# Chronotopes of Affectivity in Literature. On Melancholy, Estrangement, and Reflective Nostalgia

*Laura Salmon (University of Genoa)*

10 *Sara Dickinson* 

to provide a foundation for post-Soviet identity.

Marlena Zimna (*Koszalin*).

the individual chapters that follow, we extend warm thanks to:

Irina Marchesini's *The Presence* о*f Absence. Longing аnd Nostalgia in Post-Soviet Art and Literature* plumbs the relationship between post-Soviet identity and memories of the pre-Soviet past addressed in the work of several contemporary artists and writers. The specific works that she examines testify to complex and ambivalent feelings of regret for the 'traumatic' loss of the Soviet Union, understood not simply as a political entity, but also – and primarily – as an affective, personal, and domestic reality, the background for daily life and familial routines. Marchesini discusses how the installations of Il'ja Kabakov, Sergej Volkov, and Evgenij Fiks offer up to viewers concrete objects from the Soviet era in order both to suggest the long-lost past and to provoke specific modes of relating to and even interacting with memories of that time. The exhibited objects call forth a nostalgic response from viewers by jogging their recollection of intimate spaces from the past that were imbued with political images and concepts; these installations also encourage viewers to reflect upon the character of their own nostalgic feelings. A similar process of recalling and reacting to Soviet-era memories may be found in the autobiographical writings of Andrej Astvacaturov, where the summoning of an absent past is again mediated through material objects, their anachronistic presence enabling a multi-layered perception of bygone and present epochs. In Astvacaturov as well, distinctions between temporal eras and between private and communal spheres are blurred

We are grateful to the University of Genoa for a grant that made possible the writing and publication of this volume. We would also like to express our deep gratitude to Antonio Prete, Laura Olson Osterman, Ruth Curd Dickinson, and members of the "Studi Slavistici" Board (Firenze University Press), particularly Nicoletta Marcialis, Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, and Alberto Alberti, for valuable help in the conceptualization of our overall project during the initial stages and for subsequent improvements to the finished product. For specific advice on

Maria Cristina Bragone (*University of Pavia*), Angela Brintlinger (*Ohio State University*), Elena Buvina (*University of Genoa*), Julie Cassiday (*Williams College*), Antonio Civardi (*University of Genoa*), Amanda Ewington (*Davidson College*), Silvano Facioni (*University of Cosenza*), Lucyna Gebert (*University of Rome 'La Sapienza'*), Gitta Hammarberg (*Macalester College*), Gabriella Imposti (*University of Bologna*), Nina Issaeva (*Bologna*), Dov-Ber Kerler (*Indiana University*), Ljubov' Kixnej (*University of Moscow*), Ekaterina Klimakova (*University of Novosibirsk*), Andrej Krylov (*Moscow*), Lion Nadel' (*Tel Aviv*), Simon Neuberg (*University of Trier*), Anatolij Olejnikov (*Novosibirsk*), Bartosz Osiewicz (*University of Poznań*), Cecilia Pozzi (*University of Genoa*), Claudia Rosenzweig (*University of Bar Ilan*), Giampaolo Sasso (*Milan*), Sergej Šaulov (*University of Ufa*), Andrej Semin (*Moscow*), Andrej Skobelev (*University of Voronež*), Galina Špilevaja (*University of Voronež*), Aleksandr Sverdlin (*Tel Aviv*), Oleg Vasin (*Moscow*), Giuseppe Veltri (*University of Hamburg*), The virtue of the stranger is to show the paradoxical quality of stereotyping, the traces left within it by its efforts to annul the dilemma between open and closed thinking.

Michael Pickering

### 1. *Affectivity in Literary Studies*

For centuries, Western culture has looked upon emotions and feelings "with fear, suspicion and disdain" (Vinickij 2012). If the human mind generally has been excluded from the interests of medicine and biology (Damasio 2006: 255), literary studies have also traditionally considered feelings to lie beyond their purview (Vinickij 2012). Insofar as feelings "form the base for what humans have described for millennia as the human soul or spirit", they have been taken into account primarily by religion and philosophy, and only recently by psychology (Damasio 2006: XXVI). And, while literary criticism overcame a traditionally anti-psychological stance in the post-romantic era (Etkind E. 2005: 26), feelings are still rarely the object of systematic literary investigation even today:

[...] affective experience is both fundamental to the writing and reading of literature, yet tends to be largely *de trop* for literary critical modes that have constituted themselves by necessary kinds of metaphysical exemption or division (Hughes 2011: 6).

The role of affectivity in the literary text received thorough attention only at the end of the nineteenth century in the field of psychoanalysis, when Sigmund Freud underlined the relevance and centrality of emotion in specific works of literature, thus contributing to rethinking the function of art in general and of literature in particular. Psychoanalysis itself originates in literary myths and narratives, and assumes the priority of natural language in the expression of emotion. Focusing on the mechanisms of sublimation and substitution, Freud provided a functional model of art as "an escape from or substitute for unacceptable or uncomfortable parts of reality" (Dissanayake 1992: 91) that still serves as a guideline for most scholarly works treating the psychology of literature<sup>1</sup> . Nevertheless, there are two principle reasons that a psychoanalytic approach (whether Freudian

*Melancholic Identities, Toska and Reflective Nostalgia Case Studies from Russian and Russian-*FUP Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOI 10.36253/fup\_best\_practice)

<sup>1</sup> The psychoanalytic approach would seem to constitute roughly 80% of all scholarly production in the field of the psychology of literature (Argenton, Messina 2000: 23), while experimental psychology shows scarce interest in criticism, tending to use literary texts as thematic corpora for the classification of clinical concepts (*Ivi*: 24).

*Jewish Culture*, edited by Sara Dickinson and Laura Salmon, ISBN 978-88-6655-822-4 (online), ISBN 978-88-6655-821-7 (print), © 2015 Firenze University Press Laura Salmon, *Chronotopes of Affectivity in Literature. On Melancholy, Estrangement, and Reflective Nostalgia*, pp. 11-30, © 2015 Author(s), CC BY 4.0 International, DOI 10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4.02

. Literature, Etkind claims,

(Bak 1995), his dialogic representation of narrative's 'internal' and 'external' dimensions also legitimized the direct involvement of psychology in literary criticism. Baxtin greatly influenced Soviet and post-Soviet literary theory and his model of the mutual relationship between author and text resonates in the con-

expresses the synthesis of thought and speech at the highest level of complexity – not merely representing knowledge, but constituting a territory of psychologi-

Literature is the most powerful instrument of psychology: it goes deeper and deeper into intimate life, revealing new and previously unknown spaces. But it would be a mistake to think that literature follows science [...] Poetry and literature in general anticipate science, opening a path to the unknown – not only to what has never been studied before, but also to what as yet has been inconceivable (Etkind

Literary texts actually form an immense corpus of data that is useful for studying both how the intimate world of feelings behaves on a textual level and how feelings (the cultural constructs of affectivity) and ideologies (cognitive rules) might affect 'literary mood'. While the search for coherent ways of representing the relationship between poetics and affectivity is just beginning, it is clear that a mutually dependent relationship exists between the following components:

• an author's dominant "structure of feeling", i.e. "the social experience that only seems to be individual and personal, but in fact has some definite,

• the "mood" of a specific author, i.e. "all individual differences that form consistent patterns of emotional reactivity" (Davidson 1994: 55);

The circular relationship among these factors is particularly evident in "reflective nostalgia", a specifically melancholic and ironic mood that Svetlana Boym (2001: 49-55) opposes to the more serious and dramatic "restorative nostalgia". While restorative nostalgia aims with ideological conviction towards a future that will recover the past and restore a rigid national identity and a 'pure world' that has supposedly been lost, "*re-flection* suggests new flexibility, not the reestablishment of stasis" (*Ivi*: 49; emphasis in original).

<sup>3</sup> Particularly, in the essay *The 'Internal Person' and the 'External Discourse'. (Studies on Psychopoetics of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature*), E. Etkind (2005: 26) analyzes how the inner world of the hero is represented by "external discourse", explicitly extending literary investigation to the field of psychology. A detractor of theorization and taxonomy, E. Etkind deliberately (and unfortunately) eschews any attempt to establish a coherent pattern in the relationship between mood and

poetics, providing only coordinated, but separated case studies (*Ivi*: 27).

cept of 'psycho-poetics' introduced by Efim Etkind<sup>3</sup>

shared features" (Johannisson 2011: 10);

cal discovery:

E. 2005: 364).

• the author's poetics.

or not) has been so poorly integrated into literary study: it requires extra-literary scholarly competence and it tends to be applied only to the thematic or autobiographical aspects of a text, with disregard for its formal features.

The formal and structural characteristics of literary texts later became the exclusive object of study for the Russian formalists, who declared psychology and feelings alien to the 'science of literature'. Although Boris Ejxenbaum (1924: 324) argued that art is a stylization of feelings, he also programmatically established that "*there is not, and cannot be* a place for the reflection of any psychic experience" in a work of art (emphasis in original). Russian formalism's profound effect on both Western humanities and Slavic studies long hindered any serious attempt to investigate the psycho-emotional aspects of literature. In general, such theoretical rigidity has led to literary criticism's self-isolation from "modern thought" and "literature itself" (Boyd 2009: 384). In Alexander Etkind's words:

[...] the Formal School in Russian literary and linguistic studies was anti-psychological. From that point of view, the dreams of the heroine described by Puškin in *Evgenij Onegin* were considered a means of deceleration of the *sjužet* similar to the descriptions of nature; the reflections about love by Tolstoy's characters were included in the same category of events as their remarks on agriculture. In any case, the Formal School elaborated no specific method for reflecting on such reflections (Etkind A. 2005: 10).

Mixail Baxtin was the first theorist close to formalism and structuralism who considered the literary text to be a reflection of the author's affective world. A dialogic intermediary between psychology and formalism, Baxtin (1981: 254) claimed that any textual interpretation should approach the author as both a biographical person (*outside* the text) and a creator (*inside* the text). Borrowing the concept of 'spacetime' from physics, biology and physiology, Baxtin transformed it into the 'chronotope', which he specifically intended as an element of cohesion between a text and the emotionality of the author<sup>2</sup> :

In literature and art itself, temporal and spatial determinations are inseparable from one another, and always colored by emotions and values. Abstract thought can, of course, think time and space as separate entities and conceive them as things apart from the emotions and values that attach to them. But living artistic perception (which also of course involves thought, but not abstract thought) makes no such divisions and permits no such segmentation. It seizes on the chronotope in all its wholeness and fullness. Art and literature are shot through with chronotopic values of varying degree and scope. Each motif, each separate aspect of artistic work bears value (*Ivi*: 243).

Thus, while Baxtin elaborated a dynamic "historical poetics" in keeping with the traditionally central role of history in the interpretation of literature

<sup>2</sup> Baxtin's conception of the 'chronotope' was particularly influenced by the theories of the brilliant Russian physiologist Aleksej Uxtomskij (cf. Ponzio 2002: 24-25, Diddi 2009).

(Bak 1995), his dialogic representation of narrative's 'internal' and 'external' dimensions also legitimized the direct involvement of psychology in literary criticism. Baxtin greatly influenced Soviet and post-Soviet literary theory and his model of the mutual relationship between author and text resonates in the concept of 'psycho-poetics' introduced by Efim Etkind<sup>3</sup> . Literature, Etkind claims, expresses the synthesis of thought and speech at the highest level of complexity – not merely representing knowledge, but constituting a territory of psychological discovery:

Literature is the most powerful instrument of psychology: it goes deeper and deeper into intimate life, revealing new and previously unknown spaces. But it would be a mistake to think that literature follows science [...] Poetry and literature in general anticipate science, opening a path to the unknown – not only to what has never been studied before, but also to what as yet has been inconceivable (Etkind E. 2005: 364).

Literary texts actually form an immense corpus of data that is useful for studying both how the intimate world of feelings behaves on a textual level and how feelings (the cultural constructs of affectivity) and ideologies (cognitive rules) might affect 'literary mood'. While the search for coherent ways of representing the relationship between poetics and affectivity is just beginning, it is clear that a mutually dependent relationship exists between the following components:


12 *Laura Salmon*

(Etkind A. 2005: 10).

work bears value (*Ivi*: 243).

