American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism by Edward J. BrownReview by: Richard SheldonThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 1974), pp. 188-189Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/306187 .

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188 Slavic and East European Journal

inspired by what is called in the introduction the Petersburg tradition. One hardly has the heart to criticize this labor of love; thus only a few remarks and questions will be recorded here as they arose in the course of reading.

The first question arises at the very outset, upon looking at the title page. The main title in Russian says one thing, while the English title says a somewhat different thing. The Russian title seems to be closer to the editors' intentions as these are made clear by George Ivask in his note, "Ob htoj knige." The criterion of selection is "tipianost' stixotvorenija dlja peterburgskoj pobtiki bpoxi akmeisti'eskix 10-x gg., kogda mnogie byv~ie akmeisty i drugie peterburgskie pobty dostigli vys~ej zrelosti." The trouble is that there still seems to be some difficulty in defining the concept of this "peterburgskaja pobtika." Is it the same as Acmeism or is it different? The in- clusion of Benedikt Livbic is explained by a statement that though he is a futurist "his poetics is partly Petersburg poetics." The criteria of Petersburg poetics are said to be jasnost', prostota, sderzannost', and predmetnost'. These are fine criteria, but are they the exclusive properties of Petersburg poetics? How, for example, are Ivnev's two poems included here especially typical? (He was in the midst of his fu- turist involvement at the time: 1913-15.) Why not just as well Severjanin, who had some poems of similar qualities? And can we still speak of "bpoxa akmeizma" in the 60's, as is the chronology of some poems (Weidle, Klenovskij, Odoevceva)? Finally Xodasevid: should his poetic horizon be limited to Petersburg poetics or Acmeism? The whole idea of pairing him with Weidle in a kind of afterthought, "Es5e dvoe," adds to the impression of a certain conceptual uncertainty.

These problems are discussed further and in more detail in the introductory essay by H. W. Tjalsma entitled "The Petersburg Modernists and the Tradition." What tradition? At first the "Petersburg tradition" seems to be mainly the image of St. Petersburg in earlier literature. But then Tjalsma introduces other learned formulae and speaks of "the poetics of the Petersburg current," the "Petersburg school," etc.; this unfortunately does not make the picture any clearer. Tjalsma refers to Weidle and his essay "Peterburgskaja pobtika." But this interesting and suggestive piece can hardly serve as a model of conceptual clarity. The Petersburg poets are not "realists" as supposedly "Markov attempts to characterize the ac- meists"; they are Modernists. Markov, incidentally, did not express such a cate- gorical view, and he actually said some things about the Acmeists which Tjalsma seems to reserve exclusively for the Petersburg poets. All in all the relationship be- tween the Petersburg poets and the Acmeists remains somewhat "circular." How- ever, these imprecisions notwithstanding, Tjalsma's remarks show a sensitive even if impressionistic attitude, and they constitute an appropriate intro duction to an anthology of this kind. Somewhat irritating is the consistent spelling of Mandel'Itam as "Mandelstam" (except in the Contents), and a little imprecise in the reference to Kuz'min's line, "Aabli vo l'du, podiarennuju bulku," is the translation "fried buns. "

Z. Folejewski, University of British Columbia

Edward J. Brown, ed. Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism. (Galaxy Book, 371.) New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973. xii, 439, $3.95 (paper).

The editor of this extraordinary anthology was not shackled by any notion of sup- plying a representative cross section of the Soviet period of Russian literature. His aim was simply to assemble between two covers the best that has been said about

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Reviews 189

writers of this period by way of literary analysis. Included here are the following: Jakobson on Majakovskij and Xlebnikov; Cukovskij on Axmatova and Majakovskij ; Sinjavskij on Axmatova, Babel', and Pasternak; Bowman on Pasternak; Clarence Brown and Nilsson on Mandel'Atam; Struve on Gor'kij; Gregg and Collins on Za- mjatin; Maguire on Pil'njak and Ivanov; Nilsson and Harkins on Ole'a; McLean on ZolSenko; Sklovskij on Babel'; Ellendea Proffer on Bulgakov; Mathewson on Soloxov, Leonov, Tolstoj, and Ostrovskij ; Jones on Voznesenskij; Gibian on Kazakov; Edward Brown on Solzenicyn; and Deming Brown on Sinjavskij. The authors represented are American (14 essays), British (two), Swedish (two), and Russian (eight). The essays were originally published as early as 1920 and as late as 1971. The translations from Russian are impeccable, even in the case of the difficult essays by Jakobson. The original scholarly apparatus has been retained and judiciously supplemented with additional footnotes and prefatory pieces by the editor.

The essays are grouped into those concerned with poetry and those concerned with prose. Within each group they tend to cluster around a certain major figure. No effort was made to establish connections among the individual essays, but placed side by side they seem to interact in various ways so as to impart to certain para- graphs a new vibration. For example, Cukovskij's sparkling essay (the earliest in the collection) identifies Axmatova and Maj akovskij as the antipodes of the new Russian poetry, Axmatova cast as subdued nun and Majakovskij as brash iconoclast. Then one reads these lines in Jakobson's adjacent essay ("On a Generation That Squan- dered Its Poets"): "It is a historical fact that the people around Majakovskij simply did not believe in his lyrical monologues. 'They listened, all smiling, to the eminent clown.' They took his various masquerade costumes for the true face of the man." Cukovskij did not perceive, or chose to ignore, the suicide theme that Jakobson con- vincingly traces back to Majakovskij's earliest poetry. On the other side of Cukov- skij's essay is Sinjavskij's admirable assessment of Axmatova, written 40 years after Cukovskij's. Sinjavskij, like Jakobson, is not deluded by appearance. He as- serts that a talent for civic and patriotic verse appeared early in Axmatova, as shown by her famous 1917 poem, "Mne golos byl." This is a clue that Cukovskij either missed or chose to ignore in order to sharpen his antithesis.

Few will quarrel with Professor Brown's choices. He anticipates correctly that some will regret the omission of Cvetaeva, Zabolockij, Kuz'min, and Gumilev, figures inevitably evoked and named by those who are included. These figures do seem to belong here, as, in some curious way, Voznesenskij, Kazakov, Solienicyn, and Si- njavskij do not. The latter are in effect overwhelmed by the momentum of dazzling talent and shared experience generated by the names Majakovskij, Xlebnikov, Axmatova, Babel', Ole'a, Zamjatin, Pasternak, ZoSenko, and Mandel'Atam. It might have been more satisfactory to reserve this collection entirely for the writers who made their mark during the 20's and to devote a second collection (mentioned by Brown) exclusively to the writers who appeared during the Thaw. The fact re- mains, however, that this is a collection that can only be described as distinguished.

Richard Sheldon, Dartmouth College

Zinaida Hippius. Selected Works. Tr. and ed. Temira Pachmuss. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1972. ix, 315, $10.00.

This is the first full volume of prose works by Gippius to appear in English transla- tion. It contains a preface, an introduction, and 13 stories of varying length gleaned

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