n his person? I f so, is this a blessing or a misfor­ tune? For however much we might sympathize with Bakhtin's antipathy toward "official thinking" [ofitsiaVsh china, ofitsioz], there is much to rec­ ommend professionalism. A n internal consistency o f argument, an obli-

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gation to assess what others have researched and registered, a consensus over basic terms, an agreement as to what constitutes a misuse o f evi­ dence, the modest placement o f oneself within an established language: in the best o f worlds these are virtues that professional insidership can foster. Even i n the worst o f worlds, the Soviet U n i o n circa 1930-50, the cohesiveness o f intellectual tradition and a sense o f shared texts was what had kept Russian philological scholarship alive. Bakhtin, however, did not seek to be an insider to things. I n places he rivals Leo Tolstoy i n his reluctance to join, endorse, or build on (with any degree o f appreciation) a definition that precedes his own. A n d in matters of art, as i t was for Tolstoy so i t is for Bakhtin: art is not primarily a matter o f pleasure, beauty, perfect proportion, or disinterested play but the site o f another, more essential task—knowledge o f the self through communicative exchange. Beauty and aesthetic pleasure might even be said to get i n the way. I n the next chapter, and from a somewhat different angle, we will revisit this conceptual realignment i n Bakhtin's thought that took place i n the late twenties. The guides here will be, among others, Natalia Bonetskaia and Konstantin Isupov—who, i n Fridman's spirit, ask whether form itself possesses the resources to survive the pres­ sures Bakhtin applies to i t . The role form plays in other paradigms o f the creative process is occupied i n Bakhtin's scheme by an assortment o f more vulnerable and porous matter: speech genres, voice zones, loop­ holes, participatory outsideness, aesthetic love. Can Bakhtin's mature aes­ thetic, derived from Kant, from the theory o f relativity, from biofeedback models and the example o f Christ, steeped i n Goethe and Schelling, ever achieve the minimum disinterestedness, attention to details and to wholes, and respect for configuration that we have come to expect from a theory o f art?

CHAPTER 5

BHeHaxoftHMOCTb:

"Outsideness" as the Ethical Dimension of Art (Bakhtin and the Aesthetic Moment)

A M O N G the more remarkable aspects o f Bakhtin's present fame as mentor to the humanities is the ease with which he has shed his strictly artistic dimension. That Bakhtin was not a conventionally "academic" literary scholar is now readily acknowledged. But his own casual remark that literary studies were a "parasitical profession" can hardly be taken at face value. After all, his major life's work centered around Dostoevsky, Rabe­ lais, Goethe, the novel—and for twenty-five years as teacher and pro­ fessor, he delivered spellbinding lectures on all periods and genres o f world literature. Perhaps ironically, the literary aspect o f his legacy has been assimilated, reduced to cliché, subjected to the sober criticism o f specialists—and thus become canonical and, after a fashion, invisible. Disputatious attention has shifted to Bakhtin's "first philosophy," to the worldview that preceded those provocative readings and the god-terms that might tie them together. This chapter focuses on Russian considerations o f one problematic node at this higher level o f abstraction: Bakhtin's insistence on vnenakhodimost\ the necessary "outsideness" o f one person i n relation to an­ other. " I n the realm o f culture, outsideness is the most powerful lever [rychag] o f understanding," Bakhtin wrote in his Novy mir letter o f 1970. But the theme had been sounded fifty years before, i n his earliest philo­ sophical writings, where Bakhtin replaced the principle o f transcendence [preodoknie], so important to Kantian ethics, with the more modest, in­ teractive, horizontally oriented ideas o f mutual "surplus" [izbytok] and "supplementarity." Russian scholars who have worked on this idea (Volkova, Makhlin, Gogotishvili, Bonetskaia) properly see i t as the common denominator between Bakhtin's ethics and his aesthetics; i t is also the

1

2

1

SpG, 2

F o r the 1 9 7 0 Novy mir letter, see B a k h t i n , "Response to a Q u e s t i o n f r o m Novy

mir"

7 (translation adjusted). F o r a centennial discussion o f the "logic o f outsideness" as it contributes to a unified

field o f literature-and-life studies a n d to postmodernist attacks o n l o g o c e n t r i s m as w e l l , see M.

O . G o r o b i n s k i i ( E k a t e r i n b u r g ) , " D i a l o g i k a M . Bakhtina: L o g i k a v n e n a k h o d i m o s t i i

printsip d o p o l n i t e P n o s t i v iskusstve i z h i z n i , " i n MME

igum

mysh (II)

95,

29-32.

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concept most often held responsible for Bakhtin's negligent attitude to­ ward traditional aesthetic concerns. The neglect is indeed there. Bakh­ tin's theory o f art frets little over prescriptive rules, directives, or the par­ ticular "artistic" challenge o f symmetry and harmony (these technical matters, apparentiy, are taken for granted). A work o f art must meet the same criteria that govern every other creative event in Bakhtin's world. I t must be singular (that is, nonsystematizable and unique); answerable ("signed" by its author or beneficiary, responsible); "participatory" (ori­ ented toward another consciousness, response-worthy), and i t must be undertaken i n a spirit o f "aesthetic love." The enabling condition for all these attributes is outsideness.

BELATEDLY FINDING A PLACE FOR T H E VERY EARLY BAKHTIN A t the turn o f the 1990s, when Bakhtin's philosophical manuscripts were still a novelty and Russian specialists were making strenuous efforts to acquaint the lay public with their curious content, the publishing house Znanie [Knowledge] published i n its popular-scholarly series three pam­ phlets on the early aesthetic thought o f Mikhail Bakhtin. A l l presumed familiarity with Bakhtin's later, more famous ideas and catchwords—and were designed, i n part, to forestall a further banalization o f these ideas by providing an account o f their genesis. Each represents a different critical approach to its material and to its Russian (soon to be ex-Soviet) reader­ ship. The first o f these, a pioneering pamphlet by Vitaly Makhlin, was a dissident document, written with the public-spirited impatience that marked the late glasnost years. As a professor o f philosophy appalled at the party-minded, homogenized condition o f his discipline under Soviet rule (and grateful for the groundbreaking Western work on Bakhtin), Makhlin drives home those aspects o f Bakhtin's early life and thought that most emphasize his subject's personal outsideness, solitude, and nonacceptance o f official ideology. As Makhlin reminds his glasnost-age audience, even i n the relatively free 1920s, Bakhtin, with his non-Hegelian and nonmaterialist views, could only find himself increasingly marginalized as an aesthetician ( 2 1 23). But even against the background o f classical aesthetics, his founda3

3

T h e first p a m p h l e t , by V . L . M a k h l i n , " M i k h a i l B a k h t i n : Filosofiia p o s t u p k a , " appeared

in the Z n a n i e series "Filosofiia i z h i z n ' , " n o . 6 ( 1 9 9 0 ) : 6 3 p p . [text, excerpts f r o m B a k h t i n , and

a glossary o f t e r m s ] ; the s e c o n d , by E . V . V o l k o v a , " E s t e t i k a M . M . B a k h t i n a , " was

p u b l i s h e d later that year i n the series " E s t e t i k a , " n o . 12 ( 1 9 9 0 ) : 6 3 pp.; a n d the t h i r d , c o a u t h o r e d by V . L . M a k h l i n , A . E . M a k h o v , a n d I . V . Peshkov, " R i t o r i k a p o s t u p k a M . B a k h t i n a , " appeared i n the series " R i t o r i k a , " n o . 9 ( 1 9 9 1 ) : 4 1 pp. F u r t h e r page references given consecutively i n text.

"OUTSIDENESS"

209

tional ideas on art did not easily distribute themselves among the familiar rubrics o f the true, the good, and the beautiful. I n Bakhtin's view, art was an active co-creation of images that served to link an individual person "responsively" to an immediate reality. As such, i t posited a sort o f "aes­ thetic activism" that was wholly new for the Russian intelligentsial tradi­ tion, which tended to overlook benign, pragmatic interactions among real people i n favor o f Utopian projections or abrupt discontinuities. Makhlin suggests that Bakhtin, i n recoiling from that tradition, set a standard for independent thought that the Russian critic o f the 1990s, so given to inversions and extreme negations, would do well to heed. "So far our criticism o f the past has proceeded monologically," Makhlin con­ cludes (27), "and even our rejection o f Stalinism has been realized i n the well-known genre o f 'final judges,' people who i n Dostoevsky's time were most often the socialists and today are their antipodes, their oppo­ nent-doubles." I n a paradox he will later richly develop, Makhlin sug­ gests that Bakhtin, by being such an outsider to the terms laid down and approved by his own time, reached a higher and freer degree o f an­ swerability. Elena Volkova's contribution to this "Bakhtin cluster," appearing six months later i n the Znanie series Aesthetics, is less hortatory and more straightforwardly descriptive. Unlike Makhlin, who sees an overall conti­ nuity i n Bakhtin's thought and holds contemporary readers (with their bad habits) accountable for not grasping i t , Volkova admits o f some i n ­ ternal tension i n Bakhtin and thus some legitimate confusion. She opens her discussion o f "aesthetic outsideness" with a disclaimer. " A t first glance," she notes, "the principle o f outsideness might seem contradic­ tory" to Bakhtin's central concepts o f dialogue, the responsible deed, participatory thinking. After all, "does not being located 'outside' mean total aloofness, nonparticipation, indifference, complacent neutrality, resi­ dence on M o u n t Olympus from which one can gaze down on the flicker­ ing little figures o f other people? That this is not the case, the following will demonstrate" (19). Volkova anticipates her reader's objections step by step. "Being out­ side" does not mean isolation, security, or abstraction for the self. The healthy self is highly vulnerable and wholly involved i n others, she has­ tens to explain, only i t does not pretend (in the name o f empathy or devotion) to duplicate their particular space or time; i t enters another's worldview and then, with a memory o f that other horizon, returns to its own place. I t must return, because only by that act does i t regain its distinctive excess, or surplus, o f vision vis-à-vis the other. A n d only by reclaiming my unique outside position, by once again being i n a position to see what you cannot see, can I render you an absolute service—which will be valuable to you as a supplement regardless o f the energy, kindness,

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or creative intelligence that accompanies it. ( I t is worth noting that Bakh­ tin's vision o f outsideness is wonderfully nonelitist, nonjudgmental, and open to all, whatever our gifts or inclination. He does not stipulate that we do the other party any positive good, only that we assume an outside position toward that party. Even the laziest and most passive outsider can always help me out by letting me know what is happening behind my head; i n my laziest, most passive, most testy and unengaged moods I can render outsiders at least that much o f a service.) But why, Volkova asks, does this outsideness possess aesthetic potential? Because, she explains, only "a position 'outside' provides the possibility o f 'finalizing' an event," and the act o f finalizing or consummating, zavershenie, is the most crucial aesthetic moment. I n our daily interac­ tions with others we bestow partially finalizing images ail the time: by passing judgment, picking up our end o f a joint task, tendering congrat­ ulations (or a complaint), telling a story with a well-defined end. But these gestures are often one-sided, opportunistic, governed by our tran­ sient moods or needs. Others are rarely valuable to us in their whole selves, but only i n that aspect o f them turned toward us and attachable to our desires or our task at hand. " I t is not easy to see a person as a whole [tselestno] in everyday life," is how Volkova paraphrases Bakhtin on this point (22); i n the process o f seeking out another's face, "we must pass through a stage o f arbitrariness and grimaces." We must also work to overcome our own random reactions to that face. Only occasionally i n life are we required, by the nature o f the relation, to take the necessary time to conceive a psychological whole, worry about its every angle, lin­ ger over i t and grasp sufficiently the logic o f its parts so that this human entity can be released into its own time and space—and still cohere. I n Bakhtin, Volkova emphasizes, "the nature o f artistic finalization by means o f outsideness" (23) is realized i n a nonformalist way. What mat­ ters is "not so much the artist's work with the material and. with the form dictated by material" as i t is the finalization, or at least the stabilization, o f an evaluative position. Bakhtin believed that even i n such realms as music, architecture, or abstract design, the artist senses a potential human consciousness and strives to delineate i t and serve it. As he emphasizes i n "Author and Hero," artistic visualization o f whatever sort works within two parameters created by the artist at the outset: a spatial world with its evaluative center i n a living body and a temporal world with its evaluative center i n a soul (190). To be sure, various genres, styles, and media re­ quire that authors practice different degrees o f outsideness; "the quality o f the author's horizon may be more or less stable." But an author al­ ways enjoys some surplus o f vision vis-à-vis another potential conscious­ ness i n a work o f art; this is what makes art a "self-other" relation. I t is

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the responsivity and high refinement o f this spatial surplus that sets the category o f art apart from the rest o f our harried lives. Compared to Makhlin, then, Volkova's treatment o f "outsideness" is relatively apolitical; i t is also only tangentially related to literature and raises its questions almost entirely i n the realm o f ethical philosophy. Her focus is apt, for Bakhtin's originary scenarios allot only a secondary role to words. Polemicizing with the Russian Formalists, Bakhtin even states outright that "the author's creative consciousness is not a language con­ sciousness" ( " A & H , " i n A&A, 194). I n this early text, creative activity is perceived as closer to a "sculpting" one. The artist's work always takes place on the boundary between one self and another, and consists i n "giving a form to inner life from outside, from another consciousness . . . To find an essential approach to life from outside—this is the task an artist must accomplish" ( 1 0 1 , 191). Variations on this immensely difficult task recur throughout Bakhtin's fifty years o f researching the nature o f art. Sculpture and images o f the body dominate the early writings (how we "feel" embodiment differently from an inner and an outer perspective). W i t h the advent o f his own "language consciousness," Bakhtin began to examine words, too, for i n siderly and outsiderly qualities. Interestingly, his first full-scale published study, on Dostoevsky's prose, turned out to be an extreme case—for vnenakhodimost' is maximally intense and fastidious i n polyphonic writ­ ing. As Bakhtin reconfirmed i n 1961, the polyphonic novelist's willing­ ness to assume an outside position toward fully (and at times even ag­ gressively) "alive" material is "an activity o f a higher quality. I t surmounts not the resistance o f dead material, but the resistance o f another's con­ sciousness, another's truth . . . A creator re-creates the logic o f the sub­ ject but does not create that logic or violate i t . " W i t h its exaggerated respect for the inviolability and autonomy o f the created character, po­ lyphony indeed presents a great formal challenge to a literary author. However, the overall gesture that Bakhtin recommends here—an ousting o f one's self to some outer, and thus more privileged, position from which to then look in—is part o f the larger and prior "battle against interiority" that dominated philosophical debates during Bakhtin's Belarussian and Leningrad years. Natalia Bonetskaia provides a context for this debate i n a 1993 essay entitled "Bakhtin and the Traditions o f Russian Philosophy." She sees i n Bakhtin's model o f self-other relations a significant departure from the 4

5

4

B a k h t i n , " T o w a r d a R e w o r k i n g o f the D o s t o e v s k y B o o k , " i n P D P , 2 8 5 - 8 6 .

5

N . K . B o n e t s k a i a , " M . M . B a k h t i n i traditsii russkoi

(1993): 8 3 - 9 3 .

filosofii,"

Voprosy filosofii, n o . 1

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widespread presumption (which is erroneously attributed to Kant) that knowledge, being limited to personal experience, could never adequately or reliably be extracted from another person's soul. Information, i t was assumed, could be gathered solely "from the inside out," that is, by selfobservation. Bakhtin rejects that position utterly. He insists that i t is pre­ cisely our own selves that we cannot know, since the human psyche is set up to work "from the outside in"—that is, to encounter and come to know truths from others. By so insisting, Bakhtin separates his "philo­ sophical anthropology" from the mainstream teachings o f Russian Ortho­ dox philosophers (Soloviev, Lossky, Frank, Florensky) which, although not hostile to individual personality, tend to locate ultimate grace i n sce­ narios o f collective coming together and harmony, i n vseedinstvo and sobornost' [all-unity and communality]. For Bakhtin, i n contrast, what grace there is must be found i n drugost' and inakovost' (otherness and "otherwise-ness"); an ideal coming together is always predicated on sub­ sequent departure and vigorous differentiation. (Hence, we might add i n support o f Bonetskaia's thesis, Bakhtin's attempt i n his early writings to amend the misleading biblical precept: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." We do not have categories for self-love, Bakhtin argues, Even when I pose i n the mirror, i t is the other's reaction to my image that I imperso­ nate; I fantasize that the face I see, smiling with delight, is not merely a reflection o f my own foolishly grinning self but is some other person looking back at me—which is to say that most o f the time we do not know with any certainty what we think about ourselves, but we do know that we wish to be looked at, loved, stimulated, and changed by others. Thus the real challenge is to love thy neighbor as that other, as thy neigh­ bor.) I n a crucial but problematic move, Bakhtin will come to link out­ sideness with the question o f form—which, i n his opinion, can be applied or "bestowed" solely from without. Several large advantages come with this position, o f which we might note two. The first has to do with the individual author i n the context o f a tradition. As suggested at several points i n this study, the Russian sense of tradition is absorptive and inclusive; i t is less likely to become anxious over influence than i t is to recruit, admire, and canonize predecessors. I n keeping with this spirit, Bakhtin's insistence on the outsideness o f creat­ ing artists vis-à-vis their heroes and their chosen artistic genre permits those artists to add constructively to the dialogue rather than to displace or obliterate i t . I t liberates the artist from the burdensome mandate to create continually new content and forms, and thus from the need to destroy tradition i n order to find one's own voice. One's own voice is guaranteed by one's position, which is, by definition, uniquely new. (A recent comparison o f Bakhtin's aesthetics with that o f Georg Simmel em­ phasizes this point; unlike the German philosopher, Bakhtin could revere

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established styles and "sanctify tradition" while sacrificing nothing o f the individual creative self.) Second, by insisting that even the most complex aggregate is formless when viewed from within the event, Bakhtin makes a minimum o f two active consciousnesses absolutely necessary for aesthetic awareness. Such plenitude might well seem ludicrous to an orthodox Formalist (say, Vik­ tor Shklovsky), for i n a structuralizing approach to art, the parts o f a literary work are viewed as relatively inert and remain i n their assigned places, equally identifiable from whatever perspective one chooses. But Bakhtin understood the nature o f aesthetic material differently. I t always contains potentially unruly relationships and unpenetrable matter. This understanding o f artistic form is grounded in his tripartite model o f the self, introduced at the end o f chapter 4 and now ready for elaboration: the self's division into an "I-for-myself" and a two-sided "I-for-theother"/"the-other-for-me." The latter two linked self-other categories generate, i n Bakhtin's termi­ nology, a "soul," dusha. They alone have any real hardness or edge to them, any finalization o f form—and thus any ability to share a language and to communicate. The "I-for-myself," permeated by what Bakhtin calls dukh, or "spirit," is inchoate and fluid, without an articulate con­ summating voice o f its own. I t knows, with its inner sense o f paths not taken and potentials not realized, that any o f its fixed surfaces or com­ pleted acts perceived by others could have been different (either better or worse); i t is thus unable to rest securely on any accomplishment. Security in time and space is granted to us by other people, who inevitably see us as more stable and accomplished than we can ever see ourselves. The "I-for-myself" receives whatever forms i t has at its disposal—its store o f images and verbal cues—from others. I t can filter, domesticate, integrate, and dispute those cues, but i t is unable to form a fixed image out o f its own inherent or primordial materials. I t is important to note that Bakhtin's model o f mind acknowledges no equivalent o f a Freudian i d with autonomous, nonnegotiable, and pre­ sumably universal demands or drives. N o r does the Bakhtinian self admit 6

7

6

See P. N . V o r o k h o v ( S a r a n s k ) , " M . M . B a k h t i n i G . Z i m m e P , " i n MMB

(95),

i gum

mysh I

1 5 0 - 5 2 . A l t h o u g h S i m m e l a n d B a k h t i n b o t h advocate an interactive relationship be­

t w e e n life a n d artistic f o r m , V o r o k h o v sees this divergence: " F o r S i m m e l it is axiomatic that the author-creator resides w h o l l y i n the f o r m that he or she created. T h u s the m a j o r c o n d i ­ t i o n for the creation o f n e w f o r m , o f a n e w artwork, is the obligatory destruction o f the o l d form. B a k h t i n , however, t h r o u g h o u t the entirety o f his career insisted o n the primary out­ sideness o f the a u t h o r i n relation to the h e r o a n d o f the creator i n relation to form. F o r that reason the destruction o f o l d f o r m was by n o means necessary, for the author does n o t reside i n it b u t rather c o m e s u p o n it as a task. T h i s permitted B a k h t i n to sanctify style a n d tradition. F o r S i m m e l , b o t h are obstacles to creativity" ( 1 5 2 ) . 7

See chapter 4 o f the present study, pp. 1 9 8 - 2 0 1 ; see also " A & H , " i n A&A

90, 2 2 - 2 5 .

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the grip o f a superego that the conscious self must accommodate through submission, guilt, or fear. Such hypothetical structures provide the conscious self with impossibly tempting "alibis for existence," others to blame. Whereas the fluid "I-for-myself does indeed realize or stabi­ lize itself solely in categories that originate in a world external to i t , all the same, it has considerable negotiating power and reasonably full awareness as i t reacts to pressures and influences. As we saw in chapter 3, such awareness need bring no particular blessings. ("Consciousness," Bakhtin wrote shrewdly, "is much more terrifying than any unconscious complexes" ). But Bakhtin would insist that the mind is equipped to deal adequately, even creatively, with this terror. A healthy self, i n order to maximize its choices and thus reduce its impotence i n the world, will always strive to expose itself to a multiplicity o f inputs and perspectives from the outside, that is, i t will strive toward a "novelized" state. 8

I n Bakhtin's original metaphor, then, the "I-for-the-other" and "the other-for-me" (that which produces a soul) is not really a configuration o f words. I t is a product o f space and perspective, parameters that literally " m o l d " another's image from the outside and leave palpable, almost sculptural results. Despite the theological resonances, then, for Bakhtin dusha is more an aesthetic category than a religious, ethical, or psycho­ logical one. Our soul is the shape o f consummated surfaces and deeds; i t is concerned with those mechanisms that permit selves to appear to one another. I t does not ask whether this image is pleasing, moral, just, or productive. "The soul is spirit the way it looks from outside, i n the other," Bakhtin writes; in an audacious corollary, he presumes that look­ ing at another person is by its very nature a generous activity, welcomed by both sides. "The aesthetic interpretation and organization o f the outer body and its correlative world is a gift bestowed on the hero from an­ other consciousness" ( " A & H , " in A&A, 100). Anyone who bestows form on us in this way—whether kindly or unkindly—increases our rep­ ertory o f choices and responses and is thus a benefactor, an author, and a participant i n aesthetic activity. As we shall see, i n Bakhtin's subsequent variations on the authoring idea, the nature o f this "gift" changes. Form-bearing outsideness turns out to have its own rules o f behavior, which coincide neither with "aes­ thetic consummation" nor with the demands o f "aesthetic distance." I n fact Bakhtin's reformulation o f those two traditional criteria for art be­ comes quite spectacular. Initially the artist is portrayed as "outsider" in an engaged but still businesslike way, the way a sculptor must be profession­ ally outside a block o f marble. Throughout the 1920s and into the 8

" T o w a r d a R e w o r k i n g o f the D o s t o e v s k y B o o k " ( 1 9 6 1 ) , in P D P , 2 8 8 .

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1930s, however, Bakhtin's idea o f form becomes ever more interactive, dynamic, open-ended. A n d precisely because the "formed material" is increasingly granted the right (indeed, almost the mandate) to resist be­ ing shaped by its author—precisely because it is so "alive"—the "formal question" has inevitably been conflated with the ethical i n debates over Bakhtin's legacy A lucid examination o f the point where ethics and aesthetics are con­ joined i n Bakhtin's early thought has been provided by the American scholar Deborah Haynes, i n her monograph entided, somewhat too nar­ rowly, Bakhtin and the Visual Arts. Her concern is Bakhtin before 1925, before his attention was seized by the potentials o f language and his ideas still cast in spatial metaphors. (Thus her choice o f title; a welcome focus, for Bakhtin's early writings have long deserved nonretrospective treat­ ment outside the gravitational pull o f the more famous word-based dia­ logism to come. One recent [1991] Moscow State University dissertation on Bakhtin's aesthetics was even so bold as to divide all o f Bakhtin's thought into two periods: up through 1924 and then from 1924 to 1970. ) Haynes opens her study by placing Bakhtin's early ideas among prominent aestheticians (largely German) at the turn o f the century, all o f whom Bakhtin had studied and most o f whom, in a woefully telegraphic way, he refuted. He argues against the neo-Kantians for their normative moral imperative; against expressivists such as Theodor Lipps for their reductivist understanding o f empathy; against impressivists such as Alois Riegl or Eduard Hanslick for the exaggerated role they assigned to Kunstwollen, or the "will to form"; against Russian Formalists for their mechanistic materialist aesthetics; and against theorists o f "art as play" (for example, Karl Groos) for underestimating the indispensable role o f the other in artistic production. There are nevertheless some important points o f convergence. Similar to Kant, Bakhtin designates "the aes­ thetic" as that overlapping place where cognitive concerns (open, free, impersonal, systematic) and ethical concerns (closed, duty-laden, per­ sonal) can be brought together. The "intuitive unity" o f those two flank­ ing realms during aesthetic activity is one major reason for literary art's intoxicating appeal, for it alone enables us to participate in alternative worlds where human images are real and viable but not burdened with real-life obligations or consequences. Bakhtin differs from his continental predecessors, however, by insisting that the unique individual conscious­ ness and its concrete relations with other persons is that one obligatory 9

10

9

D e b o r a h J . H a y n e s , Bakhtin

and

the Visual Arts

(Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1 9 9 5 ) , esp. chs. 1, 2 , 4. F u r t h e r page references given in text. 1 0

E l e n a A n a t o l i e v n a Bogatyreva, " E s t e t i k a v filosofskoi sisteme M . M . B a k h t i n a , " av-

toreferat, M o s c o w State University, 1 9 9 1 , esp. 2 .

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fulcrum around which aesthetic value must be organized. He also insists that the aesthetic moment is not (as Kant and later the Formalists sug­ gest) "autonomous" or exceptional i n human experience—nor is i t , as i n Romantic or Symbolist parlance, an eruption o f inspiration or frenzy into our otherwise humdrum noncreative lives. O n the contrary, Bakhtin felt that a proper understanding o f the aesthetic task would reveal i t to be a paradigm for all other (even the most humdrum) human tasks. Such an ambitious aestheticization o f life—realized not by making life less ethically responsible but by making art, i n some vaguely defined way, more so—radically changed the meaning o f "art for art's sake," especially as that debate had developed among Decadents and Symbolists toward the end o f the last century. As Haynes points out, attempts to reduce art to mere sovereignty i n its own realm, with little more at stake than a pursuit o f perfect form, creative freedom for the artist, and sensuous intu­ ition, were perceived by Bakhtin as indications o f a serious crisis, "an attempt by artists simply to try to surpass art" (36). Against this sort o f escapism, with its reliance on hedonism or scandal to produce the new and with its tiresome rhetoric o f the End, Bakhtin opposed the philoso­ phy o f the individual conscious act or deed [postupok]. As Haynes sums up Bakhtin's position, this act is always unprecedented, always productive o f further acts, and inevitably incurs some further obligation ("the mor­ ally responsible deed expresses the nonaccidental, nonarbitrary character o f a given life" [ 5 5 ] ) . Only by means o f my own act can I hope to become an author i n my life and make o f that life something resembling a work o f art. Let us expand on Haynes's discussion, drawing on Bakhtin's reminis­ cences, details from the early essays, the example o f his own life, and some Russian work that postdates her study. First, we should note some consequences o f Bakhtin's postulate that there must be an outside per­ spective for any aesthetic event to occur. For i n matters o f art, the boundary between two conscious positions was the only firm boundary Bakhtin drew. Unlike the Russian Formalists—with their polemically clear-cut (but i n practice rather arbitrary) distinction between "everyday life" [byt] and "literariness" [ literaturnosf]—and unlike the Freudian theorists with their opposition between "real experience" and that foggy, quasi-conscious triumvirate o f dreams, fantasy, and illicit impulses to art, Bakhtin believed that aesthetic relations were both an ongoing, everyday activity and a healthy, conscious, structuring one. I n his view, aesthetic 11

11

I d r a w here, w i t h considerable c o m p r e s s i o n a n d some alterations, o n chapter 5, "Psy­

chology: A u t h o r i n g a Self," f r o m M o r s o n a n d E m e r s o n , Creation 89.

of a Prosaics, esp. 1 8 8 -

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or art-generating activity is distinguished from other activity i n our every­ day lives (practical tasks, business, dreams, games, and fantasy) by one overwhelming factor: the presence o f a spectator, an outsider. What char­ acterizes both the practical, goal-related projections o f our inner life and our fully impractical fantasy worlds is not, Bakhtin would argue, their degrees o f "reality" (for fantasy feels plenty real; that is why we engage i n it) but rather an exclusively "inner self-sensation," the absence o f an "outward expressed quality" to the self ( " A & H , " i n A&A, 67). Fantasysensations can only "imagine"; they cannot "impart an image" to any­ thing because they do not require the presence o f a genuine other con­ sciousness. Being inner, they are unable to consummate or finalize the primary actor, which is the "I-for-myself." A n d for Bakhtin, art requires above all a second self who perceives the creation as art, that is, as a finalized object viewed from the outside. There must be someone exer­ cising a surplus o f vision with respect to the event. I n this regard, o f course, artistic creators and their audiences are functionally indistinguish­ able, i n that both must remain outside their heroes' event i n space and i n time. So important is this shared status o f outsideness that Bakhtin fre­ quently combines the author with the spectator or contemplator into a single composite term, avtor/sozertsatcF. The ethical and the aesthetic, although separate spheres, are indispens­ able to each other, and their interaction can help us resolve some o f life's most intolerable questions. To escape being a mere random occurrence in life, to what sort o f continuity should I aspire? H o w do I get outside of my life—with its pain, indignity, missed opportunity, crimped perspec­ tive—so as to shape i t into something I can live with, that is, shape i t as I might shape an artistic creation? Bakhtin's response to such questions is again i n the spirit o f the Stoics and Epicureans who thought so deeply on the proper place o f the transient body. Most o f us, Bakhtin intimates, should not risk the exhibitionist-outsider's route to life-as-lived-art, the path o f an Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mayakovsky. Although those great poet-rebels left a magnificent literary testament, i n Bakhtin's judgment i t is unrealistic to assume that flamboyant or outrageous be­ havior i n itself will make us freely creative or more "aesthetically in­ formed." "Outsideness" i n the Romantic or Decadent sense—where the artist is ranked above and apart from others, tragically misunderstood, devoted to the "idea o f integral or 'total' creation" i n a life constructed largely i n an alternative world—was for Bakhtin symptomatic o f a crisis i n authorship, not its triumphant realization. For under such conditions "one is unable to humble oneself to the status o f a toiler, unable to determine one's own place i n the event o f being through others, to place oneself on a par with others" ( " A & H , " i n A&A, 203). As with Dos-

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toevsky's travesty o f the Underground Man, rebellion and isolation i n the would-be creator is more likely to lead to repetition and intensified bond­ age than to originality or autonomy. The artist, then, gains little by a stance o f alienation, ^utists are servi­ tors, and they serve the larger world by providing models for "organizing relationships." The dynamic here was explicated i n a programmatic 1993 essay on Bakhtin's theory o f art, which identifies six axes along which Bakhtinian aesthetics "organizes consciousness": among inner selves, from self to other, from other to self, from self to another's creation, from self to its own created object, and, finally, among others for others. The author intimates that Bakhtin's dialogic model for joining art to life is simply not compatible with those aesthetic attitudes now so familiar i n the modern world: rejection, estrangement, confrontation. O n the con­ trary, the very mechanics o f this model are predicated on acquiescence and assimilation: "Art as a complex means o f human adaptation to the world has as its goal a special sort o f ordering o f phenomena on the micro-level, that is, on the level where the inner spiritual life o f a person flows, his or her psychic reality. . . . I n art, a person assimilates reality and comes to control it by making sense out o f i t through images." 12

