What if a Book Could Kill You?: Or Ivan Turgenev’s 'Faust'

• In Event: Faust in Russia

Abstract

Situating this panel in the context of the Faustian legend, its supposed origins, creative receptions, and further reimaginations, Victoria Juharyan will then focus on Ivan Turgenev’s epistolary novella Faust (1856), which follows in form Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, but in content deals with Goethe’s book Faust as a title character and presents one of the most astonishing “Russian” responses to the German legend and its philosophical implications.

Author

• Victoria Juharyan, Johns Hopkins U