From Triumphal Gates to Triumphant Rotting: Refractions of Rome in the Russian Political Imagination.

Classical reception;Russian literature;General and Comparative Literature;Humanities;Comparative Literature

Greco, OlgaPaloff, Benjamin B. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Classical reception;    Russian literature;    General and Comparative Literature;    Humanities;    Comparative Literature;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/113345/olgam_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation explores the persistence and importance of the idea of a political Rome in the literature of the Russian Empire. I offer five case studies from five historical periods, starting in the eighteenth century and ending with the abdication of the tsar and the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. Despite the difference in their historical circumstances, each of these writers turns to Roman history and literature to think through and respond to Russian history and politics. However, Rome is a variable rather than a constant, and my more important goal is to draw attention to variability, to refractions of Rome, because Russian Romes are numerous. They appear and evolve in response to changing political circumstances, value systems, literary trends, and legacies of earlier Romes.I begin with the work of Mikhail Lomonosov (1711 - 1765), whose Rome is a historical and literary rival to the Russian Empire. This rivalry allows Lomonosov to transfer Rome’s grandeur onto Russia, presenting it as a great power with a proud military history and impressive literature. I then move to the writings of Gavrila Derzhavin (1743 - 1816), whose exemplary Rome re-frames the question of imperial greatness not in military but in ethical terms, urging moral and patriotic behavior both in the subjects and the rulers. Next, I turn to the Rome of Kondratii Ryleev (1795-1826) and Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), which evokes the heroes of the Roman Republic rather than Empire to inspire the fight against autocracy.The next Rome is a Rome of broken ideals unsuitable to Russia, where there is no longer any possibility of meaningful civic involvement. It appears in the novel Oblomov, written by Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891), and works through hints and echoes to show the intolerability of contemporary reality and to question the viability and morality of escapism. The final Rome, that of Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921), is a ;;triumphantly rotting” corpse. It demonstrates the need for the annihilation of the entire existing political order and civilization, undoing the myths created at the inception of the Russian Empire.