Diddi 2009).

or not) has been so poorly integrated into literary study: it requires extra-literary scholarly competence and it tends to be applied only to the thematic or autobio-

The formal and structural characteristics of literary texts later became the exclusive object of study for the Russian formalists, who declared psychology and feelings alien to the 'science of literature'. Although Boris Ejxenbaum (1924: 324) argued that art is a stylization of feelings, he also programmatically established that "*there is not, and cannot be* a place for the reflection of any psychic experience" in a work of art (emphasis in original). Russian formalism's profound effect on both Western humanities and Slavic studies long hindered any serious attempt to investigate the psycho-emotional aspects of literature. In general, such theoretical rigidity has led to literary criticism's self-isolation from "modern thought" and "literature itself" (Boyd 2009: 384). In Alexander Etkind's words:

[...] the Formal School in Russian literary and linguistic studies was anti-psychological. From that point of view, the dreams of the heroine described by Puškin in *Evgenij Onegin* were considered a means of deceleration of the *sjužet* similar to the descriptions of nature; the reflections about love by Tolstoy's characters were included in the same category of events as their remarks on agriculture. In any case, the Formal School elaborated no specific method for reflecting on such reflections

Mixail Baxtin was the first theorist close to formalism and structuralism who considered the literary text to be a reflection of the author's affective world. A dialogic intermediary between psychology and formalism, Baxtin (1981: 254) claimed that any textual interpretation should approach the author as both a biographical person (*outside* the text) and a creator (*inside* the text). Borrowing the concept of 'spacetime' from physics, biology and physiology, Baxtin transformed it into the 'chronotope', which he specifically intended as an element of

In literature and art itself, temporal and spatial determinations are inseparable from one another, and always colored by emotions and values. Abstract thought can, of course, think time and space as separate entities and conceive them as things apart from the emotions and values that attach to them. But living artistic perception (which also of course involves thought, but not abstract thought) makes no such divisions and permits no such segmentation. It seizes on the chronotope in all its wholeness and fullness. Art and literature are shot through with chronotopic values of varying degree and scope. Each motif, each separate aspect of artistic

Thus, while Baxtin elaborated a dynamic "historical poetics" in keeping with the traditionally central role of history in the interpretation of literature

<sup>2</sup> Baxtin's conception of the 'chronotope' was particularly influenced by the theories of the brilliant Russian physiologist Aleksej Uxtomskij (cf. Ponzio 2002: 24-25,

:

cohesion between a text and the emotionality of the author<sup>2</sup>

graphical aspects of a text, with disregard for its formal features.

The circular relationship among these factors is particularly evident in "reflective nostalgia", a specifically melancholic and ironic mood that Svetlana Boym (2001: 49-55) opposes to the more serious and dramatic "restorative nostalgia". While restorative nostalgia aims with ideological conviction towards a future that will recover the past and restore a rigid national identity and a 'pure world' that has supposedly been lost, "*re-flection* suggests new flexibility, not the reestablishment of stasis" (*Ivi*: 49; emphasis in original).

<sup>3</sup> Particularly, in the essay *The 'Internal Person' and the 'External Discourse'. (Studies on Psychopoetics of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature*), E. Etkind (2005: 26) analyzes how the inner world of the hero is represented by "external discourse", explicitly extending literary investigation to the field of psychology. A detractor of theorization and taxonomy, E. Etkind deliberately (and unfortunately) eschews any attempt to establish a coherent pattern in the relationship between mood and poetics, providing only coordinated, but separated case studies (*Ivi*: 27).

. Since not all affective responses to

ings seem to be under rational control, they affect human choices, preferences, and aversions. Moreover, since emotions help us to *classify* the surrounding world (persons, events, objects, memories), they constitute the cognitive means by which we evaluate our experiences, a "combination of a *mental evaluative process*, simple or complex, with *dispositional responses to that process*"

experience are equally involved in cultural interaction, it is necessary to make conceptual and terminological distinctions between them. "What is a feeling?"

Why do I not use the terms 'emotion' and 'feeling' interchangeably? One reason is that although some feelings relate to emotions, there are many that do not: all emotions generate feelings if you are awake, but not all feelings originate in

More generally, emotions can be distinguished in two categories – primary and secondary. Primary emotions, regardless of their source, are completely instinctive: a response of fear, for example, is not controlled by culture since it can be triggered by objects or animals that one has neither known nor seen before (*Ivi*: 131-134). Secondary emotion occurs when one has the experience of *feeling the emotion* itself. A secondary emotion thus forms "systematic connections between categories of objects and situations, on the one hand, and primary emotions, on the other" (*Ivi*: 134). It is these secondary emotions that are properly 'feelings' and their characteristic feature is the subject's "combined" or joint perception of two "images" or types of input – one of the subject's own physical body and one

The essence of sadness or happiness is the combined perception of certain body states with whatever thoughts they are juxtaposed to, complemented by a modification in the style and efficiency of the thought process [...]. When negative body states recur frequently, or when there is a sustained negative body state, as happens in depression, the proportion of thoughts which are likely to be associated with negative situations does increase, and the style and efficiency of reasoning suffer [...]. A feeling about a particular object is based on the subjectivity of the perception of the object, the perception of the body state it engenders, and the perception of modified style and efficiency of the thought process as all of the above happens (*Ivi*: 146-148).

In other words, while primary emotions are automatic responses, feelings are *cultural constructs* that "translate the ongoing life state in the language of

Human feelings can be organized into three major types (cf. Damasio 2006:

<sup>4</sup> In his two books on emotions, Joseph LeDoux (1996, 2002) reviews neuroscientific research in the field and argues that emotions are the means used by the human

of "something else" taken from the subject's life experience (*Ivi*: 145):

(Damasio 2006: 139; emphasis in original)4

asks Damasio (*Ivi*: 143),

emotions (*Ibidem*).

the mind" (Damasio 2003: 85).

brain to evaluate any stimulus.

149-150):

Before addressing the topic of the melancholic and nostalgic mood in verbal art, we will attempt to generally define terms such as 'emotion', 'feeling', 'mood' and 'affective style'. While none of these words "refers to a distinct class of events, neatly separated from the others", nevertheless, "distinctions exist that are worth making" (Frijda 1994: 59). Indeed, the impressive progress of cognitive science over the last few decades allows us to use terms relating to the sphere of affectivity with a higher epistemological consistency and to better understand the complex mechanisms that any definition implies. Although cognitive science and literary study have very different aims, one striving to understand how the human mind works and the other how texts work, much benefit can be derived by exploring the insights and perspectives of each. Clarifying the concepts of human affectivity is essential in order to formulate hypotheses about the relation between chronotopes, moods, and narrative styles; it will also help us to understand the interrelation between individual and universal features in the way that humans express affectivity.

### 2. *Concepts and Definitions of Affectivity from Cognitive Sciences*

In the last decade of the twentieth century, neuroscientific research inseparably linked affectivity to cognition in general and to rational thinking in particular, concluding that "feelings are as cognitive as any other perceptual image" (Damasio 2006: 159). In the brilliant *Descartes' Error*, Antonio Damasio develops a theory of brain-body communication based on scientific evidence demonstrating that affectivity is a human faculty of extraordinary complexity that has evolved in purely physical terms:

I don't see emotions and feelings as the intangible and vaporous qualities that many presume them to be. Their subject matter is concrete, and they can be related to specific systems in body and brain, no less than vision or speech (*Ivi*: 164).

New scientific data, Damasio argues, diminish neither the status of feelings in the arts, nor their value to human beings (*Ibidem*). Rather than merely "reduce ethics or esthetics to brain circuitry", he aims "to explore the threads that interconnect neurobiology to culture" (*Ivi*: XX). 'Culture' can be defined as a social, collective, and interactive response to all processes of externalization of the brain's internal representations. In the words of Jean-Pierre Changeux (2004: 50):

L'hypothèse est que les rapresentations internes du cerveaux, leur externalization et leur mise en commun entre cerveaux individuels au sein du groupe social et leur éventuel stockage dans des mémoires non cérébrales seraint à l'origine de l'évolution culturelle.

The fact that individuals communicate through affectivity means that it is one of culture's most fundamental components. Even when emotions and feel-

the way that humans express affectivity.

that has evolved in purely physical terms:

l'évolution culturelle.

Before addressing the topic of the melancholic and nostalgic mood in verbal art, we will attempt to generally define terms such as 'emotion', 'feeling', 'mood' and 'affective style'. While none of these words "refers to a distinct class of events, neatly separated from the others", nevertheless, "distinctions exist that are worth making" (Frijda 1994: 59). Indeed, the impressive progress of cognitive science over the last few decades allows us to use terms relating to the sphere of affectivity with a higher epistemological consistency and to better understand the complex mechanisms that any definition implies. Although cognitive science and literary study have very different aims, one striving to understand how the human mind works and the other how texts work, much benefit can be derived by exploring the insights and perspectives of each. Clarifying the concepts of human affectivity is essential in order to formulate hypotheses about the relation between chronotopes, moods, and narrative styles; it will also help us to understand the interrelation between individual and universal features in

2. *Concepts and Definitions of Affectivity from Cognitive Sciences*

In the last decade of the twentieth century, neuroscientific research inseparably linked affectivity to cognition in general and to rational thinking in particular, concluding that "feelings are as cognitive as any other perceptual image" (Damasio 2006: 159). In the brilliant *Descartes' Error*, Antonio Damasio develops a theory of brain-body communication based on scientific evidence demonstrating that affectivity is a human faculty of extraordinary complexity

I don't see emotions and feelings as the intangible and vaporous qualities that many presume them to be. Their subject matter is concrete, and they can be related to specific systems in body and brain, no less than vision or speech (*Ivi*: 164).

New scientific data, Damasio argues, diminish neither the status of feelings in the arts, nor their value to human beings (*Ibidem*). Rather than merely "reduce ethics or esthetics to brain circuitry", he aims "to explore the threads that interconnect neurobiology to culture" (*Ivi*: XX). 'Culture' can be defined as a social, collective, and interactive response to all processes of externalization of the brain's internal representations. In the words of Jean-Pierre Changeux (2004: 50):

L'hypothèse est que les rapresentations internes du cerveaux, leur externalization et leur mise en commun entre cerveaux individuels au sein du groupe social et leur éventuel stockage dans des mémoires non cérébrales seraint à l'origine de

The fact that individuals communicate through affectivity means that it is one of culture's most fundamental components. Even when emotions and feelings seem to be under rational control, they affect human choices, preferences, and aversions. Moreover, since emotions help us to *classify* the surrounding world (persons, events, objects, memories), they constitute the cognitive means by which we evaluate our experiences, a "combination of a *mental evaluative process*, simple or complex, with *dispositional responses to that process*" (Damasio 2006: 139; emphasis in original)4 . Since not all affective responses to experience are equally involved in cultural interaction, it is necessary to make conceptual and terminological distinctions between them. "What is a feeling?" asks Damasio (*Ivi*: 143),

Why do I not use the terms 'emotion' and 'feeling' interchangeably? One reason is that although some feelings relate to emotions, there are many that do not: all emotions generate feelings if you are awake, but not all feelings originate in emotions (*Ibidem*).

More generally, emotions can be distinguished in two categories – primary and secondary. Primary emotions, regardless of their source, are completely instinctive: a response of fear, for example, is not controlled by culture since it can be triggered by objects or animals that one has neither known nor seen before (*Ivi*: 131-134). Secondary emotion occurs when one has the experience of *feeling the emotion* itself. A secondary emotion thus forms "systematic connections between categories of objects and situations, on the one hand, and primary emotions, on the other" (*Ivi*: 134). It is these secondary emotions that are properly 'feelings' and their characteristic feature is the subject's "combined" or joint perception of two "images" or types of input – one of the subject's own physical body and one of "something else" taken from the subject's life experience (*Ivi*: 145):

The essence of sadness or happiness is the combined perception of certain body states with whatever thoughts they are juxtaposed to, complemented by a modification in the style and efficiency of the thought process [...]. When negative body states recur frequently, or when there is a sustained negative body state, as happens in depression, the proportion of thoughts which are likely to be associated with negative situations does increase, and the style and efficiency of reasoning suffer [...]. A feeling about a particular object is based on the subjectivity of the perception of the object, the perception of the body state it engenders, and the perception of modified style and efficiency of the thought process as all of the above happens (*Ivi*: 146-148).

In other words, while primary emotions are automatic responses, feelings are *cultural constructs* that "translate the ongoing life state in the language of the mind" (Damasio 2003: 85).

Human feelings can be organized into three major types (cf. Damasio 2006: 149-150):

<sup>4</sup> In his two books on emotions, Joseph LeDoux (1996, 2002) reviews neuroscientific research in the field and argues that emotions are the means used by the human brain to evaluate any stimulus.

. Style

original), i.e. the mind's response to personal experience (one's *history*) and to the subjective way this experience has been categorized and interpreted (one's *story*). In the relationship between stories (narrative) and history (experience) we can begin to see how background feelings might affect literary style. The specific style and conceptual framework of any given creative representation

thus differs from *form* and *techniques* since it reflects the interrelation of these

The synonymous concepts of 'affective style' and 'chronic mood' would seem compatible with the "structure of feelings" proposed by Karin Johannisson (2011: 10-11) in *A History of Melancholy*. This tome offers a model for the study of feelings from the perspective of social and cultural studies by analyzing the historical development of the melancholic mood in Western culture, literature, and cinema. As Johannisson argues, specific feelings and the chronotopes of their expression can be investigated with a certain degree of objectivity: "Feelings are affected by history", she writes, and "humans live in a precise

That human affectivity is influenced by specific historical, geographic, and cultural environments clearly does not suggest that culture can be equated with 'nationality' or 'national language'. Generally speaking, we can find within a given culture contrasting background feelings and different words to express them; moreover, the same words can refer to different feelings, since "no two discrete emotional episodes are exactly alike" (Lazarus 1994: 332). Scholars working on such problems must inevitably decide for themselves whether to emphasize similarities or differences in the study of emotions, feelings and moods (*Ibidem*). That said, humans do share experiences with others beyond the limits of their own native cultures, and literature powerfully demonstrates how feelings, simultaneously individual and universal, are cross-cultural.

