Volume 11 [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520312883

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CALIFORNIA SLAVIC STUDIES

California Slavic Studies VOLUME XI

Editors NICHOLAS V. RIASANOVSKY GLEB STRUVE THOMAS EEKMAN

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

CALIFORNIA SLAVIC STUDIES Volume 11

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

UNIVERSITY O F CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD. LONDON,ENGLAND

ISBN: 0-520-03584-4 LIBRARY O F CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 61-104!

© 1980 BY THE REGENTS O F THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRINTED IN T H E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Towards a Biography of Prince Peter Kozlovsky (1783-1840): Kozlovsky's Letter to Countess Lieven Gleb Struve

1

"A Word on the Polish Question" by P. Ya. Chaadaev Julia Brun-Zejmis

25

Feminine Images in Old Russian Literature and Art Joan Delaney Grossman

33

Dreams in Pushkin Michael R. Katz

71

Eschatology and the Appeal of Revolution: Merezhkovsky, Bely, Blok Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal

105

Osip Mandelstam: The Poetry of Time (1908-1916) Gregory Freidin

141

Excerpts from the Diaries of Korney Chukovsky Relating to Boris Pilnyak Translated and edited by Vera T. Reck The Singer's Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song Mary Putney Coote Enlightened Absolutism and Jewish Reform: Prussia, Austria, and Russia Arnold Springer Gleb Struve: A Bibliography Compiled by Robert P. Hughes

187 201

237 269

TOWARDS A BIOGRAPHY OF PRINCE PETER KOZLOVSKY (1783-1840):

Kozlovsky's Letter to Countess Lieven Gleb

Struve

C'est un Russe engraissé par la civilisation. MME DE STAËL ABOUT KOZLOVSKY

There were in him both a grandee of the Versailles court and an English free thinker. PRINCE VYAZEMSKY ON KOZLOVSKY

When, in 1950, I was preparing for publication my book about Prince Peter Borisovich Kozlovsky,1 I decided to include in it, among the illustrations, the caricature entitled "Longitude and Latitude of St. Petersburgh," which I now reproduce, on page 2, below. This caricature by the wellknown English draughtsman George Cruikshank (1792-1878) was published in May 1813, at the height of the post-Napoleonic Anglo-Russian honeymoon. It represented Countess (later Princess) Dorothea (Darya) Khristoforovna Lieven (1785-1857), the wife of the Russian ambassador in London (who had been transferred there, the year before, from Berlin), and Prince Peter Kozlovsky, who had recently arrived in London on the way to his post as Russian envoy to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and who was quite a prominent figure in English society, both in London and in Bath. 2 They are shown dancing together. Countess Lieven was said to have introduced and 1. For the main facts of Kozlovsky's biography see my book: Russkij Evropeec: Materialy dlja biografii i kharakteristiki knjazja P. B. Kozlovskogo (San Francisco, 1950). Also my articles: "Un russe européen: le Prince Pierre Kozlovsky," Revue de littérature comparée 24, No. 4 (19S0):522-546; " W h o Was Pushkin's 'Polonophil'?" The Slavonic and East European Review 29, No. 73 (June 19S1):442-45S; and "Kto byl puskinskij 'polonofil'?" Novyj Zurnal, No. 103 (1971), pp. 92-106. Cf. also: Léonce Pingaud, "Un diplomate russe il y a cent ans en Italie: Le prince Pierre Kosloffsky," Revue d'histoire diplomatique 31 (1917):37-83. 2. Thus, Lady Jackson, the wife of the British diplomat Sir George Jackson, wrote to her husband from Bath in January 1813 that Kozlovsky, despite his plainness and obesity, was very popular with the young ladies of society, including their daughter, and that they all found his waltzing "divine." See Lady Jackson, ed., The Bath Archives. A Further Selection from the Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson. K. C. H. (London, 1873).

1

2

Gleb Struve

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BE

0( SrPr.Tf,HSISt

Rl,H

popularized the waltz at the famous exclusive London club of Almack's, of which she was one of the patronesses (she and Princess Esterhàzy, the wife of the Austrian ambassador, were apparently the only two foreigners who ever attained that exalted position). Countess Lieven's modern biographer says that it was not long before Countess Lieven enlivened the proceedings by a bold innovation. She told her colleagues that there was a new dance called the waltz, or valse à la française, and that she had seen it on the Continent where it was becoming popular. She showed t h e m how it was done; she went through the movements in the public rooms. Although dancers who were accustomed to more stately evolutions were at first somewhat diffident about surrendering themselves to the dizzy whirl, and though it met with considerable opposition f r o m anxious mothers who thought it immoral, the waltz was gradually accepted and soon became the rage. 3

In his book Dr. Hyde reproduced Cruikshank's print, without identifying Countess Lieven's partner. In fact, she herself was not identified, and Kozlovsky was misidentified, much later, in volume 9, covering the years 1811 — 1819, of Mrs. M. D. George's valuable descriptive catalogue of personal and 3. H. Montgomery Hyde, Princess Lieven

(London, 1938), p. 75. This became the standard biography of

Princess Lieven. in which a great deal of unpublished archival material was used. The author also made use of some previously unpublished material that was available to the Princess's first biographer, Ernest Daudet, whose vividly written book {Une vie d'ambassadrice

au dernier

siècle [Paris, 1904]) contained some factual

inaccuracies. Daudet had had access to some letters exchanged between Princess Lieven and François Guizot, but not to the whole of their very interesting correspondence which was not to be published until 1963 (see below, note 33).

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

3

political cartoons and caricatures preserved in the British Museum. This volume was published just before I embarked on my book on Kozlovsky. Here the Cruikshank print was listed under No. 12047, and its description ran:

"Longitude and Latitude of St. Petersburgh." G. Cruikshank fee 1 . Pub d May 18th 1813 by H. Humphrey St. James's Street. E n g r a v i n g (coloured a n d u n c o l o u r e d impressions). T h e D u k e of C l a r e n c e d a n c e s with a tall t h i n girl (r.), h o l d i n g b o t h her h a n d s ; they face each o t h e r in profile. H e is unrecognizable, a plainly dressed short a n d obese J o h n Bull. She wears a cross s u s p e n d e d f r o m a long necklace. T h e r o o m , with b o a r d e d floor a n d small m u s i c i a n s ' gallery suggests an English provincial a s s e m b l y - r o o m r a t h e r t h a n a R u s s i a n p a l a c e . T w o couples s t a n d a g a i n s t t h e wall (1.); a lady a n d her p a r t n e r sit on a b e r g è r e ( r . ) ; a m a n s t a n d s n e a r t h e m . T w o of t h e men have m o u s t a c h e s , as an indication t h a t they a r e f o r e i g n e r s . All a r e m u c h a m u s e d a t t h e ill-matched p a r t n e r s . For the Duke and the Grand-duchess Anna see No. 12020. For the title cf. No. 8662. Reid, No. 235. Cohn, No. 1329. 8 9/16x12 7/8 in. With border, 9 13/16x13 7/8 in.'

Mrs. George's misidentification of the male dancing partner was apparently traditional: the reference to Reid and Cohn was to the earlier catalogs of George Cruikshank's works, by George William Reid and Albert M. Cohn, published respectively in 1877 and 1924. It was quite natural that Mrs. George herself had found no resemblance in the male dancer to the Duke of Clarence, the Prince Regent's brother and the future King William IV, whom it would have been in any case strange to portray as the latitude of the Russian capital. But it would be interesting to speculate how Prince Kozlovsky himself and his friends would have reacted to the description of him as "a plainly dressed short and obese John Bull": Kozlovsky was a descendant of one of the oldest Russian princely families, which is now extinct. Kozlovsky's Russian friends commented, however, more than once on his slovenliness in dress. For instance, Constantine Bulgakov, a fellow diplomat and later Director of the Moscow Post Office, wrote to his brother Alexander from Vienna, where he was attending the Peace Congress, that another "famous personage" had joined their company: this was Prince Kozlovsky, whom he then described as follows: "que je trouve changé un peu à son avantage quant à son moral; pour le phisique il a engraissé, ce qui le rend tout-à-fait rond. Son costume ne s'est pas formé sur les modes anglaises, malgré son séjour en Angleterre. Il est aussi mal torché qu'auparavant." 5 4. Mary Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vol. 9:1811-1819 (London, 1949), p. 243. The cartoon under No. 12020 has nothing to do with Kozlovsky. It showed the Duke of Clarence kneeling before the Grand-Duchess Anna Pavlovna: there was at the time some talk of a possible marriage between the Duke and Emperor Alexander's sister, who ended by marrying the Duke of Orange. 5. "Iz pisem K. Ja. Bulgakova k ego bratu. 1814," Russkij Arkhiv, 1904, No. 3, p. 189.

4

Gleb Struve

Mrs. George's wrong identification of Kozlovsky and her failure to identify Countess Lieven prompted me to write to her, and in 1950, prior to the publication of my book, we exchanged several letters. I drew her attention to the fact that both Kozlovsky and Countess Lieven had been identified by Dr. Wilhelm Dorow, Kozlovsky's first biographer (his German book was published in 1846—that is, six years after Kozlovsky's death). Dorow wrote: Kozlovsky's extraordinary obesity, his original manners and speech, in combination with his dazzling, always well-pointed, wit, attracted general attention, and in a country like England there was no lack of caricatures of him. He himself greatly enjoyed them and laughed heartily. Thus, for instance, the very meager but elegant Princess Lieven once refused to dance with an Englishman who was a poor waltzer, remarking as she did so: "Je ne danse qu'avec mes compatriotes." A cartoon was immediately published: the fat Prince Kozlovsky was shown dancing with the exceptionally thin princess Lieven, and underneath one could read: The Longitude and Latitude of St. Petersburgh."

Dorow made a mistake in dating this and other English caricatures of Kozlovsky from 1821, the year after his retirement from the diplomatic service. To his Russian friends these caricatures had been known much earlier. The same Constantine Bulgakov wrote to his brother from Vienna on April 15, 1815 that some caricatures had been received from London by one of the Russian diplomats and were being sent to him, since he was known to be collecting caricatures. On two of them, he said, his brother would recognize Kozlovsky and on one Countess Lieven was portrayed as "the Longitude." Bulgakov added that Kozlovsky felt quite proud of this and regarded it as a distinction. There was no doubt, wrote Bulgakov, that Kozlovsky had attracted the attention of the public in England where "the King himself is not immune from this kind of distinction." He also wrote that he had already seen those caricatures in London but that there were so many of them and they were so funny that it was difficult to make a choice and to buy them all would cost more than £1,000.7 There were also mentions of the Longitude and Latitude caricature in various other contemporary letters and reminiscences. Thus, in responding to Constantine's letter, Alexander Bulgakov wrote him, asking him to remind Kozlovsky of some cross of his which he had left in Kozlovsky's care when the latter was Russian Minister in Cagliari and threatening to draw an even more vicious caricature of the latitude of Russia.8 The caricature was said to have been a great success in the diplomatic world, and Count di Front, the Sardinian minister at the Court of St. James's, even had it forwarded to his government. Joseph de Maistre, Kozlovsky's opposite 6. D r . Wilhelm Dorow, Fürst KosloJJsky, Kaiserlich Kaisers, ausserordentlicher Gesandter und bevollmächtigter Facsimile (Leipsig, 1846), p. 12.

russischer Minister

7. "Iz pisem K. Ja. Bulgakova . . . 1815-yj g o d , " Russkij

Arkhiv,

wirklicher Staatsrat, Kammerherr des in Turin, Mit zwei Portraits u n d einem 1904. No. 3, p. 351.

8. " l z pisem Aleksandra Jakovlevica Bulgakova k ego b r a t u K o n s t a n t i n u Jakovlevicu," Russkij 1900, No. 2, p. 464.

Arkhiv,

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

Prince Peter Borisovich Kozlovsky in 1836. From a watercolor portrait by Césarine de Barante (1794-1877), wife of the French ambassador in St. Petersburg. Property of Professor Gleb Struve.

n u m b e r in St. Petersburg, who knew him personally quite well, f o u n d it " d e l i g h t f u l . " 9 Prince Metternich, who must have known Kozlovsky at the Congress of Vienna and who certainly met him during the Congress at Aixla-Chapelle, where he b e c a m e Countess Lieven's lover, wrote her soon after t h a t , in 1819, f r o m Vienna: 9. Pingaud, " U n diplomate russe," p. 56.

6

Gleb Struve By the way, ä propos of the waltz: do you know that 1 first came to know you through the caricature of you and the fat Kozlovsky, drawn some seven or eight years ago? 10

In replying to my first letter, Mrs. George wrote that Dorow's "explanation" sounded "plausible" to her, and that she regretted very much having accepted, despite her own "misgivings," the traditional interpretation of this print as portraying the Duke of Clarence. In the same letter Mrs. George promised to be on the lookout for further cartoons of Kozlovsky. A little later, she thanked me for some further information about Kozlovsky and the background of Cruikshank's print and said that she hoped to be able to squeeze that information into volume 10 of her Catalogue. And, in fact, a very brief rectification was "squeezed" into that volume, published in 1952, on p. lvi, under "Corrigenda etc." It ran: "The persons are Prince Pierre Kozlovsky, a Russian diplomat, and Mme Lieven. The scene is London. See W. Dorow, Fürst Kosloffsky. Leipzig, p. 12." There was no reference to my book or to our correspondence. In the meantime, by May 1950, another cartoon (or, in this case, rather a portrait) of Kozlovsky did actually come to light. In a letter dated May 5, 1950, Mrs. George wrote me: You may possibly be interested to know that in Lord Malmesbury's collection of caricatures, recently sold here, there was an impression of The Longitude and Latitude of St. Petersburgh, with a note by Lord M[almesburyj: "A Russian called Prince Koslovski or Vaimable roue as he called himself & Countess de Lieven Russian Ambassadress waltzing at Devonshire House May 1813."

This note by Lord Malmesbury made it possible to identify Kozlovsky as the subject of another print in the British Museum, recorded by Mrs. George in the same volume 9 of her Catalogue under No. 12126 and described as follows: L'AIMABLE ROUE London Pubd 6 April 1813 by H Humphries St. James Street

(i.e. Humphrey)

Engraving (coloured impression). An unidentified portrait. A very stout man with small neat features rides a well-bred horse in profile to the r.; his obesity forces him to lean backwards. He wears a cylindrical hat, double-breasted coat, frilled shirt, Hessian boots, and holds a hunting-crop. 9 1/4x11 3/4 in. (pi.) 1 1 10. When writing this article I did not have Jean Hanoteau's original French edition of Metternich's letters to Countess Lieven (1909) at hand. See the German translation: Geist und Herz verbündet: Metternich 's Briefe an die Gräfin Lieven, Mit einer Einleitung von Dr. Emil Mika (Wien, 1942), p. 137. 11. George, Political and Personal Satires, p. 217.

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

7

y ft**, L ' Aimable

Roué

This portrait of Kozlovsky has never been mentioned in Russia, though Constantine Bulgakov could have been referring to it as the second cartoon in which one could see Kozlovsky. As far as I know, it has never been reproduced before, except in my Russian book on Kozlovsky, and I reproduce it here: it offers quite a good contrast to the other cartoon. Mrs. George wrote me that the artist remained unknown, but that the portrait was similar to other portraits published by Humphrey, some of which were by Gillray and Rowlandson. Since James Gillray (1757-1815), who drew many cartoons of the Prince Regent as "Farmer John," was known to have gone insane in 1811, the artist was more likely to have been Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827). Lord Malmesbury's note to "Longitude and Latitude" located, as we have seen, the scene at Devonshire House and not at Almack's, as had been previously thought. In her "Corrigenda" in volume 10 Mrs. George merely identified Kozlovsky and Mme Lieven and the scene as London, but in her much later, richly illustrated work about English social satire from Hogarth to Cruikshank, in which she reproduced "Longitude and Latitude" (but not

8

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"L'Aimable Roué"), she seems to have reverted to the earlier and widely accepted identification of the place. She wrote: In Longitude and Latitude of St. Petersburgh, 1813 [149], by Cruikshank, evidently after an amateur, the tall thin woman and the short fat man are M a d a m e de Lieven and Prince Pierre Kozlovsky, who called himself "l'aimable roué," waltzing at Almack's. The setting shows the austerity that was a protest against the lavish entertainment of the new rich. It had been no feature of the earlier balls there . . . The magnificence of rooms, décor and food had much impressed Dr. Campbell in 1773: "every thing in the most elegant style."

And she then quotes a description of Almack's by Prince Pückler-Muskau, "a Prussian and an acutely malicious observer who made a fortune-hunting visit to England in 1826-28": A large bare room with a bad floor . . . with two or three naked rooms at the side, in which were served the most wretched refreshments, and a company into which, in spite of the immense difficulty of getting tickets, a great many "Nobodies" had wriggled . . . And yet Almack's is the culminating point of the world of f a s h i o n . 1 2

Strange though this may seem, we know tantalizingly little about the actual relations between Prince Kozlovsky and Mme Lieven. What could they have had in common—at least before 1835, when the Princess (the princely title was conferred on her husband in 1826, upon the coronation of Nicholas I) left Russia, never to go back there because she had incurred the disfavor of the Emperor, and became, to all intents and purposes, a distinguished émigrée in Paris under the July monarchy and under Louis Napoleon? Prince Kozlovsky, a great friend of George Canning, and Countess Lieven, who once described him as "a Jacobin minister" (it is true that towards the very end of his life she changed her opinion of him and also became his admirer)? Countess Lieven, the lover of Metternich, and Kozlovsky, who certainly came very close to regarding the Austrian Chancellor as "the evil genius of Europe," as some of posterity was to do, 13 and had, moreover, good reasons to ascribe to Metternich's influence his own dismissal from the Russian diplomatic service? Countess Lieven, the wife of the Russian ambassador in London, the admirer of Nicholas I and upholder of his regime, and, what is more, the sister of Count Alexander Benckendorff, the head of the notorious Third Division, that is, the Political Police;"1 and 12. M. Dorothy George, Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire (London, 1967), p. 163. The quotation is from E. M. Butler, ed., A Regency Visitor. The English Tour of Prince Pückler-Muskau, Described in his Letters (London, 1957). 13. See, for example, Viktor Bibl, "Metternich the Evil Genius," in Metternich, the "Coachman" of Europe: Statesman or Evil Genius? ed. Henry F. Schwarz (Boston, 1962), pp. 19-28. This is an extract from Bibl's book: Metternich, der Dämon Oesterreichs (Wien, 1936), pp. 378 ff. 14. Count Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff (1788-1844). The Countess's letters to him before 1835 were published in Lionel G. Robinson, ed., Letters of Dorothea, Princess Lieven, during her Residence in

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

9

Prince Kozlovsky, a "Liberal," an avowed constitutionalist, a friend of the Decembrists and, later, the interlocutor of Marquis de Custine, to whom he developed, on the latter's famous journey to Russia, the heretical Chaadayevian ideas about Russia and Europe?15 Curiously enough, Cruikshank's caricature is the only contemporary piece of evidence known to me that links Countess Lieven and Prince Kozlovsky between 1813 and 1825. Whether they had known each other before 1813, in Russia, we do not know. This is by no means impossible, for both, in a way, belonged to the same high society. It is not, however, very likely, inasmuch as Kozlovsky lived abroad on diplomatic service most of the time between 1803 and 1810, while the Lievens were in Berlin between 1810 and 1812, that is, just during Kozlovsky's short spell in St. Petersburg. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that they must have met in London in 1813, be that at the receptions in the Russian Embassy, at Almack's (though the purely "symbolic" meaning of Cruikshank's print is not out of the question), or in society at large, in which both of them scored immediately a great success. They met again five years later at the Aix-la-Chapelle Congress, at which Kozlovsky was one of the Russian representatives, though he played no important part in it. But we know that at that Congress Countess Lieven spent very much time in the company of Metternich (it was there that they became lovers), and that Metternich felt an intense dislike for Kozlovsky, whom he must have first known during the Congress of Vienna and of whose diplomatic activities in Turin he was certainly well informed. In politics and in diplomacy of those days the two men stood for sharply opposed principles. In one of his official despatches to the Austrian ambassador in St. Petersburg, Baron Lebzeltern, Metternich included the name of Kozlovsky among the Russians with whom, he said, he never did or could "come to terms" (s'entendre); while in another he complained of the "language" of people like von Anstett, Pahlen, and Kozlovsky, singling out the latter's as "entièrement libéral," and opposing to it that of some other Russian diplomats who were more to his taste (among them he included Count Lieven).16 In one of his early love letters to Countess Lieven, written during the Aixla-Chapelle Congress, Metternich wrote at some length about a personal conversation he had with Kozlovsky in the couloirs of the Congress. That conversation shocked him profoundly. Its subject was women, about whom KozlovLondon, 1812-1834 (London & New York, 1902). Some interesting further letters will be found in Daudet, Vie d'ambassadrice. It is curious that such an authoritative and otherwise reliable reference work as the Russian Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Brokgauz/(Brockhaus)-Efron gives Dorothea Lieven's maiden name as Countess Buxhoevden. 15. See Struve, Russkij Evropeec, pp. 39 ff. Also Michel Cadot, La Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française (¡839-1956) (Paris, 1967); and George F. Kennan, The Marquis de Custine and his "Russia in ¡839" (Princeton, 1971). 16. Grand-Due Nicolas Mikha'Üowitch, Les rapports diplomatiques de Lebzeltern, ministre d'Autriche à la cour de Russie (1816-1826) (St. Petersburg, 1914), pp. 324, 338.

10

Gleb Struve

sky allegedly spoke with frank cynicism, saying that he liked them with round cheeks, plump arms, and a good appetite. When Metternich told him that all he cared for in women was their spirit, their mind, and their soul, and it did not matter to him whether their cheeks were thin or plump, Kozlovsky said that he was sentimental, to which Metternich retorted: "No, but I either love or not." In his letter to Countess Lieven he went on to say that the whole conversation was so unpleasant to him that he got up under the pretext of greeting some royalty just entering the room. And he added: "There are so many Kozlovskys in this world: Heaven has created plump arms specially for them." 17 It is more than likely that on this occasion Kozlovsky spoke to Metternich with tongue in cheek, or was even making fun of him: there is enough evidence to show Kozlovsky's entirely different, nay very chivalrous, attitude to women, though there were also others who spoke of his "dissoluteness," and Comtesse de Boigne, the daughter of Kozlovsky's French colleague in Turin, described him in her memoirs as "plein de connaissances et d'esprit, mais tellement léger et si mauvais sujet qu'il n'y avait nulle ressource de société de ce côté." 18 Kozlovsky himself contracted (apparently around 1809) a secret marriage (just as he had, a few years earlier, secretly embraced the Roman Catholic faith) with a simple Italian woman, with whom he lived more or less openly during his diplomatic service in Turin and with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter (the latter, who bore his name, was afterwards a friend of Balzac and figures in his correspondence as "Sofka"; she married a young Frenchman who became a civil servant under Napoleon III). We know of no portrait of Kozlovsky's wife, and none of his Russian friends seem to have described her: it looks as though he had never brought her to Russia; she apparently lived in Paris, and we do not know when she died. But we have a playful picture of her in the reminiscences of Pictet de Rochemont, the Swiss diplomat with whom Kozlovsky negotiated the demarcation of frontiers between Piedmont, Switzerland, and France (this successful negotiation was his most signal diplomatic achievement in the aftermath of the Congress of Vienna). On one occasion Kozlovsky invited Pictet and his colleagues to his house in Turin and took them to his bedroom to show them something. There they saw, as Pictet put it, "a very pretty and quite tame night bird of a female sex whom he had recently brought from Genoa." Pictet said that during the long diplomatic conversation she would now and then glance from her needlework and smile at a young colleague of his. Since Kozlovsky invited them to dine "en famille" two days later, Pictet added: "We'll be able to tell you then how the little bird sings." And in a despatch written a couple of 17. Hanoteau, Geist und Herz verbiindet, pp. 37-38. 18. Comtesse de Boigne, Récits d'une tante: Mémoires de la Comtesse de Boigne, née d'Osmond 1924), p. 21.

(Paris,

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

11

days later he wrote: "Nothing unusual happened at our family dinner. The twittering of the little female parakeet made this dinner more delightful."" Except for the already mentioned brief recall of Cruikshank's print, on which Kozlovsky and Mme Lieven were so sharply contrasted, Metternich's account of his conversation with Kozlovsky about women is the only mention of Kozlovsky in his known letters to the Countess. Since no letters of the Countess to him before 1820 are available, we do not know whether what Metternich wrote to her provoked any reaction on her part. Kozlovsky's name is not mentioned in her published letters to him after 1820, and no letters of Metternich to her after 1819 have ever been published. It is possible that during his affair with her Metternich did implant in her some of his antipathy towards Kozlovsky. We also do not know, strangely enough, whether Countess Lieven ever wrote to Kozlovsky, His papers were not systematically preserved, and only a few have survived by pure chance. Most of his life after his retirement was spent in constant peregrinations, in crossing and recrossing Europe: we hear of him in Germany, in France, in Italy, in Belgium, in England. It was only in 1835 that he went back to Russia. He stopped first in Warsaw where his stay was unexpectedly prolonged by an accident: he fell out of a carriage and was for a time disabled (later he always had to use a crutch). When he finally arrived in St. Petersburg, Princess Lieven, who had been there since the previous year, had already left. Kozlovsky's last years were spent again in Warsaw: somewhat surprisingly, in view of his liberal opinions and his proPolish sympathies, which he had evinced at a very early stage, already in the previous reign, he was now appointed, apparently on the recommendation of Lord Durham, the then British ambassador in St. Petersburg, to the Viceroy's council in Warsaw. The Viceroy was none other than Fieldmarshal Paskevich, the "conqueror" of Poland, with whom Kozlovsky had established a satisfying relationship during his previous stay in Warsaw. From Warsaw Kozlovsky paid occasional visits to St. Petersburg and to Western Europe, and during one of the latter he died, in 1840, in Baden-Baden, where he was buried. There is nothing to show that he and Princess Lieven met during this last period of his life, though we know that she was in Baden-Baden in the summer of 1839 and wrote from there to Guizot. But there is no mention of Kozlovsky in her letters to him. As for Kozlovsky's letters to her, we know so far of one only, which is now preserved among the Lieven papers in the British Museum and remains unpublished. Although Kozlovsky shone primarily as a brilliant talker— there are enough testimonies in his contemporaries' letters and reminiscences to his sharp salon wit and to his great gift of telling tales—he was also very 19. Edmond Pictet, Biographie, travaux et correspondance diplomatique de C. Pictet de Rochemont. député de Genève auprès du Congrès de Vienne, 1814, envoyé extraordinaire et ministre plénipotentiaire de la Suisse à Paris et à Turin. 1815 et 1816 (1755-1824) (Genève, 1892).

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much given to writing letters, and among those that have been preserved there are several very interesting ones (to Chateaubriand, to Mme de Staël, to Marchese Cavour, to Rachel Varnhagen von Ense, to Miss Berry, to Pictet de Rochemont, and others), some of them quite long. There may be others, still to be found among the papers of his Russian friends, such as Prince Vyazemsky and the brothers Turgenev, in whose own correspondence he occupies a prominent place. The possibility of some of his letters to Mme Lieven still coming to light in Russian archives is not excluded. 20 Besides private letters, he also wrote and published open letters on subjects that engaged his interest and attention. One of them, addressed to Dr. Blomfield, the Bishop of Chester, dealt with the emancipation of Catholics in England, and was written as though emanating from a German Protestant; while another, addressed to the Duc de Broglie, was, curiously enough, written in defence of the ministers of Charles X. 21 Kozlovsky also left behind some interesting unfinished memoirs, which contain an unusually objective characterization of the future Emperor Nicholas I, whom he met before his accession. 22 He was also the author of two articles on scientific subjects which were published in Sovremennik, the journal which Pushkin launched in 1836. One of them, published during Pushkin's lifetime, was a review of the Parisian Annuaire du bureau des longitudes. Kozlovsky's encyclopedic interests were hinted at, when he was still quite young and lived in Rome, by one of his fellow diplomats, who said that "sa tête est une bibliothèque en désordre." 23 Pushkin, whom he met after his return to Russia, had a very high opinion of his literary abilities and said once that Kozlovsky would be his Providence if one day he made up his mind to become a writer. The letter of Kozlovsky to Countess Lieven, which is printed below, is a rather characteristic example of his epistolary art and manner and is therefore given here in its original French. It reflects also some of the characteristic traits of his personality and some of his most cherished views. 20. Prior to the publication of his biography of the Countess, Dr. Hyde published, in 1935, a description, followed by a handlist, of the Lieven archives to which he had had access and which were much later deposited in the British Museum Library. Here, under No. 172, we find listed "Letters from Koslowsky to Princess Lieven." It appears that the letter that is printed below is the only letter of Kozlovsky's among those papers. For Dr. Hyde's description of the archives see H. Montgomery Hyde, "The Lieven Archives," Bulletin of the Institute oj Historical Research 12, No. 36 ( 1935); 152-163. 21. Lettre d'un Protestant d'Allemagne à Monseigneur l'évêque de Chester ( Paris, 1825) and Lettre au duc de Broglie sur les prisonniers de Vincennes (Gand, 1830). Both these open letters, or pamphlets, were reprinted in Dorow's book. Some interesting diplomatic despatches of Kozlovsky's, in connection with Joseph de Maistre and with Mme de Staël, will be found in volumes 29-30 and 33-34 of Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (Moscow, 1937 and 1939). 22. This memoir, written in French, was also reprinted by Dorow. 23. "Iz pisem Konstantina Jakovlevica Bulgakova . . . ", Russkij Arkhiv, 1899, No. 2, p. 21. Much later, in 1814, C. Bulgakov wrote to his brother from Vienna: "Kozlovsky is, in fact, much cleaner since he has become Minister, and has gained very much. When he finishes sowing his wild oats |sovsem perebesitsja\ he will be quite a decent man [porjadocnyj celovek], for he certainly has the wherewithal, if only he had a little more order in his head." "Iz pisem . . . ," Russkij Arkhiv, 1904, No. 3, p. 199. Except for the sentence about "sowing the wild oats," the letter is written in French.

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

13

Though it bears no indication of the year in which it was written, it can be assigned beyond all doubt to 1825, the year when Countess Lieven set out on the first of her two visits to Russia before her husband's final recall in 1834 (the second time she went in 1830 when her husband was called upon to replace temporarily Count Nesselrode as Chancellor; but on that occasion she went only as far as Warsaw). In a letter to her brother, dated 2/14 March 1825, she wrote that her departure was fixed for June 1, adding: "in any case I shall travel by way of Warsaw, as I have a holy horror of that Prussia." 24 Kozlovsky must have either seen her or heard from her not long before (in the 1820s he visited London quite often) and thus known of her plan to stop in Frankfurt, as may be seen from the initial sentence of his letter. The Countess did, in fact, stop in Frankfurt, but nearly a month later than originally intended, and Kozlovsky must have missed her. The explanation for this delay was the sudden illness of her son George, who was then six years old. On June 29, the Countess wrote from Frankfurt to Metternich: I left E n g l a n d a f t e r a m o n t h of terrible anxiety a b o u t my little G e o r g e . H e h a d t h e i n f a n t i l e fever, a horrible a n d n e v e r - e n d i n g c o m p l a i n t which is c o m m o n in E n g l a n d . I myself was ill, f r o m e x h a u s t i o n a n d t h e anxiety c a u s e d by his illness. I was on t h e verge of a bilious fever; b u t , eventually, my s o u n d constitution got t h e u p p e r h a n d ; I was ill a n d set o u t , all within t h e s p a c e of f o u r days. 1 a m s p e n d i n g t o m o r r o w here, t o see my b r o t h e r [ C o n s t a n t i n e B e n c k e n d o r f f ] ; a n d t h e n I r e s u m e my w r e t c h e d s t u d i o u s j o u r n e y . . . 1 did not write to you d u r i n g my s o n ' s illness, b e c a u s e 1 f o u n d it impossible to collect my t h o u g h t s . 1 was not myself. You have never k n o w n m e in sorrow. You d o not know how b a d l y 1 s t a n d u p to it. 2 5

The main ostensible subject of Kozlovsky's letter was the Countess's second son Paul, then about twenty years old, who had just started his service in the Imperial Chancellery (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) under Count Nesselrode. In the letter to her brother Alexander, in which she announced to him her forthcoming departure for St. Petersburg and which she began by telling him of her recovery after giving birth to another boy (her fifth), she went on to speak at some length about Paul: T h e news t h a t P a u l tells m e of himself gives m e g r e a t p l e a s u r e , a n d I c a n n o t express myself t o o gratefully to d e a r C o u n t Nesselrode f o r his goodness in allowing my boy t o c o m m e n c e his c a r e e r in a way most likely to give h i m a t a s t e f o r his p r o f e s s i o n . As f o r P a u l , he is delighted with his start in life, a n d s p e a k s in high praise of t h e Foreign O f f i c e . 1 g a t h e r also f r o m his letters t h a t his doings at C o u r t a n d in society a r e such as I s h o u l d have w i s h e d . 1 a m s u r p r i s e d , however, d e a r A l e x a n d e r , t h a t you should t h i n k h i m too y o u n g to be i n d e p e n d e n t . At twenty years old he should know how to b e h a v e himself; I a m convinced t h a t he can d o so, a n d if he c a n n o t I should still be disposed to say t h a t he o u g h t to be i n d e p e n d e n t , for at t h a t age experience is t h e best m a s t e r , a n d , moreover, at 24. Robinson, Letters of Dorothea, Princess Lieven, p. 76. 25. Peter Quennell, ed.. The Private Letters of Princess Lieven to Prince Metternich (New York, 1938), pp. 352-53.

14

Gleb Struve that age not one of your contemporaries (yourself included) had not been for some time independent. Our reason for wishing him to make his debut in Russia was to awake in him a love for his own country; we have endeavoured to make him understand his duties towards it. In what concerns his tastes and affections he will need freedom of choice—that is the outcome of his stay in this country—but the fruits of his learning will not be limited to this. If your ideas on this subject do not agree with mine, wait until we meet; do not let us fall to disputing, especially on paper.20

As I have said before, it is possible that the Countess had seen Kozlovsky some time before her departure from London, and in that case she may have discussed Paul's case with him. But before Kozlovsky himself comes to deal with it in more or less concrete terms, he indulges in a long disquisition on moral philosophy, developing views that he held very dear. In the contrast which he draws between the position of the individual in Russia and in the West we can see a foretaste of the ideas which he was to develop to Custine fifteen years later. When he comes to discuss the case of Paul he tries to persuade the mother not to allow her boy to be ruled or dominated by those who are concerned with nothing but his career. It is important that he should retain his independence and not be an echo of other people's wishes and views, including those of his superiors, no matter how great those people may be. In what he says he voices his own aversion to bureaucracy in all its forms and invokes his own experience, no doubt having in mind his short spell between 1810 and 1812 in the same Chancellery, but under Count Rumyantsev. The passage in which he fulminates against those who fawn upon their superiors to the point of caressing their favorite dogs is a curious echo of the famous monologue of Chatsky in Griboedov's play Woe from Wit (also rendered into English as The Mischief of Being Clever) which, written a little earlier, was circulating in innumerable copies and, as D. S. Mirsky says in his History of Russian Literature, was "as good as published in 1825." We may assume that Kozlovsky, even though he lived abroad, was familiar with it through his friends. Kozlovsky suggests that it would be better for Paul to go into diplomatic service where he would have more opportunity to develop freely his personality, especially if he did as little routine work as possible and, instead of that, devoted as much time as he could to improving his mind by reading and 26. Robinson, Letters of Dorothea, Princess Lieven, p. 75. In the same letter the Countess enjoined her husband to use his influence ("if you have any," she wrote) to get Paul's brothers, Alexander and Constantine, made officers, adding: "I confess that it will be a shock to me to find them in the garb of corporals, and it seems to me that their apprenticeship has been long enough." And then she asked: "In what branch of the service are they serving, cavalry or infantry? The cavalry of the Guards is too expensive. They must be in the army, but where and under whom?" Ibid., p. 76. It may seem strange that the mother did not know this. At one time all three brothers seem to have attended the University of Dorpat, one of the best in the Russian Empire in those days.

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

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studying on his own. Here, again, Kozlovsky is probably recalling his own experience. The stress which Kozlovsky laid on reading, on books, in the formation of human character was very characteristic of him. He was himself widely read in world literature, though largely an auto-didact. Very fond of Latin poets, much of whose work he knew by heart (according to his friend Vyazemsky, he possessed a prodigious memory), he once urged Pushkin to translate the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, and Pushkin began doing so. But he was also at home in Shakespeare and loved the French classics, and in an unfinished verse epistle to him Pushkin apostrophized him as "a connoisseur of giant works of mind, a friend of English bards, a lover of Latin Muses." As a young man, Kozlovsky himself wrote poetry, so we can see perhaps that the honorary doctorate conferred on him by Oxford in 1813, though probably due to diplomatic reasons, was not quite undeserved. In his letter to the Countess, Kozlovsky, in denouncing flattery and insincerity, supported his argument by quotations from Coriolanus and from Racine's Britannicus27 and opposed to them what he regarded as a typically Russian proverb: "My tongue is my enemy." Referring again to the differences in fundamental attitudes in Russia and the West, he brought in the names of Charles Rollin, a French seventeenth-century historian and humanist, and the great Roman historian Tacitus, as well as those of Voltaire and Corneille. To prop up some of his points, he brought in some more literary quotations. Nor could he help mentioning his friend Canning and his praise of Pitt's "disinterestedness," though he probably knew that at that time Countess Lieven still felt hostile towards Canning. One may wonder: how much of this display of erudition was lost on the Countess? It is interesting to note that some of those who knew Mme Lieven primarily as a skillful diplomatic and political wirepuller,28 as well as those who have written about her in modern times, have spoken somewhat contemptuously of her indifference to literature and her would-be aversion to reading. For example, Jean Hanoteau, the editor of Metternich's surviving letters to her, has written that she had little taste for literature and rarely found a book that held her attention. That this was by no means so was rightly noted by Peter Quennell, who edited her letters to Metternich.29 From them we can indeed see that she admired Shakespeare, was an enthusiastic reader of Walter Scott's novels, which she recommended to Metternich's 27. The quotation from Coriolanus is from the speech of Menenius Agrippa in act 111, scene I. There is a minor inexactitude in the second line; it should read: "Or Jove for's power to thunder." The quotation from Britannicus is from act II, verses 639-642. Kozlovsky has, however, reversed the lines, perhaps deliberately: he underlined verse 640 with which his quotation concludes. There is also, in the letter, a mention of Banquo. 28. "Une intrigante au delà de toute idée," wrote of her Count Rodolphe Apponyi, who was married to her niece Annette Benckendorff and was attached to the Austrian Embassy in Paris. See Ernest Daudet, Vingtcinq ans à Paris (¡826-1852): Journal du comte Rodolphe Apponyi. . . , vol. 4 (Paris, 1926), p. 448. 29. See "Biographical foreword" in Quennell, Private Letters, p. xvii.

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attention, and was so much moved by the Third Canto of Byron's Childe Harold that she once contemplated suicide off Brighton beach! This last confession should perhaps be taken with a big grain of salt: it could have been made for the benefit of the sentimentally and romantically inclined Austrian Chancellor. But what she wrote Metternich about Scott, in a letter dated September 16, 1820, sounded even like a little piece of literary criticism: Do you like reading English, mon Prince, and have you ever had time to read the novels, or a novel, of Walter Scott? French books are not worth reading after him—there is such truth in the characters and the situations. I think 1 have found out the chief quality of Walter Scott's novels; his principal characters are never idealised as in all other novels. On the contrary, it is they who have the most weaknesses, so that in them weak people can see themselves. And, as there are more weak people than strong, there results a delightful impression of truth and fidelity of portraiture which makes the reader identify himself with his Maclvors and his Roland Grahams. Love, usually the essence of the novel, always takes second place; the dominant interest of all his works is something greater. With him, one finds oneself far readier to enter low company than with any other novelist (especially foreign novelists). English rustic society is the most picturesque and quaint of all, and I like his tavern talk as well as his palace conversation. When you have finished your "Carbonari" novel, and given it a happy ending, promise to read Ivanhoe or The Abbot—that is Scott's last book.

In a later letter (December 16, 1821) she gave proof of the constancy of her interest in Scott as a writer: Walter Scott has just published a new novel, The Pirate. As before, the book is in three volumes, neither more nor less, and contains the same number of pages; but, what is more important, it reveals the same talent, the same power of imagination, and a subtlety of observation, a fidelity in characterization that no novelist before Scott has ever achieved. It is asking a great deal to expect you to read a three-volume novel in a language you do not know very well; but it is a pity you do not read Walter Scott [apparently this is what Metternich told her in reply to her earlier letter—G. S. J—it is not a waste of time as it is with the others.

In the meantime (on April 26, 1821), Countess Lieven informed Metternich that the evening before, Sir Walter Scott, "the great English novelist" as she put it, had been introduced to her. And she added: "He holds himself exactly like M. de Talleyrand, but talks differently; he is full of vivacity and wit, and his ideas pour out like a waterfall." In the same letter she asked Metternich whether he knew [Samuel] Rogers, the poet. It is possible that she herself knew him personally, for he was noted for his table talk and was a friend of Scott's; she could have met him at one of Lady Holland's receptions. Of Shakespeare she wrote him in 1823: I have been taking a complete course of Shakespeare since I have been at Brighton. What disorder, and what truth! After him, everything seems stupid. Open his works at hazard.

17

Prince Peter Kozlovsky W h e r e v e r you look, you a r e s u r e to f i n d g e n i u s . I a d m i r e h i m so m u c h t h a t I would be q u i t e p u t o u t , if, in o n e of his t r a g e d i e s , he h a d not s h i p w r e c k e d his heroes on t h e " s e a coast of B o h e m i a . "

This last remark was no doubt dictated to the Countess by her practical, matter-of-fact spirit, which so many of those who knew her emphasized. Still, we see how wrong were M. Hanoteau and Dr. Hyde, who adopted the Frenchman's view of Countess Lieven's attitude to books. In her letters to Metternich we find another example of literary criticism— this time a very negative appraisal of a work by another contemporary, a French one, Mme de Genlis. On May 16, 1825, she wrote her friend and exlover, with whom she was in less than two years to break off all correspondence, who became her political enemy, and of whom she was later to speak very slightingly: In t h e m i d s t of t e a r s a n d luggage a n d d i n n e r s a n d balls 1 still f i n d t i m e to r e a d . M a d a m e de G e n l i s ' s f o u r t h v o l u m e is d e t e s t a b l e . H e r style is watery a n d feeble. It h a s n ' t a n idea in it; in s h o r t she b o r e s m e . T h e first two volumes [of t h e Mémoires,

just published then—

G. 5 . ] interested m e in spite of t h e i r puerility, or possibly b e c a u s e of it; f o r they give o n e a n idea of t h e careless h a p p i n e s s t h e F r e n c h enjoyed b e f o r e , a n d a l m o s t u p to t h e very m o m e n t o f , their bloody revolution. 1 0

It is permissible to think that in her appraisal of Walter Scott Countess Lieven was guided and influenced by Kozlovsky: we know that Scott was among those modern writers whom Kozlovsky admired; and from what he told Custine about Scott's novels on board the ship which took them to Kronstadt in 1839 (and which, significantly enough, was called "Nicholas I"), one is tempted to conclude that, in her letter to Metternich, the Countess may have been echoing some of his views. We can almost hear his voice behind her words. It is equally possible that it was on Kozlovsky's advice that she took "the course" on Shakespeare (whom, one hopes, she read in the original). Her negative attitude to contemporary French literature may also have been influenced by Kozlovsky. If Countess Lieven had, to begin with, little taste for books, it seems more than likely that both Prince Metternich and Prince Kozlovsky, and especially the latter, played some part in developing it. In the same letter in which she criticized Madame de Genlis she told Metternich that she would be grateful to him for sending her something to read on her journey: "What am I to do with myself between Berlin and St. Petersburg?" It is true that in her later correspondence she showed relatively little interest in literature, and we know that during her Paris period one of her favorite 30. Quennell, Private Letters: on Scott, pp. 75, 145, 128; on Shakespeare, p. 285; on Byron, p. 162; on Mme de Genlis, pp. 351-52.

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relaxations became a game of whist. Also, in one of her letters she complained of the increasing trouble she had with her eyesight; it forced her, she said, to give up reading in the evening. There are, however, references at this time to reading books in bed in the morning. And the editor of her correspondence with Lord Aberdeen mentions that by 1845 her eyes began to bother her so much that she started writing most of her letters to Aberdeen on dark green paper.31 PRINCE KOZLOVSKY'S LETTER TO COUNTESS LIEVEN32 Francfort,

ce 8 juin

J ' a i a t t e n d u ici d e p u i s le 22 m a i j u s q u ' a u j o u r d ' h u i p o u r avoir le b o n h e u r de revoir la p l u s a i m a b l e , la meilleure, la p l u s noble des a m b a s s a d r i c e s , m a i s c'est en vain, et l'arrivée de C o n s t a n t i n a S t u t t g a r d m e fait s o u p ç o n n e r q u e c'est là où j e p o u r r a i p e u t - e t r e la r e t r o u v e r . M a i s c o m m e j e d é t e s t e les a f f e c t i o n s égoistes, j'écris cette lettre a f i n qu'elle a p p r e n n e a u m o i n s ce q u e j'avois à lui dire: c'est là ce qu'il y a d ' i m p o r t a n t . Le p l u s ou m o i n s de c h a g r i n ou de plaisir d ' u n individu aussi o b s c u r q u e moi ne doit p a s être le s u j e t d ' u n e longue discussion. Il f a u t d ' a b o r d , chère C o m t e s s e , q u e vous vous p e r s u a d i e z p e n d a n t votre voyage, et q u e vous vous en p e r s u a d i e z bien i n t i m é m e n t , q u e n o n s e u l e m e n t on ne sait p o i n t j u g e r le c a r a c t è r e individuel de l ' h o m m e en Russie, m a i s q u ' i l est a b s o l u m e n t impossible q u ' o n y arrive avec le meilleur esprit, q u a n d l'état m o r a l d ' u n pays est tel q u ' u n i n d i v i d u , pris d ' u n e m a n i è r e a b s t r a i t e , n'est rien ou peu d e chose. Cette c i r c o n s t a n c e est u n obstacle invincible, et on p e u t p r o u v e r m a t h é m a t i q u e m e n t q u e cela n'y est p a s p l u s p r a c t i c a b l e qu'il ne le seroit p o u r u n Chinois de j u g e r de n o t r e p e i n t u r e , q u a n d il n ' a a u c u n e idée de l ' o m b r e ni de la perspective. O n y p e u t c o m m e ailleurs a p p r é c i e r u n e c e r t a i n e é t e n d u e d e l'esprit, m a i s les g r a n d e s n u a n c e s m o r a l e s q u i r é s u l t e n t de l'élévation d e l ' â m e a b s o l u m e n t i n d é p e n d a n t e de la s i t u a t i o n d ' u n individu, ne peuvent p o i n t être saisies q u a n d on n'est point h a b i t u é à concevoir l ' h o m m e a u t r e m e n t q u e d a n s son existence relative. J'ai p . e. [par e x e m p l e ] e n t e n d u souvent de nos c o m p a t r i o t e s les p l u s spirituels s ' é t o n n e r , q u a n d j e leur t r a d u i s o i s l ' a d m i r a b l e é p i t a p h e de Pitt, q u ' i l n'y ait loué p r i n c i p a l e m e n t q u e son d é s i n t é r e s s e m e n t . Cet é t o n n e m e n t m ' a p a r u t o u t n a t u r e l , c a r ils m a n q u a i e n t de cette notion r a f f i n é e d ' u n e â m e désintéressée, q u i ne s u p p o s e p a s s e u l e m e n t u n e a b s e n c e d'avidité p o u r de l ' a r g e n t , m a i s u n tel a m o u r de la gloire q u e la f o r t u n e devient u n objet i m p e r c e p t i b l e . Il en est de m ê m e de la f r a n c h i s e ; de m ê m e de la r é p u g n a n c e à s u p p r i m e r ses s e n t i m e n s ou ses o p i n i o n s ; de m ê m e de l'irritation c o n t r e l'injustice; e n f i n , de m ê m e , de t o u t ce q u i constitue cette m â l e fierté de l ' â m e q u ' o n voit briller d a n s les g r a n d s h o m m e s de t o u s les t e m s et qui p e u t être é g a l e m e n t le p a r t a g e des individus les plus o b s c u r s là où rien ne s ' o p p o s e et t o u t c o n t r i b u e à son d é v e l o p p e m e n t . L o r s q u e R a c i n e m e t d a n s la b o u c h e de J u n i e ces vers si c o n n u s : A b s e n t e de la c o u r , je n ' a i p a s d û p e n s e r , Seigneur, q u ' e n l ' a r t de f e i n d r e il fallut m ' e x e r c e r . 31. E. Jones Parry, éd., The Correspondence of Lord Aberdeen and Princess Lieven 1832-1854, vol. 1:1832-1848 (London, 1938), p. 247. 32. This letter is preserved among the Lieven papers in the British Museum Library. It is written on fourteen pages in Kozlovsky's own hand. I have retained certain peculiarities of spelling which reflect the usage of those days, but have supplied the missing accents here and there, and changed somewhat the punctuation. I wish to thank the Manuscript Department of the British Library for placing a photostat of the letter at my disposal.

Prince Peter Kozlovsky Cette sincérité sans doute est peu discrète, Mais toujours de mon coeur ma bouche est l'interprète! le parterre rend justice à la pensée du poète par ses applaudissemens. Mettez à côté de ceci un proverbe national comme celui-là: H3MKI> MOH Bparc. MOFT C. à d. [C'est-à-dire] que le plus grand des malheurs est de ne savoir pas feindre. Enfin, ce caractère d'élévation, cette inflexibilité de l'âme, que Shakespeare peint en deux vers: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Nor Jove for his power of thunder— cette marque infaillble d'un esprit supérieur, doivent nécessairement échapper à des hommes chez lesquels le tact, le sentiment des convenances, l'à-propos, le savoir-faire sont mis au rang des plus nobles vertus. Notez, chère Comtesse, que toutes ces petites qualités qui sont certainement bonnes, et que votre sexe reçoit presque en naissant, ne s'acquièrent par nous autres, hommes, qu'aux dépens des plus belles dispositions du coeur. Voyez les Grecs de Constantinople, les drogmans de la Porte, et en général tous ceux qui ont été dans le cas de beaucoup plier, ou de chercher à pénétrer dans le coeur des autres, par toutes sortes de voies, et vous serez convaincue de la justesse de mon observation. On lira Rollin avec plaisir en Russie, mais Tacite n'y trouvera point d'appréciateurs, parce que c'est un homme d'une autre trempe. On y apprendra par coeur des vers de Voltaire, mais ceux de Corneille n'y feront pas la même fortune; enfin, on y confondra la fierté avec l'orgueil, et cette proud station of an unbending mind paraîtra tout simplement de la bizarrerie ou une affection coupable. Ce n'est pas de la métaphysique que je fais ici, je voudrais bien vous convaincre, et je vous prie en grâce de relire plusieurs fois ma lettre et de vous en bien pénétrer, car votre bonheur plus ou moins en doit dépendre. Cela fait, je puis à présent vous parler de votre fils. J'ai vu Paul à Berlin, et vous pouvez vous imaginer avec quel intérêt et quelle anxiété j'ai tâché d'étudier un être qui tient à une des personnes que j'aime et que je vénère le plus sur la terre. Veuillez donc avant tout ne pas écouter un mot de ce qu'on vous en pourra dire en Russie; veuillez fermer vos oreilles et juger par vous-même. Si je ne me suis pas trompé, il y a beaucoup de noblesse dans le fond de ce jeune homme. La Gr[ande]-Duchesse a désiré de le voir; il en parut plutôt fatigué que pressé de courir à cette audience, un autre aurait rampé jusques là. Ses manières sont franches, son abord est simple et extrêmement gentlemanlike. Il n'y a rien d'étudié dans ce qu'il dit, et son sourire a quelque chose qui indique qu'il ne voudrait être ni enclume, ni marteau. Je tremble de penser, chère Comtesse, qu'on cherchera de toutes les manières à détruire ces nobles dispositions de l'âme, et qu'on voudra peut-être se servir quoi? de vous-même, oui sans doute de vous-même pour obtenir ce fatal résultat. Songez-y bien, je vous en prie. Si vous croyez qu'il importe avant tout que votre fils fasse ce qu'on appelle une carrière; si vous croyez que cette considération doit prévaloir sur toutes les autres considérations, laissez les faire, ils y réussiront. Je n'en ai pas le moindre doute . . . Mais moi qui suis un des hommes qui vous est le plus dévoué, je proteste solemnellement contre une semblable résolution. Je dis et je soutiens, qu'il n'est pas au pouvoir de qui que ce soit sur la terre de compenser à l'homme le sacrifice de la moindre partie de son être moral, et que comme il n'est pas possible de vivre toujours en dehors un homme qui a perdu une partie de son énergie primitive est un malade, dont rien ne peut guérir l'insupportable langueur. — Eh bien! Paul n'aura pas été aussi souvent qu'il le faudrait chez votre bellemère; il aura négligé sa triste Chancellerie, et quel mal, je vous prie, y-a-t'il à cela? Oui, Madame, il y aurait bien du mal s'il avoit péché dans le sens contraire; si son âme avilie avoit déjà mésuré, compté, approfondi tous les avantages que peuvent lui résulter de la protection; si d'un air humble et soumis, il eut montré son zèle extraordinaire à copier

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des papiers qui l'ennuyent, s'il eut déjà appris comment il faut caresser le chien favori, et ne pas négliger le moindre des secrétaires. Si à ce prix là il devoit remplacer votre mari, je n'en déplorerois pas moins son sort, et je n'en ressentirois pas une douleur moins profonde pour vous. Mais q u a n d il ne devrait j a m a i s faire une carrière, et q u ' o n le retrouvera p o u r t a n t toujours upright, manly, noble and dignified, vos amis, vos vrais amis lui serreront encore la main avec plaisir, et penseront avec douceur à sa mère. Faites-moi la grâce de le tirer de la Chancellerie. Croyez en à mon expérience: on n ' a p p r e n d j a m a i s rien en travaillant sur les idées d ' a u t r u i , q u a n d m ê m e le directeur seroit le premier génie du monde. Ni les Canning, ni les Villèle même, ne se sont point formés par une impulsion étrangère: c'est en nous qu'est le germe de ce que nous pouvons être. Placez-le plutôt à une Légation, en témoignant le désir qu'il n'y fasse rien ou peu de chose; mais confiez-le à un ministre qui le mette en rapport avec ce qu'il y a de plus éclairé dans le pays, et qu'il exerce ainsi son goût p o u r les classiques et pour les bonnes études. Si vous ne le heurtez point, si vous ne prétendez point qu'il se soumette à des observances qui lui répugnent; si avec ces m é n a g e m e n s vous lui insinuez combien il seroit agréable qu'il continuât de lui m ê m e ses études, en se livrant à des occupations véritablement utiles, je ne doute point qu'il ne fasse un sujet distingué. Un seul bon livre, M a d a m e , qu'il a u r a lu avec réflexion et avec plaisir, lui fera plus de bien que les 45 mille dépêches qu'il pourra avoir recopiées, ou m ê m e rédigées sur les idées d ' u n autre. Après cela, ne vous inquiétez de rien: si on apprécie ses connaissances, tant mieux, les deux b u t s sont remplis; si on ne les apprécie point, eh bien, il sera au moins resté un noble être; ce qui n'est pas peu de chose pour son b o n h e u r et par conséquent pour le vôtre. J'ai cru devoir vous écrire tout cela, parce que Constantin qui est le meilleur garçon sur la terre, a p o u r t a n t eu la foiblesse de se laisser endoctriner par ses lettres de Pétersbourg et m ' a parlé avec douleur de ces négligences de Paul, qui q u a n t à moi, je vous l'avoue, m'ont fait plus de plaisir que de peine. Vous êtes faite pour me comprendre, et je ne veux pas insister davantage, mais voici un exemple f r a p p a n t . J'étois à Berlin; tout à coup on a p p r e n d le mariage du Roi; non, M a d a m e , il falloit voir la plupart de ces ministres, courant sur les boulevards, interrogeant les passants, pâles et défaits c o m m e si l'ombre de B a n q u o les avoit saisies. Au milieu de tout cela, Clanwilliam promenoit d ' u n air calme et riant, et m e disoit que s'il l'avoit su deux jours avant, il n'en auroit pas moins attendu la poste pour en écrire deux mots. Jamais je n'ai éprouvé a u t a n t cette différence d ' h o m m e à h o m m e , dans la même situation. Eh bien! ils sont ministres aussi ces gens qui perdoient ainsi l'haleine, mais croyez-vous que ce j o u r là ils vous eussent p a r u s bien vénérables, et qu'ils l'eussent p a r u s à eux-mêmes, si on leur eut présenté un miroir? Croyez-moi: rien ne peut compenser le sacrifice de cette dignité secrète q u ' u n e â m e noble porte en elle-même, et qui lui donne une supériorité incontestable q u a n d la f o r t u n e la favorise, et lui assure encore de grandes jouissances, q u a n d m ê m e elle n'est point appréciée. Voilà ce que j'avois à vous dire. Q u a n t à ce qui me regarde, c'est un sujet qui présente bien peu d'intérêt. Veuillez seulement me confirmer dans l'espérance q u ' u n coeur qui vous est f r a n c h e m e n t dévoué n ' a pas battu en vain, lorsqu'il dirigeoit m a plume, qui se refuse absolument de vous parler a u j o u r d ' h u i de toute autre chose. KOSLOFFSKY

Kozlovsky's letter shows such a great interest in and sympathy with Paul Lieven that it would not be inappropriate perhaps to dwell here briefly on the latter's fortunes and on some other facts of Princess Lieven's family life, which turned out to be quite unhappy. Both her younger sons, who were born

Prince Peter Kozlovsky

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in England in 1819 and 1825 and named George and Arthur, after the Prince Regent and the Duke of Wellington, and of whom she was very fond, died of scarlet fever, within a week of one another, in 1835 in St. Petersburg, soon after her husband's recall upon his appointment as a preceptor to the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander II. The same year she left Russia, to settle eventually in Paris and never to return to her native country. Nor did she ever see her husband again after parting from him at the gates of Berlin, whither he had accompanied her. Their complete estrangement was connected with the Emperor's displeasure with her (this was generally believed to have been due to political, or rather diplomatic, reasons, but there may also have been some personal disapproval of her behavior on the part of the Emperor). Three years later, another blow befell the Countess: she learned, more or less accidentally, through her banker in St. Petersburg, of the death of Constantine, the youngest of her three sons born still in Russia: he died, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, in America, whither he had gone after quarrelling with his father. The fact that her husband did not even bother to inform her of their son's death added to her bitter resentment against him. His own death followed soon thereafter. The Princess was now left with the two eldest sons, Alexander and Paul. Both were in the diplomatic service, and at one time both were stationed in London. Alexander figures prominently in his mother's letters in 1840 when he was ill in London as a result of some accident, and she kept enquiring about him in her letters to François Guizot, the well-known French statesman and historian who was then the French ambassador in London. Guizot had become her new lover, and a great friendship united them during the last twenty years of the Princess's life. In various letters she also mentions Alexander's visits to her in Paris. Her relations with Paul, the subject of Kozlovsky's letter and solicitude, who was often said to be her favorite among her elder sons, were somewhat uneven. At one time there was a distinct cooling off, which had to do with certain problems of her husband's inheritance, and once she even wrote to Guizot that Alexander was the only son remaining to her (le seul qui me reste).32 Soon after her husband's death, Princess Lieven wrote to Guizot of the joy she had felt on hearing from Alexander that both he and Paul had spent "an intimate evening" (une soirée intime) in Tsarskoye Selo with the Imperial couple and that the Emperor had treated them as close relatives and kept saying to them: "I hold you very dear and I wish that these relations between us would last forever." For herself, the Princess said: "At last it is as it should be, but as I did not hope it was going to be." To this she added that 33. Jacques Naville, ed., Lettres de François Guizot et de la princesse de Lieven, Préface de Jean Schtumberger, t. 2:1840 (Paris, 1963), p. 115.

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Alexander had slipped into the letter a preagreed phrase from which she gathered that she was still out of favor with the Emperor and that there could be no question of a pension for her. She said that she was nevertheless delighted that the Emperor was so good to her boys. But before three months had passed, Paul Lieven did something which might have endeared him even more to Kozlovsky but came at first as a great surprise to his mother: he resigned from the diplomatic service and gave up his court position of chamberlain to the Emperor. On September 25, in a letter to Guizot, the Princess told him the background of her son's action. It turned out that he was on the list of people whose promotions were suggested to the Emperor by Count Nesselrode, the Chancellor. While approving the rest of the list, the Tsar struck out with his own hand the name of Paul Lieven. An hour later, she said, Paul tendered his resignation. "He was a thousand times right, and I am furious," she wrote to Guizot. In his reply to that letter Guizot asked her whether she had any suspicion as to the Emperor's possible motives, pointing out that he had but recently treated Paul so well and that, after all, Paul wasn't she (ei puis Paul n 'est pas vous aujourd'hui). There must have been, he thought, something else, something to do with Paul personally, some talk (propos) perhaps. 34 There was no further mention of this episode in their published correspondence. But in one letter, in another connection, the Princess did mention in passing, rather disappointedly, that Paul had given up his diplomatic career while Alexander had no chance of attaining the ambassadorial rank. She did, however, touch upon the subject of Paul's resignation in a letter to her friend Lady Palmerston, written about the same time as her September letter to Guizot. Here she said: From what I hear indirectly, Paul was a thousand times justified in handing in his resignation. The Emperor wanted to force some further humiliation upon him, and he left the service. He did right. His bad conduct towards me does not prevent me from resenting strongly any offence directed against him, and 1 am delighted to see him so proud. I too am proud, dearest, and, thank God, owe no gratitude to anyone in that cold country."

It was, in fact, at this time that the Princess's relations with Paul were at their coolest, and about a month later Lady Palmerston wrote to her: Your son's behaviour fills me with indignation, and I am distressed to think that you should not have a more suitable income. How ashamed they will be when the world hears of their meanness towards their mother, who has always sacrificed herself for them. 1 6 34. Ibid., t. 1:1936-1939 (Paris, 1963), pp. 244, 294. 35. Lord Sudley, ed. and trans.. The Lieven-Palmerston Correspondence 1828-1856, with a preface by Sir John Squire (London, 1943), p. 81. 36. Ibid., p. 174.

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Lady Palmerston seems to bracket here both sons together, but on December 30, 1839 the Princess wrote her that she was expecting her son Alexander (and he did come in January), adding: "As for Paul, alas." 37 But whatever bad blood there had been between her and Paul was dispelled the following year. What Paul did with himself after his resignation, I have been unable to ascertain from the sources available to me. Judging by what his cousin by marriage, Count Rodolphe Apponyi, wrote in his diary, he hated high society.38 Paul was with his mother in Paris when she died at the beginning of 1857. He and Guizot were present when, on January 27, Pastor Cuvier administered last Communion to her according to the Lutheran rite (like Guizot, she was a Protestant). When the ceremony was over, Paul turned aside to hide his tears, and his mother said to Guizot: "He is goodhearted. I beg you to be always a friend to him." 39 Princess Lieven survived Kozlovsky by more than sixteen years, though she was only two years younger. She witnessed some big events in Europe that could not but affect her very much: the Revolution of 1848 which, for a time, drove her back to England where she was to meet again, in her beloved Brighton, Metternich, her former lover and now another exile (so was also Guizot). Then the advent of Louis Napoleon, under whom she was to return to Paris and to whose regime she adapted herself surprisingly well. And finally, the Crimean War in which her native Russia—and she had never really, with all her cosmopolitanism, ceased regarding herself as a Russian ("I am a Russian to the core," she wrote once)—found itself at war with England, the country she loved dearly and in which she had so many old friends, and with France, with whose life and destinies she had also, by then, become closely associated. Whatever influence she could still exercise with Western politicians and diplomats she seems to have used in trying to avert that ill-starred war. For a time, she herself had to seek refuge in Belgium. Kozlovsky was not to live through all those events which no doubt would have affected him very much too. But he was still alive (and in Warsaw) when Princess Lieven lost her two younger sons. He was still alive when Constantine and her husband died. And still alive when Paul Lieven, whom he had liked so much, resigned from the service and relinquished his courtly rank (something which Kozlovsky himself never did). Yet, we do not know so far how he took all those blows showered by fate on his dear Countess, "the kindest, the best, the noblest of the ambassadresses." Nor what he thought of the resignation of her son or of her own approval of it. 37. 38. 39. French

Ibid., p. 179. Daudet, Journal du comte Rodolphe Apponyi, vol. 3, p. 492. Hyde, Princess Lieven, pp. 272-73. Based on a letter Guizot wrote to Baron de Barante, former ambassador in St. Petersburg.

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Nor do we know what she thought of Custine's book and of the role assigned in it to "Prince K."—that is, her old friend Kozlovsky, the symbol of the latitude of St. Petersburg. The things she said in her letters about her "cold," "horrible," "barbarous" country and its master were not so far from the views expounded by Kozlovsky, and some of them she must certainly have also heard from Guizot, who once lectured her on the advantages of the parliamentary system over autocracy. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine her sympathizing with Custine's picture of Russia. As late as 1844, after Emperor Nicholas's visit to England, she could still, despite all her personal rancour against him, write of him to Lord Aberdeen as "a very remarkable, a very special (très à part) m a n , " and speak of his "moral and physical greatness (grandeur), strength, and skill," and of his "great allurement (séduction)." Earlier, in 1826, upon the accession of the new Emperor, she wrote to her brother from London: Who could have foreseen, when we were discussing the Grand Duke Nicholas last summer, that he would so speedily have fulfilled our expectations? He has indeed proved himself to be a Peter the First, and we foresaw the great man of the future. He has already shown what he is capable of becoming.

