Andrew Wachtel

Writers and Society in Eastern Europe, 1989-2000: The End of the Golden Age

Although an enormous amount has been written about the political, social, and economic effects of post-communist transition, little concern has been paid to its equally traumatic effects on culture—particularly literary culture which was traditionally highly valued in Eastern Europe. Based on field research conducted in 10 countries, this article documents the changes in the environment for literary publishing and the extent to which writers in post-communist societies have suffered a loss of material wealth as well as prestige since 1989.

Petrushka : sources and contexts

The contributors - two Slavicists, a musicologist and an art historian - offer a detailed exploration of the ballet, Petrushka, which premiered in Russia in 1911 and became one of the most important and influential theatrical works of the modernist period.

Intersections and transpositions : Russian music, literature, and society

This collection serves as an introduction to the great variety of approaches being used by Slavicists and historians to situate music and literature in the Russian cultural imagination. The first part focuses on music in art; part two centres on music in life.

Trees, and: (…) Here's a way to outwit fate, and: An army of soldiers is digging out heaven, and: If we were Gypsies, and: (…) It's the end of the earth

Five poems, “Trees,” “Here’s a way to outwit fate,” “An army of soldiers is digging out heaven,” “If we were Gypsies,” and “It’s the end of the earth” by poet Anzhelina Polonskaya. Translated by Andrew Wachtel.

Let's Go to Morocco, and Trains

Let’s go to Morocco. Maybe things are different there: mountains and seas, other streets. Lions don’t fall into traps, and hares don’t whine like babies. And people don’t have scars from collarbone to shoulder. An old lady will come up to us: “let me tell your fortune?” “Predict your future luck.” Sorry, I don’t know those terms. Better take this coin and buy yourself a bright scarf and some loose pants. And we will go, sail away, leave. But still, Morocco will never end. Under a deep blue sky we’ll become like an almond branch. This will extend your life, and mine as well; at least for a time.

History and autobiography in Tolstoy

At the end of Sevastopol in May , Tolstoy makes a famous claim, central to his fiction and startling in its simplicity and boldness: “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have attempted to depict in all of his beauty, and who was, is and will always be sublime, is the truth.” In notes to War and Peace a decade or so later, he wrote: “I was afraid that the necessity to describe the significant figures of 1812 would force me to be governed by historical documents rather than the truth.” But what did Tolstoy mean by “truth” in works of fiction which have, since Aristotle, been understood to describe not what is but what might be? Given that both works contain this Tolstoyan truth, it makes sense to search for it in their intersection. At first, this approach may seem unpromising, however. Sevastopol in May , a feuilleton, focuses on the day-to-day life of a few “randomly chosen” soldiers during a short period of time in an enclosed space. War and Peace , set entirely in the past, sprawls over multiple characters and huge chunks of time and space. In other ways, however, Sevastopol Sketches and War and Peace are quite similar. Both are constructed of “real” material taken from life (and especially from Tolstoy’s biography), while that same material is fitted into a context that disguises its provenance. Tolstoy was in Sevastopol.