“Residual Meanings” and the Aesthetic of Intermediality in Pavel Saltzman’s Central Asia in the Middle Ages
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.4.856Keywords:
avant-garde in art, intermediality, intertextuality, cinematic poetics, film editing, cultural transfer, German Romanticism, OrientalismAbstract
This article analyses Central Asia in the Middle Ages, an unfinished novel by Pavel Saltzman (1939–1950), first published in 2018. In the novel, the aesthetic of film editing and the discursive “madeness” of the narrative used by the author, which refers both to the literature of German Romanticism and to Eastern historical and literary sources, transforms an example of artistic avant-garde into a fundamentally new work in terms of artistic features. According to the article, the literary game of the Gothic novel employed by the author gives Saltzman’s text the dynamics of a spectacular film text, which conceals several symbolic and associative meanings. These include the adventurous narrative itself, the medieval historical plot, the inevitable associative parallels with the tragic pages of the history of the twentieth century, and the philosophical and aesthetic comprehension of man and their place in the world in the spirit of the German Romantics and modern postmodernism simultaneously. The research methods in relation to this literary text rely on the semiotic theory of Yu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspensky. The results of the study are determined both by the author’s approach and modern literary and cultural studies concepts of Aage A. Hanzen-Löve, I. S. Kukui, and O. D. Burenina-Petrova. The novel is analysed for the first time according to the directions of “residual” memory of the author’s text that are relevant to this work, primarily in intertextual connection with E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs, as well as according to the cinematic ways of expressing the narrative. The author proves that Saltzman’s text relies on the principle of compositional film editing, which brings it into the sociocultural discursive practice. Additionally, the article traces intertextual links between the two novels in the plot and thematic aspects, concluding that the text is original for modern literature and determining the prospects of its transfer in sociocultural practice.
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1975). Slovo v romane [Word in a Novel]. In Bakhtin, M. M. Voprosy literatury i estetiki. Issledovaniya raznykh let. Moscow, Khudozhestvennaya literatura, pp. 72–233.
Baskakova, T. (2018). Krasnyi platok, ili Stranniki na puti lyubvi [Red Handkerchief, or Wanderers on the Path of Love]. In Saltzman, P. Ya. Srednyaya Aziya v Srednie veka (ili Srednie veka v Srednei Azii). Moscow, Ad Marginem Press, pp. 406–463.
Burenina, O. D. (2015). Simvolistskii absurd i ego traditsii v russkoi literature i kul’ture [Symbolist Absurdity and Its Traditions in Russian Literature and Culture]. St Petersburg, Aleteiya. 332 p.
Burenina-Petrova, O. (2013). Literatura kak mishen’? Russkaya klassika na ekrane rossiiskogo kinematografa XX-ogo – nachala XXI vekov [Literature as a Target? Russian Classics on the Screen of the Russian Cinema of the 20th – Early 21st Centuries]. In Contributions suisses au XV-e congress Mondial des slavistes a Minsk, aout 2013. Bern, Peter Lang, pp. 21–37.
Eisenstein, S. (1939). Montazh [Editing]. In Iskusstvo kino. No. 1, pp. 37–49.
Gizdatov, G. G., Burenina, O. D., Sopieva, B. A. (2023). Kul’tura kak tekst i proekt v postsovetskom diskurse (na primere Kazakhstana) [Culture as a Text and a Project in the Post-Soviet Discourse (with Reference to Kazakhstan)]. In ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Problemy vizual’noi semiotiki. No. 1, pp. 30–47. DOI 10.23951/2312–7899–2023–1–30–47.
Hansen-Löve, A. A. (2016). Intermedial’nost’ v russkoi kul’ture. Ot simvolizma k avangardu [Intermediality in Russian Culture. From Symbolism to Avant-Garde] / ed. by D. Kraft, R. Mikhailov, I. Chubarov. Moscow, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet. 450 p.
Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1928). Sämtliche Werke. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe mit Einleitungen, Anmerkungen und Lesearten. München, Leipzig, Georg Müller. 378 S. Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1929–1930). Sochineniya v 7 t. [Works. 7 Vols.] / transl. by V. L. Rantsov. Moscow, Nedra. Vol. 4. Eleksir d’yavola. 348 p.
Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1984). Eliksiry Satany [The Devil’s Elixirs] / transl. by N. A. Slavyatinskii. Leningrad, Nauka. 286 p.