And again, about a month later: I rather take credit to myself for having discovered in the Grand Duke Nicholas le grand homme; I had the foresight, others will enjoy the experience.40

But then, let us not forget that we also find Kozlovsky, at the end of his life, serving in Warsaw under Fieldmarshal Paskevich, whom Nicholas I liked so much and often addressed as "moj otec-komandir" (my father-commander). 41 There is, however, on the other hand, some interesting unpublished evidence of Kozlovsky's continued sympathies with the Poles and their cause even during his Warsaw period. But this would deserve a special article. 40. Robinson, Letters of Dorothea. Princess Lieveit, pp. 83, 85. Letters of February 7 and March 2, 1826. She also had once compared Nicholas 1 to Peter the Great in a letter to Metternich. See Quennell, Private Letters, p. 357. 41. As a Grand Duke, Nicholas I had served under Paskevich's command.

"A WORD ON THE POLISH QUESTION" BY P. YA. CHAADAEV Julia

Brun-Zejmis

P. Ya. Chaadaev (1789-1856), though not a professional writer, has often been considered the first Russian philosopher, or at least the man who first incisively articulated the problem of Russia's national destiny. As the author of the famous Philosophical Letterthe "Muscovite philosopher" frequently expressed his scorn for Russia's barbaric policy toward other countries. Curiously, Chaadaev's newly found manuscript, "A Word on the Polish Question" ("Un mot sur la question polonaise"), with its account of Poland's benefits from living under Russian supervision and a strong condemnation of the irrational, "suicidal" Polish uprising of 1830, contrasts sharply with the known views of the man who to his contemporaries symbolized a living veto of narrow Russian chauvinism. This manuscript, now in the Manuscript Section of the Lenin Library in Moscow, is in fact Chaadaev's mysterious "memorial" on Poland, the existence of which has long puzzled a number of Polish and American scholars. 2 The manuscript has been preserved on four pages of early nineteenthcentury stationery, carefully attached (apparently by the author himself) between two pages of a book from Chaadaev's library, Simonde de Sismondi's Histoire des Français (Paris, 1832-43). The book, as part of Chaadaev's collection, was donated to the Rumyantsev Museum by Chaadaev's nephew and long-time admirer, M. I. Zhikharev. There is no date nor any other evidence that would shed light on the historical circumstances surrounding the creation of this document. However, according to M. O. Gershenzon, a well-known Russian Chaadaevist, the philosopher significantly changed his handwriting in 1831.3 The text of this manuscript is 1. C h a a d a e v ' s Philosophical Letter, written in 1829 and published in 1836 in Teleskop, caused a strong reaction on the part of the authorities. C h a a d a e v was proclaimed insane a n d put u n d e r police surveillance a n d medical supervision. T h e Teleskop was discontinued forever, a n d its publisher exiled to a remote provincial town in Northern Russia. 2. C o m p a r e t h e investigations by Wactaw Lednicki, Russia, Poland and the West (Port W a s h i n g t o n , N.Y., 1954), p p . 79 a n d 100. 3. C o m p a r e the c o m m e n t by M . O . Gersenzon, Socinenija i pis 'ma P. Ja. Caadaeva (Moskva, 1913), 1:381.

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written in Chaadaev's handwriting of the later period, therefore the text may have been written in the late 1830s, during the years following the Polish Insurrection of 1830. Chaadaev's concern over western European hostility toward Russia, and his indirect polemic against "distorted" Western views on the Russo-Polish conflict, indicate that his memorial could not have been written earlier than 1832, the time of the establishment of the well-publicized anti-Russian campaign led by Polish emigré circles in Paris." Chaadaev's views could also have been a reaction to the feverish discussions among Muscovite intellectuals on the so-called "Polish question," a popular topic in Russia during and after the Polish uprising. But whatever its history, "A Word on the Polish Question" remained completely unknown until the late 1930s and, even since its discovery, has never been published by Russian or Western sources. 5 Chaadaev's apparent attempt to conceal his manuscript seems even more puzzling in view of the text's strong ideological resemblance to Pushkin's broadly publicized anti-Polish poems, To the Calumniators of Russia (Klevetnikam Rossii) and The Anniversary of Borodino (Borodinskaja godovscina), which were hurriedly published in a political pamphlet, To Conquest of Warsaw (Na vzjatie Varsavy), in 1831. Pushkin's poems met with strong criticism in some Muscovite intellectual circles.6 The first national poet was condemned for his "barbarian" chauvinism by P. A. Vyazemsky and Nicholas and Alexander I. Turgenev. 7 However, the views of Chaadaev proved to be quite different. In his letter to Pushkin of September 18, 1831, Chaadaev enthusiastically glorified the poet for the truly national "spirit" of his verses.8 According to the Polish scholar Wadaw Lednicki, Chaadaev's appraisal of Pushkin's nationalistic poetry contradicts the entire body of the philosopher's intellectual conceptions and should be seen as a sophisticated, subtly biting critique of the poet.' But Lednicki had not seen "Un mot"; his 4. I am grateful to Professor Wiktor Weintraub for his suggestion on this matter. According to Weintraub, the memorial could not have been written after 1846, the year of the Galician rebellion, because Chaadaev mentioned nothing about it in his text, and he could easily have used the rebellion as support for his thesis. 5. "A Word on the Polish Question" ("Un mot sur la question polonaise") was probably first found by O. J. Seremeteva, the author of an unpublished article about Chaadaev's library, "Nadpisi i otmetki na knigakh biblioteki Óaadaeva," in the Manuscript Section of the Institute of Russian Literature, Academy of Science, Leningrad, U.S.S.R., fond 334, no. 157. The Russian translation of the text was prepared for publication by Prince D. 1. Shakhovskoy. In 1976, during my research in the U.S.S.R., I learned that Shakhovskoy, a wellknown preRevolutionary public figure, had been arrested in 1939 and died in a Soviet prison. His Russian copy is presently in the Manuscript Section of the Institute of Russian Literature, Academy of Science, Leningrad, fond 334. 6. Compare F. F. Vigel, "Moskva i Peterburg, pis'ma k prijatelju v Simbirsk," Russkij Arkhiv, 31, pp. 25-76. 7. Compare P. A. Vyazemsky's comment in M. D. Beljaev, Pis'ma Puskina k Elizavete Khitrovo (1827-1832) (Leningrad, 1924), pp. 294-95, and a similar comment by A. I. Turgenev in Puskin i ego sovremenniki, vypusk 16-18 (St. Petersburg, 1913), p. 388. 8. M. O. Gersenzon, Socinenija i pis'ma P. Ja. Caadaeva, 1:166 (hereafter cited as Soc. i pis'ma). 9. Wactaw Lednicki, Russia, Poland and the West, p. 82.

"A Word on the Polish Question"by

Chaadaev

27

mistaken assumption of Chaadaev's friendliness toward Poland led him to the quite wrong supposition that Chaadaev was the addressee of Pushkin's mysterious poem dedicated to an unknown Russian Polonophile—a hypothesis strongly denied by another distinguished scholar, Gleb Struve. 10 The content of Chaadaev's hidden manuscript calls into question several of Lednicki's conclusions in his study, Russia, Poland and the Westand fills an important gap in the investigations of the two eminent scholars. Contrary to Lednicki's expectations, 12 Pushkin's anti-Polish historical and political arguments are further explored in Chaadaev's "A Word on the Polish Question." In fact, Chaadaev's letter to Pushkin can be viewed as an ideological companion piece to his memorial on Poland, in which he further developed his ideas. A detailed analysis of this controversial letter, therefore, leads to a better comprehension of his mysterious document. Throughout his life Chaadaev believed in the abstract idea of the "Kingdom of God on Earth"—a Utopian social and religious system that would unite all European nations spiritually in one Christian church. In his thinking history was an objective process leading to this international spiritual union. Chaadaev's approach reveals both deterministic and moralistic tendencies; he especially resembles a prophet in his attempts to enlist Pushkin in his historical mission, for Chaadaev believed in a chosen people who would lead mankind to its final goal. In his 1831 letter to Pushkin, Chaadaev tried to fire Pushkin's poetic imagination by referring to the "song of the time," which he understood as an intuitive cognition of the historical process. Chaadaev described his philosophical and political views of the Polish uprising and expressed hope for the peaceful settlement of differences between all nations, which in the future would refuse to participate in barbaric wars. Chaadaev's enthusiasm for Pushkin's savagely anti-Polish poems ("At last you have become a national poet; at last you have discovered your mission!" [£oc. ipis'ma, 1:166]) could perhaps be explained by his belief that having once expressed the national cause of his time, Pushkin might also be closer to discovering the more spiritual aspect of the national movement in Russia. In the postscript to the same letter Chaadaev seems to point to the existence of some mysterious, superior moral values that ought to be revealed by the poet: "When one has discovered . . . a part of the force that pushes us, for the second time, one will discover all of it . . . be sure." (Soc. ipis ma, 10. Gleb Struve, "Who was Pushkin's Polonophil?" The Slavic and East European Review 29, no. 73 (1951); and Waclaw Lednicki, "Some Doubts about the Identity of Pushkin's Polonophil," The Slavic and East European Review 30, no. 74 (1951). Cp. also Gleb Struve, "Kto byl puskinskij 'polonofil'?," Novyj Zurnal, no. 103 (June 1971). 11. Wactaw Lednicki, Russia, Poland and the West. 12. Lednicki was not familiar with the content of the memorial. Moreover, he refused to acknowledge Shakhovskoy's statement about Chaadaev's condemnation of the Polish Insurrection of 1830 and suggested an opposite version of Chaadaev's silent support for the Polish cause. Lednicki, ibid., p. 79.

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1:166.) Chaadaev was convinced that Russia's plans should focus on intellectual and spiritual leadership, and not on military and political power. In a letter to A. I. Turgenev (1835), he prophesied: "The day will come, and we will find ourselves in the center of intellectual Europe, just as we are now in the middle of political Europe. Then we will be stronger because of our minds than we are today because of our material force." (Soc. i pis'ma, 1:189.) Thus the "material force" of Russia's military strength represented only a preliminary stage in Chaadaev's more sophisticated concept of patriotism, which stressed Russia's spiritual superiority. On the other hand, it seems inevitable that Russia, to secure her future spiritual leadership, would have to achieve a certain level of political domination. Chaadaev's abstract notion supports his nationalistic attitude and to some extent explains his support for Russia's national interest in her military encounter with Poland. Chaadaev wrote to Pushkin in a prophetic tone, turning to the poet as the only one capable of foreseeing his own mission. In his letter Chaadaev encouraged Pushkin to follow his "mission" despite loud Muscovite disapproval of his poetry: "Everyone is not of my opinion here, you may easily guess this: but let them talk and let us advance . . . " (Soc. ipis'ma, 1:166.) Evidently, Chaadaev included himself in the elite of the "aristocracy of thought," for he decided not to popularize his ideas as probably too sophisticated and advanced for the Moscow "crowd." Perhaps he chose to conceal his manuscript of "A Word on the Polish Question" to preserve it for the future. In it Chaadaev strongly condemned the Polish uprising as a cruel and senseless act. In a defensive tone, the philosopher supported Russian raison d'état against the hostility of Western Europe, and eloquently argued that the protection of the Russian Empire was the only reasonable remedy for the preservation of Poland's national existence. The emotionality of Chaadaev's writings, and especially his hostility toward the Polish struggle for independence, reveals more personal involvement than is expected from an "objective and well-informed point of view" ("Un mot," p. 1). One could thus suspect that Chaadaev had some more profound reasons for his concern over Polish accusations against Russia. In his 1835 letter to A. I. Turgenev Chaadaev emphasized the advantages of Russia's special position in the European "family" because of her youthfulness. 13 Free from the centuries of prejudice that plagued the West, Russia would be more willing to adopt the new spiritual ideas originating in the West as well as be better equipped for rapid progress. Chaadaev saw Russia's historical privileges as enabling her to make truthful judgments and thereby 13. C h a a d a e v ' s new interpretation of Russian history was in part caused by his d i s a p p o i n t m e n t in the outcome of the July 1830 revolution in F r a n c e , which destroyed his long-cultivated image of western E u r o p e a n traditional cultural values a n d political stability. O n the other h a n d , Chaadaev had been influenced by his once nominal opponents, the Slavophiles.

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find correct solutions, not only for problems raised in western European history, but for all mankind. According to the philosopher's "Renaissance dream," the future Russia, a powerful and civilized state, would instruct the rest of the world in the proper human and noble attitudes, and lead it to spiritual victory over its outworn barbarism. The effect of the Polish Insurrection of 1830 was to set Europe against Russia, deepening the political and cultural differences between the two. Polish "complaints" against Russian barbarism unexpectedly obscured Chaadaev's idealistic vision of the future spiritual unity between Russia and Europe. The so-called "Polish question" undermined Chaadaev's favorite idée fixe about Russia's particular mission of spiritual hegemony in the world, and in fact, his angry "A Word on the Polish Question" reveals the true nature of the Russo-Polish conflict—a conflict between two nations which throughout their history constantly competed for leadership of the Eastern rampart of European Enlightenment and Christianity. P. JA. CAADAEV. "UN MOT SUR LA QUESTION POLONAISE.'" 4 Collection Zikharev, 103. Département des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de Lenin. Moscou, USSR. Après que l'insurrection polonaise eut été étouffée, ses principaux fauteurs trouvèrent un asile en France. Profitant de l'ignorance où l'on est dans le pays de l'histoire de la Pologne, ainsi que de sa situation actuelle, ils y purent facilement représenter leur folle entreprise non seulement comme excusable, mais aussi comme digne d'éloges. Chose singulière! La position géographique de la Pologne y est même si peu connue, que l'on vit un jour l'un des membres les plus distingués de la chambre des députés proposer sérieusement l'envoi d'une flotte dans le port de Polangen, au secours des Polonais insurgés, et cela sans exciter seulement l'hilarité de ses honorables auditeurs. Les discours prononcés récemment au sein de l'assemblée nationale en faveur des Polonais, témoignent de la même ignorance sur la question polonaise proprement dite. Or, voici en peu de mots, la manière dont cette question se présente à l'esprit impartial et bien informé. 1. Lorsque le nouvel état, formé par les Slaves nombreux, soumis aux Russes ou Variagues, et qui devait devenir un jour le vaste Empire de Russie, se trouva consolidé sous le règne de Jaroslav, il comprenait tout le pays situé entre le golfe de Finlande au nord et la mer noire au sud, la Volga à l'orient et la rive gauche du Niémen à l'occident. La ligne frontière qui séparait alors les Russes de leurs voisins les Polonais, s'étendait dans les plaines qui longent la rive gauche du Niémen, traversait les pays où nous trouvons les villes 14. I have both corrected a n d modernized the spelling of the text.

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d'Augustovo, de Sedlitz, de Lublin, de Jaroslav, et suivait le cours de la rivière San, jusqu'au pied des monts Carpates. C'est la même ligne de démarcation qui forme encore de nos jours la véritable frontière entre les deux nationalités, russe et polonaise. La population qui habite l'Est de cette ligne parle l'idiome russe et appartient à l'église grecque, celle de l'Ouest s'exprime en polonais et professe le rite romain. 2. Les Polonais ne forment qu'une branche de la grande famille slave. Ils ne composaient jadis, et ne composent encore maintenant qu'une population peu nombreuse. La célébré république polonaise à l'époque de sa plus grande puissance n'était qu'un état formé de divers peuples, dont les russes, habitant les contrées sous les noms de Russie-blanche et Petite-Russie, constituaient la plus grande force. Cette population russe, annexée à la république ne s'était réunie aux Polonais qu'à condition de jouir de tous les privilèges de sa propre nationalité et de sa liberté, droits qui lui furent assurés par les fameux Pacta Conventa. Ces droits et ces privilèges furent, dans le cours du temps, brutalement méconnus par la Pologne, et constamment violés au milieu des persécutions religieuses les plus odieuses. C'est à la suite de ces cruelles souffrances que les provinces russes se détachèrent de la république et vinrent se réunir au groupe de peuples slaves qui s'appela YEmpire de toutes les Russies. Cette séparation commencée en 1651, consommée vers la fin du XVIII e siècle, ne fut que l'effet inévitable des fautes d'un gouvernement oppressif, de l'intolérance du clergé romain et d'une tendance fort naturelle de cette fraction du peuple russe à secouer le joug de l'étranger et à rentrer dans les sein de sa propre nationalité. 3. Après la défection des peuples russes, la Pologne proprement dite, ou comme on l'appelait alors, Polska Koronna, réduite à ses propres forces, ne pouvant plus constituer un état indépendant, devint la proie de l'Autriche et de la Prusse. L'Empereur Napoléon la réunit de nouveau et en forma le grand Duché de Varsovie, qui, plus tard, prit une part active dans la guerre de 1812 contre la Russie. Les armées russes, ayant fait la conquête du Duché en 1813, l'Empereur Alexandre en incorpora la majeure partie à ses Etats sous le nom de Royaume de Pologne. Réuni à la Russie par force des armes, ce pays fut loin toutefois d'être traité en pays conquis. Russes et Polonais sur toute l'étendue de notre vaste Empire possèdent les mêmes droits. Le Polonais est entré par le fait de cette réunion dans le sein de cette grande association de peuples slaves qui forme l'empire, pour y jouir des nombreux avantages qu'un état puissant dispense naturellement à tous ses membres. 4. Les provinces occidentales de l'ancienne Pologne, réunies depuis aux états allemands, ont dû subir l'influence étrangère au point [que] la population polonaise y est devenue en minorité et que tous les jours elles se laissent de plus en plus absorber dans le grand corps germanique: tel est le cas de la Silésie, de la Poméranie et d'une partie du grand Duché de Posen.

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5. Dans les provinces réunies à l'Empire de Russie (non compris le Royaume de Pologne) et que l'on appelait autrefois Lituanie, Russie-blanche et Petite-Russie, les Polonais composent à-peu-près la 50 e partie de la totalité de la population. Le reste des habitants est presque exclusivement russe. Ces derniers conservent encore parfaitement le souvenir des vexations dont leurs pères furent l'objet sous le régime polonais et nourrissent pour leurs maîtres, reste vivant de ce régime, une haîne si invétérée que ceux-ci ne doivent en partie leur salut qu'à la protection du gouvernement russe. Parmi les provinces, faisant partie de l'Empire d'Autriche, la partie orientale de la Galicie, appelée autrefois Russie-rouge, et qui professe le rite grecque, conserve presque entièrement sa nationalité, et les Polonais y sont loin de jouir des sympathies des indigènes: l'autre partie, celle où domine le rite romain, se trouve à-peu-près complètement germanisée. 6. La réunion des pays ci-devant polonais dans un seul tout où le Polonais se trouverait en majorité, ne formerait donc qu'un état tout au plus de 6 à 7 millions sur lesquels des Allemands et des Juifs se trouveraient encore éparpillés en grand nombre. La reconstruction d'une Pologne indépendante, peuplée de cette manière, entourée de grands et puissants états, n'offrirait donc lors même que la chose fut un moment possible, nulle garantie de durée. Vouloir réunir à ce royaume les provinces ci-devant polonaises, habitées maintenant par des populations presque entièrement germanisées et faisant déjà partie de la confédération allemande ne serait ni juste, ni practicable. Démembrer la Russie en lui arrachant par la force des armes ses provinces occidentales, restées russes par leur sentiment national, serait une entreprise insensée. La conservation de ces provinces est d'ailleurs pour la Russie une question vitale. Le jour où l'on tenterait d'accomplir ce projet elle se lèverait en masse pour y résister, l'on verrait se produire au grand jour toutes les puissances de son esprit national. Il est même probable que ces provinces elles-mêmes s'y opposeraient de toutes leurs forces, tant à cause du souvenir héréditaire de la longue oppression qu'elles souffrirent, qu'à cause des nombreux et puissants intérêts qui les attachent à l'Empire. 7. Contre une séparation du royaume actuel pour en faire le noyau d'une Pologne indépendante, en admettant même l'assistance de quelques états de l'Europe, protesterait plus d'un Polonais éclairé, convaincu qu'il serait que le bien-être des peuples ne saurait trouver son parfait développement qu'au sein de grands corps politiques, et que le peuple polonais en particulier, slave de race, doit partager les destinées du peuple frère qui peut verser dans la vie des deux peuples tant d'éléments de force et de prospérité. 8. Il faut enfin se rappeler que dans l'origine, l'Empire de Russie ne fut qu'une réunion de différents peuples slaves, qui prirent cette dénomination d'après les Russes immigrés, ainsi que nous l'apprend la chronique de Nestor, qu'à cette heure encore c'est toujours la même association politique,

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qui embrassant les deux tiers de toute la race slave, jouissant seule parmi les peuples de la même origine d'une existence indépendante représente véritablement l'élément slave, dans toute sa pureté. Unis à ce grand corps, les Polonais non seulement n'abdiqueraient point leur nationalité, mais ne feraient de la sorte que la consolider davantage, tandis qu'en se désunissant ils tomberaient inévitablement sous l'influence germanique, dont une grande partie des Slaves occidentaux ont déjà subis l'action absorbante.

FEMININE IMAGES IN OLD RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND ART Joan Delaney Grossman

It has more than once been suggested that in the Russian cultural tradition heroines outshine heroes. 1 This impression is doubtless created in part by the admirable female figures of nineteenth-century fiction and reinforced at the other end of the historical scroll by another formidable woman, Princess Olga of Kiev. Thus the "strong woman" motif has come to dominate the image of Russian women as derived from art and literature. While such an image seems eminently justified, examination of the sources shows a picture at once more varied and more nuanced. It is the purpose of this paper to survey broadly if not exhaustively female images in the art and literature of medieval Russia, both for their intrinsic interest and for the information they may give on more general cultural matters. Representations of women certainly abound, though more so in some genres of art than in others. Taken together, Old Russian visual, oral, and written arts offer a storehouse of female images which surely influenced later artistic representations. They may well have helped shape views and attitudes of both sexes toward women and their roles. Important in such a discussion is the question of art's relation to reality. It is first of all necessary to note that this relation changes from period to period, from one type of art to another, and from one setting to another within the same period and the same broad culture. The artistic representation of a particular aspect of reality—in this case woman—can of course never be regarded as simple photographic reproduction. It is important to 1. This notion has a long history in Russian criticism. The best recent statement is Vera Sandomirsky Dunham, "The Strong-Woman Motif," in The Transformation of Russian Society, ed. Cyril E. Black (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 459-483. See also Antonia Glasse, "The Formidable Woman: Portrait and Original," Russian Literature Triquarterly, No. 9 (Spring 1974), pp. 433-453. This essay is a development of a paper written for the Stanford University Conference on "Women in Russia: Changing Realities and Changing Perceptions," May 29-June 1, 1975. My debts to colleagues, friends and students are numerous, but I wish especially to thank Professor Felix J. Oinas, Indiana University, Professors Olga Hughes and Mary P. Coote, University of California, Berkeley, and Gareth Perkins, librarian of the Slavic Department at Berkeley.

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know by whom, for whom, and for what purpose the work of art is produced, as well as the conventions of the genre employed, before deciding conclusively what the image means. These questions will be here treated separately as each genre is considered. I have delimited the cultural spread by treating Russian art approximately from the Christianization of Rus to the midseventeenth century. Obviously the intent is to stop short of the beginnings of massive Western influence, although this influence is at all times a matter of degree, not of presence or absence. Historical divisions within that period are less carefully attended to, in part because of certain persistent features— chiefly the influence of the Church and of religious belief and the vitality of the folk tradition—and in part also because of the near impossibility of establishing the origins of most oral literature, which forms an important part of this discussion. The general questions to be addressed deal with the portrayal of women in medieval Russian art and literature: how they were seen and pictured, how they may have seen themselves. Presumably these portrayals offer some kind of truth. But what kind? The varying degree of participation of men and women in the creation of these images is clearly of importance, but perhaps less than might at first seem to be the case. If a general cultural ideal of woman's behavior is formed, for example, it is probable that women as well as men subscribed to it in most of its features and may even have helped propagate it. Yet men clearly dominated the ranks of painters, chroniclers, and professional entertainers. Women no doubt had ways of making their notions and feelings felt in at least some of the genres to be considered, but their role was generally less active. In the typical images discussed below we may expect to find in various instances proposed ideals, wishful fantasy, nightmare, salutary or baleful warning, voodoo doll, some self-idealization, and no doubt some types relatively close to existing reality. Determining which is a subject for the psychology and sociology of art. This study is intended merely as an exploration of a rich artistic theme with strong cultural implications for the period under consideration as well as for later ones. To begin, then, intrepidly, at the historical beginning with Princess Olga. Olga is represented in the tradition in two very different ways. Her veneration as a saint by the Orthodox Church began sometime before the Mongol invasion.2 But there is no vita (zitie) for her comparable to those of other, male figures important in early Russian Christianity. Those vitae which do exist deal chiefly with the opening of her grave or, as in the case of one of later date, present the conventionalized picture expected of the genre: the daughter of humble parents, she was chosen as bride by Prince Igor for her virtue, was baptized in Constantinople, and upon her return went about 2. E. E. Golubinskij, Istorija kanonizacii svjatykh Farnborough, Hants., England, 1969), pp. 56-57.

v russkoj

cerkvi

(Moscow, 1903; Westmead,

Feminine Images in Literature and Art

35

preaching and setting up crosses until her holy death. 3 Composed to be read in church on her feast, such a description did all that was required by way of characterization. But how very different from the chronicler's image of Olga wreaking vengeance on the Derevlians for the murder of her husband/ The woman who in four imaginative ways despatched four groups of envoys seeking her hand for their prince "and went about herself egging on her retinue to the massacre of the Derevlians" (to say nothing of cleverly burning their city) was distinguished by other than Christian virtues. 5 The chronicle account must have been written by an imperfectly Christianized Slav for readers who would also know how to appreciate an avenging fury. The presence in this early account of ancient folklore motifs and hence presumably of a preChristian world view has long since been noted. Olga in her two incarnations thus stands at the head of two streams of the literary-artistic tradition, Christian and "other," holding different sets of values generally and in particular prizing different qualities in women. In their artistic manifestation these differing values are not always easily separable, since presumably in the artists themselves they frequently intermingled. Take, for example, the Pskov legend, where Olga appears as a peasant girl who ferries passengers across a river. One of these, Prince Vsevolod, a married man, casts unwelcome eyes on her, and she deals with him very nicely through her wit. "She was a beauty and very clever besides—she became Tsaritsa and from there a saint," says the story.6 This image of Olga links immediately with the Wise Maiden of the magic tale, to be discussed below. It also neatly connects the folkloric Olga with the sainted queen: sainted because of her wit, be it noted, not for humility or any other specifically Christian virtue. This twopronged thrust is to be found in many aspects of the literary-artistic tradition, producing interesting variations in the portrayal of women. Turning first to the area of art, we face that type of expression most completely Christian in inspiration. Medieval Russian art, as we know it, is almost entirely wedded to the religious tradition. Most features of Russian church art as well as religion are directly traceable to Byzantine antecedents, though as time went on Russian features—style, conception, favored subjects —naturally grew ever more prominent. This is not an area in which the feminine hand played a formative part. What interests us here is the presence and 3. Metropolitan Makarij of Moscow, lstorija russkoj cerkvi, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1889; The Hague, 1968), pp. 268-270. 4. D. S. Likhacev, ed., Povest' vremennykh let (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), pp. 39-42. Entry for year 945. See also note 5 below. 5. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, eds. and trans., The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian Text (Cambridge, Mass., n.d.), p. 80. 6. Quoted in M. O. Skripil', "Povest' o Petre i Fevronii Muromskikh v ee otnosenii k russkoj skazke," Trudy Otdela drevne-russkoj literatury, vol. VII (Moscow-Leningrad, 1949), p. 158. This series will hereafter be cited as TODRL.

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treatment of female figures. For the most part they are individual saints or participants in scenes pertaining to religious tradition. However, at the very beginning, in the great eleventh-century cathedral built by Yaroslav the Wise, the Hagia Sophia in Kiev, a secular, historical feature appeared: the family of Yaroslav was pictured on its walls.7 That the ruling family's portraits should so appear was not out of keeping with Byzantine practice, though the extent apparently was. Much has been obliterated, but there, faintly visible on the left in stately parade, come the four daughters, and we remember that the third of them, Anna, married a king of France, himself illiterate, while her education encompassed more than one language. On the religious side female figures abound in the Kiev cathedral: anonymous Byzantine saints with wide-open eyes, startled pious women at the tomb on Easter morning, many scenes involving Mary and Anna, based on the apocryphal life of the Virgin. Particularly in the Mary-Anna cycle, the frescoes have a charming directness, as with Anna's look of marked surprise when the announcing angel interrupts her cooking. The Anna motif has prominence here presumably because she was the patroness of Yaroslav's mother, the Byzantine princess married to Grand Prince Vladimir. The mother-daughter theme, showing such tenderness and sometimes familiarity, became a favorite theme of icons and embroidery, just as Anna became one of the most common female names in Russia. The central female figure in Hagia Sophia, however, as in all Christian art everywhere, is Mary. Here she is portrayed in several major mosaics, but most strikingly in the great Praying Virgin surmounting the apse. The female figure with upraised arms was an ancient symbol of prayer and was early identified with Mary.8 In eleventh-century Russia the Virgin Orans was venerated as patroness of Kiev and all Russian cities. No general Christian tradition was adopted with more enthusiasm than this, the intercessory function of Mary. Or so it would seem, to judge by the evidence of church art. Portrayals of Mary fell into several types based on Byzantine styles, but a basic tendency is clear: the Bogomater'—Mother of God—is in Russia a more lyrical and tender figure than her severe Byzantine model.9 The Byzantine Mother and Child are both erect, remote, and majestic: the mother of the King shows him to the world. Even those Russian icons which follow this model (the Hodigitria) grow increasingly more tempered with maternal emotion. This emotion, with the child's corresponding response, is given full play in another mode which came to be called Umilenie—"loving kindness." One of the earliest examples is the well-known Vladimir Mother of God (now in 7. Hrihoriy Logvin, introd. a n d c o m p . , Kiev's Hagia Sophia A n n a - M a r y cycle, see plates 153-168.

(Kiev, 1971), p . 37 a n d plate 125. For the

8. Leonid O u s p e n s k y a n d Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons (Boston, 1969), p. 78. 9. T h e most comprehensive t r e a t m e n t of this subject is f o u n d in N. P. Kondakov, Ikonografija Bogomateri, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1914, 1915), especially c h a p t e r s 111 a n d V of the second volume.

37

Feminine Images in Literature and Art

the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow), the work of a highly atypical Byzantine artist, possibly the inspiration for a whole trend in Russia. In the Umilenie style, the cheek of the mother presses tenderly on the face of the child, her gently curving hands holding and guarding him. Sometimes both mother and child are serene and even playful, as in Feofan Grek's Don Mother of God (1392); sometimes the mother's anxiety and foreboding are foremost, as in an early fourteenth-century Virgin of Tolg.10 In the more intensely sorrowful portrayals it is easy to suppose a link with the troubles of various times and places, invasions and famines. At any rate, the Umilenie image of Mary projects the tender, protective maternal ideal in the strongest terms. That Mary's concern for her child extends through him to all mankind— or more probably to the city of her patronage—is made graphic in icons of other types which stress also her intercessory power with him. The great Kiev mosaic figure, she of the extended arms, found reflections all over Russia, one of the earliest being the warm and gracious Praying Virgin of Yaroslavl, a full-length figure bearing the divine child in a medallion of light on her breast. He too has arms extended, not praying but blessing in response to her prayer. This particular image of mother with child was called the Znamenie —icon of the Sign. Again not a peculiarly Russian image, it was nevertheless widely adopted and honored all over Russia. The Virgin of the Sign also became patroness of Novgorod, where in half-length she often appears above the images of other favorite Novgorod saints. One particularly interesting rendition is in "The Battle between the Novgorodians and the Suzdalians," a work of the 1460s, referring to a battle of 1169." The story told by the icon is one of victory secured by the Virgin of the Sign. In the first episodes shown, the icon is brought from a Novgorod church and mounted on the city walls. There it is attacked by a flight of arrows from the wicked Suzdalians. In the final scene, the Novgorodians, led by four saints sent by the Virgin, rout their foes. The strong, grace-filled woman, all-powerful with the powers of Heaven, is finally portrayed in the Pokrov, the Virgin of the Veil. We come closer here than elsewhere to a purely Russian tradition. While the apparition commemorated in these icons was said to have occurred in Constantinople, the icons and the commemorative feast seem to have been strictly Russian. In the Pokrov icons Mary is elevated above the Holy Doors to the church sanctuary, and above her two angels hold a veil, which extends over all those gathered below. Above the veil Jesus dispenses blessing in response to her prayer. An extremely popular icon, it shows Mary at last sharing the triumph of her son and using her power to intercede for sinful mankind. 10. For the D o n M o t h e r of G o d see M . V. Alpatov, Treasures

of Russian

Art of the Ilth-I6th

Centuries

(Leningrad, 1971), plate 91. For the Virgin of Tolg cited, see L. Mochalov a n d N. Barabanova, eds., Female

Portrait

in Russian

Art (Leningrad, 1974), plate 5.

11. V. N. Lazarev, Novgorodskaja

ikonopis'

(Moscow, 1969), p p . 35-36, 38, plates 51-53, 60-64.

The

Joan Delaney

38

Grossman

Portrayals of Mary were naturally determined in their general character by their inspiration in Scripture and church tradition. The loveliness of her face and figure in so many of them bears witness to the skill of the artist, his love for his subject and his art, and also no doubt to the expectations of the faithful who would pray before them. She was the ideal beyond which no better woman could be imagined. Her warmth, strength, and protectiveness, her willingness to suffer and to intercede: all of these suggest the particular Russian emphasis given to the general Christian ideal. To examine the tradition of Russian easel painting and fresco as it developed through the centuries following Christianization is to glean little direct evidence of women's lives, attitudes, or accomplishments. One can infer slightly more of their position in the life of the church. Several scenes in the Gospels show women playing a more or less important auxiliary role: the raising of Lazarus with Mary and Martha falling to the ground in amazement; the holy women bringing myrrh to the tomb of Jesus; Nativity scenes where women attend the mother of Jesus. Scenes from the Apocrypha seem more populated with attendant women, probably because these accounts tend to fill out the home and family life of Jesus and of Mary. However, one icon from 1467 shows a family of praying Novgorodians, real-life figures, if conventionally portrayed. 12 The icon is composed on two planes. There are seven figures in the upper, heavenly tier: Christ on the throne, Mary at his right, with apostles and archangels interceding for those below. In the lower, earthly tier are seven adult figures and two children, the Kuzmin family. While Mary has the place of honor in heaven, her earthly namesake Maria does not deserve so much. Presumably wife of the donor and mother of several of the males pictured, she is humbly placed at the far right of the composition. Female saints, not surprisingly, fared much better. However, here the range is very small. And of those whose images were widely venerated, judging from extant icons, most were not Russian women but saints from the universal church calendar who had acquired the reputation for patronizing certain causes or classes. Because in fact little was usually known except name and nationality, and because often there was more than one such name on the calendar, a certain vagueness about these saints crept in, occasionally leaving room for popular imagination to do its work. One of the most interesting cases of this sort, a supposedly bona fide saint, though of uncertain origins, is that of the much venerated Paraskeva Pyatnitsa (Friday). Here is a case of unusual complexity, where Christian and pre-Christian traditions cross. Who was Paraskeva? The Roman martyrology lists a saint by that name (Parasceve) honored on March 20, a member of a group about which no hard 12. Ibid., p p . 33-34, plate 49.

Feminine Images in Literature and Art

39

facts are known.13 St. Parasceve was nonetheless honored by the Greeks and enjoyed popularity all over the Balkans.14 The name is of course the word used in the Gospels for the day on which Christ died. It meant the "day of preparation for the Passover." Was Parasceve, or Paraskeva, an early Christian maiden named in honor of the day of the Crucifixion? Or was she a personification of that day, pictured cross in hand to assist the fervor of the faithful? 15 And was the Paraskeva of the South Slavs the same who made her appearance in northern Russia? An entirely possible migration, but if so, it is only a fraction of the story. St. Paraskeva Pyatnitsa developed a personality and functions of her own on Russian soil, in a glorious example of that scourge of the clergy, dvoeverie, or the tendency of the people to live comfortably with two faiths, pagan and Christian. In Novgorod icons of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries and in wooden sculpture of somewhat later date Paraskeva is shown usually as a tall, ascetic figure dressed in the red of martyrdom, holding the Eastern cross in one hand and sometimes a scroll bearing a profession of faith or a vessel containing the perfume of martyrdom. 16 Often she is accompanied by St. Anastasia, St. Varvara, and sometimes several male saints. However, in one sixteenth-century portrayal (resembling an 1199 fresco of St. Varvara) she wears a cheerfully patterned veil, under which is visible a careful coiffure, and her whole aspect is that of a woman who knows the world she lives in.17 This is indeed in keeping with the fact that from the twelfth century in Novgorod, she with St. Anastasia was regarded as patroness of trade and fairs. All over northern Russia, where Friday was market day, she was honored in icons, in sculpture, and in churches built in her honor, sometimes by merchants. 18 While most of the known representations are mere formal figures, at least one recently restored icon undertakes, in the border surrounding the central image, to portray the events of her life and especially of 13. Benedictine Monks, St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate, comps., The Book of Saints: A Dictionary of Persons Canonized or Beatified by the Catholic Church (New York, 1966), p. 578. 14. Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX (Florence, 1952), pp. 811-812. See also A. N. Veselovskij, "Opyty po istorii razvitija khristianskoj legendy," Zurnat Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosvescenija CLXXX1X, No. 2 (1877):186ff. As Veselovskij points out, there were other instances of days of the week being personified or of saints being identified with days of the week, as with St. Anastasia (Sunday). 15. Konrad Onasch, Icons (New York, 1963), p. 352. A. M. Ammann, S. J., is of the opinion that the church erected in Novgorod to Paraskeva Pjatnica in 1156 was meant to honor not the saint but Good Friday. He further proposes that the merchants who built it were not Novgorodians but Hanseatic merchants, and adduces Low German religious terminology to explain the confusion. "Die Heilige Grossm&rtyrerin Parasceve zu Gross-Nowgorod, Ein Beitrag," Orientalia Christiana periodica 12 (1946):381-387. 16. Lazarev, Novgorodskaja ikonopis', plates 28, 29, 43. Onasch, Icons, plates 19, 47. Statues of Paraskeva from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are preserved in various museums of the USSR. They wear the expected red cloak but some of the faces are remarkably individual in feature. See N. Pomerancev, Russkaja derevjannaja skui'ptura (Moscow, 1967), plates 30-36. 17. Alpatov, Treasures of Russian Art, plate 145. Cf. plate 26. 18. V. N. Lazarev, "'/lvopis' i skui'ptura Novgoroda," Istorija russkogo iskusstva, vol. II (Moscow, 1954), p. 236.

40

Joan Delaney Grossman

her martyrdom." In one scene she is rather startlingly portrayed crucified in the nude, with the soldiers of Diocletian applying torches to her ribs. In another she is being beheaded, and finally she is placed in her tomb. Another icon showing scenes of her martyrdom dates from the early sixteenth century, when a church to Paraskeva was built in the town of Dmitrov, which had recently become a trading center. The legends concerning Paraskeva did not fade with time and were easily conveyed from place to place. However, this is not nearly all concerning Paraskeva Pyatnitsa. Like St. Olga she led a double life in art and tradition, an even more varied one. Absorbed into the folk tradition, on the one hand she took on functions having particularly to do with the lives of women, while on the other she became associated with the holy "Twelve Fridays" and the general tendency to honor certain days of the week. As patroness of marriage Pyatnitsa heard on her feast: "Matushka Pyatnitsa-Paraskeva, find me a husband, get me married as quickly as possible!" 20 On the domestic scene she was connected especially with flax-spinning. While there is some evidence that she was considered a helper in accomplishing this work, the much more popular belief was quite different. Paraskeva Pyatnitsa expected to be honored on her day, and women who took up their work of combing, spinning, weaving, and even sewing on Friday were likely to be punished for it. The explanation offered was that Matushka Pyatnitsa herself did not like to be covered with dust and fuzz as she walked about on her day.21 The great folklorist Afanasyev reported the words of a peasant woman as late as the nineteenth century telling how a woman who took up her work on Friday was cast into a deep sleep by Pyatnitsa. The visitor, in a long white garment, angrily gathered up fuzz from the work and threw it into the sinner's eyes. This caused great pain until the woman repented and promised to propagate the veneration of Pyatnitsa. 22 Pyatnitsa's authority spread to other areas as well, and here the same ambiguity reigns: patroness of the harvest, of livestock and crops, she nevertheless effectually hindered the work by insistence that Friday be treated as a day of rest through a large part of the year. Male peasants benefited as well by her generous exemptions. Observing the twelve Fridays involved fasting, as well as abstention from work, in return for which special benefits were expected: for Friday in the first week of Lent, protection from sudden death; for Friday before Ascension, protection from flood, and so on.23 The beliefs connected more or less remotely with St. Paraskeva Pyatnitsa are of the greatest variety and interest. At some points her role as intercessor 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. namens

Savelij V. Jamscikov, Drevnerusskaja zivopis', 2nd ed. (Leningrad, 1969), plates 14, 24, 25. A. N. Afanas'ev, Poeticeskie vozzrenija slavjan na prirodu (Moscow, 1865; The Hague, 1970), I, 237. Ibid., p. 233. A. N. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie legendy (Moscow, 1859; The Hague, 1970), p. 47. Felix Haase, Volksglaube undBrauchlum der Ostslaven, Wort und Brauch, Volkskundliche Arbeiten der Schlesischen Gesellschaft fiir Volkskunde, No. 26 (Breslau, 1939), p. 185.

Feminine Images in Literature and Art

41

overlaps that of the Virgin herself, while at the other end of the spectrum one senses the continuance of pagan beliefs and practices. When on St. Ilya's Day priests carried the icon of Paraskeva to the mountain ash, and children were lifted up to look through its branches, the powers of nature seemed at least as close as those of Heaven.24 Probably none of the many customs involving the figure of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa is strictly and originally Russian. And probably that "figure" refers to not one but two or three originals, whether real or themselves mythical. However, what interests us here is the composite figure created by Russian imagination out of various materials: a female saint of uncertain biography, honored all over Russia, seized upon by the popular imagination and made a veritable repository of the good and bad traits associated with female characters in folklore. Powerful protectress, demanding idol, vengeful but appeasable, she distributes benefits with a lavish hand but afflicts with scabs and sores and burning eyes, like a mischievous and touchy house spirit. From a Roman martyr she has come a long way. No wonder church authorities were concerned about some of the manifestations of devotion to St. Paraskeva. In 1589 the Patriarch of Constantinople sent a circular letter to the bishops of northwest Russia forbidding the celebration of Fridays as if they were Sundays. And in 1551 the Stoglav speaks of "false prophets," men, women, girls, and old crones, going naked with hair loose, behaving in unseemly fashion, and claiming to have had apparitions of Saints Paraskeva and Anastasia, ordering a cessation of work on Wednesdays and Fridays.25 From the same period, when the law and religious practices of Muscovy were being put in order, comes mention of an even more shadowy female figure, whom a few scholars would connect with the folk Paraskeva.26 It is Mokosh, the pagan female divinity mentioned in the Primary Chronicle under the year 980, one of those whose images Prince Vladimir had set up in Rus before its Christianization.27 Confessors were directed, in a church handbook of the sixteenth century, to ask their female penitents if they had "gone to Mokosh." 28 Apparent traces of her cult remained long in the Russian north, where she was linked to women's work and especially to spinning. Some of her tricks resembled Paraskeva's. In the Novgorod region an "unclean spirit" named Mokosha was said to inhabit peasant huts. She appeared in the form of a woman with large head and long arms and would sometimes spin the flax of women who left their materials unprayed over.29 24. Ibid., p. 183. 25. Afanas'ev, Poeticeskie vozzrenija, 1:232-233. 26. S. A. Tokarev, Religioznye verovanija vostocnoslavjanskikh Leningrad, 1957), p. 119. 27. Likhacev, Povest' vremennykh let, p. 56. 28. Tokarev, Religioznye verovanija, pp. 119-120. 29. Ibid., p. 120.

narodov XlX-nacala

XX v. (Moscow-

42

Joan Delaney

Grossman

While details of these folk beliefs have been researched, much is likely to remain unclear, if only because of their oral, and therefore shifting, transmission. Interesting for present purposes is the evidence of a tendency operating on several levels to set up a female figure as an object of faith, a figure of wish fulfillment, a personification of certain aspects of nature, a cause for the unexplained accidents of life, large and small. In other words, we are looking at the workings of superstition. These various functions came to rest with a figure offered by church tradition: Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, a martyr of the Faith, but a woman—strong yet weak, powerful and approachable all at once. In the holy icons she stood in the most orthodox company, while her mysterious name opened a backdoor connection with the whole world of superstition and homely fantasy. Countless Praskovyas—Parashas—over the centuries in Russia give another clue to her popularity as a patroness of women. One type of medieval Russian art not only presented women as subjects but was the product of their hands and sometimes of their imaginative conception: artistic embroidery. Despite the ravages of time and other agents of destruction, enough examples have been preserved in monasteries such as the St. Sergius-Trinity Monastery at Zagorsk to indicate the high level achieved by Russian artists in velvet, gold, silver, and silks. Again it was an art at the service of the church and one favored in Byzantium. In Russia the work was done in the homes of the wealthy and donated to favorite monasteries and churches. 30 The subjects imitated those of icons and frescoes, and the works themselves sometimes hung on church walls or served as table or vessel coverings in the church sanctuary, often having a special function in liturgical ceremonies. Presentation of such a piece to a church or monastery in fact honored the donors. Embroidered inscriptions usually carried the names of donors, many of whom were women. The gift also served as a form of petition, thanksgiving, or fulfillment of a promise made to God. Home studios or workshops were normally under the direction of the mistress of the house, a boyar's wife or mother. Three steps can be singled out in the creation of such a piece: first, the conception and initiation of the work, doubtless usually by the mistress of the workshop; second, the drawing, done by the male znamenscik, often an icon painter; third, the actual embroidering, which included selection of thread, colors, and stitches, all the work of the vysivalscicy (embroideresses), members of the household and other women engaged for the task, if it was a major one. No doubt this work went on in countless homes from the earliest times. Novgorod samples date from 30. I am indebted to Dr. Adela Roatcap for calling my attention to this important medieval Russian art form and its relevance to my topic. The following background information is drawn from N. A. Majasova, "Khudozestvennoe sit'e," in Troice-Sergieva Lavra, ed. Ju. A. Molok (Moscow, 1967), and A. N. Svirin, Drevnerusskoe site (Moscow, 1963).

Feminine Images in Literature and Art

43

the twelfth century. As might be expected, a great flowering of the art began in Muscovy in the fifteenth, as that state grew in wealth and pomp. There are, of course, many examples that could be considered. However, several cases especially recommend themselves, both for the historical prominence of the women concerned and for their actual involvement in one way or another in the production of some remarkable pieces of artistic embroidery. In some instances a piece of such work, richly embroidered with figures and symbols, has turned out to be closely linked to episodes in Russian history and to the women involved in them. One of these cases is that of Elena Stepanovna (called "Voloshanka"), daughter-in-law of Ivan III, wife of the son of his first marriage. 31 Ivan Ill's last years saw bitter struggles over succession to the throne of the now powerful Muscovite state. In 1498 he set aside Vasily, son of his second wife, Sophia Paleologue, and named as heir his grandson Dmitry, son of Elena Voloshanka. Dmitry did not hold his position for long, but during that time Elena managed to commission and see executed an embroidery dramatizing his favored state. The scene portrayed is a Palm Sunday procession, in which members of the princely family figure prominently. As it has been decoded, Ivan III stands out prominently, with Vasily in the background, while Dmitry is in the foreground, wearing a crown and nimbus like Ivan's own. Sophia Paleologue appears at the extreme lower left of the many-figured scene. The border of the piece contains a distinctly non-Russian design, perhaps Moldavian, for Elena was the daughter of a Moldavian prince. It has been suggested that this cloth was ordered by Elena in thanksgiving for the elevation of her son. Sophia Paleologue and her son Vasily were in disgrace during Dmitry's prominence, and this despite the fact that she was the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, a connection of some importance to Ivan. However, the tables soon turned again; in 1499 Ivan named Vasily Grand Prince of Novgorod and Pskov, and his heir to the Muscovite throne. In that year an embroidery was donated to the St. Sergius-Trinity Monastery by Ivan III, the inscription attributing the inspiration and design to Sophia Paleologue, Princess of Byzantium. 32 Once again the content suggests a royal mother's concern for her son, and once again the work may have been a prayer of thanksgiving. The center panel contains a religious symbol, and the border is made up of scenes and images connected with the monastery at Zagorsk, and significantly, images of the patron saints of Ivan, of Vasily, of the Tsar's family, of the city of Moscow, and of the Byzantine royal family: the links between the two families are made firm and clear. 33 A generation later, trouble over the succession to the Muscovite throne again caused the production of another fine piece of religious embroidery. 31. Svirin, Drevnerusskoe site, pp. 52-61. 32. Majasova, "Khudozestvennoe sit'e," p. 122. 33. Ibid., plate 140; Svirin, Drevnerusskoe sit'e, pp. 57-61.

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The ruler in question now was Vasily III, son of Sophia Paleologue. After twenty years of marriage to Solomonia Saburova, Vasily was still without an heir. In 1525 the St. Sergius-Trinity Monastery received another embroidery bearing reference to the troubles of the royal family. The inscription asks God's mercy on the Grand Prince, on Russia, on his princess, and on Moscow: "Lord grant them the fruit of the womb." 34 The center panel shows the Blessed Virgin visiting the Monastery's patron St. Sergius and St. Nikon, but again the story is contained in the border images. The influence of Sophia Paleologue's piece is evident in the presence of the same patron saints, stressing presumably the hope of continuing that line. However, Solomonia's personal urgency is expressed touchingly in the four corners of the design. In the upper left the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary, in the upper right is the birth of Jesus, and in the remaining corners are pictured the conceptions and births of Mary and of John the Baptist, the former suggested by the gentle embrace of the parents to one side of the main scene. 35 The prayer was not answered, however, and the following year Solomonia was confined to a monastery in Suzdal, where she spent the last seventeen years of her life. Beginning in the 1540s and continuing for about twenty years, the embroidery workshop of one Moscow family produced some of the most spectacular examples of Muscovite embroidery. The moving spirit of the whole enterprise—and a good deal else besides—was Princess Evfrosinia Staritskaya, widow of Ivan Ill's younger son, who was the uncle of Ivan the Terrible and a claimant to the throne. 36 After her husband's death in prison Evfrosinia and her son Vladimir were ordered to live in Moscow. In 1553, during Ivan's grave illness, some of his close associates resisted an oath of allegiance to his infant son and favored Vladimir Staritsky as his successor. The Staritsky family was an ever present threat, and the energetic Evfrosinia perhaps did much to justify Ivan's suspicions. She was finally sent to a monastery in 1563, and in 1569, when Vladimir was allegedly detected in treachery, both were executed. However, during these years a series of remarkable works issued from the Staritsky workshop, destined for monasteries all over Muscovy. The most interesting genre cultivated there was the plascanica, a large oblong portrayal of Christ taken down from the cross. Embroideries of this sort were and are used prominently in the Orthodox liturgy of Holy Week. At least four of these impressive works are known to have come from Princess Evfrosinia's workshop, presumably produced under her supervision. The most artistically perfect is that donated to the Trinity 34. Svirin, Drevnerusskoe 150-151.

sit e, p p . 69-70; Majasova, " K h u d o z e s t v e n n o e s i t ' e , " pp. 125-126. plates

35. Majasova, " K h u d o z e s t v e n n o e s i t e , " p. 125. 36. Ibid., p p . 127-131; Svirin, Drevnerusskoe r e m e m b e r the sinister a u n t with her idiot son.

sit 'e, p p . 75-86. Viewers of Eisenstein's "Ivan G r o z n y j " will

Feminine Images in Literature and Art

45

Monastery in 1561, but keenly expressive also is the final one, given to the Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery in 1565.37 The powerful psychological tension expressed in the Staritsky embroideries has naturally been noted and associated with the tensions of the times in which they were produced. While the composition is very similar, the emotionality of the 1565 plascanica is if anything more intense and agonized than that of 1561. Renditions of this scene involve the portrayal of Christ's mother, of Mary Magdalen, and sometimes of other grieving women, all grouped around the head of the dead Christ. By this very arrangement the women's faces and figures are closer to the center of attention than are the figures of the apostles. In the 1561 plascanica Mary's grief-marked face is bent close to her son's and both hands support his head in graceful curves. Mary Magdalen leans tensely forward, tearing her hair with both hands, and the third woman leans over in distress to peer closely at the face of the dead Jesus. Mary Magdalen is robed in a remarkable blue which draws attention to her intense suffering. In the 1565 embroidery Mary's face is pressed to her son's forehead, her figure bent less gracefully, and her grief somehow less contained than before. Mary Magdalen again tears her hair but wears a harsher expression, and the third woman clasps both hands to her head in a seeming paroxysm. It is understandable that, given the prominence of the Staritsky workshop, Moscow artistic embroidery for the next few decades was marked by great expressiveness of figures.38 Certainly Princess Evfrosinia's understanding of the possibilities and her talent for gathering the finest artists brought the art to a considerably higher state of sophistication than it had possessed before. While it is not certain to what extent Evfrosinia herself practiced the art she sponsored, one notable woman from the very end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries is credited with achievement in that field. When Ksenia Godunova, daughter of Boris, took up her craft, embroidery with precious stones had come into fashion. Two pieces among those donated by Tsar Boris have traditionally been considered the work of Ksenia.39 They are small, rich, and skillfully done. Dating from 1601, they were probably associated with an important and ultimately tragic event in her life. Her father had betrothed Ksenia to Prince Johann of Denmark. During his visit to Moscow the Tsar's family went for nine days to the Trinity Monastery to pray for the young Tsarevna's happiness, and at that time presumably the donations were made. However, during their absence from Moscow, the Danish prince was seized by fever and died.40 Ksenia Godunova, by all accounts beautiful, talented and well educated, was to live 37. Svirin, Drevnerusskoe

sit e, p p . 76-82, 83, 85; Majasova, " K h u d o z e s t v e n n o e s i t ' e , " plates 154, 155.

38. Majasova, " K h u d o z e s t v e n n o e s i t ' e , " p. 131. 39. Ibid., p. 133, plates 163, 164, 165; Svirin, Drevnerusskoe 40. Majasova, " K h u d o z e s t v e n n o e s i t ' e , " p. 133.

sit e, p. 110.

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Joan Delaney Grossman

through yet greater tragedies. She reappears in the artistic tradition as subject of story and song, as will be seen below. Turning to the written literary tradition, one might expect counterparts to the artistic renditions just discussed. And indeed the intercessory power of Mary is celebrated in the apocryphal Descent of the Virgin into Hell (Khozdenie Bogorodicy po mukam), found in many parts of the Christian world and embodying motifs attractive to Russians: innocence compassionating the suffering of sinners and itself suffering for sinful mankind. 41 The many other apocrypha dealing with the life of Mary and of her mother St. Anna, as well as the Gospels themselves, provide the texts for many of the scenes portrayed in icon, fresco, and embroidery. Artistic portrayals of the individual saint do indeed have their literary counterpart in the vita (zitie), the hagiographic account, official for the church calendar or, often, more extended and "literary," for popular edification and information. However, male saints flourish much more than do female ones in the hagiographic genre, and for good historical reason. Over the centuries Russian Orthodoxy has sainted few women from its own ranks and honors only a few more from the Byzantine tradition. Fewer than ten Russian women have been authorized for veneration by the entire Russian church, with roughly another two dozen accepted for local veneration.42 It seems possible that devotion to the Mother of God was so strong that no need was felt for other female figures to venerate. At any rate, of those elite who reached the church calendar, few seem to have led lives unusual enough to produce interesting, colorful biographies. In the first group, those canonized for the whole church, all were princesses and most became nuns. In the second, princesses and nuns again predominated, with a few others designated simply as wives, mothers, or daughters of princely male saints. The short vitae for church use kept them nearly anonymous, distinguished merely as "servants of God." Yet, however obscure, almost by definition, the canonized female saint's life might remain, a few of Russia's sainted women avoided becoming conventional entries in the church calendar. Two in particular are vividly memorialized in accounts which rank among the best works of Old Russian literature. One died a nun, the other did not. The earlier of the two is St. Fevronia, who died in 1228. The work is The Tale of Peter and Fevronia of Murom (Povest' o Petre i Fevronii Muromskikh), composed by an unknown author, probably in the later fifteenth century and never adopted for use by the church. 43 The reason for this exclusion is easily the folkloric quality which lends the tale 41. N. K. Gudzij, ed., Khrestomatija po drevnej russkoj literature, 7th ed. (Moscow, 1962), pp. 92-98. Also found, as are many of the references in this paper, in Serge A. Zenkovsky, ed.. Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales. 2nd ed. (New York, 1974). 42. See Golubinskij, Istorija kanonizacii svjatykh (note 2, above). 43. M. O. Skripil', ed., Russkie povesti XV-XVI vekov, (Moscow-Leningrad, 1958), pp. 108-115.

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great charm but little credibility. The Soviet scholar Skripil goes considerably further, showing that the argument for linking this tale with the calendar saints rests on unconvincing historical material.44 He views it instead as a tale composed for local political reasons by a Murom patriot. Peter and Fevronia are then to be identified with two rulers of the early fourteenth century of whom little else is known, and not with the earlier saints. For present purposes, however, the important features of the tale are the character of its heroine, the tale's wide popularity, and the fact that it is based almost entirely on folk legend, drawing on hagiographical models only intermittently and at the end. The tale falls into two parts, the first dealing with Prince Peter's combat with the magical serpent, a fiend who can impersonate a handsome man or even a husband or lover, and thereby entrap a woman. This motif of impersonation is especially current in the folk epic form, the bylina, as will be seen below. The tale's second part centers on Fevronia and introduces the Wise Maiden motif. The story tells of the wise maiden to whom came a prince afflicted by terrible sores, caused by the blood of a magical serpent. Like the Syrian general in the Bible, Prince Peter thought her remedy too simple. Furthermore, her price was too high: no less than to be his bride. In time, however, they were married and together ruled over the city of Murom, though not without opposition from the boyars, who objected to Fevronia's humble origin. The final episodes describe the couple's retirement to separate monasteries, their simultaneous deaths and their corpses' insistence on being buried in the same tomb. From any point of view a delightful work, it is for present purposes especially useful. In many ways its heroine does not conform to the hagiographic model. Fevronia is guided by her own vision rather than an angelic one throughout much of the tale. Her powers are magical, not miraculous in the religious sense. Finally, she is determined to achieve Prince Peter's good and does not scruple the means: she allows him to be covered with loathsome sores a second time because he does not keep his word to marry her. Once he conquers his social prejudice (and perhaps his aversion to a superiorly clever wife) and does so, she changes his character for the better. Together they rule wisely, mercifully—and equally. While not notably submissive, Fevronia is a loyal, loving, and comforting spouse. (Indeed theirs is practically the only love story in Old Russian literature.) Their entrance into separate monasteries in no way lessens their mutual attachment. However, Fevronia's independence and sense of justice assert themselves once more: when her husband sends word that it is time for them to die, she asks him to wait until she has finished a piece of embroidery for church use. His second call meets with the same response. But when word comes that he can wait no longer, she sticks her needle into the unfinished 44. Skripil', "Povest' o Petre i Fevronii," p. 133ff. (note 6, above).

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embroidery and composes herself for death. There is a nice balancing of obligations here, but the most human call and that of longest standing wins out. The devotion to Peter and Fevronia as patron saints of Murom was well established in the fifteenth century when the future Ivan III and his brother were taken from Moscow to Murom to save their lives.45 Guarantees of their safety were given in the very church where the saints' relics lay, and Ivan III in later years made a pilgrimage to the spot. The ties between Murom and Moscow were thus strengthened, and Murom's patron saints became more widely known. They were canonized in 1547 and approved for veneration by the whole church slightly later. They are represented in a seventeenthcentury fresco in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Thus it can be assumed that the beguiling image of Fevronia was widely known in Muscovite Russia. The second woman whose character gained extraordinary renown through an unconventional biography was Juliania Lazarevskaya, also of the lands of Murom. 46 The life of Juliania, written by her son Kallistrat Osoryin a few years after her death in 1604, is highly circumstantial, full of domestic details about a woman who bore many children, showed strong practical qualities, was given to active charity, and after burying her husband lived out her life without entering a monastery. The story's existence in numerous copies testifies to the popularity of this lay saint. Juliania had at one time asked her husband's permission to enter religious life. The fact that when she was free she did not do so may well mean that her obligations to her children and servants and to the starving peasantry during the Time of Troubles prompted her to stay where she was. Juliania was praised in youth for good sense and good household management. However, as years went by, charity took over as her ruling principle. Eventually she gave away so much of her husband's money that at times hardly a silver coin was left in the house. There is no record of his reaction, but her ways apparently did not change. Penance, humility, charity and prayer, visions and posthumous miracles all designated Juliania as a saint. But common sense, practical compassion, hard work, and independence of mind, while not incompatible with sainthood, were not the staples of hagiography. Clearly we are here dealing with a model of another sort. Of special significance is the fact that these qualities were recognized and singled out by her son, a nobleman of the seventeenth century. One can see him working from two models, his mother in the flesh and collections of religious writings beginning with Scripture. Whether the numerous Scriptural texts found in some copies were included 45. V. I. T a g u n o v a , " K voprosu o pojavlenii k u l ' t a Petra i Fevronii M u r o m s k i k h v svjazi s idejnym soderzaniem ikh zitija i vremenem vozniknovenija ego pervonacal'noj r e d a k c i i , " vol. XVII (MoscowLeningrad, 1961), p p . 338-341.

TODRL,

Russkaja povest ' XVII veka ¡¡tie

46. M . O . Skripil', e d . , (Moscow, 1954), p p . 3 9 - 4 7 . Skripil' considers that the story was d o n e over in t h e style of a by other persons. T h e text followed by Buslaev, who will b e cited below, would then be a somewhat later variant. For present purposes, this is not significant.

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by Osoryin or another, they tend to support the same viewpoint. Referring to the fact that she bore ten sons and three daughters, the author recalls Paul's Epistle to Timothy: "Woman will be saved through bearing children." 47 This is followed by other texts from St. Paul on the subject of marriage. However, with or without these arguments, the author is consciously engaged in justifying a model for the married woman whose life involves much more than praying in church or monastery. Not only is Juliania's married state, as opposed to the celibate, amply supported, but her active life of charity is also given Scriptural warrant. One paragraph sums up the argument for her sanctity, with a cadence itself almost Scriptural: It is impossible to tell all her other good deeds or to commit them to writing. I do not know what good deed she did not do. With what words can one exalt her works? Who will record her deeds of mourning? Who will count her alms? Where are those who say that it is impossible to be saved, living in the world? It is not the place that saves, but the mind and the desire for God. Even in Paradise, which was like a great calm, Adam was drowned, but Lot in Sodom, which was as the waves of the sea, was saved. You say that it is impossible among offspring to be saved? But blessed Juliania lived with her husband and bore children and owned slaves, but she pleased God and God glorified h e r . "

Was the Christian ideal of woman, then, evolving and broadening in the early seventeenth century? Generalization from a sample of one is obviously unwarranted. Nonetheless, this strong defense of the married woman in the face of the almost uniformly monastic roster of Russian female saints does suggest a different view making itself felt. Whose view and why? Presumably clerics authored the vitae which appeared in the church books. Here a layman borrows the hagiographic form to glorify a laywoman. The change may say more about shifts in the layman's attitude toward the institutional church than about attitudes toward women. But possibly, also, Kallistrat Osoryin's lay status made him put greater value than did earlier authors on the good wife, mother, and keeper of the hearth. Another view might suggest that, glorification notwithstanding, the attitude here expressed tended to close a door—that of the monastery—which offered women access to the life of contemplative asceticism and also sometimes the only possible escape from a trying life situation. One may suppose that many women listened to or read this tale. Perhaps they took comfort from it, perhaps not. As far as we know, they did not write any of their own. More could be said of medieval holy women and their image in literature, but without altering the image substantially. What of their opposite? Woman in the aggregate, after all, admittedly bears at least as much resemblance to Mother Eve as to the Bogorodica. Where does her dark side appear in 47. F. Buslaev, " l d e a l ' n y e zenskie k h a r a k t e r y drevnej R u s i , " in Isloriceskie ocerki russkoj narodnoj slovesnosti i iskussiva, vol. 11 (St. Petersburg, 1861), p. 257. Buslaev relates the story with some modernization of language, following two seventeenth-century manuscripts, his own a n d Count Uvarov's. 48. Ibid., p. 259. W h e r e not otherwise noted, the translation is mine.

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medieval Russian literature? Everywhere, we might say, considering the omnipresence of manuscript miscellanies like The Bee (Pcela), Zlatoust, Izmaragd, and Zlatostruj. These works, circulated in many variants, contained sermons and pious exhortations from the Greek Fathers, in particular St. John Chrysostom (Zlatoust), and from Russian authors. The Zlatostruj was a collection of works by or attributed to St. John Chrysostom, compiled for home reading. Appearing in Russia at the very beginning of Christianization, it also provided material for later works, such as the thirteenth-century Petition of Daniel the Prisoner (Molenie Daniila Zatocnika) and the sixteenth-century Domostroj. St. John Chrysostom was one of the milder Church Fathers on the subject of women, yet his exhortations to men, especially monks, treated them as filthy sources of temptation, whited sepulchres of rot.49 The Bee, with its aphorisms, anecdotes, and stories from secular sources, became a household library for generations of Russians. And among its favorite themes were the bad wife and the treacherous woman. so The nineteenth-century historian Zabelin considered that these readings, so widely known and highly regarded by the middle and upper classes, had everything to do with Old Russia's view of woman and of domestic relations.51 While protection of women from the coarse and cruel male society of the time was very likely a factor in their enclosure in the terem, the wall may have been designed for a double purpose. According to the best authorities quoted in the household books, woman was not to be trusted. But Zabelin points further to constant exhortations to men to protect themselves: "Flee female beauty without turning back, like Noah from the flood, like Lot from Sodom and Gomorrah . . ." 52 Granted that much of the material giving this dark picture came from non-Russian sources, there is yet no reason to believe that this image was alien to Russian minds. The ecclesiastical provenance and didactive intent of these writings is clear. However, their appeal to the taste of a large segment of the Russian audience is also indicated by the speed with which they were copied, recopied, and spread in oral form. 53 This is a literature filled with the conception of woman as at best a dubious blessing and at worst a tool of the devil. She is nearly always seen in relation to man and is therefore acceptable and even praiseworthy when she is dutiful, obedient, patient, and supportive, but worthy of damnation when (all too easily) she steps out of this role and 49. Cf. Katharine M. Rogers, The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature (Seattle, 1966). Her chapter "Introduction: Eve, Xanthippe, and Clodia" discusses in some detail misogynistic texts in the Bible, the Church Fathers, and classical authors. All, but especially the first two, are potential sources for Russian readings and attitudes. 50. 1. E. Zabelin, Opyty izucenija russkikh drevnostej i istorii (Moscow, 1872), pp. 159-160. 51. Ibid., p. 184. 52. Ibid., p. 150. 53. Ibid., p. 176.

