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Evil, Theodicy, and Jewishness in Fridrikh Gorenshtein

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2024

Anna Schur
Anna Schur*
Affiliation:
Keene State College, aschur@usnh.edu
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Abstract

The paper argues that Fridrikh Gorenshtein's preoccupation with evil and with the search for a proper response offers a useful lens through which to explore his conception of Jewishness and his identity as a Jewish writer working within the Russian literary tradition.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , Fall 2023 , pp. 737 - 753
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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Footnotes

I am grateful to the anonymous referees for their helpful criticisms and suggestions.

References

1. Lazare, Bernard, Antisemitism: Its History and Causes, transl. from French (Lincoln, 1995), 143Google Scholar.

2. Erofeev, Viktor, “Russkii antisemitizm s tochki zreniia vechnosti” in Entsiklopediia russkoi dushi; Pupok; Sharovaia molniia (Moscow, 2015), 502Google Scholar.

3. “Vecher pamiati F. Gorenshteina (3/5),” YouTube video, 14:24, from Dom kino, Moscow, December 9, 2012, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNxwDk2jOJc

4. Pomerants, Grigorii, “Psalom Antikhrista. O romane Fridrikha Gorenshteina Psalom i ne tol΄ko o nem.” Literaturnaia gazeta 13, (March 25, 1992), 4Google Scholar.

5. For an illuminating first-hand account of Gorenshtein’s life and career see, Polianskaia, Mina, “Ia pisatel΄ nezakonnyi”: Zapiski i razmyshleniia o sud΄be i tvorchestve Fridrikha Gorenshteina (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

6. Markish, Simon, “O Rossiiskom evreistve i ego literature,” in Markish, Simon, ed., Babel΄ i drugie (Moscow, 1997), 206Google Scholar.

7. Grinberg, Marat, “V drugom izmerenii: Gorenshtein i Babel,’” Slovo 45 (2005)Google Scholar; Marat Grinberg, “Hesped: Piat΄ let spustia,” SlovoWord 54, (2007): no page number, at https://magazines.gorky.media/slovo/2007/54/gesped-pyat-let-spustya.html

8. For an authoritative discussion of Soviet Jewish writers’ strategies of Holocaust memorialization, see Murav, Harriet, Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (Stanford, 2013), 111–98Google Scholar.

9. Fridrich Gorenshtein, Iskuplenie in Izbrannoe v trekh tomakh (Moscow 1992), 2:164.

10. Ibid., 2:252.

11. Ibid., 2:165.

12. Ibid., 2:177.

13. Ibid., 2:236.

14. Ibid., 2:254.

15. Ibid., 2:256.

16. Ibid., 2:253–54.

17. On the term Soviet Holocaust literature, see Murav, Music from a Speeding Train, 152.

18. Gorenshtein, Iskuplenie, 2:255–57.

19. Ibid., 2:257.

20. Ibid., 2:257.

21. Ibid., 2:270.

22. Ibid., 2:255.

23. Ibid., 2:258.

24. On the unsuitability of Spinoza’s god for a traditional type of theodicy, see Nadler, Steven, “Spinoza in the Garden of Good and Evil,” in Kremer, Elmar J. and Latzer, Michael J., eds., The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy (Toronto, 2001), 66–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nadler ends up mobilizing Spinoza for theodicy but on different terms.

25. Gorenshtein, Iskuplenie, 2:279; see also the tribute to Gorenshtein, cited in n3 above, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNxwDk2jOJc.

26. Natal΄ia Ivanova, “Skvoz΄ nenavist΄—k liubvi, skvoz΄ liubov΄—k ponimaniiu. Predislovie k romanu F. Gorenshteina Psalom” (2001), at www.belousenko.com/books/Gorenstein/gorenstein_psalom_ivanova.htm (accessed October 25, 2023).

27. Yuri Veksler, “Molilis΄ i chertu tozhe. O bibleiskom realizme i teatral’nykh mirakh pisatelia Fridrikha Gorenshteina.” Ex libris, March 22, 2012, 4, at https://imwerden.de/pdf/veksler_gorenstein_exlibris_2012_22_03.pdf (accessed October 25, 2023).

28. Nikiforovich, Grigorii, Otkrytie Gorenshteina (Moscow, 2013), 103Google Scholar.

29. Fridrich Gorenshtein, Psalom: Roman-razmyshlenie o chtetyrekh kazniakh Gospodnikh in Izbrannoe v trekh tomakh (Moscow, 1993), 3:278.