Steven Pinker (1997: 365) claims that even though cultures differ "in how often their members express, talk about, and act on various emotions", this fact says nothing about what people feel – indeed, "the evidence suggests that the

<sup>5</sup> It is worth mentioning that 'humor' is a Latin word primary meaning 'fluid'. A relationship between humors (body fluids) and melancholy was postulated in Robert Burton's *Anatomy of Melancholy* in 1621 (cf. Burton 1989) and since mood was already thought to involve the inner state of the body, its bond with the word 'humor' is clear. In almost all European languages the word 'humor' refers to laughter, but in the Romance languages is the main term for 'mood' (e.g., Italian '*umore*', French '*humeur*', Spanish '*humor*', etc.). As Luigi Pirandello (1995: 59) indicates in *On Humor*, humor is by no means a literary *genre*, but rather a "quality of expression", a *style*. Pirandello's intuition can be generalized *mutatis mutandis* – mood refers strictly to the chosen style of an author.

reveals the ways in which authors react to their own *humor* or mood<sup>5</sup>

with the author's affective mood and worldview.

time, which becomes their dwelling" (*Ivi*: 8-9).

3*. Individuality and Universality in Affective Terminology*


When background feelings are persistently of the same type over hours and days, and do not change quietly as thoughts contents ebb and flow, the collection of background feelings probably contributes to a mood, good, bad, or indifferent (*Ivi*: 151).

Richard Davidson (1994) more clearly explains the concept of 'mood', distinguishing it from "the nature of the antecedent events":

Emotions appear to be precipitated by events that are perceived as occurring quickly and without warning, while mood may be more likely to follow events that are perceived as occurring over a slower time course [...]. Moods can also be produced in a cumulative fashion over time. For example, a series of mild negative interactions (each of which might initially elicit a negative emotion) might cumulatively produce a negative mood over the course of a day. Similarly, a series of mild positive events can together result in a positive mood over time (*Ivi*: 53).

Moods are defined by Nico Frijda (1994: 60) as "nonintentional states" insofar as they are not object-focused. Yet, when a mood becomes "a salient enduring emotional quality displayed in a variety of situations and distinguishing one class of people from another", it becomes a "chronic mood" (Kagan 1994: 74), i.e. a culturally significant condition:

Chronic moods can result, for example, from membership in a particular social group, a decade of academic failure, or repeated social rejection. These chronic moods bias a person to react to incentives in a particular way. Folk theory, as well as research reports, make distinction between acute states and chronic mood (*Ivi*: 75).

The concept of 'chronic mood' coincides perfectly with Davidson's idea of "affective style" (Davidson 1994: 53). Unlike 'temperament', which seems to be partially regulated by genetics, 'affective style' emerges as the dominant mood in a person's life experience: it is "the entire domain of individual differences that modulate a person's reactivity to emotional events" (*Ibidem*).

An understanding of affective styles and chronic moods would seem to be essential for fully examining the relationship between a dominant mood and thematic-stylistic preferences in a given artist's oeuvre in order to find possibly recurring patterns. Styles and moods are indeed "products of appraisals of the *existential background* of our lives" (Kagan 1994: 84; emphasis in

(*Ivi*: 151).

(happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust);

*tween* emotions" and that constitute a general mood:

tinguishing it from "the nature of the antecedent events":

74), i.e. a culturally significant condition:

• simple emotion-based feelings that originate from the five basic emotions

• more complex emotion-based feelings "that are subtle variations of the five mentioned above; euphoria and ecstasy are variations of happiness", for instance, while "melancholy and wistfulness are variations of sadness"; • "background feelings" that correspond "to the body state prevailing *be-*

When background feelings are persistently of the same type over hours and days, and do not change quietly as thoughts contents ebb and flow, the collection of background feelings probably contributes to a mood, good, bad, or indifferent

Richard Davidson (1994) more clearly explains the concept of 'mood', dis-

positive events can together result in a positive mood over time (*Ivi*: 53).

Emotions appear to be precipitated by events that are perceived as occurring quickly and without warning, while mood may be more likely to follow events that are perceived as occurring over a slower time course [...]. Moods can also be produced in a cumulative fashion over time. For example, a series of mild negative interactions (each of which might initially elicit a negative emotion) might cumulatively produce a negative mood over the course of a day. Similarly, a series of mild

Moods are defined by Nico Frijda (1994: 60) as "nonintentional states" insofar as they are not object-focused. Yet, when a mood becomes "a salient enduring emotional quality displayed in a variety of situations and distinguishing one class of people from another", it becomes a "chronic mood" (Kagan 1994:

Chronic moods can result, for example, from membership in a particular social group, a decade of academic failure, or repeated social rejection. These chronic moods bias a person to react to incentives in a particular way. Folk theory, as well as research reports, make distinction between acute states and chronic mood (*Ivi*: 75).

The concept of 'chronic mood' coincides perfectly with Davidson's idea of "affective style" (Davidson 1994: 53). Unlike 'temperament', which seems to be partially regulated by genetics, 'affective style' emerges as the dominant mood in a person's life experience: it is "the entire domain of individual differences that modulate a person's reactivity to emotional events" (*Ibidem*).

An understanding of affective styles and chronic moods would seem to be essential for fully examining the relationship between a dominant mood and thematic-stylistic preferences in a given artist's oeuvre in order to find possibly recurring patterns. Styles and moods are indeed "products of appraisals of the *existential background* of our lives" (Kagan 1994: 84; emphasis in original), i.e. the mind's response to personal experience (one's *history*) and to the subjective way this experience has been categorized and interpreted (one's *story*). In the relationship between stories (narrative) and history (experience) we can begin to see how background feelings might affect literary style. The specific style and conceptual framework of any given creative representation reveals the ways in which authors react to their own *humor* or mood<sup>5</sup> . Style thus differs from *form* and *techniques* since it reflects the interrelation of these with the author's affective mood and worldview.

The synonymous concepts of 'affective style' and 'chronic mood' would seem compatible with the "structure of feelings" proposed by Karin Johannisson (2011: 10-11) in *A History of Melancholy*. This tome offers a model for the study of feelings from the perspective of social and cultural studies by analyzing the historical development of the melancholic mood in Western culture, literature, and cinema. As Johannisson argues, specific feelings and the chronotopes of their expression can be investigated with a certain degree of objectivity: "Feelings are affected by history", she writes, and "humans live in a precise time, which becomes their dwelling" (*Ivi*: 8-9).

That human affectivity is influenced by specific historical, geographic, and cultural environments clearly does not suggest that culture can be equated with 'nationality' or 'national language'. Generally speaking, we can find within a given culture contrasting background feelings and different words to express them; moreover, the same words can refer to different feelings, since "no two discrete emotional episodes are exactly alike" (Lazarus 1994: 332). Scholars working on such problems must inevitably decide for themselves whether to emphasize similarities or differences in the study of emotions, feelings and moods (*Ibidem*). That said, humans do share experiences with others beyond the limits of their own native cultures, and literature powerfully demonstrates how feelings, simultaneously individual and universal, are cross-cultural.

### 3*. Individuality and Universality in Affective Terminology*

Steven Pinker (1997: 365) claims that even though cultures differ "in how often their members express, talk about, and act on various emotions", this fact says nothing about what people feel – indeed, "the evidence suggests that the

<sup>5</sup> It is worth mentioning that 'humor' is a Latin word primary meaning 'fluid'. A relationship between humors (body fluids) and melancholy was postulated in Robert Burton's *Anatomy of Melancholy* in 1621 (cf. Burton 1989) and since mood was already thought to involve the inner state of the body, its bond with the word 'humor' is clear. In almost all European languages the word 'humor' refers to laughter, but in the Romance languages is the main term for 'mood' (e.g., Italian '*umore*', French '*humeur*', Spanish '*humor*', etc.). As Luigi Pirandello (1995: 59) indicates in *On Humor*, humor is by no means a literary *genre*, but rather a "quality of expression", a *style*. Pirandello's intuition can be generalized *mutatis mutandis* – mood refers strictly to the chosen style of an author.

writes in his introduction to a (translated) volume by Anna Werzbicka:

respondence between single lexemes and isolated feelings7

The feelings expressed by the Russian words *radost'*, *grust'*, *toska*, are significant precisely for Russian culture and for Russian language in particular. On the contrary, in English, there are no precise equivalents for *grust'* and *toska*, but there are words such as *sadness*, *melancholy*, *spleen* and *nostalgia*, which characterize feelings that are somehow close to *grust'* and *toska*, but, however, not identical. What I've said doesn't mean that a native of Anglo-Saxon culture can't feel *grust'* or *toska*, but that the feelings corresponding to these terms are not distinctly ex-

The conviction articulated here that some Russian words represent feelings that are nationally specific results from two ingenuous and falsifiable presuppositions: first, that there exists within the Russian language a one-to-one cor-

. In her work on nostalgia, Svetlana Boym (2001: 13) sharply

universalism which adherents of nationally specific feelings so aim to discredit requires in any way a one-to-one correspondence of single affective lexemes

<sup>6</sup> The literature of cultural relativism is interminable: Anna Wierzbicka is presently the leading figure in this line of inquiry, and her approach "a eu beaucoup de succès chez plusieurs linguistes russes, comme Rylov, Černiavskaja, Tar Minasova, Tarlanov, Padučeva, Zaliznjak & Levontina" (Gebert 2012: 105). In Lucyna Gebert's words (*Ivi*: 103), Wierzbicka believes that "la langue reflète et encourage la tendance, dominante dans la culture russe, à envisager le monde comme un ensemble d'événements incontrôlables et incompréhensibles". For a basic introduction to arguments in support of certain feelings and concepts being specifically Russian, see Šmelev 1997, Wierzbicka 1999, Harkins, Wierzbicka 2001. A useful criticism of the contrasting position of rigid universalism, based on Paul Ekman's postulate that particular facial behaviors are universally associated with particular emotions, may be found in Barbara Rosenwein's synthesis of arguments and counter-arguments (Rosenwein 2010: 2-10). 7 If Russian had precise lexemes for every Russian-specific feeling, how could we explain the hendiadys '*grust'-toska*' attested in Russian folklore (as in the idiom: "A

<sup>8</sup> That such relativistic analyses are sometimes based on superficial or incorrect assumptions may be seen in Šmelev's introduction to another Russian translation of Werzbicka's work. Amidst a series of overtly simplistic examples we find there the claim (Šmelev 2001b: 10) that English 'you' is not as "informal" as the Russian pronoun '*ty*', yet he misses the fact that English 'you' historically corresponds to Russian '*Vy*' (rather than '*ty*'), while 'thou' (which did once correspond to Russian '*ty*') is no longer used. In point of fact, levels of formality in English are not achieved by simply changing pronouns, but by altering the addressee's proper name, changing one's intonation or gaze, and so forth. According to the postulates of cultural relativism, all words of all languages are demonstrably culture-specific, including 'please', 'thank you', 'bless you', 'see you', and so on. The real problem is that languages express the exact same content but do so asymmetrically: the equivalence between any two 'units' needs to be measured at a func-

. For instance, as Aleksej Šmelev (2001a: 9-10)

; secondly, that the

translatable' into another culture6

pressed in that culture.

busy person is not gripped by *grust'-toska*")?

tional, rather than lexical level (cf. Salmon 2006).

across languages8

emotions of all normal members of our species are played on the same keyboard". Certainly, 'national' differences can be detected in the ways emotions and feelings are externalized and in the ways that different stimuli act upon individuals to elicit emotions and feelings, but they are not inherent in any innate and predetermined capacity of a particular language. It is simply not the case, in other words, that a native speaker of one language is able – purely by virtue of being a native speaker of that language – to express personally felt emotions and feelings better than native speakers of other languages. For instance, while any Russian can theoretically experience the feeling or mood described in Russian by the word '*toska*', it is not the case a) that any given Russian will necessarily experience this feeling, b) that a Russian must experience '*toska*' more deeply than, say, an American, or c) that this feeling should be expressed more clearly in Russian words than in English. The occurrence of some terms or expressions in a specific language differs simply because social and moral habits, constraints, and values differ in diverse national environments. There are, of course, country-specific differences in linguistic behavior, but these do not reflect corresponding differences in feelings experienced. Cultural demonstrativeness can widely vary, in other words, but gives little clue as to the nature of actual feelings themselves. Neuroscientists recognize that emotion by countryinteraction effect exists, but is relatively low (cf. Sherer 1994: 174). Differences in anticipated behaviors might result from unusual situations that can stem, for example, from "the perceived morality of the situation, the expectation of the eliciting event, and the perceived causes of agency" (*Ivi*: 175).

According to Roman Jakobson (1987: 433; emphasis in original) "languages differ essentially in what they *must* convey and not in what they *can* convey". In other words, all human languages can potentially represent the same referent equally well, at least when such exists in the physical world of the speaker's experience. If there is no kiwi fruit, the word for kiwi fruit will not be available until it appears – whether as a piece of fruit, an image of the fruit, or a borrowed word. Yet feelings are not tangible objects nor are they specific to nations, geographical spaces or languages. Human words for feelings are produced by human reflection on the same in a process of finding words that can serve to externalize internal affective states. Such reflection is required even when concepts, experiences or feelings are socially unpleasant and when speaking about them is considered impolite. Indeed, literature frequently assumes the task of violating socio-psychological taboos.