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becomes a scourge. Two texts illustrate the extremes of this presentation, both drawing on the same Scriptural source. One is the "Praise of Wives" ("Pokhvala zenam"), found in Chapter 20 of the Domostroj.S4 Its ultimate source is Chapter 31 of the Book of Proverbs. The other is the "Message and Warning from Father to Son" ("Poslanie i nakazanie ot otca k synu"), also called the "Conversation." 55 Found in many sources, including the Domostroj, it is a vitriolic tirade against the world's greatest evil, the bad woman. In form and partly in content it too derives from the Book of Proverbs. Given this connection, the praise of wives which forms the conclusion of the Book takes on a slightly ambiguous tone: "A good wife who can find?" 56 If found, she is a gem indeed. A superb worker and manager, she plants a vineyard, weaves linen garments and sells them, disciplines her household, fears the Lord, and serves her husband. She is a very rare find. Fevronia and Juliania Lazarevskaya are her only obvious representatives in Old Russian literature. Much more common is her baleful sister. One may speculate on the reasons for the popularity of these condemnatory works. Did such an adversary relationship between men and women generally exist? Perhaps there was honest belief that woman was the instrument of Satan, since she caused man such disquiet. Probably these images served the useful end of keeping women in their place. One wonders how women regarded them. Did they on the whole accept them and regard themselves as sinful creatures, or did they sometimes manage to turn them to their own advantage? Fear of woman presumably underlies the denigration. More methods of coping with this fear emerge when we turn to Old Russian literature outside the religious sphere.57 Once the explicitly religious frame of reference is left behind, values concerning women appear to shift. It would be tidy to mark off two quite separate models of woman, Christian and "other," which could be said to coexist in Old Russia, but not coincide. However, the hindrances to this are several. We are speaking of a written literature and an oral one, coexisting and appealing to roughly the same audience. The former, even when not religious in purpose, was nonetheless often tinged with the religious viewpoint. Or if not—and we have already seen this in the chronicle account of Olga's vengeances—a folkloric coloration frequently seems to be present. Or indeed, the inspiration may be directly from real life. One figure hard to classify appears in a saint's vita but is not the saint. The Abbot Feodosy's mother stands, arms akimbo, ready at the first opportunity to drag her overly 54. A. Orlov, eel., Domostrojpo Konsinskomu spisku ipodobnym (Moscow, 1908; The Hague, 1967), ch. 20, pp. 17-19. 55. Ibid., ch. 64, pp. 61-70. Also found in the Zlatoust, cf. Zabelin, Opyty izucenija, p. 181. 56. Reference is to The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. 57. The literature on fear of woman is vast. I will mention only one recent example: Wolfgang Lederer, The Fear of Women (New York, 1968).

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pious son from his pious pursuits and back to her side—in chains if necessary. The monk Nestor, writing soon after Feodosy's death (in 1074), seems to describe her from vivid memory, either his own or that of an older monk. 58 Her stature and voice were those of a man, and her strength and violent disposition were unfeminine also. She seems not to come from any hagiographic formula, though she plays the role of the Devil in tempting her son from his vocation. But the oral tradition, especially the bylina, offered the amazon figure, with whom Feodosy's mother shared bellicosity, physical might, and un-Christian nature. A few women of very different character glimmer in the background of military tales and chronicles, where a poetic quality seems to link them to parts of the oral tradition. Of these one of the most picturesque is surely Yaroslavna, wife of Prince Igor. And clearly Yaroslavna's lament for her absent husband in The Lay of Igor's Campaign (Slovo o polku Igoreve) has the power of magical incantation returning him from captivity, which links it to the folklore tradition. 5 ' In another military tale, the Story of the Mamay Battle (Skazanie o Mamaevom poboisce) from the fifteenth century, women left behind offer a sort of lyrical descant to the noise of battle. 60 Princess Evdokia, wife of Prince Dmitry Donskoy, comes with other princesses and boyars' wives to bestow the last kiss before their husbands go into battle. Many tears are shed, and their sobs rise like a funeral lament as they return to their gold-domed towers to watch the warriors disappear from sight. When the sons of his Lithuanian enemy come to his aid, Prince Dmitry sends word to Evdokia, and the tale ends with joyful women at a Kremlin gate to welcome their men with kisses and praise. From an artistic point of view the women's lamentation, prayer, and rejoicing highlight the drama of the events. From the psychological viewpoint the picture is one of mutually warm human relationships, obviously presented as an ideal. Turning to other historical works, the early seventeenth century offers a particularly vivid and moving example of a young woman, her image taken from life and almost before our eyes turned into a subject of song and story. The Chronicle Book (Letopisnaja kniga) (1626) is usually ascribed to Prince Katyrev-Rostovsky, a leader of Moscow boyars in the Time of Troubles. After narrating events of that period, the author describes some of the Moscow rulers and their families. The only female description is that of Ksenia Godunova, who, with her white skin, rosy cheeks, crimson lips, black eyes which shine with special brilliance when weeping, could be a maiden from a fairy tale. She is also described as the most gracious of women, 58. "Zitie prepodobnogo otca nasego Feodosija, igumena pecerskogo," "Izbornik" fsbornik Uteratury drevnej Ru&i) (Moscow, 1969), pp. 92-145. 59. D. S. Likhacev, ed., Slovo o polku Igoreve (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), pp. 26-27. 60. Skripil', Russkie povesti XV-XVI vekov, pp. 16-28.

proizvedenij

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literate and eloquent, gifted in every way.61 We are further told that she loved singing and spiritual songs. It was appropriate, then, that among the songs copied for the Englishman Richard James are two laments, as if from the person of Ksenia Godunova.62 Composed presumably by an eyewitness to the destruction of her family, or at least on the basis of fresh accounts, the songs lament the coming of Grishka Otrepyev, who forces Boris's daughter into a monastery after misusing her. In poignant rhythms she is made to mourn her family, their beautiful life, their finery, their home, and to ask why it had to happen. The songs are constructed in the parallel fashion of folk laments and ask unanswerable questions about the future. The influence of folklore models upon the written literature has been suggested at a number of points so far. The oral tradition is unquestionably the richest source for female images in Russian culture, if only because these images tended to be downplayed or even suppressed in art expressing values formed by the church. Yet the interpénétration works both ways, and oral literature often shows the influence of the written tradition as well. Oral literature of some kind surely existed long before the written, but we have almost no real evidence of what it was like in the early period. Constant reshaping is the rule in folklore. Therefore during the centuries in which it presumably coexisted with the written tradition and before it began to be recorded, it was surely replenished from written sources as well as from life itself. This said, however, the interesting fact remains that the models of woman revealed in the oral tradition differ at many points from the religious models. For example, there is possibly more variety, the plusses and minuses are distributed differently, and there is evidence of contribution by women themselves, more in some genres than in others. Nevertheless, the ethos seems to have been still largely a male one. With no pretense at thoroughness, I shall examine briefly three genres: epic song (bylina), magic tale (the magical skazka, or Märchen, as distinct from other skazka types), and lyric, chiefly bridal songs. The bylina is presumably the genre on which women had least influence, at least in the beginning.63 Its subject is the male hero, often a rough, craggy, uncouth, and unchivalrous sort. And byliny were most likely sung for the entertainment of male company at banquets where much "green wine" was poured. While the chief bylina themes were masculine exploits, women duly appear, if only as objects of abduction, rape, marriage, and murder. However, they themselves were hardly ladies of chivalry, as will be amply seen. As the epic song of Old Russia, the bylina deals with princes and heroes, 61. G u d z i j , Khrestomatija,

p. 344.

62. V. N. Putilov, e d . , lstoriceskie

pesni XVII

veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1966), p p . 4 4 - 4 5 .

63. However, several of the best-known p e r f o r m e r s of byliny in the nineteenth century were w o m e n .

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monsters and foreign enemies, showing traces of historical truth, but also a large admixture of fantasy. Though the oldest recorded evidence of the bylina comes from the sixteenth century, the consensus of scholars is that their composition dates at least from the Kievan period if not before. Most of the byliny to be discussed below belong to the so-called Kievan cycle, i.e., songs centering about the court of Prince Vladimir. Their wide dissemination in oral form over centuries guarantees modification and change, but basic plots and motifs were apparently tenacious. For present purposes the most interesting questions naturally concern the portrayals of and attitudes toward women in the bylina and their possible sources in tradition, psychology, or social reality. Who created the bylina? Despite counter-arguments put forward by Soviet folklorists during Stalin's time, the reason for accepting the aristocratic origins of the Kievan bylina are persuasive.64 Presumably they were composed by members of the prince's retinue and talented court entertainers, at least in the early stages. During the subsequent centuries of oral repetition before audiences of ever more varied social class, the professional singers— the sk.omorok.hi—of course sang what pleased their current listeners. Thus the values and interests of successive audiences no doubt influenced the songs. Hence the byliny which have survived are probably those which received the most consistent approval of audiences over the entire period which concerns us. How, then, are women presented in this essentially masculine genre, the basic themes of which are hunting and combat? The richest source for answers to this question is undoubtedly the cycle whose hero is Dobrynya Nikitich. Women appearing in these songs are Dobrynya's mother, his adversary then wife Nastasya Nikulichna, the witch Marinka, Dobrynya's godmother and his sister, and a few others in relatively passive roles. As Propp and Putilov point out, Dobrynya is the most polished (relatively speaking) of all the bogatyri: literate, musical, diplomatic, and furthermore a dutiful son and loving husband." Any or all of these qualities may have accounted for his wide popularity. He comes as close as any Russian bogatyr' to what could be called chivalrous behavior. In the very archaic "Dobrynya and the Serpent" ("Dobrynja i Zmej"), he rescues a fair maiden, Prince Vladimir's niece Zabava Putyatichna, from the lair of the evil monster who has captured her. 66 However, there is no romantic interest. Indeed, the conventions of the bylina forbid it, since the hero is performing, as it were, a civic duty, the mission being undertaken at the Prince's command. Zabava is delivered into the "white hands" of her uncle, and the deed is credited to Dobrynya's fame. 64. Cf. Felix J. Oinas, "The Problem of the Aristocratic Origin of the Russian Byliny," Slavic Review, vol. 30, 3 (September 1971), 513-522. 65. V. Ja. Propp and B. N. Putilov, eds. and introd., Byliny v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1958), 1:35. 66. Ibid., pp. 36-47; variant, pp. 48-56.

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Much more central to the plot, and to the bylina poetic generally, is the prolonged enmity between Dobrynya and the Serpent. By way of sowing wild oats, young Dobrynya has ridden far and wide, along the way trampling many small serpents. Now he has gone, against his mother's advice, to the neighborhood of the Serpent's lair, heedlessly swimming naked in a certain river nearby. He is attacked by the Serpent, who is angered by his thoughtless destruction of her brood. After downing the Serpent by apparently magical means, Dobrynya yields to her pleas and makes a peace treaty. Immediately thereafter the Serpent violates this treaty by flying off to Kiev and capturing Zabava. However, Dobrynya does not seize the opportunity to become a hero. On the contrary, when Vladimir orders him to rescue the girl, Dobrynya wishes he had never been born. His courage revives only after his mother puts him to bed with a honeyed drink, telling him to "sleep on it (Utro mudrenee zivet vecera)" (line 322). In one version the rescue is carried out more by moral than by physical force: Dobrynya simply brazens the Serpent and carries the girl away. His strength may be as the strength of ten, and his heart may indeed be pure, but it is certainly not in any fight with the Serpent. The latter, in this version, is neither beheaded nor deprived of any of her tails, and presumably may continue to menace Kiev from afar. (In other versions she does not get off so easily.) An image well known to medieval Russian lore and even chronicle, the Serpent clearly represents the enemies which constantly threatened Vladimir's state and by extension all of the Russian land, both in Kievan times and later.67 Its presence in the "Tale of Peter and Fevronia" has already been noted. Apparently the Serpent figure enters Russian folklore during a period of great threat from external foes. Interestingly, these foes, as embodied in the Serpent, at least, are destroyers of souls as well as bodies. The fiery flying Serpent (usually masculine) challenges the Russian hero—Dobrynya, Alesha Popovich, Mikhaylo Potyk, and others—and rapes or seduces Russian women. Or if the women are sufficiently evil, the Serpent is in league with them. But occasionally, as in the case just discussed, this horrible, fearful, treacherous, un-Christian thing is felt as female. As will be seen, when Dobrynya again encounters an unclean, godless magical force, it will be female in form. However, another kind of female soon faces this bogatyr' with other problems. Dobrynya's adventure with the Serpent apparently was often linked to a much shorter bylina, "Dobrynja i Nastas'ja." 68 As has been noted, the bogatyr' does not win the fair lady. In fact he does not even want her. In a variant of the preceding bylina, Zabava proposes that Dobrynya now become 67. Skripil', "Povest o Petre i Fevronii," pp. 140ff. (note 6, above). The Serpent of Russian legend is clearly linked to the Dragon killed by St. George (a favorite subject for Russian icons), despite Skripil'. See also Afanas'ev, Poeticeskie vozzrenija, 11:510-511. 68. Propp and Putilov, By liny, 1:57-59.

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her beloved—her "lyubimy drug"—but Dobrynya refuses on what can only be called a pretext. Having disposed of Zabava, he is riding about the country when he meets a strange bogatyr' who does not respond to his questions except with a challenge. Before they enter into mortal combat, however, Dobrynya discovers that his foreign adversary is a woman, Nastasya Nikulichna. They forthwith return to Kiev and are married. Nastasya Nikulichna is a prime example of the amazon type favored by the Russian bogatyr'. This kind of woman, often called the polenica, for purposes of winning or being won dons her coat of mail and prepares to show her strength. Since she is found primarily in the byliny, she seems to have appealed especially to the masculine imagination. However, only in courtship is such bellicosity desirable. For a change is required if there is to be a happy marriage. And in subsequent stages of their relationship, Nastasya Nikulichna assumes a purely feminine role. The transformed Nastasya is best exhibited in the story of how Dobrynya is sent on a long, perilous mission and enjoins his wife to be faithful for twelve years. It is very much the Penelope-Odysseus story, except for Dobrynya's warning to his wife: after twelve years she may marry whomever she chooses except for his fellow bogatyr Alesha Popovich. 69 The inevitable happens, helped on by Prince Vladimir and his Princess Apraksia and by Alesha, who falsely reports that he has seen Dobrynya slain in the field. Dobrynya returns in the nick of time, warned by a bird that Nastasya is about to wed Alesha. In one version he obtains a skomorokh costume from his unsuspecting mother and performs at Vladimir's feast. Both wife and mother have twinges of awareness, but recognition comes only when the "skomorokh" offers Nastasya a cup of wine into which he has dropped his wedding ring. Her reaction is instructive: forgive my foolishness, she says, a woman's hair is long but her wit short. For her "woman's foolishness" she is forgiven, though we have heard earlier that she is "no fool (neglupaja)." The blame is put on Alesha and on the Prince and Princess. Bloodshed is forestalled when the old Cossack Ilya Muromets advises Dobrynya not to kill a good warrior for a woman's sake. The amazon has long since been tamed, safely transformed into a fond if foolish wife. In still another adventure Dobrynya becomes involved with a very different kind of woman, Marinka the whore-witch. 70 Going into her bower one day to retrieve an arrow, Dobrynya treats her scornfully and calls her a blot on the city. But she has powers not to be resisted. Cutting out his footprints, she uses them magically to draw him back. (In one version she throws them into the fire, and when they burn, he burns.) When he returns, she changes him into a series of beasts and puts him out to pasture with a whole herd of such captives. But the magic is not all on one side. Dobrynya's sister visits 69. " D o b r y n j a i Vasilij Kazimirovic. D o b r y n j a v o t " e z d e , " Ibid., pp. 86-113. 70. " D o b r y n j a i M a r i n k a , " Ibid., p p . 64-68; variant, p p . 69-75.

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Marinka in the form of a bird and threatens her with a fate similar to Dobrynya's. Marinka then offers Dobrynya a return to his human state on one condition: he must take her to himself. He agrees, but when he has taken her to his bed, he cuts off her head—again performing a public service. But Marinka contains a power which must be exorcized by fire. And so, when all the priests have gathered, they burn her body and find it inhabited throughout by snakes. In a variant of this bylina Marinka has as an ally the Serpent, this time shown as masculine, so that Marinka can be accused of consorting with him. The main enemy throughout is Marinka, the whore, the heretic, the unbeliever. But she is associated with that other enemy of Christian Rus, the hideous Serpent. Perhaps echoes of the Book of Revelation worked their way, through readings and sermons, into the oral literature of Old Russia." Perhaps the carrier was other oral literature. Or perhaps the Book of Revelation, itself utilizing figures already present in the Old Testament, drew ultimately on an ancient tradition which fed many oral literatures. In any case, this treacherous, heretical, seductive power, this moral and physical threat to all right-thinking inhabitants of Rus, was again personified as female. One more female figure should be noted in the Dobrynya cycle: his mother. Called by various names, she is a character both clear and stable. She is a prime mother figure, and part of her function is to know all that is necessary to protect her son. Clearly a woman of long experience with life, in "Dobrynya and the Serpent" she also has hidden knowledge. Knowing the dangers that lie in wait for her heedless son, she tries to warn him. In one variant, when he must go to the fight she provides him with a special whip and a magic formula. Her advice is supplemented by a voice from heaven which tells him how to persuade Mother Earth to absorb the accursed blood of the Serpent. And of course she has the more usual maternal qualities in abundance. It will be remembered how she managed and coddled Dobrynya when he returned to Vladimir's charge heavy on his shoulders. On another occasion, that leading to his long absence and near loss of his wife, the same scene of Dobrynya's dejection occurs. This time his mother mourns with him. And then, clearly the principal person in the house, she remembers to wake Nastasya, break the news to her, and instruct her what to say to her departing husband. When Dobrynya returns to make himself known, it is again mother who feeds them sweet things, serves honeyed drinks, and then literally tucks the pair into bed. In a variant of the Marinka story, Dobrynya's godmother, obviously a like-natured friend of his mother, takes on the sorceress verbally, physically, and with threats of her own magic. In short, Dobrynya the bogatyr' is surrounded by a group of women— mother, sister, godmother—who know what is necessary to defend him and who go to considerable lengths to ensure his safety and well-being. They have 71. The Book of Revelation,

chapters 13, 17.

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magical powers and special knowledge, but the source is clearly a good one. The Russian bogatyr' (and here he overlaps with the magical tale hero) can count on a wise and benign female power, a mother figure, who will overlook his follies and even on occasion cope with the evil female principle as only another woman can. Mother, serpent/witch, amazon: these seem to be the females figuring prominently in this masculine genre, the bylina. Of the three, mother is clearly positive, witch is clearly negative, and only the amazon is ambiguous. We have seen how Nastasya Nikulichna loses her amazonic qualities, apparently as soon as she marries Dobrynya. Another instance where amazon meets bogatyr ends less happily. In "Dunay and Nastasya-Korolevichna" the footloose soldier of fortune Dunay has served with the Lithuanian king for several years, all the while carrying on a liaison with his daughter Nastasya. 72 On one occasion he ill-advisedly boasts of this connection before the king and escapes execution only through Nastasya's efforts. Later, in the bylina "Dunay Seeks a Bride for Vladimir" ("Dunaj svataet nevestu Vladimiru"), he recommends to Vladimir Princess Apraksia, younger daughter of the same Lithuanian king (in some versions the daughter of the Khan of the Golden Horde). 73 Apraksia sits at home like a lady, while her sister Nastasya prefers military pursuits. Dunay is despatched and is at first received by the king like an old friend. He falls into disfavor for passing over the older daughter, but a show of strength suffices, and Dunay undertakes to deliver Apraksia to Prince Vladimir. Finding them pursued by an enemy, Dunay sends Apraksia on to Kiev with his companion Dobrynya and stays to catch the Tatar. The Tatar turns out to be his old love Nastasya in disguise, and instead of killing her, Dunay brings her home to Kiev for a double wedding. However, all does not end well, and for interesting reasons. At a banquet where Dunay boasts of his prowess, Nastasya points out that she in fact is the best shot in Kiev. (In a variant it is Apraksia who makes the fatal claim for her.) In contest with Dunay she is proven to be so. When her husband is about to turn his tempered arrow toward her, Nastasya reveals that she is soon to present him with a bogatyr' son. He does not believe her and pierces her body. Nastasya has told the truth, and Dunay kills himself in remorse (giving his name to the river—the Danube—which is the scene of his death). It is essentially a tragic story, fit for a ballad. From one point of view the tragedy is precipitated by the amazon's failure to adopt the wife's submissive role. But looked at in another way, the problem is with Dunay, who fears and hates his wife's superiority. Thus the strong woman figure carries dangers. She necessarily competes with any man who would possess her, and one or the other must yield. 72. Propp and Putilov, By liny, 1:286-288. 73. Ibid., pp. 297-304; variant, pp. 305-315.

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Does the man ever yield superiority in the bylinal These songs, after all, portray a society in which male strength is perhaps the highest value. Female superiority in masculine pursuits is disrupting. However, not all contests are on the ground of physical prowess. An example of another sort of confrontation is contained in the story of the boyar Stavr, his wife Vasilisa, and Prince Vladimir. This bylina seems to be of mixed character. On the one hand, it employs a favored bylina motif of girl-disguised-as-man. On the other, it uses the clever-woman motif so frequently found in the folk tale.7'* In the most common version, "Stavr Godinovich," all the feasters in Prince Vladimir's hall are boasting as usual. 75 Only Stavr is silent. But when baited by Vladimir, he replies that he does have all those things of which the others are boasting, and in fact he has a young wife who is not only beautiful but so clever that she could trick Vladimir himself. For this Stavr is put into a dungeon. But his man gets away in time and warns Vasilisa. The clever young woman disguises herself as a man, takes a retinue of forty stalwarts, and comes to Vladimir as a suitor for his young daughter. (In another version she comes demanding tribute.) The daughter recognizes Vasilisa as a woman by her feminine speech and her delicate fingers with the marks of rings lately removed. Vladimir is skeptical, but subjects Vasilisa to one test after another, some of wit, some of strength. Finally Vasilisa demands to be entertained by the gusli player Stavr, who sits in the dungeon. Afraid to displease the wealthy suitor, Vladimir produces Stavr, who is remarkably impervious to his wife's hints. In the end she reveals herself to Stavr and taunts Vladimir with the same words his daughter had used: "What are you thinking of, to give a girl in marriage to a woman?" In this story there are in fact three sets: Vladimir and his daughter, Stavr and his wife, and Vasilisa and Vladimir. It is hard to say which man is more obtuse, and Vladimir's daughter shows signs of acuteness approaching Vasilisa's. The tenor of this bylina is so different from the usual fare as to raise questions concerning the reasons for its appeal to a male audience. However, the piquancy of a situation where a girl is disguised as a man, where tests are devised to determine her sex (including an attempt to catch her in the bath), and finally where she tries to awaken her mate's recognition through suggestive hints probably assured its popularity. At any rate it is a pattern with a long history of popularity in oral literature. If the bylina avoids that staple of song and story, conventional courtship, it does not wholly neglect another tried-and-true motif, the unfaithful wife. What kind of woman would dare be unfaithful to a bogatyr', and what is he likely to do about it? Nastasya's near infidelity to Dobrynya was pardoned on her plea of female foolishness, but one might expect that not all erring wives would be so indulged, nor deserve to be. Some of these, like Marinka, are 74. I b i d . , vol. II, c o m m e n t a r y , p. 467. 75. I b i d . , p p . 120-128; variant, p p . 129-135.

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innately corrupt, a quality usually associated with practice of black magic. An extreme example in this category is Marya the White Swan in the bylina "Mikhaylo Potyk." 76 Again Marya is a pagan princess. Her objectives in first ensnaring Mikhaylo, then trying to destroy him, abandoning him for another man and later attempting repeatedly to kill him are unclear on any psychological plane. She is simply an evil, godless principle, adept in black magic and clever to boot. Interestingly, as in the case of Dobrynya, a good woman saves the bogatyr', in this instance by quick action and by common sense, a feature which the hero conspicuously lacks. Other wives who are unfaithful, either in desire or in fact, belong to a much more human class than the witches mentioned above. These women are simply attracted to masculine beauty. A leading example of this type is Vladimir's own Princess Apraksia. In "Forty Pilgrims" ("Sorok kalik") Vladimir meets a band of religious pilgrims on the road and directs them to repair to his palace for hospitality and assistance. 77 Her eye taken by their leader Kasyan, Apraksia invites him to tarry for a few evenings in her boudoir. When he rejects her advances, she plays Potiphar's wife and has a silver cup secreted in his baggage. Kasyan suffers a dire punishment from his fellow pilgrims but survives miraculously. Apraksia, on the other hand, is taken by a loathsome disease. Kasyan eventually heals her after she has admitted the cause of her illness and begged his pardon. But Apraksia has a constant weakness for visitors. When the fearsome Tugarin-Zmey appears in Vladimir's hall, she is so excited that she cuts her left hand while slicing swan meat, and makes no secret of her infatuation. 78 The song ends with Vladimir's order that she be hanged with her lover. However, bylina characters return again and again. On another occasion Apraksia shows a preference for that dandy among bylina heroes, Churilo Plenkovich. Again she cuts her hand and does not hide the reason. 79 But when she suggests to Vladimir that Churilo be given duties in their sleeping quarters, the Prince abruptly tells her, "Whether you married me for love or not, I'll take your head off your shoulders if you disgrace me publicly." Churilo brings another woman to greater grief. In "Churilo and Katerina" he is passionately loved by the young wife of an old Kievan, who kills them both when he discovers them. 80 It will be noted that Churilo is hardly a true bogatyr' in character and is a late recruit to Vladimir's court. Nor is this last a typical bylina, being much closer to the ballad in spirit. In the Russian bylina, then, the man-woman relationship is a peculiarly perilous one. Woman is generally portrayed as a threat to the hero's soul, 76. Ibid., p p . 9 - 3 7 ; variant, p p . 3 8 - 4 9 . 77. Ibid., p p . 200-209. 78. "Alesa i T u g a r i n v Kieve," Ibid., 1:249-252. 79. " t u r i l o i K n j a z ' , " Ibid., 11:240-246; variant, p p . 247-253. 80. Ibid., p p . 254-257; variant, p p . 258-260.

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body or ego. She is rarely if ever a prize to be won, despite the fact that obtaining a bride through heroic exploit is an ancient epic theme. As has been pointed out, in the Kievan epos a displacement occurs." Young women are rescued from danger on orders from the prince, as a kind of public safety measure. In cases where the bogatyr' actually marries a wife, she is anything but a captive maiden in distress. Often it is she who proposes the match. Marinka the Witch and Marya the White Swan back up their demands with magic and cherish evil intent towards their husbands-to-be. The two Nastasyas are warriors who would as soon kill an opponent as marry him. Only Apraksia seems to have come peacefully, and clearly she is no bargain. It has been noted that bylina brides usually come from far lands, a fact which hints at the old practice of bride kidnapping. The Kievan epos's portrayal of this practice, stressing as it does the negative results, seems to suggest a judgment on the custom for political-religious reasons. 82 Foreign women are shown repeatedly as threats to the hero and through him to the strength of the state. It is no doubt highly significant that these foreign brides are pagans. Nor are they simple heathens waiting for the light of Christianity. Insidious, immoral, or generally troublesome, they work either openly or covertly for the destruction of the Christian hero. But the case is somehow ambiguous: are these women dangerous because they are foreigners and pagans, or because they are women? When Marinka the whore-witch is dismembered and burned by the priests, is it her evil magic being exorcized, or is it her feminine power to capture and make subject Kiev's fine young men? As for the warrior maidens, a bogatyr' worsted by a Nastasya cannot claim interference of magic. Therefore, it is imperative that such a woman be destroyed, defeated, or subdued. The troubles of Dobrynya, the destruction of Dunay suggest that this was not viewed as a costless operation. But then, neither is any man-woman relationship, as the old Russian epos amply illustrates. When we turn to the magical skazka, we recognize some of the same female figures as those in the bylina, but in a different ambience. Modern folklorists find that the chief characters in magic tales can be classified in one of three roles: heroes (or heroines), helpers, and villains, or opponents of the hero. Female figures are found primarily in the first two.83 The true heroine, like the hero, has none but positive traits, and these are the same for both sexes.84 Great physical strength, beauty, bravery are equally divided. In 81. Ibid., I:xxx-xxxi. 82. I b i d . , p. xxxi.

Obrazy vostocnoslavjanskoj votsebnoj skazki

83. Cf. N. V. Novikov, (Leningrad, 1974). Among the nents to t h e hero, in Novikov's presentation, the only female is t h e witch B a b a Jaga. However, a female figure can a p p e a r in any of the roles a n d b e characterized accordingly. T h e classification referred to does not consider the passive female, object of a quest. 84. Ibid., p . 74.

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addition, the heroine sometimes has supernatural powers. Coming from the same stock as the warrior-maidens of the bylina, she is here actually allowed to be a heroine. Although she bears various names, her most striking embodiment is that of the Tsar-Maiden (Car'-Devica). Typically the Tsar-Maiden lives in and rules over a far-distant land peopled by other strong maidens. Her city is walled and closely guarded against invaders such as Ivan Tsarevich. There she keeps her treasures, the elixir of youth, beauty, and health, but she is not able to keep her virginity. Ivan Tsarevich, finding her sleeping, is tempted by her beauty. Afterwards she gives chase, but without success. However, after bearing him a son (or two, or three, depending on the version), she goes to his father's kingdom and demands the guilty Tsarevich. At last he gives himself up and is married to this proud, beautiful, and willful woman—presumably to live happily ever after. 85 The kingdom of the Tsar-Maiden, filled with robust, beautiful, and warlike maidens, is a clear survival of the amazon legend. And where, in the bylina, the amazons came singly and met their fates, in the skazka, at least where she has the heroine's role, the amazon yields to no man. However, the Tsar-Maiden or Tsar's daughter is not always cast in that role. Instead she may play the helper, a rather ambiguous character. Women "helpers" are often the fiancées of the heroes, but sometimes they are unwilling or fickle ones, or simply engaged in making the hero's task very challenging indeed. Propp points out that the skazka fiancée comes in two varieties, the true and faithful, and the "treacherous creature, vengeful and malicious . . . always ready to kill, drown, maim or rob her betrothed." 86 In the latter case, the hero's task is to capture and tame her, after which they marry and settle down, usually in her kingdom. The fiancée is frequently more interesting than the hero, having magical powers, links to supernatural beings, and access to special wisdom. One of her most attractive forms is that of the "wise maiden," who speaks in riddles and can do the impossible. She may be a princess, or she may be a maid of simple origin, but if only the hero—prince or durak (fool)—will obey her, she can reward him richly. Sometimes he forgets that he is supposed to wed his protectress and receives a striking reminder. (This version has already been seen incorporated into the "Tale of Peter and Fevronia.") This maiden is wise with the knowledge of hidden things and has power over nature. In her benign form as Vasilisa the Wise (Premudraya) or Nastasya the Fair (Prekrasnaya), she devotes herself to one—sometimes undeserving—"hero," though as Vasilisa she must destroy her father the Sea-King to do it. In her more ambiguous form of Elena the Wise (much resembling the TsarMaiden) she at first tries to annihilate an audacious suitor. She presides over 85. Ibid., pp. 73-74. 86. V. Ja. Propp, Istoriceskie

korni volsebnoj skazki

(Leningrad, 1946), p. 277.

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unclean powers, but he also enlists their aid. And when, having learned cleverness in the pursuit, he at last outwits her, she gives him her hand. 87 The central concern of the magical skazka is the success and happiness of the hero, or much more rarely the heroine. A large number of tales show the hero engaged in obtaining a bride, who often comes more than halfway by using her "helping" powers. There is a certain ambiguity about even the most well-disposed of these maidens, however. They can punish and trick; they are linked to magic and to the not always benign secrets of nature. They demand to be respected and feared as well as loved. The picture of woman emerging from the magical skazka is in many respects different from that presented by the bylina, and the reasons make interesting speculation. The genre's origins are lost in prehistory, but its audience and means of transmission are at least as important. The skazka seems to have been the common property of men and women, and nothing points to aristocratic origin or any significant ties to the written tradition. It comes down to us as prose, not verse, and presumably it did not depend on professional performers, who could be expected to be men. Women were certainly avid listeners, possibly contributors, and surely purveyors of the skazka. Thus it is perhaps not surprising to find female characters not only faring better but generally equal and often superior to the males in strength and wit. Women's fantasies may well have been embodied in the clever heroines, the sought-after princesses. Yet the skazka does not portray a world run by wise and clever women: far from it. The Tsar-Maiden rules her feminine kingdom alone only until she is wed to Ivan Tsarevich, The crown of all the wise maiden's or strong princess's exploits is marriage to the hero. Nor does this bias necessarily point to masculine influence on the skazka. There is no reason to think that women listeners and tellers of the tales wanted any essentially different ending than did the men. They could always assume that Vasilisa the Wise went right on directing the life of her husband, once she had saved and wed him. On the other hand, one wonders if male listeners were totally comfortable with these superior maidens who rescued and dominated their male admirers. In even the most positive of these heroines there is a hint of peril for men, though turned the other way she is a reassuring figure. Just as Dobrynya Nikitich's mother was there with her sage advice, magical devices, and honeyed drinks, so the wise and beautiful skazka heroines like Vasilisa possessed unimaginable resources for delivering the—sometimes blundering —hero from the clutches of unspeakable dangers and landing him finally in safe, luxurious bliss. The mystery of woman's "otherness" and links with the

Narodnye russkie skazki v trekh tomakh

87. A. N. Afanas'ev, (Moscow, 1936-1940), vol. II, Nos. 219-226, "Morskoj car' i Vasilisa Premudraja"; Nos. 230-231, "Kuplennaja zena" (Nastas'ja Prekrasnaja); Nos. 236-237, "Elena Premudraja."

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irrational come out most strongly in the skazka. Yet the magic tale was in some sense a way of coping with reality. If human beings felt themselves surrounded by threats and secret forces, it doubtless gave comfort to embody these in forms that could be controlled, if only in fantasy. For the man, woman may have seemed at times allied with these outside forces. 88 The magical female in the skazka is half woman and half mysterious nature, with which woman seems to be in superior communication. At best she is man's devoted protectress, yet in general neither she nor nature is completely to be trusted. But she—unlike nature—can be subdued or punished and wed to Ivan Tsarevich or Ivan Durak. One final point of comparison between women in the bylina and those in the skazka has to do with moral values underlying each. As has been seen, the bylina by and large rests on the Christian moral framework, especially where women are concerned. Submissiveness and docility are rewarded (though rarely found), while treachery, wantonness, and even aggressiveness, in a wife, are condemned and linked to the influence of paganism and dark forces. Values in the skazka seem by comparison clearly to spring from outside the Christian world view. Here wit, beauty, and strength are woman's most positive attributes. And the negative image of woman here is not, as in Christianity, the simple opposite of the ideal. Rather it is its mirror image. The faithful bride or fiancée will use her wit and magical ruses to save her beloved from his foe. But if he is unworthy or simply offends her sensibilities, the same powers are quickly turned against him. Gentle disposition and loving-kindness have no relevance in a scheme where the desired and desirable Tsar-Maiden normally annihilates her visitors, but pursues and marries Ivan, who has breached her defenses and violated her. Two prominent female figures found in Russian supernatural lore remain to be mentioned. One is the fearsome, hideous, but sometimes laughable witch Baba Yaga. Her hut in the forest often stands on one chicken leg, is sometimes surrounded by a fence constructed of human bones and lighted by fires burning in human skulls. A natural villain, she nonetheless sometimes fulfills the helper's role in the skazka, giving magical aids to the hero or heroine. 89 Basically she is hostile to human beings and allied to evil forces. She is of ancient origin, is found in the lore of many Slavic peoples, and suggests the archetypal threat of the dark forest which swallows up humans and crunches their bones. The other figure to be mentioned is also a threat but a far more poetic one. It is the rusalka, commonly thought of as the Russian water nymph. The rusalka does not normally appear in the skazka and certainly not in the bylina. She belongs rather to slighter genres, called byvalscina or bylicka, 88. This and many other themes of relevance here are treated in Simone de Beauvoir, The Second trans. H. M. Parshley (New York, 1957). 89. Cf. Novikov, Obrazy, pp. 133-146.

Sex,

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short anecdotes about "real" happenings. 90 Rusalki are individualized, each having her own history while belonging to a general class. The stories concerning them have little plot, dealing chiefly with their encounters with human beings, usually men, in the forest, on the edge of a river or lake. Typically the rusalka is seen swinging on the branch of a tree, singing and combing her long green hair. She may be half woman, half fish. Devilishly beautiful, she tempts men into the water, where she tickles them to death. This is the image of the rusalka which became fixed in the written literature of the nineteenth century, where she became a great favorite.' 1 In the oral tradition her outlines are somewhat less clear, being overlaid by those of other mythological figures. 92 And in certain parts of Russia she is not a graceful, seductive sprite but an ugly, heavy-breasted creature. Nonetheless, the basic feature of the rusalka is fairly fixed: she proceeds from a woman or child who has died an unnatural death—a suicide, a victim of drowning, or a child who has died unbaptized. The most poetic version is of course the maiden who has cast herself into a stream because of rejected love and who, not being admitted to paradise, is yet allowed to avenge herself on men through her temptations. Yet she is also connected with ancient fertility rites, whose traces remain in the ritual game of "seeing off the rusalki." In songs connected with this game the rusalka leaves another trace in oral literature. However, the evidence is badly preserved, so that again the rusalka proves elusive. One other manifestation in folk art occurs in woodcarving, especially decoration of peasant huts. While the existing examples date chiefly from the nineteenth century, it is perhaps possible to regard them as continuations of an art earlier developed. In these late versions the rusalka appears alongside the heavenly bird-women Sirin and Alkonost, and her aspect is anything but tragic. 93 The image of the rusalka in folk narrations is a tragic combination of grief, beauty, and treachery, evoking both pity and fear. A captive soul who cannot obtain heaven, she must solace herself on earth. Never is she a "helper" or a heroine; she does not fit the scheme of the skazka, nor is she to be regarded in a fanciful light. Her fate is "real," as is the danger she offers to weak or unwary men. Her link with unclean forces is not to be taken lightly, as such links often are in the skazka. As an image of woman she represents victim and avenger. She is a reproach to man's conscience while at the same time she threatens him with cruel and mysterious doom. 90. E . V. Pomeranceva, Mifologiceskie

personazi

v russkom

folklore

(Moscow, 1975), p. 79.

91. Cf. Phyllis A n n Reed, " T h e R u s a l k a T h e m e in Russian L i t e r a t u r e " ( P h . D . diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1973). A basic source on rusalki in Russian folklore is D . K . Zelenin, Russische (OstslavischeJ Volkskunde (Berlin-Leipzig, 1927). 92. Pomeranceva, Mijologiceskie

personazi,

p. 68ff.

93. See for example M . P. Zvancev, Nizegorodskaja rez'ba (Moscow, 1968), plates 63, 65, 74-77. T h e subject is also treated in V. M . Vasilenko, Russkaja narodnaja rez'ba i rospis' po derevu XVII1-XX vv. (Moscow, 1960), p p . 3 6 - 4 7 .

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Anyone might relate stories concerning rusalki, though the one who thought he had seen a rusalka was perhaps likely to originate them. There is, however, one genre of oral literature in which women were traditionally both performers and central figures. This was the bridal lyric. Though these songs were highly stylized and ritualized, they yet managed to convey a definite image of woman in medieval peasant society, where these rituals were practiced. These lyrics fall into two classes.94 One is the lyric proper, suitable for singing at various stages of the preparations, ceremonies, and festivities. These lyrics were chorally performed and constituted a genuine folk art form. The other type is the so-called pricitanie, a lament for the bride, who is about to abandon her old life and home. This form is more open to improvisation and likely to be quite specific, even naturalistic, about the conditions of the girl's life. It is also specifically linked to certain stages of the proceedings: matchmaking, farewell to girlfriends, loosing the bride's plait, the ritual bath, and finally the departure from home. It is the bride's genre and always elegiac. Whatever her actual feelings, the bride-to-be was required to mourn loudly the loss of home, parents, girlfriends, and girlhood. She lamented the prospect of going among strange people and taking on new, frightening obligations. But at last she was required to cease wailing. At that moment she was turned over to the groomsmen, and the celebration began. While these dialogues and monologues depended on a firm tradition of emotion and expression, the actual performance might range from real art to none at all. Much richer from the artistic point of view and wider in range is the wedding lyric, chorally performed. Of particular interest are the images of bride and groom, found in both forms, but greatly embellished in the song with poetic metaphor, hyperbole, and symbol. The bride is pictured as a shy thing, pious, reclusive, fearful, given to abundant tears, clearly at the mercy of her conqueror. She is young and foolish, and unfit for heavy labor. She embroiders, paints icons (!), and dreams of the monastery. She is presented symbolically as a lost dove, a young birch tree, a swan separated from the flock. The groom necessarily, then, is a conqueror, a destroyer, a "prince" with his "boyars," a hawk who steals the swan, a hunter shooting his arrow into the bride's bower. In the oldest forms he is presented as threatening and unconquerable, and only later does he take on a more peaceful aspect, sometimes climbing to her bower on a silken ladder. 95 In certain ways the lament is more psychologically detailed than the song. One striking feature is the treatment of the bride's loss of volya and krasota, literally "freedom" and "beauty"—on the one hand concretized as a wreath of ribbons and flowers distributed to the bride's friends, and on the other 94. N. P. Kolpakova, e d . , Lirika russkoj svad'by source for m u c h of the following. 95. Ibid., p. 254.

(Leningrad, 1973). C o m m e n t a r y to this collection is the

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mythologized into living beings.96 Volya thus becomes a maiden, the bride's friend or double, who is heard on the roof or in the garden and then enters to bid farewell to the girl about to be married. Or she may be a rabbit or bird pursued by hunters. Krasota takes similar forms. And both may be ribbons and decorations worn by maidens but not by married women. The symbolism in any case is clear: the girl is losing or yielding to another those attributes or rights which, at least theoretically, accrued to her girlhood. In all of these lyrics, so deeply embedded in the folk tradition, there is no question about the woman's position: she is presented as going into subjection—to her husband, to his family, to her married responsibilities. Nor is there really any rebellion expressed. She may lament certain aspects of her maiden state, but there will be advantages in her new state as well. The songs make a great deal of the gifts which the groom brings, and the bride is, after all, treated as a valuable prize to be won. The tenacity of these wedding practices and the gusto with which the bride's role is elaborated suggest the women's wholehearted entry into the scheme of things, which in any case there was no possibility of changing. However, the picture of the shrinking bride is so at variance with the predominantly strong and resourceful females encountered in other genres that questions inevitably arise. It is worth noting that, of all literary genres, only this one was shaped chiefly by women. This is of course no guarantee of objectivity. But even here, where the focus is on the innocent young bride-to-be, other female images enter the picture as well. One of the lurking threats in the girl's future is her fierce and demanding mother-in-law—once a shy bride herself. Thus, while the bride's fearfulness and apprehension may be genuine enough, she has before her eyes evidence that she may yet gain the upper hand. The wedding songs, then, do not contradict the "reality," if such it be. Instead, they capture the most poetic moment of a woman's life and perpetuate it, so that at each new wedding celebration, the women present and participating can say to themselves "there go I" or "such I once was." Idealization of that moment is only to be expected, and in this genre only was it fully possible. The period so far considered stretches from the tenth to the early seventeenth century. Questions arise concerning the social, geographical and chronological distribution of awareness of a given female image. With those occurring in written literature, the matter is fairly straightforward. The approximate date of composition or first appearance in Russian of a work is normally known, and there are various indicators of diffusion, such as the number and source of extant manuscripts. Religious literature is easiest to account for, since, as the medium of a living tradition, it was actively propagated among all classes and both sexes without absolute necessity of literacy. 96. Ibid., pp. 259-260.

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Furthermore, down to the seventeenth century the church was moderately successful in combatting Western secular influences and maintaining its claim on public attention. Oral literature presents a more difficult problem. Direct written evidence presumably comes late in its history, though there has in all likelihood been a tendency to exaggerate its antiquity. Geographically, some areas are richer in folklore than others. However, oral transmission is easier than written, and many folklore motifs are spatially very widespread indeed. Furthermore, vertical spread through all social classes can also be assumed, perhaps excluding the ritual genres. Until the massive cultural shifts of the eighteenth century, entertainment for the upper classes did not differ much from that of the lower, though there was some difference of emphasis. Higher literacy and greater influence of the church on the upper classes probably gave some weight to written literature in that group. On the other hand, written literature often became oral and consequently merged with the other tradition. Therefore, feminine models transmitted through the various means so far discussed presumably were available to all parts of Russian society without sharp distinction or division. If mingling of motifs and plots from various sources had occurred from the beginning, it reached a new high in the later seventeenth century. To students of literature this is the era of secularization, of massive influx of all kinds of popular literature from the West, as well as of further development of the native tradition. The popular genre par excellence was the tale. Several works translated from Polish brought to Russia material that had circulated in Western Europe for several centuries. The Gesta Romanorum, Tale of Seven Wise Men, the Great Mirror, and the Facetiae all gathered stories from yet other sources, and much of this new literature was simply entertaining fiction. In all of it male-female relations understandably played a major role. The treacherous wife, the woman of light mind and light morals appear repeatedly and are often duly punished. Pypin, the great pioneer of research on the tale in Russia, commented that this kind of punitive story must have suited exactly the mentality of Russians of this period, blending perfectly with what they were accustomed to read in the older didactic books. 97 However, one of the sources new to Russia, the Facetiae, sometimes took quite a different tone toward women. Many of its tales, worldly, frivolous and diverting, are traceable to the Decameron. In this literature a guilty woman is often sympathetically represented if she is also a witty, skillful deceiver. 98 This lightness of touch regarding woman's sexual behavior was a new note for the Russian written tradition. However, its quick reception 97. A. N. Pypin, "Ocerk literaturnoj istorii starinnykh povestej i skazok russkikh," in Ucenye Zapiski vtorogo otdelenija Imperatvrskoj Akademii Nauk, ed. N . N . Sreznevskij, Book IV (St. Petersburg, 1858), pp. 269-270. 98. O. A. Derzavina, "Rasskazy o zenscinakh i ikh khitrostjakh v pol'skikh i russkikh sbornikakh (acecij XVII v.," Stavjanskaja filologija: Sbornik statej 11 (Moscow, 1968): 293-294.

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can be accounted for, perhaps in several ways. As has been seen, folklore always prized female wit and wile. There is in fact a whole body of Russian oral tales collected in the nineteenth century, not then publishable in Russia because of their obscenity." In these tales, attitudes toward women fully match those of Western secular narratives. Original written Russian tales of the seventeenth century, like Frol Skobeev, certainly drew on this underground tradition, while showing the same range of attitudes and models found in the facetiae and the same appreciation of bawdy wit.100 A fascinating adjunct to this new direction in written literature was a development in popular art, engravings on wood and copper.101 These pictures, usually printed from woodblocks and called lubki, featured anecdotes and abridged tales from both old and new literature, as well as many themes from the oral tradition. Some were copied from French and German models. One of the favorite themes was predictably female trickery, sometimes represented in extremely graphic form. A whole new type of popular entertainment thus appeared with the traditional negative female stereotypes and sexual antics prominently at the center. The mode of representation almost precluded edifying pictures, but satire and lampoon were easily admitted. It seems to have been a period notable for the loose morals of both sexes. Thus woman with all her faults and without mystery or magic was displayed on street corners in picture and, not infrequently, in person. Fascinating in every way as a period of cultural transition, the seventeenth century deserves its own study in relation to the subject dealt with in this paper. While the homogeneity of the early period is only relative at best, it is nevertheless possible to trace continuities of attitude and expression which begin to undergo marked change early in the seventeenth century. In the first six centuries of Russian Christianity the church's role in determining both subject matter and approach in the arts was clearly central. Responsible for the superb achievement of the Russian icon with its splendid representations of Mary, the church yet projected a dual image of woman much of the time. The Mother of God was the supreme ideal, strong, comforting, and sinless. Yet the extreme unlikelihood of most of her spiritual daughters even faintly resembling her was driven home in the widely diffused religious tracts showing woman more surely the gate of hell than of heaven. Religious teaching required woman to counteract her baleful tendencies by modesty, 99. Some of these tales were collected by Afanas'ev and published anonymously in Geneva in the 1860s. (Russkie zavetnye skazki, n . d . ) . O t h e r s r e m a i n e d with him in m a n u s c r i p t . T h e original Geneva edition was reprinted in Paris in 1975. A small a n d m u c h expurgated selection f r o m Afanas'ev's manuscript collection a p p e a r e d in the third volume of Narodnye russkie skazki (Moscow, 1940). An English translation exists: Russian Secret Tales, intro. G . L e g m a n , a n n o t a t i o n s by G i u s e p p e Pitre (New York, 1966). 100. It is unquestionable t h a t these " n a t i v e " stories owe m u c h to migratory t h e m e s . O n the other h a n d , the native Russian mind very likely could have invented most of t h e m u n a i d e d . 101. D . V. Rovinskij, Russkie C h a p t e r IV.

narodnye

kartinki,

2 vols, in 1 (St. Petersburg, 1900), see especially

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submission, and childbearing. However, outside that tradition, and especially in the oral literature, where edification is considerably less in question, we have seen a much livelier picture of feminine types. And in the intermingling of the two traditions, evidenced in so many of the works here considered, are to be found some of the most interesting conceptions of all. Thus the study here concluded has attempted to explore the images of woman which dominated medieval Russian art and literature, and presumably also the consciousness of the creators and the audience. While these images certainly find their counterparts in other traditions, one may say that in the aggregate they do present a particular Russian "face." The exact relation between these images and the reality of Russian womanhood has to be left undecided, at least in a literary-historical study. Indeed, the point here is something rather different. With this series of pictures before us, it becomes much easier to recognize and interpret later literary and artistic phenomena, which in their turn have continued shaping the consciousness of readers and viewers. Russian heroines have never been a homogeneous lot. Their continued vitality and variety surely owe a great deal to the strongly marked images of women in medieval Russian culture.

DREAMS IN PUSHKIN Michael R.

Katz

In his introduction to Delusion and Dream, Freud's single attempt at psychoanalyzing the dreams of a fictional character, the author makes the following declaration: There are two possible methods for this investigation: one is the delving into a special case, the dream creations of one writer in one of his works; the other consists in bringing together and comparing all the examples of the use of dreams which are found in the works of different story tellers. The second way seems to be by far the more effective, perhaps the only justifiable one. . . .'

This paper on dreams in Pushkin represents one chapter from a work-inprogress on dreams in Russian narrative fiction from the tenth century through the end of the nineteenth. The emphasis throughout in the larger work centers on dreams as a literary device and the analysis is based on the following questions: How do dreams contribute to our understanding of fictional characterization? What functions do dreams fulfill with regard to the narrative structure of the work as a whole? How do dreams relate to the author's principal themes? Finally, why does the literary dream, perhaps more than any other device, reveal in such concentrated form the individual characteristics of the author's style? The theoretical approach of the study is eclectic, using insights into the origin, nature and meaning of dreams in life and literature arrived at by poets, philosophers, and psychologists from Homer to Fritz Perls, without subscribing to any one particular ideology. The present paper focuses on Pushkin. It begins with a brief introduction on dreams in Pushkin's nonfictional writings; it then proceeds to analyze closely all of the literary dreams in Pushkin's narrative fiction in light of the critical questions raised above. The order is strictly chronological, with one major exception: Tatyana's dream in Eugene Onegin, the most complicated and written-about dream in Russian literature, will be reserved for last. The 1. Sigmund Freud, Delusion and Dream and Other Essays (Boston, 1956), 28.

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paper concludes with some general observations on Pushkin's use of dreams and with an attempt to formulate his "theory of dreaming." Pushkin's nonfictional writings contain remarkably few references to dreams, either the poet's own, or other people's. The evidence consists of one diary entry and one letter, both dating from 1834, and one article published in 1836. On January 7, 1834 Pushkin recorded in his diary without any personal comment a "curious anecdote" told him by his old friend F. F. Vigel', who in turn had heard it from the son of Catherine the Great's wetnurse: T h e w e t n u r s e lived in a W h i t e R u s s i a n village, g r a n t e d to her by t h e E m p r e s s . O n c e she said to her son, ' M a k e a note of t o d a y ' s d a t e : I saw a s t r a n g e d r e a m . I d r e a m e d t h a t on my lap 1 held my little C a t h e r i n e , dressed in white, j u s t as I r e m e m b e r her sixty years a g o . ' T h e son c a r r i e d out h e r r e q u e s t . S o m e t i m e later, t h e news of C a t h e r i n e ' s d e a t h r e a c h e d h i m . H e r a n f o r his note: it was d a t e d 6 N o v e m b e r 1796. W h e n his a g i n g m o t h e r l e a r n e d of t h e E m p r e s s ' d e a t h , she did not display any signs of grief; r a t h e r she r e m a i n e d silent, a n d a f t e r w a r d s said not o n e w o r d until h e r own d e a t h , which o c c u r r e d five years later. 2

The wetnurse dreamed of Catherine at the very time her death was occurring. Apparently Pushkin was so impressed by this "coincidence" that he recorded it as a genuine example of a "prophetic dream." Later that same year in a letter to his wife and dated 26 July, Pushkin referred to one of his own dreams. It concerned the young princess Polina Vyazemskaya, who was seriously ill at the time and was being taken abroad for her health. Pushkin wrote: "Today I dreamed she [Polina] had died, and I awoke in horror." 3 Less than a year later Pushkin learned that Princess Vyazemskaya died of consumption in Rome. The third reference is contained in a review of John Tanner's account of life among the American Indians. Pushkin describes the author in the following terms: H e [ T a n n e r ] s o m e t i m e s poses as a m a n for w h o m p r e j u d i c e s a r e i n c o m p r e h e n s i b l e ; yet he continually m a n i f e s t s his own ' I n d i a n s u p e r s t i t i o n . ' T a n n e r believes in the d r e a m s a n d p r e d i c t i o n s of old w o m e n ; b o t h always c o m e t r u e f o r h i m . 4

Then Pushkin relates a "poetic description" of one of Tanner's visions (videnija), in which two Indian ghosts, the perpetrator and victim of a violent fratricide, haunt his sleep. 2. Alexander Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 16 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1937-59), 12:318-19. All quotations from Pushkin's work will be taken from this edition, cited hereafter as PSS. 3. Ibid., 15:182. 4. Ibid., 12:121.

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The common element of these three nonfictional dreams is death: the wetnurse dreams of the Empress as her death occurs; Pushkin dreams of the Princess' death shortly before it happens; and Tanner is haunted by the spirits of the Indian brothers years after the event. Death in the present, in the future, and in the past—each is reflected in a "prophetic dream" recorded by Pushkin. The collection and analysis of dreams in Pushkin's narrative fiction began with the critic M. O. Gershenzon.5 His article written in the 1920s was subsequently referred to by Ralph Matlaw as the "first adequate analysis of the subject," 6 and by Vladimir Nabokov as a "remarkably silly paper." 7 Gershenzon treats five fictional dreams (Ruslan and Lyudmila, "The Snowstorm," The Captain's Daughter, Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin) and attempts to derive from them Pushkin's theory of dreaming. He observes that in Pushkin dreams consist of two separate elements: sense perceptions (vosprijatija) and free images of fantasy. He argues that all of Pushkin's fictional dreams are similar in structure: "first, these sense perceptions only yield to the play of the imagination, and then they drown in it." Gershenzon concludes that Pushkin understood the dream as an "internal vision of the soul," containing prophetic observations both on itself and on the external world. Matlaw, in his study of Tatyana's dream, pays tribute to Gershenzon's general analysis, but rightly takes issue when the rigid structural framework is applied to all of Pushkin's literary dreams. In his commentary to Eugene Onegin Dmitry Cizevsky interprets Tatyana's dream as a "revelation of things which lie unperceived in the depths of her soul," 8 and relates it to the theory of dreaming developed by European romantics. He suggests a possible source for the dream in G. H. von Schubert's Die Symbolik des Traumes, a Russian translation of which was published in 1814. While there is no concrete evidence that Pushkin actually read Schubert, there are some interesting correspondences in their ideas on the nature of dreams. Matlaw considers some of these, but maintains that Schubert's insistence on the "higher state" of the dream with all its astrological and mystical accoutrements remains "essentially foreign" to Pushkin. While this is certainly true, both Cizevsky and Matlaw seem to have overlooked the most noteworthy similarity and the most striking difference between Pushkin's literary dreams and Schubert's romantic theory of dreaming. 5. 6. 7. 8.

M. R. V. D.

O. Gersenzon, Stat 'i o Puskine (Moscow, 1926), pp. 96-110. E. Matlaw, "The Dream in Yevgeniy Onegin," Slavonic Review 37 (1959):89, 487. Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 4 vols. (New York, 1964), 2:513. 1. Cizevsky, Evgenij Onegin (Cambridge, Ma., 1953), p. 258.

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Schubert declares on the first page of his treatise: "Im Traume . . . scheint die Seele eine ganz andere Sprache zu sprechen, als gewöhnlich."' He then develops this concept of a special dream language, made up of images, objects, and persons connected by laws of association fundamentally different from those governing our conscious lives. When he compares this dream language to that of poetry and prophecy, he is struck to discover such great similarities. Schubert concludes that poetry must have access to certain interior regions of the soul which are in some form of profound communication with "cosmic reality": he even suggests that the "dream" is perhaps the "true state of waking." Dreams in Pushkin's works constitute a special metaphorical language, different from that used by the fictional characters in their conscious waking states. But never would Pushkin agree with the idea that the dream is the "true state of waking," for he never really adopted the theory of dreaming articulated by Schubert, developed later by C. G. von Carus, and embodied in the poetry of the European romantics. For Pushkin "waking life" or "real life" remains the focus of his attention, even when his characters' dreams are in direct conflict with the realities of that life. Recent critics, while providing some valuable insights on the meaning and function of particular texts, have contributed little to an overall understanding of the theory and use of dreams in Pushkin. Aleksey Remizov, for example, analyzes six dreams (Gershenzon's five plus The Queen of Spades) and cites Pushkin as the first author who used dreams to portray a "special reality," one which is internally consistent, but unlike waking life.10 Matlaw adds two more dreams to the list {The Gavriiliada and "The Coffin-maker"), and alludes to the existence of "others." In his preface to the second edition of Ruslan andLyudmila (1820), added in 1828, Pushkin lists some of the questions posed by critics about the poem. Apparently among the passages which puzzled his readers, the dream in the fifth canto stood out. The critics asked: "What does Ruslan's dream prophesy?" Ruslan has just defeated the wicked Chernomor and is en route back to Kiev with his bride in his arms and the villain over his saddle. During the journey he encounters his rival Ratmir, who, having abandoned his search for Lyudmila, has surrendered himself to a life of sensual delight. The only other remaining challenger, Farlaf, is rescued from his sulking seclusion by the witch Naina, who orders him to follow her commands. That night Ruslan pauses in his journey to contemplate his sad fate; "deep thoughts" and "dreams" (mecty) swirl in his head; finally he dozes off 9. See A. Beguin,

L'Ame romantique et le reve, 2 vols. (Marseilles, Ogon' vescej: Sny i predson 'e (Paris, 1954).

10. Aleksey Remizov,

1937), 1:185-227.

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and his "prophetic dream" (vescij son) begins.11 In the first brief scene Ruslan sees his beloved standing "motionless and pale," poised on the brink of an abyss. Suddenly she disappears; he hears her voice, a moan, and then follows after her. In the second scene Vladimir sits in his great hall in Kiev surrounded by his bogatyri, sons, and guests. He is furious; silence prevails. Rogdaj, the valiant warrior who was slain by Ruslan at the end of the second canto, sits among the guests drinking. Ratmir, who had given up the chase, is also present. The only sound is that of Bayan's "prophetic" (vescij) voice and its gusli accompaniment. When Farlaf enters leading Lyudmila by the hand, all the guests remain silent as Vladimir lowers his head sadly. This scene fades away slowly. Ruslan sheds "agonizing tears" in his sleep; he knows that it is only a dream, but is unable to stop dreaming: In consternation he thinks: this is a dream! He pines, but the ominous dream, Alas, he is unable to interrupt. B BOJIHeHbH MblCJlHT: 3TO COH! TOMHTCH, HO 3JioBemeft rpe3bi y B b i , npepBaTb He B cwjiax OH. (V:499-501)

Pushkin's critics asked, "What does Ruslan's dream prophesy?" Gershenzon saw the dream as a reflection of the hero's fear of his one remaining rival Farlaf, as a summary of Ruslan's past experiences (Lyudmila's disappearance and his pursuit), and as a prophesy: while Ruslan sleeps, Farlaf steals Lyudmila away and later returns with her to a joyless Kiev. Gershenzon concludes that, even if we grant Ruslan such a deep fear of Farlaf, "such precise foresight of the facts remains an enigma." 12 In fact, Ruslan's dream recapitulates in reverse order the events of the narrative as presented in the first canto. There at the wedding feast in Vladimir's hall sat the bride and groom, the three rejected suitors, and the vatic bard. Just as the couple is about to retire, Lyudmila disappears in a mysterious flash. Vladimir commissions the desperate Ruslan and the hopeful suitors to search for his missing daughter. In the dream the disappearance is described first, followed by Ruslan's pursuit of his beloved. The image of the "abyss" into which the characters "fall headlong" was to become a leitmotif of Pushkin's literary dreams. 13 11. Note the difference in meaning between the two most important Russian words for dream: mecta is a product of the conscious, waking mind, while son is specifically a night dream, or product of the unconscious. This distinction, inherent in Ruslan, will be treated below in greater detail. 12. Gersenzon, Slat; o Puskine, p. 97. 13. Cf. Grigory's dream in Boris Godunov and Marya Gavrilovna's in "The Snowstorm."

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Here it seems to suggest Ruslan's psychological state: his fear before the mystery and his anxiety over the fate of his bride. The second scene is a direct parallel to the wedding, but the joy of the feast is replaced by mournful gloom. As on that occasion the rejected suitors are present, but when Farlaf enters leading Lyudmila, the dream shifts from recapitulation of past events to prophecy of future ones. In just such a way will Farlaf return to Kiev with his "sleeping booty" and his reception will be just as cheerless. At the end of the dream Farlaf actually stabs the dreamer and captures his bride. Ruslan's dream, then, plays an important role in the narrative structure of the poem inasmuch as it both recapitulates the past and prophesies the future. The parallelism of the three scenes in Vladimir's hall (the wedding, the dream, and the return) establishes a symmetrical order which brings the action full circle. The hero's emotional state at the time of his dream is represented by the images he sees and by his reaction to them: his despair at the loss of his beloved, his valiant search for her, his fear of the third rival, and his anguish at his own inability to interrupt the dream. Mary's dream in The Gavriiliada (1821) plays a similar role in the structure of the work and provides as well irreverent insights into the heroine's state of mind. The original Biblical Annunciation is presented without any mention of a dream: "An angel was s e n t . . . he came to her . . . he went away from her." Pushkin chooses to place his blasphemous annunciation in a dream framework: Mary dreams that the heavens open; she sees angels, seraphim, cherubim, and archangels; God Himself appears and summons her to participate in His glory. Mary is flattered, but she also notices the attentions of Gabriel, and is herself quite taken with his beauty. When she awakens, the "wondrous dream" (divnyj son) lingers long in her memory. Later, when Gabriel appears to her and drives away the Devil, who himself has just enjoyed Mary's charms, he delivers his heavenly message, and then proceeds to consummate his own passion for the future Mother of God. He is followed in turn by God in the form of a dove, and Mary's dream is thus finally fulfilled. Though clearly parody, the dream in The Gavriiliada fulfills a role in the narrative structure and portrays the earthly heroine as more infatuated with the handsome archangel than honored by her holy destiny. Pushkin's literary ballad "The Bridegroom" (1824-5) contains another variation on the dream as a narrative device, as well as a means of characterizing the heroine. At her wedding feast Natasha accounts for her poor spirits by relating her "dream" of the previous night. While this episode does not properly constitute a dream, it is both organized and narrated as one, in the special language reserved for literary dreams."1 14. Cf. the d r e a m s in t h e bridal songs of Russian folklore. See also Michael Katz, " D r e a m s in Early Russian L i t e r a t u r e " (unpublished p a p e r , Williams College).

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Natasha relates her tale in three installments, each followed by an interpretative interruption by the bridegroom. First she describes the setting, including the booty displayed in the cottage; he notes that this portends wealth. Then she tells of the arrival of the rowdy band with the captured girl, employing a catalogue device, similar to Sofya's in Woe from Wit and Tatyana's in Eugene Onegin:15 A s h o u t , l a u g h t e r , songs, noise, a n d s o u n d , A wild free-for-all. KPHK, XOXOT, necHH, uiyM H 3BOH, P a 3 r y j i b H o e noxMejibe. . . .

The suitor interprets this scene as prophesying merriment. Finally Natasha describes the band's feast, the victim's grief, and the violent severing of her hand. The bridegroom interrupts once more, this time to reject the validity of the dream narration: B u t this—says t h e b r i d e g r o o m — Is plain make-believe! H y 3TO—rOBOpHT WeHHX,— i l p f l M a x He6bi/iHua!

