Re: [xmca] Chukovsky-Vygotsky

From: Mike Cole (lchcmike@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 12 2006 - 08:27:53 PST


I will be following up on all this, David.
I view Chukovsky (as well as LSV!) a very complicated figure. I have taught
"From 2-5" in dialogue with "1984", which, given what you say about
Chukovski's antisemitism and
stalinism is just a little ironic. I have ordered his book on translation
from the library. I will be interested in what others think about the
substance of the two men's ideas in the 1920's
and early 1930's. LSV changed a good deal between pedagogical psychology and
thinking and speech and in his thinking about imagination (the Lindqvist
piece points to this). And
I hear somewhere the Chukovsky as an expert on aespopian language, but
cannot find any refs.

Perhaps Natalia Gajdamashko can help here? She is very busy but perhaps has
some relevant historical knowledge.
mike

On 11/11/06, Kellogg <kellogg@snue.ac.kr> wrote:
>
> Dear Mike:
>
> The hostility between Vygotsky and Chukovsky is, I think, quite a story,
> and it's almost completely untold. Yes, there is some stuff available on the
> web, but my feeling is that there's a lot more to it. Here's my
> contribution, for what it's worth
>
> Well, to begin there's the famous footnote to Esthetic Education, on p.
> 270 of Educational Pedagogy, to wit:
>
> "So fashionable and, now, so popular a work as Chukovskii's Crocodile,
> like all
> of Chukovskii's stories for children, is one of the better examples of
> this perversion of children's poetry with nonsense and gibberish. Chukovskii
> seems to
> proceed from the assumption that the sillier something is, the more
> understandable and the more entertaining it is for the child, and the more
> likely that it will be within the child's grasp. It is not hard to instil
> the taste for such dull literature in children, though there can be little
> doubt
> that it has a negative impact on the educational process, particularly in
> those immoderately large doses to which children are now subjected. All
> thought of style is thrown out, and in his babbling verse Chukovskii piles
> up nonsense on top of gibberish. Such literature only fosters silliness and
> foolishness in children."
>
> I've always felt that was a little harsh, since I have liked what little
> I've read of Chukovsky (remember, I have no Russian). But when I read
> Chukovsky's book, "From Two to Five" I realized that the feeling was
> mutual.
>
> See Chukovsky's comments about the Kharkov school (Vygotsky and his
> students) in the year 1929 (p. 188 of From Two to Five), Chukovsky's
> disparaging reference (p. 127) to pedagogues from Gomel (Vygotsky's
> hometown) and Chukovsky's attacks on "leftism" (p. 130 passim).
>
>
> Part of this antipathy is probably Chukovsky's not very well concealed
> anti-semitism. Yale University Press recently published his diary, and there
> are coy hints of anti-semitism throughout.
>
>
>
> On 215, for example, we read that he goes to visit Krupskaya about the
> "pedagogue's" criticisms of "Crocodile" and succeeds in thoroughly offending
> her. He is consoled by Demyan Bedny, with the following words, which he
> quotes approvingly: "Have you noticed that the opposition is 1) all Jews and
> 2) emgres? Kamenev, Zinovyev, Trotsky. Trotsky will announce any day now,
> 'I'm going abroad', but we Russians have nowhere to go. this is our country,
> our spiritual property". (Both Demyan Bedny and Chukovsky were slated by
> Trotsky in "Literature and Revolution".)
>
>
> On p. 281 of the diary, Chukovsky says his hatred for Trotsky is "an
> aesthetic viewpoint: his hair, his weak chin, his cheap provincial
> demonism--he's a combination Mephistopheles and court clerk."
>
>
>
> Interestingly, on p. 161 of the diary, Chukovsky worriesthat he might turn
> out to be Jewish himself--his mother is of good Ukrainian peasant stock, but
> he is illegitimate and doesn't know who is father was. He needen't have been
> concerned, of course; you need a Jewish mother to be a real Jew.
>
>
>
> Howevery, I think there is more to the Chukovsky-Vygotsky antipathy than
> racial hatred and Chukovsky's finely tuned instincts as a future Stalinist
> hack. Chukovsky believes that semantic meaning is learned partly by flouting
> it; no sooner does the child learn the meaning of a horse than the child is
> flouting it by talking of saddled flies and flying horses. Vygotsky shares
> this view, but for rather older children; he believes that imagination is
> something that comes to the child from the outside, through social practices
> such as imaginary play.
>
>
>
> I think I want to take up your suggestion to continue the dialogue on
> forgiveness in a separate thread, possibly even under a new subject line,
> because it occurs to me this morning that it might indeed be possible to
> have recontextualization without decontextualization, and that to a certain
> extent that is exactly what is involved in metaphor.
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
> PS:
>
>
>
> Some refs:
>
>
>
> Chukovsky, K. (2005) Diary 1901-1969. New Haven and London: Yale
> University Press.
>
>
>
> Chukovsky, K. (1928, 1963) From Two to Five. University of California
> Press: Berkeley.
>
>
>
> Vygotsky, L.S. (1997) Educational Pedagogy. Boca Raton: St. Lucie.
>
>
>
> dk
>
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