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Ol'ga Freidenberg on Myth, Folklore, and Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Nina Perlina
Nina Perlina*
Affiliation:
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Indiana University, Bloomington
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Extract

Ol'ga Mikhailovna Freidenberg (1890-1955) has recently emerged from oblivion in the Soviet Union and in the west. In the Soviet Union, she has gained renown for the extraordinary diversity of her scholarly interests, from classical philology to a broad range of topics in theoretical poetics. In the west she is now known for her correspondence with her cousin, Boris Pasternak, and as the author of voluminous memoir notes, Probeg zhizni. The epistolary part of Freidenberg's archive was published in Russian and in English by Elliott Mossman in The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg: 1910-1954.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , Summer 1991 , pp. 371 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1991

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References

1. Lotman, Iurii M., “O. M. Freidenberg kak issledovatel’ kul'tury,” Trudy po znakovym sistemam 6 (1973): 482–486 Google Scholar (translated as “0. M. Freidenberg as a Student of Culture” in Semiotics and Structuralism: Readings from the Soviet Union, ed. Henryk Baran [White Plains, N.Y.: International Arts and Sciences PreSs, 1976]: 257-265). Lotman's article is followed by a bibliography of works by O. M. Freidenberg (Semiotics and Structuralism, 265-268) and by publication of her paper “Proiskhozhdenie parodii” (ibid., 269-284). “Proiskhozhdenie literarnoi intrigi,” and “Chto takoe eskhatologia?” (Trudy 6: 497-512, 512-514) have not yet been translated.

2. Boris Pasternak. Perepiska s Ol'goi Freidenberg, ed. Elliott Mossman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981). The English translation by Mossman and Margaret Wettlin followed from the same publishers in 1982, The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg: 1910-1954.

3. On Mossman's use of Freidenberg's diary in the text of the correspondence see Correspondence, xiii. Here I refer to the complete text of Freidenberg's Probeg zhizni. I am grateful to Ann Pasternak Slater who made this valuable document available to me. References to Probeg zhizni will be indicated in the text. The first number will refer to the folder and the second to the page.

4. “Budet li moskovskii Niurnberg? (Iz zapisok 1946-48 godov),” Sintaksis 16 (1986): 149-163. “Osada cheloveka,” Minuvshee 3 (1987): 7-44.

5. From 1973 to 1989, Nina Vladimirovna Braginskaia published several seminal pieces from Freidenberg's academic legacy: Mifi literatura drevnosti (Moscow: Nauka, 1978); Mifi teatr (Moscow: GITIS, 1988); “Proiskhozhdenie grecheskoi liriki,” Voprosy literatury 11(1973): 101-123; “Semantika pervoi veshchi,” Dekorativnoe iskusstvo 2(1976): 16-22; “Metodologjia odnogo motiva,” Trudy po znakovym sistemam 20(1987): 120-130; “Eirena Aristofana,” Arkhaicheskii ritual vfol'klornykh i ranneliteraturnykh pamiatnikakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1988): 221-236; and “Vospominaniia o N. la. Marre,” Vostok-Zapad 3(1988): 181-204.

6. E. M. Meletinskii, Poetika mifa (Moscow: Nauka, 1976): 121-141; Vvedenie v istoricheskuiu poetiku eposa i romana (Moscow: Nauka, 1986): 8-10; “Istoricheskaiapoetika A. I. Veselovskogo i problema proiskhozhdeniia povestvovatel'noi literatury,” in Istoricheskaia poetika. Itogi iperspektivy izucheniia, ed. B. Khrapchenko et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 29-39; Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, Ocherkipo istorii semiotiki v SSSR (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 14-19, 34-37; Jerzy Frayno, Mifologizm i Teologizm Tsvetaevoi, in Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 18(1985): 54-58, 70-78, 110-141, 239-241.

7. Fourteen talks were presented during the two memorial meetings (13-14 March 1990) organized by the Department of Classical Philology at Leningrad State University.

8. Freidenberg's “Tri siuzheta ili semantika odnogo,” lazyk i literatura 5(1929): 33-60, has been translated by Ann Shukman and Halina Willetts as “Three Plots or the Semantic of One: Shakespeare's ‘The Taming of the Shrew',” Russian Poetics in Translation 5(1978): 30-51. A double issue of Soviet Studies in Literature, forthcoming will provide a translation into English of twelve articles by Freidenberg, and Kevin Moss is annotating a translation of Obraz iponiatie for Harvard University Press.

9. Correspondence, xi-xix, 297-298; V. N. Roginskii, “Mikhail Filippovich Freidenberg— izobretatel’ ATS,” Izvestiia AkademiiNauk SSSR. Otdelenie tekhnicheskikh nauk 8(1950): 1243-1253, 1. V. Sokolov, “Vklad russkoi nauki i tekhniki v izobretenie kinematografa,” ibid. 4(1952): 596-599.

