Please join the Harriman Institute and The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies for a talk by Bettina Kaibach, Special Lecturer at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), on the literary reflection of the essay Hamlet and Don Quixote in Anatoly Lunacharsky’s The Liberated Don Quixote and Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry.
Professor Bettina Kaibach will read Lunacharsky’s play The Liberated Don Quixote and Babel’s Red Cavalry through the lens of Turgenev’s article Hamlet and Don Quixote. Both writers appropriated Turgenev’s ideas to grapple with issues raised by the revolution and ensuing Civil War and the Russian-Polish War, respectively. In her talk, Dr. Kaibach will show how, while harkening back to Turgenev’s essay, Lunacharsky and Babel each tailored its basic tenets to fit their own convictions, thus entering into a dialogue both with their predecessor and with each other. When read together, Turgenev’s essay and Lunacharsky’s play provide a key to unlock yet another hidden chamber of Babel’s enigmatic text that, like no other, captured the internal contradictions of the revolution.
Bettina Kaibach, PhD is a Special Lecturer in the Slavic Department of the University of Heidelberg, Germany. She teaches Russian, Czech, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian literature. Her research focuses on the many intersections between Slavic and Jewish Studies. She is also a translator of Russian and Czech literature.
