Wingless Desire in Modernist Russia - Envy and Authorship in the 1920s

In Wingless Desire in Modernist Russia, Yelena Zotova argues that the concept of envy underwent a peculiar transformation in the Russian Modernist prose of the 1920s due to a series of radical shifts in societal values, with each subsequent change thwarting Russia's volatile axiological hierarchy. Consequently, a new literary type emerged, and envy, described as "wingless desire" by Russia's chief poet Alexander Pushkin, obtained new ownership as the envied became the envier.

List of contents

Table of Contents
A Note on Translation and Transliteration
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: The Hermeneutic Challenge of Envy
Chapter 1: When Author Envies Hero
Chapter 2: Wingless Desire: Mozart and Salieri as Author and Hero
Chapter 3: A Purgatory for the Hero: Iurii Olesha's Envy
Chapter 4: The Author in Hades: Konstantin Vaginov
Chapter 5: The Surplus of Vision in the Works of Alexander Grin
Afterword: Envy, Conscience, and Taste
Bibliography
About the Author

About the author

Dr. Yelena Zotova is associate teaching professor at The Pennsylvania State University.

Summary

Russia’s chief poet Alexander Pushkin defines envy as “wingless desire” in his short play “Mozart and Salieri” (1830). Wingless Desire in Modernist Russia examines how the Mozart and Salieri literary archetypes swap roles and how “envier” becomes “envied” in Russian Modernist prose during the New Economic Policy of 1921-1928.

Product details

• Authors: Yelena Zotova
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.02.2021
• EAN: 9781793605580
• ISBN: 978-1-79360-558-0
• No. of pages: 296
• Series: Crosscurrents: Russia's Litera; Crosscurrents: Russia's Literature in Context
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Russia, Literature: history & criticism, History of specific lands, Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe), USSR, Soviet Union, History of other lands, HISTORY / Russia / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Russian & Soviet