Recent Issues of Ulbandus

Editor’s Introduction
Bradley Gorski i

Part One: Critics and Censors

Literary Criticism and the Censor in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Russia: Problems of Interaction
KIRILL ZUBKOV 3

Fidelity and Testimony: Publishing, Censorship and Commentary in József Lengyel's Confrontation 
GABOR DANYI 17

(Re)Defining a Literary Genre: How Italo Calvino's Postmodern (Hyper)Novels became "Philosophical Allegories" in the USSR
ILARIA SICARI 42

Part Two: Markets and Cultural Consumption

When Theory Entered the Market: The Russian Formalists' Encounter with Mass Culture
BASIL LVOFF 65
​
Mythologizing the Past to Survive the Present: Trauma and Cultural Memory in Timur Bekmambetov's Imperial Bank Commercials (1992–1997)
ELIZAVETA MANKOVSKAYA 86

Whose Ghosts Are These Anyway?
MARINA KAGANOVA 108

Part Three: Process and Cultural Production

Zdesizdat and Discursive Revolution: The Metropol Affair
SOPHIE PINKHAM 127

The Paradox of Thick Journals: The Place of "Thick" Literary Journals in Contemporary Russia
translated by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
EVGENIYA VOROBYEVA 146

"A Corporation Called Aleksei Ivanov": Aleksei Ivanov on Local Identity, Writing, and Success
interview by BRADLEY GORSKI 158

Book Reviews

Maria di Salvo, Daniel H. Kaiser, and Valerie A. Kivelson (eds.), Word and Image in Russian History: Essays in Honor of Gary Marker
reviewed by BRITTANY PHEIFFER NOBLE 180 

Sibelan E.S. Forrester and Martha M.F. Kelly (eds.), Russian Silver Age Poetry: Texts and Contexts
reviewed by ALANA HEIN 182

Alexander Cigale, (ed.), Atlanta Review, Russia Feature
reviewed by GENEVIEVE ARLIE 184

Viktor Pelevin, Smotritel'
reviewed by SERHII TERESHCHENKO 185

Douglas Rogers, The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism
reviewed by BRADLEY GORSKI 187

Irina Sandomirskaia, Blokada v slove: Ocherki kriticheskoi teorii i biopolitiki iazyka
reviewed by IRINA DENISCHENKO 190

Contents

Editor’s Introduction … iii
GRETA MATZNER-GORE

PART ONE: VISIONS OF POETRY

Words Turned to Spindles: Gavriil Derzhavin’s Poetics of the Machine … 9
TATIANA SMOLIAROVA

“Broadway” by Vladimir Mayakovsky … 33
Translated by CARLOTTA CHENOWETH

Fixing a Deep Gaze: Baratynskii’s Trilogy of Miniatures as a Cycle of Seeing … 41
ELENA PEDIGO CLARK

PART TWO: WRITING WITH PICTURES

Dunia’s Progress, Samson’s Decline, and Pushkin’s Modernity: Decrypting the German Pictures in “The Stationmaster” … 59
KATYA JORDAN 

History in Czech Comics: Lucie Lomová’s Divoši … 81
JOSÉ ALANIZ

PART THREE: LITERARY FILMS AND CINEMATIC NOVELS

War and Peace Visualized: From Page to Stage and Screen … 109
SARAH B. MOHLER

Sun-bathed Steppes in French Prisons: Bresson Reading Dostoevsky … 133
MELISSA FRAZIER

A Copy of a Copy (of a Copy): The Search for Authenticity in Mess-Mend and The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks … 153
GRETA MATZNER-GORE

PART FOUR: PHOTOGRAPHIC WORDS

Ekphrasis in Red Cavalry: Letters about “A Letter” … 173
REBECCA STANTON and GRETA MATZNER-GORE

“John Glassie’s Broken Photographs” by Andrei Sen-Sen’kov … 185
Translated with commentary by MOLLY THOMASY BLASING

Contents

Acknowledgments ... iii

Note on Transliteration ... iv

Editor’s Introduction ... v
KATHARINE HOLT

PART ONE: INTERPRETATIONS

Platonov’s Chevengur Between Defamiliarization and Compassion ... 3
AAGE HANSEN-LÖVE

