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COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association
Russia and Soul: An Exploration. By DALE PESMEN. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 2000. xii+364pp. [pounds sterling]19.95. ISBN 0-8014-8709-9.
Dale Pesmen's ambitious cosmological reflections on the concept of soul, dusha, spring from reminiscences of her several visits to and stays in the provincial west Siberian city of Omsk in the period 1990-94, just before and just after the demise of the Soviet Union. Her book has a complexity that Pesmen considers 'iconic of the complexity' of her subject. For 'the life of the soul', she explains, is also complex, and an attempt 'to make an utterly coherent thing' out of all her material 'would have just reduced it' (p. 13). She therefore feels free to incorporate material of many different sorts and registers, such as character sketches, reports of conversations, stories, and jokes, as well as reflections on such matters as hospitality, materialism, and authority. The steam bath, of bania, features prominently, on the grounds that this institution apparently resembles dusha, inasmuch as...
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