A n d so Bakhtin counsels us to come to terms—and thereby become authors. For him, an aesthetic attitude is an "answerable" one: by accept­ ing the world, we heighten our responsiveness to real others from our outside position i n their worlds and thus participate i n a maximal number o f relationships—in short, we reconcile ourselves to dialog;ue. But assum­ ing that such a conciliatory relation is honestly possible, to what, pre­ cisely, are we answerable? Does there exist a normative ethical or aes­ thetic model, a standard for the Good and the Beautiful against which I must measure my act—or are there other continuities and types o f rootedness? Unsurprisingly, Bakhtin, singer o f the grotesque body and the sprawling novel, makes no special plea for the True and the Beautiful. But perhaps surprisingly, he also seems indifferent to the details (and certainly to any enforcement) o f the Good. He insists that we are answer­ able not to a law o f proportion or to a theoretical moral imperative, but only to our own unique "act-taking I . " Here the problems begin i n earnest. For given the fact o f the tripartite self, the virtue assumed to be inherent i n multiple perspectives, and the value everywhere placed on proliferation and on a departure from the site o f one's last residence, how can an " I " be expected to cohere? This ques­ tion fascinated the young Bakhtin. The coherence o f culture, he appears to have believed, takes care o f itself (here non-Russians can only wonder, 12

V . I . S a m o k h v a l o v a , "Soznanie kak dialogicheskoe otnoshenie," i n MMB

1 9 0 - 2 0 5 , esp. 2 0 1 .

kak filosof 92,

"OUTSIDENESS"

219

again, at the awesome, identity-bestowing hold o f Russian culture on its communicants). One might even say that we recognize culture as such by its interrelatedness and cohesiveness, qualities that appear to be i n place without any special effort from each o f us. But how is an individual human whole possible, since persons must participate i n fragmented proj­ ects and are subjected daily to so many pressures beyond their control? Against the grain o f his generation, Bakhtin dismissed both the abstract and the intuitivist solutions to the problem o f unity within a self. I n their place, inspired by a motley and still underdocumented set o f philoso­ phies, he devised a concrete, cautiously interactive model that we recog­ nize, in retrospect, as a rudimentary preverbal form o f dialogue. The basic components o f the model are dan and zadan, Russian equiv­ alents o f Kant's gegeben and aufgegeben as reworked by the Marburg neoKantian Hermann Cohen (in Cohen's formulation, what is "given"—the world I wake up to—versus "what is posited by me as a task"). Life presents us with givens [dannost*]: formless disasters, undeserved illness, mindless revolution, unexpected good luck. I n lived experience, as a rule, we do not come upon already existent unities or wholes. What makes me whole—Bakhtin might say, the only thing that can make me whole—is a response. I t is rarely within an individual's power to initiate or guarantee a unity o f content in the world at large (at least i n no world Bakhtin ever knew). But by being actively outside o f and different from that world, it is always within my power to initiate a whole i n myself by stringing to­ gether, through my active volition, a series o f responsive acts that are marked as mine. Integrity by means o f response is infinitely more difficult 13

1 3

K a n t , S c h e l l i n g , B u b e r , a n d Cassirer are a m o n g the sources o f Bakhtin's philosophy. I n

their recent contributions to a "darker" image o f their subject, M a k h l i n , Isupov, and the M i n s k scholar Tatyana Shchitsova have argued that B a k h t i n ' s t h o u g h t — w i t h its passion­ ately literary imagination, its refusal to aestheticize o r psychologize sin by m a k i n g it a gen­ eral h u m a n c o n d i t i o n rather than a concrete act, a n d its r a n k i n g o f reality over mere possi­ bility w i t h i n a C h r i s t i a n ethics—closely parallels the writings o f Kierkegaard. Shchitsova argues further that this influence (or confluence) has been e n r i c h e d by the discrepancies in the G e r m a n translations o n w h i c h B a k h t i n relied but surely "read t h r o u g h . " I n an essay o n Kierkegaard a n d the hermeneutics o f sin, M a k h l i n makes a strong case for Bakhtin's kindred resistance to the externalization o f sin as a "given": sin c a n n o t be metaphysicized or psy­ c h o l o g i z e d , M a k h l i n c o n c l u d e s , for sin is n o t a science, sin is m y mistake. I t can be ad­ dressed only by b e c o m i n g itself the object o f address, an object o f uttered speech and c o m m u n i c a t i o n . I n his entry, I s u p o v sees in Kierkegaard's meditations w h a t he has c o m e to see, obsessively, i n Bakhtin's w o r k : the disappearance, o r death, o f the real other. See T . V . Shchitsova, " K ontologii chelovecheskogo bytiia ( K i r k e g o r i B a k h t i n ) , " DKKh,

no. 3

(95):

3 4 - 4 2 , followed by an annotated translation by S h c h i t s o v a into R u s s i a n o f selections from the

" C o n c l u d i n g Unscientific

Postscript" ( 1 8 4 6 )

to

"Philosophical F r a g m e n t s . " F o r

M a k h l i n a n d Isupov, see V . L . M a k h l i n , " G e r m e n e v t i k a g r e k h a , " 5 3 - 6 8 , a n d K . G . Isupov, " O d i n o c h e s t v o v D r u g o m ( S . K ' e r k e g o r naedine s s o b o i ) , " 6 9 - 7 7 , both in T . V . Shchits­ ova, é d . , K'erkegor

i sovremennost'

(Minsk: RivshiGo, 1996).

220

CHAPTER

FIVE

to achieve than integrity through consistency o f content or through a refusal to engage. Bakhtin laid down the groundwork for this aesthetics—personalist, re­ sponsive rather than referential, profoundly "non-postmodernist"—in the very early 1920s. His writings from that period all counsel, as the surest route to self-mastery, the slow acculturation and incorporation o f others (or rather, o f others' worldviews and words) on "micro-levels" o f consciousness. Outer reality is to be overcome by an inner generosity and by a curiosity for juxtaposing, within the mind, as many perspectives as possible. (As we saw i n chapter 3, this eager internalization o f alien view­ points has been read by some as polyphony's singular indulgence and as a central reason why Bakhtin can extract from Dostoevsky's very dark art such hopeful and friendly principles.) I n 1974, a year before his death and after all the horrors o f his century, Bakhtin reiterated this basic truth in his final essay, loosely concerned with a methodology for the human­ ities. Our consciousness can rest, and perhaps even triumph, only as an aesthetic consciousness, he reaffirmed. "Meaning [smysl, or the sense o f a thing in context] cannot (and does not wish to) change physical, mate­ rial, or other phenomena," he wrote. " I t cannot act as a material force. A n d it does not need to: i t is itself stronger than any force." Can we agree with Bakhtin that the contextualized meaning o f a thing is stronger and more satisfying than a material force? H o w "aesthetic" can the ethi­ cal moment be allowed to become? 14

OUTSIDENESS: WHAT I T IS AND IS N O T I n considerations o f Bakhtin's first and final writings, which appeared so belatedly, certain confusions about vnenakhodimost' have proved to be routine. Four recurring problem spots demand our attention. First, that Bakhtin believes i n openness, unfinalizability, and dispersal does not mean he rejects the idea o f wholes. Rather, the contrary is true. Were the world really only disjointed fragments, we would not trust our individual selves to exit into it. But trust is only part o f the answer. The other part is psychology o f art. This moment is deceptive i n Bakhtin— and repeats, along another axis, the confusion between a "philosophy o f relativism" and a "theory o f relativity" that was noted in chapter 3. I t is precisely because unfinalizability and malleability are inherent i n living personalities, i n everyday events, and in time-space parameters that the achievement (not the acknowledgment, not the discovery, but precisely the achievement) o f a whole is so indispensable—and so laden with obli1 4

" T o w a r d a M e t h o d o l o g y for the H u m a n Sciences," SpG, 1 6 5 (translation adjusted).

"OUTSIDENESS"

221

gation. The whole o f something can only be seen from a position that is outside o f i t i n space and after i t i n time. But since a whole can be variously realized from an infinite number o f angles (and each o f these realizations will be fully recognized as such only by its own "finalizer"), a sense o f wholeness is always "bestowed," not merely decreed or revealed. I t looks different, and differently perfected, to each person who beholds it. Human beings are form-bestowing creatures. I t is part o f our nature to crave to finalize. This craving, according to Bakhtin, is the aesthetic in­ stinct. As Volkova emphasizes in her chapter on "Outsideness and Dialogue," the aesthetic phase i n any reaction is always the final and culminating one. "Before reacting aesthetically," she asserts, "the author reacts cognitively, ethically, psychologically, socially, philosophically—and only then finalizes the world artistically and aesthetically" (17). This final move, although conditioned by all the others, is the fullest and purest. " I f values in the world are confused and mixed," Volkova writes, "then i n art they receive their definitive place thanks to the wholeness o f the hero (even a potential hero) and to the creative context o f the author" (18). I n her role as explicator and professional philosopher, however, Volkova tends to underestimate the sheer difficulty o f the human task Bakhtin calls on us to accomplish. I t is only through that difficulty, I suggest, that Bakh­ tin's thought finds its ultimate coherence. 15

As is the case with genuine dialogue, to create a persuasive whole takes a great deal o f sustained work. A successful author must constantly return to the same site, be drawn to the consciousness that is being shaped there, cultivate dependencies and vulnerabilities i n his own self that then risk going unsatisfied, undergo what often seems like arduous and futile training to master the creative medium (wood, marble, musical tones, words). This labor knows some highly compressed moments—the fantas­ tically efficient energy o f inspiration and intuition—as well as the slower time o f trial and error. We are driven to spend this time and do not regret the expenditure. But because o f the intense and time-consuming nature of the drive, for most o f our daily interactions we cannot, as a rule, afford to be too profligate in our creation o f wholes. We fully commit to creat­ ing them only in love and in art. Thus Bakhtin discusses those two states, making art and creating love, under a single rubric. (Matvei Kagan and Hermann Cohen were the i m ­ mediate sources for Bakhtin's concept o f "aesthetic love," to which we will return below). I n both activities, we suspend the usual open-ended state o f the world—with its promise o f disorder, apprehension, unre­ liability, betrayal, unexpectedness, slack—and are persuaded that form, 15

E . V . V o l k o v a , " E s t e t i k a M . M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Z n a n i e series " E s t e t i k a , " n o . 12 ( 1 9 9 0 ) .

222

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FIVE

contour, proportion, and coincidence have a natural, effortless justifica­ tion that "speaks for itself." I n this special sense, a beloved person is a work o f art; that is, regardless o f local errors i n behavior or judgment, the parts o f that person fit together and cause delight. (Although no creative poet himself, Bakhtin comes closest here to understanding the function and addictive appeal o f a Muse.) The image o f such a beloved person can be said to resemble the potential personality that is always, i n Bakhtin's view, at least a shadow presence i n the work o f art (and i n the wellgoverned life): a radiant personal image o f the sort that had prompted Dostoevsky to say that i f forced to choose, he would "remain with Christ rather than with the truth." Each o f these quasi-fictional, quasi-real i m ­ ages is understood so thoroughly and from so many different, subtly nuanced points o f view, and has been called up i n conversation over such a lengthy stretch o f time, that i t is pardoned i n advance for whatever i t might do. For just this reason, Bakhtin properly divined, there is no ex­ perience more galling than to witness the "deserved shaming o f a person beloved by me"—because lovers see wholes, and the rest o f the world, as is its right, sees only isolated, single-sided acts. I t is not surprising that in Bakhtin's earliest writings, where the question o f aesthetic finalization is first discussed, we find his most excruciating comments on love. 16

17

Let us now reformulate this sequence o f psychological moves, so i m ­ portant to Bakhtin's concept o f human "becoming," i n language less technical than Bakhtin and his neo-Kantian colleagues were wont to use. The psychology here is not as sentimental or counterintuitive as i t might seem—and practicing fiction writers will confirm its overall logic. Once we have put i n the necessary work to bestow a whole image on another personality, however tentative or provisional that working whole, we have some assurance that further energy spent i n its direction will not dissipate without trace. We find i t first comfortable, and then compelling, to for­ mulate words and actions in its "zone"; we welcome its responses; we begin to trust its "integrity" sufficiently to risk interacting intimately with it and investing ourselves i n it. The integrity can be that o f a Desdemona 16

" T o w a r d a P h i l o s o p h y o f the A c t , " 6 2 : " W h e n I contemplate a picture s h o w i n g the

destruction a n d completely justified disgrace o f a p e r s o n I love, t h e n this picture w i l l be quite different f r o m the one I see w h e n the p e r s o n destroyed is o f n o interest to m e f r o m the standpoint o f value. A n d this w i l l o c c u r n o t because I a m trying to justify [the beloved] contrary to sense a n d justice . . . the picture m a y be just a n d realistic i n its content." Since every individual g a z i n g at a given object perceives that object as oriented u n i q u e l y i n time and

space, s u c h agony o n b e h a l f o f a beloved "is n o t a biased, subjective distortion o f

seeing" but reality

itself; "the architectonic o f seeing does n o t affect the

content/sense

aspect o f the event." 17

F o r a preliminary statement a n d the relevant portions o f B a k h t i n ' s texts, see

Caryl

E m e r s o n , "Solov'ev, the L a t e T o l s t o i , a n d the E a r l y B a k h t i n o n the P r o b l e m o f S h a m e a n d L o v e , " Slavic Review

5 0 , n o . 3 ( F a l l 1 9 9 1 ) : 6 6 3 - 7 1 , esp. 6 6 3 - 6 5 .

"OUTSIDENESS"

223

or o f a Iago; virtue is not the issue here. What matters is a convincing human whole. A n d I know that another's personality has become a whole when, from my perspective, this personality ceases to need only me—only the questions I ask o f i t or the trajectory I impose on it—and declines to obey my fantasies o f i t without a murmur; i n short, when it emerges as open and able to devise needs o f its own. Only by thus risking ourselves with another's open personality, by "filling i t i n " with deeds o f proffered commitment where there was once only fantasy, does a bridge of reciprocal influence become possible. Once laid down, this bridge can lead to a broadening o f vocabularies on both sides and eventually to genuine learning and change. Why are we so inclined to author, and how can we improve our au­ thoring skills? Given the rate and depth o f disillusionment i n the world, i t follows that i f I wish my self to be healthy, I must seek to be finalized by as many different people as possible. Each o f them, i n orienting toward my zone, projects for me a potentially new and integral " I " that can be internalized, evaluated, drawn on, and, where necessary, even donned i n whole cloth. Where no one orients toward us, Bakhtin counsels, we must not turn, for there will be no tools for living i n that place. As Lev Vygotsky, the great Soviet developmental psychologist, remarked regard­ ing optimal learning environments for a child, people interact most pro­ ductively not with their documentable past experience but with a "zone of proximal development"—that aura o f competence and curiosity that accompanies the taking on o f tasks when outside help has been made available and the inner self feels itself securely equipped with the proper "psychic tools." 18

For this reason, Bakhtin—loner, survivor, human ecologist—would recommend that I not seek out people just like myself for the sake o f security or identity. I t narrows my scope and thus is too much o f a risk; should I change or the environment change, I might become extinct. (Here, as elsewhere, Bakhtin is not one to pick up on a cry o f despair, abandonment, humiliation. That the persecuted might need the reas­ surance o f a group would strike this aristocratic proponent o f dialogue as quite futile.) Any instinctive clustering o f like with like threatens to re­ duce my " I " and its potential languages to a miserable dot. Those who surround themselves with "insiders"—in heritage, experience, appear­ ance, tastes, attitudes toward the world—are on a rigidifying and impov­ erishing road. I n contrast, the personality that welcomes provisional final ization by a huge and diversified array o f "authors" will command

18

T h e V y g o t s k y - B a k h t i n c o n n e c t i o n is receiving a great deal o f attention i n post-Soviet

scholarship. F o r the basics, see M o r s o n a n d E m e r s o n , Mikhail saics, 2 0 5 - 1 4 .

Bakhtin:

Creation

of a Pro-

224

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FIVE

optimal literacy. I t feels at home i n a variety o f zones; it has many lan­ guages at its disposal and can learn new ones without trauma. From its perspective, the world appears an invitingly open, flexible, unthreatening, and unfinalized place. For this reason, an indispensable stage in human "becoming" is a leap of trust. I must take i t on faith that i f I go forth, I will not be ignored or destroyed by you. This gesture is without guarantees or fixed parameters and thus it resembles an act o f grace. I n everyday life, we are driven to risk this act only under conditions o f love. ("Historical life begins with love," Matvei Kagan wrote in the early 1920s. "The goal itself is tran­ scendental. Saying that we strive to realize our goal makes sense only when we know and accept that life is not indifferent to us. . . . Who knows whether the struggle for perfection and purification would exist in the face o f indifference to love?" ) True love, like every other trustworthy thing, must be tendered from an outside zone, and thus its origins are always partly i n the dark. But as Bakhtin argues repeatedly in his essay "Author and Hero" (doubtless inspired by his own constantly tormented leg), any notion o f empathy based on duplicative innerness, that is, on "experiencing another's suffering as one's own," will be anesthetizing, "pathological," an "infection with another's suffering and nothing more," a gratuitous "cry o f pain" and thus a doubling o f the suffering in the world. What is called for in the presence o f another's love or pain is not identification with i t but a creative outsiderly response to i t , "a word of consolation or an act o f assistance" (26). 19

I n art, the starting point for activity is somewhat different from that o f love, but the task and goal are the same. We must work at our creation until it embodies a viably "whole" consciousness—one with its own in­ ner logic, worldview, habits, mental and physical reflexes, contours that are not arbitrary—in a word, a consciousness that (were it to spend as much time on us as we on it) potentially could love us back. Viable images are sufficiently integral to be released into their own time and space, and survive. Any other relationship to one's creation, Bakhtin in­ sists, is "secondhand," passive, parasitic, and will fail to bring out the dynamic potential o f the hero. N o less important, authors, deprived o f this potential feedback from their viably whole creations, will find their own creative imagination stunted. Thus an "inner merging" cannot be the "ultimate goal o f aesthetic activity" ( " A & H , " in A&A, 26). Aes­ thetic activity begins only with "the author's loving removal from the field of the hero's life" (14). I n Bakhtin's own eloquent summary o f his position: "The author is the bearer and sustainer o f the intently active 19

M a t v e i K a g a n , " O n the Pace o f History," cited i n B r i a n P o o l e , " R o P M . I . K a g a n a , " B

sb III 97, 1 6 7 (see c h . 3 n . 3 5 ) .

"OUTSIDENESS"

225

unity o f a consummated whole . . . This whole is i n principle incapable o f being given to us from within the hero, insofar as we identify ourselves with the hero and experience his life from within him. The hero cannot live by this whole; he cannot be guided by it i n his own lived experiences and actions, for it is a whole that descends on h i m — i t is bestowed on him as a gift—from another creative consciousness: from the creative consciousness o f an author" (12). Such an authoring scenario, with its theological resonances and intima­ tions o f grace, brings us to a second paradoxical area in Bakhtin's think­ ing about outsideness: the I - T h o u " relation. Perceived as a strength o f German-Jewish thought, this special category o f dialogue was widely dis­ cussed (in both its religious and secular variants) by European philoso­ phers throughout the 1910s and 1920s: Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Ebner, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and, most famously, Martin Buber. I t reached Bakhtin i n provincial Nevel and later i n Petrograd through his close friend Matvei Kagan, who repatriated to revolutionary Russia i n 1918. By the 1990s seven decades o f ban had lifted and Russian schol­ ars were free to investigate the fundamental sources for Bakhtin's philos­ ophy o f "I-Thou-We" relations i n the larger European context. O f spew

20

21

2 0

K a g a n studied for eight years i n G e r m a n y ( L e i p z i g , M a r b u r g , a n d B e r l i n ) from 1 9 1 0 to

1 9 1 8 . A s P o o l e relates, K a g a n , always more politically active than B a k h t i n , h a d been ar­ rested in St. Petersburg after the 1 9 0 5 R e v o l u t i o n . T o escape the exclusionary quota system for Jews in R u s s i a n universities he repaired to G e r m a n y , but i n 1 9 1 3 G e r m a n universities began to set quotas against Russians (i.e., against J e w s ) . P a u l N a t o r p made a special plea to admit the highly p r o m i s i n g K a g a n to M a r b u r g above quota. T h e effect o f K a g a n ' s vora­ cious a n d varied academic experience o n the sedentary, semi-invalided B a k h t i n was enor­ m o u s , Poole has demonstrated. A s he writes i n " R o P M . I . K a g a n a , " : " I f we compare the list o f seminars K a g a n attended . . . w e discover that K a g a n probably sat i n the living r o o m s o f a large part o f the authors cited in B a k h t i n ' s early w o r k s ( " A u t h o r a n d H e r o , " etc.): n o t just C o h e n , Cassirer, a n d N a t o r p , but also V o l k e l t , H a m m a n , A l o i s R i e h l , the

eminent

W i l h e l m W u n d t , G e o r g M i s c h — a u t h o r o f the history o f autobiography B a k h t i n profited from i m m e n s e l y — a n d G e o r g S i m m e l h i m s e l f ( 1 7 1 ) . 2 1

I n 1995

Dru£foi

M a k h l i n p u b l i s h e d a textbook

(istoki filosofii 'dialoga' XX

o n I - T h o u relations ( V . L . M a k h l i n , Ta

i

veka), ed. K . G . I s u p o v [St. Petersburg: P K h G I , 1 9 9 5 ] ) .

I n his foreword he outlines his larger purpose in p u b l i s h i n g these "materials for a graduate seminar" (six lectures): although the "decentration" o f the logocentric subject has l o n g been a priority in W e s t e r n philosophy, M a k h l i n notes, Russia's shackled past a n d her current w h i r l w i n d liberation prepared her poorly for receiving this project. "As a w h o l e , o u r native philosophy (idealistic as w e l l as 'materialist') d i d n o t go b e y o n d the b o u n d s o f the F i c h t e a n - H e g e l i a n identity o f I = I , neither in its 'atheistic' (Soviet) n o r its 'religious' variant. T h e sorry consequences o f this we see in contemporary attempts to break t h r o u g h to a n e w philosophy a n d n e w t h i n k i n g from inside w h a t m i g h t be called post-Soviet p o s t m o d e r n i s m " ( 3 ) . M a k h l i n updated the b o o k as Ta i drugoi: XX

K istorii

dialogicheskogo

printsipa

v filosofii

v. ( M o s c o w : L a b i r i n t , 1 9 9 7 ) . See also A . B . D e m i d o v , " T h e F o u n d a t i o n s o f a P h i l o s o ­

p h y o f C o m m u n i c a t i o n a n d D i a l o g u e , " w h i c h places B a k h t i n ' s t h o u g h t i n the context o f I - T h o u - W e categories elaborated by K a r l Jaspers, M a r t i n B u b e r , S e m y o n F r a n k , a n d the

226

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FIVE

cial interest, o f course, has been Bakhtin's relationship to Buber, a philos­ opher he greatly admired. Comparative study o f the two thinkers was facilitated by new editions and translations (in 1989, the final segment o f Die Frage an den Einzelnen appeared in Russian, and in 1993, Ich und Du). Initial studies have suggested, however, that although broad sym­ metries exist between the two philosophers, their approach to das Zwischenmenschliche is not the same. The local Bakhtin-Buber debates provide another window into the macrodynamics and stress lines o f the Russian Bakhtin industry. One dis­ similarity between the two thinkers was raised (crudely, for disreputable reasons, but with provocative results) by the arch-nationalist Vadim Ko­ zhinov, i n his contentious 1992 essay entitled "Bakhtin and His Readers: Ruminations and in Part Reminiscences." I n one o f the field's more peculiar East-West overlays, Kozhinov drew for support on an American lay student o f Russian philosophy, Clinton Gardner, founder and director o f the Transnational Vladimir Solovyov Society, whose essay "Between East and West: Rediscovering the Gifts o f the Russian Spirit" was trans­ lated into Russian and published i n Moscow in 1993. Reviewing Gard22

23

24

25

A u s t r i a n - A m e r i c a n sociologist o f intersubjectivity, Alfred S c h u t z . Interestingly, in this c o m ­ pany B a k h t i n as philosopher begins to seem excessively "literary"—since his I - T h o u formu­ lations are developed largely in c o n n e c t i o n w i t h the Dostoevsky book. See A . B . D e m i d o v , " O s n o v o p o l o z h e n i i a filosofii k o m m u n i k a t s i i i dialoga," DKKh, 2 2

no. 4 (95):

5-35.

See E . A . K u r n o s i k o v a (Saransk), " P r o b l e m a ' Y a - T y ' v zerkale refleksii ( A . [sic] B u ­

b e r — M . B a k h t i n ) , " in MMB

i gum

mysh I (95),

170-72.

She remarks that the B u b e r

revival was part o f the general p o s t c o m m u n i s t inquiry into collectivism as a special sort o f tragic solitude, w i t h the T T h o u relation u n d e r s t o o d as a possible way o u t o f the impasse between the discredited Soviet o p t i o n a n d u n c o m f o r t i n g Western "individualism." 2 3

F o r an early survey o f the congruencies, see N i n a Perlina, " M i k h a i l B a k h t i n and M a r t i n

B u b e r : P r o b l e m s o f D i a l o g i c I m a g i n a t i o n , " Studies

in Twentieth

Century

Literature

9 , no.

1 ( F a l l 1 9 8 4 ) : 1 3 - 2 8 . Brian Poole is o f the o p i n i o n , however, that the diiferences are m o r e significant. " M a r t i n B u b e r , " Poole writes in " R o P M . I . K a g a n a , " "lies at one e n d o f a spectrum o f Jewish intellectuals, less philosophically trained (see his conrespondence w i t h R o z e n z w e i g , C o h e n ' s student) a n d C o h e n h i m s e l f o n the other. . . . T h e opposition

be­

tween these thinkers runs t h r o u g h all issues, from the question o f subjectivism t h r o u g h the reception o f the mystic literature o f E a s t e r n R u s s i a n Jews to the question o f Z i o n i s m . W e s h o u l d h o l d o n to this context" ( 1 6 8 ) . 2 4

V a d i m K o z h i n o v , " B a k h t i n i ego chitateli: R a z m y s h l e n i i a i otchasti v o s p o m i n a n i i a , "

Moskva 2 5

(July 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 4 3 - 5 1 , esp. 1 5 0 .

C l i n t o n C . G a r d n e r , " B e t w e e n E a s t a n d West: R e d i s c o v e r i n g the Gifts o f the Russian

Spirit" ( R R 2 , B o x 2 0 , N o r w i c h , V t . , 1 9 9 1 ) ; in R u s s i a n , K l i n t o n G a r d n e r , Mezhdu i Zapadom:

Vozrozhdenie

Vostokom

darov russkoi dushi ( M o s c o w , 1 9 9 3 ) . I n the E n g l i s h version, see

esp. 3 0 - 3 2 , " O u r F o u r Speech O r i e n t a t i o n s " ("Imperative or Vocative Speech: T o w a r d F u t u r e T i m e " ) : "We hear the vocative in the w o r d s o f anybody w h o cares for us, addressing us as t h o u . . . . A person w h o is starved for s u c h speech c a n n o t discover w h o he or she is a n d therefore cannot speak his or her o w n imperatives. D e c a d e n c e is the inability o f one generation to c o m m u n i c a t e imperatives to the next. A l l education, therefore, w h i c h is not simply technical, aims to create a n d maintain imperatives. T h i s future-creating speech pre-

"OUTSIDENESS"

227

ner's work and scarcely containing his delight that this nonacademic au­ thor appeared not beholden to the untrustworthy cosmopolitan forces controlling American educational institutions, Kozhinov sums up Gard­ ner's position i n this way: "Bakhtin's and Buber's views on dialogue do not coincide. Buber's formula says: 'Becoming an I , I say T h o u . ' On the contrary, Bakhtin's dialogism holds that ' M y I becomes an I only when others turn to me i n the capacity o f a T h o u . ' Bakhtin, i n opposition to Buber, presumed that an T was simply impossible, its existence was un­ thinkable without a 'thou,' without an 'other.'" Kozhinov then con­ cludes i n his own voice: "So Buber's 'position' ('Becoming an I , I say Thou') is i n no way compatible with the concept o f authentic dialogue, a fully weighted doctrine created by Bakhtin—who relied for support on the whole o f Russian spiritual development" (151). A t stake, clearly, was the inherent "Russianness" o f the Bakhtinian model o f dialogue, which (according to Kozhinov) begins humbly, with an effaced " I " expressed largely i n the other's need o f me, with addressivity itself. Unlike dialogue in materialist, individualistic, acquisition-oriented Western cultures (in­ cluding, o f course, the Judaic), which Kozhinov considers to be in thrall to punitive laws and to self-righteous legal subjects, Russian dialogism could never begin w i t h an " I . " Two panelists at the 1995 centennial conference delivered papers de­ voted to Bakhtin and Buber, and Kozhinov's aggressive distinction was much on their minds. Mikhail Girshman, i n his contribution to the de­ bate, specifically cited and refuted the Gardner-Kozhinov position, argu­ ing that Buber's teaching indeed resembles Bakhtin's i n this matter o f the timing o f selves. "For both Bakhtin and Buber, the becoming o f the T and the becoming o f the ' T h o u ' are i n principle simultaneous—and this is true o f personalities as well as o f peoples and o f the human race." But Girshman then remarked on two areas where Bakhtin and Buber genu­ inely diverge. The first concerns the relative urgency, i n each model, o f vertical versus horizontal modes o f communion. Whereas Buber empha­ sizes "the originary, 'androgynous' unity o f one human being with an­ other, turned toward the eternal T h o u , toward God," Bakhtin, in con­ trast, "confirms the originary separateness and singularity o f each human personality" and then leaves any turning toward an eternal or unitary Being vague and negotiable. Within a Bakhtinian universe, i t appears, 26

cedes a n d determines all the others. U n t i l w e sense this orientation, a n d feel o v e r w h e l m e d by it, w e never really b e g i n a n y t h i n g n e w i n o u r lives" ( 3 1 ) . 2 6

M.

Girshman

(Donets

State

University, U k r a i n e ) ,

k h u d o z h e s t v e n n o m p r o i z v e d e n i i , " Proceedings

" M . Bakhtin

of the Seventh International

i

M.

Bakhtin

Buber

o

Confer­

ence, M o s c o w , 2 6 - 3 0 J u n e 1 9 9 5 , B o o k 1, 1 1 - 1 5 , esp. 1 3 . I n successive reworkings o f the debate over K o z h i n o v a m o n g R u s s i a n students o f dialogovedenie m a n ' s position has been u p h e l d .

