Pushkin/Anti-Pushkin
April 17-18, 2009

For nearly two centuries, Pushkin’s legacy has been appropriated to serve myriad social, political and artistic purposes by admirers and critics eager to recast the poet in their own image. This interdisciplinary conference examines the evolution of his myth and explores the humanization and demonization of Pushkin in the hope of understanding the formative role he has played in fields as diverse as theater, music, plastic arts, film, history, politics and, of course, literature.

All events in East Pyne 245

Friday, April 17:

6:30-8:00 pm

Panel 1: Pushkin and Contemporary Russian Literature

Chair: Lindsay Ceballos (Princeton University)

Maria Khotimsky (Harvard University). От Пушкина до...: Pushkin in Contemporary Russian Poetry.

Nicholas Kyle Kupensky (Yale University). Pushkin, the Poet, and Acts of Creation in Victor Erofeyev’s Art and Thought.

Christine Dunbar (Princeton University). Ничей Пушкин: Sergei Gandlevskii’s Interpretations of the Onegin Stanza.

Olga Voronina (Harvard University). A Feast in the Time of Plague: Pushkin in Akhmatova-s Poem Without a Hero.

Discussant: Michael Wachtel (Princeton University)

Saturday, April 18:

10:30-12:00

Panel 2: New Perspectives on Pushkin

Chair: Leeore Schnairsohn (Princeton University)

Connor Doak (Northwestern University). Poltava at 300: Re-reading Byron’s Mazeppa and Pushkin’s Poltava.

Zakhar Ishov (Yale University). «Твоя лазурь и наше черноморье»: Pushkin and Ariosto — a history of a neglected connection.

Tim Portice (Princeton University). The Pushkinian Sublime in Eugene Onegin

Discussant: William Mills Todd III (Harvard University)

1:00-2:30

Panel 3: Musical Settings of Pushkin

Chair: Zaur Agaev (Princeton University)

Emily Frey (University of California at Berkeley). Onegin’s Journey: Chaikovsky and Evgeny Onegin from Pushkin to Dostoyevsky.

Kerry Philben (Yale University). Poetic Structure and Meaning in Two Musical Settings of Pushkin’s Ekho.

Anna Berman (Princeton University). Carmen Returns to Russia: Rachmaninov’s Aleko.

Discussant: Boris Gasparov (Columbia University)

3:00-4:30

Panel 4: The Modernist Pushkin

Chair: Jesse Menefee (Princeton University)

Conor Klamann (Northwestern University). Pushkin and his Work in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: The Case of Арион.

James Rann (University College London). A Stowaway on the Steamship of Modernity: Aleksei Kruchenykh’s Futurist Pushkin.

Jason Strudler (Princeton University). TBA

Discussant: Alexandra Smith (University of Edinburgh)

Organizing Committee:
Anna Berman, Christine Dunbar, Timothy Portice, Jason Strudler, and Timothy West

SPONSORED BY
THE COUNCIL OF THE HUMANITIES,
THE DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL,
THE PROGRAM IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES

Princeton University Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures