Michael Wachtel – författare

A poet, scholar, philosopher, religious thinker, translator, and teacher, Viacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949) was one of the most extraordinary figures of Russia’s tumultuous twentieth century. As a young scholar, he worked with European luminaries, studying ancient history with Theodor Mommsen and Sanskrit with Ferdinand de Saussure. Upon returning to Russia in 1905, Ivanov emerged as a major poet and theorist of Russian Symbolism. The Wednesday gatherings in his apartment attracted Alexander Blok, Nikolai Berdiaev, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Osip Mandel’shtam, and Anna Akhmatova. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he worked in the People’s Commissariat for Education, devising utopian plans for Soviet theater. Even so, Lenin personally rejected his application for travel abroad in 1920. Four years later, Ivanov left the Soviet Union for Italy, where he became a Catholic and spent his last years working for Vatican institutions.This definitive biography of Ivanov tells the full story of his life and work amid the cataclysmic events of his time. Michael Wachtel traces Ivanov’s writings across languages and countries, following his trail through Moscow, St. Petersburg, Baku, Berlin, Paris, London, Geneva, Athens, Pavia, and Rome. Though his life was marked by seemingly contradictory elements, including occult experimentation, belief in Russian Orthodoxy, defense of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and unconventional sexual mores—notably bisexuality and a marriage to his stepdaughter—Wachtel shows how Ivanov reconciled his shifting selves. Revealing Ivanov as a cultural catalyst of wide-ranging influence, this book opens a new window onto twentieth-century Russian and European intellectual life.

This work explores the art and development of Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), the poet and theorist who articulated a highly influential concept of Symbolism. The German writers Goethe and Novalis also played a central part in his vision, being precursors in the proto-Symbolist pantheon.

The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Poetry presents the major themes, forms, genres and styles of Russian poetry. Using examples from Russia's greatest poets, Michael Wachtel draws on three centuries of verse, from the beginnings of secular literature in the eighteenth century up to the present day. The first half of the book is devoted to concepts such as versification, poetic language and tradition; the second half is organised along genre lines and examines the ode, the elegy, ballads, love poetry, nature poetry and patriotic verse. All poetry appears in the original followed by literal translations. This book is designed to give readers with even a minimal knowledge of the Russian language an appreciation of the brilliance of Russian poetry.

The Development of Russian Verse explores the Russian verse tradition from Pushkin to Brodsky, showing how certain formal features are associated with certain genres and, at times, specific themes. Michael Wachtel's basic thesis is that form is never neutral: poets can react positively in terms of stylization and development, or negatively in terms of parody or revision, to the work of their predecessors, but they cannot ignore it. Keeping technical terms to a minimum and providing English translations of quotations, Wachtel offers close readings of individual poems of more than fifty poets. He aims to help English-speaking readers reconstruct the strong sense of continuity that Russian poets have always felt, transcending any individual age or ideology. Ultimately, his 1999 book is an inquiry into the nature of literary tradition itself, and how it coalesces in a country that has always taken so much of its identity from its written legacy.

The Development of Russian Verse explores the Russian verse tradition from Pushkin to Brodsky, showing how certain formal features are associated with certain genres and, at times, specific themes. Michael Wachtel's basic thesis is that form is never neutral: poets can react positively in terms of stylization and development, or negatively in terms of parody or revision, to the work of their predecessors, but they cannot ignore it. Keeping technical terms to a minimum and providing English translations of quotations, Wachtel offers close readings of individual poems of more than fifty poets. He aims to help English-speaking readers reconstruct the strong sense of continuity that Russian poets have always felt, transcending any individual age or ideology. Ultimately, his 1999 book is an inquiry into the nature of literary tradition itself, and how it coalesces in a country that has always taken so much of its identity from its written legacy.

The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Poetry presents the major themes, forms, genres and styles of Russian poetry. Using examples from Russia's greatest poets, Michael Wachtel draws on three centuries of verse, from the beginnings of secular literature in the eighteenth century up to the present day. The first half of the book is devoted to concepts such as versification, poetic language and tradition; the second half is organised along genre lines and examines the ode, the elegy, ballads, love poetry, nature poetry and patriotic verse. All poetry appears in the original followed by literal translations. This book is designed to give readers with even a minimal knowledge of the Russian language an appreciation of the brilliance of Russian poetry.

A poet, critic and theoretician during the Silver Age of Russian poetry, at the turn of the 20th century, Viacheslav Ivanov was dubbed ""Viacheslav the Magnificent"" by his contemporaries for his erudition, sumptuous and elusive poetry and brilliant essays. He provided Russian Symbolism with theoretical underpinnings based on classical and biblical mythology, the aesthetics of music, philosophy ranging from Plato and Kant to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and a profound knowledge of classical and modern European poetry. In choosing material for this volume of essays, Robert Bird and Michael Wachtel have covered a broad range of Ivanov's interests: the aesthetics of Symbolism, theatre, culturalogical concerns and such influential figures of the period as Nietzsche, Solovyov, Tolstoy and Scriabin. Also included are extensive notes on the essays in which classical, biblical and poetic citations and allusions are identified, the aesthetic and theoretical contexts are clarified and certain translation problems are briefly discussed.

This volume is dedicated to Fedor B. Poljakov, Professor of the University of Vienna, a distinguished specialist in the history of Russian culture and Germano-Slavic cultural relations. It brings together scholars from leading universities in the United States, Europe and the Russian Federation. Thirty-seven essays discuss a broad array of themes ranging from early-modern Muscovy and Slavia Orthodoxa to Russia’s contacts with the West from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries to modernist literature to early Soviet poetry and post-revolutionary emigration. The articles present unknown archival documents and offer new perspectives on the study of Russian literature in a comparative context.