It is one thing to claim that Russians tend to talk of sadness more than Americans, and quite another to claim that the Russian word '*grust'*' ('sadness') describes a feeling that is specific to Russian culture and that there is no way in English to express this 'uniquely Russian' feeling. In fact, as linguistic relativism would have it, all languages represent conceptual worlds that are more or less untranslatable, since they are strictly linked to the national culture of the speakers of that language, to their national way of thinking, to a supposedly culturally specific psychology. Such a view suggests not only that Russian words for affective states are untranslatable, but also that feelings themselves are 'un-

emotions of all normal members of our species are played on the same keyboard". Certainly, 'national' differences can be detected in the ways emotions and feelings are externalized and in the ways that different stimuli act upon individuals to elicit emotions and feelings, but they are not inherent in any innate and predetermined capacity of a particular language. It is simply not the case, in other words, that a native speaker of one language is able – purely by virtue of being a native speaker of that language – to express personally felt emotions and feelings better than native speakers of other languages. For instance, while any Russian can theoretically experience the feeling or mood described in Russian by the word '*toska*', it is not the case a) that any given Russian will necessarily experience this feeling, b) that a Russian must experience '*toska*' more deeply than, say, an American, or c) that this feeling should be expressed more clearly in Russian words than in English. The occurrence of some terms or expressions in a specific language differs simply because social and moral habits, constraints, and values differ in diverse national environments. There are, of course, country-specific differences in linguistic behavior, but these do not reflect corresponding differences in feelings experienced. Cultural demonstrativeness can widely vary, in other words, but gives little clue as to the nature of actual feelings themselves. Neuroscientists recognize that emotion by countryinteraction effect exists, but is relatively low (cf. Sherer 1994: 174). Differences in anticipated behaviors might result from unusual situations that can stem, for example, from "the perceived morality of the situation, the expectation of the

eliciting event, and the perceived causes of agency" (*Ivi*: 175).

socio-psychological taboos.

According to Roman Jakobson (1987: 433; emphasis in original) "languages differ essentially in what they *must* convey and not in what they *can* convey". In other words, all human languages can potentially represent the same referent equally well, at least when such exists in the physical world of the speaker's experience. If there is no kiwi fruit, the word for kiwi fruit will not be available until it appears – whether as a piece of fruit, an image of the fruit, or a borrowed word. Yet feelings are not tangible objects nor are they specific to nations, geographical spaces or languages. Human words for feelings are produced by human reflection on the same in a process of finding words that can serve to externalize internal affective states. Such reflection is required even when concepts, experiences or feelings are socially unpleasant and when speaking about them is considered impolite. Indeed, literature frequently assumes the task of violating

It is one thing to claim that Russians tend to talk of sadness more than Americans, and quite another to claim that the Russian word '*grust'*' ('sadness') describes a feeling that is specific to Russian culture and that there is no way in English to express this 'uniquely Russian' feeling. In fact, as linguistic relativism would have it, all languages represent conceptual worlds that are more or less untranslatable, since they are strictly linked to the national culture of the speakers of that language, to their national way of thinking, to a supposedly culturally specific psychology. Such a view suggests not only that Russian words for affective states are untranslatable, but also that feelings themselves are 'untranslatable' into another culture6 . For instance, as Aleksej Šmelev (2001a: 9-10) writes in his introduction to a (translated) volume by Anna Werzbicka:

The feelings expressed by the Russian words *radost'*, *grust'*, *toska*, are significant precisely for Russian culture and for Russian language in particular. On the contrary, in English, there are no precise equivalents for *grust'* and *toska*, but there are words such as *sadness*, *melancholy*, *spleen* and *nostalgia*, which characterize feelings that are somehow close to *grust'* and *toska*, but, however, not identical. What I've said doesn't mean that a native of Anglo-Saxon culture can't feel *grust'* or *toska*, but that the feelings corresponding to these terms are not distinctly expressed in that culture.

The conviction articulated here that some Russian words represent feelings that are nationally specific results from two ingenuous and falsifiable presuppositions: first, that there exists within the Russian language a one-to-one correspondence between single lexemes and isolated feelings7 ; secondly, that the universalism which adherents of nationally specific feelings so aim to discredit requires in any way a one-to-one correspondence of single affective lexemes across languages8 . In her work on nostalgia, Svetlana Boym (2001: 13) sharply

synthesis of arguments and counter-arguments (Rosenwein 2010: 2-10). 7 If Russian had precise lexemes for every Russian-specific feeling, how could we explain the hendiadys '*grust'-toska*' attested in Russian folklore (as in the idiom: "A busy person is not gripped by *grust'-toska*")?

<sup>8</sup> That such relativistic analyses are sometimes based on superficial or incorrect assumptions may be seen in Šmelev's introduction to another Russian translation of Werzbicka's work. Amidst a series of overtly simplistic examples we find there the claim (Šmelev 2001b: 10) that English 'you' is not as "informal" as the Russian pronoun '*ty*', yet he misses the fact that English 'you' historically corresponds to Russian '*Vy*' (rather than '*ty*'), while 'thou' (which did once correspond to Russian '*ty*') is no longer used. In point of fact, levels of formality in English are not achieved by simply changing pronouns, but by altering the addressee's proper name, changing one's intonation or gaze, and so forth. According to the postulates of cultural relativism, all words of all languages are demonstrably culture-specific, including 'please', 'thank you', 'bless you', 'see you', and so on. The real problem is that languages express the exact same content but do so asymmetrically: the equivalence between any two 'units' needs to be measured at a functional, rather than lexical level (cf. Salmon 2006).

<sup>6</sup> The literature of cultural relativism is interminable: Anna Wierzbicka is presently the leading figure in this line of inquiry, and her approach "a eu beaucoup de succès chez plusieurs linguistes russes, comme Rylov, Černiavskaja, Tar Minasova, Tarlanov, Padučeva, Zaliznjak & Levontina" (Gebert 2012: 105). In Lucyna Gebert's words (*Ivi*: 103), Wierzbicka believes that "la langue reflète et encourage la tendance, dominante dans la culture russe, à envisager le monde comme un ensemble d'événements incontrôlables et incompréhensibles". For a basic introduction to arguments in support of certain feelings and concepts being specifically Russian, see Šmelev 1997, Wierzbicka 1999, Harkins, Wierzbicka 2001. A useful criticism of the contrasting position of rigid universalism, based on Paul Ekman's postulate that particular facial behaviors are universally associated with particular emotions, may be found in Barbara Rosenwein's

share or imagine the experiences of those who speak other languages, if culturespecific differences impaired our ability to understand literary texts from the spacetime (chronotope) of other cultures, no non-natives of Russian or English

It would not be possible to read and enjoy literature from a time remote to our own, or from a culture that was profoundly different from our own, unless we shared some common emotional ground, some deep reservoir of assumptions, with

In the view of Svetlana Boym (2001: XVI), nostalgia is a cross-cultural sentiment that expresses and is "coeval to modernity itself"; it is, in other words, "the symptom of our age". In the context of Euro-American and, particularly, Russian culture, she finds two different and contrasting "ways of giving shape and meaning to longing" (*Ivi*: 41), identifying them with the terms "restorative" and "reflective nostalgia". Restorative nostalgia, the desire for an object that is "available and somehow collective" (*Ivi*: 44), transcends strictly personal memories and transforms individual longing into a form of national belonging (*Ivi*: 15). An inclination towards restoration opposes cultural manifestations of subjectivity or intimacy (*Ivi*: 43) to constitute an institutionalized form of regret for

What drives restorative nostalgia is not the sentiment of distance and longing, but rather the anxiety about those who draw attention to historical incongruities between past and present and thus question the wholeness and continuity of the restored tradition [...]. *Restoration* (from *re-staure* – re-establishment) signifies a return to the original stasis, to the prelapsarian moment. The past for the restorative nostalgic is a value for the present; the past is not a duration but a perfect snapshot

Nostalgic longing for an era prior to some presumed 'contamination' is typical of all nationalisms. In Russian culture this is a recurrent feeling that routinely appears in narratives about national origins: the contamination of a pure, 'prelapsarian' Russian world resulting from contact with Western culture is the 'original sin' that restorative nostalgia aims to eliminate. The desire for restoration is firmly based on a Manichean worldview in which а mythical restorative

Reflective nostalgia represents a contrasting form of regret: private, intimate, definitively anti-dramatic. It is a nostalgic longing without ideology, "more concerned with historical and individual time, with the irrevocability of the past and human finitude", longing that "cherishes shattered fragments of memory" (*Ivi*: 49). Reflective nostalgia, being aware of contamination in

would be able to read Dostoevskij or Dickens:

4. *Melancholy, Reflective Nostalgia,* Zadumčivaja Toska

a ostensible former era of wholeness. At the same time,

(*Ivi*: 44-45, 49; emphasis in original).

future will revive a mythical past.

the writer (McEwan 2005: 11).

criticizes the naiveté of the culturally relativistic illusion that words expressing 'longing' should be unique and untranslatable:

While each term preserves the specific rhythms of the language, one is struck by the fact that all these untranslatable words are in fact synonyms; and all share the desire for untranslatability, the longing for uniqueness. While the details and flavors differ, the grammar of romantic nostalgias all over the world is quite similar.

The inaccuracies and contradictions inherent in theories of the unique specificity of certain Russian words and concepts has been explicitly unmasked by Evgenij Zareckij (2007). As he points out, for example, cultural relativists consider Russians to be more 'fatalistic' than the British simply because the word '*sud'ba*' has a higher occurrence in Russian texts than does 'destiny' in written English. Such a conclusion disregards the fact that the English word 'fate' is also used in the same semantic contexts as 'destiny' and '*sud'ba*', and that texts translated from English into Russian contain the same frequency of '*sud'ba*' as do untranslated Russian texts. Moreover,

The supporters of A. Werzbicka, who ascribe to Russians fatalism, a belief in destiny and in chance, never attempt to strengthen their hypotheses on the basis of statistical data. Whether or not the British really use fewer impersonal constructions than Russians (since they believe more in themselves and less in destiny) should be confirmed by sociological opinion polls. Such polls do exist, yet they tend to confirm the opposite. For example, in 2005 the Russian National Center for Public Opinion Research published data that demonstrated 35% of Russians believe in destiny9 . On July 21 of the same year, the British newspaper "The Sun" published the results of an opinion poll carried out by the organization Populus Limited, according to which 68% of the population believes in destiny – almost twice as many as in Russia<sup>10</sup>. Analogous data for the US are missing, although an opinion poll from 2000 does affirm that 75% of Americans believes that they are predestined to end up in heaven and another 1% think they will finish in hell<sup>11</sup>. In consequence, we can argue that in the US at least 76% of the population (75+1) believes in destiny since predestination is indeed the same thing.

Finally, if a given language were incapable of hosting the affective states, moods, and feelings had by others, if humans lacked the empathetic capacity to

<sup>9</sup> *Navstreču Xellouinu: vo čto verjat rossijane*, "Vserossijskij Centr Izučenija Obščestvennogo Mnenija. Press-vypusk", 2005, 326 (31.10.05), cf. <http://wciom.ru/ index.php?id=459&uid=1915> (cf. Zareckij 2007).

<sup>10</sup> *Fieldwork: April 8-9 2005. Published in The Sun, June 20 & 21 2005*, "Populus Limited", 2005, <http://www.populuslimited.com/poll\_summaries/2005\_06> (cf. Zareckij 2007).

<sup>11</sup> H. Taylor, *No Significant Changes in the Large Majorities Who Believe in God, Heaven, the Resurrection, Survival of Soul, Miracles and Virgin Birth*, "The Harris Poll. A Service of Harris Interactive", 2000, 52, cf. <http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/ Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-NO-SIGNIFICANT-CHANGES-IN-THE-LARGE-MAJORITIES-WHO-2000-09.pdf> (cf. Zareckij 2007).

share or imagine the experiences of those who speak other languages, if culturespecific differences impaired our ability to understand literary texts from the spacetime (chronotope) of other cultures, no non-natives of Russian or English would be able to read Dostoevskij or Dickens:

It would not be possible to read and enjoy literature from a time remote to our own, or from a culture that was profoundly different from our own, unless we shared some common emotional ground, some deep reservoir of assumptions, with the writer (McEwan 2005: 11).

### 4. *Melancholy, Reflective Nostalgia,* Zadumčivaja Toska

20 *Laura Salmon*

'longing' should be unique and untranslatable:

do untranslated Russian texts. Moreover,

believe in destiny9

Zareckij 2007).

criticizes the naiveté of the culturally relativistic illusion that words expressing

While each term preserves the specific rhythms of the language, one is struck by the fact that all these untranslatable words are in fact synonyms; and all share the desire for untranslatability, the longing for uniqueness. While the details and flavors differ, the grammar of romantic nostalgias all over the world is quite similar.