The “Common Proletarian House,” or “Essessar, Our Mother” ... 37NATALIA DUZHINA

Kotlovan: Translation Failures As Interpretation Clues ... 48
OLGA MEERSON

A Groundless Foundation Pit ... 61
TORA LANE

Ekphrastic Metaphysics of Dzhan ... 76
NARIMAN SKAKOV

Platonov’s Last Word: The Magic Ring Reconsidered ... 93
ROBERT CHANDLER

Scenes from “Bezruchka” 105
Original illustrations by BELA SHAYEVICH

PART TWO: CONTEXTS

Platonov and Reshetnikov ... 111
BORIS GASPAROV

The Development of Platonov’s Narrative Perspective
in the Context of the 1920s ... 130
ROBERT HODEL

Platonov and His Contemporaries: Dem’ian Bednyi ... 156
NATALIA KORNIENKO

Platonov and Stalin: Dialogues in Double Dutch ... 202
EVGENY DOBRENKO

Platonov, Incommensurability, and the 1937 Pushkin Jubilee ... 216
JONATHAN BROOKS PLATT

*PART THREE: SYNTHESES

“A Mixture of Living Creatures”: Man and Animal in the
Works of Andrei Platonov ... 251
HANS GÜNTHER

Power and the Other in the Dramatic Works of Andrei Platonov ... 273
NATALIA POLTAVTSEVA

Platonov’s Blindness ... 289
THOMAS SEIFRID

Platonov and the Open Text ... 302
PHILIP ROSS BULLOCK

Contents

Editor's Introduction ... i
ANI KOKOBOBO

Voyeurism and Violence, With Constant Reference to Dostoevsky
An Essay in Misanthropology ... 1
ALICIA CHUDO*

Playground-Graveyard:
Violence, the Body and Borderline Urban Space in Lilja 4-Ever ... 29
BRINTON TENCH COXE

Horrors All Our Own:
Recreating and Reenacting Myths of St. Petersburg's Past ... 41
SASHA de VOGEL

Violence in Bai Ganyo:
From Balkan to Universal ... 52
VICTOR FRIEDMAN

Aleksandr Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter:
A Poetics of Violence ... 64
ALEXANDER GROCE

The "Curse" of Eastern Blood in Ismail Kadare's Elegy for Kosovo ... 79
ANI KOKOBOBO

Georgian Popular Music and the Cliché of the Nation at War ... 94
LAUREN NINOSHVILI

Dishonor by Flogging and Restoration by Dancing:
Leskov's Response to Dostoevsky ... 109
IRINA REYFMAN

Madeness (Сделаность) ... 126
POLINA BARSKOVA

The Fourtieth Day ... 138
ANNA FRAJLICH

feminine nouns that end in a consonant:
conversations with Croatian men ... 139
JUDITH PINTAR
__________________
*Alicia Chudo is a pseudonym of Gary Saul Morson.

Maksim Hanukai - Editor

Contents

Editor's Introduction
Maksim Hanukai • i

Part One: Life and Art

The Gavriliada as Gossip
Katharine Holt • 1

Linguistic Comedy in Eugene Onegin
J. Douglas Clayton • 21

Pushkin’s Year of Frustration, or How The Golden Cockerel is Made
Boris Gasparov • 41

The Disenchantment of Poetry: Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights
Maksim Hanukai • 63

Life-Writing in the 1830s: Viazemsky’s Fon-Vizin and Pushkin’s “Table Talk”
Andrew Kahn • 83

Part Two: Legacy

Sexuality in The Tale of the Golden Cockerel
and the Tradition of Russian Anti-Utopianism   
Alexei Lalo • 105

Learning Generational Wisdom from Pushkin:
Sophia Parnok’s “Trudno, trudno, brat…”
Vladimir Golstein • 119

Rereading Nabokov’s Commentaries to Eugene Onegin
Francisco Picon • 140

Erecting Monuments, Real and Imagined: Brodsky’s Monuments
to Pushkin Within the Context of Soviet Culture
Rebecca Pyatkevich • 161

Untitled Rant #2
Q • 183

Contents

Editor's Introduction
Thomas Anessi • i

From Aga Khan to Dim Sum:
New Russia's Asian Appetite
Thomas J. Garza • 1

Literacy and Literary Mastery in Early Soviet Russia:
The Case of Yuri Olesha's Envy
Maria Kisel • 23

From Freedom Fortress to Jihadist Camp:
The Interplay of High and Low Culture in Representing the Caucasus
John Hope • 46

Rethinking the High Style:
The Uses of Church Slavonicisms in the Works of Contemporary Russian Poets
Maria Khotimsky • 74

