The Superstitious Muse

The heartbeat of classical Russian literature is mythopoetic. Both at macro (literary tradition) and micro (individual life and works) a writer¿s lichnost¿ (personhood, psychic totality) tends to be all-important, for it combines the specifically biographical and the capaciously mythical in verbal units that speak simultaneously to different planes of being. This collection contains a liberal sampling of Bethea¿s most memorable previously published essays along with new studies.

David Bethea is Professor at Oxford University and University of Wisconsin-Madison. His publications include the books Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), and Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998).