The inaccuracies and contradictions inherent in theories of the unique specificity of certain Russian words and concepts has been explicitly unmasked by Evgenij Zareckij (2007). As he points out, for example, cultural relativists consider Russians to be more 'fatalistic' than the British simply because the word '*sud'ba*' has a higher occurrence in Russian texts than does 'destiny' in written English. Such a conclusion disregards the fact that the English word 'fate' is also used in the same semantic contexts as 'destiny' and '*sud'ba*', and that texts translated from English into Russian contain the same frequency of '*sud'ba*' as

The supporters of A. Werzbicka, who ascribe to Russians fatalism, a belief in destiny and in chance, never attempt to strengthen their hypotheses on the basis of statistical data. Whether or not the British really use fewer impersonal constructions than Russians (since they believe more in themselves and less in destiny) should be confirmed by sociological opinion polls. Such polls do exist, yet they tend to confirm the opposite. For example, in 2005 the Russian National Center for Public Opinion Research published data that demonstrated 35% of Russians

published the results of an opinion poll carried out by the organization Populus Limited, according to which 68% of the population believes in destiny – almost twice as many as in Russia<sup>10</sup>. Analogous data for the US are missing, although an opinion poll from 2000 does affirm that 75% of Americans believes that they are predestined to end up in heaven and another 1% think they will finish in hell<sup>11</sup>. In consequence, we can argue that in the US at least 76% of the population (75+1)

Finally, if a given language were incapable of hosting the affective states, moods, and feelings had by others, if humans lacked the empathetic capacity to

<sup>9</sup> *Navstreču Xellouinu: vo čto verjat rossijane*, "Vserossijskij Centr Izučenija Obščestvennogo Mnenija. Press-vypusk", 2005, 326 (31.10.05), cf. <http://wciom.ru/

<sup>10</sup> *Fieldwork: April 8-9 2005. Published in The Sun, June 20 & 21 2005*, "Populus Limited", 2005, <http://www.populuslimited.com/poll\_summaries/2005\_06> (cf.

<sup>11</sup> H. Taylor, *No Significant Changes in the Large Majorities Who Believe in God, Heaven, the Resurrection, Survival of Soul, Miracles and Virgin Birth*, "The Harris Poll. A Service of Harris Interactive", 2000, 52, cf. <http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/ Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-NO-SIGNIFICANT-CHANGES-IN-THE-LARGE-

believes in destiny since predestination is indeed the same thing.

index.php?id=459&uid=1915> (cf. Zareckij 2007).

MAJORITIES-WHO-2000-09.pdf> (cf. Zareckij 2007).

. On July 21 of the same year, the British newspaper "The Sun"

In the view of Svetlana Boym (2001: XVI), nostalgia is a cross-cultural sentiment that expresses and is "coeval to modernity itself"; it is, in other words, "the symptom of our age". In the context of Euro-American and, particularly, Russian culture, she finds two different and contrasting "ways of giving shape and meaning to longing" (*Ivi*: 41), identifying them with the terms "restorative" and "reflective nostalgia". Restorative nostalgia, the desire for an object that is "available and somehow collective" (*Ivi*: 44), transcends strictly personal memories and transforms individual longing into a form of national belonging (*Ivi*: 15). An inclination towards restoration opposes cultural manifestations of subjectivity or intimacy (*Ivi*: 43) to constitute an institutionalized form of regret for a ostensible former era of wholeness. At the same time,

What drives restorative nostalgia is not the sentiment of distance and longing, but rather the anxiety about those who draw attention to historical incongruities between past and present and thus question the wholeness and continuity of the restored tradition [...]. *Restoration* (from *re-staure* – re-establishment) signifies a return to the original stasis, to the prelapsarian moment. The past for the restorative nostalgic is a value for the present; the past is not a duration but a perfect snapshot (*Ivi*: 44-45, 49; emphasis in original).

Nostalgic longing for an era prior to some presumed 'contamination' is typical of all nationalisms. In Russian culture this is a recurrent feeling that routinely appears in narratives about national origins: the contamination of a pure, 'prelapsarian' Russian world resulting from contact with Western culture is the 'original sin' that restorative nostalgia aims to eliminate. The desire for restoration is firmly based on a Manichean worldview in which а mythical restorative future will revive a mythical past.

Reflective nostalgia represents a contrasting form of regret: private, intimate, definitively anti-dramatic. It is a nostalgic longing without ideology, "more concerned with historical and individual time, with the irrevocability of the past and human finitude", longing that "cherishes shattered fragments of memory" (*Ivi*: 49). Reflective nostalgia, being aware of contamination in

refer to a specific feeling of lack and/or loss if and when accompanied by a complement with the preposition '*po*' to indicate nostalgic longing *for some-*

Further insight on the correlation between 'reflective nostalgia' and 'melancholy' appears in Boym's comparison of the reflective nostalgic mood with

Freud made a distinction between mourning and melancholia. Mourning is connected to the loss of a loved one or the loss of some abstraction, such as a homeland, liberty or an ideal [...]. In melancholia the loss is not clearly defined and is more unconscious. Melancholia doesn't pass with the labor of grief and has less

Boym's view is consistent with that of Johannisson (2011: 20), who defines 'melancholy' (on the basis of Swedish term '*melancholi*') as a complex affective state that blends diverse feelings, ranging from objectless longing to anguish and ennui. Her 'melancholy' is also pensive and thus can be linked to

Together with concomitant feelings of longing and angst, melancholy belongs to a high form of grief, i.e. to a state of mind characterized by ambivalence [...]. It generates a space where the intimate "Self", consciously or not, can find refuge. Melancholy and its concomitant feelings almost always reveal a conflict between the individual and the surrounding world [...]. Melancholy also has a liminal nature and, though it historically represented a form of psychic distress, is difficult to define. It is the totality of moods and states of mind that have arisen in diverse combinations and in diverse situations with diverse individuals (*Ivi*: 8, 20)<sup>15</sup>.

Johannisson explicitly argues that melancholy is not only a 'liminal feeling' but it is also the direct expression of the condition of a feeling of marginality:

<sup>15</sup> In the Russian translation of the book by Johannisson (2011: 8), which is the version considered in this paper, as 'concomitant feelings' of melancholy, the word '*toska'* was used in translating Swed. '*längtan*', which is close to English 'longing'.

(1984: 389), we find '*toska*' equated with "1. *tjaželoe gnetuščee čuvstvo*, *duševnaja trevoga*; *grust'*, *unynie*; 2. *skuka*, *unynie*, *carjaščie gde-libo*, *vyzyvaemye odnoobraziem obstanovki*, *otsutstviem dela*, *interesa k okružajuščemu*; 3. *To, čto vyzyvaet u kogo-libo sostojanie duševnogo tomlenija*, *sil'noj skuki*" ("1. A heavy feeling of oppression, heartfelt anxiety; sadness, dejection; 2. ennui or dejection prevailing somewhere in something and triggered by the circumstance of monotony or by a lack of activity or interest in the surroundings; 3. that which provokes in someone a condition of heartfelt languor, of strong boredom"). 14 Interestingly, the Russian word '*nostal'gija*' may be intended by native speakers to mean 'nostalgia for the homeland', otherwise known as '*toska po rodine*', which is a subset of '*toska*' (Dal' 1979, IV: 422); thus, one can interchange '*nostal'gija*' with '*toska po rodine*', but not with '*toska*' alone. On the origins of the term '*toska po ro-*

*thing* or *someone*14.

*dine*', see Dickinson 2015.

Freud's definition of 'melancholia':

connection to the outside world (Boym 2001: 55).

Dal's '*zadumčivaja toska*' and to Boym's 'reflective nostalgia':

both external and internal spheres, represents a variety of self-analysis that has been diverted, to accept a reality that is "defamiliarized". If restorative nostalgia "takes itself dead seriously", the reflective variety "can be ironic and humorous" (*Ibidem*). The latter

reveals that longing and critical thinking are not opposed to one other, as affective memories do not absolve one from compassion, judgment or critical reflection [...]. This type of nostalgic narrative is ironic, inconclusive and fragmentary. Nostalgics of the second type are aware of the gap between identity and resemblance; the home is in ruin or, on the contrary, has been just renovated and gentrified beyond recognition. This defamiliarization and sense of distance drives them to tell their story, to narrate the relationship between past, present and future (*Ivi*: 49-50).

Boym holds that a reflective mood emerges from incongruities between reality, reason, and feelings; reflective persons, she argues, "are aware of the gap between identity and resemblance" (*Ivi*: 50). Such is the peculiar condition of the literary author, who manages an existential mood by means of artistic expression, whose melancholic 'creative style' reflects a melancholic 'affective style'.

Existential, psychological, and cultural reflectiveness is not expressed by a single, unique language, but rather through style, it is a way or mode of looking at experience and narrating it. The English term 'reflective nostalgia' itself, coined by the Russian Jew Svetlana Boym, an émigré in the United States, expresses a state of mind or affective style that is intimately linked both with the English lexeme 'melancholy', and the Russian lexemes '*melanxolija*' and '*toska*'. The relationship between these terms bears review.

The *Oxford Dictionary of British and World English* (2015) defines 'melancholy' as "a feeling of pensive sadness typically with no obvious cause", i.e. a sentiment of longing that is both reflective and lacking in clear motivation (or a precise object)<sup>12</sup>. The Russian term '*melanxolija*' was similarly defined by the famous Russian lexicographer Vladimir Dal' in 1882 as '*zadumčivaja toska*' (Dal' 1979, II: 315), literally 'reflective nostalgia'. As for '*toska*', the two most reliable and highly regarded Russian dictionaries of the previous two centuries (Dal' 1979 and Evgen'eva 1984) describe this polysemic term as indicating a hybrid feeling, whose basic elements may include sadness, depression, angst, grief, languor, ennui, and longing<sup>13</sup>. '*Toska*' in Russian can

<sup>12</sup> In the monumental Oxford Dictionary (2015: online version), the original, obsolete and physiological or medical meanings of 'melancholy' are followed by a second definition that includes a reference to 'humour'; the third is: "Sadness, dejection, esp. of a pensive nature; gloominess; pensiveness or introspection; an inclination or tendency to this".

<sup>13</sup> Specifically, Dal' (1979, IV: 422) defines '*toska*' as "*Stesnenie duxa*, *tomlenie duši*, *mučitel'naja grust'*, *duševnaja trevoga*, *bespokojstvo*, *bojazn'*, *skuka*, *gore*, *pečal'*, *nojka serdca*, *skorb'*" ("Mental stress, languor of spirit, tormenting sadness; heartfelt angst, unrest, fear, ennui, grief, sorrow, gnawing of the heart, affliction"); in Evgen'eva

(*Ibidem*). The latter

'affective style'.

to this".

both external and internal spheres, represents a variety of self-analysis that has been diverted, to accept a reality that is "defamiliarized". If restorative nostalgia "takes itself dead seriously", the reflective variety "can be ironic and humorous"

reveals that longing and critical thinking are not opposed to one other, as affective memories do not absolve one from compassion, judgment or critical reflection [...]. This type of nostalgic narrative is ironic, inconclusive and fragmentary. Nostalgics of the second type are aware of the gap between identity and resemblance; the home is in ruin or, on the contrary, has been just renovated and gentrified beyond recognition. This defamiliarization and sense of distance drives them to tell their story, to narrate the relationship between past, present and future (*Ivi*: 49-50).

Boym holds that a reflective mood emerges from incongruities between reality, reason, and feelings; reflective persons, she argues, "are aware of the gap between identity and resemblance" (*Ivi*: 50). Such is the peculiar condition of the literary author, who manages an existential mood by means of artistic expression, whose melancholic 'creative style' reflects a melancholic

Existential, psychological, and cultural reflectiveness is not expressed by a single, unique language, but rather through style, it is a way or mode of looking at experience and narrating it. The English term 'reflective nostalgia' itself, coined by the Russian Jew Svetlana Boym, an émigré in the United States, expresses a state of mind or affective style that is intimately linked both with the English lexeme 'melancholy', and the Russian lexemes '*melanxolija*' and '*tos-*

The *Oxford Dictionary of British and World English* (2015) defines 'melancholy' as "a feeling of pensive sadness typically with no obvious cause", i.e. a sentiment of longing that is both reflective and lacking in clear motivation (or a precise object)<sup>12</sup>. The Russian term '*melanxolija*' was similarly defined by the famous Russian lexicographer Vladimir Dal' in 1882 as '*zadumčivaja toska*' (Dal' 1979, II: 315), literally 'reflective nostalgia'. As for '*toska*', the two most reliable and highly regarded Russian dictionaries of the previous two centuries (Dal' 1979 and Evgen'eva 1984) describe this polysemic term as indicating a hybrid feeling, whose basic elements may include sadness, depression, angst, grief, languor, ennui, and longing<sup>13</sup>. '*Toska*' in Russian can

<sup>12</sup> In the monumental Oxford Dictionary (2015: online version), the original, obsolete and physiological or medical meanings of 'melancholy' are followed by a second definition that includes a reference to 'humour'; the third is: "Sadness, dejection, esp. of a pensive nature; gloominess; pensiveness or introspection; an inclination or tendency

<sup>13</sup> Specifically, Dal' (1979, IV: 422) defines '*toska*' as "*Stesnenie duxa*, *tomlenie duši*, *mučitel'naja grust'*, *duševnaja trevoga*, *bespokojstvo*, *bojazn'*, *skuka*, *gore*, *pečal'*, *nojka serdca*, *skorb'*" ("Mental stress, languor of spirit, tormenting sadness; heartfelt angst, unrest, fear, ennui, grief, sorrow, gnawing of the heart, affliction"); in Evgen'eva

*ka*'. The relationship between these terms bears review.

refer to a specific feeling of lack and/or loss if and when accompanied by a complement with the preposition '*po*' to indicate nostalgic longing *for something* or *someone*14.

