• A Case of Canonical Limbo: Idealist and Materialist Interplay in Marietta Shaginian's Hydrocentral

    Author(s):
    Jill Roese (see profile)
    Date:
    2017
    Group(s):
    Literary Translation, Part-Time Faculty/Independent, Russian/Eurasian Literature
    Subject(s):
    Twentieth century, Russian literature, Socialist realism, Soviet Union
    Item Type:
    Dissertation
    Institution:
    Columbia University
    Tag(s):
    dialect, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Goethe, socialist realism, Soviet Union, 20th century
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6JB6T
    Abstract:
    Marietta Shaginian’s Soviet production novel, Hydrocentral(Gidrotsentral’), represents a case of canonical limbo. Without exception, the novel is listed as a Soviet literary classic in reference works and compendia of Russian literature since the time of its publication in 1931 up to the present day, and yet is not considered an official exemplar of Socialist Realism. This two-part dissertation attempts to explain the reasons for the novel’s “in-between” status. Part I offers a structural explanation, demonstrating how the principle of multiplicity undergirds the novel’s architecture at every level. Shaginian uses two types of multiplicity, conventional, as in artistic, not true-to-life (uslovnaia) and real, everyday (bytovaia) multiplicity, combining them in a way that achieves Shaginian’s unique vision of objective reality (bytie) as unceasing dialectical development. Part II demonstrates how the nature of this objective reality has its philosophical underpinnings in German Idealism as espoused by Hegel and Goethe, as well as in the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx. At the phenomenological level, Hydrocentral is a Marxist, materialist philosophical overlay that conceals deeper Idealist – and even Modernist – epistemological undercurrents.
    Notes:
    Suggested Citation: Jill Roese, 2017, A Case of Canonical Limbo: Idealist and Materialist Interplay in Marietta Shaginian's "Hydrocentral", Columbia University Academic Commons, https://doi.org/10.7916/D80P14QC.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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