Byron's Teeth: Alexander Pushkin and the Romantic Body

Ulbandus, 2009

The Byron Journal, 2010

The Journal of Literature and Science, 2008

In Canto I of Byron's frequently bawdy epic Don Juan, following several stanzas about Wordsworth's poetic "transports" and Coleridge's lofty metaphysical speculations, we find our pubescent hero, gentle Juan, strolling pensively by "glassy brooks" and through "leafy nooks"-those parts of the natural world where "poets find materials for their books"-in an attempt to deal with his building sexual desire for Donna Julia (90). 1 The Byronic narrator depicts young Juan as lost in typically Romantic, abstract contemplation of "himself, and the whole earth, / Of man the wonderful, and of the stars," sublimely wondering "How many miles the moon might have in girth," and musing on the flight of "air balloons" (92): He poured upon the leaves, and on the flowers, And heard a voice in all the winds; and then He thought of wood-nymphs and immortal bowers, And how the goddesses came down to men: He missed the pathway, he forgot the hours, And when he looked upon his watch again, He found how much old Time had been a winner-He also found that he had lost his dinner. (94) One possible interpretation of the punch line of this episode is that since, as the narrator tells us earlier, "no one likes to be disturbed at meals / Or love" (89), Byron is suggesting that it is the body that yields the real satisfactions in life and not the metaphysical meanderings and eroticized, but wholly imaginative, communions with a surrogate lover found in nature. By condemning the tendency he sees among first generation Romantic poets to neglect the fundamental claims of the body, like shelter, warmth, and here, sex and food, Byron is making a comic argument in favor of the ultimate priority of these elemental, biological needs: if you attempt to spiritualize your desire too much, you go hungry and sexually unsatisfied. Although according to one critic, this scene is designed to show that it is "unprofitable in the midst of the spiritual and poetic to forget the physical", Byron may also be demonstrating that purely imaginative indulgence, if possible at all, requires that one ignores the otherwise persistent realities of bodily existence, which, as we will see, poses a significant and far less humorous problem for Byron than what he presents here. 2 The pensive, philosophical, poetic mind, possessed of "Longings sublime, and aspirations high" (93), must be cut off from its own real source of desire in the body: in this instance, the desire for sex qua sex. The narrator, in his typically 1 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Byron's poetry are taken from Byron: The Complete

Wiener Slawisticher Almanach, 2008

This article proposes a new reading, through the prism of Yuri Tynianov's unfinished novel Pushkin, of the aesthetics of the early and late Tynianov, and puts forward the idea of an epistemological shift. By looking in particular at the question of the centrality of the Pushkin myth to Tynianov's theoretical and artistic oeuvre in the light of the Formalist project and its legacy, Tynianov's understanding of literary evolution and the concept of the prelogical is reexamined. Tynianov's concept of the prelogical, as discussed below, is linked in Pushkin to exploration of the pre-symbolic order and to interrelation between visual and verbal signs that was exemplified by Pushkin's artistic psychology. It is clear that primitive thinking informs Tynianov's theoretical investigations as reflected in his last novel, yet the question remains: should we read Tynianov's insistence on the importance of prelogical thought as politically and artistically regressive, or as an attempt to furnish the evolutionary literary model with a new way to link prelogical thought with dialectics? To this end, this article treats Sergei Eisenstein's enthusiastic response to Tynianov's novel as a perceptive reading of its subtexts and neo-Romantic sensibility that is close to Eisenstein's own aesthetic aspirations of the 1930s-40s. Eisenstein's reading of Pushkin as a narrative imbued with the protoplasmatic vision of evolution that foregrounds the image of the national poet as young, androgynous and infantile, competing with several father-like figures, helps us understand Tynianov's semiveiled call for the revival of a prenatal undifferentiated state of nature that is mediated through its opposite, namely analytical and progressive thought. Tynianov, like Eisenstein, seems to employ metaphors of biological time in relation to history presenting the tension between progressive and regressive tendencies as something that allows for a radical breakthrough in the spheres of subjective consciousness and of artistic creativity, as well as in public life. 1 Despite some perception that "scholarship about Pushkin as cultural myth began to appear in the 1980s" 2 , we should not overlook Tynianov's 1922 article "The Illusionary Pushkin" ("Mnimyi Pushkin") which was published in the Soviet Union for the first time only in 1977. Tynianov's article not only challenged the view of Pushkin as the founder of Russian national culture and as the public figure epitomised in Apollon Grigor'ev's words "Pushkin is our everything" (1859), but it also criticised the cult of Pushkin that had been largely shaped by Russian symbolist, religious and philosophical abstract thinking. And more importantly, possibly in anticipation of attempts to canonise Pushkin in the Soviet political context, Tynianov's article warned against the growing fetishism in literary studies related to Pushkin. With the meticulous precision and positivist bent that was the hallmark of his scholarship, Tynianov in "The Illusionary Pushkin" distinguished between on the one hand the popular efforts to make Pushkin fit the artistic and ideological goals found in journalism or philosophical discourses on literature, and on the other hand the representation of Pushkin's life and works in Soviet literary studies. For Tynianov, to fall in step with the motto "Accept Pushkin and everything else will fall into its place!" ("Primite Pushkina, ostal'noe prilozhitsia") did not undermine Pushkin provided that the discursive framework governing Pushkin's suitability for any specific purpose accepted literature as an object for linguistic games and playful philosophical exercises. As Tynianov put it, "While the trend to make Pushkin suitable for any fashionable needs remains within the framework of general