[dialogue s t u d i e s ] , G i r s h -

228

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FIVE

dialogue must be primary—not because there is necessarily love or com­ patibility i n that universe but because all participants are equally un­ privileged: "unity, plurality, and uniqueness are equally indigenous i n each human personality, realized i n an answerable act on the border and before the person o f a unique other." Recast i n terms o f this chapter, then, dialogue, according to Bakhtin, is always "outside" any potential whole, more likely to remain isolated for longer and expected to sustain itself i n the absence o f transcendental guarantees. Bakhtin's world is by far the lonelier, less easily connected place. I n a probable allusion to Buber's image o f the one " T h o u " who cannot become an " I t " — t h e resi­ dent o f an eternal present, the Interlocutor who, once encountered, per­ mits us to experience what is authentic and real beyond a concretely given time and space—Girshman suggests that Bakhtin will not so easily release dialogue (even o f the divine sort) from history or from memory. Girshman notes a second area o f divergence as well: the role o f the I-Thou relation as embedded i n the work o f art. Whereas Buber concen­ trates on the artist's "communion with the artistic image and on the artwork" as a created, completed whole, for Bakhtin "more important is the communion, the dialogue within the artwork." Bakhtin investigates not only the higher spiritual functions o f dialogue but also (and perhaps even more) the arduous, fastidious "objectivized forms" necessary for re­ alizing i t i n everyday interaction: "forms that exist not within a person and not outside a person but among people." Being objectivized, these forms can be transferred from life to art and manipulated i n good con­ science on the flatter, more controlled planes o f literary creation. I n this sense, Girshman intimates, Bakhtin remains a Formalist; but since the forms that concern him are so "alive," he enjoys neither the security o f a Russian Formalist working with literary devices nor the faith i n an auton­ omous divine image that inspires Martin Buber. These intuitions—dark on Bakhtin, rosier on Buber—were reinforced in subsequent juxtapositions o f the two thinkers. During the 1995 Bakh­ tin readings i n Saransk, the Izhevsk scholar V. L . Krutkin argued that Bakhtin and Buber might indeed share a "responsive paradigm," but the nature o f the response is fundamentally different for each. The "value center o f Buber's dialogics is many 'thous' united into a community" and grounded i n an "absolute T h o u , " for only i n this way can "thous" be saved from becoming "its"; Bakhtin, by investing all value i n the con­ crete individual other, leaves the " I " unrooted and solely a place o f po­ tentials. Thus "Bakhtin's T lives only i n the future, i t has no present," Krutkin asserts. " A n d the other also does not coincide with itself; i t also 27

2 7

(95),

V . L . K r u t k i n ( I z h e v s k ) , " ' Y a ' i 'ty' ( B a k h t i n i B u b e r o dialoge)," MMB 8 6 - 8 8 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

i gum

mysh II

"OUTSIDENESS"

229

lives not i n the realm o f the essentially existing [sushchee] but i n the realm o f obligation [dolzhnoe]" (87). A t the end o f the present chapter, we will return to this unsettling pattern o f reciprocal negation as i t has been explicated, mournfully, by Konstantin Isupov—here as elsewhere, the first to see the darkest side o f every Bakhtinian idea. I n the second centennial paper devoted to the "Bakhtin-Buber" theme, P. S. Gurevich pursued a more profound difference. O f the two thinkers, he argues, Buber observes a more "traditional understanding o f dialogue as emotional connections among people" (with good reason does Bakhtin, i n his essay on the chronotope, refer to Buber alongside the Romantic Schelling and the phenomenologist Max Scheler). Buber's contribution to nineteenth-century thought was to reorient this rather conventional, emotionally grounded dialogue toward religion, "to see i n dialogue not only a drawing close to the truth but also the salvation o f a human being" (28). Despite the exceptionally broad scope Buber gives to dialogue—between people, between human life and nature, between material life and the spiritual spheres—"a secular and humanistic under­ standing o f the problem remained alien" to him. Two important results obtain, according to Gurevich. First, Buber "underestimates the dangers o f monologism"(30). Since for him dialogue is dannosf—a given and a ground rather than a problem—his anxiety is other than Bakhtin's, for w h o m dialogue is a task. This task requires continual, intense, and ten­ sion-filled effort merely to keep the territory open, even i f no content is ever resolved on i t . Second, Buber's God is indeed an approachable per­ sonality—but still an "absolute" one, an autonomous whole regardless o f who turns to H i m . A n d for Bakhtin? For h i m dialogue is a "problem field," not just a "drawing together o f voices." Bakhtin's image o f God can only be inferred from his extant writings. "Buber is a religious thinker," Gurevich asserts (20). But can the opposite be claimed o f his friendly other, "can i t be said o f Bakhtin that he is an advocate o f [wholly] secular thinking?" 28

W i t h this question we get to the core o f the I - T h o u debates, and to the degree, quality, and potential security provided by the "outsideness" so crucial to Bakhtin's dialogism. For i t is fair to say that notwithstanding all the accusations raised against dialogue and polyphony i n chapter 3— that i t robs the " I , " that i t raids the "other," that i t is smug, solipsistic, logos-centric, that i t makes Dostoevsky incalculably less frightening than that great writer intended himself to be—the dialogic principle, as Bakh­ tin espouses i t , takes very little for granted. Dialogue is by no means a

2 8

P. S. G u r e v i c h , " M . B u b e r i M . B a k h t i n : Intellektual'naia k o n t r o v e r z a , " Proceedings

the Seventh

International

given i n text.

Bakhtin

Conference,

of

B o o k 1, 2 5 - 3 0 . F u r t h e r page references

230

C H A P T E R

FIVE

safe or secure relation. Yes, a " t h o u " is always potentially there, but i t is exceptionally fragile; the " I " must create i t (and be created by it) i n a simultaneously mutual gesture, over and over again, and i t comes with no special authority or promise o f constancy. Since perfect timing among selves is so very unlikely and our need o f one another so capricious, i m ­ balance is the norm. N o absolute or autonomous presence can be pre­ sumed t o exist at any point along the boundary. To achieve Bakhtin's desired state o f "participatory autonomy," interpersonal trust is required. And a climate o f trust is infinitely more difficult to sustain than a climate of faith, to which one can heroically cling—consider God's servant Job— even when manifestly betrayed. Let us step back for a moment from contemporary Russian debates and return t o the early 1920s, keeping i n mind Makhlin's comments o n Bakhtin, Kierkegaard, and sin. Where is the watershed that divides Buber's thought (on one side) from Hermann Cohen's, Matvei Kagan's, and Bakhtin's on the other? According to Brian Poole, our best chron­ icler o f Bakhtin's "Marburg period": [Thus should we understand] the rejection of metaphysics, which not only stands in contrast to Buber's neoromantic dialogism, but also explains the logical possibility of the coexistence of rationalism and ethical idealism in Cohen's religious thinking . . . : God is the axis of man's relation to his fellow man for the sake

of the fellow

man. Cohen (followed by Kagan and

Bakhtin) repeatedly denies the metaphysical immortality of individual man, and for obvious reasons. (For the Marburg school, immortality is a cultural phenomenon.) Positing a transcendental atonement or "answerability" for our sins (like the proleptic gesture serving as an introduction to Rousseau's Confessions)

would actually sublate the historical and social quality of ethics,

nullifying the dialogic environment. . . . There is no such thing, says Cohen (and Kagan in his Russian adaptation of this passage [from Die Religion Vernunft]),

der

as a sin before God. Sin and retribution must apply to and are

fulfilled before the other by the doer of the deed.

29

Poole's reading o f the Marburg school is highly suggestive for these discussions o f the I-Thou relation. As a surrogate for God—a God who can forgive, absolve, resolve—Bakhtin's "dialogic environment" is most precarious. For that reason i t must strike many as wholly unsatisfying. Just as there is no originary sin i n Bakhtin's scenarios (ag;ain we should note his overall indifference to origins), so is there no unconditional re­ demption; no community o f believers stands ready to invite an individual inside once and for all or t o promise absolution to the repentant. I n 2 9

P e r s o n a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n f r o m B r i a n P o o l e t o t h e author f r o m M a r b u r g , 1 9 M a r c h

1994.

"OUTSIDENESS"

231

Bakhtin's understanding o f human nature, people are not innately dis­ posed to worship and do not need to be "saved." People need, and want, to be considered interesting. I f found inadequate, they want to be changed. Self-esteem is natural, and when I sense a deficiency o f it in myself I will seek to strengthen others surrounding me so they might more readily refract that strength back on my person. ( H o w remarkable, really, that this luminously healthy philosopher was drawn to Dos­ toevsky.) A n d it is characteristic o f Bakhtin, renegade Formalist, that when he does posit an "ideal third party" toward whom we instinctively orient our utterances (what he calls the nadadresat, or "superaddressee," that stabilizing reference point which supplements any I-Thou relation), "God" is but one option among many functionally similar possibilities. As Bakhtin writes, the author of an utterance [in addition to addressing the actual second per­ son in any exchange] presupposes, with a greater or lesser awareness, a higher superaddressee

(a third), whose absolutely just responsive understand­

ing is presumed, either in some metaphysical distance or in distant historical time (the loophole addressee). In various ages and with various understand­ ings of the world, this superaddressee and its ideally true responsive under­ standing assume various ideological expression (God, absolute truth, the judgment of dispassionate human conscience, the people, the court of his­ tory, science, and so forth).

30

This third party, Bakhtin continues, "is not any mystical or metaphysi­ cal being"—although for some it might be expressed as such. The superaddressee is a "constitutive aspect o f the whole utterance" and thus will always reveal itself under impartial analysis. This formal positing o f some perfectly sympathetic listener, such as we meet in love and in art, might be seen as Bakhtin's equivalent o f the Kantian "as if—except that in this instance we are seeking not empirical laws, which stand a chance o f re­ maining in place from one minute to the next, but everyday interlocu­ tors, who do not. I n a 1995 essay on the influence o f the Marburg school on Bakhtin's philosophy, Brian Poole expands on this secular, de-theorized under­ standing o f interhuman communion that requires neither absorption into a whole nor the "survival"/resurrection o f the individual. The unrelent­ ingly positive attitude toward the future i n Bakhtin's philosophy (and his belief that individuals continue their "historically significant" lives far 31

3 0

B a k h t i n , " T h e P r o b l e m o f the T e x t in L i n g u i s t i c s , Philology, a n d the H u m a n S c i ­

ences," SpG, 1 2 6 (translation slightly adjusted). F u r t h e r page references given in text. 31

B r i a n P o o l e , " N a z a d k K a g a n u , " DKKh,

no. 1 (95):

3 8 - 4 8 . See also the n e i g h b o r i n g

entry by M . I . K a g a n , " P a u l N a t o r p i krizis kuPtury," 4 9 - 5 4 , and a lengthy fragment o f Kagan's translation o f N a t o r p ' s Sozial-Idealismus

(1920),

55-126.

232

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FIVE

into the future) is wholly consonant with the teachings o f Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Kagan. Poole argues that the influence o f these neo-Kantian thinkers becomes stronger—not weaker, as is usually assumed—in the dialogic and then carnivalesque phases o f Bakhtin's thought i n the 1920s and 1930s. The capstone o f this influence is the huge lost Bildunjjsroman book, o f which only fragments on Goethe survived. The Marburg school espoused a profound O l d Testament understanding o f eternal life, view­ ing i t not as a personal possession but as something more cultural and genealogical; i t is this notion o f collectivity, not the self-effacing collectiv­ ism o f Marxism, that comes to inspire Bakhtin's paradoxical carnival opti­ mism during the darkest years o f Stalinism. The I - T h o u relation that Bakhtin endorses, then, does not prepare us for eternal salvation. I t cannot even promise us a local consummation— after which we might lay down our burdens and rest. God is a possibility in this relation, but not a necessity. Dialogue can unfold under the aegis of a third—but this third party is more a medium o f communication, more a climate o f trust, than i t is an anchored communicant with a fixed moral perspective and repertory o f answers. Thus, one might argue, Buber's "eternal T h o u " or "absolute T h o u " has no equivalent in Bakhtin's thought. A n d this basal distinction between the two thinkers—which Kozhinov suspects, Girshman and Gurevich elaborate, and Brian Poole confirms—should counsel us to consider more circumspectly the whole question o f Bakhtin's allegiance to an anthropocentric or theistic view o f humanity. Is Bakhtin a "secular thinker" as opposed to a religious one, as Gurevich asks? More probably, Bakhtin is attempting to break down this binary opposition as well. He considered the "material aesthetics" o f the Formalists flawed because i t could not take into account the moral orien­ tation o f consciousness—and because i t degraded everyday life [byt] to the status o f formless irritation. ("Pure everyday life is a fiction," Bakhtin wrote near the end o f his life, "a product o f the intellect. Human life is always shaped and this shaping is always ritualistic, even i f only 'aesthet­ ically' so.") But the vertical, metaphysical route to moral awareness that marks both Kant and Buber was also not entirely congenial to Bakhtin, who always preferred to work from the bottom up and out to the sides, starting with the obligations that accrue i n a "chamber scenario." Dupli­ cating, perhaps, his own (increasingly needful and immobile) life experi­ ence, he begins with two people who sit facing one another i n a room, permanently outside each other but obliged to fulfill each other. There is no greater challenge i n the world. Resembling i n this regard Leo Tolstoy, Bakhtin was apprehensive about any ethical problem not approached on 32

3 2

" F r o m N o t e s M a d e i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " i n SpG,

154.

"OUTSIDENESS"

233

an everyday, homely scale—for the grand, abstract formulation always urges us toward evasion and passivity. We can ignore problems that we cannot see, dilemmas that do not arise from our own daily situatedness. We feel justified i n doing so, because we see no way to solve them. A n d we see none because the problem itself has been designed i n no-man's time and space. Gurevich's observations open up a third area where Bakhtin's concept o f "creative outsideness" finds itself i n august company: its relation to Kan­ tian aesthetics. As an aesthetician, Bakhtin remained throughout his life more responsive to the concerns and questions posed by Kant—and later by the Russian Formalists—than to the aesthetic theories o f Symbolists, Futurists, Natural School critics, or Marxists. When he disagreed, it was largely with the quality, degree o f "interestedness," and overall purpose o f the aesthetic whole that the Kantians and Formalists espoused—and which, in his scheme, an author must be perpetually outside of in order to bestow. The Kantian connection is now receiving considerable attention from Russian scholars as part o f a vigorous interest i n Bakhtin as a preBolshevik ethical philosopher. We will enter this huge and learned realm in pursuit o f a single accessible motif: the Kantian component in Bakh­ tin's concept o f "aesthetic love." What does Kant contribute to that at­ tractive idea? Kantianism was the reigning philosophical movement in Petrograd University during Bakhtin's undergraduate years, and as a double major in philosophy and classics, he absorbed from his famous professors frame­ works that lasted him a lifetime. As we have seen, in imitation o f the Third Critique, Bakhtin locates the aesthetic moment midway between cognition (knowledge) and ethical activity (active desire). Again like Kant, he assigns to aesthetic judgment the task o f interrelating those two realms. But as his thought developed, Bakhtin came to subscribe neither to Kant's definition o f judgment as "the faculty o f thinking the particular as contained i n the universal" nor to his definition o f art as a "purposive whole without specific purpose." Bakhtin was also unwilling to measure aesthetic pleasure by the subjective satisfaction we experience when we successfully place an artwork in the orderly scheme o f nature (nature in 33

3 3

See, for l u c i d introductions i n E n g l i s h , James M . H o l q u i s t and Katerina C l a r k , " T h e

Influence o f K a n t in the E a r l y W o r k o f M . M . B a k h t i n , " i n Literary

Theory and

Festschrift

part 1, " T h e o r y , " ed.

Presented

to René

Wellek in Honor

of His Eightieth

Birthday,

Criticism:

Joseph P. Strelka ( B e r n : Peter L a n g , 1 9 8 4 ) , 2 9 9 - 3 1 3 ; a n d m o r e recently, M i c h a e l F . B e r ­ n a r d - D o n a l s , Mikhail

Bakhtin:

Between

Phenomenology

and

Marxism

(Cambridge: C a m ­

bridge U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 4 ) , esp. c h . 2 , " N e o - K a n t i a n i s m a n d B a k h t i n ' s P h e n o m e n o l ogy."

234

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FIVE

general is not a category o f much importance to the superbly verbal and urban Bakhtin). Any "placement" o f a singular phenomenon within a larger préexistent unity was suspect to Bakhtin, because i n his view this move tends to put too high a premium on sameness and on the drowsy securities o f the inside. I n fact, unity—as the word is usually understood i n logic, analytic phi­ losophy, and art—cannot be an ultimate criterion for Bakhtin's aes­ thetics. I n "Toward a Philosophy o f the A c t , " Bakhtin even recommends that "the very word unity [edinstvo] be discarded as overly theoretized," since what is required for understanding is "not unity but uniqueness [edinstvennost ] (37). "One can even establish a certain inverse propor­ tion between theoretical unity and actual uniqueness or singularity," Bakhtin writes i n that early essay. "The closer one moves to theoretical unity (constancy i n respect to content or a recurring identicalness), the poorer and more universal is the actual uniqueness; the whole matter is reduced to a unity o f content, and the ultimate unity proves to be an empty, only potential content, identical w i t h itself" (39). Judged from within, uniqueness promises isolation, loneliness, and a sense o f abandon­ ment. The virtues o f singularity can be appreciated solely from the out­ side. 34

s

n

Bakhtin's complicated debt to Kant and his departures from neo-Kan­ tianism underlie all the writings o f the early 1920s, where individuation and separation from system are so closely tied to the aesthetic project. The nature o f this debate was made clearer i n 1993, with the publication o f a set o f seminar notes by Lev Pumpiansky, fellow study circle member and precocious scholar, based on Bakhtin's 1924-25 Leningrad lectures on Kant, Bergson, and religious philosophy. I n one o f these lectures— actually, Bakhtin's response to a paper read by Mikhail Tubiansky on the 35

3 4

A dialogue u n d e r these conditions w o u l d o c c u r n o t between t w o personalities, b u t — i f

the w o r d dialogue

still applied at a l l — b e t w e e n o u r cognitive faculties a n d the teleologically

i n f o r m e d natural w o r l d . F o r suggestive differences between B a k h t i n a n d the Symbolists i n this regard, see James W e s t , "Ivanov's T h e o r y o f K n o w l e d g e : K a n t a n d N e o - K a n t i a n i s m , " i n R o b e r t L o u i s J a c k s o n a n d L o w r y N e l s o n , J r . , eds., Vyacheslav Ivanov: Philosopher

Poet, Critic,

and

( N e w H a v e n , C o n n . : Yale C e n t e r for I n t e r n a t i o n a l a n d A r e a Studies, 1 9 8 6 ) ,

313-25. 3 5

" [ L e k t s i i a M . M . B a k h t i n a ] , " 1 9 2 4 - 2 5 , e d . a n d annotated by N . I . Nikolaev, i n

MMB

kak filosof 92, 2 3 6 - 5 2 . I n the s e c o n d lecture B a k h t i n d i v u l g e d w h a t for h i m was so c o n v i n c ­ ing a b o u t wwsystemic p h i l o s o p h i z i n g : " I n it, natural consciousness wants to be singular" ( 2 3 9 ) . A s he elaborates further, there are three reasons w h y nonsystemic p h i l o s o p h i z i n g is plausible a n d valid: first, the i m a g i n g capacity [obraznost ] 1

itself; s e c o n d , \reaVnost\

revelation [otkrovenie];

and then

the

inherent i n the t h o u g h t process remarkable third

reason, "reality

as the ultimate instance for verifying philosophical views" ( 2 3 8 ) . F u r t h e r page

n u m b e r s given i n text.

"OUTSIDENESS"

235

role o f miracle and Revelation i n religion—we come across this curious and revealing passage: Saint Augustine against the Donatists subjected inner experience to a consid­ erably more rigorous critique than does psychoanalysis. " I believe; Lord, help me in mine unbelief finds in inner experience just what psychoanalysis finds. Help is needed not for the object of faith but for the purity of faith itself. Revelation is characterized not by help but by personality, which wants to reveal itself; the most important moment in Revelation is the moment of the personal. . . . A personal relationship to a personal God—this is the sign of religion, but this is also the special difficulty of religion, thanks to which there can arise a distinctive fear of religion and of Revelation, a fear of personal orientation, the wish to orient oneself in a single objectbased world, within a single meaning, free from the risk of falling into sin; . . . [the temptation here is] to answer not from oneself, not personally, but to answer in a unified consciousness, to answer systemically as an ethical, moral, etc., subject; this is an attempt to perform an event with only one participant . . . the Incarnation itself destroyed the unity of the Kantian per­ sonality. (246)

I n sum, the "Kantian personality," as Bakhtin conceived i t , does not provide sufficient ground for personal answerability (individuation) and thus for creativity. As he argues i n "Toward a Philosophy o f the Act," the unity o f the "actual, answerable, act-performing consciousness" cannot be grasped as a "principle, a right, an internally consistent law"; for cre­ ative unity is o f a different order. I t is more accurately characterized "by the word faithfulness

[vernost\

being true t o ] , the way the word is used

in reference to love and marriage, except that love here should not be understood from the standpoint o f a psychologically passive conscious­ ness" (38). I n this delicate gesture, redolent o f Erich Fromm's famous advice i n The Art of Loving (that we attend too much to the heady state of "falling i n love" and "being loved," too little to the difficult, active state o f "standing i n love" and being a lover), Bakhtin relates unique­ ness to fidelity—and both those qualities to the active, task-oriented energy that is the starting point o f art. Or as he writes i n his several paragraphs toward a theory o f love i n "Toward a Philosophy o f the Act": "Lovelessness, indifference, will never be able to generate sufficient power to slow down and linger intently over an object, to hold and sculpt every detail and particular i n i t , however minute. Only love is capa­ ble o f being aesthetically productive" (64). 36

3 6

Erich Fromm,

The Art

of Loving:

An

Inquiry

into

H a r p e r a n d R o w , 1 9 5 6 ) , c h . 1: " I s L o v e an A r t ? " esp. 4.

the Nature

of Love

( N e w York:

236

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FIVE

I n her 1990 pamphlet, Volkova devotes an entire section ("Bakhtin's 'aesthetic love' and Kantian 'disinterestedness'") to this contrast between the "loving affection" recommended by Hermann Cohen, Matvei Kagan, Bakhtin, and—at the other pole—the sterner, more dispassionate crite­ rion for art posited by Kant. She finds their methods different but the desired results surprisingly the same. The goal o f both is to free up a situation (from necessity, utility, the distortions o f an urgent need), and thus both value the cognitive over the sensual. Aesthetic love, i n Bakh­ tin's usage, appears to have no sexual component—which, pressing as i t must toward fusion, always puts "outsideness" at risk ("the sexual factor is not capable o f seeing the body as a finished, well-defined artistic en­ tity," Volkova notes sensibly; "[sexuality] is wholly concerned with what the body promises me" [ 3 5 ] ) . She also stresses that a loving relation i n art does not exclude negative or hostile reactions. A n evil character can be lovingly drawn. But for Bakhtin, "hatred and love are present i n the aesthetic act i n unequal parts" (36). To be wholly indifferent or hostile to something will mean simply not to see i t , for we will turn away; under such conditions, no boundaries can be drawn and no form will emerge. "Only love can be aesthetically productive, because i n its presence i t is impossible to draw too close to the hero, impossible to fuse with h i m , but at the same time impossible to distance oneself entirely" (36). 37

I n Volkova's redaction, "aesthetic love" recalls not so much a work o f art as i t does a hopeless but sweet affair o f the heart: conducted from afar, superhumanly patient, forever being interrupted and then reestablished with no lost credit, i n the best o f times sustained by intense reciprocal interest but i n barren times no less giving o f itself. I n this sense, Kant's criteria for making and receiving works o f art as "disinterested, purposive wholes" indeed overlaps with Bakhtin's. But more precise parallels be­ tween the two thinkers on this question o f aesthetic love can be found i n the realm o f ethics rather than aesthetics. I n his "Metaphysical Founda­ tions of Morals," Kant discusses the relationship between duty, happi­ ness, moral worth, and the biblical command to love our neighbor. "To secure one's own happiness is a duty, at least indirectly," Kant writes. "For discontent with one's condition under pressure o f many anxieties and amidst unsatisfied wants might easily become a great temptation to transgression from duty." He counsels us to promote our happiness "not from inclination but from duty": "Undoubtedly, i t is i n this manner that we are to understand those passages o f the Scripture i n which we are 38

3 7

E . V . V o l k o v a , " E s t e t i k a M . M . B a k h t i n a , " i n Z n a n i e series " E s t e t i k a , " n o . 12 ( 1 9 9 0 ) .

38

"Metaphysical F o u n d a t i o n s o f M o r a l s " ( 1 7 8 5 ) , i n C a r l J . F r i e d r i c h , é d . , The

of Kant:

Immanuel

Kanfs

Moral

ana Political

Writings

1 9 4 9 ) , 1 4 0 - 2 0 8 , esp. 1 4 6 - 4 7 . T r a n s l a t i o n corrected.

Philosophy

( N e w Y o r k : T h e M o d e r n Library,

"OUTSIDENESS"

237

commanded to love our neighbor, even our enemy. For love, as an affec­ tion, cannot be commanded, but beneficence for duty's sake can be, even though we are not impelled to such kindness by an inclination, and may even be repelled by a natural and unconquerable aversion. This is practi­ cal love and not pathological. I t is a love originating i n the will and not i n the inclination o f sentiment; i n principles o f action, not o f sentimental sympathy" (147). To recast Kant's thought i n Bakhtinian terms, "pathological love" is indeed a product o f "sentimental sympathy." Like all sentimentalisms, i t relies on inclination, spontaneous inner identification, and a fusion o f horizons for the personalities concerned. Such acts o f love, which feel good and into which we fall, cannot acquire true moral worth, which is achieved only when we "promote our happiness not from inclination but from duty." Duty—dolzhnoe, dolzhenstvovanie, Sollen, "the ought"—is a central concept for both Kant and Bakhtin, and there is nothing dry or passive about i t . I t insists on a gesture initiated by the lover "regardless"; the lover remains outside, with no promise o f a reciprocating response. We are duty-bound to act i n this loving way, note, not out o f any ascetic virtue or despotic morality; this duty is simply practical, or, as Bakhtin would say, productive (not just reflective) o f love. Under these conditions, what becomes secondary i n artistic conscious­ ness is the desire to possess, the fear that time will run out, a reverence before the artwork that approaches the sublime, a passionate fascination with form. None o f those reactions is as fundamental to the enterprise o f aesthetic love, and o f artistic creativity, as is attentive, long-term, active benevolence. A t this point, however, matters simplify somewhat for the Kantian artist and Kantian contemplator o f art. Those adepts will not fail to recognize the aesthetically beautiful as a symbol o f the morally good. Bakhtin has a harsher Muse. She promises only outsideness, ongoing dialogue, and responsibility. I n contemplating the anxieties o f authorship, Bakhtin appears to have worried little about beauty, craftsmanship, the influence o f precursors, or the immediate reception o f the artifact. What he did intuit, while thinking about the love relation as apprenticeship for art, were anxieties lower and closer to home: The remark he makes i n "Toward a Philosophy o f the A c t , " for example, that to witness the de­ served shaming o f a person one loves is among life's most agonizing expe­ riences {TPA, 62). Or these remarks on love during a time o f violence, contained i n the 1943 notebooks: Only love can see and delineate the inner freedom of the object. It [i.e., love] is still serious, but it wants to smile; this smile and joy, continually defeating seriousness, defeating a threat in the tone. . . . Love fondles and caresses boundaries; the boundaries take on new meaning. Love does not

238

C H A P T E R

FIVE

speak about an object in its absence, but speaks about it with it itself present. The word-as-violence presumes an absent and silent object, one that neither hears nor answers . . . [But] the word wants to exert an influence from the outside, wants to define from the outside. The world is stewing in its own juice; what is essential is a constant inflowing from the outside, from other worlds [iz

mirov

inykh].

39

Only "lovingly interested attention" from without can generate suffi­ cient power to see something i n the world, and this seeing creates love, which creates value: " T love him not because he is good, but he is good because I love h i m ' " (TPA, 64). I n all these scenarios the most difficult work I face is creating a self whose integrity I can stand behind, which I can love and respect. Only then will I seek no "alibis." (Echoing Kant's precept that "to secure one's happiness is a duty" Bakhtin must have surmised early on that to dislike oneself chronically does not prepare one for repentance or conver­ sion but simply becomes a habit, a way out o f answering for acts.) I n an overwhelming tribute to art, Bakhtin made the creation o f just such a desirable, uniquely answerable " I " the central test o f an aesthetic ap­ proach to the world. For this reason, his theory o f art lies at the heart o f every other task; for this reason, too, i t seems forever poised to become something else. As Deborah Haynes writes i n her introduction to Bakh­ tin and the Visual Arts: "Most aesthetic theories are concerned with the category o f beauty, which is visible both i n nature and art, yet invisible i n moral and intellectual activity. Some give priority to the aesthetic object or work o f art. Others privilege the perceiving subject, the viewer who looks and experiences. . . . Bakhtin brings us back to the aesthetics o f the creative process itself, back to the activity o f the artist or author who creates" (4). There is a final area i n Bakhtin's thought where "outsideness" is an un­ avoidable yet paradoxical value. This is the nature o f the boundary \$ranitsa] itself. As we have seen, Bakhtin is wholeheartedly positive about boundaries, thresholds, delineations, delimitations, drawing them wher­ ever possible and as often as possible: between life and art:, between one consciousness and another, between one person's language and another. He advises us to draw a line, cross i t , and then consider what we can offer the far side from our new perspective. Apparently he did not fear that this constant pressure to differentiate, to redraw the boundaiy so that ever more minuscule points o f disagreement can be registered upon i t , might in fact work to blunt communication rather than to vivify it. He certainly 3 9

T h e fragment, dated 12 O c t o b e r 1 9 4 3 , is k n o w n by its first line: " R h e t o r i c , to the

extent o f its falseness, strives to evoke terror o r h o p e . " I n MMB: ss 5 (96),

6 3 - 7 0 , esp. 6 6 .

"OUTSIDENESS"

239

did not worry (at least in his theoretical musings) that we might kill one another across a boundary. I n the natural order o f things, he felt, worldviews or "voices" become increasingly receptive, articulate, and accessible in the process o f becoming more personalized and nuanced. But is this dynamic in fact a natural one? Or put another way: What is the primary work o f a boundary? To divide, define, protect, defend, wall off, or con­ nect? W i t h this question we confront a Bakhtinian U t o p i a to match the U t o ­ pian dream o f the semioticians with its universe o f recodable signs. For Bakhtin believed that separation and connection happen simultaneously, in a complementary way, without contradictory aims and without threat of abandonment or assault. As he asserts at the end o f "Author and Hero," when this benevolent interactive situation does not obtain we are in an abnormal state, a "crisis o f authorship" (203). As soon as confi­ dence in our right to "outsideness" is shaken and external perspective is no longer considered essential, 40

lived life tends to recoil and hide deep inside itself, tends to withdraw into its own inner infinitude, is afraid

of boundaries,

strives to dissolve them, for it

has no faith in the essentialness and kindness of the power that gives form from outside; any viewpoint from outside is refused. And, in the process, the culture

of boundaries

(the necessary condition for a confident ancl deep style)

becomes impossible . . . all creative energies withdraw from the boundaries, 4 0

N o t surprisingly, these sentiments from the master's m o u t h are rejected by theorists o n

the n e o - M a r x i s t Bakhtinian Left. I n an essay entitled " B o u n d a r i e s versus Binaries," G r a h a m Pechey, a m o n g the more eloquent o f these critics, elaborates a "radical politics o f the b o u n d a r y " w h o s e dialectic continually displaces a n d rediscovers "a militant 'outsideness.'" A c c o r d i n g to Pechey, B a k h t i n is an anti-philosopher w h o m o c k s "all synthesizing a n d ho­ m o g e n i z i n g projects whatever." Pechey w o u l d n o t approve the accommodationist,

neo-

h u m a n i s t B a k h t i n n o w in favor a m o n g post-Soviet Russians. Preferring to associate B a k h t i n w i t h the "revolt o f the c o l o n i z e d " in the spirit o f G r a m s c i , F r a n t z F a n o n , a n d Paolo Freire, P e c h e y concludes: " [ T h o s e three liberationist thinkers] are d o i n g for the margins what Western M a r x i s m sought to d o for the revolutionary process in the m e t r o p o l i s — t r a c k i n g the oppressor a n d exploiter d o w n the latter's last outposts in culture a n d in consciousness, i n v e n t i n g n e w ways o f activating the self-articulation o f the oppressed . . I t is a p r o f o u n d irony o f o u r p o s t m o d e r n era that these genuine correlatives o f Bakhtin's t h o u g h t s h o u l d b o t h be f o u n d in the southern half o f the A m e r i c a n continent: while the liberal academics o f that continent's aggressive northern imperium

p r o d u c e a n d reproduce themselves as

intellectuals in misreadings o f his w o r k , B a k h t i n h i m s e l f lives in the fighting, praying, dial o g i z i n g , carnivalizing thinkers o f the continental body's trangressive lower half." See G r a h a m Pechey, " B o u n d a r i e s versus Binaries: B a k h t i n i n / a g a i n s t the H i s t o r y o f Ideas," Radical

Philosophy 5 4 ( S p r i n g 1 9 9 0 ) : 2 3 - 3 1 , esp. 2 5 , 3 0 . Recently, P e c h e y has p r o d u c e d

superb w o r k o n B a k h t i n ' s early ethical thought. See his " E t e r n i t y a n d Modernity: B a k h t i n and the E p i s t e m o l o g i c a l S u b l i m e , " in Theoria 8 1 / 8 2 ( O c t o b e r 1 9 9 3 ) : 6 1 - 8 5 , a n d in the premiere issue ( 1 9 9 8 ) o f Dialogism 'Aesthetic A c t i v i t y , ' " 5 7 - 7 3 .

