Russian Modernism in Music, Literature, and the Arts

This course acquaints students with one of the most fascinating periods in Russian culture that best represents the interconnectedness of various artistic forms, such as literature, music, dance, painting, décor, architecture, theater, and film. Students will explore central issues of the period, such as the relationship between art and revolution, reconceptualizations of society, history and the self. Of particular interest will be artists’ and authors’ experimentation in form and language in order to present afresh the experience of life. Employing theoretical frameworks of semiotics, formalist literary critique, constructivism, and communication theory, students will examine how modernist artists dismiss traditional referential meaning in creating new types of signification, how they construct communicative relationships with their readers, and what social implications arise from these practices. Principal artistic movements examined will include symbolism, decadence, the avant-garde, including neo-primitivism, cubo-futurism, constructivism, suprematism, and rayonism. Students will explore music of Skriabin, Stravinsky, Avraamov, Prokofiev, Matushin, Roslavets, and Mosolov; they will read short prose by Bunin, Brusov, Sologub, Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Garshin, Remizov, Pilniak, Babel, Platonov, Zamiatin, and Kharms.