10. Correspondence, 56.

11. In addition to the course work required by her department, Freidenberg took seminars in Russian literature from S. A. Vengerov (nineteenth century Russian literature), I. A. Shliapkin (Russian paleography), V. N. Bush (old Russian literature), and A. K. Borozdin, with whom she studied the history of the schism and old ecclesiastic texts. She also audited 1.1. Lapshin's and N. O. Losskii's lectures in philosophy (Probeg 2: 2-8; 10, 46).

12. For early polemics on the merits or disadvantages of historical, sociological and formalist approaches to literature, see P. N. Sakulin, “K voprosu o postroenii poetiki,” Iskusstvo 1(1923): 79-93; A. A. Smirnov, “Puti i zadachi nauki o literature,” Literaturnaia mysl’ 2(1923): 91-109; V. M. Zhirmunskii, K voprosu oformal'nom metode (Petrograd: Academia, 1923). The publication dates cover Freidenberg's stay at the university.

13. A. N. Veselovskii, Istoricheskaia poetika (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1940): 53-54; 201-206.

14. Ibid., 73.

15. B. M. Engel'gardt, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Veselovskii (Petrograd: Kolos, 1924): 165.Google Scholar

16. Lezin, B. A., ed., Voprosy teorii i psikhologii tvorchestva (Khar'kov: Mirnyi trud, 1911) vols. 1-3.Google Scholar

17. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, the pioneers of this trend in the humanities were professors M. I. Rostovtsev, N. la. Marr, S. A. Zhebelev, and 1.1. Tolstoi. As a student, Freidenberg was strongly affected by the works of M. Rostovtsev Ellinstvo i iraristvo naiuge Evropy (Petrograd, 1918); Antichnaia dekorativnaia zhivopis'na iuge Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1914); Zhebelev, S., Apostol Pavel i ego poslaniia (Petrograd: Ogni, 1922 Google Scholar; Tolstoi, I., OstrovBelyi i Tavrika na Evksinskomponte (Petrograd, 1918)Google Scholar. See Probeg 2: 10-17; 39; 43; 45; 3: 8.

18. A. A. Potebnia, Iz zapisok po teorii slovesnosti (Khar'kov: tipografiia M. Zil'berg, 1905): 398-529.

19. Zhebelev, Apostol Pavel, 15-25; 49-53; 122-159. The work discusses the transformation of epistolary forms in different ethnic, cultural, and religious surroundings.

20. In 1922-1923, while she was working on her master's thesis “Proiskhozhdenie grecheskogo romana,” Freidenberg expressed the main difference between her own and the Veselovskian treatment of the poetics of literary genres: “Rather than linear development from Adam's time to nowadays (as it was in Veselovskii and Rohde), Hellenism had prefigured duplicate forms to all plots which will then be found within the limits of the Greek novel” (Probeg 3: 40). Compare also A. Veselovskii's chapter “Poetika siuzhetov i ee zadachi,” Istoricheskaia poetika, 493-515, and Freidenberg, Poetika siuzheta i zhanra. Period antichnoi literature (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia litertura, 1936): 8-21; 21-24.

21. The works can be found in Trudy po znakovym sistemam 6(1973): 490-497; Trudy iubileinoi nauchnoi sessii LGU. Sektsiia fililogicheskikh nauk (1946): 101-113; Trudy po znakovym sistemam 6(1973): 497-512; Voprosy literatury 11(1973): 101-123; Trudy po znakovym sistemam 6(1973): 512-514.

22. Ong, Walter J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, New York: Methuen, 1982): 3, 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Compare ibid., 15, 43-45, and Freidenberg, Mifi literatura drevnosti, 11-12.

24. References to and discussions of the works can be found in Probeg2: 1-10; 3: 7-8; 165; 212-25; 4: 149-154; 5: 181-182. On Frazer and Deborin see also Correspondence, 71-72, 120-124; a critical survey of the works is included in Poetika siuzheta, 5-37. On Freidenberg's early interest in philosophy and cultural anthropology see N. V. Braginskaia, “O rabote O. M. Freidenberg ‘Sistema literaturnogo siuzheta',” Tynianovskii sbornik 2 (Riga: Zinatne, 1986): 272-283. Freidenberg's article on Bachofen (1947) is not yet published.

25. Nomogenez, Hi evoliutsiia na osnove zakonomernostei (1922) by Lev Semenovich Berg, has been published recently: L. S. Berg, Trudy po teorii evoliutsii (Moscow: Nauka, 1977). On Freidenberg's interests in the biological sciences and nonpositivistic evolutionary theories see Braginskaia, “O rabote O. M. Freidenberg,” 276-278.

