Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T16:27:26.966Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Suspicion on Trial: Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata and Nabokov's “Pozdnyshev's Address”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Tatyana Gershkovich
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The postcritique debate tends to presuppose that reading suspiciously or restoratively is largely a matter of choosing to do so and that texts themselves do not incline us to read them one way or another. Drawing on works by Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Nabokov, this essay contests these presumptions. Both authors regarded distrust as a state of mind to which we are ineluctably condemned; only by reading artworks designed to allay our suspicion can we hope to be briefly relieved of it. Tolstoy's famous Kreutzer Sonata and Nabokov's little-known variation on it, “Pozdnyshev's Address,” explore strategies for disarming readerly distrust. If these authors are right that suspicion is our existential condition rather than a freely chosen interpretive stance, the project of prescribing the ways that readers ought to relate to texts is unlikely to succeed—or cease. We might instead set ourselves the task of investigating how particular texts shape the ways they are read.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 134 , Issue 3 , May 2019 , pp. 459 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Translated and edited by Emerson, Caryl, U of Minnesota P, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, Stephen, and Marcus, Sharon. “Surface Reading: An Introduction”. Representations, vol. 108, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavell, Stanley. Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays. 1969. Cambridge UP, 1976.Google Scholar
Coetzee, J. M. “Confession and Double Thoughts: Tolstoy, Rousseau, Dostoevsky”. Comparative Literature, vol. 37, no. 3, 1985, pp. 193–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Couturier, Maurice. “The Near-Tyranny of the Author: Pale Fire!' Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives, edited by Connolly, Julian W., Cambridge UP, 1999, pp. 54–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emerson, Caryl. “What Is Art?? and the Anxiety of Music”. Russian Literature, vol. 40, no. 4, 1996, pp. 433–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. U of Chicago P, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golstein, Vladimir. “Narrating the Murder: The Rhetoric of Evasion in he Kreutzer Sonata!” Russian Literature, vol. 40, no. 4, 1996, pp. 451–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gudziy, N. K. Комментарии—Крейцерова [Kommentarii—Kreĭtserova sonata; Commentary—Kreutzer Sonata]. Tolstoy, Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoĭ], [Lev Tolstoĭ], vol. 27, pp. 563–624.Google Scholar
Gustafson, Richard F. Leo Tolstoy: Resident and Stranger. Princeton UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Herman, David. “Stricken by Infection: Art and Adultery in Anna Karenina and Kreutzer Sonata!” Slavic Review, vol. 56, no. 1, 1997, pp. 15–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Josipovici, Gabriel. On Trust: Art and the Temptations of Suspicion. Yale UP, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”. Critical Inquiry, vol. 30, no. 2, 2004, pp. 225–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morson, Gary Saul. “The Reader as Voyeur: Tolstoi and the Poetics of Didactic Fiction”. Canadian-American Slavic Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, 1978, pp. 465–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Дар [Dar; he Gift]. 1938. AST, 2000.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Gift. 1963. Vintage Books, 1991.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature. Edited by Bowers, Fredson, Harcourt, 1980.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Russian Literature. Edited by Bowers, Fredson, Harcourt, 1981.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Letters to Véra. Translated and edited by Voronina, Olga and Boyd, Brian, Penguin Classics, 2014.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Letter to Véra Nabokov. 6 July 1926. Nabokov, Letters, pp. 122–25.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Letter to Véra Nabokov. 12 July 1926. Nabokov, Letters, pp. 139–41.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Letter to Véra Nabokov. 13 July 1926. Nabokov, Letters, pp. 141–42.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. “Речь Позднышева” [Rech' Pozdnysheva; Pozdnyshev's Address]. 1926. Vladimir Nabokov Papers 1918–87, Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, pp. N38-N38j.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. 1951. Vintage Books, 1989.Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong Opinions. 1973. Vintage Books, 1990.Google Scholar
Naiman, Eric. Nabokov, Perversely. Cornell UP, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickford, Henry. Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion, and Art. Northwestern UP, 2016.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. translated by Savage, Denis, Yale UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Robbins, Bruce. “Not So Well Attached”. PMLA, vol. 132, no. 2, Mar. 2017, pp. 371–76.Google Scholar
Rooney, Ellen. “Live Free or Describe: The Reading Effect and the Persistence of Form”. Differences, vol. 21, no. 3, 2010, pp. 112–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. “The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty”. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge UP, 1989, pp. 141–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shestov, Lev. Добро в учении гр. Толстого и Ф. Нитцше: Философия и проповедь. [Dobro v uchenii gr. Tolstogo i F. Nittsshe: Filosofiia i propoved'; he Good in the Teaching of Count Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche: Philosophy and Prophecy]. Skify, 1923.Google Scholar
Shklovsky, Victor. “Art as Device”. Theory of Prose, translated by Sher, Benjamin, Dalkey Archive Press, 1991, pp. 1–14.Google Scholar
Smith, Zadie. “Rereading Barthes and Nabokov”. Changing My Mind, Penguin Books, 2010, pp. 42–57.Google Scholar
Tolstaya, Sofia Andreevna. My Life. translated by John Woodsworth and Akradi Klioutchanski, edited by Donskov, Andrew, U of Ottawa P, 2010.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. Afterword to Kreutzer Sonata. 1890. The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, translated by Maude, Louise et al., Oxford UP, 1999, pp. 163–77.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. ““Что такое искусство” [Chto takoe iskusstvo?; What Is Art?]. Tolstoy, Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoi], vol. 30, pp. 27–203.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. Дневники 1895, 1896 г [Dnevniki 1895, 1896 g.; Diaries for the Years 1895 and 1896]. Tolstoy, Лев Тол стой [Lev Tolstoi], vol. 53, p. 4.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. “К читателям” [K chitateliam; To Readers]. Tolstoy, Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoi], vol. 1, pp. 207–09.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. Крейцерова соната [Kreĭtserova sonata; Kreutzer Sonata]. Tolstoy, Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoi], vol. 27, pp. 5–78.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. The Kreutzer Sonata. 1890. Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, translated by Maude, Louise et al., Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2004, pp. 353–450.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. “K тем Господам критикам которые захотят при нять еë на свой счет” [K tem Gospodam kriti-kam kotorye zakhotiat priniat' eë na svoĭ schët; To Those Gentlemen Critics Who Wish to Take his into Account]. Tolstoy, Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoĭ], vol. 1, pp. 209–12.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoĭ: Polnoe sobranie sochineniĭ; Leo Tolstoy: Complete Collected Works]. Khudozhestvennaia li-teratura, 1928–58. 90 vols.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. “О том, что называют искусством” [O tom, chto nazyvaiut iskusstvom; About What Is Called Art]. Tolstoy, Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoĭ], vol. 30, pp. 243–72.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. Послесловие к Крейцеровой сонате [Posleslovie k Kreĭtserovoĭ sonate; Afterword to Kreutzer Sonata]. Tolstoy, Лев Толстой [Lev Tolstoĭ], vol. 27, pp. 78–92.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art? translated by Maude, Almyer, Bobbs Merrill, 1960.Google Scholar