30. Ibid., 3:14, 3:26, 3:302.

31. Ibid., 3:200.

32. Ibid., 3:312.

33. Ibid., 3:124, 2:135.

34. Ibid., 3:136.

35. Ibid., 3:124, 3:273.

36. Ibid., 3:124.

37. On the relationship between a “theodic center” and “antitheodic margins” in classical Jewish texts and on their reconfigurations in post-Holocaust Jewish thought, see Zackary Braiterman, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton, 1999).

38. On Pomerants’s and other Jewish critics’ efforts to distance themselves from Gorenshtein, see Murav, Harriet, “A Curse upon Russia: Gorenshtein’s Anti-Psalom and the Critics,” The Russian Review 52, no. 2 (April 1993): 213–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39. Pomerants, “Psalom Antikhrista.”

40. For a recent insightful discussion of this essay, see Marat Grinberg, The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines (Brandeis UP, 2023), 194–95.

41. Fridrikh Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa, literaturovedu i cheloveku, a takzhe ego potomkam. Pamflet-dissertatsiia s memuarnymi etiudami i lichnymi razmyshleniiami,” Zerkalo zagadok. Literaturnoe prilozhenie (Berlin, 1997), 48.

42. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa,” 46. That these wounds are festering is evident to Gorenshtein as much from the remarkable vividness as from the feigned lightheartedness with which Pomerants recalls an encounter with an antisemitic drunk thirty years after the fact.

43. For an illuminating discussion of Soviet Jewish converts into Orthodox Christianity, see Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Doubly Chosen: Jewish Identity, the Soviet Intelligentsia, and the Russian Orthodox Church (Madison, 2004).

44. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa,” 52.

45. Fedor M. Dostoevskii, Bratiia Karamazovy. Roman v chetyrekh chastiakh s epilogom, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, eds. V.G. Bazanov, V.V. Vinogradov, G.M. Fridlender (Leningrad, 1972–90) 14:222, 223. Italics in the original.

46. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa,” 43–44.

47. Arkadii Moshchinskii, “O knige Miny Polianskoi “Ia pisatel΄ nezakonnyi . . .”, SlovoWord 45, (2005), https://magazines.gorky.media/slovo/2005/45/o-knige-miny-polyanskoj-ya-pisatel-nezakonnyj.html; Grinberg, “Esse Gorenshteina: V poiskakh prichiny,” Lekhaim, at https://lechaim.ru/events/esse-gorenshtejna-v-poiskah-prichiny/ (accessed October 26, 2023).

48. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa”; Gorenshtein, “Pritcha o bogatom iunoshe,” 577, at www.gorenstein.imwerden.de/gorenshtein_pritcha_o_bogatom_junoshe.pdf (accessed 10/25/2023).

49. Dostoevskii, Bratiia Karamazovy, 14:60.

50. Gorenshtein, “Pritcha o bogatom iunoshe,” 577. This echoes elements of Ivan and Zosima’s discussion of the western and Russian criminal in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky, PSS 14:59–61.

51. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa,” 46. Also see Fridrikh Gorenshtein, “Prestuplenie i iskuplenie. Samoretsenziia” https://gorenstein.imwerden.de/prestuplenie_iskuplenie.pdf (accessed 10/25/2023).

52. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa,” 49.

53. Cynthia Ozick in Simon Wiesenthal, Harry J. Cargas, and Bonny V. Fetterman, eds., The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, (New York, 1998), 213–19.

54. Gorenshtein, “Prestuplenie i iskuplenie”

55. Ibid.

56. Harriet Murav discusses Jewish critics’ strategies of distancing their Jewishness from Gorenshtein’s in “A Curse on Russia: Gorenshtein’s Anti-Psalom and the Critics,” Russian Review 52, no. 2 (April 1993): 223–24.

57. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa,” 46.

58. Ibid., 52.

59. Elena Stishova, “Proshchenoe voskresenie. ‘Iskuplenie’ rezhiser Aleksandr Proshkin” at https://old.kinoart.ru/archive/2012/08/proshchenoe-voskresene-iskuplenie-rezhisser-aleksandr-proshkin (accessed November 13, 2023).

60. Gorenshtein, “Pritcha o bogatom iunoshe,” 576.

61. Gorenshtein, “Tovarishchu Matsa,” 44.