Synopses & Reviews
All the Same the Words Don't Go Away brings together twenty-five years of essays and reviews, linked loosely by three themes. First is the creative potential inherent in transposing classic literary texts into other genres or media (operatic, dramatic) and the responsibilities, if any, that govern the transposer, audience, and critic. The practice of transposition, however, gives rise to a creative conflict: is there a limit to the amount of ornamentation, pressure, or dilution to which the "mediated" word can be subject? Finally, the more polemical of the essays included here are structured on the Bakhtinian notion of coexisting "plausibilities" and points of view. What a carnival approach can uncover in Pushkin that might have surprised and even pleased the poet, what a libretto or play script brings out that the "true original" hides: here the work of the creator and the critic co-exist in exhilarating ways that respect the competencies of each.
Synopsis
All the Same the Words Don't Go Away brings together twenty-five years of essays and reviews, linked loosely by three themes. The first explores the legacy of Mikhail Bakhtin: his ideas of dialogue and carnival, and the debates ignited by each. The second delves into three master workers of the Russian tradition: Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. In this section, emphasis is comparative: the riddle of Pushkin's life, why Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky, how Chekhov reads Tolstoy, why Kundera dislikes Doestoevsky and Tolstoy dislikes Shakespeare. The final section addresses the transposition of classic literary texts into other media through musical works by Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. Throughout, the fundamental heroes are Pushkin's Tatiana Larina and Boris Godunov. This volume will be of interest to comparativists and students in interdisciplinary humanities.