(Sheffield, E n g l a n d ) , "Philosophy a n d T h e o l o g y in

240

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FIVE

leaving them to the mercies of fate. Aesthetic culture is a culture of bound­ aries and hence presupposes that life is enveloped by a warm atmosphere of deepest trust. ( " A & H , " in A&A, 203) We now turn to one troublesome boundary in Bakhtin's thought that has proved highly resistant to satisfactory resolution: that between life and art. Bakhtin counsels us to integrate the real-life deed with die aesthetically shaped word. But so vague is he on this important point that even his beloved, parodically double-voiced word has been turned against him affectionately by his own devoted students. I n the third o f the Znanie booklets on Bakhtin (1991)—a whimsical coauthored project entitled "Bakhtin's Rhetoric o f the Act: Reminiscences o f the Future or Predic­ tions o f the Past?"—the question o f words versus deeds is addressed in a carnivalized genre, modeled after a mock-Soviet "roundtable discussion," the nineteenth-century journalistic feuilleton, and the ancient genre o f "Dialogues i n the Kingdom o f the Dead." The discussants rejoice that Bakhtin is being celebrated for his notion o f the responsible deed—but how much o f this is rhetoric (in the debased as well as the classical, oratorical sense o f that word)? " A t present, half the scholarly world is making a career off Bakhtin," one participant notes, hinting at a practical and highly profitable link between art and life, between rhetoric and action; " i n the West, Bakhtin has become a messiah for the humanities" (4). The simpleton at the table agrees: i n Russia, "the deed has been completely replaced by the word, goods have been replaced by a promise o f goods, money by the possi­ bility o f receiving 40 percent o f what is due you after three years. That's glasnost for you, indeed. I don't know how it was i n the beginning—but in the end, all that will probably remain is the Word" (5). The critics then ask whether literary culture really helps us to shape responsible person­ alities. Citing Robert Musil (his famous retort that world literature is one monstrous shop where people can walk i n and purchase pride, jealousy, love, despair), one participant insists that culture, both high and low, simply gets i n the way o f a responsible life. True to its menippean spirit, "Bakhtin's Rhetoric o f the A c t " ends on a note o f cheerful resignation and nonresolution (41): 41

Peshkov: So we have two intact worlds here: the worlds of freedom and of necessity, of possibility and of reality, of word and of deed. To construct out of these two worlds a single kingdom—the kingdom of a human be­ ing—can be accomplished only by the word, by speech, by communion. 4 1

V . L . M a k h l i n , A . E . M a k h o v , a n d I . V . Peshkov, " R i t o r i k a postupka M . B a k h t i n a , " i n

Z n a n i e series " R i t o r i k a , " n o . 9 ( 1 9 9 1 ) .

OUTSIDENESS"

Makhov:

241

Well, all right, we could have realized that without Bakhtin's help.

Now let's try to live."

D o Bakhtin's own texts provide more serious guidance on this matter of art and life i n each other's service? Bakhtin devoted his tiny maiden publication from 1919, " A r t and A n ­ swerability," to just this boundary. Its seven short paragraphs—wedged between two sentimental poems and an essay by Kagan on " A r t , Life, and Love" i n the September 19 issue o f "Den' iskusstva" [Day o f art], the newsletter o f the NeveP U n i o n o f Workers o f A r t and an eclectic, rather avant-garde affair —can be reduced to a series o f self-limiting cau­ tionary statements. Art is not life, but neither is art mere lofty inspiration. Poetry is guilty before the "vulgar prose o f life" (although the nature o f that guilt is not spelled out); a life that is frivolous and unexacting will be rewarded with a sterile art (notwithstanding massive evidence to the con­ trary among artists o f genius). We must beware o f the desire o f art and life to lighten each other's burdens by dispensing with each other—for although i t might be "easier to create without answering for life and easier to live without any consideration for art," such a solution is both unethical and aesthetically barren. A n d then comes Bakhtin's concluding sentence: " A r t and life are not one, but they must become united i n myself—in the unity o f my answerability." 42

43

What i n the world does this final sentence mean? For we are not speak­ ing here o f two personalities, each unique but still structured i n a similar way, who might negotiate their coming together on the basis o f a com­ mon language. Art and life, Bakhtin insists, are different substances. What, then, is the nature o f the boundary that separates these two realms, and through what chemistry can two such disparate entities come together and "unite" i n me? Clearly the obligation on both sides is o f a different order than either the "purposive wholes without specific pur­ pose" recommended by Kant or the device-driven "literariness" o f the Formalists. I n what medium is this unity expressed? To what higher value must i t answer? Unpacking this tiny essay o f Bakhtin's has proved excep­ tionally difficult. I n the later, more leisurely essay on authors and heroes, the life-art boundary performs a variety o f duties. A t one level i t is simply a site. 4 2

A facsimile o f this eight-page,

d u c e d as an appendix i n Nevel'skii

19 S e p t e m b e r 1 9 1 9 issue o f " D e n ' iskusstva" is repro­ sbornik,

no. 1 (Sankt-Peterburg: A k r o p o P , 1 9 9 6 ) . T h e

j o u r n a l also contains reviews o f activities o f the B a k h t i n circle reported i n " M o l o t " for 1 9 1 8 - 2 0 , i n c l u d i n g discussion sessions by P u m p i a n s k y a n d B a k h t i n o n s u c h topics as G o d and socialism, religion, a n d the m e a n i n g o f love ( 1 4 7 - 5 8 ) . 4 3

B a k h t i n , Art

and Answerability,

i n A&A

and H e r o i n Aesthetic A c t i v i t y " given i n text.

90, 1 - 2 . F u r t h e r page references to " A u t h o r

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FIVE

Although each o f us is outside every other person, that outsideness can be turned to creative purpose i n varying degrees. What makes us specifi­ cally artist-authors is not so much the artifact we produce as i t is how we act on that interpersonal boundary. Attitude is all: the extent to which we attempt to see i n other human beings "that which they cannot see i n themselves, while remaining i n ourselves and living our own lives i n ear­ nest" ( " A & H , " i n A&A, 190). To become an author is to achieve this balance. "The artist is, i n fact, someone who knows how to be active outside lived life," Bakhtin writes (190-91): "someone who not only partakes i n life from within (practical, social, political, moral, religious life) and understands i t from within, but someone who also loves i t from without—loves life where i t does not exist for itself, where i t is turned outside itself and is i n need o f a self-activity that is located outside i t and is active independently o f meaning. The divinity o f the artist consists i n his partaking o f the supreme outsideness." Bakhtin suspects—and rightly so—that i n the alternative worlds o f art, which we bring into existence from without, i t is considerably easier for us to act consistently and lovingly than i n the real world o f life, "which exists for itself." A r t , i n this sense, is an important practice zone, an envi­ ronment where good habits might be efficiently acquired and reflexes tested. But i n addition to the art-life boundary as test site for moral be­ havior, there is also an "artifact" component to Bakhtin's concern. The art-life boundary is a dividing line between types of form. The topic became central to Bakhtin early i n his career, by 1924. That year marks a watershed i n Bakhtin's thought, the end o f the "manu­ script" period o f philosophical speculations and the beginning o f his con­ centration on the literary word. During that year Bakhtin prepared for publication a philosophical treatise in response to the Formalists. Entitled "The Problem o f Content, Material, and Form i n Verbal A r t , " i t contains a final section on "The Problem o f Form." Since the essay's delayed pub­ lication i n 1975, separated by a half-century from its original interlocu­ tors, this section has proved more problematic than its author could have foreseen.

T H E PROBLEM OF FORM Just as Bakhtin's biography can be viewed through the lens o f his para­ doxical attitude toward revolution (positive and "permanent" during carnival, negative and oppressive i n prosaic reality), so might Bakhtin's paradoxical relationship to form be situated at the center of all that con­ founds us i n his theory o f art. Within his thought as a whole, the role o f aesthetic form is vexed. As we have seen, Bakhtin as theorist has little to say about traditional aesthetic markers: perfection o f shape or rhythm,

OUTSIDENESS"

243

the sense we receive from certain objects that we are i n the presence o f a clarity and proportion sufficiently stable to serve us as a standard, the whole world o f norms and codes. What captures his passionate interest is always "the activity o f the artist or author who creates." But let us now, in this penultimate section, shift our attention to the receiving rather than the creating end. What are the dynamics o f aesthetic response? This ancient question has no single answer, but most schools o f thought would concur that we delight i n aesthetic form and are energized by i t when we feel ourselves resonating alongside i t , when we contemplate i t at the proper "aesthetic distance" and, i f only briefly, align ourselves with it. Similar emotional needs are satisfied i n us, I would argue, when we succeed i n finding, i f only for a moment, a compatible code. We embrace such a code enthusi­ astically because i t clarifies our options, permits us to concentrate our energies, to suspend our questions and doubts, to fit i n and relax. I n our best "coded" moments we do not feel trapped or silenced. We feel real­ ized. Finalization i n this sense is a loophole out o f everyday shapeless life—almost as Bakhtinian carnival and the polyphonic word, by wholly différent routes, can be a loophole. Its benefits are pointedly not to be found i n the rigors o f independent judgment or individuation. We do not need to answer back, nor are we driven to supplement an idea or impres­ sion with something new o f our own. Energy and bliss are released i n us when we contemplate something finished and closed, something not i n need o f our dialogic input. This bliss will not last long; but aesthetic form, like laughter and inspiration itself, need only be answerable—as our chapter title suggests—for the "aesthetic moment." That Bakhtin has a problem with form, thus defined, is easy to ascer­ tain from the most familiar texts o f his middle period. I n the 1930s he dismisses epic, lyric, drama—in fact every genre with any fixed literary form or slot i n a hierarchy—as carriers o f unfreedom. Later he speaks out categorically against semiotics and codes. Although Bakhtin does trim back his ecstasy at carnival disorder and has excellent things to say about the constraints and conventions o f "speech genres," by the end o f his life he nevertheless had come to link lyric poetry, epic, drama, the authoritative word, Structuralism, signs and codes i n a loose bundle that had something o f the feel o f a prison about it. Is this one-way trajectory the only way to read Bakhtin on form? Rus­ sian students o f his thought appear to be divided on this question—and again, a familiar spectrum stretches out, from kindly sympathy to unholy 44

4 4

See, for example, B a k h t i n , " D i s c o u r s e i n the N o v e l , " i n DI,

286-88; 296-98

("The

p o e t is a poet insofar as he accepts the idea o f a unitary a n d singular language a n d a unitary, m o n o l o g i c a l l y sealed-off utterance. . . . T o achieve this, the p o e t strips the w o r d o f others' intentions. . . . E v e r y w h e r e there is o n l y one face—the linguistic face o f the author.")

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suspicion. Some have attempted to understand the evolution o f his aes­ thetics i n an integrated spirit; others (along the lines o f those critics who so savaged dialogue and carnival) are committed to pursuing, to its bitter and unpalatable end, the ethical implications o f Bakhtin's near-fatal pas­ sion for opening up fixed things. Before sampling contributions at each o f these poles, however, we might recall the major points o f Bakhtin's programmatic 1924 statement on the "Problem o f Form." I n the pro­ cess, the argument made at the beginning o f this chapter, as well as our excursus on aesthetic love, will be revisited from a somewhat different perspective. We will seek out that moment when the force of form (as something préexistent, autonomous, striving toward consummation, as that force which works upon us but not yet i n dialogic partnership with us) becomes a "problem." For there is a threshold i n Bakhtin's thought, albeit muted and tentative, where form (or the activity o f a "form-shap­ ing consciousness") ceases to be a prerogative and a blessing for the cre­ ating artist to bestow and becomes instead a burden for the receiving, or created, personality to assume. 45

As we have seen, the early Bakhtin follows Kant i n granting to aes­ thetic form an exalted mediating function. Intuitively unifying the cogni­ tive and ethical spheres, entities constructed in this aesthetic "middle space" can partake o f the best o f both worlds: ideas have real people attached to them but these personalities are created from without—as a vymysel, or fiction—and thus are "free." They live i n a world compre­ hended by an integrated vision. For this reason the author, as the bestower o f form, can be, in Bakhtin's happy phrase, "axiologically tran­ q u i l . " Created heroes inside a text, o f course, are more likely to be apprehensive and restless; they experience their lives i n an ethical dimen­ sion bonded to consequences that are real for them. But their authors are calm, confident, disinterested, and always outside. Even from this external position, however, form is not something that authors simply "apply" to material. Rhythm, rhyme, harmony, symme­ try—these factors are all too active, Bakhtin insists, too intense to be understood as mere devices imposed on inert or passive verbal matter. The proper question for the aesthetician is not how to exile content so as to isolate form, but rather how form becomes part o f content. Form is not a material trace, not merely a nick on some préexistent surface. I t is 46

4 5

B a k h t i n , " T h e P r o b l e m o f C o n t e n t , M a t e r i a l , a n d F o r m in V e r b a l A r t , " trans. K e n n e t h

B r o s t r o m , i n A&A,

2 5 7 - 3 2 5 , esp. 3 0 3 - 1 8 , " T h e P r o b l e m o f F o r m " (translation liberally

adjusted). S u b s e q u e n t page references are to this v o l u m e . 4 6

O n aesthetic, ethical, a n d cognitive events, o n the crisis i n authorship that occurs w h e n

a bestower o f aesthetic form gravitates too fully t o w a r d the ethical real-life w o r l d a n d thus loses outsideness a n d tranquillity, a n d o n the inherent "kindness" o f aesthetic activity, see " A & H , " i n A&A,

21-22, 205-7,

277-80.

"OUTSIDENESS"

245

the projection o f energy from an agent. Thus i t inevitably reflects an evaluating, value-bearing attitude; i t has a cutting edge, a consciousness, a forward momentum, and i t serves the ego. " I n form I find myself" Bakhtin writes; " I feel intensely my own movement creating an object" (304). I f cognition does not need a creator at all and ethical action is judged by the good i t brings about i n the world, then the impulse to form is always a striving to create and consummate—and in my own individual name. What I create is conditioned by content. But content, Bakhtin is at pains to stress, is a delicate beast. By nature passive, receptive, a bit restless, i t lies there i n expectation, waiting to be shaped and loved. I must be active and fastidiously accurate i n adding form to content or else i t will rebel, become unruly, slip back into the more stable realms o f the purely cognitive or purely ethical—where i t will shed either its personality or its tranquillity. The task o f form (and here Bakhtin refers specifically to the lyric as an exemplary genre) is to detach and isolate content—not, we should note, i n order to neutralize i t morally or drain i t o f its pathos, but to release i t from dependency, enable it to relax, free i t from any craven expectation o f a response. Blessed with form, "a prayer no longer needs the God who could hear i t , a complaint no longer needs help, repentance no longer needs forgiveness" (306, 308). I n short, form detaches and isolates content so that consummation [zavershenie] can occur. A t this stage i n Bakhtin's thinking about aes­ thetics, then, a closed, consummated, self-sufficient whole is the goal o f art. Any cognitive moment that is not integrated or consummated will be sensed as a durnoi prozaism [a wretched prosaism] or a nerastvorennyi prozaism [an undissolved prosaism] (282, 285). These references to prosiness are not marks o f openness or freedom. They are indications o f the failure o f art. Here as always the taxonomist, Bakhtin distinguishes between two types o f aesthetic form. The first and simpler type is "compositional": how verbal masses are organized, what devices an author might employ to subdivide the material or move i t mechanically around (chapters i n a novel, the division o f a play into acts, the format and layout o f dialogues, the repeating rhyme scheme o f a poetic stanza). Compositional form is important but apparently unproblematic. I n composing, the competent artist is stern and merciless toward his material—"the poet casts away words, forms, expressions without pity, and he selects only a few; . . . fragments o f marble fly from under the chisel." N o matter how violent and exclusionary its genesis, however, the aesthetic result—if successful— will be "kind, accepting, enriching, optimistic" (279). For artistic success ultimately depends on a second type o f form beyond the merely compo­ sitional: the "architectonic." Architectonic energy arranges parts into a whole. I t is thus the polar

246

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opposite o f inertia and always brings into being a more internally com­ plex living entity. This organism is dynamic, intuitive, grateful to be given life. Contemplating such a whole, we ourselves become kind: we have no desire to abolish things or push them away, "we recognize everything and remember everything" (279). (Such kindness and tolerance does not come upon us so naturally i n merely cognitive states, Bakhtin intimates. Could this be what Dostoevsky had i n mind when he remarked, "Beauty will save the world"?) Bakhtin speaks here o f the "emotionally willed intensity o f form"—its efficient, "tightly wound-up quality," as i n a wound-up spring (266)—but this tension is never angry, aggressive, or disruptive. Unlike cognition and (we might add) unlike many o f our ev­ eryday ethical responses to the world, architectonic form succeeds only when i t is kind and merciful. I t creates an aesthetic whole that does not divide, reject, or choose; i t invites all inside, with dobrota and blagostnostf [kindness and generosity o f spirit] (281). I n varying degrees, compositional and architectonic forms i n literature draw on the same arsenal o f formal aspects: the attributes and building blocks o f verbal art. Bakhtin lists five such blocks: (1) the word's "sound­ ing or musical" element; (2) its referential meaning; (3) its verbal con­ nections with other words; (4) its "intonational/psychological/emotional" layer, permeated with the values and moods o f the speaker; and (5) the "sense o f the word's activeness," by which he means the feeling of "inner directiveness" or purposefulness that we experience when we give birth to a "meaningful sound" (310). From a later, more dialogic and novel-centered perspective, what is remarkable about this list, surely, is its overwhelmingly oral quality, its concentration i n the speaking or singing " I " regardless o f who might be listening and poised for response. The glory o f language, i t appears, is simply to produce i t and to feel good by expressing yourself in i t . "Form" relies on itself alone: it is the "acting soul and body" (312) o f a creator [tvorets], who produces aesthetic unity by embracing content from an outside position and consummating it. I n poetry, Bakhtin remarks, all five formal aspects o f the word tend to be subsumed by the first aspect, the euphonic or "sounding" side o f things, which is always the dominant. Sounds must work their magic on the ear first of all, i f the work o f the poem is to succeed. What can be said at this point about Bakhtin on aesthetic form? I t is a loving, self-sufficient, orally delivered poetic performance. A n d as such i t is one o f those gentle miracles that occur so often i n his work: a creative principle that is entirely " I " or ego-centered, but not i n a selfish way; i t is kindly, energetic, open to the hypothetical other, but still risks nothing and remains thoroughly i n control itself. The material i t shapes desires that shaping hand. (Again, Bakhtin has little tolerance for personal anxi­ ety: I can incorporate your formlessness and shape i t i n a friendly, non-

"OUTSIDENESS"

247

possessive way; you will like it.) The other offers no violence or resistance to my creating self or its form-bearing activity, and my self, i n turn, has no anger or bitterness to spend on defacing the other. Bakhtin does not resolve the potential tension between self and other; here, as elsewhere, he simply ignores it. Crucial to the process is the mesmerizing, perhaps even incantational sound o f form. I t creates a community i n which every participant can become an author—because a poem occurs not when i t is written but when i t is articulated. Intonation is that middle space between the bestower and the receiver o f form, where the blessings o f creativity can be felt by author and perceiver alike. I n general, Bakhtin intimates, i n order to experience form, seeing or hearing is not enough; we must rearticulate it ourselves, summoning for this activity the whole o f our "creating inner organism" (315). Involuntarily one recalls Bakhtin's septuagenarian voice on the Duvakin tapes at the centennial, reciting with his phenomenal memory and i n several languages a torrent o f beloved poetic sounds. Bakhtin ends his chapter on "The Problem o f Form" with a discussion o f form in the lyric versus form i n the novel. Reading this 1924 essay retroactively—that is, aware that forty years o f writing on the novel are to follow i n Bakhtin's life, whereas lyric form will be abandoned—we sense the approaching divide. What happens to aesthetic form i n what Bakhtin calls the "larger prosaic verbal wholes"? His remarks i n this con­ cluding section seem uncontroversial, almost banal. I n works such as novels, he writes, "the phoneme [with its base i n intonation and articula­ tion] yields to the grapheme [the written w o r d ] " (314). The involve­ ment or "attachment" to form that is characteristic o f the "creating, in­ ner organism" i n the lyric mode becomes minimal. That special energy which i n poetry could be released only through co-articulating and cohearing is now replaced, i n "large verbal wholes," with "an intense, eval­ uating, remembering activity," with "emotional memory" (316). To be sure, the creator o f a novel still organizes content, isolates i t , bestows form upon i t "as a gift"—but the dominant o f the artwork has shifted. I t has ceased to be the rearticulation o f the uttered word at any given mo­ ment and has become consciousness over time as expressed i n graphemes. Bakhtin ends his essay on the "Problem o f Content, Material, and Form" at this point. But the most interesting problems are just beginning. Since novels contain multiple personalities, masses o f time, and are written to 47

4 7

" T h e significance o f the creating, i n n e r o r g a n i s m is n o t the same i n all kinds o f poetry,"

B a k h t i n writes at this crucial j u n c t u r e i n the evolution o f his t h o u g h t . " I t is m a x i m a l i n the lyric, w h e r e the body, generating the s o u n d f r o m w i t h i n itself a n d sensing the unity o f its o w n productive tension [napriazhenie],

is d r a w n into form; i n the n o v e l this attachment o f

the i n n e r o r g a n i s m to f o r m \priobshchennosf (314).

forme

vnutrennego

organizma]

is m i n i m a l "

248

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FIVE

be realized silently rather than recited aloud, some means must be de­ vised under these new conditions to approximate that elusive intuition o f "wholeness" and gratitude that a successful architectonics bestows upon the producers and receivers o f poetry. I n the "larger prosaic verbal wholes," we are led to believe, this aim is achieved i f we respect the wholeness o f evolving heroes alongside the wholeness o f their author. This shift to novelistic prose invites a new definition o f the functions o f form. Form is not just imposed from above by a creator to bring peace to restless content (what most o f us would recognize as the "aesthetic moment"); form can now be registered as pressure from another peer consciousness—as a destabilization, a second presence, a question, a chal­ lenge. I n fact 1924 is pretty much the last time that "axiological tran­ quillity" and "artistic consummation" are invoked by Bakhtin as special virtues bestowed by form. Novelistic form comes to be valued for the potency and degree o f openness i t can tolerate, for its power to stimulate. The authoring " I " no longer coexperiences and consummates; now i t supplements and stirs up. From this point on, the stages in Bakhtin's thinking are well known. His trademark terrain—first the polyphonic, then the dialogic, then the heteroglot, ultimately the carnivalesque—is progressively redefined as the site not o f genesis or consummation but o f exchange (or better, o f inter­ change); novelistic words are scraped clean o f starting points and become instead inspired way stations, intersections that do not let us "rest i n art" but rather encourage us to look around restlessly, listening for the next voice. Gary Saul Morson is correct to credit Bakhtin as the inspiration for his wonderful idea o f "sideshadowing"—that attitude toward time which sees i t as a field, not a point, and thereby restores to life the "possibility o f possibility." Just such a spirit o f multiple opportunities and still unshaped options is the essence o f the mature Bakhtin's understanding o f form. Lest this all seem too loose and strange, two reminders are i n order. First, we must not forget that Bakhtin, raised on German Romanticism, was drawn throughout his life to Schelling's idea o f the responsive, cre­ ative "organism" endowed with inner resources that could transcend mere environmental constraints. The Schellingian "organism" repre­ sented a union o f nature with the human spirit, not a fatal struggle o f one against the other. I t is also worth noting that the debate between these two worldviews, cast as a confrontation between the romantic Lamarck and the positivist Darwin, was profound among Russian poets o f the 48

4 8

G a r y S a u l M o r s o n , Narrative

and Freedom:

The Shadows of Time ( N e w H a v e n , C o n n . :

Yale U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1 9 9 4 ) , esp. c h . 4 , " S i d e s h a d o w i n g . "

"OUTSIDENESS"

249

1920s and the early 1930s. I n this connection we might entertain a related notion: that in the famous dichotomy between form and content, "messiness" or "shapelessness" can become, under certain conditions, a category o f content rather than o f form. One such site and set o f cir­ cumstances is the organism. The "content" o f blood, ganglia, glandular secretions can be formless and flowing, but these organs are nevertheless dynamic systems (blood cannot flow anywhere i n the body and still sus­ tain the organism). Form can, and must, regulate such "messiness." But more accurate here than the idea o f "shaping," with its inspiration in the sculptural arts, is the idea o f a "monitoring" activity that optimizes, tunes up, flushes out. Although at no time can the whole organism be stopped and fixed permanendy in place (and continue to live), this monitor exerts a vital influence as a "finitizer" and "finalizer" o f content. To invoke familiar Kantian rubrics, form here fulfills a regulatory rather than a con­ stitutive function. 49

50

As with the dynamic processes o f the body, so with Bakhtin's under­ standing o f the "force o f form" i n the polyphonic and dialogic novel. Precision and control are abundandy present—but this shaping, con­ straining energy is registered as feedback rather than as structure and thus has multiple agents or "authors." The above analogy with liquid organs and life processes must be qualified i n one respect, however. I n the early 1920s Bakhtin criticized the popular organicist Bergsonian view that "the world was only a flow o f changes," a fact supposedly hidden from us by our spatialized intellect. I n Bakhtin's view, Lebensphilosophie was too psychologized, too interiorized and tied to a single consciousness, and for this reason overly theoretized even i n its attempt to exit from the straitjacket o f reason into a more flexible intuitivism. Bakhtin believed that life's events simply could not be cognized as "inner flow"—and not because we are i n the bad habit o f spatializing time but because an event, 51

4 9

I n an elegant article o n M a n d e l s t a m ' s position in the debate between anti-positivist

L a m a r c k i a n s a n d Darwinians in the Soviet 1 9 2 0 s (a debate o f w h i c h B a k h t i n was doubtless aware), B o r i s G a s p a r o v discusses h o w s u c h a Schellingian understanding o f the "organism" was for s o m e poets a force that girted artists c o u l d oppose to an e n c r o a c h i n g " I r o n A g e . " See B o r i s 'Gasparov, " T h e I r o n A g e o f the 1 9 3 0 s ( T h e C e n t e n n i a l R e t u r n in M a n d e l s t a m ) , " trans. J o h n H e n r i k s o n , in Stephanie Sandler, e d . , Rereading C o n n . : Yale University Press, 1 9 9 9 ) : 5 0

Russian

Poetry ( N e w H a v e n ,

78-103.

I thank m y father, D a v i d G e p p e r t , for this n o t i o n o f shapelessness

as a category

of

c o n t e n t rather than f o r m — a n d for decades o f stimulating debate over a thinker he never d r e a m e d he w o u l d have to take so seriously, for so l o n g . 5 1

B a k h t i n ' s critique o f Bergson's intuitivism c o m e s in the form o f incidental commentary

o n N i k o l a i L o s s k y ' s 1 9 2 2 Intuitivnaia

filosofiia

Bergsona

(itself a m i x e d evaluation), tucked

into his unfinished essay, " K filosofii p o s t u p k a . " See Toward for an interpretation, see M o r s o n a n d E m e r s o n , Creation

a Philosophy of the Act,

of a Prosaics,

176-79.

13, 21;

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to be given form and fixed i n our consciousness at all, requires input from another outside person. As he writes apropos o f polyphony i n Prob­ lems of Dostoevsky's Poetics: " I t is one thing to be active i n relation to a dead thing, to voiceless material that can be molded and formed as one wishes, and another thing to be active i n relation to someone else's liv­ ing, autonomous consciousness" (285). Here is the "social" or interper­ sonal threshold below which Bakhtin could not fall and that kept his Romanticist metaphysics i n check. W i t h this criterion o f outside con­ sciousness, however, form ceases to serve what most o f us would recog­ nize as an aesthetic function and begins to serve an ethical or even a philosophical-cognitive function. As the singular authoring " I " yields to each surrounding "thou," the ideal o f tranquil beauty gives way to equal rights o f access, multiplicity, and interruption. For all the reasons we know, this shift from centering to de-centering was a methodology well suited to resist the closing noose o f Stalinism. But i t was not especially well suited to close readings, to respect for sym­ bolic or fatidic patterning in a work o f art, to formal poetic; structures, or to the dynamics o f the creative process as viewed from inside a creator's head. To the extent that "prosaic" or dialogic readings shortchange these values, one could argue, they are inadequate as literary commentary. ( I t is o f some moment, I believe, that we cannot imagine Bakhtin as a poet or primary creator, possessed by a desire to "get i t right": he is not selfish enough and he does not exile others' voices soon enough; re-voicing excites him too fully.) Form has become a passage.