26. LeVy-Bruhl, Freud, and Cassirer's writings were well known to Soviet specialists in folklore, mythologic, and ethnographic studies of the 1920s-1930s. For Freidenberg's summary of their views, see Poetika siuzheta, 23-30; 26-28; 30-34. Further analysis of their views see in I. O. Frank-Kamenetskii, “Pervobytnoe myshlenie v svete iafeticheskoi teorii i filosofii,” lazyk i literatura 3(1929): 70-155, and in a memorial collection Akademiia nauk SSSR akademiku N. la. Marru. XLV (Moscow-Leningrad, 1935) that included K. R. Megrelidze, “O khodiachikh sueveriiakh i ‘pralogicheskom’ sposobe myshleniia (Replika Levi-Briuliu),” (461-496), and V. P. Adrianova-Perets, “Simvolika snovidenii Freida v svete russkikh zagodok,” (497-505). Freidenberg also contributed to these editions.

27. Freidenberg was excited by many of Marr's daring ideas, yet she always remained independent of Marrism. The most objective account of her academic attitude towards Marr is provided in Probeg 2: 127; 3: 7-9; 97-99; 131-134; 167-169; 205; 4: 185-189; and in “Vospominaniia o N. la. Marre.” Her article on Marr and the classical languages (1933) is not yet published. For an overall critique of Marrism, see Borbe, Tasso, Kritik der Marxistischen Sprachtheorie N. Ja. Marr (Amsterdam: Kronberg, 1974 Google Scholar; a bibliography is provided in this work. Also see Thomas, Lawrence, The Linguistic Theories ofN. Ja. Marr (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957 Google Scholar.

28. “Siuzhetnaia semantika ‘Odissei',” lazyk i literatura 5(1929): 59.

29. Correspondence, 76-79, Probeg 2: 98-105.

30. Marr, , “Iafetidologiia v Leningradskom Gosudarstvennom Universitete,” Izvestiia LGU 2(1930): 66 Google Scholar. For discussion of the Marr-Veselovskii affinity see Shishmarev, V. F., “Marr i Veselovskii,” lazyk i myshlenie (Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1936): 330–339 Google Scholar, and Zhirmunskii's introduction to Veselovskii, Istoricheskaia poetika, 4-8; 30-37. Both works, written in the period when Marr's authority was unchallengeable for folklore, language, and ethnologic studies, contain several far-fetched statements.

31. Marr, , lazyk i myshlenie (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1931)Google Scholar. See also Meshchaninov, I. I., Vvedenie v iafetidologiiu (Leningrad: Priboi, 1927 Google Scholar; Novoe uchenie o iazyke (Leningrad: Sotsekgiz, 1936) and Problemy razvitiia iazyka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1975): 3-33.

32. Marr, “Iafetidologiia v LGU,” 52.

33. Frank-Kameneckii, “Pervobytnoe myshlenie v svete iafeticheskoi teorii,” 70-73, 84-87, 111, 133, 139-141; Meshchaninov, Novoe uchenie o iazyke, 26-40; A. M. Deborin, “Novoe uchenie o iazyke i dialekticheskii materializm,” AN SSSR Akademiku N. la. Marru. XLV, 21-73.

34. Freidenberg and her colleagues owe their terminology in cultural and philosophical anthropology to L6vy-Bruhl (Poetika siuzheta, 23-34; 364-365 and notes). For the English equivalents, I have relied on Levy-Bruhl, The Notebooks on Primitive Mentality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975).

35. Poetika siuzheta, 52-68.

36. Freidenberg joined the mythology section at Marr's Institut Iazyka i Myshleniia in 1926. There she worked with Vasilii Struve, Izrail’ Frank-Kamenetskii, Moisei Al'tman, Vasilii Komarovich, Boris Kazanskii, Vladimir Shishmarev, and Ivan Meshchaninov. Their uniform terminology and methodology in the history of culture and language can be best seen from the editions of Iafeticheskie sborniki, 1—6(1923— 1930) and from the collective work of the sector, Tristan i Isol'da: Ot geroini liubvi feodal'noi Evropy do bogini matriarkhal'noi Afrevrazii (Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1932).

37. Scholars of different linguistic orientations expressed their reservations about the new teaching on language. Nicholas Trubetskoy disagreed with Marr's phonology and morphology in “Les consonnes laterales des langues Caucasiques-Septentrionales,” Bulletin de la SocUte de Linguistique 23(1922): 184-204. Lawrence L. Thomas has objected to the following features of Marr's theories: a tendency to ignore the history of language; a tendency to ignore temporal restrictions in the framing of sound laws; and a penchant for assigning a language to one family or another on the basis of a single morphological element (Linguistic Theories, 25). The structuralists have charged Marr with reductionism and with ignoring correspondences between the “thing-language, the object-language” and their metalinguistic descriptions: see Iu. S. Stepanov. V trekhmernom prostranstve iazyka (Moscow: Nauka, 1985): 166-170.

