The Semantic Weight of History: Cultural Inertia in Tynianov's Wax Person

• In Event: Alternative Pleasures, Alternative Compulsions: Reading Against Repetition in Russian Poetry and Prose

Abstract

Although Tynianov’s novella Wax Person (1931) was initially received poorly, scholars have since revisited the text and read it as a fictional representation of Tynianov’s theory of literary evolution or as a precursor to Western postmodern discourses. Through a close reading of the narrative style and visual motifs associated with the Petersburg Kunstkamera within the text, I argue that Wax Person instead depicts a state of political and cultural inertia, which is relatively under-discussed in comparison with Tynianov’s theory of evolution. Approaching the text in this manner helps us recontextualize Tynianov’s literary poetics and its relationship with the political sphere.

Author

• Gabriel Nussbaum, Princeton U