Aleksandra Xvostova, Nikolaj Karamzin and the Gendering of Toska

This article reviews the evolution of toska in eighteenth-century literary discourse to demonstrate this sentiment's profound connection with notions of femininity. That century's use of toska culminates in Aleksandra Xvostova's then popular Otryvki (Fragments, 1796), the emotional emphases of which were one of the reasons for its success. In fact, we argue that Russian women's writing contains a tradition of emotional expression that is lexically distinct from the male tradition. Xvostova’s emphatic and reiterative use of toska participates in a larger debate about gender and the 'ownership' of personal emotions and it was relevant to literary arguments about "feminization" that involved writers such as Nikolaj Karamzin and Vasilij Zukovskij, but also a number of women authors (e.g. Ekaterina Urusova, Anna Turčaninova, Elizaveta Dolgorukova, Anna Volkova), whose work asserts the right of the female subject to both suffer strong emotion and to express it.

The Presence of Absence. Longing and Nostalgia in Post-Soviet Art and Literature

This article explores the phenomenon of nostalgia for the Soviet era found in contemporary Russian society and manifested both in contemporary art, such as in the installations of Il'ja Kabakov, Sergej Volkov, and Jevgenij Fiks, and in modern literature, especially in the prose of Andrej Astvacaturov. Such regret for a bygone past primarily mourns not the apparatus of the Soviet state, but the routine and the quality of familiar daily life. Insights from the fields of visual studies and trauma studies undergird this exploration of the relationship between a work of art's visual composition and its representation of toska, memory, and material culture in the Soviet era. By juxtaposing artwork with literary prose, we reveal the significant role had by 'reflective' toska-nostalgia (as defined by Svetlana Boym, 2001) in the formation of post-Soviet identity.

Chronotopes of Affectivity in Literature. On Melancholy, Estrangement, and Reflective Nostalgia

Basing our analysis on the concepts of ‘emotion’, ‘feeling’, and ‘mood’ as defined by data from the cognitive sciences, we argue that human emotions are both universal and intrinsically linked to literary and artistic chronotopes. In her study of 'reflective' and 'restorative' nostalgia, Svetlana Boym (2001) shows that 'nostalgia' itself represents pure ambivalence that takes on a particular shape in response to the mood, thoughts, and psychological state of the author. Its ultimate expression might assume the form of either monological ideology or of paradoxical existential emotion. It is this second type of nostalgia that we can link most closely link to understandings of both 'melancholy' and 'identity' or 'self-consciousness'. Brooding and melancholic toska is shared by persons who suffer from what we might call 'existential ambivalence'; these persons are 'mercurials' in the terminology of Yuri Slezkine (2004). Within the field of Russian literature, this 'mercurial' sense of melancholy is particularly well developed.

Regret for the Time of Heroes and Existential Toska in Vladimir Vysockij

In the poetic legacy of Vladimir Vysockij, feelings of nostalgia are expressed in diverse ways, conveying various shades of boredom, longing, and melancholy. A special role is played in Vysockij's oeuvre by the so-called “longing for a heroic era”, which is sometimes expressed explicitly, but more often found in the implicit representation of “longing for a heroic deed”. Vysockij's conception of the heroic deed or feat (podvig) casts this as a moral and spiritual state that contrasts sharply with the surrounding world and with everyday life. While Vysockian "longing for a heroic deed" can be associated with specific geographic contexts (including mountains, the taiga, glaciers in the North), this articles argues that it was the peculiar chronotope of the Great Patriotic War that served as the quintessential context for the heroic feat in Vysockij's universe.

Melancholic Humor, Skepticism and Reflective Nostalgia. Igor’ Guberman’s Poetics of Paradox

The poetry of Israeli émigré Igor' Guberman, comprising thousands of quatrains (‘gariki’), represents a hybrid genre at the junction of Jewish aphoristic tradition, Russian oral folklore, and classical Russian poetry. The theme of toska, which is central to the gariki, may be sharply distinguished from the ‘restorative nostalgia’ theorized by Svetlana Boym (2001): Guberman's toska is a thoughtful, melancholic, and paradoxical feeling. It expresses a particular variety of skepticism that characterizes the paradoxical humor of the Ashkenazi, the purpose of which is not to ridicule others' shortcomings, but to gently make fun of the sadness and painful absurdity that impermeates human existence. Such melancholic and paradoxical humor permits Guberman to look at life, at himself, even at God, with an indulgent ‘smile of reason’ that is absolutely devoid of arrogance. A subtle melancholic and deep skeptic, Guberman "laughs through his tears", for this is what Russian-Jewish tradition teaches, a lesson that has penetrated deeply and more generally into Russian literature: when the soul is beset by excessive sadness, its has recourse only to laughter.

Nostalgia and Creaturality in H. Leivick’s Тhe Golem

This article examines some of the constituent elements of an often metaphysical "Jewish angst" or "Jewish toska" found in the Yiddish language drama "The Golem" (Der goylem, 1921). In this masterpiece by Russian Jewish writer H. Leivick, the renowned man-made clay giant clay of ancient Kabbalah legend, is the creature of sixteenth-century Rabbi Loew, the Maharal of Prague, and becomes an emblem of Jewish melancholic nostalgia. Such toska is directed simultaneously at the ontologically distant Creator, supremely unattainable, and at the equally unreachable messianic era. The Golem's sense of estrangement from his own existence, explored here in tandem with Leivick's biography, ultimately renders him a personification of nostalgia itself.