American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Neither With Them, Nor Without Them: The Russian Writer and the Jew in the Age ofRealism. Judaic Traditions in Music, Literature, and Art by Elena M. KatzReview by: Harriet MuravThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 54, No. 1, Special Forum Issue: New Research onthe Learning and Teaching of Slavic Languages (SPRING 2010), pp. 176-178Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23345012 .

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176 Slavic and East European Journal

Ivan Karamazov's argument that if there is no God, then all is permitted, and to Raskolnikov's

notion of the freedom to transgress allowed extraordinary individuals. Meanwhile, Nietzsche

was initially rarely invoked in discussions of Dostoevsky. Grillaert's third chapter scrutinizes Dostoevsky's religious worldview and what she calls the

writer's philosophical anthropology, emphasizing his concern with moral freedom of choice, rather than mechanical adherence to a dogmatic set of values. An important image in this regard for Dostoevsky was the figure of the Bogochelovek [God-man] Christ, who as the ultimate em

bodiment of altruistic love serves as the ideal human beings should strive to reach. Grillaert ar

gues that "Dostoevskii's anthropological ideal of free self-determination is for the God-seekers

a fruitful and recurrent anthropological motive, especially in their assessment of Nietzsche"

(77). The central chapters of her study explore how Solovyov, Merezhkovsky, and Berdiaev's

apprehension of Nietzsche was mediated by their understanding of Dostoevsky's anthropocen tric Christian worldview. Solovyov, whose knowledge of Nietzsche may have been drawn

solely from secondary sources, interpreted the German philosopher's concept of the Übermen

sch as religious in origin and indicative of a laudable desire to transcend the human condition.

From Solovyov's point of view, however, the route to transcendence lay through union with, rather than the renunciation of, the divine ultimately embraced by Nietzsche. For the Russian

philosopher, the true ideal was the Bogochelovek. In early twentieth-century Russian thought, the Bogochelovek was routinely opposed to the chelovekobog [man-god], a term popularized by

Dostoevsky, most thoroughly developed by the writer in the thought of the character Kirillov, and often mechanically identified with the Übermensch. This usage was initiated by

Merezhkovsky, who explored in depth the religious dimension of Dostoevsky's writings and

suggested the basis for this identification. For Merezhkovsky, the significance of the figure of

the chelovekobog!Übermensch was its exposure of the failure of historical Christianity to inte

grate the Flesh and the Spirit. One of Berdiaev's contributions to the discussion of what was

termed the "new religious consciousness," a novel understanding of Christianity, was to read the

figure of the Übermensch even more subtly, not as the antithesis of the Bogochelovek, but as a

summons to human creativity that approaches the chelovekobog, although the Übermensch

"falls short with regard to the authentic Christian paradigm of free self-realization" (254). Grillaert effectively elucidates the importance of Nietzsche for the religious thought of the

Russian God-seekers, providing a wealth of information about the sometimes idiosyncratic

readings of both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky by Solovyov, Merezhkovsky, and Berdiaev and

making a compelling argument for their creative use of the German philosopher's provocative ideas. Some greater acknowledgment that the God-seekers' views of Nietzsche continued to

evolve, becoming more negative in their tenor, would have been welcome —one is left perhaps with too positive an impression. Editorial attention to some infelicities in the use of the English and peculiarities in capitalization would also have made this volume more readable. As a study of an important cultural interaction that is often hastily evoked, however, Grillaert's study con

stitutes a very useful contribution to Russian intellectual history.

Margaret Ziolkowski, Miami University (Ohio)

Elena M. Katz. Neither With Them, Nor Without Them: The Russian Writer and the Jew in the

Age of Realism. Judaic Traditions in Music, Literature, and Art. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse

UP, 2008. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index, xiv + 366 pp. $34.95 (cloth).

