Pushkin’s Photographs; or, Photography as an Aesthetic Principle in Andrei Bitov

Abstract What happens when a writer of the pre-photographic era is interpreted through the lens of photography? How does the newer medium influence the way one engages with the older medium? To explore these questions, this article takes as a point of departure Andrei Bitov’s readings of Alexander Pushkin, which recast the canonical poet as a photographer. This anachronistic move—which puts Bitov in conversation with Jeff Wall, Walter Benjamin, and Henri Bergson—turns photography into a transhistorical instrument for exploring literature’s relationship with extralinguistic world. By using photography as an interpretive lens, Bitov ascribes to literature new powers, such as the power to signify indexically and to develop upon contact with new realities. But he also underscores the limits of artistic representation. Focusing on Russia’s most hallowed author, Bitov makes the claim that a text, no matter how great, can never surpass reality in expressive power. Like a photographer, a writer is perennially belated, unable to catch up with their fickle subject. Bitov ends up exposing the inadequacies of literature while simultaneously making a case for its value despite those inadequacies. He invites readers to consider writing as an experience that is simultaneously rewarding and humbling.