T H E L O G I C OF A E S T H E T I C F O R M AND "CONSUMMATION AS A TYPE OF DYING" Debates over Bakhtin's understanding o f form recall the debates over dialogism and carnival; indeed, they are intertwined. Bakhtin's supporters claim, however, that these routine complaints simply misconstrue Bakh­ tin's intent. Dialogue is not wholly open nor at the disposal o f any random speaker; carnival is not trivial; consummation need not be a de­ fensive or definitive closing down. Bakhtin intended these to be coopera52

5 2

A s V l a d i m i r T u r b i n has argued i n defense o f his mentor's maximally trustful scenario,

the personalist task o f the a u t h o r — t o "impart an artistically c o n s u m m a t i n g shape" to a w o r k o f a r t — i s m u c h too delicate a p r o c e d u r e to be grasped by those "seduced by the mirage o f s u c h self-sufficient m e c h a n i z a t i o n s as device-material, material-device." W h a t the s e d u c e d F o r m a l i s t fails to see is that " c o n s u m m a t i o n [zaversbenie] pletion

[okonchanie]

at the

level o f simple plot"

is n o t the same as c o m ­

(Vladimir T u r b i n ,

" U istokov

siologicheskoi poetiki [ M . M . B a k h t i n v polemike s formal'noi s h k o l o i ] , " MMB 92, 4 6 ; subsequent quotes o n 4 7 , 4 5 - 4 6 ) .

sot-

kak filosof

"OUTSIDENESS"

251

tive, not competitive, categories. As Matvei Kagan put the case, with the bucolic diction common to Bakhtin's circle, i n a 1922 paper on the dual strivings o f art: "Art is life's holiday, a holiday that is necessary to life, a holiday o f giftedness by means o f life. . . . After all, for art, the holiday o f life is not a trivial or idle matter [ Ved' prazdnik zhizni dlia iskusstva— delo ne

prazdnoe]"

53

The quaintly ecstatic tone o f Kagan's fusion o f carnival, life, and art provides a useful foil and contrast to this final section. Two melancholic explications will be juxtaposed from the centennial year 1995, written with the benefit o f Bakhtin's entire intellectual trajectory i n view. The first treatment is sympathetic, confirming and extending the conclusions we reached i n our reading o f "The Problem o f Form"; the other is more speculative and direly pessimistic. Both find highly problematic the be­ nevolent synthesis that Bakhtin and Kagan found so natural and argued with such conviction at the beginning o f their careers as philosophers. Natalia Bonetskaia opens her 1995 essay, "Bakhtin's Aesthetics as the Logic o f Form," with a paradox: Bakhtin's work as a whole defies classi­ fication and contains contradictory theses, yet we sense i n i t an intuitive unity. This unity must be sought not i n his postulates, however, but i n his concept o f aesthetic form—which is persuasive largely to the extent that i t is itself an evolving, dynamic category, much as Bakhtin's most favored image o f the literary hero is dynamic and the product o f an ob­ servable evolutionary process. Bonetskaia surveys the major works o f the 1920s and 1930s (from "Toward a Philosophy o f the A c t " to Rabelais) in an effort to reveal the indwelling logic o f Bakhtin's sense o f form. 54

She detects i n Bakhtin's early thought a bold challenge to aesthetics as it had been formalized by the turn o f the century. I n this essay she em­ phasizes not the Kantian connection she had previously researched but the aesthetic systems elaborated by neo-Romantic theorists and the poets o f Russian Symbolism. I n that later body o f thought, the artist was seen as a tragic personality, a seer whose vision could never be adequately recorded; authorship (the bestowal o f form) was understood as an activ­ ity that inevitably entailed constraint and the paralysis o f inspiration (52). I n muted dialogue with such luminaries as Simmel, Nietzsche, and Alex­ ander Blok, Bakhtin was taking on the most vexed question confronting aesthetics i n his day: how to devise a philosophy that would transcend what had come to be called the "tragedy o f creativity" (55). Charac-

5 3

M . I . Kagan,

" D v a stremleniia iskusstva (forma i soderzhanie;

s i u z h e t n o s t ' ) , " Filosofskie nauki, 5 4

bespredmetnost'

i

n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 5 ) : 4 7 - 6 1 , esp. 6 0 .

N . K . Bonetskaia, " E s t e t i k a M . B a k h t i n a kak logika formy," i n Bakhtinologiia,

F u r t h e r page references given i n text.

51-60.

CHAPTER

252

FIVE

teristically he cast the question as a task, that o f giving a shape and an image to "spirit" [dukh]. (Bakhtin's terminology here could have been acquired from the phenomenologist Max Scheler, one generation his se­ nior, for whom Geist was the intuited—but as yet unembodied—unity o f an individual personality prior to its realization i n a concrete act.) For classical aesthetics, such as the theories o f Hegel or Schelling, embodi­ ment i n art was not an insurmountable problem. Expression was good, possible, free. But on the far side o f Symbolism, where art had inherited the territory vacated by religious faith, the problem had become i m ­ mense. "Bakhtin seized on the most difficult task o f all: to resolve the question o f shaping that which i n principle cannot be shaped, o f imaging that which is fundamentally unimageable, o f consummating the infinite" (53). The resolution o f this task required the work o f an entire life. I n his earliest thinking about the problem, Bonetskaia notes, Bakhtin saw aesthetic form "not as a communicative event but [on the contrary] as its sole stable aspect, as that single thing that could impart a [fixed] quality to the event and overcome its dynamism" (54). Form is "the only carrier o f determinedness." I n "Author and Hero," Bakhtin concentrates on abstract notions o f "body" and "soul" and on musical and sculptural form, because i n such contexts the recipients o f form can be "absolutely passive." When the hero begins to "occupy a sense-laden [osmyslennoe] place i n existence, however, he strives to confirm his position i n terms o f its meaning [for h i m ] and thus to counterpose [that meaning] to the author's position" (55). W i t h good reason does the sequence o f literary forms examined i n "Author and H e r o " proceed from confession through lyric to romantic "type," for the task the hero must accomplish—and that is achieved, step by step, i n those genres—is to outgrow the author's control over his consciousness. The point at which these early rumina­ tions on aesthetics break off is o f some import for Bonetskaia. She sug­ gests that Bakhtin abandoned these essays, not just left them unfinished, because the next logical step, a genuine aestheticization of dukh [spirit], was simply unresolvable i n terms o f this initial progression. I n his book on Dostoevsky Bakhtin doubles back, starts over with new assumptions, and tries out a different approach to the problem o f "shap­ ing the unshapeable." Polyphony was his first attempt at a formal solu­ tion for "giving form to spirit," one that would guarantee (here Bonet­ skaia quotes Bakhtin) that "spirit could now be visualized i n a way that only the soul and the body had been visualized before" (56). Bakhtin's means to this end was a "dialogic poetics." But the unfolding internal logic o f Problems of Dostoevsky s Art made i t clear beyond a doubt that this new starting point was separated by a veritable "chasm" from Bakh­ tin's earlier writings on aesthetics. The definition o f "form as a bound­ ary" no longer applied, because polyphonic form cannot finalize i n the y

"OUTSIDENESS"

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old way (56). I n a fundamental revision o f the form/spirit dichotomy, spirit comes to be associated with dialogic form itself—and "the form o f novelistic dialogue does not deaden life because i t is life itself: this is the culmination and major revelation o f Bakhtin's aesthetics" (57). Bakhtin begins to speak o f Dostoevsky's art as i f i t were interchangeable with unmediated life; recalling Martin Buber, "spirit" is now dissolved in form, and the whole sooner resembles a philosophy, a charged space, an orientation between two people than it does an artifact. With its emphasis on the watershed o f the late 1920s, this much o f Bonetskaia's argument is familiar. What is striking, however, is her con­ clusion: that Bakhtin justified his mature conception o f form—in its new, seemingly realistic guise o f "art-for-life's-sake"—by a return to the great founders o f classical aesthetics: to Schelling, Hegel, Goethe. She points out that for those thinkers, spirit could not ultimately be fit into any form at all: "Aesthetic perfection for the classical aestheticians meant going beyond the boundaries o f form, it meant a substantive fusion o f the work o f art with life's primal energies" (57). I f by this logic Hegel and Schell­ ing could see in Romantic art the most highly perfected expression o f form, "then for Bakhtin, aesthetic perfection was the 'realism in a higher sense' o f Dostoevsky" (58). A t this point we might recall the Duvakin interviews and Bakhtin's affectionate, enthusiastic reminiscence, one-half century after the fact, o f many hours o f discussions with his close friends Pumpiansky and Yudina i n revolutionary Petrograd. I n that Bolshevik de­ cade, their topic was none other than Schelling's aesthetic theory— which, Bakhtin assured Duvakin i n 1973, had always been "very dear to me." The accumulating frustrations and potentials o f seeking artistic form within life's primal energy have their logical consummation i n the study on Rabelais. Bonetskaia argues that carnival represents yet another ap­ proach on Bakhtin's part to the problem o f form, one growing integrally out o f the earlier dead ends. I f form had been defined earlier as the aesthetic result o f an interaction between author and hero, then the haz­ ards o f this dialogic definition were now avoided altogether, for " i n Bakhtin's reading, Rabelais's novel contains neither hero nor author as personalities" (58). The heroes are "dissolved i n the folk body," and the author (at least for the purposes o f Bakhtin's analysis) "does not have his own individual voice . . . [he is] the mouthpiece o f carnival, a passive medium for primordial carnival energies. Put another way, he is possessed by the carnival spirit." Thus i n Bakhtin's aesthetic geography, spread over several decades, dukh is forced steadily downward. From its lofty aspira55

5 5

" R a z g o v o r y s B a k h t i n y m : M a r i i a V e n i a m i n o v n a Y u d i n a " (interview n o . 6 ) ,

no. 6 (1994): 167.

Chelovek,

254

C H A P T E R

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tion to "consummate the infinite," i t moves toward a polyphonic or "horizontal" regard for the immediate interlocutor, from there to the lower bodily stratum, and ultimately to the world below and beyond. "This is still spirituality," Bonetskaia assures us, "but a spirituality o f the nether w o r l d . " The dark side o f this trajectory will follow, but let us now sum up Bonetskaia's thesis. I n her view Bakhtin, an immensely ambitious theor­ ist, was preoccupied throughout his life with the potential o f aesthetic form to enable—not merely to define or to reflect—the reality o f life. I n his early thought, aims are still modest: demarcation and formal consum­ mation must precede any act o f communication. As he increasingly broadens his scope, Bakhtin does not reject form but (on the contrary) posits ever more extravagant hopes for i t , recruiting for this task the i m ­ mortality and multidimensionality o f the spoken word. A n d i n his mature aesthetics, inspired by the Romantic dream o f a fusion between artistic form and the natural elements, "he wants to grasp all o f life's fullness by means o f form" (59). But form, at least as explicated by the literary critic, must inevitably collapse under such "inner pressure exerted by life." A t the far end o f this itinerary, Rabelais's novelistic masterwork is treated as a "chunk o f carnival existence," essentially as formless. Thus does the "logic o f form" play itself out i n Bakhtin's thought. I t is itself "consum­ mated," although i n a possibly tragic key "Life, i n its striving to manifest itself in art and having found for itself an optimal form, proceeds to break down every kind o f barrier that makes for aesthetic determinateness" (59). Bonetskaia's closing note is conservative, an affirmation that life's openness and aesthetic form are, i n principle, opposed. Bakhtin could only founder i n his several attempts to combine the energies o f both; what looks like a celebration o f polyphonic and carnival dynamics is i n fact the ancient familiar deadlock. I n her reading, however, the cost o f this failure is limited to a theoretical inconsistency, an aesthetics that does not cohere. The logic inherent i n Bakhtin's thought does not i n itself erode personality, diminish human potential, or facilitate evil. I t can come as no surprise that Konstantin Isupov, familiar to us for his vision o f the demonic at the heart o f Bakhtin's carnivalesque, has also explored the grimmer implications o f Bakhtinian outsideness. His 1995 essay, "The Death o f the 'Other,' " accomplishes for dialogue what his earlier review o f Losev on the Renaissance had achieved for carnival: an exposé o f aes­ thetic love and its pretensions to creative Eros. I n the process, Isupov makes a case for Bakhtin's affinity w i t h Thanatos. He suggests that the logic o f Bakhtinian method—however much its author would like us to 56

5 6

K . G . Isupov, "Smert' ' d r u g o g o , ' " i n Bakhtinologiict,

103-16.

"OUTSIDENESS"

255

believe that i t makes us free and our words immortal—in fact enslaves and kills us before our time. I n Bakhtin's work, the opposition that mat­ ters is not between art and life but between art and death. Isupov is weary o f all those Russian philosophers and philosophizers— from Nikolai Fyodorov through the Symbolists and the revolutionary ecstaticians—who are obsessed with denying, transcending, or overcoming death. He wants a courageous exegesis o f dying, one that looks at i t straight into the light and without sentimentality, somewhat i n the spirit, we might suppose, o f epic bards like Homer or Leo Tolstoy. He finds such a dynamic at work i n Bakhtin. We are confounded by Bakhtin's concept o f "aesthetic outsideness," Isupov insists, not because i t seems naive or benevolent but because i t is simply too horrifying. To work properly, i t requires death all around. Or, as Isupov puts i t bluntly, "Bakhtin's golden key is an instrument for locking the doors on a living person" (109). He arrives at this startling conclusion by the following route. Our diffi­ culties with Bakhtin's early thought, Isupov argues, are owing to the curiously deceptive "space" o f his critical word. O n the one hand Bakhtin appears meandering and tentative i n his exposition, open to others, con­ versational rather than rhetorical, always ready to be interrupted. But on the other hand he is "authoritative, like every creator o f form": he estab­ lishes his dialogue with literary texts very much on his own terms and is so insinuatingly successful i n his one-sided theses that we cannot now imagine Rabelais without carnival or the Formalists before the Bakhtin school's exegesis o f them (104). "Bakhtin, like the heroes he describes in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, is an artist of the idea." Isupov intends no compliments. Although a scholar and a critic, Bakhtin manipulates ideas with the artfulness o f a primary creator. What is the idea that Bakhtin instills i n us with the personal stamp and skill o f an artist? Time and again, i n his thinking about art, Bakhtin brings a single god-term to bear on aesthetic matters: be outside of it. This uni­ versally accessible—and thus overwhelmingly democratic—mandate is al­ most all Bakhtin asks o f the artist. Isupov contrasts Bakhtin's description o f the poet's mission with Pushkin's. I n Pushkin's elevating, elitist image o f poetic creativity—say, i n his poem "The Prophet"—mortals become poets when they are visited by a fiery angel, their hearts torn out and replaced by burning embers, when a "corpse i n the wilderness comes back to life as a demigod." Bakhtin, however, is satisfied to "resolve the prerogative o f the artist situationally": all that is required o f the would-be poet is a surplus o f vision (105). But even i f we lay to one side the technical questions o f craftsmanship and the quality o f the artifact, i f we are all artists merely because we are all "outside" and i n a "consummat­ ing" capacity vis-à-vis others, how can we assure ourselves that the mate-

256

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rial we are shaping will stand still? To be fully consummated by another, one must have a perceivable outer crust. As Isupov sees the matter, i n his writings on the subject Bakhtin lets i t be known that this crust is death. Isupov then examines the impress o f Bakhtin's "spatial" prerequisite on our perception o f mortality. Death, as an irreversible closing down o f consciousness, cannot by definition be cognized from the inside: it exists only for others. Thus death is the single human condition for which out­ sideness is not only desirable but wholly essential: i t enables the proto­ typical, perfect aesthetic object. Only other people can know that I am dead; i f that fact is to be known at all, you must know i t for me (or for the memory o f my deceased self). Isupov pushes further, scenting another dimension to Bakhtin's bland and conciliatory pronouncements on this dark subject. Once actually dead, o f course, I can no longer bestow an image nor can I "imagine" a thing. But while still alive I can, anxiously like every other mortal, imagine my own end. This ability to "anticipate my own death"—so closely tied to others' perception o f me—could only have been learned through the experience o f anticipating; myself i n the role o f a surviving consciousness aware o f others' death, and thus demon­ strates to me that others must exist, that I am not alone (109). Such a path to human community (in equal part commonsensical and macabre) has a larger significance for aesthetics. Isupov focuses on those passages i n "Author and H e r o " where individual death is specifically linked to artistic form—where, i n Bakhtin's words, "one could even say that death is a form for consummating the personality aesthetically." I f we wish to treat the whole o f the other, that person must be "dead for us, formally dead." Isupov refuses to read that troubling phrase meta­ phorically. He connects i t with "the ancient intuition o f form as a type o f dying," concluding that "Bakhtin created an apophatic aesthetic o f cre­ ative death" (110). But i n itself, Isupov's conclusion does not take us much beyond the routine Romantic and Symbolist complaint that any artistic product is the graveyard o f its originary inspiration. What really interests Isupov is not the aesthetic end o f things—how Bakhtin utilizes the interactions o f self and other to explain the dynamics o f art—but the real-life, or rather real-death, dimensions o f the model. What is the fate of this "aesthetically competent T , ' " which is also the fate o f every per­ son outside o f me as well, since each o f our " I ' s " is other to someone else? To these questions Isupov responds: 57

Why does Bakhtin say nary a word about the fate of the other, while this activity on behalf of aesthetic salvation and consummation is being com­ pleted? And why, too, do we learn nothing at all from Bakhtin's texts about 5 7

and

B a k h t i n , " A & H , " i n A&A, loosened).

131 (here a n d elsewhere, L i a p u n o v translation adjusted

"OUTSIDENESS"

257

the fate of the " I " in the role of the other? Where did the other disappear to> What has happened to the "I"? The answer, it seems to us, is roughly this. Bakhtin has nothing to say about the other because he no longer exists. He has died. He also has nothing to say about the " I " in its roles as an other, because that " I " also does not exist. . . . Bakhtin's aesthetics is an aesthetics of sacrificial self-slaughtering. . . . [There is no catharsis in this] aesthetic formal murder and sacrificial suicide-resurrection . . . . no one has an alibi in existence, good is evil, the demonic guffaw is a blessing, blasphemy and abuse is a prayer turned inside out. . . . But saddest of all: none of this makes any of it any easier. ( I l l )

I n Isupov's opinion this specter o f a spreading death, where art is the natural end product o f self-sacrifice and personalities are formalized only in memory, is Bakhtin's real legacy to moral philosophy. The aesthetic realm proves only a launching point, an arbitrary label for this larger interest. " I n Bakhtin, the aesthetic formula o f a resurrection-bearing death became possible with the transfer o f the sense o f Eros to the sense o f Thanatos. . . . Bakhtin transformed death into a source o f creative en­ ergy for Eros" ( 1 1 1 , 112). I n reasoning thus, we might surmise, Isupov identifies Bakhtin not so much with those clinical Freudian strivings o f the psyche so commonplace for us today as with those neo-Romantic and Symbolist reworkings o f the Tristan and Isolde plot that were a part o f Bakhtin's youth i n Petrograd. As Maurice Maeterlinck summed up the malaise i n his celebrated turn-of-the-century account o f the Life of Bees, "Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind o f transparent membrane, divides death from love, and that the profound idea o f Nature demands that the giver o f life should die at the moment o f giving." 58

Isupov ends his exegesis o f Bakhtin's thought, as did Bonetskaia, on Rabelaisian laughter and the grotesque body. He sees Bakhtin's passion for carnival as a maximum test case, an exacerbation and apotheosis o f all the death-bearing enthusiasms o f the earlier texts. Carnival does not know Eros or any other form o f intimate dialogic exchange, for Eros— and here Isupov completely endorses Bakhtin's ideas about love—resides only i n "the personal effort o f a responsibly acting T . " Like aesthetic love, Eros requires boundaries. I t is tied to "individual personality and presupposes choice" (112); only "responsiveness i n love slakes the thirst for death." I n carnival-era Bakhtin, however, life goes fully on the defen5 8

M a u r i c e M a e t e r l i n c k , The Life

of the Bee, trans. Alfred S u t r o ( L o n d o n : G e o r g e A l l e n ,

1 9 0 4 ) , 2 5 2 ; as cited i n R i c h a r d T a r u s k i n , Stravinsky phy of the Works Through

Mavra

cc

v

and the Russian

Traditions:

A

Biogra­

(Berkeley: U n i v e r s i t y o f California Press, 1 9 9 6 ) , 3 2 2 .

(Stravinsky u s e d M a e t e r l i n c k ' s Vie des abeilles as the p r o g r a m for his O p u s 3 , " S c h e r z o fantastique" [ 1 9 0 8 ] . )

258

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sive. "Death is triumphant i n the book on Rabelais, death pregnant with birth [or birth pregnant with death], but i n Rabelais there is no longer any word o f love." Isupov does not divulge his own attitude toward this sinister dance. But he does fault Bakhtin for not foregrounding his ma­ ture aesthetics as a contribution to ars moriendi; i f he had, what now seems like curiosities or inconsistencies i n his work would have come together into a coherent whole and received the proper theoretical appre­ ciation. " A philosopher-artist, Bakhtin offers us the opportunity to 'begin to feel' ourselves by means o f 'formally dead others,' and steers us toward the idea o f unfinalizably consummating death as a form o f aesthetic freedom" (113). Isupov's reading is grim fare. But it is hardly unexpected: Bakhtin's concept o f form is being forced here through the same suspicious filter that i n earlier chapters o f this study revealed such troubling aspects o f polyphony, dialogue, and the carnival grotesque. Isupov is not alone in detecting an aura o f erasure and death in Bakhtin's mature sense o f aes­ thetic form. Among Russians o f the younger generation, the psychoanalytically oriented critic Aleksandr Etkind, in his 1996 collection o f essays on the intellectual history o f the Silver Age entitled Sodom and Psyche, presses Isupov's thesis even further. "The traditional Russian un­ derstanding o f love and death, similar to Dionysius, is reborn in the work o f Mikhail Bakhtin," Etkind writes (244). I n his view, Bakhtin's book on Rabelais, far from being old-fashioned or folklorish, contains "all the ba­ sic motifs o f the Russian Moderne: the idea o f eternal resurrection, the romantic ethos o f de-individuation, the blurring and rubbing out o f fun­ damental categories o f rationality, the image o f the androgyne"—in short, the standard self-obliterating and "dismembering" Dionysian com­ plex as celebrated by Vladimir Soloviev and Vyacheslav Ivanov. Individ­ uals become mere way stations, effaced and rendered formless; erotic pro­ cesses become reversible, the grotesque body becomes bisexual. "The self-consciousness o f the contemporary human being—die 'new bodily canon'—casts Bakhtin into despair," Etkind notes. Bakhtin vigorously resisted this new canon, with its (and Etkind quotes here from Rabelais) "completely ready-made, consummated, strictly delimited, enclosed, ex­ ternally displayed, unmixed and individually expressive body"—and to this list Etkind adds, in his own voice,"a body that possesses a sexuality, either one or the other, that is either a subject or an object [but not both], that is either alive or not alive" (245). The new canon that Bakh59

S 9

A l e k s a n d r E t k i n d , Sodom

i psikheia:

Ocherki

intellektuaVnoi

istorii

Serebri&nogo

veka

( M o s c o w : I T s - G a r a n t , 1 9 9 6 ) , c h . 4, " K u P t u r a protiv prirody: psikhologiia russkogo m o d e r n a , " 2 1 4 - 7 0 . F u r t h e r page references given in text. I thank D o n a l d F a n g e r for alerting m e to this i n t r i g u i n g text.

OUTSIDENESS"

259

tin resists is defined precisely by the high value i t places on a singular choice among expressive options, on differentiation, on an authoritative arrangement o f parts, on a striving toward permanence—by all that is traditionally meant by aesthetic form. H o w persuasive is Isupov's thesis? Is Etkind a useful supplement to i t , and, overall, how sound is the charge that Bakhtin conflates aesthetic form and death? As Isupov's somber centennial essay enters the next round o f Russian Bakhtin debates, its debt to Schopenhauer, Fyodorov, Nikolai Lossky, Wilhelm Reich, and Sigmund Freud will doubtless be explicated. (Alexandar Mihailovic, i n his study o f Bakhtin and Russian Orthodoxy, offered the first non-Russian reading, bringing Isupov's essay within the orbit o f Russian religious imagery. As he noted astutely soon after its publication: "According to Isupov, the sense i n which every event of reciprocated love is really a manifestation o f a Liebestod is central to many Orthodox conceptions o f martyrdom and divinity that foreground kenosis, or the emptying out o f the self, a process that after all paradox­ ically posits the complete purging o f consciousness as a prerequisite for salvation.") Several additional objections might be raised. They will also serve to summarize the spectrum o f opinions we have surveyed on the topic o f Bakhtin and form. 60

First, Isupov arguably oversimplifies and renders far too inelastic Bakh­ tin's understanding o f "consummation." I n some instances i t is indeed a "little death," i n others i t is the price o f artistic form; but most o f the time consummation is no more than an unremarkable habit o f our every­ day perception. The tone o f Bakhtin's own writing on this topic is con­ siderably less melodramatic than Isupov's excerpts suggest. Bakhtin repeatedly stresses that the ongoing incorporation o f formalized and fi­ nalized portions o f others—not the whole mortal crust—is a normal, completely nonpathological reflex i n each o f us. Although we do seek to leave as much trace o f ourselves as we can i n the souls o f others whom we care about, we are not structured to identify easily or often with whole others, nor they with us. Bakhtin considers such identification unnecess­ ary i n any event; along with Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Nabokov, he is one o f very few Russian writers who presume the desire for a genuinely 6 0

A l e x a n d a r M i h a i l o v i c , Corporeal

Words, I n t r o d u c t i o n , 5 - 6 . M i h a i l o v i c notes that I s ­

upov's orientation, w h i l e i n d e b t e d to R u s s i a n religious t h o u g h t , is "very m u c h that o f a W e s t e r n c r i t i c " — a t least "to the extent that I s u p o v views any breach o f the individual identity as a threat to its very existence" ( 6 ) . M i h a i l o v i c notes that o n this p o i n t I s u p o v shares s o m e g r o u n d w i t h W e s t e r n Marxist B a k h t i n scholars: " I n b o t h instances the r e a c h i n g o u t f r o m one subject to another ( a n d i n d e e d any penetrating o f the m e m b r a n e o f individual a u t o n o m y ) is perceived as b e i n g potentially fatal to the self. . . . [ b u t ] the idea that identity and

self are n o t h i n g m o r e t h a n rigid templates o f social constructedness or expressions o f

ethnicity does n o t interest B a k h t i n " ( 6 - 7 ) .

CHAPTER

260

FIVE

private realm. Or as he puts the matter with some eloquence at the be­ ginning o f "Author and Hero": We are constantly and intently on the watch for reflections of our own life on the plane of other people's consciousness, and moreover not just reflections of particular moments of our life, but even reflections of the whole of it. . . . But all these moments or constituents of our life that we recognize or antici­ pate through the other . . . do not disrupt the unity of our own life—a life that is directed ahead of itself toward the event-to-come, a life that finds no rest within itself... If, however, these reflections do gain body in our life, as sometimes happens, they begin to act as "dead points," as obstructions of any accomplishment, and at times they may condense to the point where they deliver up to us a double of ourselves out of the night of our life. (16) To satisfy what Isupov sees as Bakhtin's death-driven logic, we must read his texts against the spirit o f such passages. A more sensible gloss on Thanatos was provided by Bakhtin himself, in his 1944 notes for addi­ tions and changes to the Rabelais project. "The arbitrariness, the insig­ nificance o f annihilation and death," Bakhtin writes. "There is nothing one can say about i t ; death is something transitory and in essence creates nothing, there is no basis for its absolutization; by absolutizing i t , we turn nonexistence into perverse existence, absence into perverse presence; death is in time and temporal, for we know its actions only i n the tiniest segment o f time and space." I n these comments we sense again that Stoic intonation o f the Helle­ nistic philosophers who, i n my hypothesis, most likely figured among the intellectual role models for Bakhtin. " O f human life duration is an in­ stant, its substance is i n flux," Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations. Only philosophy could serve as a reliable escort along this route, and the proper philosophy consists i n "keeping the daimon within free from out­ rage and harm, superior to pleasures and pains, doing nothing at random . . . . and in all things awaiting death with a cheerful mind." With full justification, in fact, we might interpret the laughing carnival moment in Bakhtin as the Stoic moment: that philosophical stance required to pro­ tect us from outrage, pain, harm, and integrate us into a cosmos where annihilation and death are insignificant. Or as Bakhtin recasts this Stoic 61

62

6 1

B a k h t i n , " D o p o l n e n i i a i i z m e n e n i i a k < R a b l e , > " Voprosy filosofii, no. 1 ( 1 9 9 2 ) : 1 3 6 .

6 2

M a r c u s A u r e l i u s , Meditations,

Sceptics:

An

Introduction

to

2.17,

Hellenistic

as cited i n R . W . Sharpies, Stoics, Epicureans, Philosophy

( L o n d o n : Routledge,

1996),

and 132.

Sharpies ends his epilogue w i t h another compatible sentiment, Diogenes's inscription at O e n o a n d a , where the teachings o f S t o i c i s m were preached as an "act o f philanthropy": "for w e have been set free from the empty fears that h e l d us in their grip, a n d o f pains w e have excised the empty ones altogether, a n d c o m p r e s s e d the natural ones into a very small c o m ­ pass" ( 1 3 3 ) .

"OUTSIDENESS"

261

sentiment i n his word-based ontology, "there is nothing to say about it"—and thus i t is unworthy o f our anxiety. A second and more serious objection can be raised against Isupov's reading, however, beyond its immoderate tone and infusion o f extremes. I t will bring us round to one o f the unifying themes o f this chapter: the sophisticated dynamics o f aesthetic love. Is Bakhtin's notion o f Eros really so benign, so naive, so alien to possessiveness and decay, that Death—with its more selfish fears and appetites—can devour i t com­ pletely? As we saw i n chapter 3 regarding the much maligned category o f dialogue, Bakhtin is not that easily charged with naivete. Here, too, a strong counterargument can be mounted. I t is certainly true that i n his discussions o f love, Bakhtin dwells on its positive aspects. "The thirst to be loved, the consciousness o f oneself, the seeing o f oneself, the forming o f oneself in the possible loving conscious­ ness o f another, the striving to turn the longed-for love o f another into a force that impels and organizes my life": this is the primary energy that fuels "the anticipated image o f myself i n my own mind and thus permits personal growth ( " A & H , " i n A&A, 157). Bakhtin's temperament was always drawn to the creating aspects o f the world, and (as we saw above) even about something as potentially interesting as death he had "nothing to say" because i t is too accidental, not sufficiently productive o f new value, not malleable enough by conscious means. The mortality o f form—at least architectonic form—is a natural and unfrightening fact, since form is for him an outgrowth o f personality and thus a precious, fragile, transitory gift. But for all the exclusively positive sheen the 63

6 3

H e r e a n i n t r i g u i n g contrast c a n be d r a w n between B a k h t i n a n d his elder brother i n

emigration, N i k o l a i . I n 1 9 2 8 four philosophical fragments by N i c o l a s B a k h t i n were p u b ­ lished i n the Russian-language j o u r n a l Zveno

i n Paris; these i n c l u d e d ruminations o n the

physical senses—especially the m o s t precious a n d underappreciated, the sense o f t o u c h ; o n the h u m a n body; a n d o n the d o o m e d n e s s o f form. T h e elder B a k h t i n considered the i m ­ pulse t o w a r d form to be fragile, "always tragic," l o c k e d i n a n u n e q u a l struggle w i t h chaos, inevitably "more transitory t h a n the material that was shaped by it," a n d , to the extent that it succeeded i n w a l l i n g off individuality from chaos a n d the A b s o l u t e , "the purest rejection o f eternity." J u d g i n g by these fragments, w h i c h are devoted to the transient nature o f form a n d the centrality o f t o u c h i n g sensations a n d the body, N i k o l a i was o f a m o r e m e l a n c h o l i c , less original t u r n o f m i n d t h a n his y o u n g e r brother. Y e t the parameters o f their t h o u g h t are remarkably compatible. C o n s i d e r this Zveno

segment on " T h e W i s d o m o f T o u c h " : " T h e

so-called 'higher senses' (vision a n d h e a r i n g ) , w h i c h w e have developed i n ourselves to the detriment o f the 'lower,' are characterized above all by the fact that they permit, that they even require a certain distancing from the perceived object. B e i n g isolated, severed, lying outside [vnepolozhnost ]—these }

are indications o f w h a t defines o u r place i n the w o r l d a n d

those feelings that have c o m e to rule us. B e t w e e n us a n d the w o r l d there is a flat a n d transparent chilliness. A n d unless w e are u n d e r the p o w e r o f h u n g e r or o f love, w e d o n o t w a n t a n d are n o t able to t o u c h , to grope for, to seize; w e prefer to contemplate

things

passively. A n d things literally retreat from us, they b e c o m e alien, ghostiy. T h e w o r l d has lost

262

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youthful Bakhtin casts over the services that "lovingly attentive form" performs for our psyche, i t is important to separate this illustration o f the dynamic o f form from its essence. Dialogue and aesthetic love are connected in Bakhtin's thought—but not, i t could be argued, because we are necessarily made happier or more secure by their interconnection. Bakhtin was simply o f the opinion that life's energy, its drive toward ever more precise articulation and differen­ tiation, can be released solely in this way Contra Isupov, this energy need not be understood as a drive toward death—nor, for that matter, toward pleasure or kindness. Bakhtin most certainly would have seen i t as a drive toward knowledge. A n d as such, love (like the forward-striving dialogue that is its vehicle or like Oedipus recalling his encounter with the Sphinx) can be a manifest torment. I n Bakhtin's philosophy, love's longing is almost wholly devoid o f sentiment or sentimentality (and o f lust there is not a trace); its pressure is expressed largely i n cognitive terms. Bakhtin never developed his thoughts on "loving form" into a coher­ ent whole. Within the world's rich literature on philosophies o f love, his ideas are not strikingly original. But there is a dignity and chasteness to his scattered comments on the topic that recommend them to our atten­ tion i n connection with his theory o f art. Recall how Bakhtin defines love (or rather, its absence): "Lovelessness, indifference, will never be able to generate sufficient power to slow down and linger intently over an ob­ ject, to hold and sculpt every detail and particular i n i t . " For this reason, "only love is capable o f being aesthetically productive" (TPA, 64). Put another way, we will see i n detail only those things we are driven to revisit. We return repeatedly to the site o f love because i t seems we have not yet quite gotten i t right, that a little more "lingering"—Juliet to her Romeo on the balcony that first night—would permit us to grasp and retain the form, answer the nagging question, resolve the paradox. Con­ sider how real love works. One o f the reasons, surely, that love (toward an idea, an image, a person) is so innerly agonizing to its participants and so tediously irritating to watch from the outside is that no single piece o f input between lovers is ever enough; new edges and complications are revealed i n every new gesture, this fresh edge calls forth a supplementary adjustment or intonation, and each o f these tiny variations is infinitely interesting to the partners, whereas those not implicated i n the exchange are stupefied by its repetitive, non-information-bearing quality. To the

its sweet enfleshedness.

