Classical Reception at Kazan Federal University

Respected Colleagues (as the polite Russians say), this a report from my recent adventure to Kazan. It was my birthday when Edith Hall (KCL), Richard Alston (RHUL) and I flew out, more or less bright eyed if not quite bushy tailed, to Tatarstan. After a stop-over at Moscow Domodedovo, we were welcomed at Kazan airport by Professor Eduard Rung (KFU), the conference organiser, who escorted us to our hotel. Since the morning of our first full day (Wednesday 17 October) was reserved for sightseeing, we strolled down to the Kazan Kremlin, where we found exhibitions on portraiture through the ages and the Great Patriotic War (WW2). At 2pm we met our colleagues from Kazan (Eduard and Vladimir Erokhin) and from Moscow (Sergey Karpyuk and Igor Surikov) for lunch, which turned into lunch and dinner rolled into one by the logic of extraordinary quantities of booze.

It sounds obvious now, but I wish at the time I’d thought twice about joining a Siberian scholar of the English Reformation in a quest to find the bottom of a litre of vodka. In any case, the following day I became an adept if curiously pale walker of that fine line between a hangover and alcohol poisoning. Luckily I was not on the programme of the first day of the conference. And so began my slow trudge back to health.

Edith and Richard, however, were performing on Thursday. In the morning they both lectured to students: Edith on ancient libraries, and Richard on sovereignty in the formation of Augustan monarchy. At the end they were both signing autographs, which (I am told) happens relatively infrequently at their home institutions. Edith then spoke at the grand Plenary Session of the conference from a lectern in front of an oil painting of Mikhail Kutusiov, hero of battle of Borodino. She gave a lecture on disseminating research between the public and the academy, using Aristotle’s now lost exoteric (public-facing) works as an example which scholars today ought to embrace.

We also met up with fellow BNC collaborator Hanna Paulouskaya (Warsaw), who spoke to the conference on the Saturday about classical reception in early Soviet animation for children. Richard and I were in the same session on Day 2, Friday. The first two papers were in Russian, one on Chekov’s reception of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar by Vladimir Kashcheev and Natalia Shadrina on Moorish art’s transformation of the classical. Then up stepped Professor Al’stón — extremely fortunate (we thought) to have a soft sign in his Russian name Альстон — to speak about the transformation of the classical city in post-revolutionary Athens (c.1830-40). A кофе-брейк ensued.

Then it was my turn. I was happy again to be sharing research built upon the archival findings I had made in Moscow last year. (Last week I gave a paper called “Dear Comrade Apletin” at the Anglo-Russian Research Network.) I thought it might all go wrong this time, though, when no sooner had I opened up my title slide (left), than some members of the audience began (derisively, I suspected) to smirk at the title: “A Communist Catullus?”

It is not without some risk of offence that you rebrand a well-loved Roman poet with a now widely criticised system of social organisation, under the uniquely oppressive conditions of which the majority of the audience have lived. I quickly pointed to the question mark in the title, and explained that it was important.

I was, in fact, not, as the title provoked, attempting to rebrand Catullus as a communist, but introducing the fascinating modern version of Catullus that we find in the translation of the Australia-born British communist poet, Jack Lindsay. The first complete, unsqueamish and historically embedded Catullus to emerge in the English language. Lindsay translated Catullus twice in his lifetime, first in 1929 and then in 1948, either side of a dramatic ideological conversion to communism. His two texts therefore constitute a unique case study for the influence of ideology on classical translation practice. I was delighted to have friendly and searching questions asked of my work on Lindsay’s Catullus, before I could sit down and enjoy an excellent paper read by an academic who I am sure will become a collaborator and close colleague.

Natalia Samokhvalova (Moscow) spoke about the Russian reception of Catullus in the 21st Century. The picture she painted was one of energetic literary activity, where translators (many female and many publishing their work online rather than in book form) were battling against one another trying to figure out the right translation style for now.

It was wonderful to see Catullus thriving in modern Russia, just as he does in other parts of the world at the moment. I think there will be interesting parallels between Natalia’s and Maxine Lewis’ work, particularly on masculinity and gender in contemporary receptions of Catullus. I hope to hear her speak on this next month in Bristol. It’s great to be back in London and finishing the book Edith and I are working on from the Classics and Class project, which will now be called “A People’s History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain” and be freely available online from Routledge in 2019.

Уважаемые коллеги, До свиданья!