Russian Irrationalism From Pushkin to Brodsky: Seven Essays in Literature and Thought by Olga Tabachnikova - 2015

Bloomsbury, 2015. Hardbound. New Book. Hardbound. Tabachnikova distills and analyzes manifestations of the irrational in two centuries of Russian literature and thought. The concept of irrationality is elusive and clearly multifaceted, she admits, and people talk of it in philosophical, cultural, social and religious terms and point to examples of irrationalism as a semiotics of individual behavior. She discusses the language of irrationalism, Russia and the West: the power of illusion, on Russian dreamers, Russian Eros: love in the context of moral philosophy, towards the question of the man of nature and man of culture in Russian literature; cases of subversion: Chekhov and Brodsky, and the rebellious tradition: Russian literary laughter between poetry and pain. (2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR)