Adriano,
I haven’t read Yuri Slezkine’s The House of Government. In fact my last foray
into Russian history revolved around their war against the Germans in WWII. I
had a debate for a few months with a person I assume to be a low-level
functionary in the government at Moscow; although he wouldn’t tell me exactly
what he did. He had a web site praising the Red Army. He argued that the Red
Army was the greatest in the world. None could match it. I argued that his
army could certainly defend its borders as could the Chinese and a few others
against any attack, but it didn’t have the ability (at least at that time) to
project its army any place in the world (as did the American military), and in
that sense the American army was superior.
For some time I was interested in the SSRs breaking away from Russia after
1991, but eventually Russia asserted itself, as predicted by Samuel P.
Huntington, in his Clash of Civilizations, threatened the EU which had long
since lost their ability to back up their wishes with military action.
I’m only 8% through Figes’ The Europeans (reading it in Kindle) and thus far he
hasn’t gone beyond the time frame of the careers of his three subjects, Louis
Viardot, Turgenev, and especially as far as I’ve read. Pauline Viardot who
despite being the acknowledged greatest singer of her age was effectively
thwarted by jealous well-established prima donnas in Paris and so (thanks to
George Sand and her husband Louis Viardot) made good use of the railroads to
establish her reputation in opera houses outside France, especially the one in
St. Petersburg (the railways had not yet gotten that far, but they used the
trains wherever possible).
George Sand predicted that the newspaper nations, France and England, would not
be able to resist Pauline Viardot once her fame was established in St.
Petersburg.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of adriano paolo shaul gershom palma
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2020 10:53 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Adriano Palma
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Orlando Figes THE EUROPEANS
Lawrence, on that period and area I found amusing, which is much to utter about
a 1200+ pages text
the house of government by your california neighbor Y Slezkine.
I shall watch the video (when I was teaching I never used notes, imho when you
are clear about what you think you can say it, without so much apparatus of
notes, footnotes, bullshit - a good test of a position --in philosophy but not
only-- is how much of it is stated without ifs, buts, though, footnotes a
reminder of the what x said of y und so weiter--)
I wish the day is merciful
Kerem jojjenek maskor es kulonosen masho
palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 2:56 AM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Adriano,
I just watched this more recent video which can be seen to represent Figes’
thoughts in 2018. He seems more sanguine about Russia, Putin and the threat of
conflict: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o52wkS3U3cc ;
<https://protect-za.mimecast.com/s/brXKCxGjLQh1LJJQU8XQYJ?domain=youtube.com>
This video is 55 minutes long and in the middle, the visual part is corrupted
for several minutes, but if one ignores what one sees and merely listens to the
words, at Figes’ seem clear enough. I don’t know who the interviewer is.
Figes is impressive. I can recall professors who lectured with no notes, hands
in the pockets, who would quote dates, names, heights of mountains. Figes
seems like that.
I bought the Kindle edition of The Europeans before you posted your note about
Figes and the Russian Revolution; which I feared might affect his credibility
negatively in my eyes, but quite the reverse has occurred.
Thanks again,
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Lawrence Helm
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2020 3:03 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Orlando Figes THE EUROPEANS
Palma,
Thanks for pointing me toward Figes on the Russian Revolution. I just watched
this Youtube lecture from 5 years ago by Figes on the Russian Revolution which
he defines as lasting from 1891 to 1991 and then sees an aftermath that alarms
him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzH5OI9TMP0 ;
<https://protect-za.mimecast.com/s/wmd2Cy8k2Rtr7NNyHMcpam?domain=youtube.com>
Is this consistent with what you were referring to?
The idea that Russians today rationalize the evils done by the Soviets strikes
me as somewhat consistent with the views of the Germans after the first world
war. They had not been thoroughly defeated. Hitler and a majority of Germans
thought that way and so they were open to being led in a radical direction by a
demigod.
In the case of Japan and Germany after the Second world War, those two nations
had been thoroughly defeated. No national leader could spin matters as Putin
did in Russia, and Hitler did after WW1, to make it seem that there had been
some sort of betrayal.