But Natasha challenges him and exposes his crime. The "dream" then is a clever stratagem which allows Natasha to relate her story with a minimum of interference. She identifies with the girl: the girl's own situation (grieving among guests) is a direct parallel to hers. The bridegroom tries to interpret the dream as prophecy (wealth, happiness), until he recognizes (?) her trick, at which point he denies its reality (nebylica).16 In these three early poems, Pushkin's use of the dream device is fairly straightforward: Ruslan's "prophetic dream" (vescij son), Mary's "wondrous dream" (divnyj son), and Natasha's use of her "bad dream" (nedobryj son) are all important in the narrative structure of their respective works, and all contribute to the characterization of the dreamer. Grigory's dream in Boris Godunov (1825) is also significant in the narrative structure of the play and provides considerable insight into the character of the Pretender. But here the similarity with the earlier works ends. In Boris Pushkin introduces the important distinction between dream (son) and dream (mecta); he makes a major effort to differentiate the language of Grigory's dream (son), and offers a medieval explanation of its source; and 15. Cf. Griboedov: Nas provozajut ston, rev. khokhot. svist cudoviscl (I:iii) and Eugene Onegin: Laj. khokhot, pen'e, svist i khlop . . . (V: 17). 16. Cf. Famusov's interruption in the early redaction of Woe from Wit: "Kakaja nebylica eta!" (I:iv) in A. S. Griboedov, Socinenija v stikhakh (Leningrad, 1967), p. 375.

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finally, Pushkin does not limit himself to one dream. Dreams and dreamers proliferate: they are interwoven into the fabric of the play and are closely related to its central theme. Grigory's dream occurs in scene 5: "Night. A Cell in the Chudov Monastery": The same dream yet again! Is it possible? For the third time! Accursed dream! Bee TOT ace COH! BO3MO)KHO Jib? B Tperaii pa3! ripOKJlHTblft COH!

Grigory's very first words upon awakening emphasize at once the repetition of the dream, his astonishment at this occurrence, the magic number three, and the possibility of demonic origin (the epithet "accursed"). Then Grigory refers to his dream as "diabolical" (besovskoe median e) and indicates that he suspects its real source: the Devil (vrag menja mutil).17 The actual dream consists of one brief scene: a steep staircase leads Grigory up to a tower from which all of Moscow is visible. Below on the square, people point up and laugh at him; he is ashamed and afraid, then falls headlong from the tower, and awakes. The manuscript versions of this scene demonstrate clearly the creative process by which Pushkin tried to distinguish the language of the dream from the surrounding text. In short, Pushkin makes Grigory the object of every verb; 18 the first person pronoun gradually disappears from the earlier versions until Grigory is acted upon entirely by external agents (the Devil, the tower, the crowd). Significantly, only the last line differs from the above: And falling headlong, I woke up. H , n a n a « CTpeMrnaB, a npo6y5KnajicJi.

The personal pronoun returns at the moment of awakening, while the verb is in the imperfective aspect to remind us that the dream is repeated and has occurred twice before. 19 17. M. V. Dobuzhinsky, in an article entitled "O risunkakh Puskina" (1937), describes several "demonic scenes" sketched by Pushkin at various times. One is contained in the manuscript of Boris Godunov on the same page as Grigory's phrase "diabolical dream"; it depicts several strange demons—one, an "elbow-shaped insect full of despair," another, "all huddled-up and bristly," as though a "trembling, spherical ball." Dobuzhinsky's article, destined for publication in English translation in the London Slavonic and East European Review, was published only posthumously in its Russian original, which was preserved by Professor Gleb Struve, in Novyj Zurnal (New York), 1976, No. 125, pp. 145-159. 18. Thus, menja mutil, menja vela, na menja ukazyval; mne snilos\ mne stanovilos\ mne snilsja. 19. Cf. the finality of the heroine's awakening in stanza 15 of Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana": "Akh! i probudilas'."

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Grigory is first introduced as a character in contrast to Pimen. Before recounting his dream, the young monk makes this connection explicit: while he was asleep, Pimen neither sleeps nor dreams, but rather devotes himself to his sacred mission. Upon hearing the dream, Pimen attributes it to Grigory's youth. He recommends a regimen of prayer and fasting, from which pleasant dreams would follow, originating presumably from a divine source. Pimen confesses that even at his advanced years, if he neglects his prayers, bad dreams result: I dream of boistrous feasts, Or military camp, or warlike encounters, The senseless amusements of my younger years! M H e l y n H T C H TO m y M H b i e

rmpbi,

TO paTHblfi CTaH, T O CXBaTKH OOCBbie, E e 3 y M H b i e n o T e x H IOHWX j i e T !

These dreams, in an early manuscript also attributed to a demonic source, 20 are derived from Pimen's personal history and recapitulate the events of his own premonastic life. Grigory's reaction is astonishing! That is precisely the sort of excitement he longs for: he would like to retreat to a monastery only after having experienced life at its fullest. In other words, Grigory aspires to imitate Pimen's model. Bored by his monastic existence, envious of Pimen's glorious past, Grigory adopts as his dream (mecta) what Pimen now sees only occasionally in his dream (son). Pimen urges the impetuous Grigory to accept his personal fate, and to rejoice that God had sent him so few temptations; he reminds him of the tribulations which have plagued the Russian tsars, including, of course, Boris, and he hints at the possibility of the Tsar's being implicated in the murder of the infant Dmitry. In a scene which Pushkin had originally intended to follow directly after this one, Grigory complains to an "evil monk" of his monotonous existence. 21 Referring again to his troubled sleep, he reiterates its diabolic origin.22 The "evil monk" encourages Grigory's frustration and proposes that he assume the Tsarevich's identity. Perhaps Pushkin considered this motivation too explicit; for some reason the whole scene was omitted. Thus Grigory's decision (?) occurs between scenes, and his escape from the monastery is merely reported in scene 6. There the abbot hints at another demonic theme. Grigory's literacy is also suspect: 20. . . irag / Moj stabyi son mectan'jami smuscaet . . . ," Pushkin, PSS. 7:283. 21. Both the "evil monk" and Grigory as "mediate? " originate in Nicholas Karamzin's history. See Istorija gosudarstva Rossijskogo, vol. 11 (St. Petersburg, 1892), p. 75. 22. " S n o m zabudes'sja, tak dusu grezy cernye mutjat."

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. . . in truth, literacy comes to him not from the Lord God . . . . . . 3HaTb, rpaMOTa aajiac» eMy OT rocnoaa Bora . . .

He

This judgment is repeated by the Patriarch: "I've had enough of these literate ones." Grigory's departing words are quoted as "I will be Tsar in Moscow," the Patriarch calls him a "diabolic vessel" (sosud diavol'skij) and a "person in league with the Devil" (vragougodnik), and he labels his defection as "heresy." The Tsar's edict, read aloud by Grigory himself in scene 8, echoes this theme: . . . he fell into heresy and . . . , instructed by the Devil. . . . . . . Bnaji B e p e c b H . . . , HayneHHbifi AHaBOJIOM. . . .

The critic Belinsky cryptically asserted that the whole of the future Pretender is contained in his troubled dream. 23 More recently Gershenzon saw the dream as "psychological in content" and "symbolic in form." He suggested, but did not develop, the important distinction between dream (mecta) and dream (son). 24 Did Pushkin believe that the Devil was the real source of Grigory's dream? Hardly. In a conscientious attempt to recreate a medieval world view in Boris Godunov, Pushkin transforms his own conception of the irrational forces in the human personality and metaphorically attributes dreams to demonic sources. 25 These same "sources" or "forces" represent to the modern reader the notion of the subconscious. In fact, Grigory's dream (son) reveals prophetically in the dreamer's own subconscious and to the reader's conscious the dire consequences of Grigory's pursuing his dream (mecta). In other words, if he forsakes his monastic existence in order to experience "battles and feasts," he will be destroyed. In his dream (son) Grigory sees himself elevated to a position of power over the people, but the subsequent ridicule of the crowd produces a profound psychological reaction: he feels ashamed and afraid. Then he falls from this height and awakens. Grigory does not heed the prophetic warning; instead, he chooses to pursue his dream (mecta). At the conclusion of Boris Godunov, Grigory has indeed achieved his ambition and become "Tsar in Moscow"; his "downfall" occurs only afterwards, and may be foreshadowed by the 23. 13 vols. 24. 25.

"Vetom trevoznom (Moscow, 1953-9), Gersenzon, Stat'i o See Katz, "Dreams

sne—ves' buduscij Samozvanec." Vissarion Belinsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 7:529. Puskine, p. 102. in Early Russian Literature," especially on The Tale of Woe-Misfortune.

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controversial final stage direction, describing the people's silent acceptance of the legitimate heir's death. Grigory is not the only dreamer in the play. Pimen's dreams have already been discussed. In scene 10 when Boris learns of the appearance of a Pretender, he suddenly makes a startling admission: So that is why for thirteen years in a row I keep dreaming of t h a t dead child! Yes, yes indeed! Now I understand. TaK BOT 3aieM TpHHanuaTb JIET MHe cpaay Bee CHHJIOCJI Y6HTOE AHTH! j j a , aa—BOT HTO! Tenepb a nomiMaio.

Thus in another repeated dream, with its own magic number (13), Pushkin reveals the subconcious of another fictional character. The innocent victim reappears to haunt the villain: Boris' dream is a profound acknowledgement of his guilt. As Grigory's dream was juxtaposed with Pimen's, so Boris' can be seen in contrast to the shepherd's dream as related by the Patriarch in scene 15. The shepherd, blind since childhood, once dreamed that he heard a child's voice directing him to go to Uglich and to pray for the restoration of his sight. The child identified himself as the Tsarevich Dmitry. The shepherd undertook the pilgrimage and miraculously regained his vision. The Patriarch claims that other pilgrims have reported similar cures, and he advises Boris to transfer the holy relics to Moscow to prove not only that Dmitry was really dead, but also that he was already accepted among the assembly of saints. Boris knows only too well that a child can become a saint only if it has been martyred. Shuysky rejects the Patriarch's proposal, thereby "rescuing" Boris from his embarrassing predicament. Apparently the image of the Tsarevich haunts not only the villain's dreams; it also returns to plague him through the dream of a simple shepherd, a man of the people, who, like the holy fool, speaks the truth. In his study of Pushkin's views on drama, John Fennell refers to the importance of psychological realism and quotes from Pushkin's own review of Pogodin's Maifa Posadnica:u Truth of passions, verisimilitude of feelings in given circumstances—this is what our mind demands from the dramatic writer.

Pushkin advocated the realistic depiction of character in all its many-sided complexity. The insights provided by Grigory's two dreams (son and mecta), 26. J. L. I. Fennell, Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (Berkeley, 1973), p. 57.

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Pimen's recalled dreams, Boris' recurrent nightmare, and the shepherd's vision are evidence of Pushkin's profound psychological realism, including revelations on the level of the fictional characters' subconscious. In Boris Godunov Pushkin metaphorically attributes Grigory's dreams to demonic sources while the Patriarch suggests that the Pretender's literacy may also come from the Devil. In The Tales of Belkin (1830), Pushkin moves from a recreation of the medieval world view to a debunking of the romantic one, and attributes dreams to literary sources. These fictional dreams contribute to an understanding of Pushkin's main theme in the collection: the disparity between art and life. Marya Gavrilovna, the heroine of "The Snowstorm," on the night before her planned elopement with Vladimir, feigns a headache and retires early. After finally falling asleep, she sees "horrible dreams" (uzasnye mectanija). In the first, at the very moment she climbs into Vladimir's sleigh to depart for her wedding, her father interferes; with "agonizing" speed he drags her through the snow and hurls her into a "dark, bottomless pit"; she falls headlong with an "indescribable sinking heart." In the second, Marya sees Vladimir lying on the grass, pale, bloodied; dying, he implores her to marry him at once. Marya awakes from these and other "outrageous senseless visions" "paler than usual," with a real headache. Gershenzon bases his discussion of this dream on a misreading of the epigraph. He quotes it as "the prophetic dream (son) portends sorrow," and proceeds to interpret the dream as prophetic. 27 The line, correctly quoted by Pushkin, comes from an early published version of Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana," and actually reads "the prophetic moan (ston) portends sorrow." 28 However, there does exist an important connection between Zhukovsky's ballad and Pushkin's tale. 2 ' The horrible images of Svetlana's dream, which dissipate upon her awakening, are replaced by a happy reality: this is followed by a moral, typical of Zhukovsky's metaphysics, emphasizing his belief in Providence. But in Pushkin's story, the same horrible dream images coincide with Marya's waking life, with her real experience. However, instead of the dying suitor foretold in her dream, she gets a substitute, Burmin, in an ironic conclusion. 30 Providence, for Zhukovsky always 27. Gersenzon, Stat'i o Puskine,

p. 98.

28. Zhukovsky later altered it to "Voron karkaet pecal'V' 29. V. V. Vinogradov argues t h a t in both works t h e t h e m e of " f a t e " is explored on two different levels, in the d r e a m a n d in waking life. See " O stile P u s k i n a , " in Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, 16-18 (1934); 172-4. N. Ja. Berkovsky maintains that " T h e Snowstorm" is a polemic with Washington Irving's " T h e Spectre Bridegroom," translated into Russian as early as 1825. As Irving quotes Burger's " L e n o r e , " so Pushkin quotes Zhukovsky's " S v e t l a n a . " See Stat'i o literature (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962), " O povestjakh B e l k i n a , " p p . 289-94. 30. Berkovsky argues t h a t this outcome is the result of predictable socioeconomic forces: t h e d a u g h t e r of a wealthy family is married off to a well-to-do neighbor. Cf. R. A. Gregg, " T a t ' y a n a ' s Two D r e a m s , " Slavonic Review 48 (1970): 113, 494: " t h e c o m m o n lot of eligible maidens—whatever their station—who do not marry the man they love: they marry someone else."

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predictably beneficent, in Pushkin becomes unexpectedly and ironically beneficent. As in Boris Godunov, a distinction between dreams (son and mecta) is useful in further defining the function of Marya's dream in "The Snowstorm." We are told that the heroine was "raised on French novels, and consequently, was in love." 31 Marya's dream (mecta) is directly derived from this reading and parallels the characters and plot of romantic fiction: a sensitive heroine, a dashing hero, and some interfering parents; forbidden love, secret elopement, suffering, confession, and, finally, parental acceptance. Similarly, Marya's dream (son) is another, more dramatic, enactment of this same romantic paradigm: first, by exaggeration, she sees her vengeful father as an insurmountable obstacle to her happiness; second, by distortion, she imagines her lover's melodramatic death on the battlefield. Both scenes in the dream (son) are as literary and romantic as the elopement projected in Marya's dream (mecta). But "reality" intervenes. "Life" is unlike "art"—the "literary art" as reflected in both of Marya's dreams (mecta and son). The real obstacles to her plan are the forces of nature and of human nature: the snowstorm—an external natural element, which also represents the power of fate; and Marya's parents—who respond to her plight with human understanding, and soon become reconciled to her chosen suitor. But the "hero" departs in shame to die in ignominy. Burmin's arrival, his account of the strange "incomprehensible" incident, and his emotional reunion with his long lost wife are an ironic coincidence, a parody of the conventional, romantic dénouement, which unexpectedly results in happiness for the heroine, in a way unforeseen in either of her dreams. Thus both dreams (mecta and son), derived from literary sources, are proven to be unrealistic. Life simply does not follow the pattern of romantic novels. Nor does life follow the pattern of Gothic horror tales, as Adrian Prokhorov discovers in "The Coffin-maker." As Pushkin contrasts the "cheerful and jocular" literary image of the gravedigger as portrayed by Shakespeare and Scott with the gloomy and cantankerous hero of his story, 32 so Adrian's dream (son) reveals that corpses do not conform to the reader's literary expectations. Adrian returns from a party feeling both drunk and angry. A toast had been proposed by one of the guests to their respective "clients," and the jokes made at his expense offended him. He decides not to return their hospitality, and instead plans to invite his "clients" to a party. He goes to bed and "soon 31. Cf. the epigraph to chapter IV in Eugene Onegin: "/;//(• était fille, elle était amoureuse." 32. J. van der Eng argues that both Shakespeare and Scott present a "romantic" conception of the gravedigger, i.e., a witty character in a macabre profession. Pushkin, on the other hand, rejects this image, and returns to a more "classical" portrait, inasmuch as Adrian's character corresponds to his profession. See "Les récits de Belkin" in The Tales of Belkin, ed. J. van der Eng (The Hague, 1968), p. 35.

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starts snoring." It was still dark "when they woke Adrian": with these words his dream (son) begins, though the reader remains temporarily unaware that the hero is actually dreaming. The old merchant Tryukhina has died, and Adrian is summoned to make all the necessary funeral arrangements; 33 he returns home to discover that his house is full of corpses. By moonlight he recognizes his former customers. A brigadier, acting as spokesman, explains that they were responding to Adrian's kind invitation. When Kurilkin, his very first client, and one of many that he has swindled, steps forward to offer an "embrace," the coffin-maker screams and pushes him away.34 When the corpse disintegrates, the others begin to complain, abuse, and threaten the hero who is almost crushed in the chaos; he loses consciousness and—comes to. Still believing that the events are real, he asks his servant whether any message had come from Tryukhina. When informed that he had been asleep since the party, Adrian is relieved and resumes his normal life. Unlike other dreams in Pushkin, Adrian's is never announced: both his falling asleep and his awakening are ambiguous.35 But the dream is both the structural center of the story and an expression of Pushkin's theme. It is replete with the paraphernalia characteristic of Gothic horror stories (corpses, skeletons, and bones). But as in "The Snowstorm," the forces of human nature intervene. Unlike the literary paradigm which he expects, Adrian's corpses behave like real people. Each is dressed according to his place in the social hierarchy. They display various human emotions: gratitude, friendliness, pride, and shame, and become menacing only after the (guilty?) coffin-maker rejects an ambiguous "embrace." Then Adrian feels "deafened" and "crushed"; he loses his "presence of mind," falls upon the bones and faints dead away. The corpses are not frightening in a conventional macabre manner; instead, their behavior is all too recognizably human. 36 When Adrian realizes that it is all "only a dream," then he too resumes his normal life: Well, if t h a t ' s t h e way it is, t h e n give m e s o m e tea at once, a n d call my d a u g h t e r s . H y KOJIH Tax, aaBaii CKopee Haw, a a n030BH

flotepefl.

The dream illustrates Pushkin's principal theme in The Tales of Belkin: art and life are disparate, and any expectation that life (even dream life) will conform to a literary pattern will be frustrated. 33. S. G. Bocharov suggests that, with Tryukhina's death, Adrian's dream (mecta) has miraculously been fulfilled in his dream (sew), inasmuch as he was hoping to make money on the funeral arrangements. See "O smysle Grobovscika" Kontekst 1973, 1974, p. 216. 34. In the ms. version, he "crossed himself." 35. See below on Germann's visions in The Queen of Spades. 36. Cf. the behavior of Dostoevsky's corpses in Bobok (1873).

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Germann's dreams in The Queen of Spades have had a curious critical history. Dostoevsky considered Pushkin's story to be the "acme of the art of the fantastic," precisely because he was unable to determine whether Germann's "vision" of the countess (ch. V) originates in the hero's own nature, or whether he really is in contact with another world. 37 Recently critics have focused on Germann's extraordinary dream in chapter VI. Shklovsky had described it as "somewhat unexpected," stylistically incongruous, more typical of Gogol's prose than of Pushkin's. 38 In an article on the conclusion of the story, J. T. Shaw interprets this dream as "prophetic," inasmuch as its images (the flower, gothic portals, and spider) suggest the fatal outcome of the story including Germann's loss at faro. 39 Nathan Rosen counters Shaw, asserting that the dream is "causative": it represents a repressed force, Germann's guilt for the death of the countess, and it is this force which drives him to mistake the queen for an ace in the final scene. By an elaborate analysis of visual similarities and auditory puns, Rosen posits a series of equations to explain how the spider becomes identified with the queen of spades (and the countess) and thus causes Germann's error. According to Rosen, it is Germann's unconscious need for self-punishment which determines the nature of his fatal mistake at the card table. 40 Shaw defines the two basic themes in The Queen of Spades as "calculation" and "imagination." All three of Germann's dreams (sny) must be analyzed inasmuch as they reveal the stages in the development of the hero's imagination, and depict most clearly the conflict between his imagination and his calculation. Germann's first dream (son) occurs in chapter II, and is a result of his hearing Tomsky's anecdote. Wandering around Petersburg, the hero conceives of a plan to learn the countess' secret and thereby to realize his dream (mecta) of sudden wealth. But in a dramatic reversal, he rejects this plan and Tomsky's anecdote: No! c a l c u l a t i o n , m o d e r a t i o n , a n d i n d u s t r y : these a r e my t h r e e f a i t h f u l c a r d s , t h a t ' s w h a t will triple, multiply sevenfold my c a p i t a l a n d a s s u r e m e tranquility a n d i n d e p e n d e n c e . H e T ! pacqeT, yMepeHHOCTb H T p y n o j n o 6 H e : BOT MOH TPH BepHbie KapTbi, BOT HTO yTpoHT, yceMepHT Mott KanHTaji H aocTaBHT MHC noKofi H HesaBHCHMOCTb!

37. F. M. Dostoevskij, Pis ma, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1959), p. 178. 38. V. Shklovskij, Zametki o proze Puskina (Moscow, 1937), p. 66. This view was echoed by C. E. Passage; see The Russian Hoffmannists (The Hague, 1963), p. 135n. While noting its Hoffmannesque quality, Passage failed to locate the exact source. V. Setchkarev in his review of Passage (Slavic and East European Journal 8, no. 1 (1964):72-6) cites the source of one image igrandiflor) in two specific tales. 39. J. T. Shaw, "The 'Conclusion' of Pushkin's Queen of Spades," in Studies in Russian and Polish Literature in Honour of W. Lednicki, ed. Z. Folejewski et al. (The Hague, 1962), pp. 114-26. 40. N. Rosen, "The Magic Cards in The Queen of Spades," Slavic and East European Journal 19, no. 3 KfleHHH HHCTa! OcTaHbCH neHofi, Apo;iHTa, H , CJIOBO, B My3bIKy BepHHCb, H , c e p f l u e , cep,aua ycTbi/wcb, C nepBoocHOBOH jkh3HH C^HTO!

1910, 25

. . . M a y my lips a c q u i r e this Primeval quietness Like a crystal note Congenitally p u r e . Remain foam, Aphrodite; A n d r e t u r n to m u s i c , w o r d ; A n d h e a r t , b e a s h a m e d of h e a r t W h e n b l e n t with life's f o u n d a t i o n . "

But creation in reverse is a lethal occupation for a poet. His "I" begins to disappear, dissolving itself in "primeval quietness." 22. Translated by Clarence Brown (Mandelstam, p. 163). 23. Translated by Clarence Brown (ibid., pp. 165-166). Brown's rendition of this poem is exceptionally good. However, Mandelstam's "nemota" (muteness), which in Russian refers to speech, has a somewhat different meaning than the "quietness" of Brown's translation, which implies the lack of any sound.

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Gregory Freidin

. . . O iilHpOKHH BeTep Op(J)en, Tbi yfiiieuib B MopcKHe Kpan— H , Hec03AaHHbiii M i i p j i e j i e n ,

SI 3a6biji HeHy>KHoe "a"

. ..

1911,25

[. . . O h t h e b r o a d wind of O r p h e u s , / You will d e p a r t f o r t h e lands by t h e sea— / A n d cherishing t h e u n c r e a t e d w o r l d , / I forgot t h e unnecessary " I " . . .]

This is the last step that Mandelstam takes in the direction of nonbeing. Now he is left with no choice but to recognize time's creative nature—for, in the words of T. S. Eliot, . . . only in time c a n t h e m o m e n t in t h e r o s e - g a r d e n , T h e m o m e n t in t h e a r b o u r w h e r e t h e rain b e a t , T h e m o m e n t in t h e d r a u g h t y c h u r c h at s m o k e f a l l Be r e m e m b e r e d ; involved with p a s t a n d f u t u r e . . , 24

The experiment with stasis nearly cost Mandelstam one poetic personality and, fortunately, ended in failure. The poet survived. He now realized that in order to continue being a poet, he must commit both himself and his vision of the world to the law of time. . . . O , BpeMH, 3aBHCTbio He M y n a f t

T o r o , KTO BO-BpeMfl 3aCTbIJl. H a c n e H o i o B03HBnrHyji c j i y i a f l

H KpyiKeBOM coe.nHHH.il.

149"

|. . . O h t i m e , d o not t o r m e n t with envy / H i m w h o f r o z e in d u e t i m e . / Accident erected us with its f r o t h / A n d u n i t e d us with its lace.j

V. LANCET DOMES In the 1912-13 period, Mandelstam's rather abstract and declarative statements on the nature of time began to acquire poetic substance. Having entered his consciousness, the problem of time eventually forced him to search for a new vision capable of giving the quality of poetic permanence first to his impressions of the world outside and then of the world within. Both these worlds, he now realized, were subject to the law of change. The inevitable paradox of human existence with its conflict between the temporal and the eternal still served as a basic philosophical pattern for his meditations, but he no longer spoke from within the symbolist tradition whose overbearing presence was so strongly felt in his earlier poems. It is unnecessary and perhaps impossible to determine exactly when this separation occurred but the three sonnets written in 1912 (32, 33, and 34) 2 4 . T . S. Eliot, " B u r n t N o r t o n , " 1935. 2 5 . J u d g i n g f r o m h o w well t h i s p o e m f i t s i n t o t h e 1 9 1 0 - 1 1 " c y c l e , " it s e e m s likely t h a t it w a s w r i t t e n d u r i n g the same period.

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can be considered as a sort of public announcement that the alliance, shaky even at the beginning, was now irrevocably dissolved.26 In this final act of emancipation, Mandelstam decided to present both sides of the argument, the symbolists' and his own, choosing as the common ground for the dispute a metaphysical concept fundamental to the symbolist worldview ("fear of the abyss") 27 and confronting it with his rather "materialistic" interpretation. The background for this clash between the two opposing viewpoints is already set up in the opening stanza of the first sonnet: H HyBCTByio H e n o 6 e n H M b i H c T p a x B npHCyTCTBHH TaHHCTBeHHblX BblCOT, H j i a c T o m c o t i AOBOjieH B H e ò e c a x M KCWIOKOJIBHH N JTK>6JIIO n o n e i " ! [I e x p e r i e n c e a n u n c o n q u e r a b l e fear / In t h e presence of mysterious heights. / 1 a m pleased with the swallow in the sky / A n d I love a bell-tower's f l i g h t . ]

The first two lines obviously represent the symbolist poetic method which breaks the associative link between a symbol signifying a metaphysical concept beyond experience and the underlying object and image. In the second two lines, Mandelstam makes his point and reverses the symbolist process by reestablishing the severed link between the symbolic and the actual meaning of the sonnet's spatial imagery. The rest follows a similar pattern: the second quatrain echoes the first two lines of the sonnet, while the sestet develops the concluding lines of the first stanza. M , KaweTCH, cTapHHHbifi n e m e x o a , H a A n p o n a c T b i o , Ha m y m H x c H MOCTKax f l c j i y i u a i o , KaK CHe»Hbift KOM p a c T e T H BeHHOcTb 6 b e T Ha KaMeHHbix t a c a x . K o n t a 6 u TaK! H o H He cnyTHHK TOT, MejIbKaiOIUHft Ha BblUBeTUIHX JIHCTaX, M NO/IJIHHHO BO MHe n e M a u b n o e T ; XleflcTBHTejibHO, jiaBHna e c T b B r o p a x ! H Bea MOH

flyuia—B

KOJiOKOJiax,

H o My3biKa OT 6e3flHbi He c n a c e T ! |And, as it were, the a n c i e n t walker / Over the abyss on a sagging footbridge, / I listen to the snowball growing / A n d eternity striking on t h e stone c l o c k . / / If only it were so! 26. These sonnets are discussed by Clarence Brown (pp. 178-183) as a "turning point" in Mandelstam's emancipation from Symbolism. Brown's interpretation, however, differs from mine. 27. Some examples of the "abyss" theme in Russian poetry of the early twentieth century are: "My byli uzniki na sare skromnom . . . " (Russkaja Mysl', July 1913) by Valéry Bryusov; "miry letjat. Goda letjat . . . " (1912) by Aleksandr Blok, with such characteristic lines as "1 ucepjas' za kraj skol'zjascij, ostryj. / 1 slusaja vsegda zuzzascij zvon.— / Ne skhodim li s u m a my v smene pestroj / Pridumannykh pricin, prostranstv, vremen . . ."; " P i r " by Andrey Bely; "Astrolog" and " M è o n " by Vyacheslav Ivanov. For an example of treatment of the same theme in prose, see Andrey Bely, "Necto o mistike," in Trudy i Dni, no. 2 (March-April 1912), pp. 46-52.

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But I am not that wayfarer / Appearing now and then on the faded leaves, / And genuine sadness sings in me; // Truly, there is an avalanche in the mountains! / And all my soul is in the bells / But music cannot save one from the abyss!]

One by one Mandelstam transforms " s y m b o l s " into material images. T h e "mysterious heights" lose much of their mystery as soon as they are confronted with the literal swallow and the bell-tower filling the space of the sky. T h e abyss under the "sagging f o o t b r i d g e " becomes an actual precipice, while the growing " s n o w b a l l " and the tolling of the "stone c l o c k " — b o t h the harbingers of a metaphysical disaster signaling the end of t i m e — f i n d their material counterparts in an avalanche in the mountains and in the melodious chiming of a clock on a church tower. In the final line, Mandelstam even goes so far as to reject the symbolists' sacred doctrine of redemption through music. In the real world, he seems to be saying, salvation cannot be achieved by means of escape into the spheres where actual time and space lose their material significance entirely. In the second sonnet, " K a z i n o , " Mandelstam again brings up the theme of mental anguish associated with and caused by the " f e a r of the abyss," but he does it now in an offhand and even humorous manner. f l H e I10KJ10HHHK p a f l O C T H n p e f l B 3 H T O H ,

riozmac npiipoaa—cepoe

FIHTHO.

M H E , B ONBJMEHBH j i e r n o M , c y j K a e H o

H3BeaaTb KpacKH

>KH3HH

He6oraTofi.

(I am no fan of preconceived joy, / Nature sometimes is a gray spot. / I am fated, in a slight inebriation, / T o explore the colors of meager life.)

But as though the ironic smile of the first stanza were not

enough,

Mandelstam further deprives the " f e a r of the abyss" of its metaphysical clout. He places the image at the end of a sequence which, by analogy, forces a material interpretation of the image itself. T h e " s h a g g y " cloud and the anchor sinking to the " b o t t o m of the sea" which precede the " d a m n e d abyss" in effect establish actual spatial boundaries for the image of a " s o u l " teetering on the edge of a metaphysical precipice.

HrpaeT

BeTep TyneK)

KOCMa-roft,

JIOJKHTCH H K O p b HA M O p C K O e FLHO, 14 6e3flbixaHHa;i, Kaic FIOJIOTHO, flyma

BHCHT HAN 6e3flHOK> n p o K j i s T o f t .

[The wind is playing with a shaggy cloud, / An anchor is settling on the bottom of the sea, / And, lifeless as a piece of canvas, / My soul hangs over the damned abyss.)

In the concluding sestet, the last vestiges of " f e a r " disappear as the poet's eye playfully scans the objects surrounding him in the "casino on the dunes."

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157

H o H JIK>6JTK> H a AIOHAX KSBHHO,

U1HP0KHH BHFL B TyMaHHOe OKHO H TOHKHA Jiyq Ha CKaTepTH H3MHTOB; M, OKpyjKeH Boaofl 3ejieH0BaT0ft, R o m a , KaK p o 3 a , B xpycTajie BHHO— J1K>6JIK> cjieziHTb 3a Haitxoio KpbijraTofi! [But I like t h e casino on t h e d u n e s , / A b r o a d vista in t h e foggy window / A n d a slender ray on a r u m p l e d t a b l e c l o t h ; / / A n d , s u r r o u n d e d by g r e e n i s h w a t e r , / W h e n wine in a crystal (glass) is like a rose— / I love to follow [the flight of] a winged seagull!]

The full significance of the sonnet as a critique of symbolist perception becomes obvious when we compare it to Alexander Blok's "V restorane," ("In the Restaurant," 1911), a famous poem that Mandelstam may have had in mind while working on his "Kazino." 2 8 Indeed, the way Mandelstam presents the images that he and Blok share clearly betrays Mandelstam's ironic and polemical intent. For example, in Blok the "poet" sends to a mysterious female "a black rose in a glass of Ay-champagne golden as the sky." Mandelstam, on the other hand, uses "rose" to describe the play of light refracted in a glass of wine. Blok's "rose" is a symbol, a hieroglyph which conveys esoteric meaning familiar only to a poet who can see through the illusion of actual experience. Blok makes it appear that he is not even sure whether what he is describing really happened: ". . . did it really happen, or not, that evening?" In his universe actual experience has very little to do with what "really happens." By contrast, in Mandelstam's sonnet a poet tries to free himself from a "preconceived" (predvzjatyj) way of seeing the world, in order to enjoy actual experience—even though experience, the poet admits, may not be as colorful and as rich as the "other" world of the symbolists. Mandelstam's rose serves to reinforce the illusion of organic life and natural beauty, an illusion created not by a demon but by a ray of light refracted in a wine glass. Certainly, "like a rose" is hardly an uncommon simile; but in the literary context dominated by symbolism, Mandelstam's choice appears both daring and original. What he attempted to present in his sonnet was not new tropes, but a change in the focus of poetic vision that would enable the poet to train his eye on actual instead of other-worldly experience. However, the mere substitution of a simile for a symbol, and of realistic perception for the metaphysical and mystical, does not by itself create a new poetic universe. Poetry has its own time and space, different from what they are in nature, and in the third sonnet Mandelstam offers his own definition of these basic categories of human perception. 28. The idea of comparing these two poems was indirectly suggested to me by an article by Viktor Zirmunskij, "Dva napravlenija v sovremennoj lirike" (1920), in which the famous scholar compares Blok's "V restorane" with Anna Akhmatova's "Vecerom" (1913) in order to point out the difference between the Symbolist and Acmeist poetic vision. (Zirmunskij, Voprosy teorii literatury [Leningrad, 19281, PP- 182-189.)

158 rianeHbe—HeH3MeHHbifl cnyTHHK

Gregory Freidin cTpaxa,

H caMbifl cTpax ecTb HYBCTBO nycTOTbi. KTO KaMHH K HaM 6pOCaeT C BblCOTbl— M KaMeHb oTpnuaeT Hro npaxa? H aepeBHHHOfl nocTynbio MOHaxa MomeHHbifl /iBop Koraa-To Mepnji Tbi, ByjibiiKHHKH H rpy6bie MeiTbi— B HHX wajicna CMCPTH h TocKa pa3Maxa . . . Tan npoKjTHT 6ynb roTimecKHH npmoT, File nOTOJIKOM BXOiWIUHH 06M0p0MeH M B OHare Becenbix apoB He » r y r ! HeMHorHe nnn BemiocTH >KHByT, H o ec/m Tbi MrHOBeHHbiM 03a60MeH— TBOA «pe6nii cTpauieH H TBOA AOM HenpoieH!

1912, 34

[Falling is a constant companion of fear, / And the fear itself is a feeling of emptiness. / Who throws us stones from on high, / And does the stone deny the yoke of dust? / / And with the wooden pace of a monk, / You paced the cobbled courtyard once, / Cobblestones and crude dreams— / In them the thirst for death and anguish of expanse . . . I I So let the Gothic refuge be accursed / Where the ceiling deceives and confuses you / And where merry wood is not burned in the hearth! / / Few live for the sake of eternity / But if the momentary distresses you— / Your lot is terrifying and your house fragile.]

The third sonnet follows the main structural outlines of the first two, but it also contains a new element, "you," the poet's alter ego whom he addresses in rejecting the views he himself used to hold in the earlier period. This "other" Mandelstam perceives the actual universe as a void where the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time are illusory, merely concealing nonbeing or the "abyss" which causes one to fear the inevitable fall. Seen from this perspective, even a Gothic cathedral with its vaulted ceiling can serve only as a reminder of the fleeting nature of human existence. In such a universe, one thirsts for death, not life, and the fear of death normally experienced by people becomes transformed into the fear of life—the "anguish of expanse," in Mandelstam's oxymoronic idiom. Mandelstam presents the symbolist view of the world as perverse, and eventually rejects it. The elements of the new poetic vision revolve around one metaphor which runs throughout the whole of the sonnet: building. Before this metaphor is eventually realized in the "home" of the sonnet's conclusion, it passes through various stages, appearing first as the "stones" which "deny the yoke of dust," then as "cobblestones" with their "thirst for death," and finally as the "Gothic refuge" which used to deceive and confuse the poet's alter ego. Only in this last instance does the positive significance of the metaphor begin to come to the surface: in cursing the "Gothic refuge" for what it is not, Mandelstam in fact affirms what it ought to be—a building where "merry wood is burnt in the hearth." If one fears life in time ("If the momentary causes you distress") and concentrates entirely on a wish for eternity, then

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one's "home" will eventually collapse, being unsupported by either the space or the time of actual existence. The universe that Mandelstam was about to create was quite different. Its basic outlines begin to appear in the second half of the first quatrain, which contains an allusion to "Problème," a well-known poem by Feodor Tyutchev. 2 ' This poem consists essentially of one question: Did a stone lying on the floor of a valley roll down by itself, or was it an "alien will" that pushed it down? Without answering Tyutchev's question, Mandelstam proceeded to reformulate it and to offer his own riddle: "Who throws stones to us from on high, and does stone deny the yoke of dust?" The answer is implicit both in the question itself and in the sonnet as a whole. The fact that stones arrive on earth "from on high" (no matter who throws them), already establishes their credentials as a gift of heaven capable of "denying the yoke of dust." But however impervious to change stones may be, they nonetheless represent matter, and dead matter at that. Simply to emulate their eternal quality would be tantamount to a wish for death. Mandelstam says as much when he speaks about the "cobblestones and crude dreams" with their "thirst for death and anguish of expanse." Yet there is a way to overcome this last obstacle. The hand of a sculptor, a mason, or an architect can bring dead matter to life and endow it with the warmth of a home hearth without transforming stone into something entirely temporal. A poet too, just as a mason does, uses eternal categories like death, time, eternity as his material, categories which remain lifeless unless he can breathe into them the warmth of his own life in time. "We do not fly," Mandelstam wrote as if answering the riddle of the sonnet's stone, "we ascend only those towers which we can build ourselves." 30 Now architecture becomes for Mandelstam a new model of poetic creation. A mason or an architect extends human reach both in space and time without denying the temporal essence of existence. The merciless time of nature will no longer "torment" Mandelstam "with envy" (149), for he can match nature's challenge by creating his own human space and time: KpyaceBOM, KaMem», 6 y a b , M nayTHHofl CTam>: H e 6 a nycTyio rpyab TOHKOfi HMOK) paHb . . .

1912, 29

[Stone, turn into lace / And become a cobweb: / W o u n d with a slender spire / The empty breast of the sky . . .]

29. F. 1. Tyutcev, Lirika, ed. K. V. Pigarev, 2 vols.; vol. 1 (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), p. 50. 30. "Utro akmeizma," vol. 2, p. 325. This essay was first published in 1919; however, there are strong reasons to believe that it was written more or less simultaneously with the two Acmeist manifestos published in Apollon in 1913 (see note 14 above). For a more detailed discussion, see Clarence Brown, pp. 138-151; and the commentary by G. P. Struve and B. A. Filippov in Sobranie, vol. 2, p. 647.

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The "architectural" poems that Mandelstam wrote in 1912-13 continued directly the theme of permanence and change of his earlier poetry. These "studies in verse" of architectural masterpieces not only helped Mandelstam to resolve certain conflicts internal to his poetry (such as the ones discussed above), but they also brought him face to face with material embodiments of concepts of time generated by different cultures. Unlike his earlier poems, where movement is often contrasted with fixity and the material world with Platonic realiora or a Schopenhauerian "abyss," the poems of the new cycle define the problem of time in terms of the most characteristic features distinguishing a given culture. Thus in "Hagia Sophia" and in "Notre Dame," the chronological paradox of human existence is expressed through an opposition between the contemplative, other-worldly nature of Eastern Orthodoxy and the temporal vigor and corporeality of its Western counterpart, the Catholic Church. AHH-Co(t>HH—3flecb OCTaHOBHTbCH CynHJi Tocnoflb HaponaM h uapHM! Beflb Kynoji TBOS, no cjiOBy oieBHflua, KaK Ha uenH noziBeiiieH K He6ecaM.

1912, 38

Hagia Sophia! Here did God decree that nations and their emperors should stop. In fact, as one who saw it said, your dome depends as though from heaven on a c h a i n . "

Hagia Sophia is suspended in time. It is an image of heaven on earth, an image of total peace and tranquility. Notre Dame belongs to a different world. It bursts with energy and conflicting forces. Movement, lacking in Hagia Sophia, spreads in all directions. Men harness it, channel it, but allow it to exist in harmony with the static essence of stone: Tae PHMCKHA cyan« cyami qyacofi Hapoa— CTOHT 6a3njinKa, H paaocTHbifl H nepBbifl, Kax Hexoraa AaaM, pacnjiacTbiBaa HepBbi, M r p a e T M b i m u a M H K p e c T O B b i f i j i e r K H f i CBOA. H o BbiaaeT c e 6 x c H a p y x t n TaftHbift iuiaH:

3aecb no3a6oTHJiacb noanpywHbix apoK CHJia, HTO6 Macca rpy3Ha« cTeHbi He coKpymnjia, M cBoaa aepsKoro 6e3neficTByeT TapaH . . .

1912, 39

Where a Roman judge judged an alien people, / There stands a basilica, and, joyful and first / Like Adam was once, spreading its nerves / The light groined arch is playing with its muscles. / / But the secret plan is revealed from without: / Here the power of the saddle-girth arches took care / That the weighty mass not crush the wall, / And the battering ram of the daring vault is idle . . . 31. T h i s a n d t h e following p o e m a r e t r a n s l a t e d by C l a r e n c e B r o w n ( p p . 1 8 6 - 1 8 7 ) .

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This is Mandelstam's first attempt to extend an abstract theme of human time into the realm of history. Hagia Sophia is the result of man's direct communion with God. God decreed that time should stop here. Men are simply conductors of His will, its passive agents who built the cathedral but do not dwell in it. The dome of the cathedral is attached to heaven and the building itself never touches the ground. It hovers over what Mandelstam called propast' (the abyss). A house built according to the schemes of this architect cannot become a sturdy structure when placed on the ground. Mandelstam, in making his statement on architecture, makes a statement on the Orthodox Church's ability to reconcile permanence with change. The Eastern way, he believes, is to give oneself up completely to the contemplation of God, to cease to exist in time. The people who built Notre Dame found a way of fusing the temporal with the eternal. They accepted God's challenge as a gift, and transformed the material furnished them into their own space and time. Taken alone, the two poems point to no clear commitment but, given Mandelstam's long search for a reconciliation between permanence and temporality, the Catholic way seems to hold out a greater promise. And even though the poet never ceased to value Orthodoxy's gift for pure spiritual contemplation, its persistence in time in spite of time, during the years to follow he turned westward to Rome, where the secular activity of man had long flourished under the divine sanction of the Catholic Church. "The Roman Judge," echoing the "God" of "Hagia Sophia," helped people to preserve the dynamic essence of tradition, to overcome the dread of oblivion, and to transform the chaos of life in time into a "sacred continuity and change of events." 32 In Mandelstam's poetry, now for the first time, human existence and, more importantly, human history began to acquire a teleological meaning; and during the poet's "pilgrimage" 33 to Rome, an acute historical sensitivity would become a permanent and major element of his perception. VI. DAHIN, DAHIN! Nature's the same as Rome and is reflected in it..

.

O. MANDELSTAM: "Priroda—tot zeRim ..." 32. "Petr Caadaev," vol. 2, p. 286. 33. There is no clear agreement among the students of Mandelstam's poetry on whether Mandelstam ever visited Italy. It was first pointed out by G. P. Struve in his "ltaljanskie obrazy i motivy v poezii Osipa Mandel'stama" (Studi in onore di Ettore Lo Gatto e Giovanni Mover [Rome: G. Sansoni Editore, 1962], pp. 601-614) that Mandelstam actually did not have any "topographically" Italian poems. For the purposes of this essay, the question of Mandelstam's actual presence in Italy is not relevant, but it seems appropriate to note that Nadezhda Mandelstam mentions the poet's two-week stay in Italy (Hope Against Hope [Baltimore: Penguin, 1975], p. 295; and Hope Abandoned [New York: Atheneum, I974J, p. 26). For another, more comprehensive discussion of Mandelstam's foreign travels, see Clarence Brown, ch. 3.

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The 1910's were a time very important in the development of Mandelstam's art, and people will be thinking and writing about it for a long time to come: Villon, Chaadaev, Catholicism. ANNA AKHMATOVA:

Memoirs

More than one road leads to Rome, and Mandelstam's attraction to the Eternal City can be explained only in part by the poet's philosophical attempts to solve the riddle of time. Other forces, which mirrored the resurgence of historical thinking throughout the continent of Europe and were also integral to Mandelstam's poetic theory and practice, pointed him in the same direction. Futurism and Acmeism, two new schools of poetry appearing on the Russian scene in the second decade of the 1900s, were defining themselves, as their names suggested, 34 partly in response to the new historical consciousness of the epoch. The aesthetics of Futurism lie outside the scope of this essay—but Acmeist theory, to the extent that it was shaped by Mandelstam himself and reflected his reaction to Russian Symbolism, played a major role in the poet's future development and deserves to be discussed here. In brief and general terms, the Acmeist reaction to the still dominant poetics of Russian Symbolism was manifested in a strong emphasis on Parnassian precision in place of abstraction, on tangibility (oscutimost') and materiality ( v e s c n o s t p r e d m e t n o s t ) of poetic expression in place of the "ventriloquist" pronouncements of a Symbolist theurgist. 35 In Clarence Brown's apt phrase, the Acmeists' was "the romance of the precise," 36 and while the Symbolists were busy searching for words bridging realia and realiora,37 the young Acmeist Mandelstam looked for "identity" between the word and the world. "A = A: what a splendid theme for poetry!" he exclaimed in his 1913 essay, "The Morning of Acmeism." "Symbolism," he continued, "languished and longed for the law of identity; Acmeism makes it a slogan and offers it instead of the dubious a realibus ad realiora" (vol. 2, p. 324). 34. On Futurism, see Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968). As to Acmeism, here are Mandelstam's own words: "Acmeism is not only a literary but a social phenomenon of Russian history" (vol. 2, p. 258). And later: "To the question: 'What is Acmeism?' M. [Mandelstam] once replied: 'Nostalgia for world culture.'" (Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, p. 295.) 35. An enlightening discussion of the Acmeists' reaction to Symbolism, and the way this reaction affected the Symbolists themselves, can be found in an essay by V. Weidle, "Peterburgskaja poetika," in Nikolaj Gumilev, Sobranie socinenij, ed. G. P. Struve and B. A. Filippov, vol. 4 (Washington: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1968). The word "ventriloquist" (crevovescatel'nyj) is of Weidle's coinage and comes from the same essay. Viktor Zhirmunsky wrote extensively on the same subject in Voprosy teorii literatury (Leningrad, 1928). Another excellent discussion can be found in Clarence Brown's Mandelstam. 36. This is the title of Chapter 9 of Brown's Mandelstam, in which he deals with Acmeist theory. 37. See Vjaceslav Ivanov's "Zavety simvolizma," in Apollon (no. 10) for 1910, and his "Mysli o simvolizme" in Ivanov, Borozdy i mezi. Opyty esteticeskie i kriticeskie (Moscow: Musaget, 1916), pp. 145-159. Mandelstam refers to the latter in "The Morning of Acmeism" (vol. 2, p. 324).

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Whether such identity is at all possible, and what form it may take in poetry, will be discussed below—but, it has to be emphasized now, the quest for such identity alone demanded utmost artistic sensitivity to the things of this world. The poet set before himself the task to preserve such qualities and elements of a particular experience which would retain not only its present tensions and conflicts but also its nerve-endings linking it to the rest of the universe, to both its past and future. The kernel of this theory was already contained in the 1910 essay "Fransua Villon," where Mandelstam predicated real poetry on a poet's ability "to pull a moment out of the soil of time without damaging its roots." "Otherwise it shall wilt," he concluded his dictum, with the authority of one who only a year earlier had spoken of himself as being "a gardener and a flower too" (vol. 2, p. 307). This very early choice of a floral metaphor could have been forgotten had it not been fated to occupy a central place in Mandelstam's poetic universe. And it was the metaphor's virtual biological precision—not just a supple flower, but a plant with soiled roots—that rewarded his poetry with one potent and persistent image: "Time is turned up by a plough, and once a rose

was earth . . ." ("Vremja vspakhanoplugom,

iroza zemleju byla . . .," 1920,

103).38 After wandering for six years, Mandelstam returned to his old garden to see that the seed he had planted was going to be a tree after all: yHHiTOJKaeT njiaMeHb C y x y K ) )KH3Hb MOK>, M HbiHe « He KaMeHb, A aepeBO noro.

OHO jierKo H r p y 6 o ,

Hs oflHoro

KycKa

M cepaueBHHa j i y 6 a , M B e c J i a pbi6aica . . .

1914, 73

[ A f l a m e is destroying / M y dry l i f e , / A n d now not the stone / But the tree I a m singi n g . // It is light a n d r o u g h . / O f the same piece are / B o t h the core of an o a k / A n d a f i s h e r m a n ' s oars . . .]

One would look in vain for a tree of this sort in a "forest of symbols." "The stone," accordingly, was shifted away from the place it used to occupy in Mandelstam's world, though it was not removed completely. T o do so would have meant for the poet to damage the roots of his own art. The inert mass of a boulder could still be endowed with creative energy and participate 38. T h e r e is, perhaps, an echo f r o m O v i d here: In caput alta suum labentur ab aequore retro Flumina, conversis solque recurret equis; T e r r a feret stellas,

coelum Jindetur aratro,

U n d a dabit flammas, et dabit ignis aquas.

(Tristia,

B k . 3, 8: 1 - 4 ; italics are m i n e . )

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in an interplay of conflicting forces concealed in a groined arch or a vault. Yet Mandelstam came to realize that the fusion of tranquility and tension, timelessness and temporality, inherent in the image, was confined to the space above the ground. A tree, on the other hand, possessed the chronological verticality our language recalls each time we speak about genealogical trees, cultural roots, and branches of science. From time immemorial, a tree has given human imagination the symbol of a live link uniting the basic elements of the universe—the earth, the air and the sky—into one dynamic whole. And as an equally ancient image of human existence, both individual and collective, a tree has stood for continuity of human time, for the persistence of our past into the present and the future. The song of a tree was an old song, but Mandelstam "composed it again and sang it as his own" ("/ snova skal d cuzuju pesnju slozit / I kak svoju ee proizneset," 1914, 67). The metaphor of a tree reflected and expressed through the language of poetry a new depth in Mandelstam's historical perception. His poetry had begun to grow in much the same fashion a tree does, with its trunk, crown, and branches never forgetting about the roots in the ground. New themes and new methods would stem directly from what preceded them; Notre Dame would show the poet his way to Rome, and in poetics proper the same pattern of continuity would determine the palimpsest-like quality of his verse. Thus the internal dynamics of Mandelstam's poetry combined with his own interest in Romance philology and the contemporary classical revival39 made his "pilgrimage" to Rome virtually inevitable. During the two years 1914 and 1915, Mandelstam wrote at least seven poems which dealt specifically with the theme of Rome. 40 Here we shall concentrate on one of them, "Pogovorim o Rime" (1914, 261*), since it incorporates practically all the main elements of the "cycle" including the poet's own persona. It is also Mandelstam's only poem, and for that matter 39. "In 1910 Mandelstam was a nineteen-year-old student of philosophy and Old French in Heidelberg . . (Clarence Brown, p. 153). Mandelstam's translations of Old French epics and his work on Racine's Phedre (vol. 1, nos. 461, 462, 463, and 460, respectively) testify to the poet's more than superficial interest and knowledge of Romance philology. And in order to show the magnitude of the contemporary classical revival, it seems sufficient to enumerate the titles of a few books popular in Russia in the beginning of the century: Quo Vadis by Sienkiewicz, Julian the Apostate by Merezhkovsky, Cor ardens by Vyacheslav Ivanov, Stephanos by Valery Bryusov, and the list could go on and on. In fact, the popularity of classical scholarship was such that in 1907 there began to appear a popular bimonthly newsletter, Germes (Hermes), devoted entirely to the classical field. In this respect, Russia in the first two decades of the 1900's was little different from the rest of Western Europe. The history of the great influence that contemporary classical scholarship had on Russian letters still remains to be written. 40. In the American and Soviet editions of Mandelstam's poetry, respectively, their numbers are as follows: 69/59*, 56/261*, 71/266*, 184 (it did not appear in the Soviet edition), and 57/264* for 1914; and 80/67* and 79/268* for 1915. In fact, three of the poems (60, 61, and 69) appeared under a common title "lz cikla ' R i m " ' in a small magazine, Golos Zizni, no. 14 (April 1, 1915). For a very enlightening, though brief, discussion of Mandelstam's "Italian" poems, see G. P. Struve's "Ital'janskie motivy . . ." (Studi in onore di Ettore Lo Gatto e Giovanni Maver [Rome: G. Sansoni Editore, 1962]). But we shall never know whether the word "cycle" belonged to Mandelstam or his editor in Golos Zizni.

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the only piece of his writing, where he explicitly brings up his attitude to Catholicism, something that may hold a key—and Anna Akhmatova believed it did—to the development of his art. 41 The subject proper of this essay, the evolution of Mandelstam's concept of time, is the ultimate reason why this poem has been selected for a close reading. rioroBopHM o PuMe—AHBHbiii r p a n ! OH yTBepnmicH KynojioB n o 6 e n o H . riocjiyuiaeM anocTo/ibCKoe credo: HeceTc« n m i b H p a a y r w BHCHT. H a ABEHTHHE BCHHO » a y T u a p s — iUyHaaecHTbix npa3AHHKOB KaHyHbi— M CTp0r0-KaH0HHiecKHe jiyHbi H e MoryT H3MeHHTb KajieHnapn. H aFLOJIBHHIIMHP 6pocaeT neneji 6 y p w f l H a a opyMOM o r p o M H a a jiyHa, H ro/ioBa MO« O6HA>KEHA— O x o n o i i KaTOJiHqecKofl TOH3ypbi!

1914, 261*

[Let us s p e a k a b o u t R o m e — a m a r v e l o u s city! / I t a f f i r m e d itself with t h e victory of t h e c u p o l a s . / Let us h e a r t h e Apostles' credo: / T h e spray is blowing a n d r a i n b o w s a r e susp e n d e d / / O n t h e Aventine t h e king is always e x p e c t e d — / T h e eves of t h e Twelve Holy D a y s — / A n d t h e strictly c a n o n i c a l m o o n s / C a n n o t c h a n g e t h e c a l e n d a r . / / E n o r m o u s m o o n over t h e F o r u m / Casts its b r o w n i s h ash o n t o t h e world below, / A n d b a r e is my h e a d — / O h t h e chill of t h e Catholic t o n s u r e ! ]

The poem is written in iambic pentameter which in Russian prosody, though not associated with any particular genre, may have solemn, elegiac overtones.42 In the first quatrain, this meter together with the sure-footed, almost pounding, consonantal combinations (poGoVoRiM, RiMe, DiVNyj, GRaD, utVeRDiLsja . . ., kReDo . . ., RaDuGi) cannot help but inspire the reader with a hieratical awe before the spiritual imperiousness of Catholic Rome. Mandelstam is parading the tightly knit, colorful regiments of sight and sound that can never be brought to a halt. The archaic last two words of the first line (divnyj instead of udivitel'nyj, grad instead of gorod) positively shock the reader who was preparing himself for a leisurely Russian conversation, and clearly indicate that the poet intends not to miss a device which can emphasize the lofty splendor of the Eternal City. Yet, despite the archaisms, despite the presence of a metonymy piled on a periphrasis (the cupolas are 41. Anna Akhmatova, Sobranie socinenij, eds. G. P. Struve and B. A. Filippov, vol. 2 (Washington: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1968), p. 172. The passage referred to serves as an epigraph to this section of our essay. 42. "Iambic pentameter is the most 'neutral' of Russian classical meters. It does not have a long tradition . . . which can give it one or another association whether in theme or style; therefore, it is equally applicable in any literary trend" (M. L. Gasparov, Sovremennyj russkij stikh. Ritmika i metrika [Moscow: Nauka, 19741, p. 108; translation is mine). However, if one wishes to emphasize the word "classical," in a short poem like Mandelstam's the tone most likely will be elegiac.

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part of St. Peter's, a periphrasis of the Roman Church), the first quatrain has a modern ring to it. Unmistakably, the poem was written in this century, by a poet who had gone through the school of Verlaine's "Art poétique" with its "chanson grise / Ou l'Indécis au Précis se joint." 4 3 By inviting us to hear the Apostles' Creed with our eyes, Mandelstam offers us his own version of "la chanson grise." It is a tribute to the poet's skill that he managed to slip in a modernist trope based on a presumed identity between visual and aural perception, without disturbing the classical harmony of the first stanza. What accounts for his success is that he stood this Symbolist technique on its head. He took Verlaine's prescription, which had been used and abused by Russian Symbolists, and followed it in his own way, stressing precision, a classical quality, where his predecessors would have preferred its opposite: "l'Indécis." Under Mandelstam's pen, "la chanson grise," which was meant to integrate different modes of perception into one Emotion, places our senses into a relationship of identity and allows them to exist both quite separately and as parts of a larger whole. Taken literally, the last line of the first quatrain cannot be faulted for inexactitude any more than a tourist guide to Rome can be accused of misrepresenting facts when it maintains that the water spray from the fountains refracts sunlight and sometimes produces the effect of "suspended rainbows" (the R u s s i a n p y l ' , dust, can be used to describe water spray). 44 No less precise are "the cupolas" which many centuries ago reestablished and extended the domain, though in a new form, of the hitherto dwindling Roman Empire. This theme is quite logically developed in the evocation of the Apostles' Creed which points both to the spiritual nature of the new power and to the first disciples who spread the new faith. This exactitude, however, refreshing as it may have seemed compared to the Symbolist vagueness, has only a limited poetic value of its own. The major innovation lies in the relationship that Mandelstam establishes between two kinds of images differing from each other not only in perceptual modes but also in the degree of abstractness of their connotations. Given this distinction, the Apostles' Creed is both aural and abstract, while "the rainbows" and "the spray" are visual and material. The colon dividing the third and the fourth lines sets the two categories in a relationship of identity. 45 Going beyond mere literary innovation, the technique reflects a new attitude to language, an attempt to reactivate potential meanings hidden in a word 43. In his 1921 essay "Slovo i k u l ' t u r a , " M a n d e l s t a m misquoted a line of Verlaine's other poem " E c o u t e z la chanson bien douce . . . " by slipping into it "la chanson grise" from "Art p o é t i q u e . " T h e result was a line: "Ecoutez la chanson grise. . . . " By that time the sweetness must have gone out of Verlaine's old song. 44. C o m p a r e it with the following passage from Tyutchev's f a m o u s poem " V e s e n n j a j a g r o z a " : "Gremjat raskaty molodye, / Vol dozdik bryznul, pyl letit, / Povisli perly dozdevye, / I solnce niti zolotit. . . ." 45. Here, of course, the colon is used to " i n t r o d u c e direct s p e e c h , " to allow the Creed to become verbalized so that the reader could identify the n a m e with its " v e r b a l " substance.

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and to channel them in a specific direction. The Symbolists knew well how to release the associative memory of a word, how to let it shine, but focusing this memory into a beam of light was contrary to their poetic theory and practice.46 In the last two lines of the first stanza, we not only begin to see the Creed and hear the rainbows, but we also notice that the rainbows acquire the abstract quality of the Creed, and the Creed the materiality of the rainbows. Yet the two images do not merge into one; each undergoes its own, though parallel, metamorphosis, almost a transsubstantiation. The dogmata comprising the Creed receive the immediacy and tangibility of their primal meaning and become, as Mandelstam put it seven years later, "Flesh and bread." 47 The rainbows suspended in midair "remember" the day when they ceased to be just an atmospheric phenomenon and came to symbolize the Covenant that God announced to Noah: "When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh" (Genesis,9:13-15). In this context, even "the dust" ("spray" in our translation; but the Russian pyl', like its English equivalent, implies corruptibility and mortality) forgets its proper place and begins to hover above the ground. Mandelstam tightly controls the reawakened memory of his words. The "cupolas" go through a similar transformation, different only to the extent that their metonymic and periphrastic function endows them at once with the abstract and the material meaning. But here too, as in the case of the other three images, the immediate and the projected connotations are placed in a relationship closely approaching Mandelstam's "identity." On the material level, the cupolas' likeness to the heavenly spheres and their proximity to the sky set the visual context of the stanza high above the horizon. Yet they receive their support from a structure which firmly rests on the ground. The verb "utverdilsja" (affirmed itself), which predicates Rome's persistence in time on "the victory of the cupolas," indirectly reinforces this double meaning. On the one hand, it shares a common root with the noun tverd', which is a virtual equivalent of the English "firmament" or the sky; on the other, "utverdilsja" primarily connotes a state of being firmly attached to the ground. This pattern established by the material connotation of "the cupolas," their intermediary position between the ground and the sky, finds an exact replica in its abstract counterpart, the Roman Catholic Church, which for the faithful serves as a bridge between this world and the next. 48 It was this 46. Things of this world were of no interest to the Symbolists, a n d in their poetry they tried to bring out the mystical a n d other-worldly potential meaning of a word. And such a meaning cannot be expressed directly. This is why Vyacheslav Ivanov dwells so much on Tyutchev's f a m o u s d i c t u m in his "Zavety simvolizma" no. 10. 1910).

"mysl'izrecennaja est'loz'"

(Apollon,

47. "Slovo i k u l ' t u r a , " vol. 2, p. 223. 48. " . . .

pontifex . . . m e a n s both

a priest a n d a builder of a bridge which, u n d e r s t a n d a b l y , spans not over

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Church that gave a lasting form and filled with a new content the ancient Latin concept of "religio": "the mysterious chain, in the words of Mandelstam's contemporary, binding us (religans) to something above us whatever its essence." 49 Now, all the four images—the cupolas, the Creed, the elevated dust-spray, and the rainbows—snugly fit into the picture of Rome's eclectic religious history. And Mandelstam locks them into place by applying a rondo-like (aBBa) rhyming pattern. One mosaic is complete, but the poet intends to make two more pictures in which his subject will be presented from a different angle of vision. If, in the first quatrain, Mandelstam illuminates the evolution of Roman "religio" as a concept, in the second he attempts to reveal its substance and fixes his attention on what Ezra Pound once called "the luminous detail" of history. 50 One such detail is the Aventine Hill, and it sets the tone for the rest of the stanza. Plebs urbana, the alienated crowd of Ancient Rome, who often found refuge from the patrician domination on the Aventine, were known to be very receptive to foreign religious influences, much more so than their ordinary rivers but over the Styx, the Acheron, the Phlegethon and the Cocytus. . . Such was Vladimir Solovyev's "folk" etymology for the Latin "pontifex," but the idea was right. (Solovjev, Sobranie socinenij [St. Petersburg, 1901-1903), vol. 8, p. 277; translation is mine.) 49. "From time immemorial Rome and religion have been mysteriously related; not by accident, the very word 'religion,' which has been accepted by all civilized nations, originated in Rome. 'Religion' is not the same as faith, or confession, or virtue (blagocestie); it is a mysterious chain binding (religans) us to something above us whatever its essence." (F. Zelinskij, Iz zizni idej, vol. 3: Soperniki Khristianstva [St. Petersburg, 1907J, p. 2). The famous Polish scholar Tadeusz Zielinski < 1859-J944)—or, as he was known in Russia, Faddey Frantsevich Zelinsky—was one of the most popular, productive, and thorough classical philologists of Mandelstam's time (a bibliography of his works published prior to 1914 contains over 400 entries [Germes or Hermes, no. 4 (Feb. 1, 1914), pp. 84-87]). He worked primarily in the fields of classical philology, Roman history, and history of religions. Unwilling to limit himself to research and teaching at St. Petersburg University (1887-1920), he devoted much of his time to popularizing contemporary achievements of classical scholarship among the Russian intelligentsia. A collection of his more popular essays, published in three volumes under the title Iz zizni idej, together with practically countless translations from Latin and Greek authors, represents a major part of this effort. In 1921, Zielinski left Russia for Poland, where he resumed his teaching career at the University of Warsaw (1921-1939). We do not know whether Mandelstam ever read Zielinski's works or attended his lectures at St. Petersburg University, but the poet's interest in Roman history and culture makes his knowledge of Zielinski's less specialized writings not only possible but virtually certain. Moreover, according to the memoirs of Mandelstam's friend, poet Vladimir Al. Pyast (Vstreci [Moscow: Federacija, 1929], pp. 148, 168), Zielinski used to be a frequent participant in the gatherings at Vyacheslav Ivanov's "tower." In short, Mandelstam, a student at St. Petersburg University and often a guest at Vyacheslav Ivanov's, simply could not avoid knowing Zielinski. Therefore, in this essay we shall use Zielinski's work liberally in order to provide a background of contemporary scholarly opinion on the subject in which Mandelstam was so keenly interested. 50. Quoted in Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 152-153. Clarence Brown discusses at some length the striking similarities between Acmeism and Pound's lmagism (Mandelstam, pp. 136-139). For a student of Acmeism, reading Hugh Kenner's book will prove to be a literary revelation; the points of "contact" (though actual contact had never been made) are so numerous and telling that they make a comparative study virtually imperative. We shall mention here only one such point: the enormous influence of the "post-Schliemann's" classical philology (and not only classical proper) on the concepts of art, as well as time, of these two great poets of this century. For this writer, Hugh Kenner's discussion of Ezra Pound's concept of "vorticism" (The Pound Era, especially pp. 145-162) became instrumental in understanding the poetics of Mandelstam's "identity."

