The Spectral Century: The Ghosts of Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Performance

Abstract

This dissertation traces the etiology of ghostly figures in medieval and nineteenth-century Russian literary and performing arts. Beginning with the native pre-history of spectrality in Kyivan Rus and early modern Russia, I propose that the specters that proliferate in the nineteenth century are uniquely Russian in essence, despite their ostensible translation from a Western European context. The role of pre-Christian East Slavic paganism, the unique version of Orthodoxy inherited by Volodimer, Christianizer of Kyivan Rus, and the commingling of the two in the form of folk Orthodoxy provided specific conditions for the adoption of the ghost as a master trope in the long nineteenth century. Distinctly Russian elements, such as the beliefs surrounding Orthodox icons and folk rituals commemorating the dead, imprint themselves on the figure of the ghost in the Russian nineteenth century, creating a unique instantiation of the specter that haunted European culture during the period. Building on this foundation, I move through a variety of art forms and media that proved especially popular in the nineteenth century. In order, they are Romantic poetry, Gothic prose, early historical opera, and Romantic and neo-classical ballet. For each of these art forms, the nineteenth century proved to be the time of its modern genesis, and the models established in this era persist into the present moment. The types of ghosts in each art form are largely similar, albeit with some important distinctions among them. For example, the ghost employed in Romantic poetry is oriented more toward a consideration of the mortality of the poetic speaker and the possibility of post-mortem lingering, while the phantoms of Gothic prose are more acutely concerned with the uncovering of legacies of violence and the revelation of secrets. Throughout this dissertation, I provide a throughline that shows how the cultural ghost of this period is, paradoxically, a plural singularity, the Derridean plus d'un. It is the same ghost that haunts Romantic poetry, Gothic prose, and the performing arts during this period, but each and every iteration of the phantom is radically distinct from each other. My theoretical approaches include psychoanalysis, Derridean hauntology, and the contemporary field of spectrality studies. My specific interventions into each of these fields comes from the prolonged consideration of Russian material. The majority of investigations into the ghostly have come from Western European and North American sources, and the result is that the figure of the ghost in contemporary scholarship has a certain Catholic/Protestant coloring. Studying Russian material provides an opportunity to interject Orthodox theology and East Slavic folklore into the conversation. I argue implicitly throughout this project that specific material from the Russian context complicates some of the conjectures of contemporary spectrality studies. The introduction provides an overview of each approach and a detailed literature review. My goal in this dissertation is to enliven the research of ghosts in Slavic material through defamiliarizing and problematizing the use of spectrality as a literary and artistic device. The ghost is no mere trope. As contemporary scholars assert, lingering on the ghost's presence entails a confrontation with some of the most pressing questions of our time. Throughout this project, delving into the figure of the ghosts of nineteenth-century Russian literature and performance inevitably leads to consideration of colonialism, gender, sexuality, alterity, and others. These questions frequented the debates of the nineteenth century, and they continue to haunt today.