Slavic Colloquium: Michael Wachtel: Biography vs. Mythography: The Case of Viacheslav Ivanov

Please join the upcoming Slavic Colloquium talk entitled, “Biography vs. Mythography: The Case of Viacheslav Ivanov" by Michael Wachtel (Princeton University).

Viacheslav Ivanov was a central figure in pre-revolutionary Russian culture. The memoir literature teems with references to him and to his “Tower” apartment, the meeting place of poets, artists, philosophers, religious thinkers, actors and directors. In writing the first scholarly biography of Ivanov in any language, the author was confronted with a plethora of information, sometimes multiple (contradictory) accounts of the same event. The talk will focus on the difficulties involved in creating a coherent and reliable narrative of his life.