This study provides a nuanced and detailed approach to the image of the Jew in Gogol, Dosto

evsky, and Turgenev, whose works, as Katz points out, greatly influenced the Russian reader's

perception in the nineteenth century and, arguably, beyond. The author's readings seek to make

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Reviews 177

more complex the rigid categorizations and simple oppositions that she claims have dominated

the critical reception of this issue thus far. In order to examine the representation of the Jew in

Russian literature with greater analytical rigor, Katz traces how three great figures of Russian

literature "reflected the realities of Jewish life in the empire" and how the "mythical Jew mu

tated through their art to reflect the real Jew in the course of the 1830s through the 1880s" (17). The first chapter, on Gogol, questions the standard reading of Taras Bulba as one of the key

Judeophobic texts of the Russian canon by arguing that its negative attitudes toward Jews do

not necessarily reflect Gogol's own beliefs, but rather serve as a feature in his portrait of the

Cossacks. Katz finds that in Gogol's works as a whole, the Jew is a weak and even powerless

figure, who presents no real threat to Russia. She aptly raises the question as to whether the

problem of the Jew in Gogol should be framed in light of Gogol's own vexed and multiple af

filiations with Ukraine, Poland, and Russia, although more could have been made of this point. In agreement with Steven Cassedy, Joseph Frank, and others who have argued for complex

ity and ambivalence in Dostoevsky's attitude toward Jews, and in opposition to David Gold

stein, who saw Dostoevsky as an unrepentant anti-Semite, Katz also characterizes Dostoevsky's

position in terms of a profound duality. Dostoevsky, as Katz points out, reserved his opinions as

to the Jews' capacity for ritual murder to his private correspondence. In The Brothers Karama

zov, in contrast, Alyosha says that he does not know whether Jews practice ritual murder (189). Katz compellingly argues that Dostoevsky's own doubts about the unique messianic role of the

Russian people led him to remove Jews from the space of his fiction and confine them to his

polemics. Freud's famous phrase about the narcissism of little differences comes to mind.

In contrast to the limitations of the Russian nationalist vision that emerged in the last decade

of Dostoevsky's life, the Jew occupied a far more positive role in Turgenev's cosmopolitan view—but as Katz shows, not consistently. In his letters and his personal relationships, Tur

genev allowed Jews the status of fully-fledged human beings, but stereotypes of Jews domi

nated his fiction. The author sees a close connection between the image of the Jew in Gogol and Turgenev, although Turgenev did not use a supernatural framework for his Jewish charac

ters. Katz also finds a certain anxiety in Turgenev with regard to his public positions on Jew

ish issues. Turgenev apparently thought that the Tsar should have spoken out against the 1881

pogroms, but he reserved this opinion to his private correspondence. On the whole, Katz is more critical of Turgenev's attitudes toward Jews than most critics, although she traces an evo

lution in Turgenev from the negative stereotype of the 1847 "The Yid" to the more positive

image in An Unhappy Girl.

This is a well-researched and broad-ranging study that deserves the attention of students and

scholars in the field of Russian and Jewish studies. One of its shortcomings, however, is its rel

atively brief discussion of terminology and of the concepts behind the terms she uses. The title

of the work does not receive a full explanation, and as Katz herself points out, the three au

thors did not in any real sense "live with" Jews. How the author distinguishes between anti

Semitism and Judeophobia is not clear, although she aptly points out that the application of

these terms tends to render complex phenomena into monoliths. Katz insightfully argues that

religious anti-Jewish prejudice competed and co-existed with modern, racialized anti-Semi

tism in Russia. Dostoevsky's emphasis, in his Pushkin speech, on the Russian attachment to

the "great Aryan race" supports this claim. Katz, however, does not discuss the Pushkin

speech, which is a pity, because very few scholars have attempted an analysis of race in Dos

toevsky or in nineteenth-century Russian public discourse generally. The strength of the study lies in its broad overview and detailed discussions of the role of Jews in the life and work of

three crucially important Russian authors. Katz does well to insist that the question has to be

viewed in terms of dynamic shifts; for example, Dostoevsky's position with regard to the Jew

changed dramatically from the beginning of his career to his last work. This very strength of

the study, the breadth of its subject matter, however, a'<-o allowed for a looseness in the struc

ture of the argument. The discussion of the "realities t f Jewish life in the empire" gets short

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178 Slavic and East European Journal

shrift. This is lamentable, because scholars and teachers of Russian literature—the audience of

this work—could benefit from a discussion of Jewish history in Russia, and precisely in the lit

erary context that this volume offers.

