Meanings and Values of Water in Russian Culture

Description

Bringing together a team of scholars from the diverse fields of geography, literary studies, and history, this is the first volume to study water as a cultural phenomenon within the Russian/Soviet context. Water in this context is both a cognitive and cultural construct and a geographical and physical phenomenon, representing particular rivers (the Volga, the Chusovaia in the Urals, the Neva) and bodies of water (from Baikal to sacred springs and the flowing water of nineteenth-century estates), but also powerful systems of meaning from traditional cultures and those forged in the radical restructuring undertaken in the 1930s. Individual chapters explore the polyvalence and contestation of meanings, dimensions, and values given to water in various times and spaces in Russian history. The reservoir of symbolic association is tapped by poets and film-makers but also by policy-makers, the popular press, and advertisers seeking to incite reaction or drive sales. The volume's emphasis on the cultural dimensions of water will link material that is often widely disparate in time and space; it will also serve as the methodological framework for the analysis undertaken both within chapters and in the editors' introduction. Cover Half Title Series information Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgments Note on transliteration Introduction Notes Bibliography Section I Language and myths of water 1 The cultural semantics of water idioms in Russian dialects Dialect idioms reflecting common symbolic meanings of water The plot elements of water idioms in dialects Notes Bibliography 2 Sacred waters: The spiritual world of Lake Baikal Water and the sacred Creation stories: Baikal and the Buriats Sacred waters and rocks: the water-related cosmologies of Baikal Water, spirits, and human action Contested waters Divine Baikal The religious world of Lake Baikal Notes Bibliography 3 On the veneration of springs in the nineteenth century: Models of behavior and decision-making practices Notes Bibliography 4 Daemon loci: The formation of river images in Russian mental worlds River worlds: introduction to the context Images of the river: stasis and dynamism Daemon loci: the image’s genesis The river and image archetypes: the pathways of civilizations River discourse in Russian culture and literature: key elements River and place: the becoming of image The river text of Sasha Sokolova: the twilight of daemons Zaitil’shchina: the optics of twilight landscapes Notes Bibliography Section II Socio-cultural identities of water 5 “Mother Volga” and “Mother Russia”: On the role of the river in gendering Russianness Rivers in the discourse of nationalism: gender dimension The symbol of “Mother Russia” in Russian nationalism “Mother Volga”: the history of the idea Gendering semiotics of Volga The functions of “Mother Volga” Conclusion Notes Bibliography 6 Main street of the Urals: Creating the “Chusovaia” metanarrative The Chusovaia: the “natural” foundation of a symbolic space The Chusovaia: literature discovers the river Chusovaia: tourist destination and site of class struggle The Chusovaia: inventing the “message” Note Bibliography 7 A cup of tundra: Ethnography of water and thirst in the Bering Strait Introduction From the ice curtain to a steamy cup The loved and ubiquitous beverage Tea time in the Bering Strait Finding “tasty tea” in contemporary water systems Water in cooking and cleansing Feeling and quenching thirst on each side of the Strait Tea, coffee, and national belonging within the shared Beringian heritage Concluding remarks Acknowledgments Bibliography Section III Water rebuilding landscapes 8 Water on the Russian gentry estate I. II. Notes Bibliography 9 Celebrating the return of the flood I. The new and the old: politics of the flood II. Desire and anxiety of the flood Notes Bibliography 10 Water and power: The Moscow Canal and the “Port of Five Seas” Notes Bibliography Section IV Aesthetics and poetics of water 11 A woman in nature/a woman is nature: The eternal feminine as a conceptual blend of human and liquescent ... Introduction Approaches: cognitive framework Bal’mont’s and Musatov’s shared Symbolist poetics of the eternal feminine Konstantin Bal’mont: “Apparitions” Viktor Borisov-Musatov: Apparitions Notes Bibliography 12 Parched: Water and its absence in the films of Larisa Shepit’ko Notes Bibliography 13 “Water flows and teaches”: Marietta Shaginian’s novel Hydrocentral The power plant of desire production The palimpsestic text of the “sea of life” Challenging modernization Aqueous dissolution and metonymic discourse “Concrete-water factor” Notes Bibliography 14 Spatriotism: Water recycling in literary polemics (late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century Russia) Notes Bibliography Index