'Disinterested, p u r e , u n w i l l e d perception' has l o n g been o u r official

d o g m a i n art a n d o u r natural inclination i n life. O u r w i s d o m has also b e c o m e c o l d , percep­ tual. A n d w e are p r o u d o f this" ( 1 2 2 ) . See N . B a k h t i n , " C h e t y r e fragmenta" (publikatsiia O . E . O s o v s k o g o ) , MMB (Paris, 1 9 2 8 ) :

133-38.

i fil kul XX,

2 (91),

1 2 2 - 3 0 ; first p u b l i s h e d i n Zveno,

no.

3

"OUTSIDENESS"

263

brute and uninvolved eye, love's "content" goes nowhere; but through this obsessive interest i n sculpting the particulars, love itself is continually refreshed and refined i n time. Such is its pure dialogic impulse—mea­ sured not by the moral worthiness o f its plot nor even by the pleasure i t brings, but by the plentifulness o f its energy and its ability to slow down and sculpt. As Bakhtin shrewdly noted, to linger i n this way takes strength and force o f character. Such an understanding o f love and aesthetic form need not be naive or benevolent at all. I t can easily be experienced as distracting, exhausting, insatiable. But i t is always accretive, and i t is driven to produce ever more fastidiously modified forms. I t must be kinetic. So when Isupov, i n an attempt to darken what strikes him as Bakhtin's overly innocent and translucent formulations, links the dialogic model o f self-other relations with reciprocal sacrifice, with the emptying out o f content, and ulti­ mately with the undifferentiated inertia o f death, his vision is at best a partial one. Let us now consider the fate o f outsideness and the ethical dimension o f art through their permutations in this chapter—and i n relation to part 2 o f this study as a whole. The concepts o f dialogue and carnival were well established i n the canon (in fact they had been already well whipped i n the backlash) before Bakhtin's early ideas on aesthetics became available. Over the past ten years a major task o f Russian scholars, and increasingly o f non-Russian scholars as well, has been to reconstruct the appropriate sequence o f these value-concepts—architectonics, dialogue, carnival—in Bakhtin's developing thought. I n the process, certain paradoxes have been clarified. Consummation is not finalization. Openness is fully com­ patible with a drive toward wholeness. The T T h o u relation is most inter­ esting to Bakhtin as a formal dynamic designed to take place between two living people or within the aesthetic object (not between a human being and an Absolute), and he understands i t as a process with no priorly fixed parts. Kantian "disinterestedness" i n art would cause us to fall asleep on the job; art must have commerce with a person's soul [dusha], which cannot be created or uncovered by a Formalist device. A n d whereas wholeness might be a by-product o f death, i t does not depend on death to bring i t about. A l l these paradoxes have their origin i n Bakhtin's subtle and problem­ atic contemplation o f aesthetic form. The authors o f our final two cen­ tennial essays each chose to approach the problem genetically, beginning with "Toward a Philosophy o f the A c t " and ending with Rabelais; each was at pains to construct an integrated logic out o f Bakhtin's successive phases and, at times, follies. Both conclude that the intellectual trajectory is bold, exciting, internally coherent, but that Bakhtin falls short o f a

C H A P T E R

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FIVE

comprehensive vision. A l l the same, Bonetskaia applauds his attempt, which she sees as a rebirth o f that heroic Romantic impulse to define form so broadly that all o f life's fullness can be encompassed by it. Is­ upov, at the other extreme, considers Bakhtin's aesthetics—and the in­ creasingly vacated, immobilized forms i t generates—to be a poorly dis­ guised poetics o f death. Neither investigates in detail what might well emerge as the focal point o f future research into Bakhtin's philosophy: its absolute fearlessness as regards our mortality, its moral efficiency, and its unsentimental rendering o f the tasks o f love. For although i t is true Bakhtin pays scant attention to the Grand Inquisitor's view o f the world—a world responding solely to miracle, mystery, and authority— this neglect does not misread Dostoevsky. Bakhtin's entire ethics is per­ meated by the Elder Zosima's dictum o f "active love": I t is "labor and perseverance," an "entire science," and "a harsh and fearful thing com­ pared with love i n dreams." 64

6 4

F y o d o r Dostoevsky,

The Brothers

okhonsky ( N e w York: Vintage, 1 9 9 0 ) ,

Karamazov, 58.

trans. R i c h a r d Pevear a n d Larissa V o l -

AFTERWORD

One Year Later: The Prospects for Bakhtin's HHOHayica [inonauka], or "Science in Some Other Way"

I N HIS final, unfinished essay, " O n a Methodology for the Humanities," Bakhtin made a passing observation that touches a delicate chord i n pro­ fessionals who teach and write i n those continually crisis-ridden disci­ plines. "The author, when creating his work, does not intend i t for a literary scholar and does not presuppose a specific scholarly understand­ ing" Bakhtin remarked; "he does not aim to create a collective o f literary scholars. He does not invite literary scholars to his banquet table." As the present study has demonstrated, Bakhtin's position on this matter is highly controversial. What justifies the special language and status claimed by experts i n the human sciences? Who benefits from their ser­ vices? When successful, whose truth or skills do they transmit? For teach­ ing a novel or poem is not like teaching a foreign language or a theorem. Most primary creators would consider their works o f art successful to the extent that intermediaries who "teach" or "research" them are not needed at all. Dostoevsky and Robert Frost wrote for ordinary questing human beings—not for a trained audience (in the way that mathemati­ cians write for other mathematicians); what is more, artists and authors are jealous o f that unmediated contact and consider i t their due. But does that mean there is no banquet table at which the literary scholar is genuinely welcome? We return now, i n this afterword, to questions raised at the end o f the introduction to this study, and also to the juxtaposition o f explanation and understanding that has structured so much o f the debate over Bakhtin's legacy. 1

We might begin with the whimsical comment by Sergei Averintsev that serves as our epigram: Bakhtin should be enrolled not among the intel­ lectuals but among the poets. Is Bakhtin himself best read as a sort o f "poet"—or does he offer Russians and non-Russians alike a serious, pro­ fessional alternative route to traditional academic scholarship on cultural texts, what i n Bakhtin's homeland is called jilologiia [philology]? Good astrophysics is international, so astrophysicists can compete with one an­ other, move from lab to lab, be ranked for their scientific results. But do 1

B a k h t i n , " T o w a r d a M e t h o d o l o g y for the H u m a n Sciences" ( 1 9 7 4 ) , SpG

y

165.

266

AFTERWORD

national cultures so differ i n the roles they consider legitimate for cultural criticism that any comparison among them is illusory? Part o f the problem is i n the nature o f the material. Literaturovedenie, the scholarly study o f literature, is not a progressive science as is, say, physics or biology. I n those latter fields Aristotie is a toweling presence i n the history o f science, but he is not (as he is for the serious literary scholar) still an urgent, primary, untranscended source. But literary study, while not progressive, is also not wholly at the mercy o f caprice, o f change for the sake o f change—as is, for example, the concept o f "fash­ i o n " i n clothing design, where change from one season to the next is unrelated to climate, comfort, attractiveness, or the shape and mobility o f real bodies. Research into literary texts falls somewhere in between these two poles: i t is accretive but not progressive, and its methodology is "falsifiable," although not i n the manner o f a scientific hypothesis. Most o f us who profess i n the humanities would agree that our research is "scien­ tific" to the extent that i t is innerly consistent, is aware o f its method, communicates its findings i n terms or categories that make some intuitive sense, and—excepting wildly deconstructionist practice—is compatible with the whole o f a primary text and committed to the survival o f that text, whether i n or outside the canon. As we have seen, measured against this standard, Bakhtin's dialogic theory and criticism has seemed to many scholars i n the humanities close to the outer limits o f professionalism. Four years after Bakhtin's death the Soviet journal Litemturnoe obozrenie raised these issues obliquely i n a serialized forum on "The Tasks o f Philology." Among the scholars who participated are several who have played a prominent role i n the present study, on various sides o f the Bakhtin debates: Mikhail Gasparov, Yuri Lotman, Mikhail Girshman, Vadim Kozhinov. Each recommended a different interaction o f aesthetics with ethics and proposed a different psychology for the legitimately re­ searching mind. Bakhtin's "human science" has proved vulnerable at pre­ cisely the nodes examined i n this forum; the most stimulating work now being done by the new generation o f Bakhtin scholars addresses just these problematic areas. Predictably, the most unsympathetic to a Bakhtinian worldview is Gas­ parov, whose contribution "Philology as Morality" (the title alone speaks volumes) closes down the forum. His position, i n all its stubborn purity, is by now a familiar refrain. Philology arose as a method for deciphering ancient texts. Although applied to increasingly recent eras, philological 2

2

Selections are taken f r o m entries i n " Z a d a c h i filologii" [ T h e tasks o f p h i l o l o g y ] , f r o m

the following three issues o f Litemturnoe

obozrenie:

no. 3 (1979): 4 5 - 5 0

(for K o z h i n o v

a n d L o t m a n ) ; n o . 4 ( 1 9 7 9 ) : 2 6 - 2 8 (for G i r s h m a n ) ; a n d n o . 10 ( 1 9 7 9 ) : 2 6 - 2 7 (for G a s ­ p a r o v ) . References i n the text are made to the j o u r n a l issue n u m b e r for the year 1 9 7 9 , followed by the page n u m b e r .

ONE YEAR LATER: BAKHTIN'S

INONAUKA

267

science nevertheless must always value distance. I t must, Gasparov argues, because "human thinking is egocentric; in the people o f other epochs we easily see what is similar to ourselves and often do not notice what is dissimilar." I f not trained to do otherwise, we tend to collapse everything into our own experience and call the core o f that experience "eternal." Philological training is moral because it instructs us that "there are no eternal values, only temporary ones" (no. 10: 26): "Philology is difficult not because it requires that we study alien systems o f values, but because it commands us to put aside for a time our own system o f values. To read all the books that Pushkin read or could have read is difficult, but possi­ ble; to forget (even for a while) all the books that Pushkin did not read but that we have read is immeasurably harder. . . . When we take into our hands one o f the classics, we avoid asking ourselves the simplest question: for whom was it written? Because we know the simplest an­ swer: not for us" ( 2 6 - 2 7 ) . Gasparov believes i n the closed communication loop, associating it with privacy, personal dignity, the rights o f authors to their own time and place. I n a fastidious reaction against excessive reader-response criticism, he sympathizes with people "who feel uncomfortable reading, or even looking at, the published letters o f Pushkin, Chekhov, or Mayakovsky, 'because they were not, after all, addressed to m e ' " (27). He even rec­ ommends that "this same sense o f moral awkwardness, o f one's own in­ appropriate obtrusiveness, be present i n a philologist when he opens Eu­ gene

Onegin,

The

Cherry

Orchard,

or

" A Cloud i n Trousers";

one

redeems this obtrusiveness only by renouncing one's own self and dis­ solving oneself in one's lofty interlocutor" (27). A n d thus, although the opening entry i n the forum was entitled "Trust toward the Word" (Doverie k slovu), Gasparov would prefer "that philology begin not with trust but with distrust toward the word": We trust only the words of our own individual language, whereas the words of an alien language we first and foremost experience as if they corresponded precisely to our own. . . . Yuri Lotman, in his contribution to this discussion, said that philology is moral to the extent that it teaches us not to be seduced by easy paths of thought. I would supplement that. What is moral in philol­ ogy is not only its path but its goal: it trains a person away from spiritual egocentrism. (It is probably the case that all forms of art teach a person how to be self-affirming and all sciences teach us how not to put on airs or be carried away.) (27)

Thus does Gasparov—joining E. D . Hirsch and other American critics who have argued for a distinction between "objective interpretation" and mere criticism—confine scholarly "dialogue" to acts o f reclamation and serving the text to an unqualified reverence before it. To Bakhtin's re-

268

AFTERWORD

mark about literary scholars not being invited to a poets' banquet, Gas­ parov would answer that academics should not pretend to be poets. They have no place feasting alongside primary authors and their untutored, spontaneous primary readers. Professional philology is a humbling and abstemious pursuit whose joys are other. Before parting company with Gasparov, who has played such an impor­ tant watchdog's role i n the present study, i t might be helpful to consoli­ date his reservations i n a final analogy. One o f the commentators on the Moscow centennial pointed out that o f the 103 papers delivered at the conference, the vast majority "could be grouped, however strange i t seems, under three rubrics organized i n roughly the same way: 'Bakhtin and philosopher so-and-so,' 'Bakhtin and writer so-and-so,' 'Bakhtin and the problem o f . . . " ' This is true: for literary professionals and comparativists, binary juxtaposition (however i t risks reducing both parties) is an exceedingly attractive approach to a complex biographical subject. But not all entities can be juxtaposed. Among the parlor games we play i n this realm, therefore, i t might be instructive to consider those "Bakhtin and x " themes that, for all the goodwill i n the world, would never get off the ground. One such topic is "Bakhtin and competitive sports." 3

Why is this such a non-starter, a non-topic? N o t because Bakhtin was missing one leg and moved around with a crutch. Rather, as Gasparov would grasp intuitively, i t is because "competition" under pressure, the reality o f winning and losing within a fixed time frame filled with precise moves or performances that cannot be rescinded, is alien to a primary commitment to dialogue as Bakhtin understood it. We should not be misled by his fondness for metaphors o f "struggle." Bakhtinian struggle knows no stopwatch, fouls, or final innings. I t is open-ended and un­ armed, one big unwinnable, unlosable war o f words. "Living i n dia­ logue" encourages its participants, above all, to cultivate individually crafted horizons, standards o f behavior, personal potentials—so that no matter what might happen to us i n a given encounter, some response can be forthcoming that is still marked with one's own dignity o f personality. Responsive aesthetics and aesthetic love rush to the site o f a disappoint­ ment and assure the sufferer that a context can be found that will explain and justify the outcome (such, indeed, is the meaning o f Bakhtin's "great time"). The same dynamic underlies Bakhtin's unsettling notion, jotted down near the end o f his life, that even a word known to be false is not absolutely false, for i t "always presupposes an instance that will under­ stand and justify i t , even i f i n the form: 'anyone in my position would 3

V . V . Z d o l ' n i k o v ( V i t e b s k ) , "Bol'she sud'by i vysshe veka svoego . , . (vpechatieniia ot

M e z h d u n a r o d n o i konferentsii v M o s k v e ) , " i n DKKh,

no. 3 (95):

1 4 0 - 5 2 , esp. 1 4 3 .

ONE

Y E A R L A T E R : B A K H T I N ' S INONAUKA

269

have lied, t o o . ' " If, i n short, serious game playing requires a single set o f rules then Bakhtin would prefer not to play, because for him every act has its own place and gives rise to a new act that can dispute that place. As we read i n Bakhtin's notes for revising the Dostoevsky book, not even catastrophe is allowed to finalize, resolve, or trigger a catharsis. We do not w i n or lose; we renegotiate. And Gasparov would say, as regards philological scholarship but per­ haps regarding our everyday lives as well, that i t is bad spiritual training to believe that you cannot lose. People who compete—that is, who agree to play with a single, conventionally acknowledged set o f rules that pro­ duces one winner—are likely to be good losers. They must learn to be or they could not continue to be players, and because they want to w i n and are not too embarrassed (or too proud) to enter competitions, they know how to respond to losing. To be sure, not all victories and defeats are lone affairs. I n its best-played moments, a team sport manifests a comple­ mentarity between communal and individual impulses that can approxi­ mate idealized dialogue. But because the ends are fixed, there will be a winner. The losers o f the game are sad not to have measured up, but the best o f them are not angry, nostalgic, or stubbornly bent on reinterpret­ ing the terms. They spend that energy on perfecting their skills. I n addi­ tion to being good practical losers, then, successful competitive game players also tend to become efficient learners. 4

5

The paradox that emerges here surely must be among the most i n ­ triguing i n dialogism's arsenal. I t is possible to become more rigid, vain, unforgiving, proud, closed down to new information and—most damag­ ing o f all—noncooperative with the world when we persist i n believing that this world is forever open to negotiation. I t blunts our sense o f form. We do not know when to stop, when to acknowledge limited benefits and losses, and thus when to begin reconciling ourselves to them (the loss o f an idea, a person, a match, a tournament). Agree to accept rules, codes, norms, fixed results, and one is better prepared for the next en­ counter, where again we will come up against operating procedures not of our own making and accidents o f performance not for us to shape. We will be disappointed not to w i n these competitive encounters as well, but—and here is the payoff—disappointment, too, remains "within the rules." One has lost only that one thing, not the entire, fatally integrated 4

B a k h t i n , " T h e P r o b l e m o f the T e x t , " i n SpG, 1 2 7 .

5

" T h e p r o b l e m o f catastrophe. C a t a s t r o p h e is n o t finalization. I t is the c u l m i n a t i o n , i n

collision a n d struggle, o f points o f v i e w . . . Catastrophe does n o t give these points o f v i e w resolution, b u t o n the contrary reveals their incapability o f resolution u n d e r earthly c o n d i ­ tions . . . B y its very essence it is d e n i e d even elements o f catharsis" ( " T o w a r d a R e w o r k i n g o f the D o s t o e v s k y B o o k , " P D P , 2 9 8 ) .

270

AFTERWORD

mind or body. The psyche o f a person on the losing side might be sadder, but i t is arguably freer, stronger, and more humble than the dialogically embedded one. I t moves on with more grace. Good game players—peo­ ple who are competitive rather than dialogic by nature—sense the logic and virtue o f this economy. The psychological self-discipline produced by such training is also more professional, which would be Gasparov's i m ­ mediate point. Strength and humility, that is, solid training combined with a willingness to serve on someone else's terms, are, i n his view, the marks o f a philologist. I n his entry for the "Tasks o f Philology" forum, a short piece entitled "That Difficult Text . . . ," Yuri Lotman does indeed advise philologists to "avoid the easy way," as Gasparov properly recalled (no. 3: 47). But Lotman is less flinty than Gasparov on this question o f permissible schol­ arly dialogue and more willing to grant the critic some independence o f thought and creative method. This method need not be considered wholly self-serving or reductive. (Significantly, i n an appreciative 1996 tribute to Lotman, Gasparov commends that great semiotician for the sort o f quantitative precision—the human being as a "phoneme, com­ posed o f differential signs" and "intersecting cultural codes"—that had long ceased to be definitive for Lotman's mature thought on the nature o f personality. ) Lotman asks i f philology has the right to claim scientific integrity along the lines o f mathematics, physics, or biology—and affirms that i t does. "The ancient task o f philology is explanation, the decipher­ ing o f a text, the revelation o f its meaning," he writes. This is a task "burdened with the most significant difficulties"—but these difficulties are resolvable, or at least fully approachable, by researchers o f honest intent and sound training. This is the case because coming to know a text or a personality is not to know only one thing; every culturally valuable text is a "multilayered system i n which an understanding o f one layer does not guarantee penetration into the meaning o f the others." Suc­ cesses as well as errors are local, falsifiable, rectifiable as the functions and genre o f each text are painstakingly reconstituted. To devise ever more sophisticated means o f deciphering these systems is the philologist's task, and—although today's researcher is inevitably an outsider, both "alien" and "later" to the material at hand—trustworthy decoding is possible and provisional hypotheses can be coordinated and cross-checked. Strati­ fication is not by its very nature mortifying. Thus the project o f devising and applying, from the far end, one's own deciphering mechanisms is not in itself a fraudulent activity or an abuse o f dialogue; i t is unavoidably part o f any reclamation project. I n the depth and breadth o f its reclama6

6

M . L . Gasparov, " L o t m a n i m a r k s i z m , " Novoe literaturnoe

1 3 , esp. 1 2 .

obozrenie,

no. 19 ( 1 9 9 6 ) : 7 -

O N E Y E A R L A T E R : B A K H T I N ' S INONAUKA

271

tions, Lotman numbers the Russian philological tradition among the most responsible, thorough, and patient i n the world. Lotman is concerned, however, that the standards o f training i n Soviet educational institutions have become lax. Especially unwelcome, he re­ marks, is recent evidence pointing toward an alleviated or "relieved" phi­ lology, which produces "academic work often not devoid o f acute obser­ vations and often interesting, but always subjective and purely 'a matter o f taste,' a 'reading into' the text without relying on any linguistic, his­ torical, or cultural erudition, posing as scholarly analysis" (48). We sense in these lines the apprehension Lotman felt when Bakhtin's concept o f carnival laughter was applied—even by an academician o f D m i t r i Likhachev's irreproachable standing—to the worldview o f medieval Russia, infinitely alien to Rabelais's France. The "stratification" method is saved from oversimplifying the world only by its filigree o f complex intersecting strands, and by the enormous caution exercised by the philologist. For Lotman, any lightening o f this task is dangerous, because "easy paths are not only false, they are immoral." Thus he shares Gasparov's anxieties about, i f not his strictures against, scholars who employ an overly active creative imagination. A t the other end o f the spectrum from Gasparov is Vadim Kozhinov, founding Bakhtinian. His contribution to the forum, "The Word and the Art o f the Word," opens by examining the inevitable drama i n every utterance. What makes the criticism o f literature so confoundingly attrac­ tive and so difficult, he suggests, is that "the literary scholar, before be­ ginning to investigate an artistic phenomenon, cannot fail to have been 'an object o f the unmediated action' o f art," that is, once under its spell and sway (no. 3: 46). H o w is one to remember that "primary" feel and at the same time gain the distance to research i t responsibly? As Bakhtin had demonstrated a half-century ago, the "material aesthetics" o f the Formal­ ists will not suffice as a guide—although, Kozhinov adds, " i t is sad to see how this hopelessly outdated approach to the study o f the art o f the word continues even today to define the work o f many literary scholars." Phi­ lologists should investigate not only the word (in a Formalist spirit) but the art of the word, which involves acts o f understanding as well as acts o f explication. Formalist approaches can always confirm technique (al­ though they risk confirming the researcher's technique rather than that o f the primary artist); such approaches are helpless, however, to define the feel o f a style. I n Bakhtin's spirit, Kozhinov urges literary profes­ sionals to study the artistic forms o f the word. He must presume, o f course, that such study will be undertaken with all the modesty, erudi­ tion, and self-discipline that Gasparov and Lotman fear is i n decay. Our final exemplary entry from this forum, by Mikhail Girshman, is an attempt to achieve a Bakhtinian synthesis among these warring extremes.

272

AFTERWORD

I t succeeds, I believe, largely because Girshman—who entitled his essay "The Foundation o f Understanding"—locates himself on the boundary between an "understanding" that links or personalizes events and an "ex­ plication" that dissociates or depersonalizes them. As we saw i n the pre­ ceding chapter, Girshman, fifteen years later at the Bakhtin centennial, would argue that the I-Thou relation i n Bakhtin differs from Buber's formulation i n its insistence on a separateness right up to (and including) the boundary between two speaking voices; also, he contended, i n con­ trast to Buber, Bakhtin believed that the most exciting quarrels and dia­ logues take place not among competing interpreters or even among realworld readers but within the artwork itself, between authors and their fictional heroes. Thus the dialogue that matters is already self-contained, structured into the text, philological—even in the strict definition o f that term. Although Girshman does not commit himself to this extent, he intimates that other lesser quarrels—ones that take place between you and me, or the ones going on i n the forum where his comments ap­ pear—can be ignored (as Bakhtin indeed magisterially ignored them). Girshman takes i t as a given that "philology teaches understanding" (no. 4: 26). But who understands whom and from whose point o f view? H o w are we to explain that the classic images o f Hamlet and Oedipus speak to so many different cultures over so many generations? Anticipat­ ing Gasparov's objections and invoking an ancient defense o f poetry, Girshman acknowledges that "the artist, to be sure, could not foresee all our questions and all the particularities o f our perception. But certain fundamental particulars he not only foresaw but fixed i n place i n the wholeness o f the artwork, i n a special artistic positing o f questions" that allows human problems to be at once both historically concrete and uni­ versal. Again, Girshman intimates that i t is not human beings and their real-life worlds that make this miracle possible—and thus a real-life fo­ rum o f scholars, such as this one i n Literaturnoe obozrenie, will never resolve the questions i t poses and may never even get a full-scale dialogue off the ground. But such inexplicable dialogues will occur, and repeat­ edly, inside art. This phenomenon is art's defining feature. I f each new reader o f Hamlet can claim to be, after a fashion, its new author, then such a claim is true "only to the extent that this new reader has found not only and not so much himself in Shakespeare as he has found Shake­ speare i n himself. I n any case, i t is only on the boundaries between these two human contents, at the points where they meet, intersect, and reveal a deep kinship, that the genuine life o f the literary work takes place . . . Philology, maximally facilitating this encounter, helps to realize in prac­ tice this penetrability o f the human personality" (27). Girshman's insights provide "foundations for understanding"—but are they sufficient guidelines for nauka, for scholarship? Among those most

ONE

YEAR

LATER:

BAKHTIN'S

INONAUKA

273

sensitive to Bakhtin's embattled "scientific" status has been Sergei Averintsev, to w h o m Bakhtin himself referred i n a rare, self-reflexive mo­ ment. I n his " O n a Methodology for the Humanities," making the case for contextual meanings against mere formal definitions, Bakhtin cited i n his own defense the following quotation, which he identified as Averintsev's: "We must recognize that symbology is not an unscientific [nenauchnaia] but a differently scientific [inonauchnaia] form o f knowl­ edge, one that has its own internal laws and criteria for precision" (160). Bakhtin had come across the passage, i t turns out, i n Averintsev's entry on the "artistic symbol" i n volume 6 o f the Soviet Short Literary Encyclo­ pedia (1972). That exceptionally informative little essay on symbology is also a thoughtful inquiry into the extent and degree o f precision possi­ ble—and desirable—in the humanities. 7

Averintsev's discussion everywhere recalls categories precious to Bakh­ tin. What, he asks, is the difference between a symbol and a sign [znak]> (Averintsev suggests, to the possible distress o f the semioticians, that polysemy is a hindrance to the sign—overloading its circuits, as it were, making i t difficult to load and unload—but a blessing to the symbol, which lives best when i t is maximally full [826].) The meaning o f a sym­ bol, we read, "is not given, but posited"; thus "its sense cannot be 'expli­ cated' or reduced to a monosemantic logical formula. I t can only be 'clarified' and correlated with subsequent symbolic linkages" (827). Can a symbol be assimilated to the exact sciences? A t this point Averintsev develops his distinctions between nauka, anti-nauka, nenauka, and inonauka [science, anti-science, nonscience, and "science i n some other way"]. The symbol is most definitely knowledge but a dialogic form o f it. "Its sense can be realized only within human acts o f communion, within human dialogue"; that is, how each o f us understands a symbol is itself an act o f self-analysis. "Whereas things allow us to do no more than look at them, a symbol 'looks' back at us as well" (828). Averintsev is by no means blind to the dangers that confront students o f symbology. These include false and vague interpretation, a premature enclosure o f meaning, subjective judgment, inadequate scholarly mod­ esty, esoteric and unverifiable procedures. They are, o f course, the dan­ gers and torments o f dialogue itself. But although the symbol itself is ancient, Averintsev reminds us, symbology is a young science. What seems like mystery today will eventually find its appropriate methodology. N o wonder this routine encyclopedia entry caught Bakhtin's attention, for i n i t Averintsev defends avant la lettre Bakhtin's own notion o f ino-

7

S. S. Averintsev, " S I M V O L k h u d o z h e s t v e n n y i , " entry i n Kratkaia

tsiklopediia, text.

litemturnaia

en-

vol. 6 ( M o s c o w , 1 9 7 2 ) , 8 2 6 - 3 1 . F u r t h e r c o l u m n references are i n c l u d e d i n

274

AFTERWORD

nauka, that relative newcomer on the philological scene. We recall Averintsev's 1988 retrospective essay on Bakhtin's body o f work: "His works are not a depository o f ready scholarly results that can be mechanically 'applied,' but something other [inoe] and greater: a source o f mental energy" (256). As o f 1996, what might be said o f the potential directions for this "men­ tal energy," the product o f Bakhtin's "science i n some other way"? I t is interesting—and a little sad—that Averintsev, who by mid-decade had relocated to Vienna, remarked (according to Vitaly Makhlin) that "the time had come to fall silent for a while about Mikhail Bakhtin." His gentler temperament was unsuited to the turf wars o f the Bakhtin indus­ try, which showed no signs o f calming down or slacking off. Judging by material i n press, as well as by projects circulating but not yet published, where is Bakhtinistics headed? I speculate that a Bakhtin for the twentyfirst century is likely to have an impact on three fields o f inquiry. The first, fueled by the Vygotsky centennial i n 1995 and an accom­ panying surge o f interest i n developmental psychology, is the practice and theory o f pedagogy. I n the Russian lands the academic discipline o f ped­ agogy (and the related field o f children's literature) has traditionally en­ joyed high intellectual status—much higher than i n the West, where "teachers' colleges" are granted second-class intellectual credentials and raising children is considered more a matter o f loving nurture than o f scientific inquiry. I n the 1980s the eminent philosopher o f consciousness Vladimir Bibler, author o f Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin or the Poetics of Culture (1991), devised a curriculum for primary and middle-school stu­ dents based on the principle o f a "dialogue o f cultures." Intended to fill the methodological void following the collapse o f communist pedagogi­ cal controls, this course o f study would expose young children to succes­ sive incompatible worlds—in time and across geographical space—and encourage them not to resolve these worlds nor replace one by the other. For, as Bibler remarked, culture is not progressive; i t is best understood as a drama i n non-Euclidian space, as a "tragedy o f tragedies, when the variegated global surfaces o f dramatic action and catharsis are sharply angled one into the other (like i n a Chinese dice puzzle or brainteaser)." Only by teaching i n this way, he claims, will the old ideal o f an "educated 8

9

8

A s w i t h m a n y o f his generation i n the post-perestroika p e r i o d , B i b l e r is enthusiastic

a b o u t the philosophical a n t h r o p o l o g y o f the y o u t h f u l M a r x a n d its pedagogical implica­ tions; see V l a d i m i r Bibler, Samostoianie

cheloveka

[ T h e coming-to-individuality o f the h u ­

m a n being] ( K e m e r o v o : A L E F , 1 9 9 3 ) . F o r a s u m m a r y o f Bibler's project, see I . E . B e r l i a n d , " S h k o l a dialoga k u l ' t u r , " i n DKKh, 9

nos. 2-3

(93):

201-5.

