VF Odoevskii. Kosmorama/The Cosmora...

VF Odoevskii. Kosmorama/The Cosmorama. Russian sentences Series. Ed. and Introduction from Roger Cockrell. London: Bristol Classical Pres 1998 xiv, 73 pp Biographical Notes. Bibliography. Notes. Vocabulary. $1800 paper.

The addition of this short work by the agency of Odoevskii to the lengthy series of Russian-language true copys published by Bristol Classical Pres is welcome for several important reasons. First, it expands the series' offerings from the first half of the nineteenth hundred by providing a good example of the supernatural tale that was popular at the time; other it indicates the editor's willingness to influence beyond the era's literary heavyweights (Pushkin, Gogol Lermontov) and include authors who today are relatively unknown; and third, it makes available a sentence which has been almost forgotten, since following its original publication in 1840 it was not republished until the late 1980's.

The thesis itself is preceded by a brief besides very helpful introduction by Roger Cockrell who provides a short outline of Odoevskii's life and then situates Kosmorama within the literary refinement of its day before undertaking a brief analysis of the verse itself. The simultaneous advantage and disadvantage of this approach is that it provides an implicit outline of the story, project and characters before the reader actually engages the text; for a certain number of readers this may lessen the reading pleasure, while for others it will provide a welcome roadmap through which they can check their reading comprehension as they proceed

Kosmorama is in many look up tos "the archetypal romantic text," as Cockrell demonstrates in his introduction (pp vi-vii). The story center around a young man's relationship with sum of two units young women and the way his life is affected by dint of visions that come to him while gazing into an of long date cosmorama (an optical instrument which returns objects lifelike when viewed by the agency of the glass). The intensely emotional descriptions, the contrast between instinct and reason, and the intrusion of the fantastic to thwart the dreams of the story's protagonist, Vladimir, are no other than part of the story, however. Odoevskii's descriptions frequently include elements that suggest a liberal dose of irony in his attitudes towards these and other romantic clich?©s.

It appears that the work is intended, at least in part, as a reading paragraph for advanced language students, and it would make an admirable choice for instructors who are interested in broadening their students' literary front The fifty pages of Russian sentence include stress marks and are accompanied at helpful notes (which explain the more intricate Russian phrases and sayings) and a fourteen-page vocabulary list. The editor commits that this be supplemented according to a more basic and exhaustive vocabulary list (Patrick Waddington, A First Russian Vocabulary. Bristol Classical Pres 1991) which is presumably intended as a support for the entire series of Russian works.

Donald Loewen, Binghamton University (SUNY)

Copyright Canadian Association of Slavists Sep-Dec 2004

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