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haughty compatriots. Surrounded by a multitude of cults to choose from, they invariably leaned toward the ones that gave a more immediate, more tangible form to their "religio." On the contrary, the patricians, the adversaries of the Aventine, tended to remain loyal to their di indegetes or the native Latin gods whose worship often demanded a strict, virtually legalistic, observance of highly complicated ceremonies. As a consequence, patrician religious practice bore a far closer resemblance to the contestants' arguments in a patrician court of law than to a commoner's prayer.S1 The celebration of a Holyday's approach ("the eves of the Twelve Holy Days"), required by the calendar of the Catholic Church, brings out precisely this element of tangibility which the plebs sought in the Hellenic and Eastern religions until they finally found it in Christianity with its constant expectation of the return of the King. 52 However, by not capitalizing the word "king," Mandelstam, just as in the first stanza, wishes to stress the continuity in the religious sensibility of Rome. The victory of Christianity, he seems to suggest, did not constitute a breaking point but formed a knot marking the place where the new faith implanted itself on the body of the old but still vigorous religious tradition. As a poet with a good historical sense, Mandelstam understood that this change was produced by a long process; and as a "historian" with a good poetic sense, he found an expression for this process in a condensed image borrowed from history itself and capable of shedding light in both directions of the chronological axis. Mandelstam's "king" is one of many kings (though not all), and the "Aventine" can be another mount. The latter image possesses an even greater potency, for it draws into itself, as if into a vortex, both history and nature. The reform of the Roman calendar alluded to in the last two lines of the second stanza represents another such image. 51. " . . . gods and people (particularly those who worshipped di indegetes. G.F.] were believed to be bound with a strictly formal agreement based on summum juris; a minute deviation from the form of a prayer . . . could release the gods from the responsibility for people that they had accepted; and every social misfortune was explained precisely by such an unredeemed deviation. This is how deeply juridical consciousness penetrated religion." (F. Zelinskij, Istorija anticnoj kul'tury, part 2 [Moscow, 1915], p. 311.) The same subject is treated in Section VII of ZieliAski's long essay "Rim i ego religija" Uz zizni idej, vol. 3, pp. 38-48.) Here is another short but highly relevant passage from the above-mentioned essay: ". . . Patrician gods, just as their earthly counterparts, rejected the plebs who, naturally, leaned toward di novensides [Hellenic and Eastern gods, not native to Rome, G.F.]. And indeed, we know that the temple of Eleusian trinity (Ceres, Liber, Libera) on the Aventine became the religious center of the plebs and also a place where they would congregate to discuss secular matters" (p. 43). Theodor Mommsen, whose Römische Geschichte was still an unsurpassed authority in Mandelstam's time, had a somewhat less democratic comment to make on the plebs' infatuation with "sensuous" Eastern religions: "Überall ist mit der Völker- auch die Religionenmengung beständig im Steigen. Von allen erlaubten Culten war der populärste der der pessinuntischen Göttermutter, der mit seinem Eunuchencälibat. mit dem Schmausen, der Musik, den Bettelprozessionen und dem ganzen sinnlichen Gespränge der Menge imponirte." (Römische Geschichte, vol. 3 [Berlin, 1855J, Bk. 4, p. 402.) 52. The commentator of the Soviet edition of Mandelstam makes an error in his annotation to this poem: the dates of the Twelve Holydays of the Christian Church were determined not only by the sun, as he suggests, but by the phases of the moon as well. This is precisely the reason why three of the Twelve are "movable": Easter, Pentacost, and Palm Sunday. In this poem such an error may lead to an incorrect interpretation.

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Before the reform, the Romans, taking after the Greek fashion, reckoned months ("luna regit menses" [Ovid, Fasti, 3:83]) and years by the phases of the moon. But the lunar calendar did not coincide with regular seasonal changes (the solar year), and its continued use led to much chronological inconsistency which was made even worse by frequent additions and subtractions. In the words of Mommsen, the calendar of the Romans "ging vielmehr gänzlich ins Wilde." 53 Determined, often arbitrarily, by the Pontifical College (thus Mandelstam's "canonical moons"), the calendar interfered with the normal functioning of the state machine and, in more ways than one, reflected the Republic's own political and religious confusion. When Caesar assumed power, both institutions, the lunar year and the Republic, had to yield: one to the solar calendar, the other, though somewhat later, to the Empire. In the last two lines of the second stanza there is perhaps even an echo of what Caesar himself had to say about his reform: "And my solar year shall not be outdone by Eudoxus's fasti" (Nec meus Eudoxi vincetur fastibus annus).54 He could have said something similar about the fate of the Republic whose demise he helped to bring about. Mandelstam's own words, placed in the present tense, seem to acknowledge, in a highly compressed form, our debt to the concepts of time and state which we inherited from Ancient Rome. After all, we still use the Julian Calendar, only with slight modifications, and Caesar's political lessons still reach many a statesman's mind. The implications of the calendar reform were not, however, limited to the chronological and political spheres, but affected the religious trends as well. Once the solar year was established, it greatly contributed to the spread of the Sun Cult (its traces are still evident in Christian symbolism) and later influenced the decision of the early Church to move the celebration of Christmas to the winter solstice or, as the Romans called it, to "the birthday of the invincible sun" {"dies natalis solis invicti").ss On the same day, at least since 217 B.C.,56 Romans celebrated Saturnalia, the ancestor of the famous Roman carnival and Mardi Gras. This festival was meant to imitate and, through imitation, to invite back the bountiful reign of god Saturn and his "golden age." Utopian by nature, this celebration was nourished by, and itself nourished, the palingenetic expectations that were to sweep the Augustan Rome and to prepare the way for the advent of Christianity. 57 But this change in 53. Quoted in E. J. Bickerman's Chronology of the Ancient World (London, 1969), p. 41. Most of my chronological wisdom originated in this excellent book which, in a concise form, sums up modern knowledge of the ancient time-reckoning. Recently this book appeared in Russian under the title Khronologija drevnego mira (I. M. Seblin-Kamenskij, tr. [Moscow: Nauka, 1975]). 54. Lucan, Pharsalia, 10:187. Quoted in Bickerman, Chronology of the Ancient World, p. 47. 55. Ibid., p. 49. 56. Zelinskij, Iz zizni idej, vol. 3, pp. 50-51. 57. See, for example, the end of Virgil's famous Fourth Eclogue. F. Zielinski treats the history of the Ancients' millenarianism in great detail in his essay "Pervoe svetoprestavlenie" (Iz zizni idej, vol. 1 [St. Petersburg, 19081, 2nd ed., pp. 137-189).

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religious sensibility, marked by the Julian Calendar, in its own turn reflected important social and political transformations which Mandelstam implied in the first line of the second stanza ("the Aventine" and "the king"). Following deification of Caesar by his successor Augustus, Roman Emperors, both dead and living, began to be worshipped as gods of the official Roman religion; and this worship was particularly strong among the pariahs of Rome, freed slaves (Mandelstam's "Aventine"). For them a deified Augustus served as the only patron god, since they were not supposed to have a special relationship with the divine protectors of other Romans. 58 All through the years of the Caesars' Rome, the "king" (in Russian, car or czar, which is etymologically derived from the Latin caesar) awaited on "the Aventine," continued to acquire his new embodiments until one day he became Christ, the King, Whose Second Coming has been "always expected." Mandelstam completed his second portrait of Rome and it, too, can now be framed into a rondo-like rhyming pattern. The subject remained the same but, comparing the two stanzas side by side, one notices a striking difference in the dominant tone. While the first resounds in clear liquids, the second has a somewhat muted quality of voiceless plosives and nasal sounds, even though in some key words the liquids are retained (caRja, pRazdnikov, kaLendaRja). It is as though Mandelstam added some earth to his palette when he was mixing colors for the second stanza. Unlike Onegin and very much like Pushkin, Mandelstam did not mind dirtying his hands "in the chronological dust of world history" ("v khronologiceskoj pyli bytopisanija zemli" [Eugene Onegin, 1:6]) and he was rewarded for it with an excellent historical insight. The commentary on both the first and second stanzas might be continued for countless pages, and it would turn into a fat exegesis of Roman history beginning with the sack of Troy and ending in 1914. For the purposes of this essay, however, such a commentary is quite unnecessary. But that it can be done, and become not just a compendium of facts but a conceptually unified work, constitutes a great tribute to Mandelstam's poetic genius. In a few images contained in two short stanzas, he was able to summon up and concentrate enormous forces that energized and shaped centuries of Roman history; and by doing this, he also gave poetic substance to the emerging historical consciousness of his epoch, enabling it to deal with the approaching cataclysms of war and revolution. 59 In the last quatrain Mandelstam chose to pose together with his subject or, rather, with what little had remained of it by his own time. Curiously, the 58. Zelinskij, Istorija anticnoj kul'tury, pt. 2, pp. 327ff. 59. It is significant that Andrey Bely's Petersburg, which began appearing in 1913, uses the same myth of Saturn that Mandelstam alluded to in his poem, as the central structural element of the novel's Apocalyptic vision.

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Rome he presents now very closely resembles the Eternal City of the poem's beginning, but in the same way that a negative resembles a photographic print: sunlight gives way to moonlight; the hovering domes to the ruins sunken into the ground by the ages; and even the very miraculous "Rim" (Rome) is spelled backwards in the last stanza to produce "m/'r" (world), which is qualified by a downward epithet "dol'nij" (an archaic adjectival equivalent of the English "nether"). 6 0 Euphonic structure, too, undergoes a similar conversion. The same consonances that gave such a ringing and bright quality to the first lines of the poem are now tuned to a different key and create an opposite, grave impression. The means by which Mandelstam achieves this euphonic effect become evident when we consider that within a rondo-like rhyme scheme (AbbA or aBBa), the accented vowel of the initial rhyme produces, as it were, a primary vowel overtone. On the other hand, its counterpart in the middle of a quatrain (.BB. or .bb.) serves a secondary, contrapuntal function. This is not a general rule of Russian syllabotonics, but in a short poem consisting of three self-contained quatrains, an abba rhyme may possess a major structural significance. And it does so in our poem where rhymed vowels trace an intricate assonance pattern: / a E E a / , / a U U a / , / U a a U / , if we mark each rhyme by the accented vowel it contains. In such a context, a switch to an initial feminine rhyme, which occurs for the first and only time in the last stanza, gives the poem's conclusion an added distinction and sets it even further apart from the rest of the poem. Furthermore, the primary vowel overtone is no longer / a / , but a brooding and moody / u / with its prolonged resonance in the feminine end rhyme. And it is this overtone that accounts, in large measure, for the somber music of the last quatrain. The theme associated with the /u/-rhyme of the third stanza in fact has its euphonic origins in the counterpoint of the middle of the poem. True, its presence there is more or less subliminal, since the initial / a / of the first and second stanzas still strongly dominates the vowel overtone. Nevertheless, 60. "The universal Roman nation preserved the legend that the true name of the Eternal City ought to be read in a sacred, pontifical, way: from right to left; then it becomes transformed from "power" to "love": Roma (corresponds to the Greek pco^ir) or power, pcopa in the Dorian dialect; compare with the well-known xaipe pot, 'pO)(aa, iSuydiTip 'Apr|a^) when read in the ancient Semitic way, spells—Amor." (Vladimir Solov'jev, "Dukhovnaja drama Platona," in Sobranie socinenij, vol. 8, p. 277.) This passage from Vladimir Solovyev, whose Roman Catholic leanings are only too well known, provides us with an occasion to identify, though tentatively, the mysterious person mentioned by Mandelstam in his "K enciklike papy Benedikta XV" (1914, 71): ". . . Ja povtorjaju eto imja (Rome, G.F.) / Pod vecnym kupolom nebes, / Khot' govorivsij mne o Rime / Vsvjascennom sumrake iscez)" The "thunder" which can be heard in the "Apostolic sound: Roma" (sic!), Mandelstam says in the second stanza of the poem, cannot frighten the "dove" (an obvious image for "love" as well as the Holy Ghost; just as obvious as "thunder" stands for "power"). It is not hard to hear in this a clear echo of Solovyev's words. Besides, Nadezhda Mandelstam attests to the poet's admiration and knowledge of Solovyev's work (Hope Against Hope, ch. 49). On the other hand, G. P. Struve in his "Ital'janskie motivy i obrazy v poezii Osipa Mandel'stama" (Studi in onore diEttore Lo Gatto, p. 607) points to another possibility, P. Ya. Chaadaev. Vasily Rozanov, who with his usual dexterity picked up on Solovyev's etymology of "Roma" in his Ital'janskie vpecatlenija (St. Petersburg, 1909; p. 7), cannot be a serious contestant for the place, since by 1914 he had not yet "disappeared in the sacred twilight."

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already then the poet provides us with a euphonic hint that there exists a force attempting to negate the radiant Rome: "And the strictly canonical moons (luny)/Cannot change the calendar." But what could not be accomplished in the second stanza seems quite possible in the first and second lines of the third, where the /u/-rhyme, now feminine, shifts to the strong initial position. It appears that the sun's triumph was not final after all, and the moon's gigantic size leaves little doubt about the identity of the eventual victor. In euphonic terms, however, the memory of the sun theme is not obliterated altogether, but remains in the secondary /a/-rhyme of the last quatrain, reversing the contrapuntal relationship of the preceding stanza. Thus the conflict and tension of the poet's vision of Rome find their echo in the sound fabric of the poem. Indeed, in the final quatrain, the Roman past which was so skillfully resurrected, with all its contradictions, is suddenly transformed into mere rubble scattered around by the destructive power of time. Yet there is also present another force, the poet himself, standing ready to defy this power. Taking his position opposite such a formidable adversary, Mandelstam realizes that the contest may prove fatal, if not for his own person, then for his muse who may find the burden of world history unbearable. But his kinship with the tradition, and the reverence he feels for it, rule out the possibility of a retreat. True to his law of identity, Mandelstam transforms the initial reverence for the culture of Rome ("And bare is my head . . .") into a firmly binding commitment, knowing only too well how demanding and difficult this commitment will be: "Oh, the chill of the Catholic tonsure!" Mandelstam fulfilled his promise, but he could do it only because he was now properly equipped to deal with the task he set before himself. He now resolved to challenge the time of nature with a historical and dynamic perception of human existence, the very same tool that the devouring beast put into his hands. It no longer mattered that the roots of the cultural tree which once nourished Mandelstam's favorite cathedrals lay buried deep in the ground. The poet's keen eye could now see through the soil of time, while his ability to perceive and express identities could animate the past and endow it with the tangibility and warmth of the present. In his poetry, the Creed and the rainbows, the moon and the sun do not have to fear amnesia but can exist in the full consciousness of their past and each "speak of their own metamorphosis." 61 One question remains: What was Mandelstam's attitude to Catholicism proper? The poem gives an ambiguous answer, but this ambiguity is quite explicit. Christianity cannot be separated from the Roman culture to which Mandelstam pledges his commitment, but neither can the Covenant, the pagan religio, the Aventine, nor the Caesars. The poet's concern was for continuity in human existence and culture and not only for their "crowning 61. "Slovo i k u l ' t u r a , " vol. 2, p. 222.

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achievements," with which it would have been too easy to identify. The "tonsure" Mandelstam bestowed upon himself "chilled" him, unlike the laurels adorning a celebrated victor. No doubt Mandelstam felt a strong attraction to Catholicism and was partial to it. His admiration for harmony and order—which for a time were realized, or so he believed, 62 in the social and aesthetic values of Medieval Europe—may in part account for this attraction. The Roman Church could also offer the poet an established form for his rather amorphous religiosity evident in some of the "Stone" poems as well as in his early letters. 63 Moreover, Mandelstam may have turned toward Catholicism hoping to find in it a sense of belonging, a cultural as well as religious identity which he, an assimilated Jew, needed so much amidst petty anti-semitism and talk of ritual murder. 64 But this is a matter of Mandelstam's personal religion which properly ought to be left to his biographers. Our interest lies with his poetry, where distinctions between "a Hellene and a Hebrew" have a different meaning. In his "Roman cycle," Mandelstam was as much a Catholic as he was a mason in his architectural poems; and as a stone revealed to him its dynamic potential when placed in a vault or an arch, so did Catholicism demonstrate to him that heterogeneous historical and cultural elements were sometimes capable of producing a purposeful dynamic whole. There was, however, an important difference as well. Builders' stones represented a homogeneous mass, while the material of history had a fluid and protean nature. And yet— Mandelstam witnessed it for himself—Rome received it all, absorbed it, fitted it into its constantly moving structure, and did not collapse. If that were so, then perhaps what Rome transformed mattered less than how this transformation took place. And again, as in the case of architecture, where a 62. See "Utro akmeizma" and "Fransua Villon" in vol. 2. 63. Nos. 19, 30, and 117 (dated 1914 in the Soviet edition) and letters to V. V. Gippius and Vyacheslav Ivanov (vol. 2, pp. 483-484 and 486-488, respectively). As the two letters testify, Mandelstam was about to combine in his person the three evils that Dostoevsky believed were to bring eventual downfall to Russia: a Jew, a socialist (reading the Erfurt Program) and a Catholic. 64. A good example of the first can be found in the much-quoted story of Sergey Makovsky's (Portrety sovremennikov, [New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1955], pp. 377-378), which Nadezhda Mandelstam discusses at some length in Hope Against Hope (ch. 37) and which Clarence Brown quotes in full, reserving his judgment, in Mandelstam (pp. 42-44). Brown also quotes another source, Dr. A. Z. Steinberg, who recalled Mandelstam's obsessiveness with the "Jewish question" (p. 46). A good example of the second leads us to Vasily Rozanov, a writer whom Mandelstam greatly admired (vol. 2, pp. 248-250) and who in 1914 published in 3000 copies a book with a curious title: Obonjatel'noe i osjazateinoe otnosenie evreev k krovi or, to put it in English, The Sense of Smell and Touch in the Jewish Attitude Toward Blood (St. Petersburg, 1914). In this book Rozanov provides the reader with "scientific" evidence supporting the popular accusation that the Jews like nothing better than to murder Christian boys. He even preceded his treatise with an unattributed epigraph which says that "matters of science are decided not by counting votes but by scientific knowledge." Incidentally, he also recalls witnessing blood rites performed by the two famous members of St. Petersburg's Jewish intelligensia, N. Minsky (a poet) and his wife, in the presence of Merezhkovsky (p. 112).

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pattern of an arch or a vault assured the viability of a structure, Rome's historical design, consisting of intricate cultural patterns, made the survival of its civilization possible. Mandelstam knew that the same rule allowed poets to build their own sturdy structures, if only they could perceive and express "identities" between different sets of phenomena which formed into identical patterns like the Creed, the rainbows, and the Covenant. And it was Mandelstam's remarkable ability to apply this rule to his poetry that in Rome made him appear as a Roman, a Catholic, and later gave him the right to call the whole Mediterranean basin his own. Mandelstam's poetics of identical patterns becomes plainly evident in another "Roman" poem, dated 1915 (268*) but written in the same meter and sharing more than a few images with the one discussed above. Here the poet develops the "Aventine" theme much further and in a more singleminded way than in the previous poem. For the present purposes it seems unnecessary to quote the poem in full, and we shall simply retell it in a brief and adumbrated fashion. A rather unusual herd of sheep whom the poet calls also "black Chaldeans, 65 the heart of night hooded in darkness," are heading for "the sheep's Rome" or "the black Aventine." But instead of going in a more or less straight line, they are running in place, just "like lots in an enormous fortune wheel." And in a way reminiscent of the previous poem, they too desperately "need a king." It is possible, of course, that Mandelstam simply decided to describe a herd of sheep, but the obvious Old Testament and Christian symbolism together with the images borrowed from Roman history make it quite unlikely that the poet was limiting himself to a pastoral. Rather, Mandelstam confronted us here with an image of what we call "a common herd." However, he does so in such a way that we immediately perceive the pattern which originated countless centuries ago when there were many fewer people than sheep, and which persisted to the present day when the ancient numerical relationship has been reversed, to provide us with a useful metaphor for one mode of human behavior. The elements entering into this pattern do change with time, and Mandelstam briefly sketches a chronological axis, but the pattern itself remains the same whether it is placed in a Judaic, pagan, Christian, or secular culture. For a number of years Rome, itself a grand design, served Mandelstam as a repository for a virtually infinite number of such patterns. And in 1917, the 65. "Aber weit populärer noch waren natürlich die unerlaubten und die Geheimculte. Schon zu Catos Zeit hatte der Chaldäische Horoskopensteller angefangen dem etruskischen Eingeweide-, dem Marsischen Vogelschauer Concurrenz zu machen." (Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, vol. 2 [Berlin, 1855], Bk. IV, p. 402.) Here the Soviet commentator of Mandelstam's poetry is again misleading when he says that the Chaldeans were simply "a people of Semitic origin who lived raising sheep and cattle (zanimalis' skotovodstvom) on the shores of the Persian Gulf." (Mandel'stam, Stikhotvorenija, p. 310.)

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poet's adherence to his law of identity and an uncanny historical perception made it even possible for him to declare the Eternal City to be "Man's place in the universe . . . without which both homes and altars were worthy to be despised as pathetic rubbish" (81*). In order for human existence to have meaning, the poet now believed, cultural continuity has to be maintained, but that can only be done if basic patterns are retained to pass on memory to succeeding generations. Rome possessed an enormous store of such patterned memory, and in his "Roman cycle" the poet made an attempt to impart this memory to his contemporaries as if trying to forestall the day when an amnesiac grand design would begin destroying the poet himself and the memory of his generation. 66 But poets do not change the course of events, all they can do is to be prophets in their own land. And Mandelstam became one when he returned from his "pilgrimage" to Rome. Now, to use the poet's own words, "people could point at him with a superstitious reverence, as once at Dante, and say: 'That one has been there, he has seen it—and he came back.'" 6 7 In order to shed some light on how and why Mandelstam resolved "to come back," we shall have to turn to another Russian "pilgrim" whom Mandelstam could even have met on his way to Rome, had he traveled there some ninety years earlier. 68

VII. FREE SPIRIT The imprint Chaadaev left in the consciousness of Russian society is so deep and indelible that one cannot help but wonder: Was it a diamond cutting glass? O. MANDELSTAM, "Chaadaev"

The "pilgrim," a Russian philosopher of history, Petr Chaadaev, lived in Russia and wrote in French in the first half of the nineteenth century. A brilliant essay and three poems Mandelstam wrote in 1914, 1915, and 1917 66. "Among the people of my generation, only a very few have kept clear minds and memories. In M's [Mandelstam's, G.F.) generation, everybody was stricken by a kind of sclerosis at an early stage." (Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, p. 357.) This is Mandelstam's "law of identity" at work: both the metaphorical and the literal meanings are simultaneously present. 67. "Petr Caadaev," vol. 2, p. 292. 68. Mandelstam obviously was not the only one in his generation to make such a "pilgrimage," and the evidence to support this contention can be found in a rather cryptic passage in Zielinski's "Rim i ego religija": "We may even say that the less a person's worldview fits into the framework of a well defined confession, the more this person will be affected by Rome's power of attraction as the world's religious center. We have seen such examples in our very recent past, and Rome's grandeur cannot be diminished by those arbitrary and base interpretations which it has received and still receives by virtue of the poor and narrow vision of the interpreters." (/z zizni idej, vol. 3, p. 3).

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(66, 69, and 71 )69 testify to the profound significance the poet ascribed to Chaadaev's writings. Like Mandelstam, Petr Chaadaev was preoccupied with the idea of reconciling permanence with change, of finding meaning in the passage of time which threatens both individuals and nations with sudden oblivion. Chaadaev's thoughts grew out of a certain mixture of rationalism and fascination with religion, and in this respect he was little different from his contemporaries or from the contemporaries of Mandelstam, not to speak of Mandelstam himself. However, Chaadaev was—and it has to be emphasized —a Christian thinker who firmly believed that the Kingdom of God, the ultimate goal of human existence, could be realized here on earth if people were to draw the right conclusions from the lessons of history through which God's design had been revealed. Social unity, complete intellectual, cultural, and religious integration, were the tasks facing humanity, if it wished to build and eventually enter the Kingdom of God. 70 Within this historiosophical framework, the Middle Ages in Western Europe were a time when, according to Chaadaev, human activity was at its most consistent with Divine Providence. Like many of his Romantic contemporaries in the West, Chaadaev saw the reason for this consistency in the fact that the Catholic Church held in its hands the reins of political, cultural, social, and national development, uniting various peoples into one Christian nation. J u s t t h i n k , f o r f i f t e e n c e n t u r i e s , every y e a r o n t h e s a m e d a y a n d h o u r they [ t h e p e o p l e of W e s t e r n E u r o p e ] , u s i n g t h e s a m e w o r d s , h a d b e e n r a i s i n g t h e i r voices in g l o r i f y i n g t h e S u p r e m e B e i n g f o r t h e g r e a t e s t of H i s d e e d s . "

Even the Reformation could not efface the imprint of the idea of unity which continued to exist in the secular institutions firmly rooted in Christian tradition. The time would come, Chaadaev believed, when the universal light would eventually bring mankind together in the eternal Kingdom of God on earth. These thoughts on the meaning of history must have had a major appeal for Mandelstam. As the poet found a symbol for the fusion of permanence 69. Since the evidence to support either our or G. P. Struve's interpretation of this poem (see note 60 above) cannot be considered conclusive, we chose to include this poem in the list as well. We also feel justified in doing so because Vladimir Solovyev, in more ways than one, duplicated Chaadaev's ideas on Rome. And given Mandelstam's "law of identity," it would be safe to suppose that both thinkers had a place in this poem. 70. For an exposition of Chaadaev's ideas on history, in a brief form, and for an English translation of his work, see Raymond T. McNally, "An Analysis of Chaadaev's Main Ideas on History" which serves as an introduction for The Major Works of Peter Chaadaev, with translation and commentary by Raymond T. McNally (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969). 71. P. Ya. Chaadaev, "Filosoficeskie pis'ma," in Mikhail Gersenzon, P. Ja. Caadaev (St. Petersburg, 1908), p. 219.1 prefer to quote Chaadaev from this edition rather than from McNally's, because it was the one available to Mandelstam.

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and change in Gothic architecture, so Chaadaev saw in it the embodiment of his idea of purposeful historical development: You ask me what there is in common between the lancet domes and the Pharaoh's Pyramids? . . . D o we not witness here [in the Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic styles] the whole history of man's thought which at first was thrust toward heaven in its original purity, then, at the time of its corruption, grovelled in the dust and, finally, was again thrust toward Heaven by the hand of the Savior."

But it was Chaadaev's meditation on Russia's place in history which must have struck Mandelstam the most. According to Chaadaev, Russia was one of those nations "which, as though not belonging to mankind, exist only in order to give the world a certain important lesson"—a lesson, that is, on what a nation should not be. 73 Russia had cut herself off from the West's sacred development and was wandering in the darkness, subjecting herself to every whim of time: Our memories do not extend further than yesterday; we are, so to speak, foreign to our own selves. We move in time in such a strange manner that with each step forward past moments disappear never to return. . . . W e have absolutely no internal development, no natural progress; old ideas are replaced by new ones and leave no trace because the new does not flow from the old but turns up from God knows where.' 4

Mandelstam—a Jew by birth and, like Chaadaev, a European by virtue of his upbringing—must have wondered about his relationship to the country where he was born and lived. And Chaadaev's writings seem to have resolved, at least partially, Mandelstam's identity crisis. Since Russia lacked tradition in the Chaadaevian sense, she could not determine the consciousness of her people to the same extent that it happened in the West. At least on an intellectual plane, being a Europeanized Jew in Russia was almost identical with being a Europeanized Russian, since both were simultaneously foreign and native to their own country. Eventually Mandelstam came to use Chaadaev's argument in a way very reminiscent of another famous Russian European, Alexander Herzen, who saw in Russian-ness the source of a virtually absolute inner freedom. To be born in Russia meant for Herzen to obtain release from the laws of historical necessity; and the spirit of European culture could permeate a Russian mind, meeting no resistance from the native tradition or its nasty byproduct, national prejudice.' 5 Herzen was right and so was Chaadaev, or so Mandelstam believed; and this contradiction, he thought, could only be resolved through a conscious choice: 72. Ibid., p. 211. 73. Ibid., p. 210. 74. Ibid., p. 210. 75. See A. 1. Gercen,

Socinenija

(Moscow, 1956) vol. 3;

Pis'ma iz Francii i Italii,

pp. 7-230.

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Mandelstam

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H a v i n g given us i n n e r f r e e d o m , Russia o f f e r s us a choice; a n d t h o s e w h o m a d e this choice a r e g e n u i n e R u s s i a n p e o p l e w h a t e v e r their [spiritual, c u l t u r a l , a n d , we m a y p r e s u m e , e t h n i c a n d religious, G.F.] association m a y b e . B u t woe u n t o those w h o h a v i n g circled a r o u n d their nest, f a i n t h e a r t e d l y c o m e b a c k . (Vol. 2, p. 292.)

Not to make this choice was tantamount to denying cultural continuity and with it the essential condition of a meaningful existence in time: the memory of past generations. And now that Mandelstam could perceive recurrent cultural patterns and a potential for "identity" between "the word and the deed," the past no longer had to be a dead ballast; it could persist into the present, retaining all the immediacy it used to possess before, and thus assure the poet's present of a place in the memory of the future. / l a 6y.ueT B c T a p o c T H n e i a u b MOM CBeTjia: 5\ B PHMe p o f l H j i c s , H OH KO MHe BepHyjicji; MHe oceHb

flo6pa«

BOJIMMUCK) 6 b u i a

M — M e c a u u e 3 a p e i i — M H e aBrycT yjibi6Hyjicfl.

1915, 8 0

[ M a y t h e g r i e f of m y o l d a g e b e b r i g h t : / I w a s b o r n in R o m e a n d R o m e r e t u r n e d t o m e ; / K i n d a u t u m n w a s m y m o t h e r - w o l f , / A n d t h e m o n t h of C a e s a r s , A u g u s t , s m i l e d to me.)

At last Mandelstam found his own human time capable of integrating the past, "patterned" into history, into the present of his poetic personality. The spirit of his poetry overcame the dread of physical oblivion and was now free, as Dante's once was, to speak with his predecessors with the intimacy of a contemporary. The "soil of time" about which Mandelstam spoke in his "Fransua Villon" (vol. 2, p. 307) could now be upturned—it would only better nourish and sustain the new seeds of Mandelstam's poetry. And what began as the Acmeist "nostalgia for world culture" 76 now allowed the poet to reanimate his cultural heritage and endow it with the quivering immediacy of the present. This shift in Mandelstam's perception of time became most obvious in the two poems, the concluding one in Stone and the opening one in his new collection Tristia.11 In the first, he is still a "nostalgic" spectator separated from "another world," Racine's Phedre and Racine's time, by a "mighty drapery": T e a T p PacHHa! M o i u H a n 3aBeca H a c OTFLEJIAET OT a p y r o r o M H p a ; 76. See note 30 above. 77. Though Tristia was not compiled by the poet himself, it nevertheless represents a new stage in the development of his art. O n the history of the publication, see Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, ch. 41, where she discusses the significance of "cycles" in Mandelstam's poetry and says, among other things; " T h e word 'phase' refers to stages in the growth of a person's outlook—his changing view of the world and his own work. Tristia consists of poems which came to M. as he was waiting for the Revolution and as he experienced it in the early days." See also N. 1. Khardzhiev's annotation referring to the history of Tristia's publication in O . Mandel'stam, Stikhotvorenija (Leningrad, 1973), pp. 251-252.

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niy6oKHMH MOpiUHHaMH BOJIHyH, M e » HHM H HAMH 3AHABEC ne>KHT.

1915,81

. . . Racine's theatre! A m i g h t y drapery divides us f r o m a n o t h e r w o r l d . A curtain waving in d e e p f o l d s lies b e t w e e n it a n d us . . . "

But in the second poem, "Phaedra," the curtain has risen, and Mandelstam's voice, defying chronological decay, merges with the voice of Racine and the chorus of the ancient Hellas: . . . M zijifl MaTepw Bjito6jieHHO0 CojiHue nepHoe B30ii.neT. — O ecjiH 6

HeHaBHCTb

B rpyaw

Moeft KHnejia—

H o BHflHTe—caMO npH3HaHbe c ycT cjieTe.no.

—HepHbiM nnaMeHeM

O e a p a TOPHT

Cpe.au 6 e j i o r o AH». n o r p e 6 a j i b H b i H (fraiceji i a n n T CpeziH 6 e j i o r o AH». Boficfl MaTepn Tbi, M n n o j w r : « P e a p a — H O I B — T e 6 a CTOPOJKHT CpeflH 6 e j i o r o AHH. . . .

1916, 8 2

. . . A n d for the e n a m o r e d m o t h e r a black s u n will rise. — O , if it w e r e h a t e t h a t b u r n e d in my b r e a s t — b u t y o u s e e t h a t t h e c o n f e s s i o n f l e w itself f r o m m y lips. P h a e d r a b u r n s with a black f l a m e in b r o a d daylight. A f u n e r a l torch s m o u l d e r s in b r o a d daylight. Fear thy m o t h e r , H i p p o l y t u s : P h a e d r a , the n i g h t , is w a t c h i n g y o u In b r o a d daylight. . . .

Another pattern, the one that Euripides passed on to Racine, had now become Mandelstam's own. The poet's ability to fuse past and present, "to tie with a flute the knotted joints of days" ("Vek"; 1922, 118*), would assure the survival of his poetry for future readers. He would lift up the Word like a priest administering the Eucharist and would show it to time. He would become the second Joshua and would stop the sun, but time, human time, would continue to flow so that human beings could accomplish their battle. 78. This and the following poem are in Clarence Brown's translation

(Mandelstam, p.

208 and 212-213).

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VIII. THE METAMORPHOSIS The first eight years of Mandelstam's poetic career, which culminated in the 1916 collection Kamen', represented a major achievement on the part of the young poet. During this time when his voice reached maturity, he succeeded in creating a new poetic vision capable of reawakening the memory of his culture and giving shape to the consciousness of his time. But even though the collection possesses an immediate and independent aesthetic significance, it cannot be properly appreciated outside the literary context of the decade preceding its appearance. Mandelstam himself, by arranging the poems in a largely chronological order and by including the first Kamen' in the 1916 edition, wanted to emphasize both continuity and change in the development of his poetry, whose origins undoubtedly belonged to the symbolist tradition. As one of the founders of Acmeism, a new movement in Russian poetry, he must also have considered his collection to be a statement of poetic substance supporting the aesthetic declarations of the new generation of poets. Therefore, in concluding the present essay, we would like to focus once again on the innovative aspects of Mandelstam's early development which, in retrospect, can be seen as a turning point in the evolution of Russian letters. When Mandelstam's name first began to appear in St. Petersburg journals, Russian poetry was already undergoing a profound transformation. The star of Russian Symbolism, which had produced so many brilliant poets, was on the wane, but the new poetic sensibility still remained to be created. This period of transition was marked both by public disagreements among the Symbolists themselves" and by the appearance of literary manifestoes announcing the demise of Symbolism and offering new alternatives to the still prevalent aesthetic doctrine. 80 This controversy touched on the basic questions confronting any theory of art and inevitably took the form of an ancient philosophical argument on the nature of artistic creation and its relation to reality. Though itself not entirely homogeneous, the Symbolist movement in Russia had several common denominators in poetic practice as well as in theory. Among them, the concept of redemption through art and the rejection of actual experience as either evil or insignificant ("revolt against nature") formed the core of the symbolist aesthetics. The poets belonging to the "mystical" wing, like Alexander Blok, Andrey Bely, and Vyacheslav Ivanov, maintained that poetry acquires value only if it opens the gates to the other-worldly reality concealed from mortals by the illusion of actual 79. Aleksandr Blok, "O sovremennom sostojanii russkogo simvolizma" ( A p o l l o n , 1910, no. 8) and Valerij Brjusov, "O 'reci rabskoj', v zascitu poezii," ( A p o l l o n , 1910, no. 9). For the statements by Vjaceslav Ivanov, see note 37 above. 80. See notes 14 and 30 above.

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existence.81 To put it in Platonic terms, they believed that they could avoid imitating appearances by rejecting them altogether and by establishing a direct link to the true world of ideas. A Symbolist of a more sober bent, Valery Bryusov, considered not the other world but art itself to be the ultimate reality.82 For him, actual existence had no value apart from being a catalyst of poetic expression; only when the poet's genius transformed experience into a purely aesthetic entity, an artifact, did it deserve to be called real. In Bryusov's view, nature and human environment were an amorphous mass, and a poet could give meaning to his existence only in an aesthetic universe created solely by his poetic intuition. As a result, both Symbolist approaches, the "mystical" and the "aesthetic," rejected reality, in the literal sense of the word, and this rejection proved to be the Achilles' heel of their aesthetics. What the Symbolists ignored was the transfigurative power of art, its ability to present human experience as ideal, but at the same time to give to the ideal the quality of the immediate and the actual. No doubt they were brilliant poets and in their poetic practice they amply compensated for what they overlooked in theory. However, when their movement reached an impasse— and the Symbolists were the first to acknowledge it—they fell back on their old theories and were unable to account for or to guide the new currents emerging in Russian poetry. The Acmeists quite naturally made the sore spot of the Symbolist tradition a strong point of their own theory, although there were, of course, numerous other factors contributing to the creation of the new movement. In other words, the Symbolist "oversight" provided the Acmeists with effective ammunition for attacking their former tutors and, more importantly, helped them to formulate the positive part of their aesthetic program. Thus an Acmeist Mandelstam came to view poetry as an instrument of creation. But unlike Bryusov, he perceived the "word" as both the original creator and the basic building block of the universe, at once real and ideal. Moreover, he believed in identity between the impressions received by human consciousness of the world outside and the outside world itself, therefore rejecting the 81. For Blok and Ivanov, see the already cited sources (notes 37 and 79 above). For Andrey Bely, see his collections of essays, Simvolizm (Moscow: Musaget, 1910), especially "Smysl iskusstva" (pp. 195-230). In this essay, among other things, one can find the following definition of art: "The essence of art is the Absolute (bezustovnoe nacalo) which reveals itself by means of this or that aesthetic form" (p. 199). And further: "The meaning of art can only be defined in terms of finding the meaning of seen images or feelings. But this meaning is religious" (p. 223). (Translation is mine.) 82. "Like the realists, we [the symbolists, G.F.] believe that life alone is subject to artistic embodiment (voploscenie); but while they sought for it outside themselves, we turn our sight inward. . . . To express one's thoughts and feelings, which are the only reality accessible to our consciousness—this is what the artist's task has become. . . . When artists believed that their goal was to represent the exterior (of life, G.F.|, they tried to imitate the exterior, seen images, to duplicate them. Having realized that the subject of art is in the depth of feelings, in the spirit, they had to alter their artistic method. This is how art arrived at the symbol." (Valerij Brjusov, "Svjascennaja zertva," Vesy, no. 1, 1905. I quote this essay from Brjusov, Sobranie socinenij [Moscow: Khudozestvennaja literatura, 1975], vol. 6, p. 97; translation is mine.)

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necessity for "poetic intuition" and mystical insight. 83 According to Mandelstam, a poet had to be first and foremost a superb craftsman who knew his material well enough to compete with the mastery of nature, for this alone was sufficient for creating a living artistic form, both actual and ideal. On the one hand, the Acmeists' statements were undoubtedly meant as an announcement of their serious intent to change the course of Russian literary history. But on the other hand, they also represented an attempt to gain a theoretical understanding of the new elements already present in their poetry. Seen from this perspective, even the earliest poems of Mandelstam such as "Zvuk . . ." (1, 1908) and "Dykhanie" (8, 1909), written under a strong Symbolist influence, begin to reveal the emerging poetic perception of a new kind. Their uniqueness lies in their dealing with the actual world and experience, where temporality is a necessary condition of existence. But as he was still confined to the Symbolist value system, Mandelstam at that time could not go beyond translating his new sensibility into the available language, inadequate as it was for expressing material categories. The result was a clash between the received vision and Mandelstam's own, as yet illdefined, mode of perception; or, to put it in different terms, between the eternity and infinity of the Symbolist worldview and the categories of time and space which determined Mandelstam's view of nature and his own existence. It was precisely this clash that brought about the poet's initial preoccupation with the problem of time. The conflict could, of course, easily have been avoided if only Mandelstam had chosen to close his eyes to the real world. But the young poet preferred to abandon his claim to "eternity" rather than question the truth of his own vision. Mandelstam paid this price in the poems that followed the "stasis" period, when all he attempted to do was to echo the sound of nature's life in time ("Rakovina," or "Seashell," 26, 1911). Yet, however painful this experience may have been, there was much to be gained from it. Poetry, Mandelstam now realized, could not solely deal with the eternal and the infinite, nor could it imitate what was only temporal and finite. At this point, the new poetic vision—the elements of which were to enter into the Acmeist doctrine —began to acquire shape. Transience and eternity, as categories of perception, coexist in human consciousness, and as soon as Mandelstam declared in his "Morning of Acmeism" that human consciousness and language were identical with nature, he firmly established the foundation of his aesthetic theory. Now he could offer his own interpretation of the ancient dictum that art imitates nature. For Mandelstam, to "imitate" did not mean to reflect or to repro83. "It is possible to build only for the sake of the 'three dimensions,' for they are the conditions of all architecture." ("Utro akmeizma," vol. 2, p. 323.) This is how Mandelstam formulated the relationship between art and reality.

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duce in a different medium nature's work, it meant to create—as nature or God creates. The word, "logos"—Mandelstam himself used the Greek equivalent in his essay-manifesto84—was at once eternal and temporal. It responded to human touch and, like the stone from the same essay, it asked to be placed in the middle of a groined arch or a vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. 85 The word contained in itself the potential for its own time and space, and the task of a poet, just as that of a sculptor or a mason working with stone, was to realize this potential in his art. Only then would poetry become an extension and an equal of nature. Now the conflict between the temporal and the eternal, which had caused more than one crisis in Mandelstam's development, resolved itself in a unified poetic vision. He realized that neither category cancelled the other out in consciousness or in language, both of which reflected the true state of his own being and of the world outside. In his universe, time would allow him to create new forms and permanence would assure their survival. Finally, poetry became for Mandelstam a living form establishing its own time which would not cease to flow as long as the culture that produced it continued to exist in the consciousness of men. While Mandelstam was formulating his new concept of poetry, both in the theoretical statements and in the poems of the 1912-1913 period (the sonnets and the architectural poems), he began to explore the ways in which cultures resolved the eternal contradiction inherent in the perception of time. The shape a culture would take, he found, depended to a great extent on a culture's attitude to time. The Orthodox East virtually rejected change and produced a vision of timeless existence. By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church, especially during the Middle Ages, helped a culture to organize its life in time by establishing a mnemonic continuum capable of using time's creative essence. The Western way was much more congenial to the poet's current attitude, but Mandelstam's infatuation with Catholicism nearly severed his own cultural roots. It was then that Mandelstam discovered how poetry could reanimate cultural memory and endow it with the immediacy of the present. Cultures, he realized, established patterns according to which new historical experience was transformed. Events that filled these patterns with content differed with time, but the patterns themselves persisted and were little affected by 84. "Slow was the birth of the 'word as such.' Gradually, one by one, all the elements of the word were drawn into the concept of form; only the conscious meaning, Logos, is still arbitrarily and mistakenly considered to be the content. Logos merely loses from this unnecessary honor; Logos demands only to be equal to other elements of the word. . . . For Acmeists, the conscious meaning of the word, Logos, is a form as beautiful as music for the Symbolists." ("Utro akmeizma," vol. 2, p. 321.) 85. "Tyutchev's stone . . . is the word. . . . It is as though the stone began yearning for a different existence. By itself it revealed its concealed potential for dynamism; as it were, asked to be placed into the 'groined arch' in order to participate in the joyous interaction with its own kind." ("Utro akmeizma," vol. 2, p. 322.)

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change. In the course of history, new patterns might arise, but once they were formed they would leave a virtually permanent imprint on the consciousness of a culture. By concentrating on these patterns, by revealing them, a poet could almost at will shorten the chronological axis of a culture's history and bring its past to life. When Mandelstam made this discovery, he still felt dissatisfied with the cultural heritage Russia had to offer him, considering it to be too thin and too amorphous in comparison to the West. "There" and not "here," he believed, people managed to overcome the dread of time. They saw in change the necessary condition for a new creation, yet their past would not sink into oblivion with each turn their history would take. Before long, however, Mandelstam, not unlike other Russian thinkers, began to see in Russia's "weak memory" a potential virtue. Since Russia, he now thought in the wake of Alexander Herzen, did not possess a firm tradition, she could not lay exclusive claims on the consciousness of her people. This dialectical twist allowed Mandelstam to come to terms with his own identity as an outsider and to claim in his essay "Petr Caadaev" that a truly Russian mind (obviously meaning himself) could absorb Western heritage without the usual inhibitions caused by a more established culture. Only later would Mandelstam find out that the reverse was more often the case. But for now he came to understand that a poet's task was not to identify with any particular culture—and his own background gave him such a choice—but to be a guardian of cultural memory, keeping its flame alive for the generations of the present and the future. The concept of time which he eventually developed in the Kameti' period would allow him to accomplish this onerous task. With the appearance of Kamen' in 1916, the philosophical line in the development of Russian poetry, stretching from Mikhail Lomonosov to Innokenty Annensky, was assured of survival. But Mandelstam also brought into Russian poetry a decidedly new quality which stemmed from his belief in the transfigurative power of art, its ability to be an equal partner of nature in creation. In his poetry, human culture and nature met and began to exchange and share their physical and spiritual qualities (e.g., "Pogovorim o Rime . . . ," 56, 1914). The time of nature became human time, and the cultural past acquired the actual immediacy of nature. No longer did human consciousness have to envy, ignore, reject, or revolt against nature, for in Mandelstam's poetry both were indissolubly linked. In his later writings this vision would be developed more fully; but already in 1916, when he was still a "young" poet, Mandelstam demonstrated to his contemporaries a metamorphosis in which nature and civilization could be seen as one. The final question: Did Mandelstam's poetry defy time? This old critical platitude will have to remain what it has always been—a meaningless statement, whether the answer is affirmative or not. What Mandelstam's poetry

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defied was not time, but oblivion and death in human life as well as in nature. And it is a tribute to Mandelstam's genius that already in his early poetry he offered us a universe founded on human time, where permanence and change, spirit and nature are engaged in an eternal metamorphosis of creation. Helsinki—Berkeley, 1975

EXCERPTS FROM THE DIARIES OF KORNEY CHUKOVSKY RELATING TO BORIS PILNYAK Translated, and edited by Vera T. Reck1

The night of Easter Sunday, April 31-May 1, 1921 [Petrograd] On the way remembered Pilnyak's telling me in the night: "Say what you will, but Gorky is outdated. A good man, but as a writer— outdated." March 22, 1922 [Petrograd] I have just found out about Doroshevich's death. 2 The last time I saw him was about two months ago, under circumstances very painful to me. Two Muscovites came to Piter:3 Kusikov 4 and Pilnyak. They came on their way to Berlin. Their hands were full of wild money: they had sold to Ionov s some manuscripts which had been sold elsewhere at the same time, went on a binge, and I accidentally found myself in their orbit: I, Zamyatin, and Zamyatin's wife. We went to some cafe on Nevsky, took a separate room—dank and foul—and went on a spree. After my back-breaking life this seemed 1. The excerpts were given to the translator by Chukovsky on May 29, 1969. 2. Vlas Mikhaylovich Doroshevich (1864-1922), well known and very popular columnist, essayist and drama critic; he was also editor of the Moscow Russkoe Slovo. He died of cancer of the stomach soon after the events described in this entry. This was Doroshevich's second and final death. In the October 1920 issue of Vestnik Literatury, there appeared a fairly long and highly laudatory obituary titled, "Vlas Mikhajlovic Dorosevic," which begins with the words, "We have received a telephone call from Moscow informing us of the death in Sebastopol of Vlas Mikhaylovich Doroshevich of stomach cancer." (A. Kaufman, "Vlas Mikhajlovic Dorosevic," Vestnik Literatury, No. 10, 1920, pp. 12-13). In the same journal, several months later, was published a Letter to the Editor from the "deceased." "Citizen Editor: It was with a warm feeling that I read my obituary in Vestnik Literatury. Everything in it is true, with the exception of one statement: 1 am not dead. The news is somewhat premature. Forgive me please, but 1 am alive—something I wish everyone else with all my heart. Salut et fraternité. The late V. Doroshevich Petersburg, August 7, 1921." ("Letter to the Editor," Vestnik Literatury, No. 8, 1921, p. 19). 3. Piter—popular for St. Petersburg. 4. Aleksandr Borisovich Kusikov (1896-1977), Imaginist poet. 5. Ilya Ionovich lonov (1887-1942), director of the Petrograd branch of GIZ (State Publishing House).

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amusing to me. Pilnyak—tall, with the face of a German colonist, 6 mumbling, drunk, sweaty, slobbery, wearing a long sheepskin coat—was very charming. Kusikov would say to him: "Say bublik." "Bublik." "Stupid! 7 1 said respublika and you say bublik. See how drunk you are." They drank brudersaft, first to "you," then to "we," 8 paid four million' and left. From the morning on Pilnyak was obsessed with the thought that it was imperative for him to visit Guber, 10 who lives on the Petersburg Side (Pilnyak, no matter how much drinking is going on, never loses sight of his interests: Guber had written a review of his work and Pilnyak wanted to encourage Guber to more efforts of this nature). He called an izvozcik11— and the three of us set off for the Petersburg Side. After visiting Guber we wandered into the building of the Rossiya Insurance Company; Shkapskaya 12 was there, and Pilnyak immediately began smooching her. We cracked jokes, read poetry—and suddenly someone said casually that Doroshevich was in the next room. "What Doroshevich?" "Vlas Mikhaylovich." "No!" "Yes. He is sick." I did not listen to the rest, I rushed into the adjoining room—and saw an emaciated, glum, long, dull, indifferent something not in the least resembling the former wit and gourmand. Every few seconds he uttered this sort of sound: "Ga!" He was short of breath. The intervals between these "ga" were regular, as if measured by a metronome, and this made him resemble an object, an instrument rather than a living human being. I stood there a while looking; he recognized me, extended to me an emaciated hand—and suddenly I felt such tenderness toward him that it became difficult for me to go back to those drunken ones, and still alive. 6. This is a reference to Pilnyak's Volga G e r m a n ancestry; his family n a m e was Vogau. 7. Stupid!— Durakl in the original. 8. Oni pill brudersaft na vy, potom na my. Drinking brudersaft (from Brliderschaft) is a ritual of affirming friendship in which two persons link right arms, simultaneously drain their glasses, and then kiss. After this they use the familiar f o r m of address, ty. Here the last p h a s e of the process is reversed in the one case (drinking to the formal " y o u " ) a n d carried to the a b s u r d in the other. 9. Four million—in the grossly inflated roubles of the time. 10. Petr Konstantinovich G u b e r (1886-1941), writer, literary scholar; " r e p r e s s e d " a n d "posthumously rehabilitated." 11. Izvozcik—a

horse-drawn cab.

12. Mariya Mikhaylovna S h k a p s k a y a (1891-1952), poet, writer.

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September 29, 1922 [Petrograd] Yesterday I was at Annenkov's 13 —he was painting a portrait of Pilnyak. Pilnyak is not yet thirty-five,14 his face is long—that of a German colonist. He was sober, but his tongue was sluggish as with a drunk. When he talks a lot, he mumbles unintelligibly. But his eyes are sly and, even when he is drunk, piercing. In general, he is a shrewd and tough man: he told us that in Berlin he was cozy all at once with Gessen, 15 with the Soviet people there, and with Chernov 16 . . . mainly while getting drunk. There is craft and cunning in this "while getting drunk"; while getting drunk it is easier to make friends with the people who can be useful to you and these useful people soften up. With all sorts of leather jackets 17 he knocks about the various "Bristols," 18 and they sign for him the required scraps of paper. In general, he feels himself the conqueror of life—the wisest and the foxiest of men. "With publishers I am like that!" 19 Annenkov began a pencil drawing of him but then was tempted by his red hair and began working in color—watercolors and colored pencils. After the sitting he took us to a pub on Liteiny. And there the three of us drank four bottles of beer. He [Pilnyak] told us about his Berlin adventures: "Lundberg20 is one of those ambitious failures, anguished and erratic. He found out somehow that I, Bely, and Remizov were going to read at Gessen's for the benefit of the Writers' Union, and said to me, 'What are you doing? You will ruin yourself. You cannot read at Gessen's.' I . . . told Gessen about that. Gessen 13. Yury Pavlovich Annenkov (1889-1974), portraitist, painter, designer. A striking drawing of Piinyak by Annenkov is reproduced in the artist's memoirs, Dnevitik moikh vslrec, Cikl tragedij, (New York, 1966), 1:287. 14. At the time Pilnyak was about two weeks short of his twenty-eighth birthday. He was born on October 11 (New Style), 1894. 15. losif Vladimirovich Gessen (1865-1943), well-known jurist, publicist and politician. He was one of the founders of the Kadet Party (Constitutional-Democratic Party) and editor of the Party's organ, Rech', to which, incidentally, Chukovsky was a contributor. After the Revolution, Gessen emigrated and settled in Berlin where he published the daily Rut' and Arkhiv Russkoj Revoljucii. 16. Viktor Mikhaylovich Chernov (1873-1952), writer, politician; one of the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia and, later, abroad. According to Pilnyak, his mother, before she married Andrey Vogau, had been engaged to Viktor Chernov. ("Moja biografija" in n.a. "Bytopisatel' revoljucii," Vestnik Literatury, no. 1, 1922, p. 4). 17. Leather jacket—a character encountered in Pilnyak's earlier work; a Bolshevik stalwart, referred to in terms of his favorite item of apparel. 18. In Russia before the Revolution and in the Soviet Union during the early part of the New-EconomicPolicy period, "Bristol" was a very popular name for hotels and restaurants. 19. In the interview on May 29, 1969, Chukovsky recalled an anecdote that illustrates Pilnyak's extraordinary sense of purpose and also, perhaps, his somewhat bizarre sense of humor. Once, while in Paris, Pilnyak entered into negotiations with a Jewish publisher. At an early meeting he produced several photographs of rabbis that he had purchased somewhere that day. He showed them to the publisher one by one, explaining, "This is my father; this is my grandfather," and so on. The negotiations—Pilnyak claimed—went very well from that point on. 20. Evgeny Germanovich Lundberg (1887-1965), writer, critic, founder of the Berlin publishing house "Skify," organizer of the Berlin branches of GIZ and Gostekhizdat (State Technical-Theoretical Literature Publishing House).

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printed a vile note about Lundberg, etc., etc. Lundberg was called a Soviet spy, etc." Now, how could anyone repeat to Gessen the pronouncements of that wretched Lundberg, stupid as they were? Then he talked about Tolstoy —their drinking together and Tolstoy's story about the adventures of a deacon and a teacher. The teacher reads a book and scribbles nota bene everywhere, while the deacon, etc. Many funny stories. Then about Gorky, the second time: "I was staying overnight at Gorky's, and early next morning had to go into the room where some of my things were. You know, the one beyond his little study? I go in, I don't knock—and what do you think?— Marya Ignatyevna21 is in there and away from her [jumps]22 Aleksey Maksimovich in his underdrawers! He was embarrassed and went and sat at the table, and there he sits in his underdrawers drumming his fingers on the table."23 All of Pilnyak's stories are in this vein. February 27, 1923 [Moscow] The following day 24 1 visited Pilnyak at the Krug Publishing House. A tiny office, two rooms, four girls of whom one is a fiery redhead. Some reasonably well-dressed people wander around—like lost souls—no one knows why— Budantsev,25 Kazin,26 Yakovlev,27 and others. All these are pub people. 21. Baroness Budberg, Mariya Ignatyevna (1892-1974), née Zakrevskaya, von Benckendorff in her first marriage. She was Gorky's mistress and secretary. She is perhaps best known for her later liaison with H. G . Wells. 22. In the original, "lam Mar'ya Ignat 'evna. i ot nee v podstannikakh Aleksej MaksimovicV' 23. There is a sequel to this story related to the translator by Yu. G. Oksman, May 28, 1970. Some discrepancies between Chukovsky's and Oksman's versions exist, but in the main the stories agree. Pilnyak, as a talented beginner, was befriended by Gorky, and in the winter of 1918/1919 lived in Gorky's flat in Petrograd. It was a winter of severe food shortages, and writers among others—particularly young writers—led a hungry existence. Invitations to Gorky's for supper were highly valued not only because his flat was a gathering place of the literary elite, but also because Gorky, who enjoyed extraordinary privileges including ample supplies of food, fed his guests well. For many a young writer that winter a supper at Gorky's was the meal of the week [My eii na celuju nedelju]. At one such supper party there were between fifteen and twenty men and women seated at the table, Pilnyak among them. Gorky was entertaining his guests with a tale of some sort. He excelled in the art of storytelling—in fact, he was a better raconteur than a writer—and liked to receive his listeners' undivided attention. Pilnyak, who habitually drank to excess and was quite drunk on this occasion, kept interrupting Gorky's story with stupid remarks [glupye zamecanijaJ. At first Gorky tried to ignore the interruptions, but finally his patience was exhausted. Turning to Pilnyak in a state of extreme irritation he said something like, "Oh, keep quiet, you fool!" Painful silence settled upon the gathering. Pilnyak's rudeness was most embarrassing, but not nearly so embarrassing as Gorky's rudeness to his guest, which shockingly violated Russian rules of hospitality. In the silence, as the guests struggled to regain their composure, Pilnyak—bleary-eyed, sprawled drunkenly in his chair—looked around the table and said: "Do you know why the old man is angry with me? This morning I saw him leave Mariya lgnatyevna's room in his underwear." This was how the literary community learned that Gorky's "wife", of whom everyone was very fond, had been replaced by a mistress. Later, Baroness Budberg followed him to Italy as his "secretary and companion." Gorky never forgave Pilnyak his indiscretion. 24. The visit took place on the same day Chukovsky described it, February 27. 25. Sergey Fedorovich Budantsev (1896-1937), writer; probably "repressed." 26. Vasily Vasilyevich Kazin (1898), poet; one of the founders of the literary group Kuznitsa (The Smithy). 27. Aleksandr Stepanovich Yakovlev (1886-1953), writer.

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Pilnyak is on familiar terms with all of them; their manuscripts he does not read, does not correct; he publishes whatever comes along. In the bookkeeping department, confusion. Few accounts are kept. The young ladies do not work but gab with the visitors, especially one of them, Lidiya Ivanovna, a favorite of Pilnyak's. The business end of it is in the hands of Aleksandr Yakovlevich Arosev,28 thickset and self-satisfied. The editorial office has an automobile at its disposal, and Pilnyak is the one that rides around in it most frequently. I became closer acquainted with Pilnyak. He gives the impression of being wild and confused, but actually is very businesslike and preoccupied. His face shows preoccupation, and in the middle of a conversation, whether in a pub or in someone's house, he will invariably leave for a second to talk on the telephone; with him this transition from conversation to telephone is unnoticeable. One does not feel the least strain. Nowadays he talks on the telephone a great deal with Krasin; 29 he wants the Commissariat of Foreign Trade to send him to London. His appearance is very amusing: a long body, short legs, head thrown back, red hair, and glasses. Forever with people and always going somewhere enterprisingly, with hope of some sort. March 29, 1923 [Petrograd] Zamyatin told me that Pilnyak called on Kamenev30 with him, Zamyatin, about some of his, Zamyatin's, business. They talked at length, and suddenly the conversation turned to a certain writer. And Pilnyak said, "Well, what's there to say, Lev Borisovich. He is almost not a writer, you know, unlike you and /." February 27, 1925 [Leningrad] Shchegolev31 came back [from Moscow]. I talked with him on the telephone. In Moscow, it turns out, Shchegolev had a fierce battle with Vsevolod Ivanov. The event took place at Boris Pilnyak's, in his apartment. There were people at Pilnyak's: Chekhova-Knipper, 32 Kachalov, 33 and others. Shchegolev and Tolstoy arrived at two o'clock in the morning. Vsevolod Ivanov began picking on Tolstoy, Tolstoy kept silent, and suddenly Ivanov grabbed a bottle of wine and hurled it in Tolstoy's face. After the first bottle, a second and a third. Fortunately, all missed. But he broke some dishes, struck a statuette; the bottles flew into a thousand pieces. Shchegolev threw 28. Aleksandr Yakovlevich Arosev (1890-1938), writer, Party official; " r e p r e s s e d " a n d "posthumously rehabilitated." 29. Leonid Borisovich Krasin (1870-1926), at the time plenipotentiary a n d t r a d e representative of the U S S R in G r e a t Britain a n d also People's Commissar of Foreign T r a d e . 30. Lev Borisovich K a m e n e v (1883-1936), critic a n d publicist, b u t known mainly as a leading C o m m u n i s t , at the time a m e m b e r of the Politbyuro. 31. Pavel Eliseevich Shchegolev (1877-1931), literary scholar. 32. Olga Leonardovna K n i p p e r - C h e k h o v a (1868-1959), acress, widow of A. P. Chekhov. 33. Vasily Ivanovich Kachalov (1875-1948), f a m o u s actor for many years associated with the Moscow Art Theater.

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his bulk upon Ivanov and with his belly held down his ferocity. As a parting gesture, however (after everything had quieted down), Ivanov gave Shchegolev a wallop on the back of the head. Shchegolev repaid in kind and with such generosity that Ivanov now has a dislocated arm. A fine visit our Petersburg men had in Moscow! November 25, 1931 [Moscow] Together with him [Kornely Zelinsky]34 I paid a visit to Pilnyak. Out in the country. The first impression: terribly rich and stylish, and plentiful, and independent. He has become less edgy, more restrained and quiet. A very sturdy, thrifty German colonist. Today he'll come for me in his car at Koltsov's35 and take me to dinner. I did not sleep last night. Very edgy. Must work on Whitman. November 27, 1931 [Moscow] Yesterday36 Pilnyak came for me at Koltsov's, wearing a black beret, amiable, quick, self-confident; he has a Ford of very fanciful shape—he drives it brilliantly, with nuances. On the back seat was his niece Tanya, a round-faced girl of fourteen. On the way he jumped out several times, "Allow me to leave you for a minute!" On the way: "I almost never see any of the writers. Vultures. 37 Literaturnaya Gazeta—is not a newspaper. Averbakh 38 —is not a writer." And again with agility, speed, and assurance, into a fine food store. He ran out carrying a bottle. At home he had two visitors, the writers Platonov39 and his friend (?) about whom he says that they are the best writers in the USSR, "very worthy people"; the friend is a Communist ("You have never met such Communists"), and indeed this one immediately declared, "To hell with machines and collective farms (!), the human being is what's important (?)" We immediately sat down to dinner: Olga Sergeevna,40 an American lady with her husband whom she had just joined, Eva, Pilnyak, and we the three guests. Goose with apples. All three of us are writers constrained by the epoch. To console us Pilnyak told us a legend. A tribute was levied against a certain city. The citizens protested and came sobbing to their oppressor. He said, "Double the tribute!" Horrified, they went home and decided to beg for mercy on their 34. Kornely Lyutsianovich Zelinsky (1896-1970), literary scholar, one of the leaders of the Constructivist movement in Soviet literature. 35. Mikhail rehabilitated."

Efimovich

Koltsov

(1898-1942),

writer,

journalist;

"repressed"

and

"posthumously

36. T h e r e seems to be an error in dating; the dinner took place either on the 25th or t h e 26th. 37. Vultures—stervecy in the original. 38. Leopold Leonidovich Averbakh (1903-1938?), editor, critic, publicist; o n e of t h e f o u n d e r s of V A P P (All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers); disappeared d u r i n g t h e purges. 39. Andrey Platonovich Platonov (1889-1951), writer. 40. Olga Sergeevna Shcherbinovskaya, actress; Pilnyak's second wife.

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knees. They returned. And he said, "Double the tribute!" They were now completely destitute, and he said: "Double the tribute!" Then they all laughed. And he said, "What, they are laughing!" Well, that means there is nothing left that can be taken from them. But, apparently, there is still something that can be taken from us, because we did not laugh very heartily. Platonov told us that he had a novel, Chevengur,41 about a commune that was formed somewhere by fourteen true Communists who banished from the town all non-Communists and nonRevolutionaries, and how the commune flourished; and although he wrote the novel with great piety toward the Revolution, publication of the novel (twenty-five printer's sheets) has been forbidden. It has even been set in type by Molodaya Gvardiya Publishing House—and there it is lying without action. Twenty-five printer's sheets! To console us Pilnyak repeated that we live in an atmosphere of shadows, that the Federation of Proletarian Writers—who the hell needs it—is sustained only by the special store;42 there are no such writers as Fadeev and Averbakh, there is no such newspaper as Literaturnaya Gazeta. The officials who rule literature want everything to be smooth and quiet, as few troubles as possible, and Kanatchikov 43 has expressed the ideal of all these administrators: "If only you did not write, and we edited." But writers write, only they don't publish: Platonov has a novel lying there, Vsevolod Ivanov also (it is titled Kreml', but is not about the Moscow [Kremlin]). . . . I remembered Pilnyak's story about Lermontov, where there is a wonderful description of fat naked women taking the cure at Essentuki, 44 and Olga Sergeevna told about a fat woman who wanted to shoot herself and inquired how to make sure she hit the heart: she was told to aim three inches4S below the nipple, and she shot herself in the knee. Suddenly Pilnyak began to shake with fever. Malaria. He was given some quinine. He refused to take it until Olga Sergeevna took a lick from the wrapper. 46 We moved to the sofa in the study. Pilnyak's teeth began to chatter. He wrapped himself in a plaid blanket. On the wall of the study hangs a portrait 41. T h e novel was published in 1972 in Paris by t h e Y M C A Press. Only excerpts f r o m the work have a p p e a r e d in t h e Soviet Union.

42. Special store—zakrytyj raspredelitel'—a store selling rationed or scarce goods to m e m b e r s of the sponsoring organization. 43. Semyon lvanovich Kanatchikov (1879-1940), at the time m e m b e r of the Secretariat of t h e All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers, an editor of chief editor of G I K h L (State Literature Publishing House), a n d c h a i r m a n of t h e Editorial Council of " F e d e r a t i o n " Publishing House.

