{"product_id":"milton-and-the-rise-of-russian-satanism-9781442612938","title":"Milton and the Rise of Russian Satanism","description":"\u003cp\u003eNo European Devil can claim so long or so political a connection with Russian culture as Milton's Satan. Russian poets came to know him before they heard of Dante, Marlowe, Tasso, or of the devils of the Baroque era. This may explain why Milton's influence was so intensely felt by the Russians, especially during the Romantic age. In this, the first study in any language of Milton's reception in Russia, that influence is traced to an early translation of \u003cem\u003eParadise Lost\u003c\/em\u003e uncovered by Valentin Boss in the Moscow archives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBritish radicals who professed to believe that Milton himself was of the Devil's party were, with the notable exception of Byron and Tom Moore, hardly known by Pushkin and his contemporaries. Russian literary Satanism, although derived from Milton, thus developed its own characteristics which tsarist censors considered morally subversive.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA brilliant pleiade of poets from Zhukovsky to Lermontov gave Milton's outcast from Heaven some of his many modern masks. Towards the end of the nineteenth century these inspired the alarming paintings and sculptures of Mikhail Vrubel who, like Lermentov, was obsessed by the demonic.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn cultural influence Goethe's Devil had by then eclipsed Milton's, but Goethe's did not survive 1917 with the same political authority. Boss concludes with a description of what happened to Milton's Satan after October 1917, when his connection with the English Revolution gave him an edge his German rival lacked.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLunacharsky, Lenin's Commissar for Education, who admired Milton's Arch-rebel, steered him past Left-wing Communists who continued to regard \u003cem\u003eParadise Lost\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eParadise Regained\u003c\/em\u003e as Christian propaganda. Despite such attacks, Milton's Satan resurfaced under Brezhnev to bask in Soviet pedagogic approval as an Anti-Imperialist and 'the embodiment of love of freedom.'\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRussian notions of good and evil changed before the Revolution and will change again under glasnost' and perestroika. But no literary character has reflected such changes more dramatically than Milton's Satan, who managed to be both a hero to Romantic poets and Marxist critics.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Valentin Boss\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Toronto Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/10\/2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 276\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.99lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.70d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781442612938\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eValentin Boss\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor of History at McGill University.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis title is not returnable\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Toronto Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44788701626483,"sku":"9781442612938","price":70.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/files\/img_e83842e0-f601-415f-b2d0-3faa325f097c.jpg?v=1776371909","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/en-de\/products\/milton-and-the-rise-of-russian-satanism-9781442612938","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}