Boris Asaf'ev and the Soviet Musicology - E-thesis

particular writer to create in a “Bergsonian” way). Moreover she is interested in
considering the intertextuality of modernism, of how Russian modernist works may be
viewed through a Bergsonian prism, thus broadening our understanding of the period
while suggesting new pathways for interpretation and further research. She uses the
word intertextualism as a term that has recently been defined as “working out from the
broad definition of influence to encompass unconscious, socially prompted types of text
formation; modes of conception; styles” and thus Fink emphasizes, “it is not the causal
school of influence studies, but rather attention is focused on parallels and occasional
differences between works of Russian modernism and the philosophy of Bergson”. 6
Another important notion that I have tried to keep in mind and which is especially
important when exploring the Soviet culture is by Timo Suni: “If one notes that the
formalist thoughts are based on dialectics, it doesn’t mean that they follow the Hegelian
or Marxist thought which are certainly an inseparable part Russian culture and the world
of ideas of the time. Moreover, the same kind of characteristics can be found from for
example Darwin or Nietzsche, who are simply just not expressed as dialecticians quite
often.” 7
The idea in my analysis works almost the same as Fink’s idea. In my case it is mostly
invoked by a very important notion by Elena M. Orlova: “Asaf’ev took only some parts
of different philosophies and he was generally interested only in single thesis” 8 . As a
result I attempt to view the works of Boris Asaf’ev trough different prisms. The task is
not easy because modernist texts in general were not one totality, but a set of diverse
texts in evolution. Secondly, as Fink emphasizes, the parallels are important and not
necessary the causality. 9 Causality can actually sometimes even mislead the interpreter
in order to understand the correct meaning.
A practical problem related to the material of this study is the lack of proper footnotes
which makes it difficult to trace the origis of Asaf’ev’s expressions. Asaf’ev did use
some footnotes and references sometimes, but not sytematically. Moreover as David
6 Fink 1999, p. xiv.
7 Pesonen & Suni 2001, p. 15.
8 Orlova in Asaf’ev: Simf.E 1970, p. 6.
9 Fink 1999, p. xiv.
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