Krasnaya Nov',

44. Boris Pil'njak, "Stoss v z i z n ' , "

verska

Staryj dom. Sobranie socinenij,

(Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), 8:226.

45. T h r e e inches—3 in the original. 46. Q u i n i n e was t h e n sold in powder f o r m ; separate doses were w r a p p e d in small pieces of p a p e r .

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of Pasternak with a tender inscription, "To a friend of whose friendship I am proud" and below a poem which contains the line, And am I not measured by the Five-Year Plan.

It turns out that Pasternak dedicated this poem to Pilnyak, but in Novyj Mir it was published under the title, "To a Friend." 47 At this point the conversation turned to Pasternak, and Pilnyak delivered an impassioned speech in his praise. The speech was very precise, brilliant in form, a long time in the making. Pasternak is a profoundly cultured man (no, I am not going to repeat it—I'll ruin it; it was the first time I had ever heard from Pilnyak such wise and precise words). Everyone listened to the speech enchanted. Generally speaking, the people around Pilnyak regard him as a very good man, a warm person, a pure soul. To me this is something new, and he apparently finds it pleasant to radiate warmth; he was very sympathetic to me and even made me a present of a tie because absent-mindedly I had arrived at his house without one. I left having been shown much kindness: the American had presented me with some new American magazines, the niece had been attentive to me. Gleb Alekseev48 came and began talking about alimony, and I left. It is a long journey from Pilnyak's place, streetcar No. 6, then No. 10.1 was on the streetcar, and for the first time I felt a kind of relief because for the first time this whole year I had heard a literary debate. April 2, 1932 [Moscow] Pilnyak came to see me yesterday, between visits to Gronsky49 and Radek. 5 0 1 have been sick. After a sleepless night my heart began giving me trouble; my left arm swelled, and I stayed in bed. Pilnyak said that he had no wish to go to Japan: "I was all set to take off for the country and get down to writing a novel; I could knock off a whole one in two months. But Stalin and Karakhan 51 want me to go. It is a pity that Borya (Pasternak) is not going with me. I could have gotten a passport for him too, but he was determined to take Zinaida Nikolaevna along, and she would have been a burden to both of us; I refused even to try to do anything about it; Borya sulked—she had maliciously incited him against me. Oh, I now see that this new wife is even harder on Pasternak than the former one was. And the former one was a treasure too: Borya ran errands for her, heated the samovar, and this one. . . ." 52 47. B. Pasternak, " D r u g u , " Novyj Mir, no. 4 (April 1931), p. 63. 48. Gleb Vasilyevich Alekseev (1892-1943), writer; he fled Russia after the Revolution, b u t r e t u r n e d in 1923. 49. Ivan Mikhaylovich Gronsky (1894-

), journalist, critic, and at the t i m e editor-in-chief of

Izvestija.

50. Karl Bernardovich Radek (1885-1938), C o m m u n i s t leader. 51. Lev Mikhaylovich K a r a k h a n (1889-1938), at the time Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs. 52. T h e sentence is unfinished in the original.

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Today at OGIZ 53 Pilnyak will get—for no reason at all—five thousand roubles. He modestly announced to Karakhan that he would not take any money for his trip to Japan, but that he had books—ten volumes of his collected works—and it would be nice if they were purchased from him. Karakhan—with Stalin's approval—called Khalatov;S4 Khalatov sent Pilnyak to Solovyov,55 and Solovyov said: "We are not going to publish the books. There is no paper. But you will get the money, we are not stingy with money." And he set the amount at five thousand roubles. "Some publishers. It is more profitable for them to pay an author five thousand roubles without publishing his work" said Pilnyak. August 14, 1932 [Moscow] On Pilnyak's terrace there is an India helmet56 which he brought from Japan, and wooden Japanese sandals. He himself wears sandals and a tussahsilk kimono. He has many papier-mache boxes and in general all sorts of Japanese trinkets. In the dining room is Russky Golos (Burlyuk's American newspaper)57 and The New Yorker. While talking to me he suddenly says, "Wouldn't you like to see Fomushka?" He leads me to a door, knocks, and there on the floor sits a Japanese girl, 58 funny looking, ape-like. The expression on her face is most complex: she smiles with her eyes, but her lips are sad; actually, they are indifferent rather than sad. Then she smiles with her mouth, but her eyes take no part in the smile. She flirts in what might be described as a refined manner and as if laughing at herself. Her face is intelligent, faintly masculine. She is a musician, does not know a word of Russian or anything else; her name is Yonekawa Fumino; on the carpet in front of her is a long, narrow instrument the size of a coffin—it is called koto; at the request of Pilnyak, whom she calls Dya-dya (Uncle), she plays on it for me, plays for a long time, with a professional smile, but bored inwardly, plays in a businesslike manner; she moves one peg, then another, shortening the string which produces the sound, and is like a cook over a stove, where many dishes are cooking, who touches one pan, then another, moves one over the fire and another one away. The result is random sounds which do not flow together into any kind of melody (for me). 53. O G I Z — U n i o n of State Publishing Houses. 54. Artemy Bagratovich Khalatov (1896-1938), director of G I Z R S F S R (State Publishing House of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic). 55. Vasily Ivanovich Solovyov (1890-1939), at the time director of G I K h L . 56. I n d i a h e l m e t — i n t h e original these words are in English, " I n d i a h e l m a t " [sic]. A topee is probably meant. 57. A Russian newspaper, published in New York, with which David Davidovich Burlyuk (1882-1967), Futurist poet a n d painter, was associated for many years as contributor, editor, a n d one of the owners. 58. In the interview on May 29, 1969, Chukovsky referred to the girl as Pilnyak's " J a p a n e s e wife" whom the writer h a d brought with him f r o m J a p a n .

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Displaying her as a miracle of drill work, Pilnyak in his capacity as the impresario made her speak about Russian literature (her brother is a translator). She immediately made a rapturous face and pronounced, "Pusikini, Tolostoi, Belenyaki (Pilnyak)." 59 The entire windowsill in her room is covered with dead mosquitoes. It turned out she had brought with her from Japan some incense which kills all the mosquitoes in the air. Nearby was her baby-fcoio on which she practices. Lavishing praise on Pilnyak's O-kejt0 I said that to me it was something close to Dostoevsky's Summer Notes on Winter Impressions.61 Pilnyak has not read that work. "I have read only The Idiot—he was a talented writer— not bad." The beginning of September, 1933 [Tiflis] All the hotels are full. I had spent about fifty roubles on izvozciki and porters; the baggage was stacked in the vestibule of the Hotel "Palace" (as I recall it) and there was almost no hope of getting a room. In my desperation I went to the Hotel "Oriant"—"Orient"—and asked if Pilnyak was staying there. "Yes, he is in the rooms reserved for government officials." I went there and in a spacious dining room saw a table loaded with food, and there at the table sits Pilnyak radiant with smiles. [Among the guests was Evgeniya Vladimirovna, Boris Pasternak's first wife] . . . immediately Zhenichka ran off somewhere and arranged for us to take her room at the "Oriant," getting another one for herself, and I transferred the baggage (again using an izvozcik) from the "Palace" to the "Oriant." 6 2 When we walked in the talk was about Gorky—a hostile talk. Pilnyak, who had been provoked by an article of Gorky's, was greatly comforted by the hostility toward Aleksey Maksimovich of certain blockhead writers. He posed a riddle, "What is more powerful than Gorky?" "Death," replied some old man. "Right, right! Do you hear that, Chukovsky!" On the evening of the 2nd Pilnyak organized a discussion with local writers at the Palace of Arts, 13 Mochavelli Street (formerly Sergievskaya Street). The attendance was three hundred or so. The auditorium could not 59. In the interview on May 29, 1969, Chukovsky reported this incident as follows: "When asked, 'Who are the greatest Russian writers?' [the girl] replied, 'Pus'kin and Bil'njak."' 60. Boris Pil'njak, O-kej, Amerikanskij roman. First published in nos. 3, 4, 5, and 6 of Novyj Mir for 1932. 61. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions is meant. 62. In the interview on May 29, 1969, Chukovsky gave a somewhat different version of the events. In 1933 Chukovsky and his wife, Mariya Borisovna, visited Tiflis on their first "rich trip." But the hotels were full and an izvozcik took them on long, fruitless rounds of local hostelries. When, finally, the possibilities seemed exhausted, the driver demanded a payment of one hundred roubles. The amount was exorbitant, and frayed nerves led to a family quarrel. "If you pay," said Mariya Borisovna, "I am going back to Leningrad." Chukovsky paid, and his wife left for the railroad station where she bought a ticket and settled down to wait for the train. In the meantime Chukovsky went to the "Oriant" ("Orient") where he met Pilnyak. The latter quickly appraised the situation, sent someone to fetch Chukovsky's wife, and persuaded the manager to provide a room for the couple at the hotel. Commenting on the feast in progress, Chukovsky observed, "Pilnyak enjoyed the extravagant praise the master of ceremonies [tamada] accorded him."

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hold all those assembled. People stood in the aisles and in the adjoining rooms. Pilnyak was asked questions; he replied wittily, belligerently. "After all, everybody can't be writing Klim SamginV' He was asked what his attitude was toward Dos Passos (in connection with an article by Gorky condemning Dos Passos as an American Pilnyak), 63 why he wrote Krasnoe derevo,M etc. Suddenly he called my name. Because of the crush of the people, the din, and the distance I could not hear what it was all about; he came down into the audience, pulled me out, and stood me in front. I began reading my fairy tales, and the public greeted me with such enthusiasm as I had not been greeted with before—anywhere, ever. The night of November 23-24, 1933 [Leningrad] Attended a lecture by Pilnyak on November 22nd. Pilnyak had announced all over town that he would speak on "America and Japan." At present, because of the recognition of the USSR by America, America is a burning subject, Japan too. A great multitude rushed to the kapella,ti and he came out on the platform and began delivering truisms about Japan long known from the papers: volcanoes, earthquakes, kimonos, geishas, samurai. The audience was furious. Up to half past eleven he had not said a word about America. In the intermission he invited me to have supper with him, but I fled (with Shura Bogdanovich)66 because the boredom was unbearable. When leaving, people were saying, "He's taken it all wholesale from Frigate Pallada." April 1, 1935 [Moscow] For some reason Koltsov advises me not to see Pilnyak. It is a strange reputation that Pilnyak has. He lives a very rich life—has two cars, a butler, spends heaps of money—but where that money comes from nobody knows, because his work is not being published. It must be the royalties paid by the idiot foreigners who publish his books. February 21, 1963 [Peredelkino] All the Serapions in Peredelkino have grandchildren—Fedin, Kaverin, Tikhonov (an adopted child)—all whom I knew as young men: Leonov, Vsevolod Ivanov, Selvinsky. They came here as fathers, and became grandfathers. After I go, all these grandchildren will marry; in the seventies most 63. In the article, " O kocke i o t o c k e , " which a p p e a r e d both in Pravda a n d lzvestija on July 10, 1933, Gorky refers to Dos Passos as " a n unsuccessful caricature of Pilnyak who himself is enough of a c a r i c a t u r e . " " O kocke i o t o c k e , " in M . G o r ' k i j , O literature (Moscow, 1961), p. 394. 64. Boris Pil'njak, Krasnoe derevo (Berlin, 1929). T h e novelette Mahogany was o n e of Pilnyak's literarypolitical " c r i m e s " a n d led to his persecution in 1929. It u n d o u b t e d l y played a role in the decision to execute him in 1937, 65. Kapetla—the

a u d i t o r i u m of the Leningrad State Academic Capelle on the Moyka e m b a n k m e n t .

66. Aleksandra Angelovna Bogdanovich (1898-1938), d a u g h t e r of the critic a n d publicist, Angel Ivanovich Bogdanovich (1860-1907).

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of the grandfathers will die off; in the eighties the grandsons will begin to get bald, and someone among the grandchildren will write a novel Peredelkino; the first part of it will be titled "Prehistoric Times," and that part will be about us: Seifullina, Babel, Pilnyak, Lidin, Leonov, Pasternak, Bruno Yasensky [Jasefiski] and me—the first Peredelkino settlers. In the second part will appear Trenev, Pavlenko, Andronikov, Kazakevich, Nilin. Commentary Chukovsky's record of his acquaintance with Pilnyak gives evidence that the author of the Naked Year and at least two politically unacceptable works, "The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon" (1926) and Mahogany (1929), was a complex personality, a man of many qualities, some genuine and others apparently assumed. Within him lived side-by-side a talented writer, a hardheaded "German colonist," a family man and a generous host, a prodigious carouser, a hail-fellow-well-met, and a "public man" given to behaving in a manner calculated to attract attention. The last facet of Pilnyak's personality is well reflected in the diary. There is evidence from other sources as well that during his years in the public eye Pilnyak assiduously cultivated an image of himself as a man apart, disdainful of the commonplace and the expected. Chukovsky's impressions of the writer in this respect are strikingly corroborated by Dr. Bertha Malnick, 67 who met Pilnyak in the fall of 1929 when she was a student and a publisher's representative in Moscow. She asked Pilnyak for an interview to discuss the possible publication of his work in England. (The project did not mature.) Arriving at Pilnyak's "sumptuous" flat on a sunny autumn day she was struck by the host's incongruous attire; he was wearing a rough jacket and a pair of valenki—coarse felt boots, the coldweather footwear of the workingman and the peasant. This was in sharp contrast with the restrained and elegant appearance of two other visitors at the flat, Evgeny Zamyatin and Anna Akhmatova. Apparently Pilnyak felt that an explanation was in order: he was dressed this way, he said, "to be as Russian as possible. My local color." The guests were offered tea, which was lavish: one of the Soviet Union's most popular writers was obviously enjoying an abundant life—at the time when NEP was coming to an end and good food was becoming scarce. Pilnyak's manner was jolly and expansive, reports Dr. Malnick. There was something of an exhibitionist about him—dramatic, comic, absurd, whimsical, extravagant. These qualities did not seem spontaneous but deliberately assumed. There was calculation in his eccentricity. Perhaps he was moved by a desire to assert his identity, to show himself a rebel, to give proof of his status as a successful black sheep of Soviet literature. 67. Interview, O c t o b e r 8, 1968.

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There may have been a touch of desperation in Pilnyak's performance before his guests, because in the fall of 1929 he was the object of an intensive attack by the State for the publication in Berlin of his novelette Mahogany. Petr Vladimirovich Sletov, a Soviet writer, a contemporary and friend of Pilnyak's, 68 describes him as "charming and amiable," and offers another glimpse of him as a "public man," this time in relation to Pilnyak's literarypolitical troubles with the authorities in 1926 and 1929. Far from being the victim of his own indiscretion, ignorance of political reality, or miscalculation in his efforts to draw attention to himself by writing on "forbidden" subjects, Pilnyak knowingly and deliberately chose his material; far from being hurt by the officially organized persecution of him, particularly in 1929, Pilnyak enjoyed the attacks on himself, eagerly following—"as a dealer at a stock exchange follows the slightest ups and downs of his chosen security"— the developments in the political scandal created around Mahogany. He saw the publicity as the fire "that kept his literary reputation bubbling." It is not easy to believe that that was indeed the way Pilnyak reacted to the savage official efforts to beat him to the ground, but an assumed devil-maycare attitude would be entirely in keeping with the role in which he had cast himself. Pilnyak as a family man was something of a surprise to Chukovsky. There is no doubt that he was very fond of his three children; his first two marriages, however, ended in divorces. Pilnyak's energetic womanizing may have contributed to the breakdowns. In his relationships with women he was not averse to staged effects and striking behavior. Here again he appears intent, at least in some cases, on proving himself a man who could be depended on to do the unexpected. The Japanese koto player in his household in Moscow, whether she was his "Japanese wife" or merely an item for display (at the time Pilnyak was living with his second wife, Olga Sergeevna), is a good example of his determined efforts to be different. Pilnyak was bold, different, and very likely calculating when he proposed to Anna Akhmatova—by some accounts three times. Chukovsky recalled 6 ' Akhmatova's story about Pilnyak arriving one day at her apartment with a huge bouquet and asking her to marry him. She was surprised, since at the time they were "barely acquainted." It would have been a great coup for Pilnyak to marry Akhmatova. His preoccupation with effect, his firm belief that he had few peers among Russian writers, probably caused him to see the marriage as an epochal union of two great talents of the twentieth-century Russian literature. He must have made the proposal in the early 1930s, before his third marriage and a few years before he entered the final dark chapter of his life. 68. Interview, May 15, 1976. 69. Interview, May 29, 1969.

THE SINGER'S THEMES IN SERBOCROATIAN HEROIC SONG Mary Putney

Coote

The storyteller who composes poetry orally in a traditional form, such as that of the Serbocroatian heroic song, draws on tradition for the language, the narrative incidents, and the subject of his songs. Following Lord's presentation of the Oral Theory in The Singer of Tales, these three kinds of traditional story material have been designated as formulas, themes, and story patterns. 1 In most applications of the theory the formula has been taken as the distinctive feature of an oral style. The theme, though less amenable than the formula to precise definition, may also serve as a hallmark of orality, if we have a clear understanding of how the poet uses it as a tool in oral composition. 2 The special application of the term "theme" by Parry and Lord to refer to an element of oral narrative poetry has led to an ambiguity in its use. Like the formula, the theme has a dual aspect: the essential underlying idea, and the words in which the idea is clothed in individual texts. The statement in The Singer of Tales, "I have called the groups of ideas regularly used in telling a tale in the formulaic style of traditional song the 'themes' of the poetry," 3 attempts to unite both aspects in a single definition comparable to that of the formula." Further consideration has shown, however, that a distinction must be drawn between the theme as subject (its meaning in ordinary usage) or as a narrative idea common to the tradition at large, and the theme as a com1. Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), esp. chaps. 3, 4, and 5. 2. The theme as a distinctive feature of oral composition is discussed in Lord's "The Marks of an Oral Style" (Paper delivered at a meeting of the International Comparative Literature Association, Belgrade, 1967). 3. Lord, Singer of Tales, p. 68. See also Albert B. Lord, "Composition by Theme in Homer and Southslavic Epos," Transactions of the American Philological Association 82 (1951): 71-80. 4. The formula is "a group of words which is regularly employed under the same material conditions to express a given essential idea." Milman Parry, "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. I: Homer and Homeric Style," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 41 (1930): 80; also Lord, Singer of Tales, pp. 30 ff. The relationship between deep and surface structure, underlying pattern and verbal content, in the formula is treated in Michael Nagler, Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer (Berkeley, 1974).

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positional device in the texts of individual oral poets. 5 It may be convenient to designate the two aspects of the theme as, on the one hand, the paradigmatic theme,'' a general narrative idea which the singer restates in performance using specific motifs, and, on the other hand, the compositional theme, a piece of narrative that repeats a set of formulas. The evidence for a singer's reliance on themes lies in their repetition. If the use of the theme is essential to oral composition, then an oral text must be dense in themes in the same way, if not to the same extent, that it is dense in formulas. 7 From an analysis of an oral narrative song into its constituent themes and a comparison of these themes with the themes in other songs in the tradition and in other songs by the same singer, we can see how densely and in what form themes recur. The description of density must consider the theme in both its aspects: how does the singer use both paradigmatic and compositional themes, and what is the relationship between repetition of paradigms and repetition of formulas? 1. THE SINGER AND THE SONG The singer who provides our model is Camil Kulenovic, of Kulen Vakuf in northwest Bosnia. Camil learned his art in the tradition of the Moslem heroic songs of the Croatian Border, the area represented in the extensive collection made by the Matica hrvatska in the late nineteenth century. 8 He supplied eighteen texts for the Parry Collection during Parry's collecting trip in 193435.' Although only in his mid-twenties, he already had the self-confidence of 5. Lord suggests adopting the terminology current in Anglo-Saxon studies, that is, distinguishing between type-scene, the theme as subject, and theme, the theme as a passage of poetry. (Albert B. Lord, "Perspectives on Recent Work in Oral Literature," Forum for Modern Language Studies 10, no. 3 [July 1974]: 187-210, esp. 207-9.) See, for example, Donald K. Fry, Jr., "Old English Formulaic Themes and Type-Scenes," Neophilologus 12 (1968): 48-54. David Bynum proposes taxonomic theme for the theme as subject; cf. "Themes of the Young Hero in Serbocroatian Oral Epic Tradition," PMLA 83 (1968): 1296-1303, esp. 1298. The theme as subject corresponds to what Vladimir Propp, in his Morphology of the Folktale (Austin, Texas, 1968), terms a function. 6. My term paradigmatic theme is derived from David E. Bynum, "Thematic Sequences and Transformation of Character in Oral Narrative Tradition," Filoloskipregled 8 (1970): i-ii, 1-21: "A thematic paradigm is an habitual association of certain motifs, not a conscious model in a story-teller's mind which determines his arrangement of motifs when he produces an actual multiform of a theme. A thematic paradigm is not a code, and oral narrative themes are not devices for expressing a variety of different ideas. The essential logic underlying every theme is a single, invariable proposition expressed in the aggregate meaning of all that theme's multiforms" (p. 11). Motifs are the specific nominal characters, objects, places, and actions used to tell a story; thus: "Treating as a formula the English sentence that states the events of the theme . . . , one may substitute for the general quantities in the formula the particular motifs which a Yugoslav bard uses to produce an actual text of the theme" (p. 10). 7. On density of formulas see Lord, Singer of Tales, pp. 45-48; also the 1967 ICLA paper cited in note 2. 8. Luka Marjanovic, ed., Hrvatske narodne pjesme. Junacke pjesme (muhamedovske) (Zagreb, 1898-99), vols. 3-4. 9. The catalogue of (Tamil's songs in the Parry Collection is given in Milman Parry and Albert Lord, Serbocroatian Heroic Songs (Cambridge and Belgrade, 1954), 1:35, 38. It should be noted that although Camil was literate enough to write down some of his songs, his written texts were in effect self-dictated, that is, composed in the same way as his sung and dictated texts.

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an experienced singer and was able to produce a number of long and elaborate songs. The eighteen texts—nine sung, three dictated, and six written down by Camil himself—tell fifteen different stories and comprise 24,563 lines of poetry; most of the songs are over 1,000 lines long. (Tamil's songs therefore offer sufficient material for the study of the technique of a competent oral poet. His longest and most ambitious performance, "The Captivity of Vrhovac Alaga" (Parry 1976; 3,388 lines), will be taken as the basic sample of his work, while the rest of the repertory, excluding two variants of 1976 and one of another song, will serve as comparative material. The variants have been left out of consideration so that the repetition of themes in different narrative contexts, rather than in retellings of the same story, can be made clear. The song of Vrhovac Alaga tells of the capture and rescue of the commander of a fortress at Vrhovi, on the border between the Turkish and Christian realms. In the first part of the song, the Turkish heroes [i.e., Bosnians of the Moslem faith] are gathered in the beys' chamber in Udbina, drinking and boasting. Their chief, the bey Mustajbeg, sees from his window a wounded horseman whom he recognizes as Sava, a vassal of Vrhovac Alaga, commander of Vrhovi. Sava bursts in and accuses Mustajbeg of having betrayed his master to the Christian Captain Gal in return for a large bribe (a coach full of what were purported to be melons—actually gold coins). The castle at Vrhovi has been attacked and Vrhovac Alaga, his wife, and his two sons have been taken captive. After appealing to the Turks to go to the rescue, Sava departs to go to Alaga's side. After he leaves, six of the young heroes, led by Dizdarevic Meho, leap up in turn, brandishing their swords and threatening to go to the captive aga to learn whether the accusation against Mustajbeg is true and to return to punish their leader, even if they bring Udbina to ruin. All sixty of the young hotheads in the chamber follow them out, leaving only the faithful Ensign Dulic with Mustajbeg, who prudently retreats to the bey's private quarters. There the bey's wife brings in his clothes and arms and advises him to escape to the mountains, Mustajbeg arrays himself in full panoply while Dulic leads out horses for the journey. Bulic's white horse starts off as though it were winged, but Mustajbeg's dove-colored horse refuses to budge. The bey asks to exchange mounts, whereupon the dovecolored horse flies off and the white will not stir. Dulic declares that the horses' behavior confirms the accusation against the bey. At this point a vila intervenes and tells Mustajbeg that no horse can carry him while he is under suspicion of treason. She reports that she met the young heroes on their way to Captain Gal's camp and gave them all wings for their horses. They each in turn attacked the encampment, hacked their way to where Alaga was tied in the midst of the Christian forces, and heard from him that the bey was falsely accused and that they should seek his pardon. Meanwhile the Christians

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have surrounded the Turks and nearly overwhelmed them. But by the heroic action of the Turks the accusation has been lifted from Mustajbeg, and he and Bulic are able to set out. They travel across Vrhovi, reviewing the aftermath of the raid: ruined houses, headless corpses in the streets, grieving mothers seeking their sons. When they arrive at Gal's camp, the two attack but are repulsed. One by one the young heroes emerge wounded from the camp and fly to Mustajbeg for pardon and blessing. The bey then has the dead buried, gathers the wounded, and conveys his weakened band back to Udbina. The second part of the song begins after three months have passed. One day when Mustajbeg is sitting in the bey's chamber with only three elders as company a horseman in Christian disguise approaches whom the bey recognizes as one of his spies. Asked for news of Vrhovac Alaga, the spy reports that after some searching he has located the aga and his family held captive in the fortress of the ban [governor] of Novi. The aga's wife has sent a message by him to inform Mustajbeg that the ban has been torturing her to force her to renounce her faith. As she steadfastly refuses, the ban threatens to baptize her and her sons by force, to sell the sons into slavery, and to impale her husband in two weeks' time at a church on the coast. She appeals to the bey to raise the men of Lika and the Border to come to the rescue. This Mustajbeg is ready to do, but not without his young front-line fighters. He and the three elders set out to make the rounds to see whether the young men are in condition to fight. They first find Dizdarevic Meho, already dressed in his Christian disguise and telling his horse that he is about to go to Vrhovac Alaga's impaling. Mustajbeg will not allow Meho to go on his own, and he takes Meho with him. Next Bulic is roused from his sickbed, and he too bandages his wounds and joins the group. At the next seven stops, the young men, like Bizdarevic Meho, have already heard the news and are preparing themselves and their horses for the expedition. The whole party stays one night with Ogrosevic Ale and then repairs to Udbina where Mustajbeg obtains medical attention for them all. He then calls his scribe Omer and dictates letters to four local chiefs, summoning each to come with his army and listing those heroes who on no account may be left behind (a total of fiftythree named heroes). When the appointed day approaches, the bey sends his standard-bearers to gather his own army and dispatches Bulic to perform prayers for the expedition and two stewards to set up a refreshment tent for the chiefs. The bey himself dresses, mounts, and rides off in procession with all seven of his standard-bearers. The three elders and the young heroes are waiting for him at the place of rendezvous. The other forces then assemble, first thirty companies of border guards (ten are named), then five companies of cavalry, then the four chiefs and their armies, and finally Tale the Fool in his ragged array. After Tale's arrival and exhortation to the troops the army marches off, leaving Pasha Radoslija behind to guard Udbina. Mustajbeg positions

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his troops across the route to the coast. A select number of heroes who are courting Christian girls put on Christian disguise, and Tale dons a priest's robes. At daybreak an alarm sounds and a procession of coaches, each bearing a maiden, comes creaking along the road. Tale stops each one and tells the girl inside that her Turkish sweetheart is dead; seeing her unfeigned grief, he introduces the sweetheart into the coach. Thirty-five coaches pass (fourteen are named), and then two bans and their forces appear, conducting Alaga bound and carrying his stake, with him his horse, his wife, and his two sons. Sava follows them in disguise. Tale joins the party and is invited by the bans to perform a church service for them, to baptize the wife, and to confess and condemn Alaga. Tale eagerly complies. The wife adamantly insists that she will die rather than give up her faith. Interrogated by the ban of Zadar, Alaga boasts that he has burned twelve monasteries, killed three bans, fifteen captains, and countless sirdars (lieutenants), and captured, converted, and married off seven Christian maidens; he regrets only that he has not been able to finish off with the ban of Zadar himself. The order is given to raise him on the stake. Sava and Meho attack the guards to release the prisoner, thus precipitating battle. Tale quickly locks the two bans and all the girls in the church to keep them safe during the fighting. Battle rages for six hours, until the bey prays for a wind to clear the air of dust and blood. When it appears that the Christians are in flight before the Turks, the bey recalls his army. Meanwhile Alaga pursues the fleeing Captain Gal; after dispatching his enemy, he returns to the field where the others are gathering with their booty and the bey is telling over the dead and wounded. Only Tale is misisng. He is discovered ringing the church bell. After resisting the attempts by his fellow Turks to break into the church for the girls, Tale bestows his captives on Mustajbeg. The bey arranges to ransom the bans, since they were not responsible for Gal's first attack on Vrhovi. He releases the girls and distributes the other booty among his men. After burying the dead, the army returns home. Soon the bans send their ransom money, and with it Mustajbeg restores the fortification of Vrhovi and gives Vrhovac Alaga a new complement of men to defend the border. 2. DENSITY OF PARADIGMATIC THEMES An orally composed song like "Vrhovi" exhibits density of themes in two ways, one in relation to the tradition at large, the other in relation to the practice of the individual singer. The first kind measures the traditional nature of the incidents of which the story is composed, that is, how many of the actions and events in the story resemble actions and events in other Serbocroatian heroic songs. The second is a measure of how useful the themes are to the singer in composing a narrative, that is, how many of the actions and events are repeated in other songs by the same singer.

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To find the density of the themes in a narrative, one must first divide the text into units each comparable to the other, analogous to the line and half line that serve as the units of comparison in formula analysis. Unlike the formula, the theme has no formal limits of line length or meter, so it must be defined either in terms of its idea or of the words in which the idea is expressed. For purposes of analysis I have taken paradigmatic themes, regardless of verbal content, as the units of comparison. These themes are the invariables of traditional narrative, actions performed by traditional character types, which appear in the texts in multiform, varying according to what nominal characters and other specific motifs the singer chooses to tell his tale. 10 My analysis into themes of Parry 1976 is given in the first part of the Appendix. The song is entirely composed of recognizably traditional themes, just as its language, if analyzed, would be found to be thoroughly formulaic. That is, all the narrative incidents in the song are paralleled elsewhere in Serbocroatian heroic song. The list of themes provides a useful way to refer to the paradigms of events out of which the song is made. As a demonstration of density of themes, however, it does not have telling significance. The identification of repeated ideas and paradigms necessarily allows more latitude than the identification of repeated lines of text. A rigorous analysis would require a precise statement of the paradigm of each theme and, moreover, limits set on the variation of multiforms allowable under a single theme. This would impose an unjustifiable rigidity on the essential fluidity of oral material. The importance of the paradigmatic themes in oral composition becomes clearer when we observe how regularly our individual singer uses the traditional paradigms underlying this song. Despite the length of the text and the unusual nature of the plot compared with (Tamil's other texts, 11 only one of the thirty-nine different paradigmatic themes in Parry 1976 is unique to that song among the sample of fifteen songs. That one is Hero Quarrels in Assembly. It is crucial in the plot of "Vrhovi," yet Camil uses it nowhere else. All other incidents in Parry 1976 represent paradigms that recur at least once in Camil's other recorded texts. Some themes in Parry 1976, while not unique to this song, appear in unique or unusual multiforms. That is, the motifs that embody the paradigm are not used with the theme where it occurs elsewhere in Camil's songs. The 10. T h e p a r a d i g m a t i c themes have been identified mainly on the basis of David E. B y n u m ' s "A Taxonomy of Oral Narrative Song: T h e Isolation a n d Description of Invariables in Serbocroatian T r a d i t i o n " ( P h . D . diss., H a r v a r d University, 1964), with some a d a p t a t i o n s . T h e taxonomy, containing a list of 117 t h e m e s derived f r o m analysis of a sample of seventy-five wedding songs, is not intended to be an exhaustive catalog of the narrative ideas current in the tradition. 11. " V r h o v i " differs not only f r o m Camil's other songs, b u t also f r o m most of the rescue songs in the tradition. I have f o u n d no close parallels in published collections. In the Parry Collection there is a variant of " V r h o v i " sung by M u r a t Zunic (Parry 1960).

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paradigm, it should be noted, exists in the song and in the singer's mind only as a grouping of motifs. For each theme the singer will have worked out a grouping that has proved useful to him in composing a number of tales. An unusual situation in a story may require a break in the habitual grouping and the introduction of other, equally traditional, motifs not customarily used to express the paradigm. The unusual multiforms in the first part of the song are for the most part connected with the most distinctive feature of the plot of "Vrhovi," the accusation of treason against the bey. The first uncommon multiform of a common paradigm is the incident with Mustajbeg's horse, a complicated form of the theme of Travel (no. 27) that is not found elsewhere in Camil's songs. The two equipping themes that follow (nos. 29 and 30) and the blessing theme at the end of the vila's speech (no. 48) involve a supernatural type of donor that appears in only one other song. Further on, the rescue of Alaga, the expected result from the attack on Gal's camp, is replaced by an unusual multiform of equipping (nos. 33, 39, 42, 44, 46). The aga does not truly fit the role of a patron sending a hero on a quest, although he does send the young men to another patron, Mustajbeg, to request pardon. As befits the incident's position in the plot, the aga resembles a figure in an "other world" who bestows the object of a quest. The unusual nature of the quest is again reflected in the closing theme, Aftermath of Battle (no. 52). Ordinarily individual heroes appear with the prisoners and severed heads they have taken and to receive congratulations and a reward from the commander. Here the returning heroes bring no tangible booty; instead each proffers his recognition of Mustajbeg's innocence and receives his forgiveness. The second part of the song, dealing with a more conventional rescue, has anomalies of a different sort. One is the high number of allusions to the theme of Aftermath of Battle, especially that portion that tells of the treatment of the wounded. The reduced size of the assembly (no. 53) and the talk about health there and in the themes of consulting that follow it (nos. 67, 74, 78, 83, 88, 94, 100, 104, 108) reflect a concern for binding up the wounds, both physical and spiritual, incurred earlier. The consulting themes also show the effects of the previous expedition in that the elder, Mustajbeg, goes to the younger heroes, rather than vice versa. The heroes' overheard conversations with their horses (nos. 66, 82, 87, 93, 99, 103, 107), asking for support in the forthcoming venture, have been designated as Hero Consults a Patron, although the substance of the speech is close to the themes Hero Announces a Quest and Hero Requests Companion's Support. The remainder of the unusual multiforms occur toward the end of the song and have to do with the fact that "Vrhovi," unlike most of Camil's songs, is not primarily a song about a marriage. The pull of the traditional marriage pattern in a rescue-return song is so strong that some curious compensations are made for its absence. The first is the inclusion of the deceptive

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story of a hero's death in the theme of Discovery of a Girl (nos. 123-136). Although such a test of loyalty is an essential feature of the return song, Camil does not use it elsewhere, even in his rendition of "The Captivity of Jankovic Stojan" (Parry 1950), where it would be most appropriate. 12 In "Vrhovi" the question of loyalty and the question of marriage are separated. Marriage is not impending for Alaga's captive wife; the audience with her captors (no. 141) concentrates on her fidelity to her Moslem faith, rather than to her husband. Eventual marriage is implied by the presence of at least fourteen nubile Christian girls at the Other World Assembly (no. 140). This assembly, however, is not a wedding celebration with the usual drinking and feasting, but a church service. This uncommon incident seems again to be related to the emphasis on religious conversion; it also offers an opportunity for comedy in having Tale the Fool officiate. Since the major conflict of the song, given in the theme of Battle (no. 144), does not involve a fight for a bride, the lack is made up by Tale's refusal to give up the captive girls, and the normal form of yielding booty in the Aftermath of Battle (no. 147) is elaborated to include a small battle between Tale and his fellows at the church door. Finally, the closing theme, Hero Marries and Rules (no. 148), omits the customary mention of marriage and tells only of Alaga's restoration as guardian of the border. The density of paradigmatic themes as habitual groupings of motifs is shown by the number of thematic units in the text that are repeated, rather than unusual, multiforms of the paradigms. Thirty of the 149 units in text 1976 have no close parallels in the comparative material; thus 80 percent of the song may be said to be repetition of paradigmatic themes in recognizably the same multiform. Some of the units that have no parallels in other songs, such as Hero Quarrels in Assembly, are repeated several times in succession, so that the number of units not duplicated elsewhere is inflated. If all such sequences are excluded from the calculations, sixty-six out of seventy-three units, 13 or 90.5 percent of the song, are repetitions of themes as groupings of motifs. These figures may be compared with those for a short song with a more conventional plot, "The Wedding of Custovic Omer" (Parry 527, 591 lines): twenty-four of its twenty-six paradigmatic units, or 92.5 percent of the song, are repeated multiforms. (The analysis of text 527 is given in the second part of the Appendix.) Thus far we have seen that a song consists of narrative ideas, paradigms of 12. See "The Captivity of Jankovic Stojan," in Srpske Narodne Pjesme, ed. Vuk Stef. Karadzic, vol. 3 (Belgrade, 1964), no. 25; "The Captivity of Dulic Ibrahim," in Serbocroatian Heroic Songs, ed. Parry and Lord, no. 4; also the discussion of return songs in Lord, Singer of Tales, chap. 5 and app. 3. 13. The seven rare themes and multiforms are: Hero Quarrels in Assembly, two multiforms of Absence (treason), Travel in which the horse balks, Equipping by the captive Alaga, Discovery of the Girl with deceptive story, and Other World Assembly with church service. Other multiforms described as anomalous in the discussion include rare motifs in an otherwise regular recomposition of the theme.

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events, that are repeated in the tradition as a whole and in the songs of a single singer, and that the singer has habitual ways of presenting these ideas by grouping pertinent motifs. One story is distinguished from another by the motifs (such as the nominal characters and places) that express the paradigms, and by the breaks in habitual groupings of motifs (unusual multiforms of paradigms). Part of the oral poet's technique, then, depends on the repetition and variation of groups of specific motifs, groups that we perceive as bound together by underlying paradigmatic themes. 3. THE THEME IN THE TEXT While motifs specify the content of the paradigms, the theme as a grouping of motifs is still an abstraction, a narrative idea, rather than a compositional device. It appears in the text only as lines of poetry produced by the singer. Just as the paradigm is associated in his mind with a grouping of motifs, the whole paradigmatic theme with its motifs is associated with the words in which he habitually expresses it, that is, with repeated formulas and compositional themes. The theme as compositional device, like the formulas of which it is made, comes into being because a working singer needs and uses it to express ideas in a traditional narrative form. We shall look at a selection of paradigmatic themes, comparing examples from Parry 1976 with those in other songs, to see how the themes are repeated not only with the same sets of motifs, but also in the same sets of formulas. The selection covers the descriptive themes of Assembly and Boasting, with two themes related to Assembly, Two Heroes Converse and Other World Assembly, and the narrative themes of Battle and Aftermath of Battle, and Hero Travels. Assembly"1 In the fifteen songs under consideration, there are twelve examples of Assembly, varying in length from six to thirty-two lines.15 Two appear in text 1976, the remainder in seven other songs. Nearly all are gatherings of the Turks for drinking and talking in the beys' chamber or outside a guardhouse on the border. The exceptions are councils, one a meeting of Christian bans (1951), the other a meeting of Mustajbeg's Turkish peers (1966). 14. Studies of the Assembly theme in Serbocroatian and other traditions include: Patricia Arant, "Excursus on the Theme in Russian Oral Epic Song," in Studies Presented to Prof. Roman Jakobson by his Students, ed. Charles E. Gribble (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 9-16; Walter Arend, "Die typischen Szenen bei Homer," Problemata 7 (Berlin, 1933), chap. 8; Lord, Singer of Tales, chap. 4; Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., "Formulaic Diction and Thematic Composition in the Chanson de Roland," University of North Carolina Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures, no. 36 (Chapel Hill, 1961). 15. Assembly passages in the sample (those marked with an asterisk are the longer multiforms of the theme): 1976: 2-32*, 905-15; 1941: 1-22*; 1943: 1-23*, 248-302; 1951: 8-22, 827-35; 1954: 1544-79*; 1966: 35-41; 1969: 332-51*.

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The Assembly theme depicts a scene of ease and merriment, the setting for the initiation of action in response to some contingency that will confront the assembled group. It commonly appears at or near the beginning of a song or of an important new stage in the plot. Three occur as the absolute beginning of a song; two, the council variants, fall in second place after a description of devastation. The sessions nearly always lead into the arrival or dispatch of someone with a message, or to a speech by a hero who has previously received a troubling message (the themes of Entry and Reception, or Discontented Hero).16 The longer Assembly passages, like the one that opens our text, are not usually followed directly by the speech of the messenger or discontented hero, but are extended by the theme of Boasting, which theme epitomizes the hero's life. The heroes boast not of particular individual achievements and possessions (horses, swords, wives, and the like), but of unspecified exploits like those that form the plots of the songs: "What a hero one man is in combat, who has traveled farther in German disguise . . . who has challenged a Hungarian to combat and taken off his head, taken his head and given it to the bey in exchange for a gold plume for his own head . . . who has abducted a Latin girl, taken her to Lika, converted her to the Turkish faith and married her . . ." (1976). Occasionally Boasting is inappropriate, as when Assembly (or Two Heroes Converse) is leading into the theme of Discontented Hero, but even here a reflection of it can be seen in the exchange that precedes the hero's statement of his trouble. Both a questioner and the replying hero rehearse the greatness of the unhappy man's reputation, which makes his sadness seem all the more portentous. Camil limits Boasting to one specific context: all nine examples of it occur after Assembly or Two Heroes Converse, and all but one are in second place in the song. It lends to the opening theme a formal and ceremonial air, which other singers often create by beginning the song with a special invocation and introduction (pripjev)." In all the longer Assemblies, the motifs that appear are ordered according to the same scheme: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Place of gathering Enumeration of elders present Elders' refreshments Younger heroes' place Younger heroes' drinking

16. The Assembly theme thus is associated by a "tension of essences" (Lord's term; see Singer of Tales, p. 97) with the idea of devastation, the subject of its deliberations, and with the idea of a messenger. Formulas common to Assembly passages often occur in Messenger themes. 17. See the following discussion of repetition of formulas, pp. 226-227.

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For example, the motifs in the Assembly that opens our text are arranged thus: 1. The Turks in Udbina in the beys' chamber 2. Mustajbeg at the head of the table, Kozlic Huremaga on his right, Gazi Cejvanaga on his left, and others 3. Drinking coffee and smoking 4. Separate table with swords laid on it 5. Drink served up, poured, passed; Tale the Fool hands back the empty glass In the parallel instances of Assembly some points are not elaborated so much as in text 1976, while others are dwelt on longer. Only two other songs name the elders individually (the same company, but introduced in a different order); the rest simply name Mustajbeg under 2. Text 1941 dismisses the younger heroes (5) in a single line, but interpolates between 3 and 4 a specific mention of the absence of the elder Gazi Cejvanaga. The scheme thus gives an order to motifs that regularly appear in the recomposition of the theme, at the same time allowing details that belong to a specific narrative context to be fitted in. Because the same groups of motifs are mentioned in the repetition of the Assembly theme, one might suppose that the verbal content of Assembly passages will also tend to be the same, or at least similar, every time the theme recurs. But in fact, not all Assembly passages use similar formulas. The relationship between the paradigm and the formulas fluctuates; at times the two almost coincide, while at other times multiforms may occur with almost none of the formulas that regularly appear in the repeated multiforms. A comparison of lines 2-35 of text 1976 with all the other Assembly passages shows that this passage closely resembles the four other longer Assemblies. All are over twenty lines long. Of the thirty lines in this Assembly, all but the first occur in one or more of the other Assemblies, either as half- or whole-line formulas duplicated exactly or in formulaic variations of lines in the sample passage. (In Example 1, the repeated formulas are underscored with a solid line and the formulaic expressions with a broken line.)18 Thus 97 percent of the Assembly passage in our text consists of lines that recur in other examples of Assembly. The figures for the Boasting passage, lines 36-62, are twenty-five and one-half lines of formulas and formulaic variations out of twenty-seven, or 94.5 percent. In the second Assembly in text 1976 (lines 905-23; theme no. 53) we find neither the five-point scheme nor the same formula content. The whole 18. T h e p r o c e d u r e for m a r k i n g formulas a n d formulaic expressions is d e m o n s t r a t e d in Lord, Singer Tales, p p . 4 5 - 4 8 .

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EXAMPLE 1 ASSEMBLY AND BOASTING 1

Pice ga piju Udbinjani Turci, [cf. Two Heroes Converse] Po prilici na sirokoj Liei, Na Udbini u begluk mehani, U begluku ajan Mustajbega. Pun ga je begluk . . . ispunijo [celebi spahija] A na sezdeset redna casa hoda.

2

U vrh kola beg Mustajbeg Lika. U vrh stola do dzamli pendzera. S desne mu strane Kozlic Huremaga, A iz live gazi Cejvanaga, Do njega glava sijo Osmanaga, Pa do njega Grdan Mustafaga, Do njega sijo stari P u n i t a l a , Pa do njega aga Beciraga, Do njega Ogros sijo Omeraga, Pa do njega Ogros Hasanaga, Do njega sijo Bajaga Alaga,. Sa Zalozja, sa vrela Cetina.

3

Ihtijari jandaljjosidali, Pa cibuke duge potocili, Pirjalije lule razjarili, Duhan ga puse, mrku kahvu sreu. 4 Jandaljja mladez tolu postavili, Iza pasa pale povadili Gole ga pale na sto pometali. 5 *Pice ga piju ko kad prolivaju, Ah, dvi im case a dvi tocibase Jednu ga piju, drugu nalivaju. Pice im sluzi kremare Omere A liva ga Memicicu Suljo, ¿ase ga dili Durdevicu Rade Prazne ga vraca budalina Tale. (Boasting) O svacem su eglen zametnuli, §to o svacem handzak o svacemu, Ponajbolje o pustu junastvu: O puskanju i o vojevanju, O dobrim atim i ostrim mizdracim, Kako je koji junak u mejdanu, De je ga koji dulje sahodijo A po tevdilu nimackom odilu, U Primorje sila^ijc^nivno^ Uhodijo sela i gradove; De li Madzaru stao na mejdanu,

The Turks of Udbina are drinking Somewhere in broad Lika, In Udbina, in the beys' hall, In the chamber of the lord Mustajbeg. The chamber is full And the glass goes round among sixty men. At the head of the circle is the bey Mustajbeg of Lika At the head of the table next to the window. On his right is Kozlic Huremaga, And on his left Gazi Cejvanaga, Next to him sits Osmanaga, Next to him Grdan Mustafaga, Next to him sits old Durutaga, Next to him the aga Beciraga, Next to him sits Ogros Omeraga, Next to him Ogros Hasanaga, Next to him sits Bajaga Alaga, From Zalozje, from the spring of the Cetina. The elders sat in a place apart, They filled their long chibouks And lit their flickering pipes. They smoke and sip black coffee. The young men have set up a separate table, Pulled their swords from their belts And laid them naked on the table. They are drinking like men with the flux. They have two glasses and two pourers; As they drink one, they pour the other. Tavern keeper Omer serves the drink, Memicic Suljo pours it, Durdevic Rade distributes the glasses, Tale the Fool returns them empty. They began to speak of many things, Of this and that and everything, Most of all of sheer heroism, Of shooting and fighting, Of good steeds and sharp spears, How one is a hero in single combat, How one has ridden farther In disguise as a German, Gone down to the level coastland, Spied out the villages and cities; How one has challenged a Hungarian to combat And taken off his head,

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Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song I njegovu odvalijo glavu, Snijo g a glavu, b e g u p o k l o n i j o . A za z u t u na_£lavu_cejenku2 Jal_shodijo k a k v u m a n a s t i r u , I k o d n j e g a kavgu z a t u r i j o ; J a U v i d i j o kicene latinke, Jal c u r i c u , jali udovicu, Jali g a k a k v u azgin p u s c e n i c u ; Jal g a iznijo ] a t j n k u _ d i v q j k u . A h iznijo j e na_vrJiovnu L i k u , P o t u r c i j o £ a se ozenijo, Jali d a r o v o p o b r a t i m a svoga. A h , sve i' beze siska o d p e n d z e r a , " S a u l a ga, dico, sivi sokolovi! B l a g o g a begu u vas g l e d a j u c i K a d g a vidim senli i vesele!"

T a k e n t h e h e a d , given it to t h e bey, A n d received a g o l d e n p l u m e f o r his own h e a d ; O r g o n e down to s o m e m o n a s t e r y , And started a fight there; O r spied t h e pretty L a t i n m a i d e n s , A girl, a widow, O r a y o u n g divorced w o m a n ; Stolen away a L a t i n m a i d e n , T a k e n her to rocky L i k a , C o n v e r t e d her a n d m a r r i e d h e r , O r given her to his f r i e n d . F r o m t h e window t h e bey k e p t soothing t h e m , " C a l m yourselves, c h i l d r e n , g r a y falcons! H a p p y is t h e bey looking at you, W h e n I see you c h e e r f u l a n d m e r r y ! "

[1976:2-60]

passage is an elaboration of point B, the enumeration of the elders present, with special mention of the absence of the younger heroes (not unlike the notice of absence in text 1941); but the full development of the Assembly as drinking party is lacking. As for formula content, only two full lines and six half-lines out of seventeen are repetitions or formulaic variations of the formulas in the longer Assembly. The shorter Assemblies in the other songs are similarly expressed in their own formulas and present only one or two of the points in the scheme, usually 1 and 2. Camil repeats one elaborate form of Assembly in the same formulaic expressions, giving the same groups of motifs in the same order. This ornamented multiform of the theme constitutes the formal opening of a song, and is the proper setting for a hero to reveal a need, either by delivering a challenge or by declaring the cause of his discontent, thus initiating the action of the song. The shorter Assemblies as a rule follow the dramatization of the existence of a need in other themes, or when the group receives a conventional message from a menial messenger rather than from someone who is a hero in his own right. They are nonce creations, limited to a few motifs and having no fixed formula content. Most of the songs that do not use Assembly to set the scene for the initiation of action open with the theme of Two Heroes Converse, in effect an assembly of two. Two (sometimes three) sworn brothers are drinking in a private chamber, often in a guardhouse on the border between the Turkish and Christian realms; their names and background are given. In the sample of (Tamil's songs there are eight instances of Two Heroes Converse in seven songs; all are between eight and twenty lines long." 19. Two Heroes Converse passages: 527: 1-9; 1942: 1-18; 1945: 1-10; 1950: 1-19; 1954: 2-12, 1148-56; 1975: 1-33; 1977: 1-19.

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Two Heroes Converse is the opening theme of all seven, and in one it also begins the second major part of the story (just as text 1976 uses a second Assembly). Like Assembly, Two Heroes Converse leads, often through Boasting, into the revelation of a need for action, thus forming the same sort of larger complex as Assembly and its succeeding themes. (Five of the passages are followed by Boasting, then by the announcement of the existence of a desirable bride or, in one case, of a desirable horse. The other three cases continue with Discontented Hero, a theme that implies Boasting.) The two themes belong to a substitution system, analogous to the substitution systems of formulaic expressions. 20 The use of one or the other is related to the nature of the conflict at the climax of the song. The Two Heroes Converse opening appears only if subsequent events do not involve Mustajbeg and the full army of Turks; if the bey meets the ban in full-scale military encounter the full Assembly must meet at the beginning. Tales of single combat properly begin with Two Heroes. The scheme by which motifs are ordered in Two Heroes Converse resembles a shortened form of Assembly: 1. Place of gathering ( = 1 and 3 in Assembly) 2. Identification of the heroes ( = 2 and 4 in Assembly) 3. Drinking ( = 5 in Assembly) The various passages designated as Two Heroes Converse, especially those that open songs, resemble each other in formula content, though not always so closely as the longer Assemblies do because much of the relatively brief theme is concerned with proper names peculiar to each song. In a sample passage, 1954: 2 - 1 2 (see Example 2), all but one and one-half lines are repetitions or variations of the formulas in other examples of the theme; 86.3 percent of the lines are formulaic for the theme. Furthermore, this example shares three distinctive formulas with Assembly, formulas that are markers of the Assembly system: the two introductory lines of the sample, which correspond to 1976: 2 - 3 , and the final line, which often summarizes the younger heroes' drinking in Assembly. (The marker formulas are designated with an asterisk.) It might be supposed that any large gathering for refreshment and entertainment would belong to the same paradigm and be expressed in the same motifs and formulas as Assembly, even a gathering of Christian heroes in enemy country. A similar idea is being conveyed whether the gathering takes place in Udbina or in Zadar; just as Assembly shows the Turks forever making merry in the beys' chamber until they are sent off on some quest, so too the world of Christendom enjoys one long feast until the Turks arrive to 20. See Lord, Singer of Tales,

pp. 47-48, on substitution systems of formulas.

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Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song EXAMPLE 2 T W O H E R O E S CONVERSE Piju_ga £ice do dva probratima Po prilici na sirokoj Lici U cardaku kod vrela Budaka. Boze ga mili, ko bi pobre bili? Oklen jesu, od senta kojeg su? Lako je obe pobre pogoditi. Jedno je glava Ibre bajraktara, jJajraktara_ bega udbinjskoga^ Sa Podovlja i vrhovne Like, Drugo mu pobro ¿ustovic Osmane. *Pice ga piju ko kad prolivaju. (Discontented Hero) Da gledamo dvaju pobratima! Ibro ga pije senli i veseo A Custovic sucut i zlovoljan. . . .

Two sworn brothers were drinking Somewhere in broad Lika, In the guardhouse at the spring of Budak. Dear God, who would those brothers be? Where are they from, from what region? It is easy to guess who those brothers are. One is Ensign Ibro, The standard-bearer of the bey of Udbina, From Podovlje and the mountainous Lika. The other is his sworn brother Custovic Osman. They are drinking like men with the flux. Let us watch the two brothers! Ibro is drinking cheerful and merry, But Custovic is glum and ill-tempered. . . . [1954:2-15]

disrupt it. The singer, however, composes the two scenes in two different ways, which we have designated as the themes of Assembly and Other World Assembly. The dissimilarity between the two themes derives primarily from their contexts. Since the Other World Assembly is characteristically the questing hero's destination rather than his starting point, it comes near the climax of the action of a song, not at its beginning. Thirteen of the eighteen examples 21 are juxtaposed with themes of travel, either of a single hero or of a host, or with themes of interdiction; the assembly in the other world is remote and difficult to enter. This theme is regularly the setting for the discovery of the object of the hero's quest, a girl or a prisoner, and of the struggle to obtain that object. Seven of the examples lead to themes associated with the girl or with captives (e.g., Discovery of a Girl, Hero Meets Party with Captives), and the scene is usually staged either for a wedding or for an execution, which the Turks will try to prevent. Other World Assembly represents the opposite pole from Assembly in the journey of the hero. 22 21. O t h e r World Assembly passages: 1976: 996-1002, 2980-97; 1941: 678-719; 1942: 102-14, 263-66; 1943: 798-818; 1945: 460-71, 9 7 3 - 8 2 ; 1950: 221-41, 571-83, 599-607, 1273-94; 1954: 1416-22, 1976-89, 2037-64, 2136-46; 1966: 500-518; 1969: 1049-1161. 22. T h e difference between Assembly a n d O t h e r World Assembly is not t h a t one depicts a Turkish setting while the other is Christian. In text 1950, Camil, a Moslem singer, tells of a Christian hero's adventures a m o n g the T u r k s . W h e n the hero entertains a friend at the beginning of the song, we have a normal instance of T w o Heroes Converse; when in disguise as a T u r k he joins an ordinary drinking party on T u r k i s h soil, the scene is a short Assembly. But when he enters a gathering of T u r k s where he discovers a desirable girl, the scene has the descriptive details of the O t h e r World Assembly.

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The narrative ideas underlying the two scenes are two distinct paradigms, expressed in different groupings of motifs and in different sets of formulas. Examples of Other World Assembly usually repeat the two descriptive motifs of which they are composed in fixed clusters of formulas, but they do not share characteristic formulas with Assembly (see Example 3). Moreover, the paradigms differ so widely in their position and function in the song that Other World Assembly has no place in the substitution system of Assembly and related themes. EXAMPLE 3 OTHER WORLD ASSEMBLY Kad sam, beze, ja se promolijo, Promolijo do Novoga bila, A do kule baña Novljanina, *A1 se zurba cuje u Novome O, kod kule Novljanina baña. Kadkad koja otrgne lubarda, A ucesto grokte mozarovi, Puska vije a tamburin bije, Pokuckuju bubnji limenjasi Otrguju puske nimackinje. (Interdictors) A ja, beze, prisuka dogata O, do kule baña Novljanina U avliju ujaha dogata. Na avliju kad sam udarijo Na kapiji stoje dva soldata Pod musketim i pod bajunetom U skrljaci i pod telecaci. . . .

When I appeared, o bey, Appeared at white Novi, At the mansion of the ban of Novi, A commotion was heard in Novi At the mansion of the ban of Novi. Cannon boomed now and again, Mortars fired constantly, Rifles whined, tambourines rang, Tin drums rattltd, German guns went off. And I rode my white horse up To the mansion of the ban of Novi. I rode to the courtyard. When I arrived at the courtyard, At the gate stood two soldiers With muskets and bayonets, Wearing caps and knapsacks. . . . [1976:993-1009]

Battle and Aftermath of Battle23 All of Camil's songs include combat of some sort, but not always represented by the theme of Battle. Besides the thirty-four instances of Battle, combat is depicted as, for example, Hostile Arrival, Hostile Reception, Pursuit of a Bride Thief, Hero Met and Assisted, Companion Supports a Hero, Hero Overcomes Captors, and Hero Overcome and Detained. Aftermath (of which there are twenty-five instances—at least one in every song) 23. Studies of the Battle theme in Homer and in Serbocroatian songs include: Bernard Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad, in Hermes, Heft 21 (Wiesbaden, 1968); David Gunn, "Thematic Composition and Homeric Authorship," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 75 (1971): 1-31 (uses examples from Parry and Lord, Serbocroatian Heroic Songs).

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may occur after any of the combat themes.24 For example, in the first part of text 1976 conflict is presented in Hostile Arrival and Hero Overcome, followed by Aftermath; the full-scale Battle is reserved for the second part. Themes of combat are usually climactic, as hostilities between two parties are brought to a head and resolved by violent clash. Accordingly they regularly appear near the end of a song, part of a song, or story within a story, with Aftermath directly preceding the closing themes or the transition to another line of the plot. Having the same position and function in the song, Battle and its equivalents constitute another substitution system of themes, comparable to the system of opening themes related to Assembly. Battle and Aftermath together tend to form one of the longest scenes in a song; in text 1976 only Gathering a Host (in this case a tour de force) is longer. This is due in part to the importance of Battle and Aftermath in resolving the plot and in part to the great variety of actions they include. Battle may involve negotiations between the two forces, attack on a fortified spot, exhortations by the leaders, cries of the fighting men, pillaging, and pursuit of the defeated army, as well as combat between individual warriors. Aftermath may include the recall of the armies, gathering up the dead and wounded, burying the dead, the distribution of booty and disposal of captives, and the return home. There are basically two types of Battle—engagements between armies, and single combats—each with its appropriate aftermath. Six songs have single combat only; then the duel between two warriors is lengthy and elaborate. The others combine the two types of combat. Usually individual heroes open hostilities, and then both the Christian ban and the Turkish bey bring in armies to support their champions. Pursuit and combat between single warriors may also conclude the battle, as in text 1976. Single combats included in a battle of armies are usually summary encounters, resulting in quick victory for the hero. As in the longer Assembly, the motifs belonging to Battle and Aftermath are grouped according to a scheme that orders the major incidents in the two paradigms. The outline of the scheme below shows some of the motifs (or independent themes) that may appear at each point; those proper to engagements between armies are on the left, those proper to single combat on the right. 24. Battle passages: 1976: 3098-3187, 3207-46; 527: 537-59; 1941: 849-97; 1942: 395-508, 929-1013; 1943: 1025-80; 1944: 380-442, 478-97; 1945: 1072-79; 1950: 677-97, 816-37, 845-951; 1951: 702-33, 2260-77, 2318-68, 2394-2427, 2491-2509; 1954: 959-72, 2300-34; 1964: 628-714, 996-1012, 1168-1215, 1255-1497, 1499-1635; 1966: 980-1008, 1034-80; 1969: 1209-30; 1975: 492-622, 648-738; 1977: 261-68, 336-61. Aftermath passages: 1976 : 736-894, 1674-80, 3181-3201, 3250-3371; 527: 443-53, 561-80; 1941: 1016-37; 1942: 510-27; 1943: 255-97, 1019-24, 1166-1218; 1944: 491-535; 1945: 1080-95; 1950: 452-1046, 1163-93; 1951: 1290-1312; 2370-93, 2443-84, 2512-2605; 1954: 975-97, 1135-75, 2606-46; 1964: 1638-1823; 1966: 473-518, 1009-33, 1102-62, 1250-87; 1969: 1258-1372; 1977: 365-98. Some of the individual passages have been grouped together as a single instance of the theme when one continues the action of a previous one.

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1. Approach to combat (Themes of Host Travels, Hero Met and Assisted; alarm and pursuit of a bride thief or villain; ambush laid, siege of a city or fortress begun) 2. Opening hostilities, challenge to combat (Girls and other valuable captives (Terms of combat arranged) secured) 3. Combat (Attack by vanguard; themes of (Dueling with a succession of Hostile Arrival, Hostile Reception) weapons: guns, swords, knives, wrestling) 4. Intervention (Full armies engage, exhortation (Horses fight, Tale the Fool or a by the commander, cries of the captured girl lends aid) warriors, pillaging) 5. Victory (Pursuit of defeated army) (Theme of Hero Overcome and Detained) Aftermath 6. Return (Air cleared in response to prayer, army recalled, individual heroes return with prizes, receive rewards) 7. Final arrangements (Dead and wounded gathered up, burial of the dead, booty gathered and distributed, prisoners executed or released for ransom) Combinations of themes that can substitute for Battle in the Battle system usually follow the same scheme. For example, Hero Met and Assisted, after opening with its own marker formulas (1), consists of a challenge (2) and attack (3), which often merge into a Battle theme proper at intervention (4). A combat fought unsuccessfully by a single hero may involve Hostile Arrival (2 and 3), then combat (3, single combat type), concluding with Hero Overcome and Detained (5). The order of motifs in Battle and Aftermath is subject to more variation than that of Assembly, because the motifs themselves are more numerous and diverse and because narrative, as opposed to descriptive, themes require more adaptation to their context. Since they fall at the end of a story, Battle and Aftermath must be adapted to the preceding narrative by including the specific motifs necessary to resolve the plot. The groups of motifs that may be used appear in different combinations and in different positions within the order of major incidents (the scheme). The sequence of incidents may be broken off at any point and resumed at an earlier stage as a new set of actors enters the scene. Some incidents may be expanded into longer episodes based

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on an independent paradigmatic theme in the Battle system, while others may be summarized or omitted altogether. Similarly, the diversity of the motifs results in greater variation in formula content among the several examples of Battle and Aftermath (see Example 4). For the final Battle in text 1976 and its Aftermath the proportions of repetitions of formulas and formulaic lines are: Battle 11. 3098-3179 62/79 lines 78.5% Aftermath 11. 3181-3201 18/21 lines 85.5% Battle 11. 3207-3246 32/38 lines 84% Aftermath 11. 3250-3371 77/117 lines 66% (excluding the unusual motifs telling of the fight at the church) 52/72 lines 72% For all the scene except the final section of the Aftermath (7), with its peculiar disposal of the girls and captives, the percentages are high, higher in fact than other examples of the two themes yield, but lower than those for Assembly. The full-line formulas that are repeated tend to fall in clusters, chiefly at point 4, the general melee with its speeches and cries, and at points 6 and 7 in the Aftermath. These clusters regularly appear in combat scenes, forming the core around which elaboration and expansion can be built. They not only mark the Battle and Aftermath themes with special descriptions, 25 they also narrate the essential actions of the two themes. The singer has one basic form of Battle and Aftermath, consisting of the clusters, which he habitually uses whenever he embarks on a Battle scene and which he shapes by adding to the core and appropriately elaborating the particular song he is singing. Hero Travels Hero Travels is the most frequently used theme in the songs in our sample. It occurs twenty-two times in text 1976, and sixty-two times elsewhere, varying in length from two to thirty-seven lines.26 Besides depicting the major journeys of the hero between his home and enemy territory, Hero Travels serves to link scenes and to facilitate shifts between parts of the plot. It is also a component of other themes, such as Messenger Travels, Pursuit of a Bride 25. T h e idea of c o m b a t has m a r k e r formulas, such as " F r c a j u glave, o d p a d a j u r u k e " ( " H e a d s are falling, a r m s are falling off"). Individual t h e m e s in the Battle system also have their own markers; e.g., Hero Met a n d Assisted has the couplet: " B e je srece, tu je i nesrece, D e nesrece, tu i srece i m a " ( " W h e r e t h e r e is f o r t u n e , there is misfortune also, W h e r e misfortune, there is f o r t u n e also"). 26. E x a m p l e s of long Travel passages: 1976: 506-26, 688-724; 527: 256-94; 1942: 321-41; 1943: 222-46, 528-42; 1944: 249-68, 354-79; 1945: 384-402; 1950: 5 7 - 7 7 , 7 7 1 - 8 0 3 , 1 2 4 0 - 7 2 ; 1951: 318-45, 441-78, 630-50; 1954: 497-529, 631-71, 1372-1413, 1943-64, 2026-42; 1964: 246-79, 401-43; 1969: 976-1011; 1975: 439-60.

