CSLC 139 The Demonic in Eastern European Literature and Film
To become a human being I need something or somebody who is not altogether human. What or who might this be? Eastern Europe gives a provocative and profound answer: to become a human one needs demons. This idea can be found in the works of the majority of Eastern European writers, painters, composers, filmmakers, and philosophers. Every major Russian writer—including Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Tsvetaeva—has at least one novel, poem, or essay entitled Demons or The Devil. The final film of Andrei Tarkovsky was originally entitled The Witch, and even the Ocean in his Solaris (based on Stanislav Lem’s science fiction novel) is endowed with demonic features. The demonic—at least in Eastern Europe—is a mirror, in which a person could find their true self.
We will begin the semester by discussing the pagan beliefs and practices of the East Slavs that included a non-hierarchical and diverse pantheon of the so-called minor spirits that were more mischievous than evil, and frequently helped humans in their everyday tasks. We will then take a close look at several literary and cinematic works, in which the traces of this pagan worldview survive until our own times. These works might include novels, stories, and poems by Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Tsvetaeva, Schulz, Lem, and films by Tarkovsky, Paradjanov, Sokurov, and Ilyenko. Several philosophers from Eastern Europe—such as Bakhtin, Florensky, and Rozanov—will guide us in this impish inquiry.
No previous knowledge of either the Russian language or Russian literature is required.