Further insight on the correlation between 'reflective nostalgia' and 'melancholy' appears in Boym's comparison of the reflective nostalgic mood with Freud's definition of 'melancholia':

Freud made a distinction between mourning and melancholia. Mourning is connected to the loss of a loved one or the loss of some abstraction, such as a homeland, liberty or an ideal [...]. In melancholia the loss is not clearly defined and is more unconscious. Melancholia doesn't pass with the labor of grief and has less connection to the outside world (Boym 2001: 55).

Boym's view is consistent with that of Johannisson (2011: 20), who defines 'melancholy' (on the basis of Swedish term '*melancholi*') as a complex affective state that blends diverse feelings, ranging from objectless longing to anguish and ennui. Her 'melancholy' is also pensive and thus can be linked to Dal's '*zadumčivaja toska*' and to Boym's 'reflective nostalgia':

Together with concomitant feelings of longing and angst, melancholy belongs to a high form of grief, i.e. to a state of mind characterized by ambivalence [...]. It generates a space where the intimate "Self", consciously or not, can find refuge. Melancholy and its concomitant feelings almost always reveal a conflict between the individual and the surrounding world [...]. Melancholy also has a liminal nature and, though it historically represented a form of psychic distress, is difficult to define. It is the totality of moods and states of mind that have arisen in diverse combinations and in diverse situations with diverse individuals (*Ivi*: 8, 20)<sup>15</sup>.

Johannisson explicitly argues that melancholy is not only a 'liminal feeling' but it is also the direct expression of the condition of a feeling of marginality:

<sup>(1984: 389),</sup> we find '*toska*' equated with "1. *tjaželoe gnetuščee čuvstvo*, *duševnaja trevoga*; *grust'*, *unynie*; 2. *skuka*, *unynie*, *carjaščie gde-libo*, *vyzyvaemye odnoobraziem obstanovki*, *otsutstviem dela*, *interesa k okružajuščemu*; 3. *To, čto vyzyvaet u kogo-libo sostojanie duševnogo tomlenija*, *sil'noj skuki*" ("1. A heavy feeling of oppression, heartfelt anxiety; sadness, dejection; 2. ennui or dejection prevailing somewhere in something and triggered by the circumstance of monotony or by a lack of activity or interest in the surroundings; 3. that which provokes in someone a condition of heartfelt languor, of strong boredom"). 14 Interestingly, the Russian word '*nostal'gija*' may be intended by native speak-

ers to mean 'nostalgia for the homeland', otherwise known as '*toska po rodine*', which is a subset of '*toska*' (Dal' 1979, IV: 422); thus, one can interchange '*nostal'gija*' with '*toska po rodine*', but not with '*toska*' alone. On the origins of the term '*toska po rodine*', see Dickinson 2015.

<sup>15</sup> In the Russian translation of the book by Johannisson (2011: 8), which is the version considered in this paper, as 'concomitant feelings' of melancholy, the word '*toska'* was used in translating Swed. '*längtan*', which is close to English 'longing'.

The distinguishing feature of liminal states of mind may be found in their oscillation between health and illness, but also between adaptation and rebellion. They lie exactly at the boundary between the personal and social spheres (*Ivi*: 20).

*Chronotopes of Affectivity in Literature* 25

Emotional communities are largely the same as social communities – families, neighborhoods, syndicates, academic institutions, monasteries, factories, platoons, princely courts. But the researcher looking at them seeks above all to uncover systems of feeling, to establish what these communities (and the individuals within them) define and assess as valuable or harmful to them (for it is about such things that people express emotions); the emotions that they value, devalue, or ignore; the nature of the affective bonds between people that they recognize; and the modes of

emotional expression that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and deplore.

backward and more deeply into the historical past.

quence and cowardice (Slezkine 2004: 212).

Whatever their national provenance, people who feel themselves to be 'different' belong to a community that is not ethnically or nationally specific, but international, supranational, or even hyper-national, cosmopolitan, and fundamentally hybrid. Whatever specific linguistic or cultural elements are at stake, a melancholic affective style is marked by pronounced *reflectiveness*: it is nostalgic, critical, humorous, and/or ironic, expressing distance or estrangement from a dominant and more serious ideology, from the very cliché of nationality itself. Albeit in various gradations, reflectiveness is a state or condition of exaggerated and recurring 'regret for the Self', that might in Russian be called '*toska po sebe*'. The pensiveness that characterizes marginal identities thus often takes the shape of an ambivalent 'longing for belonging', a sentiment which simultaneously expresses both yearning for and, ultimately, rejection of belonging or, more generally, of any definite ontology, ideology, or dogmatic position. Melancholic identities reflect the sense of marginality or estrangement proper to border zones or physical and psychological diasporas, and are characterized by longing that aims by no means at the actual past, but at "the past the way it could have been" (Boym 2001: 351). Boym's theoretical framework dovetails nicely with the illuminating historical paradigm brilliantly outlined by Yuri Slezkine's in *The Jewish Century* (Slezkine 2004). The overlap of the two models is astonishing, especially as both authors mainly devote their attention to Russian and Russian-Jewish history and culture. Slezkine's representation of modernity would seem to constitute a logical extension of Boym's cultural analysis of nostalgic feeling that goes

According to Slezkine, human cultures can be divided into two types that reflect the symbolic contrast between the classical gods Apollo and Mercury. 'Apollonians' belong to those cultures rooted in a stable land that serves as their main point of reference: they stand for territory, stability, national identity, and physical dominance. 'Mercurians' are comparatively 'nomadic' in the sense that, wherever they live, they remain outsiders and experience a "permanent state of ambivalence" (*Ivi*: 36). Whereas Apollonians are strong and build strong countries, Mercurians are physically weak, and against Apollonians can offer only wisdom and knowledge (*Ivi*: 12)16. Mercurians thus "create concepts and

<sup>16</sup> Slezkine's catalogue of Apollonian qualities includes solidity, firmness, toughness, decisiveness, earnestness, simplicity, inarticulateness, and courage, while the Mercurian traits are restlessness, changeability, doubt, self-reflection, irony, cleverness, elo-

In fact, melancholic *toska* is a complex feeling of incongruity and dissonance, a permanent sense of liminality in a world where, as the famous Russian song has it, "all is not the way it should be" (Vysockij 1999, I: 164).

## 5. *Melancholic Identity and Mercuriality*

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Boym (2001: 16) asserts, the "melancholic sense of loss" characterizing modernity "turned into a style". Insofar as the world of words can offer an alternative to the 'real' world, a place where feelings can be elaborated and stylized, expressions of reflective nostalgia can paradoxically constitute a meaningful response to absurdity and to the nonsense of reality, an active process of 'disillusionment'. The greater one's tendency to melancholic reflection, the richer a concomitant sense of irony that hinders any impulse towards a dramatic worldview and more 'serious' writing. In short, when a melancholic mind begins to reflect upon itself, the outcome is *melancholic humor*.

A 'feeling of marginality' constitutes the stable background sentiment of particular categories of people that share a fragile sense of identity and a disposition towards a paradoxical 'de-idealized idealism'. These are people experiencing 'intimate exile', their existence characterized by a permanent state of internal marginalization and consequent yearning for the 'Self'. Since this overly aggrandized 'Self' is at home both nowhere and everywhere, the object of their reflective longing "is not really a place called home", but a "sense of intimacy with the world" (*Ivi*: 251). A persistently 'reflective mood', or state of pensiveness, makes thoughts and feelings themselves the sole 'homeland' for such unstable Selves.

'Melancholic identities', the subject of this volume, belong to reflective 'nostalgics' that are somehow strangers to themselves. Their reflectiveness tends to prize the evidence of diversity found in culture and in cultural memory – an approach that contrasts with that of restorative nostalgia:

the other is not merely a representative of another culture, but also a singular individual with a right to long for – but not necessarily belong to – his place of birth (*Ivi*: 337).

In other words, melancholic identities actually represent social and psychological 'difference' and do so by sharing not a specific language, but certain background feelings that emerge from historical and personal narrative. While melancholy can be expressed with variable gradations depending on its *Zeitgeist* (Johannisson 2011: 9), it also reveals shared patterns that link its subjects in what Rosenwein (2010: 11) has called an "emotional community":

5. *Melancholic Identity and Mercuriality*

The distinguishing feature of liminal states of mind may be found in their oscillation between health and illness, but also between adaptation and rebellion. They lie exactly at the boundary between the personal and social spheres (*Ivi*: 20).

In fact, melancholic *toska* is a complex feeling of incongruity and dissonance, a permanent sense of liminality in a world where, as the famous Russian

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Boym (2001: 16) asserts, the "melancholic sense of loss" characterizing modernity "turned into a style". Insofar as the world of words can offer an alternative to the 'real' world, a place where feelings can be elaborated and stylized, expressions of reflective nostalgia can paradoxically constitute a meaningful response to absurdity and to the nonsense of reality, an active process of 'disillusionment'. The greater one's tendency to melancholic reflection, the richer a concomitant sense of irony that hinders any impulse towards a dramatic worldview and more 'serious' writing. In short, when a melancholic mind begins to reflect upon itself, the outcome is *melancholic humor*. A 'feeling of marginality' constitutes the stable background sentiment of particular categories of people that share a fragile sense of identity and a disposition towards a paradoxical 'de-idealized idealism'. These are people experiencing 'intimate exile', their existence characterized by a permanent state of internal marginalization and consequent yearning for the 'Self'. Since this overly aggrandized 'Self' is at home both nowhere and everywhere, the object of their reflective longing "is not really a place called home", but a "sense of intimacy with the world" (*Ivi*: 251). A persistently 'reflective mood', or state of pensiveness, makes thoughts and feelings themselves the sole 'homeland' for such unstable Selves. 'Melancholic identities', the subject of this volume, belong to reflective 'nostalgics' that are somehow strangers to themselves. Their reflectiveness tends to prize the evidence of diversity found in culture and in cultural memory

song has it, "all is not the way it should be" (Vysockij 1999, I: 164).

– an approach that contrasts with that of restorative nostalgia:

what Rosenwein (2010: 11) has called an "emotional community":

(*Ivi*: 337).

the other is not merely a representative of another culture, but also a singular individual with a right to long for – but not necessarily belong to – his place of birth

In other words, melancholic identities actually represent social and psychological 'difference' and do so by sharing not a specific language, but certain background feelings that emerge from historical and personal narrative. While melancholy can be expressed with variable gradations depending on its *Zeitgeist* (Johannisson 2011: 9), it also reveals shared patterns that link its subjects in

Emotional communities are largely the same as social communities – families, neighborhoods, syndicates, academic institutions, monasteries, factories, platoons, princely courts. But the researcher looking at them seeks above all to uncover systems of feeling, to establish what these communities (and the individuals within them) define and assess as valuable or harmful to them (for it is about such things that people express emotions); the emotions that they value, devalue, or ignore; the nature of the affective bonds between people that they recognize; and the modes of emotional expression that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and deplore.

Whatever their national provenance, people who feel themselves to be 'different' belong to a community that is not ethnically or nationally specific, but international, supranational, or even hyper-national, cosmopolitan, and fundamentally hybrid. Whatever specific linguistic or cultural elements are at stake, a melancholic affective style is marked by pronounced *reflectiveness*: it is nostalgic, critical, humorous, and/or ironic, expressing distance or estrangement from a dominant and more serious ideology, from the very cliché of nationality itself. Albeit in various gradations, reflectiveness is a state or condition of exaggerated and recurring 'regret for the Self', that might in Russian be called '*toska po sebe*'. The pensiveness that characterizes marginal identities thus often takes the shape of an ambivalent 'longing for belonging', a sentiment which simultaneously expresses both yearning for and, ultimately, rejection of belonging or, more generally, of any definite ontology, ideology, or dogmatic position. Melancholic identities reflect the sense of marginality or estrangement proper to border zones or physical and psychological diasporas, and are characterized by longing that aims by no means at the actual past, but at "the past the way it could have been" (Boym 2001: 351).

Boym's theoretical framework dovetails nicely with the illuminating historical paradigm brilliantly outlined by Yuri Slezkine's in *The Jewish Century* (Slezkine 2004). The overlap of the two models is astonishing, especially as both authors mainly devote their attention to Russian and Russian-Jewish history and culture. Slezkine's representation of modernity would seem to constitute a logical extension of Boym's cultural analysis of nostalgic feeling that goes backward and more deeply into the historical past.