2013

is the mysterious link connecting the great Slavic literature with the literature of the West" 1. These surprising and unusual words were spoken by the greatest Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, on 20 December 1842 at the Collège de France in Paris. On 20 December 1842 Mickiewicz, a Romantic and the most important of Polish poets, the man who expressed the Polish mentality the most fully, was in his third year of lecturing in Paris and was trying to introduce the Western cultural elite to the Slavic world: he outlined the history, the literature, and the unique character of the Slavs. He spoke not only about Polish or Czech culture, but also about the Southern Slavs and about Russia, a country on which he was a great expert, not onlya paradoxas a tsarist prisoner but also as a friend of many Russians and a poet loved by the Russian intelligentsia of his time (but that's just by the way). It also needs adding that today Mickiewicz's lectures at the Collège de France are considered to be the sum and synthesis of Polish Romanticism. It was in the third lecture of the third year of the Slavic literature course, when Mickiewicz was discussing "how Slavic poets, men of letters, writers understand their mission and their duties" 2 , that those extraordinary words were spoken about the mysterious relations between the spirit of contemporary Slavic poets and the spirit of Byron. What is the real significance of identifying such a connection between Byron and Slavic poets? What is the meaning of the words: "Byron is the mysterious link connecting the great Slavic literature with the literature of the West"? How was establishing such a connection between Byron and Slavic poets possible? What is its essence? 1 All documentation refers to the original texts in Polish. The cited fragments have been translated into English by Joanna Dutkiewicz who also translated the present paper. Mickiewicz (1997: 33). 2 Ibidem, p. 25.

2014

"This methodical and instructional monograph on Lord Byron and armenology does not limit the discourse within these two topics. Such a strategy would be detrimental factor to the subject matter presented here. In order to make this oeuvre meaningful a drastically arduous modus operandi must have been formulated to demonstrate armenology through Byronic mindset of approach to an endevour of re-writing an essay. For didactic reasons most of the English text of different writers were translated into Armenian, then they were all translated back into English from Armenian — like a XXI century palimpsest (παλίμψηστος). This is how Lord Byron would have done this task as an armenologist! Regrettably though justly, the title of the 'Father of Armenology' has been always reserved for St. Mesrop Mashtots. No one can be the father of armenology but an Armenian. Lord Byron was a master in Armenian studies, and the main force behind armenology to be propagated amongst European academics. Armenology consists of four main phases: Ա պարբերաշրջան) from V Century to early XVIII century; Բ պարբերաշրջան) from early XVIII century to the late XIX century; Գ պարբերաշրջան) from late XIX century to early XX century, and Դ պարբերաշրջան) from early XX to the present day. Lord Byron was studying its phase Ա from V century to early XVIII century. This was a serious undertaking for Byron, and it must have been a real devotion and love towards Armenian. Passages in Armenian are used throughout the text is a reminder, that Armenian studies cannot exist without Armenian. The chronological boarders for this oeuvre are 1788-1824. The main emphasis will be the period between the years of 1816 and 1824. This was a period in Byron’s life, when romantic poetry disappeared and it was replaced with the Armenian language, literature, history and music. Byron as a poet is left for others to discuss. Throughout the monograph Byron is looked at through a different lens to discover Byron as a man. Unfortunately, during recent decades so many biographies had fabricated and published numerous biographies on Byron, that the real Byron was lost in the vast quantity of babble. Byron became nothing but a commercial tool for publishers, who have tailored their own “Byron” to be marketed towards the reader’s “moral” and religion. This was mainly due to the conspiracy of “paper business” and publishing “standards“ which have created the most evil censorship machine ever. However, time changed everything. On one hand, this monograph will ruthlessly ignore each and every “standard” which was established and shamelessly maintained by men for hundreds of years either for the sake of public’s “moral” or defence of the “Christian values.” Byron deserves finally to be presented in his real colours, something that almost all Byron biographers have intentionally ignored partly due to their own ignorance in man’s psychology, especially when it comes to a homosexual man, who is in exile, disguised as Child Harold. On the other hand, this monograph will emphasize on armenology, where Byron found his own solitude. The essence of this monograph and its subject matter is not how others were possessed and captivated by Byron, or his gift of poetry, but rather the fact how Byron was haunted by Armenia, the Armenians, their language, literature, religion, culture etc. Throughout the text of this monograph Armenian, English, French, Greek and Russian languages are used. Most armenologists speak at least 5 languages. Lord Byron himself spoke Armenian, English, French, Greek and Latin. This is a standard phenomenon. However, the architectonics of the monograph allows the reader to block or disregard non-English text; the contextual relationship to the subject matter just in English will not be measured by the disturbed readers ignorance. The English text just by itself is an idiot proof discourse! Passages in Armenian are used throughout the text as a reminder, that Armenian studies cannot exist without Armenian. What would be the reason of compiling a monograph on Lord Byron and Armenology without Armenian? Therefore, “if the poet’s body belongs to England, and his heart — to Greece, then you, Armenians, inherit the purest element — a portion of his soul since his solidarity, peace and intimate love remains with You!” (Չ. Գամմել, անգլիացի բանաստեղծ). Human collective mind and effort is always victorious! This will be proven on every line of this essay. "

European Romantic Review, 2011

2012

Author of the most influential long poem of its era (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) and the funniest long poem in European literature (Don Juan), Lord Byron was also the literary superstar of Romanticism, whose effect on nineteenth-century writers, artists, musicians and politiciansbut also everyday readers-was second to none. His poems seduced and scandalized readers, and his life and legend were correspondingly magnetic, given added force by his early death in the Greek War of Independence. This introduction compresses his extraordinary life to manageable proportions, and gives readers a firm set of contexts in the politics, warfare and Romantic ideology of Byron's era. It offers a guide to the main themes in his wide-ranging oeuvre, from the early poems that made him famous (and infamous) overnight, to his narrative tales, dramas and the comic epic left incomplete at his death.

Slavic Review, 2015