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Mary Putney Coote EXAMPLE 4 BATTLE

Sad kod crkve zametnu se kavga, *Puce lunta, zametnu se punta. Nabodice carak zametnuse, A na_njihu^VIasi jidarise. Alah rabum, na svacem ti fala! Tq_vidao beg Mustajbeg Lika, Jer mu je mosno bilo pogledati. Sad da vidis bega Mustajbega, Be halaknu niz poljane vojsku. Bajraktari naprid udarise Svaki_aga^ tepa_bajraktarm "Radi mi, sine, munu ujagmiti, Bolji cu ti tajin izbaviti!" A veli mu vridan bajraktare, "Moj ajanu, ne brini se s time!" Stoji fuka u^nebu bajraka. U toga bega^ uspiranja nema, Nece beze dove_dji_zauci, Nit on ceka da zauci dova, Da je uce hodze i hadzije, Vec brez dove beze_udarijo. Bajraktari naprid udarise, Vec dusmanske lige potrgase Al i' dobro tudi docekase Sve na oganj i na vatru zivu, Sve na oganj i na vatru zivu. T u c a j m s k a ^ britka sablja siva, Sablja siva a krv se proliva, Bojna koplja stoji krhljevina, Pala ga magia od neba do tala Ni brat brata poznati ne mere. Vis£ begu ^atra_dogorjela. Stade vika lickog poglavara, "Ala dico, sivi sokolovi! Dzenetu se otvorila vrata Iz dzeneta izasle hurije, I iznile krzli pestevalje, One kupe duse o' sehita! Aljíuj^teji^ deco moja draga, Kuja mu mati a otac kopile Ko_bi_se_vise^pa_guske fatijo, Ve' za Boga i za golu cordu!" Ja kad bega cuse svi Licani, Svako male baci u gajtane, Halaknuse, Boga spomenuse, Pa za golo gozde prifatise.

Now the fighting began by the church, Cannon fired, the battle began. Warriors fired their flintlocks, And the Vlahs charged. Lord Allah, thanks be to thee for all things! The bey Mustajbeg observed this, Because it was possible for him to see. Now see the bey Mustajbeg, As he cried the army on over the plain. The standard-bearers struck first. Each aga encouraged his standard-bearer: "My son, take the first place for me, I will obtain better rations for you." And his worthy standard-bearer said: "My lord, have no fear for that!" There was a rustling of standards in the sky. The bey did not hesitate, He would not say a prayer, He did not wait to say a prayer, For the priests and pilgrims to say one, But the bey struck without a prayer. The standard-bearers struck first, They tore through the enemy lines, But the enemy met them well With fire and living flame, With fire and living flame. Guns fired, sharp sabers flashed, Sabers flashed, blood flowed, Battle spears shattered, A mist fell from heaven to earth, Brother could not recognize brother. The firing came closer to the bey. A shout went up from the leader of Lika: "My children, gray falcons! The gates of Paradise have opened, The houris have come out of Paradise And brought out red towels. They gather up the souls of those who fall for the faith! But hear me, my dear children, His mother is a bitch and his father a bastard, Whoever seizes his gun again. But now rely on God and on your naked sword!" When the Lika men heard the bey, Each one hung his pistol on a strap. They gave a war cry, they called on the name of God And seized their naked swords.

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Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song •Stade ga cika pera o' sabalja •Stade ga jeka ostrega mizdreka Od ga mizdreka jeka _ranjenjka Ranjen ga jeci jer ga zdravi gnjeci Jedni ga vicu na polju ranjeni, "Ne gazi me, brate, na poljani! Lake su me rane savladale, Ja_bi_mogj3 rane preboliti." Jedni vicu po polju ranjeni, "Udri mene, gazi dusmanina! Dusa mi je u kotlac izasla Ne bi 1' moju zaminijo glavu!" Stoji ga vika u p i s n i j o l d a t a ^ " O h ajme, Luka, odpade mi r u k a ! " "Ajme, Sava, otice i glava!" "Ajme, Mujo, poginu mi b r a j o ! " "Ajme, caca, sva legose b r a c a ! " P e ga krvava kisa udarila Nije ga kisa sto je od godine. Vec je magia njihu poklopila O ' zadaha konjska i j u n a c k a . Goni ga se ses puni sahata Vise ga svakom vatra dodijala. . . .

Saber blades whistled, Sharp spears ground, The wounded cried out at spear wounds. T h e wounded cried because the u n h u r t were trampling them. Some wounded on the field cried out, "Brother, do not trample me on the field! I have fallen with light wounds." I might recover from these wounds." Other wounded on the field cried out, "Strike me, my brave enemy! My life hangs by a thread. You may kill me with your last blow." Conscripted soldiers shouted, "Alas, Luka, I have lost my a r m ! " "Alas, Sava, your head will go too!" "Alas, Mujo, my brothers have perished!" "Alas, father, all my brothers have fallen!" A rain of blood fell, Not the rain the season brings, But a mist covered them From the dust raised by horses and heroes. They fought on for six full hours. Firing was finding its mark on both sides. . . . [1976:3111-79)

Thief, and Aftermath of Battle. Although widely applicable, the independent multiforms of the Travel paradigm tend to fall at just two points in the narrative: first, after an Assembly scene with a challenge or announcement of a quest (or the equivalent), the hero travels to his home to prepare for his undertaking; second, he travels to the location of the object of his quest, usually far from his home. All the cases of Travel in text 1976 fall at one of these two junctures, and forty-nine of the cases in the other songs are similarly distributed. Travel themes at the first point are usually short and unremarkable in formula content. They often resemble one another, mainly because there are limited ways to say, "He mounted his horse of such and such a color and rode to such and such a place." Most of the longer Travel passages—those of more than fifteen lines— appear at the second point, for the journey across the boundary into another realm requires more lengthy description of the leave-taking, the route covered and its special dangers, and the marvelous and sinister character of the destination. Instances of Travel at this juncture are marked by recurrent formulas and clusters of formulas that stand out in passages of otherwise undistinctive verbal content. For example, in a sample Travel passage (theme no. 49 in text 1976; see Example 5) twenty-six out of thirty-five lines,

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Mary Putney Coote EXAMPLE 5 HERO TRAVELS

O n d a beze k a d a cuo vilu, O n govori p o m a m n u golubu, H A I g p j j j b e ^ i brate i d r u z e ! " Ja Jcad jjolub b e ^ a j r a z u m y o D o b a r hajvan govorit ne znade Al razumi sahibiju svoga. D o b a r golub begu poletijo, D o b a r dalgu digo na sebika, Bas ko oro ispod oblakova. Prvi cula k r a j usiju noge, Sve mu z a d n j e na sapi izlicu. Po njemu se beze poklopijo. Sve se beze [beze] k u n e na goluba D a se golub ispod bega krade. Za njim ga Dulie skace na dogatu, Vavik Dulie u d a r a dogata, Kad izbili niz siroku Liku, Udarili uz Vrhove crne. K a d izisli na Vrhove ravne, Ala garet vid'li po Vrhovi, Garet jeste sa obadvi strane Pogorile kuce siromaske I aginski visoki o d i a c i O zidine same ostanule. Sve junaci leze po sokaci Ni na kakvu ruse glave n e m a . Sve izasle ostarile m a j k e Pa poznaju go sokaeim r a n k e Po uckuri i tanki rukavi Pa poznaju dicu po sokaci Po uckuri i t a n k i rukavi. R a h m e t daje beg M u s t a j b e g Lika Rahmet daje sa obadve strane. Kroz Vrhove protisce goluba Pa ^ n krenu sentu Velebitu Do b u n a r a i starca j a b l a n a . . . .

Then the bey, when he heard the vila, Spoke to his spirited dove-gray horse: " A h , dove-gray brother and f r i e n d ! " When the horse understood the bey (The good beast could not speak, But it understood its master) T h e good dove-grey flew to the bey. T h e good steed raised a rush of wind Like an eagle soaring beneath the clouds. Its front feet flew past its ears, T h e hind feet flew u p to its croup. T h e bey m o u n t e d on it. T h e bey kept swearing at the horse, T h a t it was only creeping under him. Behind him Dulic galloped on his white horse. Dulic kept striking his white horse. When they had ridden down broad Lika, They struck out u p black Vrhovi. When they emerged on level Vrhovi, They saw destruction in Vrhovi, Destruction on all sides, Poor men's houses b u r n e d down And of agas' lofty homes Only the walls remained. Heroes were lying everywhere in the streets, Every one lacking his head. Aged mothers had all come out T o identify the wounded in the streets By their waist cords and fine sleeves, T o identify their children By their waist cords and fine sleeves. M u s t a j b e g the bey of Lika prayed for the repose of the dead, Prayed for the dead on all sides. He urged his horse on across Vrhovi And turned toward the slopes of M o u n t Velebit, T o the well and old poplar tree. . . . [1976:688-723]

or 74.5 percent, are repeated formulas and formulaic expressions. The formulaic lines in the passage fall into clusters, one describing a horse's gait, another the ruins of Vrhovi, a third the border between Turkish and Christian lands. Unlike the clusters in Battle and Aftermath, the clusters in Travel do not convey the narrative idea of Hero Travels. Usually they introduce an idea concomitant to Travel that may be appropriate in other themes as well. For

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example, the hero's departure may be elaborated by a simile comparing the hero mounting his horse to a falcon settling on a fir branch, or by a description of the remarkable appearance and gait of his horse. Either of these two sets of formulas might occur in any theme involving the hero and his horse, e.g., Hero Steals Girl and Flees, or a horse race in Contest. When used in Travel such clusters mark the special significance of the journey across a dangerous boundary, rather than the theme of Hero Travels in general, a paradigm that has no fixed form of expression in (Tamil's songs. 4. REPETITION OF FORMULAS27 The seven themes, both narrative and descriptive, discussed above have provided examples of the various ways Camil recomposes narrative ideas in his texts. We have observed that, as they recur in songs, paradigmatic themes attract both sets of motifs arranged in a certain order and sets of formulas. The paradigmatic theme, however, does not have a consistent relationship to the repetition of formulas. The repetition of formulas has been of three kinds: (1) marker formulas; (2) clusters of formulas; and (3) passages of formulas covering an entire theme. Only the third constitutes a compositional theme, a repeated passage of narration that coincides with a paradigmatic theme. Compositional themes may be described as formulaic multiforms of a theme, as opposed to neutral multiforms that simply restate the paradigm without recourse to a recurrent cluster of formulas. In the other two kinds of repetition, one or a few formulas regularly apear in the restatement of a theme that otherwise does not have stable verbal content. The clusters of formulas, many of them applicable to more than one paradigm, represent a compositional unit larger than the single line formula, yet smaller than the compositional theme. They present one detail or motif rather than an entire narrative idea or paradigm of events. Though subject to formulaic variation, the clusters tend to be extremely stable in wording, more so than most of the multiforms of themes in which they appear. Often they are chiefly responsible for a high correspondence in formula content among the multiforms of a given theme, as in the Battle theme. Many of the compositional themes and clusters constitute what the singer may regard as ornamentation (nakice). In conversation Camil implies that such themes as Summoning a Chieftain to Join a Host, Gathering a Host, and Battle are a kind of nakice, although when questioned about certain passages he restricts nakice to what we have called the themes of Hero Dresses Specially, Preparation of a Horse, and Discovery of a Girl.28 To him 27. On repeated runs of formulas see Lord, Singer of Tales, pp. 58-63. 28. In conversation text 1963 Camil defined nakice. N|ikola]: Fine, and what is included in nakice? C: Nakice includes dressing, getting ready, getting a horse ready, and when they send letters for an army, the ajani ( c h i e f s ) . . . . In those letters [by other singers] they don't put in anything, except that the army was raised. And when there is a battle, they just say, "There was a fight and then it was over." To hell with that stuff, I say,

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Coote

and to his audience the nakice themes are ornamental probably because they offer the singer an opportunity to display his virtuosity in embellishing a song and the characters in it (the girl, the hero, or the horse) with lavish detail. They may also be considered ornamental, as opposed to essential, in that they do not advance the action of the plot. 2 ' However, "ornamental" when applied to such themes is not entirely fitting, since it implies that they are merely embellishments. More precisely, they are essential themes that have ornamental qualities. What makes them ornamental is their extraordinary length and the distinctive character of the formulas that compose them. The formulaic multiforms are generally the longer, more elaborate statements of a given theme, while the neutral multiforms are shorter and simpler. In the latter the singer is summarizing the basic idea of the theme in the formulaic language of the tradition, but not necessarily in the formulas belonging to the full development of the theme. The formulaic multiform, in contrast, is not a nonce creation in each performance. Through frequent repetition it has evolved into a stable form characterized by the use of acoustic devices, order and balance in the presentation of motifs, and traditional similes. Marker formulas, clusters, and compositional themes make more conspicuous use of poetic devices than do the formulas in neutral passages.30 Markers, for example, frequently have internal rhyme: A od volje sto se m o r e bolje

(Challenge)

(of your will as best you c a n ) Po tevdilu n i m a c k o m odilu

(disguise)

( I n disguise in G e r m a n g a r b )

or patterns of alliteration and assonance: ( P i c e piju k o k a d prolivaju

(Assembly)

(They are drinking as though they had the flux) Let him tell me how they fought—I want to hear how it was. "The sound of scraping swords rose; A rain of blood fell, not the rain the season brings, but from swift gunpowder. The sword split him in seven pieces." (The formulas are markers of Camil's Battle theme.) Isn't that better? N: And how many kinds of nakice do you think there are? C: There was woman's nakice, the woman's dress that was called Turkish, which the Moslems wore. And there was the man's Turkish nakice. Then there was the Christian dress for women, what the women wore, and what the sirdars wore extra. Two kinds for women, different ones, and two for men. Camil thus shifted from talking about nakice in a general sense to nakice in the literal sense of adornment of a person. Later in the same conversation, Camil and another singer, Murat Zunic, agreed that nakice should not be the same in every song. When asked about specific items, they answered each case with another description; for example, Assembly is not nakice, it is conversation—"u nijh zanimanje" ("their occupation"); combat is not nakice, it is heroic deeds; and so on. 29. See Lord, "Composition by Theme in Homer and Southslavic Epos"; also Nichols, "Formulaic Diction and Thematic Composition." 30. The use of poetic devices in the composition of formulas is discussed by Lord in "The Role of Sound Pattern in Serbocroatian Epic," in For Roman Jakobson, comp. Morris Halle (The Hague, 1956), pp. 301-5, also in Singer of Tales, pp. 55-56.

Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song U gavrana griva izgorila (The black horse's m a n e was burnt away)

225

(wounded horseman)

Many are constructed with syntactic parallelism between the two parts of the line: ( D u h a n puse, m r k u kahvu srcu (They smoke tobacco, they sip black coffee)

(Assembly)

Les do lesa, j u n a k do j u n a k a (Corpse upon corpse, hero upon hero)

(battlefield)

Puce lunta, zametnu se p u n t a (A fusil fired, the battle began)

(Battle)

Or in chiastic order: U m r k u bucu i skrljaku zutu (In a d a r k cloak and bonnet yellow)

(disguise)

Such lines tend to stand out from the context of other formulas in which they appear. In this way the verbal expression emphasizes the line itself and the entire multiform with which it is associated. Similar acoustic, syntactic, and rhythmic patterns underlie the larger clusters and themes. They are useful to the singer in composing groups of lines, as well as in composing single formulas. For example, they assist him in building catalog, as here in Summoning a Chieftain to Join a Host: Starog Vuka od skrbackog b u k a O d Sokolca O m e r Kozijarca Izsrid ga Bisca do dva Senagica O d Ribica dva Sejtanagica O d Hatinca dva H a n d a n a g i c a . . . O d M u t n i k a dva j a d n a vojnika I pobru mu M u j o R a z b l u d n i k a S Pucenika oba mucenika Old Vuk f r o m Skrbacki Falls, From Sokolac O m e r Kozijarac, From the midst of Bihac the two Senagici, F r o m Ribic the two Sejtanagici, F r o m H a t i n a c the two Handanagici, . . . F r o m Mutnik the two u n h a p p y warriors And their sworn brother M u j o the Rake, From Pucenik the two Muceniks [sufferers], . . .

[1976:1709-13, 1719-21]

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Mary Putney Coote

In long catalogs like those in text 1976 it often seems that the sound pattern of the place name in the first half-line governs the choice, or composition, of the hero's name in the second. Marker couplets, especially those of an aphoristic character, are tied together by the use of balance and opposition in meaning: Volim muski tamo poginuti

(Hero Announces

Neg se zenski natrag povratiti.

a Quest)

(I would rather die there like a man T h a n come back like a woman) B e j e srece, tu j e i nesrece; De nesrece, tu i srece ima; . . . (Where there is fortune, there is misfortune also; Where there is misfortune, there is good fortune also; . . .) Al vuk vije, al coban popiva?

(Hero Met and

Vuk ne vije, ni coban popiva

Assisted)

(Did a wolf howl, or a shepherd sing? A wolf did not howl, a shepherd did not sing,)

Markers and clusters also may be distinguished by constant use of a particular simile, either a negative simile, as in the example immediately above, or one such as: Pa s' doratu u sedlo izvijo Bas ko soko u granje jelovo

(Travel)

(And settled into the chestnut's saddle Like a falcon onto a fir b r a n c h . ) Na Savi se dlaka ispravila Bas ko kocet na poganu vuku Zle godine prosince miseca

(hero's terrible aspect)

(Sava's hair stood on end Like the pelt on a wicked wolf In a harsh season in D e c e m b e r . )

The cluster of formulas that a hero addresses to his beloved illustrates how the devices of internal and end rhyme, alliteration, assonance, rhythmic parallelism between lines, and grammatical and syntactic parallelism within and between lines, as well as metaphor, all serve to hold the unit together and impart to the whole the same striking euphony that the single line markers possess:

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227

Lipo A n o , n e l o m l j e n a g r a n o , Neljubljena i neobljubljena, Nelomita i nesakrsita, Neobrana i neozobana, Ziva mi bila, srcu si mi mila; O k o srca m o g si se savila Bas k o svila o k o kite smilja.

1527:359-65]

Lovely A n a , u n b r o k e n b r a n c h , N e i t h e r kissed n o r loved, Neither b r o k e n nor c r u s h e d , Neither p l u c k e d n o r t a s t e d , M a y you b e well! You a r e d e a r to my h e a r t ; You have twined yourself a r o u n d my h e a r t Like silk a r o u n d a b o u q u e t of i m m o r t e l l e s .

A similar quality is observable in the opening of the Boasting theme (see Example 1), and is especially evident in the theme of Blessing: A j d e s i n k o , h a j i r o m ti bilo! K u d hodijo, zdravo pohodijo, D o b r o m a j c i j o p e t povratijo; Ti se lipom A n o m ozenijo. Svito ti o b r a z bijo u d i v a n u A sikla ti c o r d a u m e j d a n u . D u s m a n i ti p o d n o g a m a bili Bas k o d o r u [pod] cavli u p l o c a m a .

1527:236-43]

G o , my son, m a y good f o r t u n e go with you! W h e r e v e r you go, m a y you r e t u r n in safety, A n d c o m e again to y o u r m o t h e r ; M a y you t a k e t h e lovely A n a to wife. M a y y o u r h o n o r be b r i g h t in council, A n d y o u r sword s h a r p in c o m b a t . M a y y o u r e n e m i e s be b e n e a t h your feet Like t h e nails in y o u r h o r s e ' s shoes.

The poetic devices that distinguish the markers and clusters are technically essential to the singer in that they make the formulas and groups of formulas easier to recompose, retain, and transmit. Passages made up of lines marked by these characteristics are the most stable parts of the singer's repertory (though they are never completely fixed in wording). In another, equally important, sense, poetic devices are essential because they lend a distinctive character to the articulation of certain paradigms. The language of such compositional themes as Boasting, Blessing, Discovery of a Girl, and even the catalogs in Summoning a Host has an incantatory quality that implies a special significance for these narrative ideas in the tradition of heroic song. 31 31. The descriptive clusters seem to serve the same purpose as the extended similes in the Homeric tradition, although, unlike the similes, they usually do not describe by means of comparing one object or

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The distribution of compositional themes gives another indication of how these are useful, and used, as narrative tools in creating a complete story. Seventeen compositional themes were identified in Camil's recorded songs.32 In our sample text he uses all but three: Blessing, which occurs in another form in the narrative context of "Vrhovi"; and Two Heroes Converse and Discontented Hero, which were replaced by their functional equivalents, Assembly and Entry. Text 527 has ten of the compositional themes. Since the paradigmatic themes they express all have appropriate and, moreover, necessary general subjects, the singer employs at least some of his compositional themes in every story he tells. Formulaic multiforms of paradigms (i.e., compositional themes) tend to fall in clusters at three particular points in a song (see the analyses in the Appendix). At the beginning there is a group of opening themes associated with the Assembly system. A second cluster occurs toward the middle, rather closer to the beginning than the end, when the hero or heroes are preparing for the quest (Hero Dresses Specially, Preparation of a Horse, Blessing or Summoning and Gathering a Host). The song closes with a third cluster related to the Battle system and the conclusion of the action. Two other compositional themes, belonging to Other World Assembly and Discovery of a Girl, lie somewhere between the second and third clusters, sometimes together, sometimes in isolation. Rare paradigms and unusual multiforms of common paradigms are fixed in position: they normally appear just after the opening cluster as the action of the specific plot is set in motion, close after the second cluster as the action shifts to the "other world," and occur just before or within the final cluster as the action is resolved. The remainder of the song is made up of a mixture of neutral multiforms of paradigmatic themes and multiforms marked by repeated sets of formulas. The clusters of compositional themes constitute a framework that underlies most of Camil's songs. Repeated from song to song, these formulaic multiforms of the themes provide a skeleton around which the rest of the narrative, told in themes and multiforms of more specific import, may be built. 33 The regular pattern of distribution of compositional themes means action with a n o t h e r which itself is presented in some detail. Both devices m a r k the importance of the object or action to which they apply by elaborating on its a p p e a r a n c e , often in exaggerated terms. T h u s the wonderful gait of the horse (in the theme of Entry or Travel) is not only essential to the story in a narrative sense because it provides a token by which the h e r o can b e recognized, b u t also is an indication of the special quality of the hero as a hero. 32. T h e compositional themes belong to the p a r a d i g m s of: Assembly, T w o Heroes Converse, Discontented Hero, Boasting, a Blessing, Entry, Reception, Discovery of a Girl, S u m m o n i n g a Host, S u m m o n i n g a Chieftain t o Join a Host, G a t h e r i n g a Host, O t h e r World Assembly, Battle, A f t e r m a t h of Battle, a n d Conclusion. 33. Camil recognizes the usefulness of these t h e m e s in learning a new song. In conversation text 1959 he says of M u r a t : "You can pick u p a song more easily t h a n somebody else can. W h y ? Because you know how t o dress a hero, a girl, a horse, how to set a battle going, all t h a t . . . . You can do it more easily; when the other m a n sings, you pick u p f r o m him just the route, the city he went to, the plain he crossed, you pick u p what kind of horse he h a d a n d his n a m e , where he married f r o m , a n d t h a t ' s all you n e e d . "

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229

that periods of composing material proper to the song at hand—that is, the rare themes and unusual multiforms—and material with little or no fixed form of expression—the marked and neutral multiforms—are interspersed with periods of recomposing stable passages regularly employed by the singer. While he is singing the well-established compositional themes, familiar to him through use in a great many songs, he may rest briefly from the conscious effort required to shape the specific ideas pertaining to the story he has to tell. 5. DENSITY OF THEMES AS REPETITION OF FORMULAS The relationship between paradigmatic themes and compositional themes in an orally composed text may be summarized. Paradigmatic themes appear as: A. Formulaic multiforms (compositional themes), in which over 75 percent of the lines are repeated as formulas or formulaic expressions in other instances of the theme, and motifs are ordered by the same scheme (e.g., Assembly, Battle); B. Marked multiforms, which have no significant overall correspondence in formula content among the multiforms and no stable order of motifs, but are characterized by certain formulas or clusters of formulas (e.g., Travel); C. Neutral multiforms expressing the paradigm but not marked by distinctive formulas or order of motifs (e.g., Patron Equips and Sends a Hero on a Quest); D. Unusual multiforms, expressing a common paradigm, but including rare motifs (e.g., Travel in which a horse is under a spell); E. Multiforms of rare paradigms, used infrequently by the singer and bearing no markers of more common paradigms. Since most of the paradigmatic themes that take formulaic or marked multiforms also occur in neutral multiforms, it is clear that the compositional theme is not the singer's sole means of expressing the recurrent paradigm underlying it. He can choose to use the set form or not, but there are conditions that govern his choice, just as there are conditions that govern his choice of words. The solution to the problem of choosing words lies in the thrifty use of formulas; that is, the singer resorts to one recurrent formula to express a given essential idea in a given position.34 The metrical, acoustic, and syntactic conditions that the formula meets, however, are not operative in determining what sort of multiform of a theme will appear. The singer 34. On the notion of thrift, see Lord, Singer of Tales, chap. 3, esp. pp. 50-53.

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chooses the multiform to meet other conditions: first, he adapts the theme to the specific plot of the story he is telling by using the motifs (names, places, and actions) proper to that plot; and second, he composes the theme and its motifs in formulas appropriate to their place in the total structure of the song. These conditions also imply a kind of thrift. The use of a neutral multiform in place of a marked multiform means that certain distinctive formulas are omitted from a passage that otherwise may not differ much from a marked form. The singer may omit these lines by chance, or because the paradigm at that point is not clearly differentiated from what surrounds it. The use of a neutral multiform in place of a formulaic one involves a more deliberate choice; such a choice is sometimes governed by the peculiar circumstances of a particular story, in which case the alternative is likely to be an unusual multiform of the theme rather than a neutral form. A neutral multiform appears when the theme, whether it is normally formulaic or marked, falls in a position where it is not especially significant to the story. In Singer of Tales Lord compared long and short forms of a theme in discussing the arming theme. 35 He suggests that the long form of the theme appears in situations of probable ritual significance, such as the initiation of a young hero, while the short form is used in ordinary situations. Or, put the other way around, the presence of the long form indicates that the situation has ritual significance. Camil's practice confirms these conclusions and shows further that the important distinction is not between long and short forms as such, but between two different ways of expressing the theme, one the formulaic or marked, and the other the neutral statement of the paradigm. The choice between a formulaic and a neutral form is not governed by considerations of length. The recomposition of a theme is adjusted in length according to how much leisure the singer has to develop it, but the adjustment is not made by the substitution of neutral for formulaic forms, or vice versa. A short variant of text 1976, which Camil was trying to keep brief, uses formulaic multiforms in all the places that the longest variant has them. The order of motifs and the characteristic formulas are retained; only the number of details—for example, the number of items of dress mentioned in Hero Dresses, or the number of names in the catalogs—is reduced in the shorter song. 36 On the other hand, the singer does not rely more heavily on formulaic 35. Lord, Singer of Tales. p p . 8 6 - 9 1 . 36. Some examples of the varying length of m u l t i f o r m s of themes a p p e a r i n g at the same point in the story in three variants of " V r h o v i " : 523 Assembly Boasting Entry

1948

1976

15 11.

34 II.

13 25

26

27

33

38

32 II.

Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song

231

multiforms to create a longer variant, though he may embroider them at greater length. No matter how long or how short the song there is a proportion to the appearance of elaborated formulaic multiforms that is not violated. Not every hero merits the formal Hero Dresses, not every gathering is an Assembly with Boasting, not every fight is a Battle. As a rule, a formulaic multiform of a theme will occur only once in any one song, at the point where it bears the greatest significance. The appearance of most formulaic multiforms may be explained in the same way that Lord proposes for the long dressing or arming theme. That is, it may be the unconscious association of the theme with its traditional ritual meaning that leads the singer to repeat and elaborate it in many songs. Not every multiform of a theme reflects to the same extent the potential associations in the theme, because the significance of the individual multiform is related to its function in the specific story as well as to the inherent meaning of the theme in the aggregate of its occurrences in the tradition. Thus the blessing addressed to Mustajbeg by the vila is not represented by a compositional theme, but by a passage placed in a different position and phrased in different formulas, lacking the traditional associations evoked by the formulaic Blessing; in "Vrhovi" Mustajbeg does not play the role of a hero who requires a ritual benediction. 37 Density of Themes A traditional storyteller works with certain narrative ideas, or paradigmatic themes, in creating his stories. The number of such themes he uses depends on his experience with the tradition and the diversity of his stories. In Camil's eighteen songs at least ninety-two different themes can be identified. The underlying paradigms are not so rigidly defined that no "new" story can be composed out of them. On the contrary, variation in the recreation of them is the essence of their survival and usefulness, and also the mark of a gifted narrator. The recomposition of themes in oral performance, however, is a demanding process that imposes limits on the variation of ideas and of their expression. S u m m o n i n g a Chieftain Dress

23 10

27 83

25 70

Battle 74 62 79 Battle (second p a r t ) 64 38 37. T h e t h e m e of Blessing in Camil's songs serves the f u n c t i o n often fulfilled by t h e t h e m e of Patron E q u i p s a n d Sends a Hero on a Quest, t h a t is, the f u n c t i o n of providing the hero with something tangible or intangible t h a t is essential to the success of his quest. T h e heroes of Camil's recorded songs are not novices; themes concerned with the initiation of a young hero, such as Hero Consults a P a t r o n , Patron E q u i p s a Hero, a n d Hero Q u a r r e l s in Assembly, are not used in such a way as to b r i n g out their ritual associations. Hero Quarrels is rare, a n d the consulting a n d e q u i p p i n g themes, although they a p p e a r frequently, are not repeated consistently in the s a m e position, with similar motifs a n d formulas. See David E. B y n u m , " T h e m e s of the Young H e r o . "

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In repeating traditional themes the oral poet tends to work out habitual forms of expression for recurrent ideas. Some of these ideas, embodied in repeated runs of formulas, correspond to what can be identified as paradigmatic themes. Others, expressed in a line or short cluster of lines, represent a subsidiary idea proper to more than one paradigm. Thus some paradigmatic themes, of very general application and considerable significance in traditional narrative, are faithfully repeated in nearly the same formulas from song to song. Other themes not so consistently repeated in the same formulas regularly evoke a few formulas that belong to some aspect of the theme. The presence of such runs and clusters of formulas indicates that the singer feels an association among narrative incidents that we see as multiforms of a single paradigm or system of themes. The singer uses the same formulas in recomposing many of his themes, partly because the exigencies of oral composition induce him to, and partly, perhaps, because he perceives what we call themes as separate entities, to be expressed and enhanced by the use of certain formulas. 38 The extent to which the singer relies on repeated groups of formulas to recompose traditional paradigms is shown by the repetition of paradigms in, or in association with, the same formulas. In the table below the formulaic and marked multiforms of themes in text 1976 have been taken as a percentage of the total number of thematic units in the song, and the lines that make up formulaic and marked themes as a percentage of the total lines. (It should be noted that not all the lines in the formulaic multiforms have parallels in other multiforms of the theme, but a sufficient number do so that the passage as a whole is classified as formulaic.)

Formulaic Marked Total

Themes

Total (percentage)

Lines

Total (percentage)

34/149 70

22.8 47

1628/3388 1235

48 36.5

69.8

2863

84.5

104

In 527, the shorter, more conventional song with which 1976 has been compared, the figures are: 38. Here we have not considered the use of compositional themes as distinctive features of the style of a particular singer. David Gunn, in his "Thematic Composition and Homeric Authorship" (see note 23), has shown the stability of themes in the songs of individual singers and the discrepancy among songs of different singers. Similar studies have been made of the texts of Russian byliny, e.g., P. D. Uxov, "lz nabljudenij nad stilem sbornika Kirsi Danilova," Russkij Fol'klor 1 (1956): 97-115, and "Tipiceskie mesta (loci communes) kak sredstvo pasportizacii bylin," Russkij Fol'klor 2 (1957): 129-54. Camil's compositional themes seem to be his own solution to the problem of recomposing certain recurrent themes. For example, the opening Assembly and Boasting in text 1976 differ markedly from the opening Assembly and Boasting in Murat's variant of "Vrhovi," text 1960: only four half-lines out of the twenty-five lines in Murat's passage are identical to formulas in Camil's passage, and a total of twelve and one-half lines in Murat's are formulas or formulaic variation of formulas used in Camil's.

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Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song

Themes Formulaic Marked Total

Total (percentage)

Lines

Total (percentage)

10/26 10

38.5 38.5

251/591 270

42.5 46

20

77

520

88.5

These figures are lower than those we found for density of themes taken as paradigms (see p. 00), yet they tell more about the oral poet's technique. The importance of the theme as a compositional device is demonstrated by the fact that nearly one-half of (Tamil's "Vrhovi" is composed in compositional themes (the formulaic multiforms). It is made yet clearer by comparing the figures for a lengthy performance of an uncommon story (1976) with those for a brief and conventional tale (527); proportionately more of the longer song consists of formulaic multiforms, while the shorter song has a lower percentage of neutral and rare multiforms. To sing his masterpiece Camil draws more heavily on rarely used narrative material than he does in other songs, and he also draws more heavily on his repertory of stable and ornamental passages of formulas. The compositional themes permit him to sustain and elaborate his narrative; the more he sings, the more he relies on them. (Tamil's song about the captivity of Vrhovac Alaga (Parry 1976) is not a totally unique poem. It is composed in the traditional language of formulas and is based on traditional paradigms of events that belong to all singers of Serbocroatian heroic song. The fact that it contains paradigmatic themes that recur in the tradition and in other works of the same singer is not in itself a mark of oral composition, for such themes could just as well appear in poetry composed in writing. In recomposing the paradigms, however, Camil uses recurrent groups of formulas, some short clusters, others long passages with a fixed scheme ordering the constituent motifs. His use of compositional themes and themes marked by certain formulas to compose his story is neither so dense nor so thrifty as his use of formulas to compose his lines, yet it is an essential feature of his technique as an oral poet. 39 APPENDIX Paradigmatic Themes in Parry 1976* F F F

1. 2. 3.

Assembly Boasting Entry

•Note: F designates a formulaic multiform of the theme, M a marked multiform, N a neutral multiform, and R a rare multiform or rare theme.

39. The Kulenovic material on which this study is based was made available by the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard University and is quoted here by permission of the Curator.

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4. Reception 5. Absence 6. Sack and Captivity 7. Challenge 8. Hero Announces a Quest 9. Hero Travels 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19. Hero Quarrels in Assembly 11, 13, 15, 17, 20. Hero Travels 21. Hero Travels 22. Patron Equips a Hero 23. Hero Travels Filler N 24. Patron Equips a Hero N 25. Preparation of a Horse F 26. Hero Dresses Specially R 27. Hero Travels R 28. Absence N 29. Patron Equips a Hero N 30. Patron Equips a Hero M 31. Hero Travels M 41, 43, 45. Hostile Arrival 32, M 35, 38. Companion Supports Hero R 33, 36, 39, 42, 44, 46. Patron Equips a Hero M 34, 37, 40, 47. Hero Overcome N 48. Hero Obtains Blessing M 49. Hero Travels M 50. Hostile Arrival M 51. Hero Overcome F(R) 52. Aftermath of Battle Filler N 53. Assembly 54. Entry F F 55. Reception M 56. Search for Absent Hero 57. Other World Assembly F M 58. Interdictors N 59. Interdictors Allow Passage M 60. Hero Meets Party with Captives M 61. Messenger Travels 62. Report of Captive's Whereabouts M M 63. Challenge M 64. Hero Announces a Quest N 65, 76, 81, 86, 92, 98, 102, 106. Hero Travels M 66, 77, 82, 87, 93, 99, 103, 107. Hero Consults a Patron 67, 78, 83, 88, 94, 100, 104, 108. Hero Consults a Patron M M 89, 95, 109. Report of a Captive M 68, 79, 84, 90, 96, 110. Hero Announces a Quest M 69, 80, 85, 91, 97, 101, 105, 111. Patron Equips Hero N 70. Hero Travels N 71. Wounded Hero Tended M 72. Entry F 73. Reception F R M M M N M N N N N

Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song M N

74. 75.

Hero Consults a Patron Hero Dresses Filler N 112. Hero Travels N 113. Gathering a Host M 114. Aftermath of Battle F 115, 116, 117, 118. Summoning a Chieftain to Join a Host F 119. Summoning a Host F 120. Gathering a Host M 121. Host Travels N 122. Preparation for Battle F(R) 123-136. Discovery of a Girl M 137. Hero Meets Party with Captives R 138. Strange Hero Enlists N 139. Host Travels R 140. Other World Assembly M 141. Prisoner has Audience with Captor N 142. Prisoner has Audience with Captor M 143. Hero Overcomes Captors F 144. Battle F 145. Aftermath of Battle F 146. Battle F 147. Aftermath of Battle N 148. Marriage and Rule F 149. Conclusion

F F R R M M N F M F F M M R N F N M M R M F F F F

1. Two Heroes Converse 2. Boasting 3. Hero Asked to Marry 4. No Suitable Girl for Marriage 5. Courtship and Troth 6. Hero Warned Gives Assurances 7. Hero Travels 8. Hero Dresses Specially Hero Consults a Patron 9. 10. Preparation of a Horse 11. Hero Obtains Blessing 12. Hero Travels 13. lnterdictors 14. Hero Destroys lnterdictors 15. Hero Travels 16. Discovery of a Girl 17. Hero Steals Girl and Flees 18. Pursuit of a Bride-Thief 19. Hero Overcome and Detained 20. Aftermath of Battle 21- 23. Hero Met and Assisted 24. Battle 25. Aftermath of Battle 26. Marriage and Rule 27. Conclusion

Paradigmatic Themes in Parry 527

235

ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM AND JEWISH REFORM: Prussia, Austria, and Russia Arnold, Springer

The period between the first partition of Poland and the Congress of Vienna—1779-1815—was critical for central European Jewry.1 During this time the question of Jewish emancipation-integration was discussed by Jewish intellectuals and government officials in Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and numerous projects were advanced and legislation enacted which aimed at furthering this goal. In the end, however, no substantial progress was made by the enlightened absolutist regimes of east central Europe. The roots of failure are to be found not only in such obvious areas as lack of sufficient financial resources and an underdeveloped and unsympathetic bureaucracy, but in the ultimate reluctance of these governments to support a program at once fundamental and radical. While they were inclined to accept sweeping reform of the Jewish community in theory, it turned out to be a low priority item in their public policy; the dilettantish and usually indifferent manner that characterized their follow-through on actual reform legislation is a measure of their lack of dedication and commitment to such reform. The opportunity to effect fundamental and rapid Jewish reform successfully was probably never greater than in these three states at the turn of the nineteenth century. All signs pointed toward a harmony of interest and purpose between the leaders of the Jewish intellectual community and the policy-makers of the absolutist states in which they lived. The latter had already redefined and extended the role of state power and claimed the right to intervene in every aspect of public life. The attitude of the state toward reform can be characterized as radical, secular, and universal, at least in theory. It recognized no legal or traditional limitations on its sovereignty and claimed that the entire fabric of society could be altered without regard for past custom. All that was needed to ensure the success of such interventions were simple and uniform laws and well-conceived and forceful implementation. 2 The driving force behind this reformist attitude was not humanism or 1. Simon Dubnov, Novejsaja istorija evrejskogo naroda (1789-1815) (Berlin, 1923), p. xi. 2. John Roberts, "Enlightened Despotism in Italy," in Enlightened Despotism, ed. Stuart Andrews (London, 1967), p. 27; Marc Raeff, "Random Notes on the Reign of Catherine," Jahrbiicher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, NS 19 (December 1971), pp. 541-56, esp. 549.

237

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Arnold

Springer

idealism, but a recognition of the necessity for social and economic modernization. The immediate aim was social regulation and cohesiveness, the systematic employment of human resources to magnify state power. Tolerance, utility, secularization, rationality, the equalization of the rights and obligations of all subjects were the important slogans of this program. The reform attitude was both critical and constructive; it aimed not only at eliminating pernicious practices, but at replacing these with positive ones. Applied to Jewish reform this attitude appeared optimistic and even-handed when compared to the approach of earlier, "unenlightened" governments. The Jewish community could not seriously protest that it was being singled out for special treatment, since corporate religion in general was treated without much circumspection. If the Jews were to be reformed, no area of communal life was inviolable. Not to be satisfied with limited fiscal reforms or with manipulating the definition of who did or did not qualify as a Schutzjude, enlightened absolutist governments were predisposed to change in such areas as education, marriage practices, reforms of language and dress, civil administration, preparation and pursuit of occupation—in short the full plethora of relations among individual, community, and state. These states did not necessarily view compulsion as antithetical to freedom and equality. Consequently, the possibilities for radical and rapid change via legislation and dynamic state intervention were theoretically enormous, for, unlike nineteenth-century liberalism, enlightened absolutism inclined toward a simultaneous policy of assimilation and emancipation, the degree of the latter dependent on progress in the former. 3 It was, however, not the state but Jewish intellectuals who came to the fore in the struggle for fundamental Jewish reform. The followers of the Aufklärer Moses Mendelssohn were found not only in Berlin, but also in Prague, Vienna, Breslau, Lvov, Warsaw, Shklov, Riga, Königsberg, and St. Petersburg, and during this period they exercised an influence on government policy toward the Jews far beyond the strength of their numbers. Steeped in the secularism, rationalism, and humanism of the Enlightenment, the Mendelssohnians were interested in far-reaching reform, although they could arrive at such a position only with the partitions of Poland. They were not attracted to the magnification of state power, but they did not find it objectionable. They held that the state could play a positive role in Jewish reform, and realized that there was a direct relationship between the expansion of government intervention in everyday life and the potential breadth and depth of Jewish reform. They were naturally interested in the emancipation of their own people from a bondage that was both internal (that is, if not originally self-imposed then at least in part self-perpetuated) and external. 3. Reinhard Rürup, Emanzipation (Göttingen, 1975), 15:14.

und Antisemitismus,

Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft

Enlightened Absolutism and Jewish Reform

239

They believed that the root of this internal bondage was to be found in religious practices that served no useful or humane purpose, but only reinforced ideas of Jewish exclusiveness and social, cultural, and intellectual backwardness. These practices not only caused mutual animosity, misunderstanding, and oppression of Jew by non-Jew—and vice versa—they also deprived Jews of the right to develop and prosper as individuals. Preoccupation with what they felt was an essentially medieval and obscurantist religion inhibited Jews from creatively participating in the daily life of their own countries. The idea that the Jewish religion as practiced made it impossible for Jews to be "good" or "useful" was the cutting edge of the Mendelssohnian reform attitude, and provided the link between reformers and government officials. If Jews could be induced to break with tradition so as to permit maximum social participation, and, as a result, become more productive, useful, and manageable, then the government was interested. Moreover, it was sympathetic, because it claimed both the right and the obligation to liberate any of its subjects from backwardness and oppression. 4 The utility of the Mendelssohnian reform program became obvious to Austrian, Prussian, and Russian officials only after the partitions of Poland. The first partition probably gave impetus to the full elaboration by Christian Wilhelm Dohm, with Mendelssohn's urging, of that program. 5 Before the partitions none of these states had a serious "Jewish problem," although all had adopted severely restrictive Jewish legislation. The Jewish population in each country was relatively small, largely confined to urban ghettos, and occupied with commerce, banking, and specialized handicraft production. None of these communities (except in Silesia) was significantly involved in the rural economy, in peddling or hawking, innkeeping, spirit distilling, or farming. As far as the authorities were concerned the Jewish communities were controllable, self-regulating, and sober in their religious observances. It was not difficult to tolerate such communities and, under the circumstances, radical reform was not a consideration. Prior to the partitions the Jewish community itself was concerned not so much with corporate, socioeconomic, or even religious reform, but with civil liberties—that is, with the elimination of the many onerous legal-administrative restrictions promulgated by Frederick II, Maria Theresa, and Elizabeth. The stress was on rights rather than on obligations, with little interest in questions of utility. True, the upper strata of German Jewry, influential and 4. Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York, 1968); R. R. Palmer, "At the Sources of Jewish Liberty and Equality," Christianity and Crisis 38 (October 28, 1968), pp. 253-56; Jacob Katz, "The Term 'Jewish Emancipation,'" in Studies in Nineteenth Century Jewish Intellectual History, ed. Alexander Altman (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. 1-25; idem, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation. 1770-1780 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973). 5. Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews, trans. Helen Lederer (Cincinnati, 1957).

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well-off financially, were moving toward assimilation, but voluntarily, and against social and administrative resistance. They considered assimilation to be both reasonable and advantageous and did not believe that, at least as far as they were concerned, any government compulsion was required. Their negative assessment of the "reasonableness" of the mass of Polish Jewry opened the way for this small group to formulate reforms and to support similar government legislation which they would never have advanced or advocated for themselves. Such advocacy and advancement were clearly seen by the leading element of German Jewry as proof positive of their own "enlightenment" and "civilization" and consequently as an argument for their emancipation. The problem of Polish Jewry was part of the solution for the German Jewish elite. The partitions resulted in a dramatic quantitative and qualitative transformation of the Jewish "problem" in the three states. Between 1772 and 1795 each at least quadrupled the number of its Jewish subjects. Latest interpretations of the census data indicate that the Polish-Lithuanian state had a Jewish population of 750,000—actually probably 20 percent above that figure. 6 Using the conservative number, the figures for the Jews transferred to Russian, Prussian, and Austrian hegemony are as follows. Almost onethird of the total, or 200,000 Jews, lived in Lithuania-Belorussia; these went to Russia, mainly between 1793 and 1795. Of the remaining 550,000 Polish Jews, approximately 45 percent, or 240,000, lived in the western Ukraine and Galicia; about one-half of these went to Russia in the second and third partitions, for a total of 320,000. A real "Jewish problem" originated in the Russian empire, therefore, only in the final decade of the eighteenth century. This was also true of Prussia, which received 170,000 Jews, 135,000 of whom came between 1793 and 1795. Even after the conquest of Silesia in 1742 Prussia had a small Jewish population, which after the addition of the Kulm and Danzig districts in 1772 numbered perhaps 45,000. Austria incorporated Galicia with 120,000 Jews in 1772, and lesser Poland with 140,000 for a total of 260,000 in 1795. The first radical Jewish legislation came from Austria because Austria was the first enlightened absolutist regime to confront "the problem." Numerically Prussia received the least number of Polish Jews, mainly from great or western and northern Poland; a disproportionately high number of these were involved in commerce and handicrafts. Jews of Masovia and east Prussia, taken in 1795, were occupationally underdeveloped compared to their great Polish brethren. In addition to the problem of the dramatic increase in numbers, these Polish Jews appeared, both to Aufklärer and government officials, to be a breed apart from western and central European Jews. In the main they were 6. " P o l a n d , " in Encyclopedia

Judaica,

16 vols. (Jerusalem, 1971-72).

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poor (often impoverished), rural, culturally backward, and, in religion, obscurantist. These factors had led to much oppression of the poorest elements of the community, not only by non-Jews but also by Jewish community elders, religious and secular. Almost every scholar places part of the blame for the backwardness of Polish Jewry on the community leadership.7 Of course, their condition ultimately was traceable through that leadership to actual conditions in the Polish-Lithuanian state itself, to its backward agrarian economy and peculiar political and social structure. Whatever the cause, these Jews seemed to confirm the worst prejudices of the German-Jewish Aufklärer and government officials, and inclined them to consider complete transformation of a community which they saw as unproductive, unenlightened, disorganized, hence out of control and dangerous. One final element contributed to the new interest in radical Jewish reform. Not only were these Polish Jews generally despised and deprecated, 8 they were also for the most part poor and defenseless. By focusing on groups like the Jews (and also the gypsies) these governments did not have to deal with powerful vested interests. All three states considered the great mass of Polish Jewry dispensable and the attitude of the leading elements of German Jewry, though naturally more sympathetic, was not qualitatively different. With the possible exception of the faint support given them by Polish magnates before Russian officials, no group stepped forth as their defenders. The powerlessness of Polish Jewry created an atmosphere in which both officials and enlightened Jews could safely entertain Utopian fantasies and radical programs for dejudification. 9 It is generally assumed that enlightened absolutism's commitment to "progressive" reform of the Jewish community can be measured by the degree to which it supported toleration and emancipation. This formulation is misleading and confuses rather than clarifies the question of Jewish reform in central and eastern Europe, since it judges a pre-modern historical situation from the standpoint of nineteenth-century liberalism.10 While the formulation may be useful for judging these governments' sincerity vis-à-vis the more advanced elements of German Jewry, it is a distortion of actual historical 7. For example, Katz, Ghetto, p. 21; Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden in den böhmischen Ländern. Das Zeitalter der Aufklärung 1780-1830 (Tübingen, 1969), pp. 21-22; Bernard Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia, 1973), p. 157; Simon Dubnov, "Evrejskaja Pol'sa v èpokhu razdelov," Evrejskaja Starina 2 (1909), pp. 3-16, 4 (1911), pp. 441-63; Elena Gekker, "Proèkt reformy evrejskogo byta v Pol'se v konce XVIII veka," Evrejskaja Starina 7 (1914), pp. 206-18, 328-40; Josef Meisl, Haskalah, Geschichte der AufklärungsBewegung unter den Juden in Russland (Berlin, 1919); Sergej Bersadskij, Litovskie evrei. Istorija ikh juridiceskogo i obscestvennogo poloienija v Litve 1388-1569 (St. Petersburg, 1883), p. 36. 8. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte, p. 138. 9. Leonard Krieger's review of enlightened absolutism, in The Norton History of Modern Europe, Felix Gilbert (New York, 1971), p. 657. 10. Katz, Ghetto, p. 191.

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conditions to apply the same formulation to the reform of Polish Jewry at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The complexity of the problem of Jewish reform was recognized by Christian Dohm and by the most influential social interpreter of the Mendelssohnian attitude, David Friedlander. Both of these men assumed that the reform of Polish Jewry required a different solution than for the Jewish communities of Berlin, Prague, or Vienna. This attitude was accepted by all of Mendelssohn's followers, for example, Natan Notkin and Jacob Frank in Russia, Herz Homberg and his followers in Galicia, and the Jewish deputies to the Polish Quadrennial Diet of 1788. The Mendelssohnian position was based on the belief that the Polish Jewish community was culturally backward and socioeconomically underdeveloped compared "to the Jews of even the smallest German town." 11 The principal hope for change lay, they thought, in enlightened government intervention. Repressive and punitive legislation served no useful purpose. Polish Jews, the Mendelssohnians argued, could be useful and productive subjects if given the opportunity. But this approach did not presuppose lifting all restrictive legislation, granting the Jews freedom, and allowing them to find their own place in society, because the Mendelssohnians held that the heritage of provincialism had restricted individual Jewish choice. If left to themselves Jews would continue to do those things—economically, socially, and culturally—which they were accustomed to, and which has proven not to be in the real interest of state, society, or the community. Progressive rather than repressive legislation was needed, with enlightened governments playing a decisive role in leading the Jews out of the medieval into the contemporary world. Once government officials became convinced of the benefits of this approach, half the problem would be solved. What remained standing in the way of Jewish modernization would then be the Jewish community itself. Mendelssohnians believed there existed two elements of internal opposition to modernization: one was the organization of the community, the other was the consciousness of its membership. Both had to be changed before the masses of Polish Jews could be assimilated and made useful. Full emancipation, the equalization of Jewish and non-Jewish civil status, could only follow such changes. To Jewish Aufklärer the religious-administrative organization of the community was the major problem. Rabbis and Talmudists exercised too much power over the community, and the consequences of their authority were horrendous. Their religious intolerance and obscurantism were the principal internal causes of community isolation, backwardness, and popular antiJewish sentiment. The poverty and oppression of the masses of Polish Jews were the direct result of the tight control they exercised over all aspects of community life; this leadership was responsible for continued and heavy 11. David Friedlander, Aktenstücke fend

der Reform

der Jüdischen

(Berlin, 1793); a n d idem, Ueber die Verbesserung

Kolonien

der Israeliten

in den Preussischen

im Königreich

Pohlen

Staat

betref-

(Berlin, 1819).

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Jewish involvement in the spirit traffic and for the excessive religious enthusiasm of Hassidism and Frankism. An unsavory alliance was seen to exist between the purely religious leadership and the Kahal administration, which was drawn from the small, wealthier segment of the community and whose principal source of wealth and power was the farming of rural leases, chiefly the liquor monopoly. The obvious solution was to reorganize communal administration, to restrict the religious leadership to purely religious matters, and to prevent the Kahal from defining and controlling the socioeconomic relationship between the community and society at large. By and large, government officials accepted this interpretation. With the government committed to a sympathetic approach to Jewish legislation, and with the religious-oligarchic leadership deprived of its power, the basis would then be laid for the transformation of what the Mendelssohnians saw as a distinct Polish-Jewish national character. Naturally the goal was not dejudification (although that at times was the interpretation of this program by non-Jews and even by Jews, for example Homberg), but a reeducation designed to permit the Jews to enter into the mainstream of national life. Education was recognized as critical to Jewish reformation. 12 Traditional Jewish education, almost exclusively religious, failed to prepare Jewish youth to enter the larger society. Religious instruction had to be deemphasized and courses in history, geography, mathematics, and foreign languages introduced. Language instruction was considered especially important, since ignorance of the state language was an obstacle to full Jewish participation in national life, and forced Jews into a client relationship with the traditional reactionary communal leadership. Knowledge of the official state language^) would permit dealings with the state without a Kahal or rabbinical intermediary, and open up to the Jewish community, through the printed word, a world more civilized, more secular, and rather more full of opportunity than they had ever imagined. With the end of their isolation they would be as free as non-Jewish subjects to pursue those opportunities, and would thus be individually happier and more socially useful. Other universal elements of the Mendelssohnian program were dress reforms (with the exception of rabbis, Jews should dress according to class, like everyone else, and abandon their distinctive garb), marriage reform (early marriage resulted in unusually high Jewish birth and infant mortality rates, poverty, and oppression of women), and occupational reforms. Mendelssohnians considered the traditional concentration of Jews in smallscale commerce, innkeeping, peddling, and rural leaseholding to be disadvantageous to society as a whole. Jews should be taught useful trades and 12. 216-17; Charles sophical Avstrii.

Horst Glassl, Das Österreichische Einrichtungswerk in Galizien (1772-1790) ( M u n i c h , 1975), p p . D u b n o v , Novejsaja istorija, p p . 214-15; Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte, p p . 40-65; O ' B r i e n , " I d e a s of Religious Toleration at the T i m e of Joseph 11," Transactions—American PhiloSociety [Philadelphia], NS 61, pt. 7 (1969), p. 30; M . B a l a b a n , " P e r e k h o d pol'skikh evreev pod vlast' Galicijskie evrei pri Marii Terezii i Iosife I I , " Evrejskaja Starina 6 (1913), p. 306.

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encouraged to become artisans, craftsmen, factory workers, and, especially, farmers. The many apparently rootless, itinerant Jews (Betteljuden) were viewed as both scandal and tragedy by Jewish reformers who thought that the best solution to this problem was to direct them into agriculture. The Mendelssohnians argued that the interests of all parties would be best served by Jewish participation in all aspects of a state's economic life. To achieve this end all government restrictions on choice of occupation by Jews must be eliminated, and the government must actively encourage broadened occupational involvement, mainly through granting subsidies and other financial inducements such as temporary freedom from certain taxes. Beyond this program neither Dohm nor Friedlander, the leading spokesmen of the Jewish Aufklärung, were prepared to go, although that was not true of their followers. However, all evidence points to their willingness to accept government leadership in achieving these reforms, even against strong community opposition. Their followers, particularly in Austria and Russia, who encouraged programs of compulsory Jewish reform were only faithfully building on the general edifice of reform already elaborated by their mentors. But if reforming government officials and Mendelssohnians were generally in agreement on the nature of the problem and the general solutions required, the Jewish Aufklärer viewed the masses of Polish Jewry with sympathy and compassion, stressing liberation and the consequent unleashing of vast resources of human potential, while government officials were more concerned with questions of order and utility. As a consequence, their approach to the implementation of Jewish reform tended to be heavy on compulsion and light on humanity, and in fact their initial objective was political. Enlightened absolutism was jealous of its political prerogatives and eager to wipe out any remnants of communal or local autonomy. State intervention in the internal life of the Jewish community was not a unique phenomenon or a manifestation of anti-Jewish attitudes, but was the natural result of the ever-growing centralization of the modern state. When these states moved to circumscribe or eliminate the self-contained Jewish judiciary; when they set standards for the election of elders; limited or abolished the organ of internal administration, the Kahal; instituted closer control over community finances, over participation in the economy, over the excesses associated with the spill-over of religious practices into social life, they were primarily concerned with the affirmation of state prerogatives, that is, with power, legal order, and utility.13 Officialdom assumed that peace, tranquillity, justice, and happiness were the natural consequences of a wellordered and powerful state. Prussian, Austrian, and Russian officials all responded to Jewish autonomy in the same manner and with the same vehemence, attesting to their concern over state sovereignty, and also to the fact 13. Marc Raeff, "The Well Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in 17th and 18th Century Europe," American Historical Review 80 (December 1975): 1221-43.

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that this element of Jewish reform was the easiest to achieve. Reorganization of forms was obviously more accessible to these officials than the remaking of Jewish national character. Clearly, although elimination of communal autonomy was an important component of any Jewish reform program, for the Jews themselves, as objects of reform, it represented only a preparatory step opening the way to more fundamental changes. This at any rate was how the Mendelssohnians interpreted such reforms. The test of how "enlightened" a government was in its attitude toward the Jews was not whether it moved against Jewish autonomy, but what it attempted to do after its elimination. Ultimately the test of an enlightened absolutist government's sincere commitment to fundamental Jewish reform was the extent to which it attempted to legislate Jewish emancipation-integration through sweeping occupational reforms. The elimination of repressive legislation—the usual yardstick for judging the "progressive" nature of a government's Jewish policy—is not, of itself, an adequate or fair measure of that policy. Mendelssohnians and enlightened officials generally saw the Jewish problem as one of emancipation-integration, that is, their aim was to eliminate dysfunctional legislation and replace it with more functional regulation. Such regulation would not grant immediate civil equality, but instead create conditions favorable to the maximization of an individual's potential. Full realization of such potential was viewed as a social indicator of emancipation. In other words, Jews were to be relieved of the burden of unconstructive, repressive legislation but not granted complete equality of civil status with non-Jewish subjects until they showed themselves willing to assimilate into general life. Progressive legislation was designed to create the conditions in which this integration could take place. As a consequence, enlightened absolutist reform programs and the most significant legislation aimed at breaking down traditional Jewish occupational patterns and forcing the substitution of new ones to further emancipatory-integrationist goals. In essence, the degree to which such regimes legislated and actively supported Jewish occupational reform represents the key to their sincere commitment to radical Jewish reform in general. If the Jews were to be integrated and emancipated, if they were to be made more useful and productive, if the great mass of Jewish un- and underemployed was to be eliminated, the Jews would have to enter nontraditional occupations, for the most part as mechanics in industry, and in agriculture— and, since the Industrial Revolution was then only in its infancy in this area, primarily in agriculture. The cameralist and physiocratic bias of enlightened absolutist governments, as well as real economic conditions, determined that farming would be an essential part of any overall Jewish reform. 14 However, 14. Sucher Weinryb, Neueste Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Breslau, 1934), 1:136.

derJuden

in Russland und Polen (1772-18811, 2 vols.

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two obstacles stood in the way. First, these states forbade or strictly circumscribed the right of Jews not only to own land, but even to reside permanently in the countryside. Second, once these restrictions were eliminated or modified means would have to be devised to induce Jews to take up a new and unfamiliar occupation. While the two obstacles were distinct and unconnected, it is clear that voluntary and enthusiastic Jewish participation depended upon the conditions which governments imposed on it. All of these states chose to impose strict conditions because of their preoccupation with Polizeiordnung and because they feared that without such conditions the immediate objective—occupational reform—would not materialize. Without these conditions, Jews could indeed be expected to purchase or lease farmland, but in all probability would not farm it themselves and might in fact hire non-Jewish labor to do the heavy field work. The intent of the reform would be subverted and popular anti-Jewish sentiment exacerbated. Officials feared that if Jews were permitted to own land and hire agricultural labor, they would be free to continue their traditional rural activities, that is, innkeeping and liquor manufacture and distribution. Therefore each government not only forbade Jews to produce or sell liquor and severely restricted Jewish innkeeping and peddling, but stipulated that Jews could only buy or lease land on the condition that they work it themselves or with hired Jewish labor. Even with such conditional safeguards, Mendelssohnians and officials suspected that this approach alone would not produce the desired results. Because Jews had no background in or knowledge of agriculture they might be easily discouraged, and would most certainly be farming failures. Nor could the government effectively supervise occupational reeducation if Jewish farms were scattered throughout the countryside. An additional problem involved possible confusion over Jewish civil status, especially in Russia. In Prussia and Austria, where serfdom had been abolished and non-nobles could own land, individual Jews eventually were permitted, in theory, to purchase or lease land on the above mentioned conditions, with the assurance that they would retain their free status. Austrian authorities in particular encouraged Bohemian Jews to pursue individual farming by promising them eventual but complete civil equality. But this moderate or voluntarist approach was rejected for Austria's Galician Jews. In Russia, where only nobles could own land and serfdom still existed, Jews could not purchase farms or estate lands without disrupting the entire system of civil rank (soslovie). Several reform projects and pieces of actual legislation gave Jews the option of leasing crown or private lands, or hiring themselves out (at great risk) to serf-owners as free agricultural labor. But neither in Prussia and Austria, nor in Russia, did this option prove attractive to the Jews themselves, and such voluntarist experiments in reform had no substantial impact on Jewish occupational patterns.

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These negative results appear to have been anticipated by both Aufklärer and government officials, and their support for this type of reform was unenthusiastic, amounting to no more than a series of gestures in the direction of an individual, voluntarist approach to introducing Jews into agriculture, gestures not meant to produce substantial results. Theoretical and practical considerations predisposed both groups in favor of a more grandiose and heroic solution, one that permitted more direct supervision and control over reform, and which they believed better guaranteed the desired results. They thought that mass resettlement and colonization of Polish Jewry would create conditions favorable to rapid assimilation and emancipation. Each of these states encouraged foreign colonists with subsidies, immunities, and privileges, and it occurred to reformers that colonization could be patterned on already established programs but made to serve a double purpose when applied to Jews. It would aid the economy and strengthen the state's hold over newly acquired frontier areas, and at the same time would be a more efficient way to plan and supervise Jewish reform. Of the three states Prussia proved least interested in the creation of a class of Jewish agricultural colonists. Several reasons account for this lack of interest. The Prussian bias against a Jewish presence in the countryside had a long history and was unambiguous. 15 Frederick the Great, who despised the Jews more than any other enlightened monarch, spelled out this policy in no uncertain terms in the General Jewish Ordinance of 1750. He barely tolerated Jews and was interested not in reform but in eliminating as many of them as possible from his realm. Frederick's policy was aimed at discouraging, not encouraging, Jewish artisan, industrial, or agricultural labor. His attitude was rooted in the notion that the Jews were naturally unfit for all economic activity except commerce and banking and that state legislation should reflect that truth. The consequences of Frederick's Jewish policy were devastating. By 1816, over 92 percent of the Jewish population in west Prussia were engaged in commerce, only 5 percent in handicrafts. 16 Despite and even because of their removal from the countryside, the problem of the Betteljuden remained and worsened because they were concentrated in cities that could not accommodate them. As far as Jewish policy is concerned, Frederick cannot be counted as an enlightened absolutist. By the time he died in 1786 Prussian officials had been conditioned by more than seventyfive years of unrelenting repressive anti-Jewish legislation, leaving a great reservoir of preconceived attitudes toward Jewish legislation. As a consequence, during the reigns of Frederick William II and III Jewish reform 15. D u b n o v , Novejsaja istorija, p p . U - 1 9 ; Max Aschkewitz, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Westpreussen ( M a r b u r g , 1967), p p . 42, 77-79, 82; O s m a r F r e u n d , Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preussen, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912), 1:18-28. 16. Aschkewitz, Geschichte,

p. 77.

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legislation—especially that concerned with agriculture—encountered much institutional opposition. Of course other reasons also account for Prussian lack of interest in occupational reform. The partitions of Poland had not presented Prussia with an underpopulated frontier or with vast territories requiring colonization. Prussia received the fewest Jews, and of these a large proportion was already located in cities, especially in the territories around Danzig. Furthermore, throughout his reign, but especially after the first partition, Frederick had enforced a mandatory transfer of great masses of rural Jews into Prussian cities, and this program had been so successful17 that there was no large number of unemployed rural Jews to provide raw material for an agricultural colonial experiment. In addition, Prussian Jewry, and the Jews of western Poland Prussia received in the first partition, were more urbanized, more involved in commerce and artisan activities, and significantly less involved in the rural economy (innkeeping and alcohol) than the rest of Polish Jewry.18 For all these reasons the need for agricultural reform was not as compelling or attractive in Prussia as it was in Austria or Russia. Still, Prussian authorities were concerned about a Jewish problem, particularly in east Prussia and Silesia, and one would expect that in the absence of agricultural reform possibilities they would have taken a serious look at the factory alternative. They did not. Shortly after Frederick's death in 1787, leaders from the Berlin Jewish community, seeking to improve the conditions of Prussian Jews, petitioned Frederick William II to create a commission to review the government's Jewish policy.19 They suggested, among other things, that Jews be permitted to buy, work, or lease agricultural land, arguing that there was unworked land in Prussia and that uncultivated land was not beneficial to the state. They suggested that rather than attempting to attract foreign colonists with costly subsidies and privileges, its interests would be better served by permitting Prussian Jews to occupy and farm these lands. A government commission was appointed and delivered its report in 1789. It was discussed by the Jewish leadership in Berlin, including Friedlander, and a set of counterproposals was drawn up which in effect requested both full civil equality and privileges (freedom from state taxes for a certain number of years and from compulsory military service) similar to those granted Mennonite colonists by Frederick II. 20 The Jewish leaders assumed that poorer and underemployed Jews would become farmers; but their proposals produced no change in the status of Prussian Jews. 17. Ibid. 18. "Poland," Encyclopedia Judaica. 19. Freund, Emanzipation, 1:35-53; Weinryb, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, p. 138. 20. Max Beheim-Schwarzbach, Hohenzoilernische Cotonisationen (Leipzig, 1874); Freund, tion, 1:52.

