ABSTRACT
In what sense does art defy or redefine death? This essay will examine the ‘reality of immortality’ as pursued by Russia’s two greatest nineteenth-century novelists – and then as a retrospective lens on those formidable primary artists – by Russia’s most accomplished twentieth-century philosopher of the novel. For all three, the concept of immortality was fused with aesthetic activity, but this activity was not ritualized or reinforced by the dominant culture; quite the contrary, each of these thinkers designated a ‘cultural corpse’ that needed to be interred if the modern subject was to be saved. In the end, all three thought optimistically, and each devised his own version of art as a mode of survival. By comparing their three versions, we can locate the aesthetic dimension of immortality – that most volatile and precious ideal – more securely in the European and Russian tradition.