V . S. Bibler, " K u l ' t u r a . D i a l o g k u l ' t u r (opyt opredeleniia),"

( 1 9 8 9 ) : 3 1 - 4 2 , esp. 3 4 , 3 6 .

Voprosy filosofii, n o .

6

ONE

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275

person" (one who lives merely by the latest scientific truth) be replaced by the far more desirable and flexible ideal o f a "person o f culture." People o f culture are more than mere scholars or activists; they must be able to hold i n focus, but at the same time hold i n suspension, many incompatible and unresolvable truth principles. On the ruins o f the centralized Soviet curriculum, Bibler's tolerant and vaguely pluralistic message, as well as other experiments under­ taken i n Bakhtin's name, have temporarily inspired new pedagogical models. But teachers must be retrained before students can be set free, and Russian schoolteachers have proved as reluctant as any guild to aban­ don their expertise during a chaotic time. O f special interest i n this proj­ ect are the mass o f Saransk-era "certification" documents now emerging from the local archives—curricula, class notes, lesson plans, oral leg­ ends—that attest to Bakhtin's professional concern, even during the po­ litically most harassed years, for a renewed "culture o f the teacher," not only o f the student. Several papers at the October 1995 Saransk read­ ings were devoted to such topics as "dialogism i n pedagogical culture" and "dialogue i n the professional coming-to-maturity o f a teacher's per­ sonality." More ambitious plans for "the teacher i n dialogue with cul­ ture" were outlined at the Krasnoyarsk Bakhtin centennial lectures, spon­ sored by the city's libraries. Rejecting the notion o f (uppercase) Culture as an accumulation o f static, preshaped content, one author urged teachers to transmit information to their students solely as a form o f dynamic energy: not the "what" or even the "how" o f a cultural event but predominantly the why. Why do some events cohere, "come to­ gether" into conceptual wholes and remain i n cultural memory, whereas others do not ? 10

11

12

Should such "dialogic" curricula genuinely catch on by the new mille nium, we can be certain they will be subject to the same criticisms—and give rise to the same anxieties—that we saw so amply reflected i n the 10

See, for example, B a k h t i n ' s notes o n teaching Russian-language stylistics to h i g h s c h o o l

pupils i n Savelevo a n d K i m r y d u r i n g the w a r years ( 1 9 4 2 - 4 5 ) , i n MMB: ss 5 (96), 11

141-56.

See, for example, E . G . O s o v s k i i (Saransk), " D i a l o g i z m M . M . B a k h t i n a i pedago-

gicheskaia k u l ' t u r a uchitelia," a n d L . I . O r e s h k i n a (Saransk), " D i a l o g v professional'nom stanovlenii lichnosti uchitelia," i n MMB

igum

mysh I (95),

1 8 3 - 8 5 , 1 8 1 - 8 3 . I n the latter

precis B a k h t i n is q u o t e d as an advocate for s l o w i n g d o w n : b o o k s , even textbooks, are diffi­ cult; never c o u n t o n a rapid r u n - t h r o u g h ; every text m u s t be e x a m i n e d n o t only for content b u t also for its inherent m e t h o d o l o g y ;

w h a t m u s t be taught is the "logic o f the

given

science" ( 1 8 2 ) . 12

See the p r é c i s by S. V . E r m a k o v , " U c h i t e l ' v dialoge s k u l ' t u r o i , " i n Proceedings

Krasnoyarsk

Museum

Biennale

in Honor

of the Bakhtin

Centennial,

for

the

" M . M . Bakhtin i

sovremennye gumanitarnye praktiki," ed. A . G . Glinskaia (Krasnoyarsk, 1 9 9 5 ) , 8 0 - 8 2 . A t this j u n c t u r e , o f course, the mature w o r k o f Y u r i L o t m a n is o f e n o r m o u s interest i n c o n n e c ­ tion w i t h B a k h t i n a n d V y g o t s k y ( a n d perhaps a valuable "philological" corrective as w e l l ) .

276

AFTERWORD

1979 forum on the tasks o f philology. For skeptics will insist there is content i n every culture, and i n every humanities curriculum, that must be passed down, not across, and passed down intact, not debated or bar­ tered. Does an unranked, accretive coexistence o f values in each citizen's heart or mind necessarily promote civic virtue? Bibler's graduates, by temperament philosopher-kings, might be splendid creators and con­ sumers o f universal culture. But will they also be able to hold political office, draft legislation, further a just cause with stubborn conviction, ne­ gotiate what seems like an impossible difference, mold a consensus under noncrisis conditions? Over the past decade the image o f Bakhtin as pragmatisi: and Russianstyle theorist o f liberalism has won some distinguished converts among anti-foundationalist thinkers outside Russia. ( I n the American press, jux­ tapositions have been made between Bakhtin and George Herbert Mead, Richard Rorty, and John Rawls.) Some o f this comparative work has be­ gun to appear i n translation i n the Russian journals and will enter domes­ tic academic debates alongside the revival o f their own native liberal tra­ dition. I t is too early to say whether a gradualist route to human rights can enter the Russian body politic "merely for the teaching o f i t " — o r how quickly such a pedagogy can supplement Russia's one thousand years o f largely authoritarian, maximalist, collectivist practice. Now that heroic efforts to place "Bakhtin as a philosopher" have estab13

13

See, for example, D o n H . Bialostosky, " D i a l o g i c , P r a g m a t i c , a n d H e r m e n e u t i c C o n v e r ­

sation: B a k h t i n , Rorty, a n d G a d a m e r , " i n Critical

Studies

1, n o . 2 ( 1 9 8 9 ) : 1 0 7 - 1 9 ; trans­

lated by A . K . Vasiliev as " R a z g o v o r : dialogika, pragmatika i germenevtika. B a k h t i n , R o r t i i G a d a m e r , " i n Filosofskie

nauki,

n o . 1 ( 1 9 9 5 ) : 2 0 6 - 1 9 . F o r a w i d e - r a n g i n g discussion o f

B a k h t i n / V o l o s h i n o v , Vygotsky, L o t m a n , a n d ( o n the W e s t e r n side) M a r v i n M i n s k y , C h a r l e s Sanders Peirce, a n d G e o r g e H e r b e r t M e a d , see F r a n c e s c o L o r i g g i o , " M i n d as D i a l o g u e : The

B a k h t i n C i r c l e a n d Pragmatist Psychology," i n Critical

Studies 2 , n o . 1 / 2 ( 1 9 9 0 ) : 9 1 -

1 1 0 . O f special interest i n L o r i g g i o ' s discussion is the speculation that M e a d w o u l d have f o u n d m o r e i n c o m m o n w i t h the mature L o t m a n t h a n w i t h any phase o f B a k h t i n ' s w o r k ( 1 0 5 ) ; Bialostosky, for his part, properly aligns B a k h t i n w i t h R o r t y ' s "edifying" philosophers ( a l t h o u g h n o t necessarily w i t h their dread o f institutionalization), n o t i n g that the practical o u t c o m e o f a c o n v e r s a t i o n — o r for that matter even a reality c h e c k o n i t — i s a secondary c o n c e r n i n b o t h models. I n a passage that c o u l d w e l l serve as a m o t t o i n one o f Bibler's n e w schools, Bialostosky writes: "Dialogics seeks neither agreement n o r transcendence o f differ­ ences b u t rather articulation o f differences. D i a l o g i c s also finds i n R o r t y ' s image o f epist e m o l o g y a resemblance to its practice o f characterizing others i n its o w n terms, even i f it does n o t c l a i m that s u c h characterizations c a n say w h a t the other is really doing.

. . . There

is n o dialogic guarantee that i m p r o v e d u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f the other's ideas w i l l leave us at ease w i t h t h e m or less estranged f r o m their advocate. O n e does n o t feel at ease w i t h a R a s k o l n i k o v or a Stavrogin once one gets to k n o w h i m " ( 1 0 9 ) . F o r a p r o b i n g recent survey, see C a r o l A d l a m , " I n the N a m e o f B a k h t i n : A p p r o p r i a t i o n a n d E x p r o p r i a t i o n i n R e c e n t R u s s i a n a n d W e s t e r n B a k h t i n Studies," i n Alistair Renfrew, e d . , Exploiting clyde M o d e r n L a n g u a g e Studies, N e w Series, n o . 2 ( 1 9 9 7 ) : 7 5 - 9 0 .

Bakhtin,

Strath-

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lished the basic contexts for his thought, a second influx o f energy, I predict, will be registered i n a return to literature. But the new work i n this area will not resemble the old practice o f the 1970s or 1980s: those endless, at times mindless applications o f Bakhtinian catchwords (dia­ logue, chronotope, carnivalization, voice zone, the grotesque) to individ­ ual works that otherwise remain very much stuck i n their prior grooves. Some scholars have begun to reconsider ignored seams between the Bakhtin school and its purported ideological foes (the Formalists, Hegelians, Symbolists). Magisterial textological work has been done on the Bakhtin archive i n preparation for the Collected Works; a mass o f minor, previously unknown material from Bakhtin's pen (that is, pencil) is expected to surface. Although nothing is likely to alter radically our image o f Bakhtin, its reception will differ from the primary bulk o f Bakh­ tin's writing i n that we will now know, when i t appears, where i t belongs and what i t modifies. This filling i n has already begun. The publication, i n 1993, o f Bakh­ tin's 1944 "Additions and Changes to Rabelais" with its lengthy com­ mentary on several Shakespeare plays as w ell as its refinement o f certain issues crudely handled i n the published dissertation, promises a broader relevance o f Bakhtin's thought to Renaissance studies. The Bildungsroman project, famously sacrificed for cigarette paper during the war years, has been almost entirely reconstituted i n penultimate draft (seven hun­ dred pages long); this text, annotated by Brian Poole and supplied with Bakhtin's extensive reading list o f German sources, should reawaken in­ terest i n his contribution to that literary tradition and especially to the Goethezeit. A n d then there is the fate o f Bakhtin's Dostoevsky. I n the first volume o f the Collected Works to appear (no. 5 [1940s-1960s]), a halfdozen fascinating fragments toward revising the Dostoevsky book are made available from various years, a great improvement on the single (albeit absorbing) text from 1961 that has long been i n print (translated in PDP, 2 8 3 - 3 0 2 ) . These notes vary from provocative, contentious, un­ supported assertion—such as this entry from 1961: "Dostoevsky's heroes do not leave corpses. The image o f the corpse (for example, Raskolnikov's or Ivan's) within Dostoevsky's world o f visualization is not possi­ ble" (365)—to well-elaborated arguments, such as Bakhtin's comments from the early 1940s on the complex working o f time, space, biological generation, and sequence in the Dostoevskian "scene." Since several T

14

14

" T h e nature o f the scene o f an event i n Dostoevsky," B a k h t i n writes. " F e e l o u t its

traditional o r g a n i z a t i o n . . . H e [ D o s t o e v s k y ] c o u l d n o t w o r k w i t h big masses o f

time

(biographical a n d historical): he never succeeded at a biographical n o v e l , a n d n o n e o f his novels c o m e together as a biographical n o v e l , o r a n o v e l o f generations, or a n o v e l o f [different] epochs. F r o m s u c h eccentric crisis-ridden infernal points y o u c o u l d never pull together a line o f biographical o r historical b e c o m i n g . U s u a l l y a scene [ i n a novel] is the

278

AFTERWORD

scholars, most assiduously Yuri Kariakin, have regretted Bakhtin's indif­ ference to precisely this "scenic" aspect o f the novelist's art, these archival findings might refine the clichés and temper the critics. There are some remarkable lines. Clipped together with several pages on Flaubert is a fragment containing this comment: "We do not know what world we're living i n . The novel wants to show us." This steady current o f supplements to Bakhtin's life, especially i n the areas o f classroom practice and literary bibliography, have nourished hopes i n those who see Bakhtin not only as literary scholar and theorist but also as the founder o f a new, overarching metaliteraturovedenie—or even metagumanitctrnvtipt netuka [metahumanities]. Bakhtin's most ar­ dent apologists have long claimed for him this status. I t is proper, these critics feel, that such a dialogic metadiscipline be lodged in one o f the world's most tenacious nations o f the book—and i n a culture, moreover, undergoing an exhilarating transition out o f tyranny into freedom, made wiser by its terrible experience, and never again to be taken i n by naively monologic ideology now that i t finds itself on the far side o f commu­ nism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. 15

One such proposal, "Bakhtin's Scholarly 'Testament' and the Problem o f Metaliterary Study," was put forward by V. V. Kurilov at a Bakhtin centennial conference i n September 1995 i n the southern city o f Rostovon-Don (proceedings published i n a tiny print run o f thirty copies). Its tone recalls the opening ceremonies at the Moscow centennial the pre­ ceding June: Bakhtin as both survivor o f Stalinism and as pre-Bolshevik, whose biography is a bridge thrown over a nation's rudely interrupted intellectual heritage. Concentrating on the texts o f the later years (1960s and 1970s), Kurilov emphasizes their links with the rich culture o f the 1910s and 1920s—at which time, he insists, all the components for a 16

t h i c k e n i n g o f its ordinary w a y o f life, a c o n d e n s a t i o n o f temporal life-process, c o n d i t i o n e d by the pace a n d time o f life; i n D . , [scenes] fall o u t o f time, they are built o n its explosions o r collapses. O n e p e r s o n dies a n d gives birth o u t o f h i m s e l f to an absolutely n e w other p e r s o n , a person w i t h n o privileged c o n n e c t i o n to his o w n self; a c o n t i n u a t i o n o f the novel w o u l d be another n o v e l a b o u t another h e r o , w i t h another n a m e . " " R i t o r i k a , v m e r u svoei lzhivosti," i n MMB: ss 5 (96), 15

1 6

64.

" K stilistike r o m a n a " ( 1 9 4 4 - 4 5 ? ) , i n MMB: ss 5 (96), V.

V.

Kurilov,

"Nauchnoe

'zaveshchanie'

M.

139.

M.

Bakhtina

iteraturoveneniia," i n N . V . Z a b a b u r o v a , é d . , M. M. Bakhtin anitarnogo sentiabria

znaniia

(Materialy

1995 goda)

mezhvuzovskoi

nauchnoi

i problemy

konferentsii.

i

problema

metal-

sovremennogogumRostov-na-Donu,

27

( R o s t o v - n a - D o n u : R o s t o v s k i i gosudarstvennyi universitet, kafedra

teorii i istorii m i r o v o i litemtury, 1 9 9 5 ) , 3 - 9 . A s this b o o k w e n t to press, the pretensions o f Bakhtinistics to a "special status" w i t h i n the humanities was still being contested i n leading R u s s i a n literary journals. F o r one

answer i n the negative,

see V . Vakhrushev,

t i n o v e d e n i e — o s o b y i tip g u m a n i t a r n o g o znaniia?" i n Voprosy literatury 1997): 2 9 3 - 3 0 1 .

"Bakh-

(January-February

ONE

Y E A R L A T E R : B A K H T I N ' S INONAUKA

279

metascience o f literature had been i n place i n post-Silver Age Russia: history, theory, methodology, interrelations w i t h linguistics, philosophy, society as a whole—plus a healthy tradition o f self-criticism and self-cor­ rection (7). Then came the Stalinist night: literary studies abruptly began to be directed from the top down, with a single "social-engineering ap­ proach," and all natural development i n the field came to an end (9). "The mission o f today's population o f Russian literary scholars is to re­ store the past glory o f our national scholarship," Kurilov writes, and Bakhtin could be its patron saint. He would ascend definitively from un­ official to official. But how big, official, institutionalized, or explanatory can Bakhtin's ideas become before their spirit is lost? Such postcentennial enthusiasms have a loose analogy i n Bakhtin's own typology o f single- and double-voiced words. Kurilov is amplifying, "stylizing" the legacy, developing i t i n the direction o f its own acknowl­ edged grain. But there is another highly interesting development i n Bakhtin studies more akin to "active double-voicedness." I t does not reject Bakhtin, not at all; fully conversant with, and converted to, the primary texts, i t functions as a sort o f affectionate parody from within the industry, working against the familiar bias o f Bakhtin's writings. I t is drawn to the loopholes, taboos, ignored or impoverished places i n his thought rather than the manifoldly rich areas. One could argue that scholars o f this latter turn o f mind are working more i n Bakhtin's own nonconformist spirit. Here belong those critics who fear Bakhtin's assimi­ lation to pragmatic ethical theory because—however attractive this move might be i n Western countries—all channels for honest moral thought i n Russia had been destroyed by the Soviets, and thus, for the present, "the good and sensible" simply collapses into nihilism or hedonism. Here also we find the first tentative attempts to examine frankly the Utopian side o f Bakhtin's culturology, which does not insist on God (or on any other primordial principle) and assumes infinite time, space, and re­ sources for all meanings. A n d here, finally, belong the "revisionist" critics who find dialogism useful i n precisely those realms where Bakhtin himself chose to exclude it: i n lyric poetry, epic, staged drama, the exact sciences, analytic philosophy, and i n the psyche o f the lonely or socially isolated self. 17

18

As mentioned i n chapter 1, the Moscow centennial scheduled several 17

See A . S. F r a n t s ( E k a t e r i n b u r g ) , " O dialoge m o r a l i i nravstvennosti," i n MME

mysh I (95), 18

i

gum

220-22.

" W h a t marvelous B a k h t i n i a n culturological idealism!" concludes

one

Ekaterinburg

scholar, after n o t i n g the m o d e s t social p r o g r a m that B a k h t i n i a n t h o u g h t demands o f itself and its heavy reliance o n p r é e x i s t e n t "culture i t s e l f as the alpha a n d o m e g a o f all h u m a n satisfaction. See L . A . Z a k s , " U m i r a est' smysP ( D u k h o v n o e m i r o z d a n i e M . B a k h t i n a ) , " C

i n MME

igum

mysh II (95),

54-57.

280

AFTERWORD

panels o f "poets for Bakhtin." Although no match for the vast novelreading and philosophizing majority, a promising start was made and sev­ eral study circles founded. I n this afterword, with its leitmotif o f the "human" versus the "hard" sciences, i t suffices to mention only one addi­ tional expansion and revision o f Bakhtin's categories, launched in the early 1990s by a group o f gifted young Russian historians o f science. Happily, an introduction to their work exists in English, including an interview with the prominent historian-philosophers Anatoly Akhutin and Vladimir Bibler. 19

Their starting point is territory somewhat alien to Bakhtin as a theorist: the wages o f real politics on the fate o f the word. Specifically, they an­ alyze the compensatory structures that emerge in a given society—and in an individual's psyche—that is compelled to live large stretches o f time under oppressive or monologic conditions. O f special interest to these scholars is the small, informal, often illicit "dialogic community," the "backstreet circles" and "kitchen seminars" that always flourish during repressive regimes, where the lack o f more general access to ideas or audience serves to compress and heighten an internal dialogism o f thought. Or, as the interviewers expressed i t , "perhaps i n the solitude and silence o f a closed society, one can hear the voices o f a universal cultural community better than in the midst o f an open society" (325). Akhutin makes the additional commonsensical observation that many serious thinkers and artists are "apparently asocial" or even completely solitary— not for rebellious or Romantic reasons but because the more deeply one is drawn into dialogue the broader does the circle o f interlocutors be­ come. A n d , in this regard, a reading room or study is more capacious than an actual social gathering. "The desire arises to become a lighthouse keeper or a country schoolteacher, a recluse or an anchorite" (384). What is the nature o f our private thought under such conditions? As historians o f science and trained logicians, these scholars develop the i m ­ plications o f Bakhtin's inomtsionaVnost'and inologika (a radically "other­ wise," nonlinear, inclusionary approach to rationality and logic). Specifi20

19

A special edition o f T h e J o h n s H o p k i n s U n i v e r s i t y interdisciplinary journal

tions (A Journal

of Literature,

Science, and

Technology)

Configura­

(vol. 1, n o . 3 [ 1 9 9 3 ] ) is devoted to

this g r o u p . F o r the B a k h t i n c o n n e c t i o n , see especially D a n i e l A . Alexandrov, " I n t r o d u c t i o n : C o m m u n i t i e s o f Science a n d C u l t u r e i n R u s s i a n Science Studies" ( 3 2 3 - 3 3 )

and Daniel

A l e x a n d r o v a n d A n t o n Struchkov, " B a k h t i n ' s L e g a c y a n d the H i s t o r y o f Science and C u l ­ ture: A n Interview w i t h A n a t o l i A k h u t i n a n d V l a d i m i r B i b l e r " ( 3 3 5 - 8 6 ) .

F u r t h e r page

references given in text (translation slightly adjusted). 2 0

F o r m o r e o n inoratsionaVnost,

see G . L . T u P c h i n s k i i , " D v a z h d y 'otstavshiP M . B a k h ­

tin: P o s t u p o c h n o s t ' i inoratsionaPnost' bytiia," in MMB

i fil kul XX,

1 (91),

5 4 - 6 1 , esp.

5 8 : " T r a d i t i o n a l rationality reduces to the 'tekhne' o f the a n c i e n t s — t h e idea o f an artificed a n d artificial transformation o f reality. Rationality . . . is p r o g r a m m a t i c a n d goal-oriented; w h a t is rational is w h a t permits a goal to be achieved by optimal means. R e a s o n , the realiza-

ONE YEAR LATER: BAKHTIN'S

INONAUKA

281

cally refuting Bakhtin's own categorization o f the exact sciences as monologic, they would reopen debate over the distinction between hu­ manistic and nonhumanistic (341). For i f one considers the actual theo­ retical origins o f science—the use made o f the "personal philosophical letter" as a hard-science speech genre by seventeenth-century French sci­ entists, for example—one discovers "real dialogue . . . i n that sphere which Bakhtin himself regarded as definitely monologic" (347). These revisionists push further. N o t only is the lyric poet not monological, Bibler argues, but "quite the reverse. I t is precisely where and when one is alone, i n one's inner speech, that we are genuinely dia­ logic—and no escape is possible from this kind o f dialogue. I t is precisely here that one does not coincide w i t h oneself, is not 'self-same' but 'lo­ cated outside' oneself [vnenakhodim]. Dialogue in this case cannot be dispensed with. I have walked away and taken my dialogue with me. To put i t another way: nowise can I escape from the 'dialogic inhesion' o f my consciousness, thinking, understanding, simply because my opponent has moved into another room or left for good" (353). By another route, these scholars are affirming—for good or for ill—the authentically dia­ logic Raskolnikov, loner and misfit. Akhutin suggests that only a person who commands such a flexible, nondependent relation to the here and now o f actual bodies can live fully i n "the great time o f culture" (384). I n sum, as a theorist o f consciousness, these scholars claim, Bakhtin began with real-life time and space, people facing one another and lo­ cated outside one another. He then analyzed their "encounters" by ex­ amining author-hero relations i n literary texts—and eventually the inter­ nalization o f that dialogue, which is the novelistic word. He chose not to begin with the more primary dialogic nature o f thinking itself. But we need dialogue because o f the way knowledge works, because o f our natu­ ral cognitive bias toward our own experience and the necessity to resist that bias, not because dialogue makes us happier or more moral. Akhutin and Bibler conclude that by concentrating on the external, ethical virtues

t i o n o f the idea, is primary over responsibility. C o n s c i e n c e , shame, s i n , repentance are cast o u t as irrational. S u c h an u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f rationality is fraught w i t h pretendership, vio­ lence, w i t h appeals to an inherent battle o f contradictory forces or some other s u c h 'dialec­ tics' . . . F r e e d o m is presented as the will to u n f r e e d o m [kak volia k nevole], as the a c k n o w l ­ e d g e d necessity o f being structured into some goal-oriented p r o g r a m . B u t there is another tradition o f rationality g o i n g back to the ancient ' C o s m o s ' — t h e idea o f the h a r m o n i c wholeness o f the w o r l d . T h i s tradition is s u p p l e m e n t e d by the E a s t e r n idea o f ' D a o ' as the P a t h o f T r u t h i n a n integrated w o r l d . F r o m this p o i n t o f view, reason is secondary to an originary answerability . . . R e a s o n is the means by w h i c h to recognize the measure a n d d e p t h o f this answerability. T h e w o r l d is n o t a battle o f all against all, b u t the reciprocal supplementarity o f unrepeatable individualities. U n d e r s t a n d i n g is the p a t h o f freedom but n o t o f w i l l . Precisely i n this w a y is B a k h t i n 'rational i n some other way'

[inomtsionalen]."

282

AFTERWORD

o f dialogism, Bakhtinians restrict the scope and force o f their mentor's insights. One unusually eloquent centennial summation recommends itself as a closing exhibit for the centennial year, for i t is organized precisely around Bakhtin as a model for our mental processes. I t has the added advantage o f appearing i n the provinces (Novosibirsk) and i n the premiere issue o f Diskurs, a journal founded i n 1996 devoted to "communication, educa­ tion, culture" and run by intellectuals o f the undeniably New Guard. Its chief editor, Valéry Tyupa, opened the journal with a Jubilee tribute enti­ tled "Bakhtin as a Paradigm o f Thinking" —not as a paradigm o f action, interaction, dialogue, but o f thinking. His essay can remind us o f the truly heroic distances traversed by the Russians who have reclaimed Bakhtin. 21

Tyupa urges us to ignore the fad and the boom and to take Bakhtin's paradigm with the utmost seriousness. From "Hegelianism to Derrida, not to mention neo-Kantianism, Neoplatonism, Marxism, existentialism, all the way up to God-seeking and demonology"—Bakhtin has been at­ tached to them all. This profligacy is i n part a result o f the reluctance, on the part o f Bakhtin's admirers, to systematize his thought. I t has seemed inappropriate to this thinker; furthermore, Tyupa adds, "systematizers are rarely liked . . . [they] are accused o f revisionism and epigonism at the same time" (10). But Bakhtin deserves this service, because his legacy lacks neither cohesion nor integrity. I n honor o f the centennial, Tyupa offers his own three-part "paradigm" to explain the dynamics o f Bakh­ tin's thought—which turn out to be, much more ambitiously, the dy­ namics Bakhtin himself assumed are inherent i n thinking i n general. The three parts o f the paradigm are personalism, eventness, and respon­ sibility. Each o f these categories has its own image, antipode, and type o f energy; each also generates a characteristic expectation. Personalism sets up an opposition between personality [lichnosf] and thing [veshch^]. A thing can be described technically and exhaustively, but a personality— since i t possesses its own inner space—cannot; since anything that can be exhausted can be destroyed, things can be destroyed whereas personality, " i n its wholeness, is unreproducible (unique) and indestructible (belongs to eternity)" (11). I n like fashion, a thing can serve as a sign [znak] o f another thing, but personality can never be a sign. Personality is an "ab­ solute human value" and thus cannot be reduced or wholly represented.

2 1

V . I . T y u p a , " B a k h t i n kak paradigma m y s h l e n i i a , " i n Diskurs,

no.

1 (Novosibirsk:

N a u k a , 1 9 9 6 ) : 9 - 1 6 . F u r t h e r page references given i n text. T y u p a , philosopher a n d literary critic, is author o f a 1 9 9 5 study entitied "Neotraditionalism or the F o u r t h P o s t - S y m b o l ­ ism."

O N E Y E A R L A T E R : B A K H T I N ' S INONAUKA

283

Essential to Bakhtin's personalism, however, is that personality-essence and thing-essence are not antagonistic. The relationship is ambivalent and up to participants to determine. People can choose to treat one an­ other as things; a thing, on occasion, can take on "its own little grain o f quasi-personal mystery" (12). But the approaches are distinct, each pro­ ducing its own data and trademark anxieties. As Bakhtin himself ex­ pressed it: "Both viewpoints are justified, but within certain methodolog­ ically recognized limits and without combining them. One cannot forbid a physician to work on cadavers on the grounds that his duty is to treat not dead but living people. Death-dealing analysis is quite justified within certain limits. The better a person understands the degree to which he is externally determined (his substantiality), the closer he comes to under­ standing and exercising his real freedom." 22

The second part o f Tyupa's paradigm, eventness \sobytiinost\ has three components, by now familiar to the readers o f this study. There are event experiences o f the " I , " o f the "other," and then "eventness" as a trait characteristic o f thinking as a whole. " I f personalism is the 'root system' o f Bakhtin's paradigm o f thinking and eventness its dominant productive principle ('the trunk'), . . . then the value-bearing 'crown' is respon­ sibility" (13). The Russian word for responsibility [otvetstvennosf] implies both a literal "ability to respond," that is, "responsiveness," "answer­ ability," as well as a more ethically burdened meaning. I n both senses, Tyupa suggests, i t is Bakhtin's "noncategorical imperative" that makes his thinking least akin to classical paradigms (14). Classical thinking was necessity laden. The twentieth-century reaction against this necessity has been free thinking (the most extreme example being deconstruction); but Bakhtin's resolution, Tyupa hastens to add, is at the opposite pole from that o f a Barthes or a Derrida. With Tyupa's comment in mind, we might remind ourselves that Bakhtin had no nervousness about language. He believed that the word, by definition, was adequate to the world's complexity. A n d , by definition, writers were craftsmen i n control o f the word. Authors were competent agents; whatever failures occurred were the result o f individual lapses in patience, curiosity, energy, literacy, or talent on the part o f that author. Words can be made to lie, o f course, and Bakhtin was hardly naive about the power o f rumor, slander, and the helplessness o f historical fact before a timely or nourishing myth. But there is no sense i n Bakhtin's work—as there is i n the work o f so many postmodernists, from Dostoevsky o n — o f the indwelling inadequacy o f the word as such, no trace o f that "under­ ground" anxiety about narration and communication that breeds un­ answerable crises o f identity i n modern texts. For the committed decon2 2

B a k h t i n , " F r o m N o t e s M a d e i n 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 , " SpG, 1 3 9 .

284

AFTERWORD

structionist, no language commands respect. For a disciple o f Bakhtin, speakers and authors must believe i n and respect M languages. I f words fail to stick or fail to make sense, I have simply not listened attentively enough to them, not learned enough languages, not put i n the required work over them. Echoing Makhlin earlier, Tyupa concludes that Bakhtin can be called a "neo-traditionalist" i n his attitude toward language, obligation, and selfother relations. To be traditional, i t appears, means to move slowly and to be satisfied with small gains. Freedom for the " I " inevitably means self-delimitation i n relation to an "other." Tyupa notes astutely that Bakhtin rarely reproaches personality or thinking processes for their i n ­ consistency (that would be a "systems" complaint); "the most serious Bakhtinian reproach is always formulated, one way or another, as a re­ proach for irresponsibility" (14). Tyupa's last point conceals a minefield o f moral uncertainties. For Bakhtin asks that we combine two difficult, diverging qualities: respon­ siveness (which must be elastic) and obligation (which must be bound). The nature o f "responsive obligation" has been one o f the unresolvable themes o f the present book. For Bakhtin, the phrase appears to mean obligation driven less by referential content than by one's own respond­ ing word. I f I commit to i t , then do it: a good deed, a term paper, a contract murder. I f I address a word to you, then I stand by the ut­ terance. When people or conditions change, I can alter those words by uttering new ones; but, being alive, I cannot ignore the fact that words have been uttered and someone might be waiting for a response. Bakhtin was very taken by Thomas Mann's image o f hell as "an absolute lack o f being heard." A n d i t was surely i n light o f that ethical dilemma that Bakhtin returned so often to this curious sentiment: that the. only relief— he calls i t a "gift"—we can offer those who love us, who find us oriented toward them i n expectation and yet who crave aesthetic consummation, is our own death. To work at all, Bakhtin's "responsibility" must presume a series o f mi­ raculous balances. There must be outsideness but not aloneness; a vulner­ able openness to participation but at the same time autonomy and an indifference to critical assault or personal rejection; a full reserve o f "aes­ thetic love" but combined with a willingness to be more lover than be­ loved. I n Bakhtin's understanding o f "response," I can never demand from another person the specific content I think I need. I can only sup23

2 3

See B a k h t i n , " T h e P r o b l e m o f the T e x t " SpG,

1 2 6 . T h e translator V e r n W . M c G e e

glosses this c o m m e n t as follows: " I n M a n n ' s Dr. Faustus,

the devil descrilbes hell as 'every

c o m p a s s i o n , every grace, every sparing, every trace o f consideration for the i n c r e d u l o u s [crying o u t that this c a n n o t be d o n e ; b u t ] . . . it is d o n e , it happens, a n d i n d e e d w i t h o u t b e i n g called to any r e c k o n i n g i n w o r d s ; i n the soundless cellar, far d o w n beneath G o d ' s h e a r i n g , a n d happens for all eternity" ( 1 3 0 n . 1 9 ) .