I see there are several other (longer) Youtube lectures and discussions by
Figes. Is there some particular lecture you had in mind? I’d be interested in
whether Figes remains as alarmed as he did five years ago.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Lawrence Helm
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2020 2:13 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Orlando Figes THE EUROPEANS
No. I’d never heard of Figes before reading the review on “The Europeans”. Is
there something about him I should know?
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of adriano paolo shaul gershom palma
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2020 12:59 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Orlando Figes THE EUROPEANS
Good day Lawrence
did you see Figes on conversation under soviets?
best
legösszetettebbszóhosszúságvilágrekorddöntéskényszerneurózistünetegyüttesmegnyilvánulásfejleszthetőségvizsgálataitokról
Kerem jojjenek maskor es kulonosen masho
palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
On Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 7:43 PM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In the January 3rd, 2020 issue of the TLS is a review of Orlando Figes’ THREE
LIVES AND THE MAKING OF A COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE. [The review was written by
Larry Wolff, professor of History at New York University]
The three subject lives are “Ivan Turgenev, the Spanish opera star Pauline
Garcia Viardot, and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, literary
translator and theatrical entrepreneur. Turgenev was in love with Pauline
Viardot for four decades and for much of that time was actually living with her
and Louis, mostly in Paris.
“Figes artfully makes these individual lives into illustrative examples of the
changing terms of nineteenth-century culture, and especially the ways in which
a Russian writer and a Spanish diva, from the eastern and western margins of
Europe, could emerge as fully European and cosmopolitan cultural figures.”
I read the article looking for anti-Brexit arguments, and perhaps they are
implied by the British historian, Figes,
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Figes ;
<https://protect-za.mimecast.com/s/Rk3xCzmlY0FMGRRmHg7nz7?domain=en.wikipedia.org>
) who has written several books, mostly about Russian history. If he is
opposed to Brexit, which he may be, I wonder what he thinks of the even greater
alienation (from Europe) of Russia. However I didn’t find my suspicions
vindicated in the review in which Wolff concentrates upon Pauline Viardot, an
opera singer, who had some of the most famous people of Europe panting after
her. She could not only sing better than anyone else, she was a concert-level
pianist and regretted giving that up to concentrate upon singing.
Wolff writes, “In 1860, Wagner came to visit her in Paris for a musical
evening, and, astonishingly, she participated in the very first performance of
the love duet from Tristan und Isolde, singing Isolde with Wagner himself as
Tristan. In fact Viardot was a composer herself, particularly writing songs
for solon performance, which are still heard in concert recitals today.”
And, “Viardot was closely associated with Don Giovanni, and sang the role of
the flirtatious Spanish peasant girl Zerlina, but also, more unexpectedly, the
role of the virtuous Spanish noblewoman Donna Anna (a role that was written for
soprano, and was almost never sung by a mezzo-soprano like Viardot).”
But after reading the review I wonder if there ever has been another
mezzo-soprano like Viardot. “The astonishing range of her voice, its
unrivalled virtuosity, its magical, silvery tonality’, gushed one Russian
critic in St. Petersburg, ‘we have not heard anything like it before.”
[Unfortunately we must take the words of others in regard to the quality of
Viardot’s voice – unlike today when the beautiful and ugly-voiced alike may
preserve themselves on Youtube for future historians and review writers to
marvel at.]
Figes apparently makes much of the railroad’s enhancing of cosmopolitanism:
“Turgenev, then twenty-five, met and fell in love with her during her
triumphant engagement in [St Petersburg].” “From the 1840s onwards, trains
carried Pauline Viardot to her singing engagements, while Turgenev, led a
peripatetic life on the railways of Europe, following the Viardots whenever
possible. Figes speculates about Turgenev and trains that ‘he must have
journeyed more on them than any other writer of his day’. With the completion
of the Warsaw-Petersburg line in 1862, also the year of Turgenev’s masterpiece
Fathers and Sons, it would have been possible for him to travel all the way
from France to Russia by Train. Figes suggest that it was Turgenev’s relation
to the modern technology of train travel that also made it possible for him to
conceive of himself as a fully European writer, and declare in 1864 that ‘there
is no necessity for a writer to live continuously in his own country.”
“Tolstoy, less enthusiastically modern, wrote to Turgenev in 1857 to urge him
to avoid the railroad as the travel equivalent of mechanical sex in a brothel,
cheapening the whole experience of the voyage. . .”
Lawrence
