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Resurrection à la Russe: Tolstoy's The Living Corpse as Cultural Paradigm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Andrew Wachtel
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Abstract

This essay explores the sociocultural ramifications of a literary theme—fake suicide and resurrection—in Russia through an analysis of Tolstoy's drama The Living Corpse. Written in 1900, the work illustrates Tolstoy's theory that a play must have a central thematic “knot.” The knot Tolstoy chose was central not just for his play but for Russian culture in general. This knot engages four kinds of subtexts: it derives from a contemporary trial, it polemically attacks Chernyshevsky's notorious novel What Is to Be Done?, it marks a dialogue with the religious philosopher Fedorov, and it represents a development of ideas that Tolstoy had been exploring for almost fifty years. Subsequently, Tolstoy's reworking of the suicide-and-resurrection theme served as a point of departure for such twentieth-century authors as Mayakovsky, Erdman, Nabokov, and Bulgakov.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 2 , March 1992 , pp. 261 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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