Iampolski, M. (2004). Diskurs i povestvovanie [Discourse and Narrative]. In Iampolski, M. Yazyk – telo – sluchai. Kinematograf i ponimanie smysla. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, pp. 251–276.
Iampolski, M. (2022). Formy real’nosti. Ocherki teoreticheskoi antropologii [Forms of Reality. Essays in Theoretical Anthropology]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 328 p.
Kazarnovsky, P. (2019). Telesnye i prostranstvennye anomalii kak otrazhenie vseobshchego raspada (roman Pavla Zal’tsmana “Shchenki”) [Physical and Spatial Anomalies as a Reflection of Total Decay (Pavel Saltzman’s Puppies)]. In Quaestio Rossica. Vol. 7. No. 1, pp. 203–221. DOI 10.15826/qr.2019.1.372.
Kukui, I. (2017). “Priroda, obernuvshayasya adom…” (o proze Pavla Zal’tsmana) [“Nature turned into hell…” (about the Prose of Pavel Saltzman)]. In Saltzman, P. Shchenki. Proza 1930–50‑kh godov. 2nd Ed. Moscow, Vodolei, pp. 407–415.
Lotman, Yu. M. (1998). Tekst v tekste [Text in Text] In Lotman, Yu. M. Ob iskusstve. St Petersburg, Iskusstvo SPb, pp. 423–436.
Lykoshin, N. S. (1910). Divana-i-Mashrab. Zhizneopisaniya populyarneishego predstavitelya mistitsizma v Turkestanskom krae [Divana-i-Mashrab. Biographies of the Most Popular Representative of Mysticism in Turkestan Region]. Samarkand, Izdanie Samarkandskogo oblastnogo statisticheskogo komiteta. 245 p.
Poslavskii, P. (1891). Bukhara [Bukhara]. In Voennyi sbornik. No. 11, pp. 237–481.
Said, E. (2021). Orientalizm [Orientalism] / transl. by. K. Lopatkina. Moscow, Muzei sovremennogo iskusstva “Garazh”. 560 p.
Saltzman, E. (Lotta). (2012). Mesto Pavla Zal’tsmana v khudozhestvennoi kul’ture XX veka [The Place of Pavel Saltzman in the Artistic Culture of the 20th Century]. In Mamytova, S., Barmankulova, B. (Eds.). Pavel Zal’tsman. Almaty, RUAN, pp. 62–73.
Saltzman, E. (Lotta) (2007). Vospominaniya ob ottse [Memories of My Father]. In Zal’tsman Pavel. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo. Ierusalim, Filobiblon, pp. 18–69.
Saltzman, L. (2018). O romane P. Ya. Zal’tsmana “Srednyaya Aziya v Srednie veka” [About Novel of P. Ya. Saltzman Central Asia in the Middle Ages]. In Saltzman, P. Ya. Srednyaya Aziya v Srednie veka (ili Srednie veka v Srednei Azii). Moscow, Ad Marginem Press, pp. 379–405.
Saltzman, P. Ya. (2018). Srednyaya Aziya v Srednie veka (ili Srednie veka v Srednei Azii) [Central Asia in the Middle Ages (or the Middle Ages in Central Asia)]. Moscow, Ad Marginem Press. 472 p.
Shafranskaya, E. (2020). O russkom orientalizme, “russkom mire” v kolonial’noi literature i ikh pereosmyslenii v literature postkolonial’noi [On Russian Orientalism, the “Russian World” in Colonial Literature and Their Rethinking in Postcolonial Literature]. In Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. No. 1 (161), pp. 291–306.
Uspenskii, B. A. (1995). Poetika kompozitsii (struktura khudozhestvennogo teksta i tipologiya kompozitsionnoi formy) [Poetics of Composition (Structure of Literary Text and Typology of Compositional Form)]. In Uspenskii, B. A. Semiotika iskusstva. Moscow, Shkola “Yazyki russkoi kul’tury”, pp. 7–218.
Vámbéry, Á. (1873). Istoriya Bokhary, ili Transoksanii s drevneishikh vremen do nastoyashchego. Po vostochnym obnarodovannym i neobnarodovannym rukopisnym istoricheskim istochnikam v 2 t. [History of Bohara, or Transoxiana from Ancient Times to the Present. According to Eastern Published and Unpublished Handwritten Historical Sources] / transl. by A. T. Pavlovskii. St Petersburg. Ya. A. Isakov. Vol. 1. 273 p.
Zenkin, S. (2018). Teoriya literatury: problemy i rezul’taty [Literary Theory: Problems and Results]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 368 p.
