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11 Through the opaque veil

Rhe Gothic and death in Russian realism

Abstract

This chapter examines nineteenth-century Russian writers who drew on the Gothic in order to explore the experience of death, existential terror, and the possibility of an afterlife within the bounds of literary realism. In Turgenev’s story Bezhin Meadow and Chekhov’s sketch A Dead Body, Gothic language and imagery create a narrative frame that contextualizes an encounter between peasants and a traveller focused around a discussion of death. This chapter argues that the Gothic is juxtaposed with folk belief in these works, to underscore that both the peasants’ dvoeverie and educated Russia’s interest in natural sciences, materialist philosophy, and the pseudo-science of spiritualism represent attempts to systematise and explain the unknown. The Gothic mediates the tension between science and faith, the irrational and the prosaic, and the abject and the mysterious, while allowing these ruminations to remain ambiguously unfinalised for the reader.

Abstract

This chapter examines nineteenth-century Russian writers who drew on the Gothic in order to explore the experience of death, existential terror, and the possibility of an afterlife within the bounds of literary realism. In Turgenev’s story Bezhin Meadow and Chekhov’s sketch A Dead Body, Gothic language and imagery create a narrative frame that contextualizes an encounter between peasants and a traveller focused around a discussion of death. This chapter argues that the Gothic is juxtaposed with folk belief in these works, to underscore that both the peasants’ dvoeverie and educated Russia’s interest in natural sciences, materialist philosophy, and the pseudo-science of spiritualism represent attempts to systematise and explain the unknown. The Gothic mediates the tension between science and faith, the irrational and the prosaic, and the abject and the mysterious, while allowing these ruminations to remain ambiguously unfinalised for the reader.

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures viii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Series editor’s preface xiv
  6. Acknowledgements xvi
  7. Introduction – the corpse in the closet 1
  8. Part I Gothic graveyards and afterlives
  9. 1 Past, present, and future in the Gothic graveyard 21
  10. 2 ‘On the very Verge of legitimate Invention’ 34
  11. 3 Entranced by death 48
  12. Part II Gothic revolutions and undead histories
  13. 4 ‘This dreadful machine’ 63
  14. 5 Undying histories 76
  15. 6 Deadly interrogations 88
  16. Part III Gothic apocalypses: dead selves/dead civilizations
  17. 7 The annihilation of self and species 103
  18. 8 Death cults in Gothic ‘Lost World’ fiction 116
  19. 9 Dead again 130
  20. Part IV Global Gothic dead
  21. 10 A double dose of death in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s ‘I fatali’ 145
  22. 11 Through the opaque veil 157
  23. 12 Afterdeath and the Bollywood Gothic noir 174
  24. Part V Twenty-first-century Gothic and death
  25. 13 Dead and ghostly children in contemporary literature for young people 191
  26. 14 Modernity’s fatal addictions 204
  27. 15 ‘I’m not in that thing you know ... I’m remote. I’m in the cloud’ 218
  28. Index 233
The Gothic and death
This chapter is in the book The Gothic and death
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526107916.00022

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures viii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Series editor’s preface xiv
  6. Acknowledgements xvi
  7. Introduction – the corpse in the closet 1
  8. Part I Gothic graveyards and afterlives
  9. 1 Past, present, and future in the Gothic graveyard 21
  10. 2 ‘On the very Verge of legitimate Invention’ 34
  11. 3 Entranced by death 48
  12. Part II Gothic revolutions and undead histories
  13. 4 ‘This dreadful machine’ 63
  14. 5 Undying histories 76
  15. 6 Deadly interrogations 88
  16. Part III Gothic apocalypses: dead selves/dead civilizations
  17. 7 The annihilation of self and species 103
  18. 8 Death cults in Gothic ‘Lost World’ fiction 116
  19. 9 Dead again 130
  20. Part IV Global Gothic dead
  21. 10 A double dose of death in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s ‘I fatali’ 145
  22. 11 Through the opaque veil 157
  23. 12 Afterdeath and the Bollywood Gothic noir 174
  24. Part V Twenty-first-century Gothic and death
  25. 13 Dead and ghostly children in contemporary literature for young people 191
  26. 14 Modernity’s fatal addictions 204
  27. 15 ‘I’m not in that thing you know ... I’m remote. I’m in the cloud’ 218
  28. Index 233
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