Silver spoons in their mouths, the legacy of the Russian Silver Age in the works of Nabokov, Pasternak, and Viktor Erofeev

grantor: University of TorontoThis dissertation examines the phenomenon of literary influence and the transmission of literary tradition with particular application to the cultural heritage of the Russian Silver Age and its refractions in later writings. The Silver Age (1890-1917) has distinct historical and political boundaries (the waning years of the Romanov dynasty) as well as cultural confines. Hence, attitudes to the Silver Age--both in the Soviet Union (post-communist Russia) and abroad--became highly politicized and laden with ethical and moral overtones. It is demonstrated that the perceptions of the Silver Age and its legacy have been neither uniform nor constant. This period went through various stages of being rejected, then re-evaluated and upgraded to the status of the Silver Age in Russian literature and culture; subsequently it received belated, though wide, recognition for its tremendous contribution to the evolution of Russian culture. At present it is undergoing further revision and re-evaluation. The larger part of this dissertation is devoted to a discussion of various strategies that Nabokov, Pasternak and Erofeev employed while assimilating the legacy of the Silver Age into their writings. These include "heuristic imitation" and transposition (Nabokov), "translation" (Pasternak), and overt parody (Erofeev). It is suggested that each of the chosen approaches was dictated not only by the inclinations of each particular writer and aspects of their personal lives, but also by varying attitudes to the Silver Age that were current at the specific spaces and times when Nabokov, Pasternak and Erofeev embarked on writing their novels. It is shown that the inclusion of the legacy of the Silver Age into succeeding cultural phases has been a gradual and complicated process. However, despite a lasting and widespread assumption that the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent political and cultural developments brutally interrupted the "normal" course of literary evolution and thus consigned the Silver Age heritage to oblivion, the present study suggests otherwise. In fact, the abysmal rift between pre- and post-revolutionary cultures appears to have been beneficial in that it gave rise to an entire cultural apparatus (or even institution) that has been seriously engaged in the re-production of the Silver Age's legacy for a contemporary audience, thus securing its vitality during later periods. This study offers new insights into the phenomenon of literary influence and throws new light on the ways in which cultural memory operates in modern Russian/Soviet society.Ph.D