Three-Day Weekend
Vitaly Komar • 99

Jane Austen and Russian Chat
Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy • 115

Fourth Partition
Thomas Starky • 126

"I Want": Women in Post-Soviet Comics
José Alaniz • 142

From Foul Utopia to Critical Mess:
The End of Modernity in Russian and American Art
Jonathan Brooks Platt • 180

The Songs of Edward Stachura: An Introduction
An essay by Graham Crawford with translations by
Graham Crawford and J. Podlaszewski • 222

Born in the USSR:
Searching High and Low for Post-Soviet Identity
Irina Six • 232

The Robert A. Maguire Prize • 252

Contents

Editor's Introduction
Marijeta Bozovic • i

Who is 'My Nabokov'?
Brian Boyd • 1

Vladimir Nabokov: Two Poems
translated by John C. Wright • 4

Nabokov vs. Casanova: An Affair of Honor 
Valentina Izmirlieva • 8

Reading Chernyshevskii in Tehran: Nabokov and Nafisi
Eric Naiman • 25

Little Girl Lost: A Hebrew Translation of Lolita and Nabokov's Angry Ghost
Ari Lieberman • 41

Self-Parasitism, Shared Roots, and Disembodied Meters within Nabokov's Eugene Onegin Project 
John C. Wright • 63

Nabokov and Benjamin: A Late Modernist Response to History
Will Norman • 79

Plaster, Marble, Canon: The Vindication of Nabokov in Post-Soviet Russia
Yuri Leving • 101

How Did They Ever Make a Dance Work of Lolita? Vladimir Nabokov's Novel in Motion
Laura Regensdorf • 123

Insert: Photos
Svetlana Boym • 146

Struggle for the Narrative: Nabokov and Kubrick's Collaboration on the Lolita Screenplay
Julia Trubikhina • 149

The Cybernetics of Nabokov's "Beneficence": An Anachronism
Ben Peters • 173

Literary Bilingualism and Code-Switching in Nabokov's Ada
Rita Safariants • 191

Talking Back to Nabokov: A Commentary on a Commentary
Rebecca Stanton • 212

Untitled
Q • 222

Staff

Contents

Announcement: The Maguire Prize • i

Editor's Introduction
Rebecca Pyatkevich • 1

Aleksey Rzhevsky, Russian Mannerist 
Irina Reyfman • 3

The Russian Literary Scene: 1860s and 1980s
Robert Belknap • 19

An Imprint of the Times: Marlen Khutsiev's July Rain and the End of the Thaw 
B. Tench Coxe • 30

Anna Akhmatova in Poems by Brodsky and Naiman
Margo Shohl Rosen • 48

Mikhail Krasilnikov: A Memoir
Lev Loseff (trans. Rebecca Pyatkevich) • 69

Bad Singing: Avtorskaia Pesnia and the Aesthetics of Metacommunication 
Rachel Platonov • 87

Staff

Photography

Photography for “The Salon Files” by Sonje Berg, Tench Coxe, Tony de Leon, and Emily Newman.

Contents

From the Editor
Margo Shohl Rosen • 2

The First Russian Flowers of Evil
Adrian Wanner • 4

The Salon Files
The Informalists • 18

Valery Briusov and the Construction of Urban Forms
B. Tench Coxe • 27

A New Russian Rafflesia from Baudelaire’s Garden:
Yuri Mamleev’s Literary Origins and the Poetics of the Ugly
Inna Tigountsova • 47

From the Hothouse to the Harem: Rozanov and Decadence
Douglas Greenfield • 67

The Decadent Anna Akhmatova?: a virtual tea
Margo Rosen, Boris Gasparov, Kirsten Lodge, Colleen McQuillen, Jon Platt, Anatoly Naiman, Marijeta Bozovic, Doug Greenfield, and Tench Coxe • 91

The Dionysian Roots of Symbolist Masquerade Balls
in Petersburg and Poem without a Hero
Colleen McQuillen • 106

“He said that for a woman to be a poet is nonsense”:
Anna Akhmatova in Quest of a Lyrical Voice
Boris Gasparov • 119

The Other Russian Literature:
Viktor Erofeev’s Russian Flowers of Evil
Marijeta Bozovic • 138

Victim and Scourge: Baudelairean Echoes in Gumilev
Timothy Williams • 144

Contents

Staff

Contents

Staff

Illustrations