According to Slezkine, human cultures can be divided into two types that reflect the symbolic contrast between the classical gods Apollo and Mercury. 'Apollonians' belong to those cultures rooted in a stable land that serves as their main point of reference: they stand for territory, stability, national identity, and physical dominance. 'Mercurians' are comparatively 'nomadic' in the sense that, wherever they live, they remain outsiders and experience a "permanent state of ambivalence" (*Ivi*: 36). Whereas Apollonians are strong and build strong countries, Mercurians are physically weak, and against Apollonians can offer only wisdom and knowledge (*Ivi*: 12)16. Mercurians thus "create concepts and

<sup>16</sup> Slezkine's catalogue of Apollonian qualities includes solidity, firmness, toughness, decisiveness, earnestness, simplicity, inarticulateness, and courage, while the Mercurian traits are restlessness, changeability, doubt, self-reflection, irony, cleverness, eloquence and cowardice (Slezkine 2004: 212).

rative sense; neither notion can be defined simply as mere distance from one's homeland, because, as Bronislava Volková (2008: 175) puts it, exile is "multifaceted and can be considered from many different perspectives". In his *Essay on Distance*, Antonio Prete (2008) analyzes how different forms of concrete (physical) or psychological (affective) 'exile' are expressed in literary texts – and how literature itself contributes to the holistic understanding of the feelings that are generated by lack, loss, and distance. At the same time, he points out, our 'loss' of native or affective space is also the loss of the time that we have spent there (Prete 2008: 83). But there is a form of nostalgic estrangement not considered by Prete that emerges from the work of both Boym and Slezkine: this is a form of longing for the very state of estrangement that is represented by an ambivalent or 'split' identity. In this context, ambivalence itself paradoxically becomes a positive value and this feeling of 'split identity' turns into a mood of permanent longing for an existential 'homeland' which gradually becomes ambivalence itself. Such a nostalgic mood is widely shared by those individuals in which a diasporic

Diasporic intimacy is possible only when one masters a certain imperfect aesthetics of survival and learns to inhabit exile. The immigrants cherish their oases of intimacy, away from the homeland and not quite in the promised land (Boym

The pensive and funny-though-poignant mood of diasporic artists serves as an antidote against any kind of restoration, as a paradoxical form of 'hyper-

– Я наполовину русский, наполовину – украинец, наполовину – поляк и

Вот какой был уникальный человек! Из четырех половин состоял... (Do-

People 'of four halves' can speak multiple languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Yiddish, German, and so on), their identities taking shape in a world of words that is rife with representations of diversity, a supranational 'territory' designed for the preservation of the Self, i.e. of strangeness itself, that quality essential to diasporic identity (Slezkine 2004: 19). A Russian-Jewish sense of diasporic estrangement finds its direct reflection in Russian verbal art. Russian would seem to be the most 'Mercurian' of the available languages since it is the most ambivalent of the 'usurper's' tongues, the official language of the Apollonian state, but also the idiom of Puškin. Insofar as Russian Mercurian identities are imperfectly Russian, they are also typically Russian, representing the hybrid, melancholic, and 'dark' side of Russian culture that has traditionally

<sup>19</sup> "My friend the painter Šer would say, 'I'm half Russian, half Ukrainian, half

Polish and half Jew...'. Now that was a unique individual! Made of four halves...".

identity has been developed and reinforced. In Boym's words:

2001: 336).

nationalism'. As Sergej Dovlatov wrote:

наполовину – еврей...

vlatov 1983: 11)19.

Мой приятель художник Шер говорил:

artifacts", they "use words, concepts, money, emotions, and other intangibles as tools of their trade" (*Ivi*: 24, 28)17.

The sphere of feelings, like that of concepts and words, is thus typically a 'Mercurian zone', an intimate realm that contrasts with the Apollonian world shaped by physical domination. For many reasons, all 'diversities' and 'strangenesses' share in their marginalization a 'feminine' quality or sense of weakness that Apollonians feel as a 'threat for masculinity' despite its contradictory appeal. Mercurians oppose wit to weapon (*Ivi*: 24); they "break the rules" of tradition, particularly the social rules "regulating sexual life and the sexual division of labor" (*Ivi*: 10-11), and "assign more visible and economically important roles to women than do peasants and warriors" (*Ibidem*). Despite physical fragility, they are mentally strong and emotively alluring. Mercurians do not constitute a proper national group, but an emotional community bound by shared estrangement.

The quintessential representatives of modern mercuriality, Slezkine argues (*Ivi*: 39), are the European Jews, "the scriptural Mercurians of Europe", who "came to represent Mercurianism and modernity everywhere". In particular, as he demonstrates throughout his book, the fundamental cultural mutation that defined the modern age occurred among the Russian Jews. The Russian Empire was indeed the birthplace of many Zionist and Communist heroes, and thus "the cradle of much of modern Jewish mythology" (*Ivi*: 4). Yet a paradox lies at the core of Russian-Jewish mythology – and identity. To combat autocracy and Russian orthodoxy, the two sacred pillars of nineteenth-century Russian (Apollonian) self-representation, Jews wielded the 'Puškin faith', a new, secular and 'cultural religion' that was conceived as a means for Mercurians' assimilation into the dominant culture18. Russian secular literature, with its undisputed hero, Puškin, was closely tied to a Jewish sense of exile and rebellion. Jews became 'Russians' and assumed verbal art as their primary (Russian) value (*Ivi*: 159), their focus on classical Russian literary culture symbolically embraced the spirit of opposition that reflective-melancholic art could provide against the conservative and 'restorative' tendencies of Apollonian culture:

After the nineteenth century, Russian literature became a form of civic religion. Yet the cosmopolitan ideal of a 'republic of letters' is foreign to Russian culture. Rather, there is a Russian Empire of letters, and the writer is a subject of that empire, Hence the exile is a cultural transgression that threatens a writer's very survival, both physical and spiritual (Boym 2001: 257).

In Boym's view (*Ivi*: 251), Russian Mercurians are typical examples of "reflective nostalgics", those who *reflect* on both Self and Other, who "see everywhere the imperfect mirror images of home, and try to cohabit with doubles and ghosts". 'Exile' and 'Diaspora' can be understood in both their literal and figu-

<sup>17</sup> It is significant that Mercury is the patron of writers and Mercurians the "people of the written word" (Slezkine 2004: 29).

<sup>18</sup> On the history of the Russian Jews and their relationship with Russian culture, see also my article on Igor' Guberman in this volume.

tive and 'restorative' tendencies of Apollonian culture:

vival, both physical and spiritual (Boym 2001: 257).

ple of the written word" (Slezkine 2004: 29).

see also my article on Igor' Guberman in this volume.

tools of their trade" (*Ivi*: 24, 28)17.

artifacts", they "use words, concepts, money, emotions, and other intangibles as

The sphere of feelings, like that of concepts and words, is thus typically a 'Mercurian zone', an intimate realm that contrasts with the Apollonian world shaped by physical domination. For many reasons, all 'diversities' and 'strangenesses' share in their marginalization a 'feminine' quality or sense of weakness that Apollonians feel as a 'threat for masculinity' despite its contradictory appeal. Mercurians oppose wit to weapon (*Ivi*: 24); they "break the rules" of tradition, particularly the social rules "regulating sexual life and the sexual division of labor" (*Ivi*: 10-11), and "assign more visible and economically important roles to women than do peasants and warriors" (*Ibidem*). Despite physical fragility, they are mentally strong and emotively alluring. Mercurians do not constitute a proper national group, but an emotional community bound by shared estrangement.

The quintessential representatives of modern mercuriality, Slezkine argues (*Ivi*: 39), are the European Jews, "the scriptural Mercurians of Europe", who "came to represent Mercurianism and modernity everywhere". In particular, as he demonstrates throughout his book, the fundamental cultural mutation that defined the modern age occurred among the Russian Jews. The Russian Empire was indeed the birthplace of many Zionist and Communist heroes, and thus "the cradle of much of modern Jewish mythology" (*Ivi*: 4). Yet a paradox lies at the core of Russian-Jewish mythology – and identity. To combat autocracy and Russian orthodoxy, the two sacred pillars of nineteenth-century Russian (Apollonian) self-representation, Jews wielded the 'Puškin faith', a new, secular and 'cultural religion' that was conceived as a means for Mercurians' assimilation into the dominant culture18. Russian secular literature, with its undisputed hero, Puškin, was closely tied to a Jewish sense of exile and rebellion. Jews became 'Russians' and assumed verbal art as their primary (Russian) value (*Ivi*: 159), their focus on classical Russian literary culture symbolically embraced the spirit of opposition that reflective-melancholic art could provide against the conserva-

After the nineteenth century, Russian literature became a form of civic religion. Yet the cosmopolitan ideal of a 'republic of letters' is foreign to Russian culture. Rather, there is a Russian Empire of letters, and the writer is a subject of that empire, Hence the exile is a cultural transgression that threatens a writer's very sur-

In Boym's view (*Ivi*: 251), Russian Mercurians are typical examples of "reflective nostalgics", those who *reflect* on both Self and Other, who "see everywhere the imperfect mirror images of home, and try to cohabit with doubles and ghosts". 'Exile' and 'Diaspora' can be understood in both their literal and figu-

<sup>17</sup> It is significant that Mercury is the patron of writers and Mercurians the "peo-

<sup>18</sup> On the history of the Russian Jews and their relationship with Russian culture,

rative sense; neither notion can be defined simply as mere distance from one's homeland, because, as Bronislava Volková (2008: 175) puts it, exile is "multifaceted and can be considered from many different perspectives". In his *Essay on Distance*, Antonio Prete (2008) analyzes how different forms of concrete (physical) or psychological (affective) 'exile' are expressed in literary texts – and how literature itself contributes to the holistic understanding of the feelings that are generated by lack, loss, and distance. At the same time, he points out, our 'loss' of native or affective space is also the loss of the time that we have spent there (Prete 2008: 83). But there is a form of nostalgic estrangement not considered by Prete that emerges from the work of both Boym and Slezkine: this is a form of longing for the very state of estrangement that is represented by an ambivalent or 'split' identity. In this context, ambivalence itself paradoxically becomes a positive value and this feeling of 'split identity' turns into a mood of permanent longing for an existential 'homeland' which gradually becomes ambivalence itself. Such a nostalgic mood is widely shared by those individuals in which a diasporic identity has been developed and reinforced. In Boym's words:

Diasporic intimacy is possible only when one masters a certain imperfect aesthetics of survival and learns to inhabit exile. The immigrants cherish their oases of intimacy, away from the homeland and not quite in the promised land (Boym 2001: 336).

The pensive and funny-though-poignant mood of diasporic artists serves as an antidote against any kind of restoration, as a paradoxical form of 'hypernationalism'. As Sergej Dovlatov wrote:

Мой приятель художник Шер говорил:

– Я наполовину русский, наполовину – украинец, наполовину – поляк и наполовину – еврей...

Вот какой был уникальный человек! Из четырех половин состоял... (Dovlatov 1983: 11)19.

People 'of four halves' can speak multiple languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Yiddish, German, and so on), their identities taking shape in a world of words that is rife with representations of diversity, a supranational 'territory' designed for the preservation of the Self, i.e. of strangeness itself, that quality essential to diasporic identity (Slezkine 2004: 19). A Russian-Jewish sense of diasporic estrangement finds its direct reflection in Russian verbal art. Russian would seem to be the most 'Mercurian' of the available languages since it is the most ambivalent of the 'usurper's' tongues, the official language of the Apollonian state, but also the idiom of Puškin. Insofar as Russian Mercurian identities are imperfectly Russian, they are also typically Russian, representing the hybrid, melancholic, and 'dark' side of Russian culture that has traditionally

<sup>19</sup> "My friend the painter Šer would say, 'I'm half Russian, half Ukrainian, half Polish and half Jew...'. Now that was a unique individual! Made of four halves...".

of drastic Russia's Apollonian values. As we have seen, according to Svetlana Boym (2001), Russian culture contains two different nostalgic modalities that are based on contrasting attitudes towards the nature of personal identity, the homeland, the past, and the future. These modalities coexist within a given subject in different gradations, but remain radically opposed from both the cogni-

Boym's restorative modality corresponds to the values that Slezkine defines as 'Apollonian' (strength, confidence, faith, and nation), while the reflective approach to reality reveals a Mercurian emphasis on incertitude, art, and exile. Mercurian culture produces 'melancholic identities', people "wavering between

Melancholy results from the externalization of one's own intimate rebellion against the Apollonian establishment. Much as restorative nationalists define the source of corruption, decay, and decline as being external to a 'Russian self', so do they perceive a reflective and melancholic state of mind to be a 'foreign danger': after all, ambivalence is infectious and Apollonian culture has "little patience for ambivalence" (Boym 2001: 34). Melancholic expression represents exactly what restorative Apollonians consider to be dangerous for the status quo. If restoration entails a process of de-estrangement, or purification and return to the supposedly unadulterated origins of an idealized Russia, reflection is the response of the 'adulterated' and estranged Russians, including the Russified

In her work on nostalgia, Boym also discusses the concept of '*Ostalgie*', a phenomenon of post-Soviet art and literature characterized by a longing for Soviet identity (*Ivi*: 57-82). Here again, she argues, what appear to be voices calling for restoration are in fact echoes of exile experience, of the existential condition of 'supranational exile' that was possible even within the Soviet Union. An experience similar to that of forced emigration or exile has befallen those post-Soviet Russians who were born in the Soviet era: the personal narratives of these 'chronotopic orphans' are not properly characterized by regret, but persistently evince a reflective, melancholic mood. In addition to the traditionally recognized works from the Russian official canon, i.e. from the more serious Apollonian tradition, Russian literature and art also host narratives of a

Newly collected memories of exile and acculturation shift the old cultural frameworks; even Russian or Soviet souvenirs can no longer be interpreted within their "native" context. Now they are cipher for exile itself and for a newfound ex-

In short, Russian melancholic narratives might be characterized by the following paradox: the more Russian authors feel themselves to be in a border zone characterized by reflection and complex, multifaceded identities, the more they feel a sense of emotional integrity. Opposing national integrity, such emotional integrity "requires flexible, nonrigid personalities capable of reacting emotion-

tive and existential point of view.

adaptation and rebellion" (Johannisson 2011: 20).