38. Poetika siuzheta, 28. See also ibid., 119-121; 189-197; 291-335, and lectures 1 through 5 in Mifi literatura, 9-33.

39. The titles of Freidenberg's articles are indicative: “Semantika pervoi veshchi” (transformation of the semantic integrity: the vault of the sky-the vault as architectural detail); “Iz do-gomerovskoi semantiki” (cultural survivals of totemistic tribal rituals in the epics of The Iliad); “Fol'klor u Aristofana” (orgiastic praxes as the base for poetic subject matter and genre in Aristophanes).

40. Freidenberg and Frank-Kamenetskii shared common views on the archaic forms of poetic thinking. See Poetika siuzheta, 33-37. In the 1940s she relied on Frank-Kamenetskii's “K voprosu o razvitii poeticheskoi metafory,” Sovetskoe iazykoznanie 1(1935): 93-145, and “Rastitel'nost’ i zemledelie v poeticheskikh obrazakh Biblii i v gomerovskikh sravneniiakh,” lazyk i literatura 4(1929): 123-170. For her treatment of drama see “Komicheskoe do komedii (k probleme vozniknoveniia kachestva),” Mif i teatr, 74-127.

41. “Proiskhozhdenie epicheskogo sravneniia (na materiale lliady),” Trudy iubileinoi sessii LGU. Sektsiia filologicheskikh nauk (Leningrad, 1946) 109.

42. Correspondence, 260.

43. Ibid., 266; “Proiskhozhdenie grecheskoi liriki,” 105.

44. Poetika siuzheta, 9-10.

45. “Iz do-gomerovskoi semantiki,” Akademiia nauk SSSR AkademikuN'. la. Marru. XLV, 381-392.

46. Poetika siuzheta, 231-238.

47. Tristan i I sol'da. Ot geroini liubvi, 5.

48. Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folktale, ed. Wagner, Louis A., trans. Pirkova-Jakobson, Svatova (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968 Google Scholar; the first Russian edition appeared in 1928.

49. V Propp, “Ritual'nyi smekh v fol'klore,” “Motiv chudesnogo rozhdeniia,” “Edip v svete fol'klora,” Fol'klor i deistvitel'nost’ (Moscow: Nauka, 1976): 174-204; 205-241; 258-299. Freidenberg, Poetika siuzheta, 100-103; 111-121; 71-87.

50. Propp, “Spetsifika fol'klora,” Fol'klor i deistvitel'nost', 19-31.

51. Compare Bogatyrev., Petre The Function of Folk Costume in Moravian Slovakia, ed. Sebeok, Thomas A., trans. Grum, R. G. (The Hague: Mouton, 1971 Google Scholar; Voprosy teorii narodnogo iskusstva (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971), and Freidenberg, Poetika siuzheta, 121-223, where she discusses the formation of primeval worldviews. See also her “Semantika pervoi veshchi,” Dekorativnoe iskusstvo 12(1976): 16-22; “Semantika postroiki kukol'nogo teatra,” Mifi teatr, 16-20, and lectures 4 through 8 in Mifi literatura, 22-49.

52. Bogatyrev, The Functions of Folk Costumes, 102.

53. Freidenberg, Mif i teatr, 15-22, 24-28.

54. Bogatyrev, The Functions, 102; 83-84; 95-98; Freidenberg, Mifi literatura, 22-23; “Semantika pervoi veshchi,” 19.

55. Bogatyrev, Voprosy teorii, 180-185; 189; 195.

56. Ibid., 218-23.

57. Ibid., 221.

58. A semantic equivalent of this residuary peasant belief can be seen in John 4: 22: “We worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”

59. Bogatyrev, Voprosy teorii, 170.

60. Preface to his translation of Obraz iponiatie by Ol'ga Freidenberg (forthcoming).

61. Lotman, “O. M. Freidenberg as a Student of Culture,” Semiotics and Structuralism, 263.

62. Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, “Semiotica sub Specie Sovietica: Anti-Freudianism, Pro-Marrism, and Other Disturbing Matters,” PTL 3(1978): 441, 448-453.

63. Kevin Moss, “Two Views of Parody: Mikhail Bakhtin and Ol'ga Freidenberg,” paper delivered at AATSEEL Annual Meeting, New York, December 1983.

64. Nina Perlina, “Ol'ga Freidenberg's Works and Days,” Strumenti critici, forthcoming; introduction to the O. M. Freidenberg issue of Soviet Studies in Literature, forthcoming.