Content area
Full Text
Orwin, Donna Tussing. Consequences of Consciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Stanford University Press, 2007. xvi + 238 pages. ISBN: 9780804757034.
In the nineteenth century, westernized Russians "began to think about themselves"(181). Worried, perhaps, that they were off to a late start, they went about the business of thinking about themselves with a peculiar and distinctively modern intensity. One of the momentous consequences of this sudden and heightened selfconsciousness was the flowering of midnineteenth- century Russian psychological prose, which examined the complex inner lives of relatively ordinary people with unprecedented boldness and depth. Donna Orwin, in this challenging and intricately argued new book, offers an extended meditation on the ways in which the three greatest representatives of Russian psychological prose variously defended, explored, and represented the rich "reality of subjectivity" (5).
Orwin's title is modest and open-ended. Working more in the spirit of Turgenev than Tolstoy, she places no definite article before "Consequences" and eschews any claim to encyclopedic coverage or definitive answers. She gives extended attention to many shorter and less well known works by the three writers, but at the same time takes strategic and illuminating forays into the their long masterpieces as well. She manages throughout to strike an effective balance between broad generalizations (where I find her especially provocative and convincing) and close textual analysis (where I occasionally disagree with her).
The book consists of nine chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. In terms of sheer pages, Orwin devotes slightly less space to Tolstoy than to the other two authors: in the book's subtitle he comes third in the triumvirate, and he plays a lead role in only three of the central chapters, while Turgenev and Dostoevsky each take center stage (or share the spotlight) in five. In pedantically spelling this out for the readers of Tolstoy Studies (a few of whom may even prefer their Tolstoy straight), I do not mean to imply that Tolstoy is in any way less important for her...