Harriet Murav, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Michal Oklot. Phantasms of Matter in Gogol (and Gombrowicz). Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2009. Appendices. Bibliography, xvi + 411 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Without a doubt, criticism over the years has grown more and more accustomed to speaking of

Gogol's writings in terms of an "artistic apophatism" or negative theology. The tendency could

be said to have begun (or at least become explicit) with Dmitrij Cizevskij's important essay,

"Gogol: Artist and Thinker" (Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US, 4 (1952), 261-78), and since then it has reappeared in various guises in the work of prominent critics like Mikhail Vaiskopf or Robert Maguire, as well as in many of the essays collected a

decade ago in a landmark anthology edited by Sven Spieker entitled Gogol: Exploring Absence

(Slavica, 1999). There is certainly no denying that these and other approaches to this aspect of

what is called Gogol's "negativity" have directed us toward a new understanding of his writ

ings, however beyond us such an understanding ostensibly ought to remain (at least in theory). But in the same vein it is just as undeniable that such approaches almost invariably seek to pre serve or maintain a certain relation to what would be negativity's double—in a word, "positiv

ity," however ineffable it may be: as Spieker sums it up in his introduction to Exploring Ab

sence, "Negativity points to the unsayable or the ineffable in the very act of speaking or writing; it paradoxically allows us to perceive the inexpressed or inexpressible in what is being said, thus

establishing a relationship between what can be said and what, for one reason or another, can

not be said. Negativity highlights what in a given utterance is left unspoken or unwritten, it

points to what Wittgenstein called that 'whereof one cannot speak'" (6). Spieker rightly goes on

to note that, understood in this way, as indication, as allowing for perception, as establishing re

lationships, such "negativity" does not at all "negate" or disrupt a text, "but rather qualifies or

structures it" (7), and one could furthermore add that in the specific case of Gogol's texts this

permits their negativity to be resolved or sublated into the positivity of an artistic practice or

aesthetic experience. This last movement is one that tends to be overlooked, particularly by crit

ics who might associate negative theology with things like deconstruction: the former does not

at all deny the self-identity of logos but merely consigns it intact to an ineffable beyond—to the

"abyss above," as it were, to borrow a phrase from Dostoevsky. Indeed, one could argue that for

readers of Gogol like Cizevskij, the reality of that otherworld and Gogol's presumed faith in it

is precisely what dictates "the ephemeral, illusory, phantasmal character" (Cizevskij 270) of this

world, that is, the one Gogol ostensibly depicts. Michal Oklot's interesting new book on Gogol (and the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz) is

also concerned with phantasms, but these are phantasms of a very different order, ones that

would have less to do with the "abyss above" than the "abyss below," namely, materiality: re

lying on a definition derived primarily from Neoplatonic philosophy, Oklot argues that Gogol's

phantasms are not produced by religious faith or the play of imagination ("the romantic concept of phantasy," 55), but instead "are governed by accidental associations of sensual images not

ordered by intellect" (25). From a certain standpoint, one might say Oklot's interpretation

merely elaborates on Innokenty Annensky's remarks in his "Aesthetics of Dead Souls and its

Legacy" regarding the consequences of what he termed Gogol's "abyssal corporeality" (bezdon naia telesnost'; see "Estetika 'Mertvykh dush' i ee nasled'e" in Izbrannyeproizvedeniia, Khu

dozhestvennaia literatura, 1988, 628), but Oklot actually would go much further than Annensky

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