Mercurians, who live as exiles at 'home' and as Russians in exile.

community that is essentially and existentially diasporic:

ilic domesticity (*Ivi*: 336).

been marginalized – and often scapegoated – by official Apollonian culture. Apollonian Russian culture has tended to favor a nationally oriented restorative approach to cultural identity and to imagine a 'purely' Russian mode of existence uncontaminated by foreign 'germs'<sup>20</sup>. This 'drastic Russia' promulgates a restorative ideology that, through mystification, negates real historical change and the feelings that such engenders: "Restorative nostalgics don't acknowledge the uncanny and terrifying aspects of what was once homey" (Boym 2001: 251).

'Drastic Russia' is well known outside of Russia, its image having become so pervasive abroad that Western culture sometimes partially and sometimes completely ignores the fact that active reflection is a constant presence in Russia's creative border zones. Both critics and readers have traditionally paid more attention to Russian classical literature's more forceful expressions of feeling and ideology, i.e. to the Apollonian texts that while 'dramatic' frequently hide within their pages the elements of irony and paradoxicality produced by hybridity, tokens of the cross-cultural contamination of Mercurian melancholy that is characteristic of Russian literature and art. Beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, Boym (2001: 5) notes, "Russian soil proved to be a fertile ground for both native and foreign nostalgia". Joseph De Maistre once famously declared "grattez le Russe et vous trouverez le Tartare"; we might also argue 'grattez le dogmе russe e vous trouverez la mélancholie, l'ironie et le paradoxe'. Twentieth-century Russian art has frequently concealed a melancholic affective subtext of intimacy, ambivalence, and rebellion under the restorative surface of the 'direct' text. Indeed, it is precisely the reflective variety of nostalgia that is best expressed by 'melancholic' artists with the notion of Russian '*toska*'. In short, Russian culture is characterized by a peculiar fracture that stems directly from the selfsame 'rebellious adaptation' (to use Johannisson's words) required for survival in 'drastic Russia'.

### 6. *Conclusions*

This volume demonstrates how a melancholic, reflective, and liminal mood takes shape in the work of various Russian and Russian Jewish authors. A persistent 'feeling of marginality' with respect to the dominant strains in Russian culture produces a background sentiment of melancholy that, together with a sense of suspended and liminal identity, affects the style of their artistic expression. Melancholy, a form of 'pensive longing' that can be expressed in Russian as '*zadumčivaja toska*', is a response to these artists' sense of estrangement and existential hybridity, of their emphatic affectivity, a response to the pressure

<sup>20</sup> The success of 'cultural nationalism' in contemporary Russia closely resembles that of nineteenth-century Slavophilism. It probably reflects, as Gebert (2012: 109) suggests, the "désir désespéré de la difference, de la spécificité russe par rapport à l'Occident représentant le danger de l'omologation dans un monde globalizé".

for survival in 'drastic Russia'.

6. *Conclusions*

been marginalized – and often scapegoated – by official Apollonian culture. Apollonian Russian culture has tended to favor a nationally oriented restorative approach to cultural identity and to imagine a 'purely' Russian mode of existence uncontaminated by foreign 'germs'<sup>20</sup>. This 'drastic Russia' promulgates a restorative ideology that, through mystification, negates real historical change and the feelings that such engenders: "Restorative nostalgics don't acknowledge the uncanny and terrifying aspects of what was once homey" (Boym 2001: 251). 'Drastic Russia' is well known outside of Russia, its image having become so pervasive abroad that Western culture sometimes partially and sometimes completely ignores the fact that active reflection is a constant presence in Russia's creative border zones. Both critics and readers have traditionally paid more attention to Russian classical literature's more forceful expressions of feeling and ideology, i.e. to the Apollonian texts that while 'dramatic' frequently hide within their pages the elements of irony and paradoxicality produced by hybridity, tokens of the cross-cultural contamination of Mercurian melancholy that is characteristic of Russian literature and art. Beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, Boym (2001: 5) notes, "Russian soil proved to be a fertile ground for both native and foreign nostalgia". Joseph De Maistre once famously declared "grattez le Russe et vous trouverez le Tartare"; we might also argue 'grattez le dogmе russe e vous trouverez la mélancholie, l'ironie et le paradoxe'. Twentieth-century Russian art has frequently concealed a melancholic affective subtext of intimacy, ambivalence, and rebellion under the restorative surface of the 'direct' text. Indeed, it is precisely the reflective variety of nostalgia that is best expressed by 'melancholic' artists with the notion of Russian '*toska*'. In short, Russian culture is characterized by a peculiar fracture that stems directly from the selfsame 'rebellious adaptation' (to use Johannisson's words) required

This volume demonstrates how a melancholic, reflective, and liminal mood takes shape in the work of various Russian and Russian Jewish authors. A persistent 'feeling of marginality' with respect to the dominant strains in Russian culture produces a background sentiment of melancholy that, together with a sense of suspended and liminal identity, affects the style of their artistic expression. Melancholy, a form of 'pensive longing' that can be expressed in Russian as '*zadumčivaja toska*', is a response to these artists' sense of estrangement and existential hybridity, of their emphatic affectivity, a response to the pressure

<sup>20</sup> The success of 'cultural nationalism' in contemporary Russia closely resembles that of nineteenth-century Slavophilism. It probably reflects, as Gebert (2012: 109) suggests, the "désir désespéré de la difference, de la spécificité russe par rapport à l'Oc-

cident représentant le danger de l'omologation dans un monde globalizé".

of drastic Russia's Apollonian values. As we have seen, according to Svetlana Boym (2001), Russian culture contains two different nostalgic modalities that are based on contrasting attitudes towards the nature of personal identity, the homeland, the past, and the future. These modalities coexist within a given subject in different gradations, but remain radically opposed from both the cognitive and existential point of view.

Boym's restorative modality corresponds to the values that Slezkine defines as 'Apollonian' (strength, confidence, faith, and nation), while the reflective approach to reality reveals a Mercurian emphasis on incertitude, art, and exile. Mercurian culture produces 'melancholic identities', people "wavering between adaptation and rebellion" (Johannisson 2011: 20).

Melancholy results from the externalization of one's own intimate rebellion against the Apollonian establishment. Much as restorative nationalists define the source of corruption, decay, and decline as being external to a 'Russian self', so do they perceive a reflective and melancholic state of mind to be a 'foreign danger': after all, ambivalence is infectious and Apollonian culture has "little patience for ambivalence" (Boym 2001: 34). Melancholic expression represents exactly what restorative Apollonians consider to be dangerous for the status quo. If restoration entails a process of de-estrangement, or purification and return to the supposedly unadulterated origins of an idealized Russia, reflection is the response of the 'adulterated' and estranged Russians, including the Russified Mercurians, who live as exiles at 'home' and as Russians in exile.

In her work on nostalgia, Boym also discusses the concept of '*Ostalgie*', a phenomenon of post-Soviet art and literature characterized by a longing for Soviet identity (*Ivi*: 57-82). Here again, she argues, what appear to be voices calling for restoration are in fact echoes of exile experience, of the existential condition of 'supranational exile' that was possible even within the Soviet Union. An experience similar to that of forced emigration or exile has befallen those post-Soviet Russians who were born in the Soviet era: the personal narratives of these 'chronotopic orphans' are not properly characterized by regret, but persistently evince a reflective, melancholic mood. In addition to the traditionally recognized works from the Russian official canon, i.e. from the more serious Apollonian tradition, Russian literature and art also host narratives of a community that is essentially and existentially diasporic:

Newly collected memories of exile and acculturation shift the old cultural frameworks; even Russian or Soviet souvenirs can no longer be interpreted within their "native" context. Now they are cipher for exile itself and for a newfound exilic domesticity (*Ivi*: 336).

In short, Russian melancholic narratives might be characterized by the following paradox: the more Russian authors feel themselves to be in a border zone characterized by reflection and complex, multifaceded identities, the more they feel a sense of emotional integrity. Opposing national integrity, such emotional integrity "requires flexible, nonrigid personalities capable of reacting emotionally, of experiencing anxiety, guilt, and hostility, when these are appropriate and legitimate responses to life experiences" (Frank 1954: 32). Melancholy is that affective style which is capable of transforming a multivalent identity into an integral sense of being and the uncertain space of exile into an existential *terra firma*.

#### Резюме

#### Лаура Сальмон

*Хронотопы чувств в литературе. О меланхолии, отчужденности и "задумчивой тоске"*

Исследование роли и типологии человеческих чувств в художественной литературе отнюдь не простой вопрос. Проанализировав определение таких понятий как 'эмоция', 'чувство', 'настроение', основанное на данных когнитивных наук, аргументируется, с одной стороны, универсальность человеческих чувств, а с другой связь 'чувства' и 'настроения' с художественным *хронотопом*. В частности, раскрывается значимость предложенного Светланой Бойм (2001) противопоставления двух типологий 'ностальгии' – "реставрирующей" vs. "задумчивой". Бойм показала, что 'тоска' – чувство сугубо амбивалентное, зависящее от *настроения*, от общей идеологии и от психологического состояния автора. 'Ностальгия' может высказаться в форме либо монологической идеологии, либо парадоксального экзистенциального чувства. Последнюю типологию тоски можно в сути своей отождествлять с понятием 'меланхолия', связанным в свою очередь с понятием 'идентичность/самосознание'. Задумчивая/меланхолическая тоска объединяет общину людей, страдающих от экзистенциальной амбивалентности. Юрий Слезкин (2004) называет их "меркуриалами". В лоне русской литературы 'меркуриальное' чувство меланхолии проявилось особенно изысканно и глубоко, в частности и благодаря влиянию русско-еврейской культуры.

> *Melancholic Identities, Toska and Reflective Nostalgia Case Studies from Russian and Russian-Jewish Culture*, edited by Sara Dickinson and Laura Salmon, ISBN 978-88-6655-822-4 (online),

<sup>2</sup> Unless otherwise indicated, all of the translations in this article are my own.

Aleksandra Xvostova, Nikolaj Karamzin and the Gendering

At the height of sentimentalism in 1796, Aleksandra Xvostova published a small book entitled *Otryvki* (*Fragments*) that contained two short sketches, *Kamin* (*The Fireplace*) and *Ručeek* (*The Rivulet*), both of which might be described as elaborations on the theme of *toska.* She combined this sentiment with various gloomy relatives to weave an emotional fabric of those "doleful humors" that were especially prized by the sentimentalists, an emphasis that un-

to strike today's readers as peculiarly heavy-handed – in part because we have become unaccustomed to the sentimentalist era's expressivity and in part because it is *so* very thickly laden with suffering and dismay – her work enjoyed considerable popularity in its day. Before its inclusion in *Otryvki*, *Kamin* had already been published in a journal and circulated in manuscript; according to one contemporary (Runič 1896: 309), it was a "delightful trifle" that could be found "on all of the tables in both salon and office and that everyone read with

*est'*)" together with the "tenderness and profundity of melancholic feelings" that the authoress renders so "correctly" and with "inexpressible pleasantness" (Podšivalov 1795: 68), while such established literary figures as Mixail Xeraskov and Nikolaj Karamzin were said to have been "pleasantly surprised" by

<sup>1</sup> Based on a new regard for emotions and, particularly, for '*čuvstvitel'nost'*', or 'sensibility', sentimentalism tended toward melancholic themes from its very origins. In the words of 'Ju. Podol'skij' (Jurij Ajxenval'd), "since sentimentalist writers listened keenly, as it were, to the beating of the human heart, they were particularly prone to apprehend among the other feelings that made up the content of inner life a range of doleful (*skorbnyx*) humors – sorrow (*pečal'*), sadness (*grust'*), disappointment, *toska*. That is why the complexion of many sentimentalist works is *melanxolija.* It was with her sweet streams that feeling (*čuvstvitel'nye*) souls were fed" (Podol'skij 1925: 764 ff.). In 1794, the *Dictionary of the Russian Academy* explicitly defined ''*čuvstvitel'nost'*' as "the quality of a person who is moved by the unhappiness of another" (cf. Page 1985: 395). As М.А. Аrzumanova notes sentimentalism had detractors from the 1770s on (Аrzumanova 1964: 197); the journalist N. Straxov lampooned the fashion for emotional excess in 1791 by offering an infallible technique for would-be authors: "take 175 alas's, 200 ah's, 4 poods of sighs, 7 buckets of tears, from 20 to 30 daggers and several

. *Kamin*'s first editor lauded the text's "spirit of Ossianic grief (*gor-*

. While Xvostova's text is likely

of *Toska*

pleasure"<sup>2</sup>

1. *Introduction*

*Sara Dickinson (University of Genoa)*

doubtedly contributed to the book's acclaim<sup>1</sup>

ISBN 978-88-6655-821-7 (print), © 2015 Firenze University Press

bottles of poison that the novel's heroes can guzzle" (quoted *Ivi*.: 200).