Writing the piece on Lermontov left me on the horns of a big fat angry dilemma.  I’m going to try working some of it out here, and I would love for my fellow Foxes and anyone who happens to be passing to give me some feedback.

Here’s the thing.  I’m a historian of a certain school.  If ever you really want to see me flip out, casually drop into conversation something like:

“Yeah, I hear that Stalin’s rise can be pretty much explained by the trauma sustained when he fell down as a small child”

or

“Do you think Trotsky was compensating for something with that great big armoured train?”

So yeah, I’m not what you’d call sympathetic to psycho-history.  By the same token, I have a pretty strong reaction to literary analyses that assume author and narrator are one and the same, or that every action of the characters must represent some subconscious urge on the part of the creator.  Sure, you have authors who deliberately merge life and art; I’ve gone on enough about Tolstoy and his didactic ways on Vulpes in tha past.  But even then I believe you have to be careful, and bear in mind that you’re still hearing a narrative voice.  No reader will ever know exactly what the author intended, what he or she added in or filtered out, or exactly how this was informed by past or present experience.  You can’t see into someone’s head.

When it comes to academic writing, I’m a stickler.  I operate by a very strict set of guidelines.  My sticklerhood probably has something to do with the fact that my subject attracts a great deal of emotive response, and most of the existing literature is heavily underpinned with value judgments and political statements.

Writing for Vulpes, though, I decided to cast off the shackles of po-faced academic thinking and just say what I feel.  Easy, right?  Actually, no.  For one thing, the writing process is kind of marred by the annoying little voice nagging in my ear.  Did you just say Lermontov disliked women?  Where are your citations for that?  You do realise there’s very little concrete evidence about the duel?  You know, you should be stricter with your terminology.  Define your terms, woman, define your terms!

As a result, I end up arguing with myself.  I don’t like Tolstoy because of his personality.  Well, I mean his narrative voice really.  But I don’t think the author’s personal life should have any bearing on how you assess a given work.  That’s my inner (or outer) historian speaking though.  As a reader, I just don’t like the man.  But does that mean I can just go ahead and say so on the interwebs?  Well, this is an informal piece, so why not.  Except that I’m not very anonymous and I really ought to be consistent with my academic writing.  Argh.  But it would be boring for everyone if I wrote a scholarly essay every two weeks.  That’s not what Vulpes is for.  And I really do feel this strongly about Tolstoy.  Hell, I should be able to express that, right, if I’m clear about what I’m doing?  Right?  Wait…

In a way, this discussion is kind of unnecessary because I am very clear about what the Russian series is for.  It’s meant to be fun and to engage people and make them want to read an author they might not have encountered before.  (This is why I won’t be touching War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina and so on.)  Some details are still to be ironed out – will I stick with one piece per author or spread the more prolific ones over several, for instance – but the overarching purpose of the series is clear.  It turns out though that letting your hair down isn’t as easy as it seems.  Either I’m going to have to go for it and not give a damn, or find a way that sits better with my poor little indoctrinated brain.  Ideas on a postcard please…