O N E Y E A R L A T E R : B A K H T I N ' S INONAUKA

285

plement whatever I have managed to elicit. As Bakhtin would have i t , this is the dynamic that governs all fundamental human relations: the link between authors and heroes, the impulse to dialogue, the world's wisest novels, the most successful lives. Such a notion o f answerability is not so much benevolent or naive—it is neither—as i t is exceptionally difficult to live by. Nevertheless, Bakhtin would insist that creative thinking has no other route or option. I n chapter 5 we remarked on Bakhtin's definition o f architectonic form i n his 1924 essay on aesthetics, a spiritually mature position that remained unaltered until the very end o f his life. Form is tensed and intense, like a wound-up spring, but never angry or disrup­ tive; it does not divide or reject; i t is merciful; and regardless o f the bitterness or desperation o f its content, i t turns toward the world with dobrota and blagostnost', kindness and generosity o f spirit. I t is tempting to end this study on a scene from the literary life o f the supreme artist o f the Russian word, a man on the brink o f his bicenten­ nial who shared with Bakhtin this understanding o f creativity: Alexander Pushkin. N o poetic genius was less naive or less encumbered. Nowhere in the Russian nineteenth century—an era increasingly given over to di­ dactic pronouncement and literary prophecy—do we find so perfect a balance between art and moral judgment. ( " A n immoral work," Pushkin wrote i n 1830, i n a response to his critics designed never to be published, "is one whose aim or effect is to subvert the rules on which societal happiness or human dignity is based . . . but a joke inspired by heartfelt gaiety and a spontaneous play o f the imagination can seem immoral only to those who have a childish or obscure notion o f morality.") One could argue, moreover, that no other poet i n the Russian language made the idea o f blago- [goodness, kindness, blessing] more central to more situations, both i n the plots o f his characters and i n the destiny o f the ideal poet. His texts are rich i n blagoslovenie, blagodarnost\ blagorodstvo, blazhenstvo^ blagodaf [blessing, gratitude, nobility, bliss, grace]. During his final year, a time filled with intolerable personal tension and soon to culminate i n the duel o f honor that cost him his life, Pushkin published in his literary journal Sovremennik his review o f a new French translation o f Dei doveri degli uomini [ O n the duties o f man], a memoir by his contemporary, the Italian dramatist Silvio Pellico. When Bakhtin, i n the early 1970s, pulled together his scattered thoughts on the problem o f the 24

25

2 4

"Refutations o f C r i t i c i s m s " [ 1 8 3 0 , u n p u b l i s h e d n o t e s ] , i n C a r l R

trans., The Critical

Prose of Alexander

Pushkin

Proffer, ed. a n d

( B l o o m i n g t o n : I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y Press,

1 9 6 9 ) , 1 1 4 (translation adjusted). 2 5

" N o v y e knigi: O b o b i a z a n n o s t i a k h cheloveka ( S o c h i n e n i e Sil'vio P e l l i k o ) , " i n

mennik Izbrannye

3 ( 1 8 3 6 ) , repr. i n Sovremennik,

literaturnyi

zhurnal

A.

S. Pushkina

Sovre­

1836-1837:

stranitsy ( M o s c o w : Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1 9 8 8 ) : 2 3 5 - 3 8 , esp. 2 3 6 - 3 7 . T r a n s l a t i o n

i n Proffer, The Critical

Prose of Alexander

Pushkin,

203-6.

286

AFTERWORD

text, he made reference to this review o f Pushkin's i n one laconic phrase: "Pushkin's well-known aphorism about lexicon and books." Given the context, what might Bakhtin have had i n mind? Silvio Pellico had what we would call today a Dostoevskian, or even better a "Soviet," biography. Arrested as a suspected member o f the Car­ bonari i n 1820, he was sentenced to death, which was then commuted to ten years i n some o f the more ghastly dungeons o f Europe. His rumina­ tion on The Duties of Man, published after his release, was such a hum­ ble, forgiving, and inspired confirmation o f Christian faith that many Eu­ ropean readers were confounded. As Pushkin wrote i n his review, Pellico had revealed himself to be a chelovek blagogoveniia, a man o f reverence. 26

The astonishment was universal: people expected complaints saturated with bitterness—but instead they read touching meditations filled with clear tran­ quillity, love, and goodwill. But let us confess our own idle suspicion. Read­ ing these notes, where no expression of impatience, reproach, or hatred ever slips out from under the pen of the unfortunate prisoner, we involuntarily presumed some hidden intention in this indestructible "benignness" [blagosklonnost'] toward everyone and everything; this temperance seemed to us an artificed thing. And while enthralled by the writer, we rebuked the man for insincerity. Pushkin then rebukes his fellow readers for such suspicious reactions. He also calls to account a fellow critic who had claimed, i n his review o f the book, that The Duties of Man would have been read as a dry, dog­ matic series o f clichés were i t not for the well-advertised suffering and dismal life experience that had preceded it. Pushkin resists the implica­ tion that eloquence, nobility o f spirit, and giftedness need be tied to one's own fate or the conditions o f the material world. (As Bakhtin would later make this point: "Freedom cannot change material existence (nor can i t want to) . . . Creativity is always related to a change o f mean­ ing and cannot become naked material force.") "Does Silvio Pellico really stand i n need o f an excuse?" Pushkin asks o f this radiantly affirma­ tive book. A n d he answers i n a passage that could only have been written by a person wholly confident i n the power o f language to come together with personality—and live forever. Here is Pushkin on Pellico's critics: that's not new, that's already been said—this is one of the most common accusations of the critics. But everything has already been said, all concepts have been expressed and repeated in the course of centuries: so what? Does it follow that the human spirit no longer produces anything new? No, we will not begin to slander that spirit: the human mind is as inexhaustible in the grasping of concepts as language is inexhaustible in the linking up of But

2 6

B a k h t i n , " T h e P r o b l e m o f the T e x t , " SpG,

124.

ONE YEAR LATER: BAKHTIN'S

INONAUKA

287

words. All words can be found in a dictionary; but the books that appear every minute are not repetitions of the dictionary. Taken separately, an idea can never offer anything new. But ideas can be varied and diverse to infinity. The passage so partakes o f Bakhtin's spirit that Averintsev might well be correct i n assigning Bakhtin, that great singer o f prose, to the ranks o f the poets.

Index

A e s o p i a n language, 8 - 9 , 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 7 , 1 2 3

2 5 5 ; Problems

aesthetic love, 2 2 1 , 2 3 3 , 2 3 6 , 2 6 2

thetics,

aesthetics ( a n d ethics), 1 3 6 ,

of Literature

1 0 7 - 2 0 ; Rabelais,

and

Aes­

7, 7 3 , 8 4 , 9 3 -

1 0 7 , 1 6 3 , 1 6 5 , 2 5 1 , 2 5 3 , 2 5 8 , 2 7 7 ; and

208-10

religion, 17, 1 7 2 - 7 6 , 2 1 2 , 2 5 9 ; Speech

A k h u t i n , Anatoly, 2 8 0 - 8 2

Genres and

Anastasiev, N i k o l a i , 14 architectonics 2 1 , 1 5 5 , 2 4 5 - 4 8 ,

Other Late Essays, 1 2 0 ;

teaching in Saransk, 2 3 ; " T o w a r d a

261

M e t h o d o l o g y o f the H u m a n Sciences,"

Aristophanes, 105 Aristotle, 1 1 0 , 2 6 6

1 2 0 , 2 6 5 ; " T o w a r d a P h i l o s o p h y o f the

Aurelius, Marcus, 2 6 0

A c t , " 1 5 5 , 2 3 4 - 3 7 , 2 5 1 , 2 6 3 ; Toward

Averintsev, Sergei, 1 1 1 - 1 4 , 1 7 9 - 8 4 , 265, 273-74,

188,

Philosophy of the Act,

a

6 1 , 120

Bakhtin, Nikolai Mikhailovich (brother),

287

261 B a k h t i n a , E l e n a A l e k s a n d r o v n a (wife), 5 0 ,

Baevsky, V . , 6 8 Bakhtin Centennial Conference ( 1 9 9 5 ) ,

86 B a k h t i n i a n terminology as c l i c h é , 3 , 108

31, 49, B a k h t i n centers, 5 8

Bakhtinology, 6 7 - 6 8

B a k h t i n , M i k h a i l M i k h a i l o v i c h : as adminis­

Bakhtinskii

sbornik,

5 7 , 195

trator, 2 4 - 2 5 ; " A r t a n d Answerability,"

Batkin, Leonid, 9 3 , 9 7 - 9 9

1 2 0 , 2 4 1 ; Art

Baudelaire, C h a r l e s , 1 8 8 , 1 9 2

Philosophical

and Answerability:

Essays by M. M.

Early

Bakhtin,

Belinsky, V i s s a r i o n , 9 , 8 6 , 198

6 1 , 1 2 0 ; " A u t h o r a n d H e r o in Aesthetic

Belknap, Robert, 149

Activity," 1 2 0 , 1 9 9 , 2 1 0 , 2 2 4 , 2 3 9 , 2 4 1 ,

Bely, A n d r e i , 1 4 9

2 5 2 , 2 5 6 , 2 6 0 ; a n d " B a k h t i n circle," 7 4 ;

Berdyaev, N i c o l a s , 6 0 , 7 4 , 1 3 3

Bildungsroman,

5 6 , 2 3 2 , 2 7 7 ; biograph­

ical, 3 - 4 , 2 2 , 2 3 ; Collected 5 8 , 2 0 2 , 2 7 7 ; Dialogic

Works, 5 6 , Imagination,

Bibler, V l a d i m i r , 2 7 4 - 7 6 ,

280-82

Bocharov, Sergei, 7, 4 2 , 4 9 , 5 3 , 5 4 , 5 6 , 74, 83, 120, 129, 154, 158,

161

1 1 6 ; " D i s c o u r s e i n the N o v e l , " 1 3 5 ; dis­

Bolshevik critics, 1 0 4 , 1 4 3

sertation, 9 1 - 9 4 , 1 1 8 ; " E p i c and

Bondarev, A . P., 1 6 7 - 6 8

N o v e l , " 1 1 6 ; Filosofiia i sotsiologiia

Bonetskaia, Natalia, 1 4 5 , 2 0 6 , 2 0 7 , 2 1 1 -

nauki

i tekhniki:

Ezhegodnik

1984-85,

12,251-54,

264

1 2 0 ; illness and h u n g e r , 1 7 3 - 7 4 ; a n d

Boriskin, Vladimir, 94,

nationalism, 1 2 , 1 7 , 1 7 2 ; N e v e l / V i t e b s k

Breikin, O l e g , 179

( 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 4 ) , 125; "Novel of Education

Buber, Martin, 74, 172, 2 1 9 ,

a n d Its Significance in the H i s t o r y o f R e ­

101-4 225-32,

253, 272

alism," 1 2 0 ; a n d poetry, 3 3 , 3 5 ; political

Bulgakov, Sergei, 6 4

views of, 2 2 ; " P r o b l e m o f C o n t e n t , M a ­

Bursov, Boris, 8 9 , 9 0 , 91

terial, a n d F o r m , " 1 1 8 , 2 4 2 - 5 0 ; " P r o b ­ l e m o f Speech G e n r e s , " 1 2 0 ; " P r o b l e m

carnival: and atheism, 1 0 1 - 3 ; a n d the

o f the T e x t in L i n g u i s t i c s , Philology, a n d

body, 1 6 3 - 6 4 ; a n d Christianity, 9 8 ,

the H u m a n Sciences," 1 2 0 , 1 2 4 ;

1 6 8 - 6 9 , 1 7 2 ; a n d folklore, 9 6 - 9 7 ,

lems of Dostoevsky's

Creative

Art,

8 5 , 1 4 3 , 2 1 1 , 2 5 2 , 2 6 9 ; Problems

Prob­ 73-84, ofDos-

106,

1 7 6 ; frightening sides of, 1 6 4 - 6 5 , 151— 5 5 , 1 8 2 - 8 3 , 2 0 4 - 5 ; and holiday time,

toevskfs Poetics, 7, 1 7 , 4 4 , 7 3 , 8 4 - 9 3 ,

1 7 6 - 7 8 ; and h u m a n i s m , 9 8 ,

131, 133, 137, 187, 197, 250,

a n d imagic t h i n k i n g , 9 7 - 9 8 , 1 9 5 ; and

100-101;

290 carnival

(cont.)

INDEX 1 4 2 ; Idiot,

laughter 9 1 , 9 7 - 9 9 , 1 8 1 - 8 4 ; a n d liter­ ary history, 1 9 8 - 2 0 0 ; a n d parody, 1 0 4 -

the Dead,

5; in Rabelais, 9 4 - 9 5 ; a n d R u s s i a n his­

ground,

tory,

Folk,

166-67

132, 137, 142; "Meek O n e "

( K r o t k a i a ) , 1 4 2 ; Notes from the House of 1 3 2 , 1 3 7 ; Notes

from

Under­

8 0 , 1 3 1 - 3 2 , 1 4 2 , 2 1 8 ; Poor

80

censorship, 1 0 - 1 1 , 1 2 3

d o u b l e - b o d i e d image, 1 6 7

center vs. provinces, 5 7 - 5 8

double-voiced word, 128, 130, 167

centrifugal force, 2 2

dukh,

Christ, 1 5 7 - 5 8 , 181, 206

dusha, 2 1 3 - 1 4 , 2 6 3

Cohen, Hermann, 54, 219, 221, 225,

D u v a k i n , V i k t o r , 6, 3 1 - 3 3 , 7 0 , 1 1 8 , 2 5 3

230-32,236

177, 213, 2 5 2 - 5 4

D y m s h i t s , Aleksandr, 8 5 - 8 9 ,

110

C o m m u n i s m , 8, 1 2 , 14 C o n c e p t u a l i s t critics, 1 4 8 , 1 4 9 , 1 5 9

E a g l e t o n , Terry, 18

C o n r a d , Joseph, 134

Ebner, Ferdinand, 172, 225

co-voicing, 72

Egorov, Boris, 4 1 , 1 5 0 - 5 1 ,

C o x , R . L . , 149

E i s e n s t e i n , Sergei, 3 , 4 5

creator cults, 19

E p s t e i n , M i k h a i l , 1 2 - 1 3 , 14, 1 6 , 1 7 , 1 4 7 -

154

4 8 , 194 Davydov, Yuri,

145-46

Eremeev, A . F . , 38

death, 9 6 - 9 7 ; a n d artistic form, 2 5 6 ; a n d

ethics (vs. aesthetics), 1 3 6

creative memory, 1 3 6 ; a n d dialogue,

E t k i n d , Aleksandr, 1 4 8 , 2 5 8 - 5 9

1 3 8 ; in Dostoevsky's w o r k s , 1 3 7

explanation, 6 1 - 6 2 , 2 6 5 expressivists, 2 1 5

Decadents, 2 1 6 Deconstructionists, 17 Dewey, John, 62

Fanger, Donald, 9 Fedin, Konstantin, 93

dialectic, 1 6 - 1 7 Dialog

Karnaval

Khronotop,

Feuerbach, Ludwig, 80

57, 133

dialogic process, 6 3 - 6 4 ,

Florenskaia, T . A . , 144

dialogue, 2 2 8 - 2 9 , 2 6 2 ; abuse of, 6 5 - 6 8 ,

Florensky, Pavel, 1 7 2 , 2 1 2

89, 116, 135, 1 6 0 - 6 1 , 2 6 7 - 7 0 ; and

Fogel, Aaron, 134

agreement, 7 2 , 2 1 8 ; a n d authority, 1 3 3 ,

Formalism, 22, 4 0 - 4 1 , 81, 86, 108, 114,

1 4 7 - 4 8 ; defined, 1 6 - 1 7 , 3 6 ; a n d d e m o ­

127, 150, 151, 211, 2 1 3 , 2 1 5 , 2 3 2 - 3 3 ,

cratic processes, 6 3 - 6 4 , 2 7 4 - 7 6 ; a n d lit­

241

erary history, 1 1 9 , 2 7 8 - 7 9 ; a n d literary

Frank, Joseph, 131, 149

realism, 8 5 - 8 6 ; a n d narrator, 1 3 3 ; a n d

Frank, Semyon, 60, 212

necessity for G o d , 1 5 8 - 5 9 , 2 3 0 - 3 2 ; a n d

F r e i d i n , Gregory, 19

plotting, 1 4 3 ; p o l y p h o n y as painful form

F r e u d , S i g m u n d : Bakhtin's attitude t o w a r d ,

of, 1 5 2 - 5 3 ; a n d relativity, 1 5 4 - 5 6 ; a n d

6, 2 5 9

selfishness, 1 4 1 ; a n d the sciences, 3 6 ,

F r e u d i a n i d a n d superego, 2 1 3 - 1 4

1 5 0 - 5 1 ; a n d violence, 1 3 2 - 3 3 , 1 3 9 ,

F r e u d i a n theorists, 2 1 6

1 4 5 - 4 6 , 2 5 3 , 1 7 0 ; as way o f t h o u g h t ,

Fridlender, Georgii, 1 1 3 - 1 5 , 133

282-84

Fridman, I . N . , 3, 200, 2 0 4 - 6 Fromm, Erich, 235

Dilthey, W i l h e l m , 6 2 Diskurs,

Futurists, 19,

282

Dostoevsky, F y o d o r M i k h a i l o v i c h , 7 5 - 9 3 , 127-49, 207, 221, 229, 246, 277;

Ado­

lescent, 1 4 2 ; " B o b o k , " 1 4 2 , 2 0 3 ; Brothers Karamazov, 2 6 4 ; Crime

130, 142, 2 0 1 ,

and Punishment,

132, 1 3 9 -

40, 142, 147, 151, 153, 201, 202; Devils,

149-50

Fyodorov, Nikolai, 259

137, 142, 145, 147; "Double,"

Gachev, Georgii, 4 - 5 , 4 9 - 5 1 , 53, 150, 158,159 Gardner, Clinton, 2 2 6 - 2 7 Gasparov, M i k h a i l , 1 1 7 , 1 5 3 , 1 5 9 - 6 1 , 162,266-68,

270-72

INDEX German Romanticism,

Kabakov, I l y a , 1 4 7 - 4 8

248

Ginzburg, Lydia, 68, 141,

Kagan, Matvei, 154, 177, 2 2 1 , 2 2 4 ,

144

Girshman, Mikhail, 2 2 7 - 2 8 , 232,

266,

2 3 0 - 3 2 , 236, 241,

271-72 200,

K a n t , I m m a n u e l , 1 5 8 , 2 1 9 , 2 4 1 ; ethics of, 25,207,211,233

232

G o g o l , Nikolai, 37,

Kariakin, Yuri, 79, 1 3 0 - 3 1 , 144, 153,

147

Gogotishvili, Liudmila, 156, 204,

225,

251

Kanaev, I v a n , 3 , 7 4

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 33, 207,

291

K h a n i n , Dmitry,

207

13

G o r k y Institute g r o u p , 4 3

Kierkegaard, Soren,

Gorky, Maxim,

K o m a r o v i c h , Vasily, 8 2

10

230

Gorobinskii, M . O . , 2 0 7

K o n k i n , Semyon (and Larisa), 5 2 ,

G r e e k comedy,

Kontekst,

105

Griftsov, B o r i s ,

108-9

59

46

Kozhinov, Vadim, 4 2 - 4 4 , 4 9 - 5 1 , 5 3 - 5 4 ,

Groos, Karl, 215

74, 85, 107, 1 1 9 - 2 0 , 2 2 6 - 2 7 ,

Grossman-Roshchin,

200

Kermode, Frank, 72

198-203,

I., 78-79,

266,

81,

84

232,

271

Krutkin, V. L . , 2 2 8 - 2 9

grotesque, 9 6 , 9 8 , 1 6 3 ,

193

Kudriatsev, Y u r i , 8 1 , 8 4 - 8 5

grotesque body, 1 6 3 - 6 4 , 1 6 7 , Groys, Boris, 171,

194

Gurevich, A r o n , 106,

215

Kunstwollen,

174

Kurilov, V . V . , 278 113

G u r e v i c h , R S., 1 4 9 , 2 2 9 ,

K u r i t s y n , V . , 14 232-33 Laptun, Vladimir, 60

Hanslick, E d u a r d , 215

laughter, 9 6 - 9 7 , 1 6 4 , 1 8 1 ,

Haynes, Deborah, 2 1 5 - 1 6 ,

238

Lavrov, Pyotr,

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 110,

L e n i n , Vladimir, 76

252-53

Levinas, E m m a n u e l ,

Hellenistic philosophers, 2 5 , 1 3 7 ,

183

79

260

Liapunov, Vadim,

138

120

Likhachev, Dmitri, 4 3 , 166, idea-hero, 8 3 , 1 2 7 , 1 4 1 , 1 5 2 , Idealism, 8 1 , I-for-myself,

201

271

Linetskii, Vadim, 51, 135, 144,

114

152

Lipps, Theodor, 215

213

literary criticism, 9 , 2 3

I-for-the-other, 1 9 9 , 2 1 3

Literaturnaia

Iliushin, A . A . ,

Liubimov, N . M . , 93

195

gazeta,

88

I-monologism, 1 9 9 - 2 0 1

L o c k , Charles, 1 7 3 - 1 7 4

impressivists, 2 1 5

Losev, Aleksei, 3 , 9 3 , 1 0 0 - 1 0 2 , 1 6 9 ,

interlocutor, as G o d , 5

80, 186,

International C o n f e r e n c e s : Fifth I n t e r n a ­ tional B a k h t i n C o n f e r e n c e ( 1 9 9 1 ) , 1 8 , 38 192, 198, 2 0 3 , 206, 2 2 9 ,

184-88,

Lukacs, Georgy,

254-64

I - T h o u relation, 5, 2 2 5 , 2 2 8 , 2 3 0 - 3 2 , I v a n the T e r r i b l e ,

Lossky, N i k o l a i , 1 7 2 , 2 1 2 , 2 4 9 ,

182

Ivanov, Vyacheslav, 4 4 , 1 3 3 ,

110 87

272 i filosofskaia kuVtura

XX

Jakobson, R o m a n , 4 1 ,

149 84

258

Maeterlinck, Maurice,

257 82,

121, 172, 1 9 5 - 9 7 , 203, 207, 208, 225, 230,

284

J a m e s o n , F r e d e r i c , 18

Makhov, A . E . , 240

Johnson, Leslie,

Maliavin, Vladimir, 2 0 - 2 2

138

veka,

57 M a k h l i n , Vitaly, 3 , 3 8 , 5 3 , 6 9 , 7 4 ,

Jackson, R o b e r t L o u i s ,

69,

270-71

L u n a c h a r s k y , Anatoly, 7 5 - 7 8 , M. Bakhtin

Ivanov, A . T . , 6 7 - 6 8 , 6 9 - 7 0

259

Lotman, Yuri, 41, 43, 4 5 - 4 6 , 67, 1 6 6 - 6 7 , 179, 266,

Isupov, K o n s t a n t i n , 1 8 0 , 1 8 2 ,

179-

254

211,

292

INDEX

Mamleev, Y u r i , 1 9 2

philosophical anthropology, 2 1 2

Marxism-Leninism, 12, 17, 18, 19, 2 2 , 39

Pinsky, L e o n i d , 5 2 - 5 3 , 9 2 , 9 3 , 1 0 1 , 1 8 4

M c G e e , Vern, 120

Plekhanov, G e o r g y , 8 0

Mead, George Herbert, 2 7 6

Pletnev, R , 8 2 ,

Medvedev, Pavel, 3 , 7 4

polyphony, 7 7 , 8 3 , 8 6 , 8 7 1 2 7 - 4 9 , 1 8 7 ,

M e i e r , Aleksandr,

185-86

2 0 1 ; a n d the dramatic scene, 1 3 0 - 3 1 ;

Melikhova, Leontina, 4 9 , 58, microdialogue, 139, 140, 1 4 1 , 1 4 2 , 151,

a n d self-deception, 1 3 0 P o m e r a n t s , Grigory, 5 2 ,

176-78

Pomerantsev, V l a d i m i r , 3 9 ,

152 M i h a i l o v i c , Alexandar, 1 6 8 - 7 0 , 1 7 2 , 1 9 3 -

Ponomareva, Galina, 6 9 , 125, 163 Poole, Brian, 55, 154, 177, 2 3 0 , 2 3 1 - 3 2 ,

94,259

277

Mikhailovsky, N i k o l a i , 7 9 M o r s o n , Gary S a u l , 7 4 , 1 3 8 , 1 4 9 , 1 9 7 , 248

postcolonialism, 1 9 - 2 0 postcommunism,

12-13

p o s t m o d e r n i s m , 3 , 7, 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 5 , 1 6 ,

multiculturalism, 1 9 - 2 2 Murashov, Yuri, 6 6 - 6 7

18, 193, 194

Myasnikov, A . , 8 7

post-Structuralism, 1 5 , 1 6 0 P r o k i n , V V , 17

Na literaturnom

78

postu,

Proletarian reviewers, 8 8

Natorp, Paul, 177, 2 2 5 , 2 3 2

Propp, Vladimir, 176

neo-humanism, 12, 17

prosaics, 3 5

neo-Kantians, 2 1 5 , 2 3 2

Pumpiansky, L e v , 2 3 4 , 2 5 3

n e o - M a r x i s m , 18

P u s h k i n , Alexander, 1 9 , 3 3 , 3 7 , 2 5 5 , 2 6 7 ,

New Literary

190

History,

285-87

Nihilists, R u s s i a n , 19 novel, 2 0 7 ; theory of, 1 0 8 - 9 ; genres a n d , 110-11

Pantagruel,

Novikov, V l a d i m i r , Novoe literatumoe

Rabelais, 8 4 , 9 1 , 9 3 - 1 0 7 ; Gargantua

121-22 obozrenie,

and

93, 200

Ranchin, A. M . , 65 6 5 - 6 6 , 68

Rawls, John, 276

Novyi Mir, 4 3 , 2 0 7

R e e d , Natalia, 1 3 2 , 1 3 8 - 3 9 , 1 4 1 , 1 4 3 ,

Osovsky, O l e g , 1 8 , 6 0 , 1 0 9

Reich, Wilhelm, 259

other-for-me, 1 9 9

relativity, 1 5 4 - 5 5 , 1 5 6

other-monologism, 199, 201

Riegl, Alois, 215

otherness, 2 1 2

R o d n i a n s k a i a , I r i n a , 13

outsideness, 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 , 1 3 9 , 2 0 7 - 2 1 1 ; a n d

Rorty, R i c h a r d , 2 7 6

144, 151, 175, 200

aesthetic love, 2 6 2 - 6 3 ; i n artistic cre­

Rosenzweig, Franz, 172, 225

ativity, 1 2 2 , 2 0 9 - 1 1 , 2 4 8 , 2 5 5 - 6 6 ; a n d

Ryklin, Mikhail, 1 6 9 - 7 0 , 1 8 9 - 9 4 , 195,

Bakhtin's biography, 2 2 , 2 5 ; a n d b o u n d ­ aries, 2 3 8 - 4 0 ; i n c o g n i t i o n , 2 0 6 , 2 1 1 -

198,203 R y s k i n , Y u . D . , 163

1 2 ; a n d d e a t h , 2 5 6 - 5 8 , 2 6 0 ; a n d differ­ ence, 1 3 5 - 3 6 ; i n ethics, 2 0 8 - 1 1 ; a n d

Savinova, E . Y u . , 1 6 2

laughter, 1 9 5 - 7 ; historical sources for,

Scheler, M a x , 2 2 9 , 2 5 2

2 1 5 - 1 6 ; a n d the nature o f w h o l e s , 2 1 7 -

Schelling, Friedrich W i l h e l m Joseph, 4 8 ,

2 2 0 ; a n d trust, 2 2 4

219, 229, 248, 2 5 2 - 5 3 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 2 5 9

Panchenko, A . M . , 166

Segal, D m i t r i , 39

Pan'kov, N i k o l a i , 6 0

Semiotics, 4 1 - 4 4

Pankov, A l e k s a n d r ,

Shakespeare, W i l l i a m , 5 5 , 9 6

165-66

Pechey, G r a h a m , 2 3 9 Peshkov, I . V . , 2 4 0 - 4 1

Shklovsky, V i k t o r , 4 0 , 8 4 , 8 8 , 9 4 , 1 0 3 , 104-7, 213

INDEX Simmel, Georg, 2 1 2 - 1 3 , 225, sobornost\

158,

Socrates,

understanding

251

(vs. explanation), 6 1 ,

265

unfinalizability a n d politics, 3 7 , 1 3 1 ,

212

Socialist R e a l i s m , 1 0 ,

293

149

Uspensky, B o r i s , 4 1 , 1 6 6 - 1 6 7 ,

74

Uspensky, V l a d i m i r , 41

Soloviev, V l a d i m i r , 6 0 , 2 1 2 ,

258 Vasiliev, N i k o l a i , 6 0 ,

Sorsky, N i l , 5 4 Starenkov, M i k h a i l , 8 0 - 8 1 , Structuralism, 1 5 , 6 9 ,

74

Vasilievskaya, I . , 8 7

84

Strakhov, N i k o l a i , 9 0

Vinogradov, Viktor, 9 3 117

Symbolism, 114, 1 4 9 - 5 0 , 216,

V i n o k u r o v , V a l , 138 251-

52

Volkova, Elena, 2 2 - 2 3 , 2 5 , 2 0 7 - 1 1 , 2 2 1 , Voloshinov, V a l e n t i n , 3, 7 4 V v e d e n s k i i , Aleksandr,

Tartu school, 4 1 - 4 2 , 4 4 , 6 7 , 4 8 ,

166,

Vygotsky, Lev, 2 2 3 ,

185

274

171 Teider, V . R , 32

Wizinska, Dr. J . , 136

Teriaeva, M a r i a , 9 4 - 9 5 Tolstoy, L e o , 2 6 , 7 7 , 9 0 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 7 ,

wordless situations (silence), 1 3 2 , 141,

206

Yampolsky, M i k h a i l , 2 0

transcendence, 2 0 7

Yannaras, C h r i s t o s ,

Tubiansky, Mikhail, 2 3 4 - 3 5

Yudina, Maria, 2 3 , 4 3 , 118,

173

T u r b i n , Vladimir, 37, 5 1 - 5 2 , 1 1 0 - 1 1 , 1 7 4 - 7 5 , 188,

137

179

250

T y u p a , Valéry, 2 8 2 - 8 5

Zakharov, V l a d i m i r , 1 3 3 - 3 4 Zatonsky, D m i t r i , 1 1 5 - 1 6

253

144

236