Sil’fida [The Sylph, 1837), one of V.F. Odoevsky’s Gothic-experimental tales of the late 1830s (a particularly productive period for him), while not receiving as much critical attention as Kosmorama [The Cosmorama, 1839] and Salamandra [The Salamander, 1841], has been read by Claire Whitehead in terms of the Todorovian fantastic. Neil Cornwell has, among other things, described it as “broach[ing] the dislocation between time and space” and as displaying the “occasional modernistic quirk” – this latter comment referring in particular to the strange epigraph of the tale, which ends with the quotation “!?!?”, attributed to “the 19th century” (The Salamander, 40). The t…
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Citation: Sucur, Slobodan. "Sil'fida". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 February 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16240, accessed 21 November 2024.]
