Ilya VinitskyGhostly Paradoxes
Modern Spiritualism and Russian Culture in the Age of Realism
Acknowledgments
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: A New World - Modern Spiritualism in Russia, 1853-1870s
PART ONE TABLE TALKS: SEANCE AS CULTURAL METAPHOR
1 Seance as Test, or, Russian Writers at a Spiritualist Rendezvous
2 Russian Glubbdubdrib: The Shade of False Dimitry and Russian Historical
Imagination in the Age of Realism
3 Dead Poets’ Society: Pushkin’s Shade in Russian Cultural Mythology of the
Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
PART TWO REALIST EXORCISM: SPIRITUALISM AND THE RUSSIAN LITERARY
IMAGINATION OF THE 1860s TO 1880s
4 Flickering Hands: The Spiritualist Realism of Nikolai Vagner
5 The Middle World: The Realist Spiritualism of Saltykov-Shchedrin
6 The Underworld: Dostoevsky’s Ontological Realism
7 The (Dis)infection: Art and Hypnotism in Leo Tolstoy
Epilogue: The Spirit of Literature - Reflections on Leskov’s Artistic
Spiritualism
Notes
Works Cited
Index