NEW PUBLICATIONS
In his most recent book, The Word Made Self: Russian Writings on Language, 1860-1930 (Cornell University Press, Spring 2005), Professor Seifrid explores the Russian fascination with the power of the word as expressed in the work of philosophers, theologians, and artists of the Silver Age and early Soviet period. He shows that their diverse works (poems, novels, philosophical and religious tracts) share an attempt to articulate "a model of selfhood within the phenomenon of language."
The thinkers included in this book-among
them Pavel Florenskii, Roman Jakobson, Aleksei Losev, and Gustav Shpet --
frequently responded to the work of contemporary European philosophers even
as they drew upon and revitalized powerful elements of early Russian religious
thought. On Seifrid's view, this highly original body of writing about language
was the essential context for the development of Russian Futurism, Formalism,
and the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and the Soviet structuralists-movements and
ideas whose influence has extended far beyond Russia and long past their years
of efflorescence. In the end this study aims to recover for a western readership
this long-suppressed chapter in the history of Russian culture.