Emanzipa-

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Discussions between the government and Berlin Jews continued through the second and third partitions, with the government pressing the Jews to suggest an agricultural resettlement program for its new Polish-Jewish subjects. In 1793 the government proposed that poor Polish Jews be assembled, by force if necessary, and made to become agricultural colonists.21 The suggestion was apparently prompted by a visit by a Prussian official to Austrian Galicia, where such a project was already under way. The Berlin community rejected the suggestion, charging that there was no sense in settling Jews on wasteland (their reading of the government proposal) since they could not succeed under such conditions. In 1795 a Silesian official suggested that colonization would help Jews develop "steadiness, a penchant for physical labor, and industry." That same year in Breslau it was proposed that Betteljuden be colonized on state lands with the right to buy their own farms. It was thought that with government encouragement and trained instructors they would, in time, become good farmers. 22 The impetus toward agricultural reform was continued in the Jewish Ordinance for south and new-east Prussia of 1797.23 This was the first general piece of Jewish reform legislation since 1750 and, in the area of occupational reform, represented a significant step forward. Judged by the standards of that day it qualifies as an enlightened piece of legislation.24 Chapter II, paragraph 3, opened virtually all occupations to Jews—they could be merchants, artisans, mechanics, and could engage in agriculture, herding, and transport. 25 Paragraph 13 encouraged the investment of Jewish capital in the construction of factories and workshops, especially if Jewish workers were to be trained and employed.26 Paragraph 14 reflected the recognition that under existing economic conditions only a small percentage of Jews could find employment as merchants, artisans, or industrial workers, and permitted Jews to lease dairies and small farms, but only if they worked these themselves or employed Jewish labor.27 Paragraphs 15 and 16 announced that Jewish agricultural colonization was not merely permitted but encouraged.28 Jews willing to become colonists would be able to purchase state land though they were prohibited from buying farms owned by Christians. Jews were expected to establish and equip their farms at their own expense or with help from the Jewish community. There were to be no direct fiscal subsidies (as all other 21. Weinryb, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, p. 102. 22. Ibid., p. 163. 23. General Juden Reglement für Süd und Neu-Ost Preussen—April 17, 1797, in L. Rönne and H. Simon, Die Früheren und Gegenwärtigen Verhältnisse der Juden in den sämmtlichen Landestheilen des Preussischen Staates (Breslau, 1843), pp. 290-302. 24. Weinryb, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, p. 163. 25. General Juden Reglement, p. 295. 26. Ibid., p. 297. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid.

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colonists received), but Jews were to be freed from all taxes for three years both as an incentive and as an indirect subsidy. The colonists were permitted to hire Christian workers for a period of three years, for the specific purpose of instructing adults and children in the rudiments of agriculture. Jewish farmers who employed Christian help after the expiration of the privilege would have their lands confiscated. In 1799 the senior Prussian official in East Prussia, Friedrich Leopold von Schrotter, caused to be set aside what was apparently a large area of state land to be colonized by 900 Jewish families, but officials in the office of colonial administration protested to Berlin and forced reallocation of the land for German colonists. They argued that the amount of uninhabited, uncultivated state land in East Prussia was insufficient to accommodate "the great mass of Jews" living in the countryside and designated for relocation and occupational retraining by the Ordinance of 1797. Von Schrotter appealed to his superiors in Berlin but received no support. 29 The Jewish response was also negative, that is, nonexistent, and von Schrotter, discouraged, decided on a different approach. In 1801, acting on a project presented to him by an "enlightened" Jewish convert to Christianity (Plan for the Introduction of Agriculture among the Jews of South and NewEast Prussia), von Schrotter issued a directive that promised a government subsidy of 200 Reichsthaler for each family of Jewish colonists prepared to establish and work a farm in east Prussia, provided that it be "organized along Magdeburg lines." 30 Rabbis who recruited Jewish families for the colonization program would be paid a fee of 20 thaler per family, while Christian landowners who hired Jewish agricultural laborers would be paid a 50-thaler subsidy over a three-year period. Officials of the Warsaw and Poznan Kammern (responsible for the territories annexed by Prussia during the partitions) both opposed the plan. The former argued that if Jews were allowed to become farmers they should be granted full equality of rights with their Christian counterparts. The Poznan Kammer protested that it opposed any plan of voluntary, individual, and unsupervised Jewish colonization, favoring instead mass colonization, if the state provided funds and instructional and supervisorial personnel sufficient to ensure the experiment's success. Meanwhile it adopted a policy that frustrated attempts by individual Jews to take up farming in great Poland as permitted in the legislation of 1797.31 Von Schrotter continued to support schemes for Jewish colonization 32 before government departments in Berlin, but without success. He asked the Bialystock Kammer to draw up plans for the creation of an agricultural colony to be made up of Jews scheduled by the Ordinance of 1797 to be forced out of innkeeping, peddling, and the spirit trade, but opposition of 29. Weinryb, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 31. Ibid., p. 166.

p. 167.

30. Ibid., pp. 164-65. 32. Freund, Emanzipation,

1:143-44.

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local authorities, and those in Berlin as well, again forced him to abandon his efforts. By 1803 the Prussian government had clearly decided against mass Jewish colonization. There were plenty of German colonists requesting settlement in new-east Prussia, and Frederick William III and his advisers saw more advantage in subsidizing them than in supporting Jewish colonization, which they had entertained serious doubts about from the start. They were encouraged by the negligible Jewish response to the increased occupational possibilities provided in the legislation of 1797. Concluding that it was futile to pursue Jewish colonization further, Frederick William issued a decree on August 9, 1803, lifting all the opportunities for a broadening of the Jewish occupational base with the observation that legislation "had not had any success in attracting new colonists to the Empire or in settling or covering uncultivated land with competent activity." 33 In Austria, as in Prussia, the impetus to radical Jewish reform was the sudden appearance of masses of impoverished Polish Jews, especially those Galician Jews taken in the first partition. This was one of the most important factors influencing Austria's approach to their reform. There were few Jews in Vienna and German Austria—Bohemia and Moravia had 76,000; Hungary, Slavonia, and Trieste 85,000. But in Galicia there were almost 300,000.34 Galician Jewry was double the combined total for the rest of the Hapsburg lands, and it was also the poorest, most oppressed, backward, and religiously traditionalist. In response, Austrian authorities issued legislation for Galicia that was significantly radical, while that promulgated for the western section of the empire was basically conservative and modest. 35 As in Prussia, the first partition found a conservative monarch in power in Austria, essentially uninterested in Jewish reform. Like Frederick II, Maria Theresa nurtured an intense dislike of the Jews, would have preferred to expel as many of them as possible and strictly circumscribe the activities of those that remained. She is quoted as having written: "I do not know a fouler plague for the state than this nation, with its obfuscations, usury, and monetary activities by which it reduces others to poverty; it does things which honest folk would shrink from." 3 6 Though interested in the taxes Jews paid, the empress seemed to believe that they were unreconstructable. Her major piece of Jewish legislation—the Galician Jewish Ordinance of 1776— reaffirmed Jewish liberties; that is, it sanctioned continued self-government and communal autonomy, but also introduced a greater measure of government supervision than had been in force under the Polish regime.37 This legislation, which included the creation of a Jewish Directory controlled by 33. Weinryb, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, p p . 167-68. 34. D u b n o v , Novejsaja istorija, p. 202. 35. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere

Geschichte,

36. Pavel Mitrofanov, Politiceskaja dejatel'nost' 37. Glassl, Einrichtungswerk, p p . 189-213.

p p . 36, 333. losifa II (St. Petersburg, 1907), p. 607.

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the rabbinate and supervised by government officials, was not considered unusually oppressive by Galician Jewry. It is ironic that the traditional Jewish leadership as well as the Jewish masses found Joseph II's policies far more objectionable than his mother's. 38 Most Galician Jews were content to continue their traditional habits, customs, and occupations; they were committed defenders of what had been and was, and enemies of modernization. Among the masses this attitude resulted from poverty and ignorance, but among the leadership it flowed from self-interest, the desire for continued authority and control over the direction of the entire community. Maria Theresa's government showed no interest in changing these habits or the community's life-style—neither education, occupational patterns, religious practices, nor the legal system received any attention. Its chief interest was in collecting taxes and keeping the Jewish population out of German-speaking Austria, that is, in isolating it. In the western parts of the empire her policy resembled Frederick's in that she was convinced Jews belonged in the cities because they were legally and by nature part of the commercial population. As a consequence, her government issued legislation that severely restricted Jewish occupational opportunities, generally in the countryside and specifically in agriculture. 3 ' Joseph II is considered to have been very different from his mother and the most radical, democratic, and Utopian of the enlightened absolutists. This description may be correct in general, but it is not evident as far as his Jewish policy is concerned. He was no admirer of the Jews and shared some of his mother's prejudices (he once said that Jewish depravity and insincerity were signs of divine punishment), but neither was he satisfied with the status quo. 40 The Toleration Edicts of 1781-83 were certainly a milestone in progressive Jewish legislation, although they were in part anticipated by Polish reform activity between 1764 and 1775."' What is important to remember about these Josephian reforms was that, while they granted Jews religious freedom and removed some of the most onerous anti-Jewish restrictions, they were in no way intended as a grant of freedom or equality. Many restrictions continued in force, in particular on the rights of domicile and occupation. Joseph believed with Mendelssohnians and enlightened officials in other states that full civil equality was not a right but a privilege, to be prepared for and earned. The government had to create the conditions that allowed subjects to be good and useful, while subjects had to prove to the government that they merited equality and freedom by taking advantage of the new opportunities presented them. 38. Ibid., p. 219; Dubnov, Novejsaja istorija, p. 21. 39. Balaban, "Perekhod," pp. 290-94. 40. Mitrofanov, Politiceskaja dejatel'nost', pp. 611-13, 653. 41. Weinryb, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, pp. 156-58; Dubnov, Novejsaja istorija, pp. 41-48; Gekker, "Proekt reformy."

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An important element in all of Joseph's reforms was the concept of Glückseligkeitsstreben,42 the desire that the emperor and his subjects strive together for the latter's happiness. It was necessary, he believed, that the members of the Jewish community should have an opportunity to "participate in enlightenment, improve their moral condition, and also be provided with a plentiful sustenance." 43 As Jacob Katz has pointed out, the goal for enlightened absolutists was only ultimately civil equality. In the short run the aim was bürgerliche Verbesserung—civic and social improvement conceived of as modernization, which could alone create the conditions for full equality and happiness for a state's subjects.44 In Bohemia and Moravia Joseph's policy consisted of three parts: (1) elimination of irrationally restrictive and unconstructively repressive legislation and the introduction of a strict but even-handed administration; (2) continued restriction on where Jews might live; and (3) redefinition of what were permissible and forbidden occupations. This policy was first enunciated between 1781 and 1783, and reaffirmed by the legislation of 1797. The intent of the first element has already been discussed. The grant of toleration and the lifting of the most noxious religiously derivative restraints attracted and pleased both Mendelssohnians and the traditional Jewish leadership and inclined them towards acceptance of the latter two.45 But the retention of quotas on the number of Jews permitted to reside in Bohemia and Moravia was an important part of Joseph's program. He believed an unrestricted right of Jewish residence would be harmful to state and society, and would result in a large concentration of Jews in urban areas where most would be unable to find productive work. The outcome would be ruthless economic competition between Christian and Jew, the impoverishment of segments of both communities, an undermined economy, and aggravation of social tension. Following this logic Jewish immigration into these territories was all but forbidden and attempts were made to decrease the Jewish birthrate in pursuit of the goal of reduced community growth. Jewish marriage was made subject to educational requirements and bureaucratic approval. Only one male per Jewish family could inherit the right of permanent residence.46 The third element, occupational reform, was the forward-looking and progressive section of the legislation because, in theory at least, it opened up a new world of opportunity to Bohemian and Moravian Jews. They were now permitted to lease and manage estates, to build and own factories, engage in transport and cartage, to apprentice themselves as artisans and craftsmen (only in Moravia could they actually work as masters), and even to lease land 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte, p. 36. Ibid.; Mitrofanov, Poliiiceskaja dejatel'nost', p. 613. Katz, Ghetto, p. 191. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte, p. 38. Ibid., pp. 65-69.

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(for thirty years) for farming. In 1789 it became possible for second and third sons to become farmers or enter the military, both of which carried the right of permanent residence.47 Continuing the pattern laid out by Joseph, 48 Francis II's Jewish Edict of 1797 began: "Since the government has set for itself the goal of making the Jews completely useful citizens, worthy of the protection granted them by the government, therefore we open to them all worthy means of sustenance which are permitted Christian subjects." Innkeeping, spirit franchising, the working of various other franchises—all were forbidden. Jews were encouraged to become farmers and promised all rights given to free Christian farmers, except that such rights became hereditary only if the children continued to pursue agriculture. The limited nature of Josephian Jewish policy in Bohemia and Moravia indicates not a radical but a cautious and rather lackadaisical approach to reform and assimilation. Expanded occupational opportunities were provided, but all were voluntary, not obligatory, a fact that assured their minimal impact. 49 Tolerance and evenhanded treatment of Bohemian and Moravian Jews became state policy, but the actual living conditions of most Jews did not change, because for the most part they chose to pass up these opportunities. Although Jewish capital was invested in Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian factories, only wealthier Jews benefited. Factory workers turned out to be exclusively Christian, no effort being made to create a class of Jewish industrial workers. A broader Jewish occupational base was not achieved, nor was a class of free Jewish agriculturalists created, again because the decision to enter that occupation was voluntary. Jews did not consider farming to be economically rewarding or especially attractive in terms of status, since it was associated with serfdom and a grubby peasant culture in which they were, besides all else, unwelcome. 50 Compared to its meager efforts in the western lands, Josephian Jewish reform in Galicia was certainly more radical and definitive in concept, if not in implementation. As in east Prussia, its ultimate failure was due to the lack of sincere government commitment, the voluntary elements of the program, and the strenuous opposition of the Jewish community and local officials. The program in Galicia was more radical for several reasons. Joseph had conducted a personal survey of the newly acquired territory in 1773 and considered himself thoroughly acquainted with the land and its inhabitants. 51 Even before he became emperor Joseph appears to have considered Galicia a 47.

Ibid.)

Dubnov,

Novejsaja istorija,

p p . 21-25, 210-12.

48. Simon Adler, " D a s J u d e n p a t e n t von 1797," (Prague, 1933), p p . 199-230.

vakischen Republik

49. Kestenberg-Gladstein, 50. pp. 98-99.

Ibid.,

51. Glassl,

Neuere Geschichte,

Einrichtungswerk,

p. 220.

in Jahrbuch der Gessellscha/t derjuden in der Czechoslopp. 38-39.

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suitable laboratory in which to pursue enlightened experimentation involving schemes of mass colonization. These schemes usually had limited economic and political objectives (as with German colonization), but could, as in the case of Jews and gypsies, also have broader sociocultural objectives, that is, denationalization and modernization. 52 Galicia was also an attractive area for experimentation because its Jewish population was very large, poor, and—in Joseph's view—oppressed by the Kahal and rabbinical leadership as well as by its own religious credulity. Its economic presence in the countryside (concentrated in the usual areas) involved it in a system that thrived on peasant exploitation. The fact that this system, and not the Jews, was the cause of that exploitation seemed beside the point. Finally, the Jewish community of Galicia was disorganized and rent by religious controversy (Hassidism and Frankism), and was not prepared to unite to protect itself. A small party of vocal Mendelssohnians urged farreaching reforms on the government and promised to support them. 53 The more powerful and sophisticated Jewish communities in German-speaking Austria, which looked down on Galician Jewry, were not particularly concerned about the government's radical Jewish reform experiment as long as it was conducted in Galicia alone. There is no doubt that Joseph's Galician program, culminating in the Jewish Ordinance of 1789, was the most revolutionary and potentially most significant attempt to that day to transform an entire community, to put it on the path of assimilation and eventual civil equality. The policy was inaugurated in 1781, when Joseph asked the Lvov administration to consider resettlement of rural Jews on crown and vacant land in that territory. 54 He suggested that as an inducement Jewish settlers be released from the payment of state taxes for three years, granted permission to employ Christian field labor for three years (to aid in the establishment of family farms and to teach Jews the rudiments of farming), a reduction by half in the Jewish marriage tax, and the grant of their assigned plots free and in perpetuity. In 1790 Joseph ordered the military authorities to assemble all itinerant and impoverished rural Jews, who would be set to work on road repair until they could be resettled in agricultural colonies. In 1784 all Jews engaged in innkeeping and spirit sales had been ordered removed from the countryside and settled as farmers. A three-year period was granted in which to implement this order. Between 1784 and 1787, 1,410 Jewish families (between 6,000 and 7,000 individuals) were actually resettled in two districts —Neu Sandez and Stanislaw. Although the colonists did not receive hereditary proprietary rights but only a thirty-year lease, the initial response 52. 53. pp. 48, 54.

Ibid., p. 35; Jerzy Ficowski, Cyganie Polscy (Warsaw, 1953), p. 42. Gekker, "Proekt reformy," p. 207; Dubnov, "Evrejskaja Pol'sa," 2:13-15; Dubnov, Novejsaja istorija, 214; Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte, pp. 138, 238. Glassl, Einrichtungswerk, p. 215.

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of Galician Jews was positive. The government in fact found that it had not set aside enough land to resettle all the Jews who volunteered for the program. Resettlement was momentarily halted and the initial momentum lost." Joseph tried to regain that momentum in 1787. Realizing that the Jewish colonies required financial support, he ordered that the proceeds from the state-collected tax on kosher slaughtering be allocated as a subsidy. Part of the tax was also earmarked for support of the radical educational reforms being introduced by Herz Homberg, the Mendelssohnian director of the newly created Jewish normal school system. Joseph also proposed to the Kahals that they aid in the colonization of rural Jewry through the institution of a self-tax. He estimated that forty Jewish families should be able to contribute enough money to support the creation of one Jewish farmstead. 56 Radical Josephian reform was capped and epitomized by the Galician Jewish Ordinance of 1789.S7 A fine example of enlightened Polizeiordnung legislation, it represented, on paper, the most ambitious attempt by any government to that day to reorganize an entire community. Occupational reform was a critical part of the package. With the exception of agriculturalists or artisans, no Jews were to have the right of residence in Galician villages.58 Foreign Jews would be permitted to settle in Galicia only if they took up farming, and only if they paid for their own resettlement. 59 All trades, professions, and occupations were opened to Jews except that they were not permitted to work leases "which do not involve active physical labor on their part, which allow them too much leisure time, until they prove themselves diligent subjects." 60 Jews were thus temporarily forbidden to lease or own taverns or inns anywhere in Galicia or to farm any leases, in order "to secure the general welfare." 61 At the same time the government abandoned any commitment to active participation in Jewish colonization, turning that responsibility over to the community itself, which was expected to settle a certain number of poor Jews as farmers each year at its own expense, with each Jewish household contributing in proportion to its wealth and status. The number of families to be resettled was to be determined by local authorities. 62 That this section on agriculture was intended to make un- and underemployed rural Jews more productive and subject to control was obvious. Paragraph 38 of the ordinance stated: "The opening of so many honorable 55. Balaban, "Perekhod," pp. 298-300; Glassl, Einrichtungswerk, pp. 213-15. 56. Glassl, Einrichtungswerk, p. 213. 57. Ibid., p. 215. 58. Juden Reglement fur Gallizien, December 21, 1789, in Handbuch alter unter der Regierung des Kaisers Josef des II. fur die K. K. Erbliinder ergangenen Verordnungen und Gesetze in einer systematischen Verbindung, 18 vols. (Vienna, 1785-90), 18:361-424, §24. 59. Ibid., §26. 60. Ibid., §§31, 32. 61. Ibid., §34. 62. Ibid., §37.

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possibilities to earn a livelihood makes it natural that tramps (Landstreicher), idlers (Miissigganger), and beggars (Bettler) will be severely dealt with." However, peddling and hawking were permitted. An additional incentive was also decreed for Jews who became colonists and for those who hired themselves out as free agricultural labor; they would be freed from the yearly Schutzsteuer, or protection tax. 63 At best the overall reform worked out by Joseph, his officials, and their Mendelssohnian supporters enjoyed limited success. Those reforms that were immediately susceptible to legislation alone, such as the religious, civil, and judicial administrative reforms, survived local opposition, while those that required government financial aid and sympathetic persistence in implementation, such as the occupational, educational, and military reforms, failed miserably. Although approximately 1,100 of the original 1,410 Jewish families settled as colonists between 1784 and 1787 still remained on the land in 1803, the goal of creating useful and productive citizens through occupational reform had not been achieved. Jewish colonists were impoverished and many families were jammed into very few houses, abandoned by the government and their own community. The Austrian state made no further attempt to pursue Jewish colonization after 1790.64 While the absence of government funds was important in accounting for the failure of Galician occupational reform, other factors worked against its success as well. The government plan for auto-financing Jewish colonization was wildly unrealistic and indicative of its cavalier approach to the problem. Galician Jewry was relatively poor and debt-ridden, and certainly unable to underwrite colonization. Officials were aware of this fact, since much of the rationale behind the legislation of 1776 was a direct response to it. A further problem was that the program remained voluntary in spite of gestures towards an obligatory approach. Traditional and ingrained occupational patterns could be modified voluntarily only if the advantages were obvious, and the transition phased over a long period and planned so as to be painless to those expected to participate. The only alternative was obligatory colonization enforced by dedicated personnel with adequate resources. The government decided against direct subsidies and against assuming direct responsibility for the experiment because it believed that the available money and energy would be more productively spent on colonizing German farmers, who could make an immediate contribution to economic growth and social stability. The government also realized that Jewish colonization would be resented by Christian peasants, especially if they saw that Jews were the recipients of special privileges and dispensations not available to them. The inevitable result would be to stimulate peasant discontent in an already 63. Ibid., §51. 64. Balaban, "Perekhod," p. 300; Glassl, Einrichtungswerk,

pp. 213-14.

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highly charged anti-Jewish, anti-Polish atmosphere. Finally, the initial positive reception of the occupational reforms was quickly dissipated by their association with military and educational reforms (both of which were obligatory), which the community feared, hated, and resisted. 65 The sharp fall-off in voluntary colonization after 1789 was perhaps in part a consequence of the crystallization of community opposition to the threatening modernization proposed by the government in that year. However, the chief responsibility for the failure of the occupational reforms must be assigned to the government, which did not make a serious attempt to implement or support them. Like Prussia and Austria, the Russian government's elaboration of a Jewish reform program came as a direct response to the partitions of Poland. 66 Before 1772 Russia had the smallest Jewish minority of the three states and very little experience with their administration. There were no urban ghettos, no problem with a large Jewish presence in the countryside, and no heritage of Schutzjude legislation to overcome. Official policy was hostile and aimed at keeping all Jews out of the empire, but the justification given was religious and not socioeconomic. The fact that Russia had not developed a tradition of repressive anti-Jewish legislation made it, in a sense, easier for Russian officials to approach the Jewish question in a more flexible and imaginative way than their central and eastern European counterparts. The policy adopted by the Russian government toward the Jews between 1772 and 1786 was unique in that it was based on the assumption that Jews should be treated like other free subjects, enrolled into the urban estates, and granted all rights, duties, and obligations commensurate with such membership. 67 The objective was administrative assimilation. No attack was made on Jewish autonomy, it being assumed that Jews would abandon it voluntarily if they were given the opportunity. The government was similarly tolerant toward Jewish economic activity. Jews, it believed, were by inclination and habit folk whose natural place was in the city, a fact apparently of which they needed to be reminded, and they were, in 1772, 1782, and 1786.68 But no attempt was made to remove them from the countryside, nor were there any attempts to legislate a fundamental reformation of the Jewish community. The reason was obvious. The first partition brought Russia between 20,000 and 30,000 Lithuanian Jews, not a large number and comparable to Prussian numbers at the same period. There was simply no great need. 65. Glassl, Einrichtungswerk, p. 119. 66. An extensive body of scholarship exists on Russia's Jews. The most recent work on the period under discussion here is Matthias Rest, Die Russische Judengesetzgebung von der Ersten Polnischen Teilung bis zum "Poioienie dlja Evreev" (1804) (Wiesbaden, 1975). 67. Simon Dubnov, "Sud'by evreev v Rossii v epokhu zapadnoj pervoj emancipacii (1789-1815)," Evrejskaja Starina 5 (1912), pp. 3-25. 68. Julij Gessen, Zakon i zizn' (St. Petersburg, 1911), pp. 71-72; Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossijskoj Imperii s 1649 goda, 45 vols, in 48 (St. Petersburg, 1839-43), hereafter cited as PSZ: no. 13,865, 19:571-52; no. 15,724, 21:907-11; no. 18,132, 24:725.

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But with the second and third partitions Russia suddenly found itself with a Jewish population of 300,000, distributed over an area stretching from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. These people were predominantly rural and backward, yet they dominated the economy of much of the area. Their condition, number, and economic role made it impossible for the government to ignore them. The problems which government officials had earlier identified now were seen as serious and on a scale that demanded immediate and vigorous attention. Kahal autonomy, and the fiscal, administrative, and religious "excesses" that appeared to be its consequence, plus "unhealthy" Jewish economic activity in the countryside (control of the propination monopoly, farming of leases, peddling and hawking, all of which were related to peasant exploitation and unrest), attracted the attention of Russian officials even before 1793-95, but now these cried out for immediate attention. The first response was the usual call for the Jews to leave the countryside and relocate in the cities. They had already been put on notice that the government expected them to reside and work only in urban centers; since they had not voluntarily responded to the suggestion they would have to be forced to relocate. A decree of 1795 declared that the Jews were residing in the countryside illegally and that their activities were harmful. They were all to be resettled in urban centers within the year. A Senate directive of December 1796 reemphasized that Jews must reside only in towns. Similar decrees were published in June, September, and December 1797, but no relocation of population, voluntary or otherwise, took place. 69 The reason was that there was simply no room in the cities for 300,000 Jews and no way that they could all engage in useful, productive economic activity as merchants or artisans in the conditions of that time and place. There was also a great deal of opposition, not so much on the part of officials, but from Christian merchants and artisans who feared the consequences of such a relocation; from the nobility, which was already hard pressed economically and feared that its economic situation would deteriorate even further if the Jews were no longer permitted to purchase and farm their monopolies; and from the Jewish community. The rush of legislation notwithstanding, by 1797 it was clear that what was required was a basic reform of the Jewish community that went beyond population relocation. In the same year Natan Notkin, a follower of Mendelssohn, submitted a Jewish reform project to the Russian procurator general, Prince Aleksey Kurakin, the first attempt in Russia to identify the kernel of "the Jewish problem" and to advance solutions in terms of contemporary enlightened thinking. 70 It proved very attractive to government officials and strongly 69. PSZ no. 16,391, 22:598; no. 17,327, 22:694-95; no. 17,594, 24:257; no. 18,015, 24:635; no. 18,132, 24:725. 70. There are two extant but incomplete versions of Notkin's proposal. 1 have used both in building a

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influenced subsequent projects and legislation. Notkin's memoir was titled "Project Concerning the Resettlement of Jews in Colonies on the Fertile Steppe, so that They Might Increase Husbandry, Improve Agriculture and Other Things, for Example the Creation of Factories Whose Products Will Be Useful and Whose Results Beneficial to the State and the Jews as Well." Notkin agreed with officials that the Jewish economic role in the lands of partition Poland was not healthy, but pointed out that relocation in Belorussian cities was not practical or even possible. Clearly approaching the problem from a perspective which was sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish masses, he concluded that the best solution for poor Jews, for the state, and society at large was to resettle them in the recently annexed territories of new Russia and along the Black Sea coast, on uninhabited and unproductive state land. Here, with proper financial aid (nothing was said about instruction or supervision), they could learn new and useful occupations. Not only would they become a class of free farmers and laborers, but also factory workers. Notkin proposed that the government organize the construction of factories and workshops to be scattered throughout the new frontier area, to produce cloth, sail, rope, and linen. The financing would be provided both by the state and by private sources, and Jews would be recruited to work in them. Jewish agricultural colonies would also be established, and their profits would help finance the Jewish manufacturing experiment. Notkin suggested that Jewish colonists first be directed into husbandry and encouraged to raise grapes and silkworms, since they were not accustomed to heavy field labor; eventually and naturally they would be introduced to that. The rewards would be enormous, he promised, profiting the state, creating new and useful occupations for the mass of Jewish poor, and serving as a viable alternative to urban relocation in Belorussia. Echoes of the Notkin proposal proved to be numerous and significant. Out of it came the first government attempts to train a new class of mechanics and industrial labor. The Kurakin project," funded by the state, established two factories in Chernigov and Kremenchug whose purpose was to employ and train Jewish labor exclusively. After serving a short apprenticeship these workers would be free to leave their factories and to practice their newly acquired skills in any part of the empire. Notkin's proposal was also the starting point from which developed the scheme for a vast Jewish agrarian-colonial experiment elaborated by Gavriil Derzhavin in 1800, and actually adopted in principle by the Russian government as official policy in the Jewish Statute of 1804. One element was, however, initially rejected. Notkin had proposed his colonial scheme as an experiment in which Jews composite. Julij Gessen, Evrei vRossii, pp. 443-46; and Ja. Grot, ed., Socinenija Derzavina s ob'jasnitel'nymi primecanijami, 9 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1864-83), 7:353-55. 71. I. P. Pavlovskij, 'Kremencugskaja fabrika suknodelija dlja evreev v nacale XIX veka," Golos Minuvsego (October 1913), pp. 175-80.

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could participate by choice. The government suspected, correctly, that the great majority of poor Jews would not freely opt for such a radical change in their style and condition of life. Consequently, the state continued to threaten imminent removal of the Jews from the countryside as a prod to stimulate colonization. The most radical project for Jewish occupational reform was authored by Gavriil Derzhavin, eminent poet, one-time state secretary to Catherine II, senator, and soon to be minister of justice under Alexander I.72 In 1799 and again in 1800 Derzhavin investigated the causes of peasant unrest in Belorussia, reporting these in his famous Opinion, a document that became the basis for the deliberations of the Jewish Committee in 1802, as well as of the legislation that resulted, the Jewish Statute of 1804. Derzhavin's project was the most detailed, inclusive, and radical approach to Jewish reform ever articulated by a proponent of enlightened absolutism. All the critical areas of Jewish internal life were discussed (Kahal autonomy, administration of justice, regulation of religious administration, taxation, education, occupations) and sweeping and concrete suggestions for reforms of each were presented. Although the spirit of Derzhavin's project is usually derided as antiJewish or anti-semitic,73 it would be more correct to say that it represents the classical approach of a bureaucratic devotee of enlightened absolutism. Mitrofanov has written about the Josephian attitude towards reform: "A police state such as under Enlightened Absolutism cannot tolerate any organization or group except those which are under its constant control and supervision, and cannot be content with allowing them any unsupervised activity beyond the barest spiritual requirement." 74 That definition faithfully characterizes both the spirit and the intent of Derzhavin's Opinion. The rationale for Derzhavin's project consisted of a blend of Mendelssohnianism and the concerns of a good bureaucrat of those years: Everyone knows . . . that in many times and places a multitude of laws have been passed in an attempt to raise the Jews up or to eliminate them. Especially in Poland and Spain, some were close to the sovereigns and occupied high state positions. At the same time, as a consequence of their hostility and fraudulent business practices, they were burdened and oppressed with taxes. In a word [the pattern has been ] to use them for their strengths and for their weaknesses. Nowhere however was any care taken to see to their political or moral education, no attempt was made to lift them out of darkness and barbarism. Only lately have we been given the example of the German Jew Mendelssohn, who is proving 72. Mnenie ob otvrascenii v Belorussii nedostatka khlebnogo obuzdaniem korystnykh promyslov Evreev, o ikh preobrazovanii, i o procem, in Derzavin, Socinenija, ed. Grot, 7:235-61. 73. Simon Dubnov, History oflhejews in Russia and Poland, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1918), 1:330; and the authors of the articles that appear in the Evrejskaja Enciklopedija, 16 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1906-13), on "G. R. Derzavin," 7:113, and "1. G. Frizel'," 15:452. Ja. Grot identified Il'ja Orsanskij, Zakonodatel'stvo o evrejakh (St. Petersburg, 1877), the well-known authority on Jewish legal history as the scholar who first pinned the anti-semitic label on Derzavin. 74. Mitrofanov, Politiceskaja dejatel'nost', p. 659.

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that the Jews are capable of something else, and whose work is recognized as the successful crowning of this attitude, especially in the purification of language, for he has translated the holy books into pure German and made them available to the simple people. With their eyes opened to enlightenment the influence of the Talmud has collapsed. From that moment there were more and more educated men in the German Jewish community, comparable in fact to the most enlightened men of Europe. . . . It is possible to open the eyes of the Jewish people . . . and to restore their religion to the pure source whence it originated.' 5

Jewish autonomy was unacceptable to Derzhavin because it constituted what he considered a state within a state. The community's administration had near-total control over financial, judicial, and economic matters, and also had a negative impact on "public morality." The Jews, Derzhavin wrote, can be good subjects if they are organized and administered in such a way as to advance "civic virtue, the sole source of well-intentioned thoughts and activity." They must be made to recognize the sovereignty of the Russian state over them; they had to be subjected to direct government authority, their religious fanaticism and "hostility towards real enlightenment" broken, but "not, however, infringing one bit on their religious freedom." "In a word they must be politically and morally remade." 76 Derzhavin's analysis convinced him that meaningful reform would require substantial government intervention in every aspect of Belorussian Jewish life. To begin with, the Kahal would have to be dismantled and replaced by a special state office (the Jewish procuracy), because Jewish autonomy stood squarely in the path of reform. Lease-holding, innkeeping, spirit-franchising, and hawking would have to be prohibited because these activities were not economically productive and were actually socially harmful. All Jews not engaged in productive activities (Derzhavin estimated that Belorussia had a Jewish population somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000, with perhaps three-fourths located in rural areas) would be relocated, some to the cities, a few in rural Belorussia, but the vast majority to Jewish colonies on the southern frontier. His project called for the government to divide the Jews into four estates: merchant, urban artisan (mescane), rural artisan or farmer, and free agricultural laborer. Estate membership would be determined by previous civil status plus minimum, government-certified capital holdings. Up to 18,000 Jewish commercial and artisan families, or approximately 90,000 people, would be allowed to remain in the Belorussian countryside as artisans and as farmers and free laborers, industrial and agricultural. They could settle on crown or private land, which they might lease but not purchase, and could cultivate the land by themselves or with the aid of hired Jewish labor, but they could not employ peasant labor. Rural Jews could become artisans Mnenie,

75. Derzavin, 76. p p . 291-92.

Ibid.,

p. 328.

Enlightened Absolutism and Jewish Reform

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or small manufacturers; and every effort should be made to transform them into a rural manufacturing class engaged in the production of agricultural implements. Under no circumstances would they be permitted to work traditional leases, inns, or taverns, nor could they engage in commercial activity, especially the purchase and sale of grain. Jewish farmers would have to be self-sufficient in that commodity so they would not be tempted to become involved in the production and sale of vodka as a by-product of the grain trade. The entire community and its reform would be supervised by the Jewish procuracy with the assistance of the former Kahal leadership. It would be financed by the community on a mandatory basis, with the wealthy bearing the burden for the poor. But to Derzhavin the key element of Jewish reform was the colonial solution. Only in new surroundings, deprived of their traditional leadership and familiar economic patterns, could the Jews be remade. This experiment could not begin without adequate preparation; 77 otherwise reform was bound to fail. Derzhavin therefore suggested that the Jewish procuracy select a number of young Jews from all walks of life and send them to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Riga to be trained as bookkeepers, administrators, specialized artisans, and in the basics of agriculture. In the interim the government would designate and set aside certain lands for Jewish colonies. The Jews who had been trained as specialists, together with a group of energetic and enthusiastic young Jews especially selected by the procurate and Kahal, would prepare the colonies for the masses of Jews who would soon follow. They would lay out urban centers, help construct the first government buildings and housing, and put up the first farmsteads. Each urban center would contain no more than 300 homes, each farming village would be composed of ten freeholders with holdings of 15 desiatinas (1 desiatina = 2.7 acres) each. The freeholder could employ up to four Jewish laborers and their families. Each village therefore would be made up of approximately fifty households and composed of 200 to 250 inhabitants. The first Jewish colonists would find their homes and farmsteads waiting, and would help complete similar preparations for the next group to arrive. In this way colonization would proceed in an orderly fashion. Derzhavin thought the transfer of population could be completed in ten years. It is not appropriate here to discuss the entire reform project. 78 Suffice it to say that transforming the life-style and raising the social and civic consciousness of the Jews, transforming their occupational patterns, overhauling their community organization, their educational system, and their religious affairs were all important parts of Derzhavin's reform. The new community was modeled along military lines. Everything would be arranged 77. Ibid., p. 314. 78. See my article, "Gavriil Derzavin's Jewish Reform Project of 1800," Canadian-American Studies (Spring 1976).

Slavic

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Arnold

Springer

by the procuracy to "insure the general welfare of the community," Needless to say, such a transformation could not occur overnight, as even the optimistic Derzhavin realized, and so supervision of the community would continue until the goal had been achieved. Derzhavin's project was Utopian and too grandiose to have succeeded. Even its scaled-down, voluntary version proved too difficult for the government to organize. What distinguished it from other projects, however, was its attention to details, and its attempt to anticipate and plan for specific problems certain to arise in the course of carrying out a colonial reform project. Derzhavin's project provided the basis for discussion in the Jewish Committee, but the document that emerged from those deliberations, the Jewish Statute (Polozenie) of 1804, differed from it in significant ways. 7 ' Although the statute envisioned the Jewish introduction to agriculture as an important occupational reform, Jewish involvement was put on a voluntary basis. No Jews would be compelled to become farmers, but those who did would be freed from all state taxes for ten years and would be treated like foreign colonists. In fact, Jewish colonization was to be carried out under the auspices of the Foreign Trusteeship Office (Kontora opekunstva Novorossijskikh inostrannykh poselencev), the government department with substantial experience overseeing the colonization of large numbers of Germans, French, Greeks, Serbs, and Armenians in new Russia, Astrakhan, and the Crimea. 80 No special Jewish procuracy was created. The document promised that as farmers Jews could own land outright in the area of resettlement and that they would be provided with government assistance and funds. It also pledged itself to the construction of factories where Jews could find employment and learn trades. At least on paper, the Russian government's commitment to occupational reforms for the Jews went farther even than Joseph's projected Galician reform project. Many Jews were optimistic about the opportunities offered in the statute, and many volunteered. Between 1806 and 1815 about 4,000 Jews were actually settled in New Russian colonies. 81 They had imagined that they would receive massive government aid, that they would be given fertile land near Black Sea ports, and that they would receive large plots, perhaps 50 to 60 79. Julius Elk, Die jüdischen Kolonien in Russland (Hildesheim, 1970), pp. 26-27; PSZ no. 21,547, 28:731-37. A full German translation appears in the appendix to Rest. 80. Hans Rempel, Deutsche Bauernleistung am Schwarzen Meer. Bevölkerung und Wirtschaß. 1825, in George Leibbrant, Sammlung, Band 3, Quellen zur Erforschung des Deutschtums in Osteuropa (Leipzig, 1940); Apollon Skal'kovskij, Khronologiceskoe obozrenie istorii Novorossijkogo kraja. 1730-1823, 2 vols. (Odessa, 1836); Dmitrij I. Bagalej, Kolonizacija Novorossijkogo kraja ipervye sagi egopo puti kul'tury (Kiev, 1889); Grigorij Pisarevskij, 1z istorii inostrannoj kolonizacii v Rossii v XVIII veke, in Zapiski Moskovskogo Arkheologiceskogo Instituta pod redakciej A. I. Uspenskogo, vol. 5 (Moscow, 1909); Elena 1. Druzinina, Juinaja Ukraina v 1800-1825 gg. (Moscow, 1970). 81. S . J a . Borovoj, Evrejskaja zemledel'ceskaja kolonizacija Nikitin, Evrei Zemledel cy, ¡807-1887 (St. Petersburg, 1887).

v staroj Rossii (Moscow, 1928); Viktor

Enlightened Absolutism and Jewish Reform

265

desiatinas. They thought they would be able to raise whatever crops they wanted, that structures would be built and ready when they arrived, that they would be free to go into agriculture, industry, or commerce as they wished. They were sadly mistaken. The government did provide free land, but only 15 desiatinas, not 50. In total, 30,000 desiatinas had been set aside for the Jewish colonies, enough for 2,000 families or about 10,000 individuals. The government did supply funds, and by comparison with Austrian and Prussian colonization schemes its allotment was large: 100,000 rubles was earmarked specifically for the Jewish colonies. The money was, however, controlled by the Foreign Trusteeship Office, and it was squandered. The office was understaffed and the scope of its responsibilities was too broad to ensure close supervision of the new colonies; its officials did not understand the assimilationist rationale behind Jewish colonization and had no appreciation of the unique problems these Jews faced. The difficulty was not oversupervision, as is always maintained, but a paucity of supervision and the total absence of adequate preparation. Once deposited in their new colonies, the Jews were left to fend for themselves. No townships were laid out and only the flimsiest of huts were built for the first colonists, many of whom were forced to live in the open. The land was virgin and untilled and the work of transforming it into farms proved difficult, even for the German colonists who were more familiar with agriculture and who suffered almost as much as the Jews from inadequate support. There was insufficient water for irrigation and no instructors were provided to teach the rudiments of agriculture; there were few implements or draft animals, and no feed or barns for them. The Jewish colonists were simply not prepared for this experiment, and their problems were compounded by natural calamities. Harsh winters and dry, hot summers resulted in crop failures and starvation. Typhus decimated Jewish and non-Jewish colonies alike. Many Jews took the first opportunity to abandon the agricultural expeirment; they fled to district towns and to Odessa. Although the colonies survived and even grew throughout the nineteenth century, they never prospered. The Jewish colonial experiment in Russia was a dismal failure. No significant occupational reform came about because the undertaking was not conducted with ample preparation and support, because the government, in theory committed to this reform, did not pursue it in a serious and committed way. Russian reform proposals and even legislation were more radical than elsewhere, its transformational schemes more grandiose because the problem in Russia was larger than in Austria or Prussia, because it had a vast, newly acquired territory to settle, and because it was not burdened by the restraints of a previous legislative heritage. In spite of these advantages the reforms failed for lack of government commitment and resources. The Russian administration refused in the end to stand by its reform project.

266

Arnold Springer

The emergence of the Jewish question as a modern, pan-European phenomenon dates from the partitions of Poland when great numbers of impoverished Jews, constrained by a medieval, traditional culture, suddenly became the subjects of enlightened absolutist Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Attempts to remake them into useful and "free" subjects, to ensure the maximization of their productive potential, their social utility and individual happiness, were naturally framed within the context of enlightened absolutist political economy. The discussion of Jewish emancipation-integration began shortly before the French Revolution, with Dohm's work, which exercised an extraordinary influence on publicists, scholars, and modernizers. The partitions transformed an essentially theoretical concern into a pressing sociopolitical problem. Attempts to legislate a solution naturally took the form of Polizeiordnungen, in accord with the general centralizing and regulatory tendency of legislation in that period. That such legislation could lead to "tyrannical control and supervision of every facet" of Jewish life was not a manifestation of anti-semitism but the normal approach taken by such governments in their attempt to realize the essential purpose of all their reform efforts, that is, to maximize the creative energies of their subjects, to create a stable and harmonious society, to ensure the power of the state and the happiness of its subjects. For both the enlightened absolutist governments of east-central Europe and Mendelssohnian reformers the question of Jewish freedom and equality was a pressing one. Neither group believed that emancipation alone, if defined in a restricted legal sense, could ensure either. Legal freedom, they thought, would not guarantee social equality nor would it help Jews abandon traditional religious habits or economic activities that tended to isolate them from the Christian communities in whose midst they lived. For such reformers, social, economic, and cultural assimilation-integration represented the key to the achievement of Jewish emancipation and freedom. At the heart of such a program was a dramatic reform of Jewish occupational patterns. Sweeping reforms in this area could not be realized, it was held, without the active support and direction of the state. This approach was basic to central European cameralism; Mendelssohnians and enlightened bureaucrats had unbounded trust in the ability of the state to initiate and direct massive social change, to reconstruct what appeared to them an unreasonably structured world. Under the real socioeconomic conditions of that time and place, and given the physiocratic bias of the states there, it was natural that agriculture would be seen as the basis around which a grand reform effort would be launched. Jewish and Christian reformers suspected that voluntary Jewish participation in a transformational agricultural experiment would not be forthcoming, and to facilitate control over that experiment, a colonial solution—the creation of Jewish agricultural colonies—was favored and sponsored by reformers. The goal of this undertaking was to force Jewish integration through occupational reforms that would transform

Enlightened Absolutism and Jewish Reform

26 7

traditional Jewish attitudes toward the community, end religious and cultural exclusiveness, and broaden Jewish economic activity. The experiment in Jewish colonization failed in all three states; and no significant occupational reforms occurred. In each case the government itself, and not the Jews, was responsible for the failure. The reforms were not conducted with ample preparation or support, insufficient funds were allocated for colonization and reeducation, and no competent personnel, aware and appreciative of the reform aims and sensitive to the special problems Jews faced in making the transition from nonagricultural to agricultural occupations, were provided. Although in theory committed to fundamental Jewish reform, none of these states actually pursued it in a serious or committed way. A comparison of the various reform projects shows that Russian proposals and transformational schemes were sketched on a broader scale, and were often more radical in approach than even Josephian legislation. This difference is the consequence of several factors. The "Jewish problem" in Russia was more obvious and significant than in either Austria or Prussia. The size of the Jewish population and its domination of the local economy in large areas of rural Belorussia, and the existence of newly acquired and sparsely populated territory in the south, made government intervention inevitable. But even in Russia, practical considerations both framed and reinforced a theoretical bias shared by government officials and Jewish reformers in the three states. It is, consequently, a mistake to dismiss this theoretical perspective as a mere gloss behind which lurked the real or practical motive for Jewish reform. Invariably the form and content of such reform projects reflected the theoretical references that were, in part, responsible for the recognition of "the problem" in its new, modern form. In the final analysis, despite all their brave talk about radical reformation of society, class structure, administration, and the economy, very little fundamental reform was actually accomplished by the enlightened absolutists (perhaps with the exception of Joseph II). These states may have been politically radical in theory but in practice they were only extensions of the Old Regime and, because of the narrow base of their actual power, conservative in action. This is certainly true of the Russian and Prussian governments, while the failure of the Josephian reform program may be traced to the emperor's unwillingness to engage this contradiction. Neither the theoretical interests of the state nor the vision of Mendelssohnian reformers was strong enough to carry proposed radical and thoroughgoing Jewish reform. In spite of their obvious inclinations in favor of such a reform program, none of these governments was prepared to face, let alone solve, the serious difficulties that radical transformation of the Jewish community involved. In part this failure reflects the political, economic, and administrative limitations of the enlightened absolutist regimes, in part the lack of commitment and the actual low priority which they assigned to their own program.

Gleb Struve: A Bibliography

Literary historian, critic, poet, translator, editor, and teacher, Gleb Petrovich Struve was born in St. Petersburg, April 19 (May 1), 1898. On his father's side he belongs to the family of prominent astronomers; on his mother's he is the great grandson of James Arthur Heard, who introduced the Lancaster system of mutual education in Russia, wrote an historical novel from the time of Peter the Great, and was the author of one of the first grammars of Russian for speakers of English. He spent part of his childhood abroad, in Switzerland, Germany, and France, where his father, the economist, politician and philosopher Peter Struve, was in political emigration. Soon after graduation from high school (the Vyborgskoe vos'miklassnoe kommerceskoe ucilisce in Petrograd) in 1916, the young Struve accompanied his father to England, where the elder Struve received an honorary LLD. from Cambridge University. Within the year he was serving in one of the wartime auxiliary public organizations (the Zemsko-Gorodskoj Sojuz) at the front in the Wooded Carpathians in Bukovina. In the spring of 1917 he joined as a volunteer the Horse Guards Artillery, and after the October Revolution enrolled in General Alekseev's Volunteer Army. He spent three months as a hostage in a prison in Novorossijsk, and finally emigrated, by crossing the Finnish border on a false passport—by the same route his father had taken two days before—in December 1918. Early in the next year he went to England, and from 1919 to 1921 studied at the University of Oxford (Balliol College), where he received a B.A. in Modern History. Struve left England in the spring of 1922, and for the next decade lived and worked as journalist and literary critic in Germany and France. He contributed to his father's journal Russkaja Mysl', 1921-1923 and 1927, and to the Russian emigré daily Vozrozdetiie (Paris), 1925-1927, and was a member of the editorial staff of the Russian weekly Rossija (Paris), 1927-1928, edited by his father, and then joined the editorial board of its successor Rossija i Slavjanstvo (Paris), 1928-1933. Struve returned to England in 1932 when he was appointed Lecturer in Russian Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the University of London. He held that post until 1943, when he was promoted to Reader in Russian Literature in the University of London. In 1935 he published the first of four editions of his now standard history of Soviet literature. (One edition or another of this work has appeared in French, German, and Italian, and in an unpublished Russian translation, for the benefit of Soviet officials.) During World War II, from 1941 to 1945, he also worked as Senior Russian Listener at Reuters' Radio Station outside London.

269

270

Struve Bibliography

Struve came to the United States in 1946 when he was appointed Visiting Lecturer in Russian in the University of California, Berkeley, for the academic year 1946-1947. He assumed a regular professorship in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Berkeley in 1947, a position he occupied until retirement in 1967. He has also taught, as a visiting professor, at Harvard University, the University of Washington, the University of Colorado, and after retirement, at the University of Toronto and Indiana University. It was during these years that he completed and published his remarkable history of Russian émigré literature (Russkaja literatura v izgnanii, 1956) and, with Boris Filippov, extraordinary editions of the poetry of Boris Pasternak, Nikolaj Gumilev, Osip Mandel'stam, Anna Axmatova, Nikolaj Kljuev, and Nikolaj Zabolockij. In 1960 he was designated, with Nicholas Riasanovsky, one of the first editors of California Slavic Studies, a post he holds to the present day. He was on the editorial board of the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature (Chapel Hill) between 1961 and 1964, and from 1961 to the present has been an editor of Studies in Romanticism (Boston). Professor Struve was awarded an honorary LLD. from the University of Toronto in 1971. In 1973 he was presented with an Award for Distinguished Contributions to Slavic Studies by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. The citation addressed him in the following terms: "Pioneer in studies of Soviet Russian and émigré literature, you were often the first to attract attention to new or unjustly forgotten writers. During a quarter of a century as teacher and director of research, you have inspired several generations of literary scholars. The written record of your prodigious scholarship spans the full history of Russian literature and sets an example for us all. To your students, colleagues and friends who honor you as a teacher, scholar and editor, you embody a unique capacity for work, a rare degree of dedication, and a grand combination of scholarly and human integrity." During commencement ceremonies at the University of California, Berkeley, at the end of the academic year 1977-1978, Professor Emeritus Struve was presented with the Berkeley Citation, the highest award the institution bestows on one of its own members. That award in his eightieth year recognized the scholarly achievements of Gleb Struve. The bibliography that follows is meant to document that career, which has already spanned 64 years. Let it be realized that the bibliography is incomplete and that mistakes may have crept in where original publications were unavailable. Items have surely escaped our attention; the regular bibliography columns, entitled "Rossica-Slavica," "Kniznaja polka," and "V mire literatury i iskusstva," which Struve among others wrote for Rossija and Rossija i Slavjanstvo, are ignored, as are several unsigned lead articles in the same newspapers; some "letters to the editor" have not been included; and individual publications of poems and translations of poetry have not been listed, even though the collections of his poetry in 1965 and 1978, Utloe zil'e, were only selective. Pseudonymous and anonymous items are so indicated in square brackets; all others were signed "Gleb Struve" or "G.S." The Bibliography is divided into Russian and non-Russian sections. In each case, the section is preceded by a list of the principal periodicals (with place and dates of publication if possible to ascertain) in which Struve's pieces appeared; in other instances the periodical is identified by place within the entry itself.

Struve

Bibliography

271

Professor Struve himself has been an invaluable source for much of the information, and his participation is gratefully acknowledged. A special debt of gratitude is owed Tatiana Kusubova-Ermolaeva of Princeton University who initiated this project and began the cataloging of items still in Professor Struve's possession. Claudia Waters and Galya Diment have performed feats of research and typing. Robert P. Hughes University of California, Berkeley

LIST O F P E R I O D I C A L S Annali deli Istituto Universitario Orientale. Sezione Slava (Napoli, 1958). BecmnuK Pyccxoeo CmydeuuecKoeo XpucmuancKoeo JJeuotceHun (wypHan, n a p H K , MioHxeH, r i a p H » , 1925). Bo3ÒyiuHbie Ylymu (ajibMaHax, Hbio HopK, 1960-1967). Bo3pootcdeHue (ra3eTa, r i a p H » , 1925-1940; acypHan, F l a p n » , 1948). rpanu (»ypHaji, paHKKOH MeflHapa KeflHC, 3xonoMmecxue nocnedcmeun Mupa. CTOKrojibM, CeBepHbie OrHH.

1922 Peu. Ha: JJpaxoH: A/ibManax cmuxoe (rieTep6ypr, 1921). Pyccxan Mbic/ib, yi-yn. "IlHCbMa o pyccKOÍi no33HH" (peu. Ha: A. AxMaTOBa, Anno Domini, neTporpaa, 1921; M. Ky3MHH, He^deiunue eenepa, neTporpau-BepjiHH, 1921; B. PoHcaecTBeHCKHH, 3o/iomoe eepemeno, neTporpaa, 1921; r . POCHMOB, Cmuxu 06 ymepnHHOM, EepjiHH, 1921). Pyccxan Mbic/ib, y i - Y l l .

1923 Peu. Ha: BepemeHO. JlumepamypHO-xydooicecmeeHHbiü a/ibManax (EepjiHH, 1922). Pyccxan Mbicnb, 1-11. Peu. Ha: Eopnc 3ftxeH6ayM, Menoduxa pyccxoeo /tupmecxoeo cmuxa (neTep6ypr, 1922). Pyccxan Mbicm, 1-11. Peu. Ha: Aunaabi. >KypHan Bceo6meft HCTOPHH, H3flaBaeMbiií POCCHÜCKOIO AKaueMHeio Hayic, Ms 2, (IleTepóypr, 1923). Pyccxan Mbic/ib, 1-11. "IlHCbMa o pyccKoü no33HH, 11" (peu. Ha: B. XoaaceBHM, Tnace/ian /tupa, EepjiHH-IleTep6ypr-MocKBa, 1923; M. IIlKancKaa, Eapaóan cmpoeoeo socnoduna, EepjiHH, 1922, Kpoeb-pyda, EepjiHH, 1922; H. OaoeBueBa, JJeop uydec, neTporpafl, 1922; B. CHPHH, rpo3db, EepjiHH, 1923; O. MaHflejibuiTaM, Tristia, neTep6ypr-EepjiHH, 1922). Pyccxan Mbic/ib, 1-11. "KpHTHKa H 6H6jiHorpa(J)HH" (peu. Ha: Mapima UBeTaeBa, PeMec/io, MocKBa, 1923; Tlcuxen, EepjiHH, 1923). Py/ib, Ms 779 (24 uto mi).

1924 riepeBOfl: ToMac Byapo BnnbcoH, IlpuHifunbi deMOxpamuu. M3BjieneHH5i H3 penen H nocjiaHHñ BO BpeM» BOHHU (C npeaHCJioBHeM FleTpa CTpyBe). EepjiHH.

1925 Peu. Ha: fl KO6HKOB, KepaMUxa ( n a p a » , 1925); H;ib« EpHTaH, TJondeub (EepjiHH, 1925); B. AHKCOH, Cmynenu (napiwK, 1924); KH. FL.A. IIIaxoBCKOfl, IJecHU 6e3 c/ioe (Epioccejib, 1924). Bo3pootcdeHue, 10 HK>HH. Peu. Ha: A. THHrep, Tlpedannocmb ( n a p a » , 1925). Bo3poxdeHue, 16 HIOHH. Peu. Ha: Teamp. EaceMecaHHbift HJiJuocTpHpoBaHHwft acypHan, nocBameHHbiñ TeaTpy H My3biKe. 4-bifl r o a H3flaHHH, Ns 1 (riapnac, HioHb). Bo3poxdeHue, 29 HK3HH.

"BeHOK Ha MorHjiy A . B . TecceHa." Bo3po3icdeHue, 12 HKWTH.

Struve

Bibliography

273

Peu. Ha: CmydewecKue rodbi, Ne 3 (20), 1925. Bo3poxdeuue, 27 hk>jih. "/jHcnyT o 3apy6e>KHOM c i e s ^ e " , Bo3poxdenue, 3 hohöph. "npaBHTejIbCTBeHHblfl KPH3HC BO OpaHUHH. KaKOH B03M05KCH HCXOfl? HauiH öece/ibi." Bo3poxdenue, 24 hohöph. "3apy6ejKHbifi Cbe3fl. Eeceaa c B . n . PHÖyuiHHCKHM." Boipoxdenue, 28 hohöph. "3apy6e3KHbiH cie3fl. Eece.ua c A . H . rymcoBbiM." Bojpoxdeuue, 29 hohöph. "CoBeTCKaH Pocchh He H3 'aBTOKapa'" (peu. Ha: Henri Béraud, Ce que j'ai vu à Moscou, Paris, 1925). Bo3poxdeHue, 30 hohöph. " E e c e a a c anaaeMBKOM n . r . BHHorpaaoBbiM." Bo3poxdenue [aaTa He ycTaHOBjieHa]. 1926 "HenpHMHpHMbift M h k o t h h h 'TaKTHK' Mhjiiokob. Ha flomiaae B.A. MaKOTHHa." Bo3poxdenue, 8 HHBapn. " O t b c t Ha aHKeTy c nHcaTejiHMH. ' ' Bo3poxdenue, 21 HHBapn. Peu. Ha: Koeiee. Cöophhk coio3a pyccKHx nncaTejiefl b MexocjioBaKHH, 1 ( n p a r a , 1926). Bo3poxdenue, 21 HHBapn. "paHuy3bi 0 6 HCTopHiecicoii P o c c h h . " Ha coöpaHHH «SpaHKO-PyccKoro CoK)3a. Bo3poxdenue, 24 HHBapn. " H a flOKjiaae C.O. 3aropcKoro." Bo3poxdenue, 26 HHBapn.

"CnaBHHCKoe 06o3peHHe." (peu. Ha: The Slavonic Review, Vol. IV, No. 11, December 1925). Bo3poxdenue, 4 HCHeHHe k ôeceae

275

0 6 ilKyiueBe-OeflopoBe. ' ' Poccwt,

5 HOHÔpa. [ I l o a n . : T.

GryKOB.]

' T . n . y . b 3ctohhh. m y ,

Bhpk h

OnnepnyT,

neTpoBCKHii." POCCUH, 12

HOHÔpa. [ r i o a n . : T. CTyKOB.]

côophhk cthxob"

"HoBbifi

(peu. Ha: Amipeii Bnox, Cmuxomoopemw,

IlapHac,

1927). POCCUH, 26 Hoaôpa. "'yHHBepcHTeTCKaa no3Ma' B. CHpHHa." POCCUH, 10 aeKa6pa. ")KH3Hb B o f l j i a p a " (peu. Ha: François Porche, La vie douloureuse Baudelaire,

de Charles

Paris, 1926). POCCUM, 17 fleica6p«.

"MHOCTpaHUbI

O nOJlOHCeHHH ÔOJIblueBHKOB.

AMepHKaHCKHH

3KOHOMHCT

O

C0BeTCK0M xo3HHCTBe." POCCUH, 24 aeKaôpfl. "KHHHCHbie ayKUHOHbi b riapH5Ke." POCCUH, 31 neKaôpa. [Be3 noanHCH.] " H o B b i f l paccKa3 0 6 OTpeneHHH r o c y f l a p a . " POCCUH, 31 fleicaôpH.

1928 "BeaceHCKHe paccKa3bi" (peu. Ha: Bopnc JlasapeBCKHH, ronoc

podumi.

Hoebie

paccKa3bi, napHHc, 1928). POCCUH, 14 HHBapa. "JlHTepaTypa b 'CoBpeMeHHbix 3anHCKax'." POCCUH, 14 HHBapa. " T o M a c X a p f l H . " Poccwt

[aHBapb?].

" T o M a c XapflH, 1840-1928." 3a Ceoôody

cthxh"

"HoBbie

Bohchcb, eopod,

(peu.

Ha: H .

0OHTNAH. BoceMHadyamb

(BapmaBa), 8 (feeBpana.

Ouyn, Bcmpeua. cmuxomeopeHuù,

Tlo3Ma,

flapim,

1928;

I l a p H » , 1927; P . Bnox,

B. Moü

rieTponojiHC, 1928). POCCUH, 11 $eBpajifl.

"Thxhö

a a. O no33HH B. XoaaceBHHa." 3a Ceoôody

(Bapmaßa), 11 MapTa.

"3aMeTKH o CTHxax" (peu. Ha: H . TypoBepoB, Tlymb, FlapHHc, 1928). POCCUH, 14 anpejm.

Chphh, Koporn,

Peu. Ha: B.

doMa, eanem (BepjiHH, 1928). POCCUH U C/iaexHcmeo,

1 aeKa6pa. Peu. Ha: EßreHHH He,n3ejibCKHfi, M3 neuicxoù nupuKu u C/iaeHHcmeo,

(YjKropofl, 1928). POCCUH

15 fleKaôpa.

"ilecflTHJieTHe öonbuieBHUKoro BjiaubmecTBa" (peu. Ha: Ten Years of Bolshevic Domination,

Ed. J. Bickermann, Berlin, 1928). POCCUH U C/iaexHcmeo,

15 fleKaôpa.

Peu. Ha: TeoprHH PaeBCKHH, CmpopaHuy3CKOM nepeBoae" (peu. Ha: Adam Mickiewicz, L'Homme Eternel. Pages choisies en prose. Avec préface de M. André Mazon et introduction de M. Josephe-André Teslar, Paris, 1929). POCCUH u Cnaenncmeo, 25 Ma». [Tlofln.: Reviewer.] Peu. Ha-.Kapnamcmü Ceem. ÛHTepaTypHO-oôinecTBeHHbifi acypHaJi OômecTBa hm. AjieiccaHflpaflyxHOBmab yacropoae ( r o a 2-oft, 1929), 2-3,4. POCCUH U C/iaoHHcmeo, 25 Maa. [noun.: Reviewer.] "XopBaTCKoe Oôo3peHHe" (peu. Ha: Hrvatska Revija. Mjesecnik Matice Hrvatski, N°N° 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Zagreb, 1929). Poccun u C/iaeHHcmeo, 1 hk>hh. [Ilofln.: Reviewer.] "3aMeTKH o CTHxax. IlapH>KCKne h npaxccKue 'Mojioflbie'." POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo, 22 hiohji. "'OjiHMnHflCKHfl jiaBp' K. Be»(HHCKoro" (peu. Ha: Ka3HMHp BokhhckhA,

Struve

277

Bibliography

IlepeBOfl c nojibCKoro Mnxaroia XopoMaHCKoro, BepjiHH,

O/iuMnuücKuü jiaep.

1929). POCCUH u C/iaenncmeo,

29 HK>HH.

riepeBoa: PaflHep MapHH PHJibKe, "CMepTb KaMeprepa B p n r r e " (M3 3anucoK Manbme Jlaypudca Epueee).

Py/ib, 30 HJOHJI.

" H 3 MeiuyapoB BpycHjiOBa." POCCUH U Cnaenucmeo,

6 HIOHH [noan.: Reviewer.]

"AHTUHH 4epe3 cnaBHHCKHe OHKH" (peu. Ha: Karel Tchapek, Lettres Paris, 1929). Poccwt "naMHTHHK

u C/iaenncmeo,

ôojirapo-pyccKoft

oceoôodume/iHama

flpy»6bi"

(peu.

Ha:

IJpocnaea

Ha

CÔOPHUK, Cocjwsi, 1929).

eoüna 1877-1878. PycKO-Ebmapcxuù

POCCUH u Cnaenncmeo,

d'Angleterre,

20 HKJJIH.

10 aBrycTa. [Ilofln.: Reviewer.]

" F l o cjiaBHHCKHM >KypHajiaM. Kapnamcxuü

Ceem,

5." POCCUH U

CnaexHcmeo,

10 aBrycTa. " n o CjiaBHHCKHM jKypHajiaM" (peu. Ha: Hrvatska Revija JMsMe 6 H 7), POCCUH U C/iaenncmeo,

10 aBrycTa. [Ilofln.: Reviewer.]

"CrpaHHaa KHHra" (peu. Ha: Jules Legras, La littérature 3a Ceoöody

en Russie, Paris, 1929).

(BapuiaBa), 11 aBrycTa.

"XIHJIJIOH B n e T e p 6 y p r e , "

POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo,

17 aBrycTa.

[Flofln.:

Reviewer.] "3aMeTKH o CTHxax. BniecnaB JleöefleB." POCCUH U C/iaeHHcmeo, 24 aBrycTa. "50-neTHe npocj). P . B . CHTOH-YoTCOHa," POCCUH U C/iaenncmeo,

31 aBrycTa

[rioAn.: Reviewer.] "3aaaHH pyccKHx MeHbuiHHCTB. Becera c npohh. [Floan.: Reviewer.] "Mnaaopoccbi 3a peBOjirouHOHHyio 6opb6y h o6luhh (Jjpoht." POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo, 19 hiojih. "3aMeTKH o CTHxax" (peu. Ha: lOpHft MaHaejibiuTaM, Ocmpoe, IlaprnK, 1930; Bhktop TpeTbHKOB, Co/iHifepou, EepjiHH, 1930; Tpemuu C6OPHUK COK>3Q Mo/iodbix nosmoe u nucameneu e IJapuxe, napnxc, 1930). POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo, 2 aBrycTa. "O MJiaaopoccax h 'HenpeflpemeHCTBe.' Bmccto OTneTa." POCCUH U CnaeHHcmeo, 2 aBrycTa. "3aMeTKH o CTHxax. IlepeKpecmoK." POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo, 30 aBrycTa. "PaccKa3bi BajieHTHHa KaTaeBa" (peu. Ha: BajieHTHH KaTaeB, Omeif, EepjiHH, 1930). POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo, 27 ceHTuSpn. "CBoeo6pa3Haa imcapeBLUHHa. Eme o 'HHCJiax'." Poccun u Cnaenncmeo, 11 okt»6ph. "flBa poMaHa o jho6bh" (peu. Ha: E. KenbneBCKHfl, B necy, riapw», 1930; K). Oejib3eH, 06MOH, IlapH«, 1930). Poccun u Cnaenncmeo, 8 hoh6p«. "EflHHeHHe Ha nyTHx K HaunoHajibHoft peBoirrouHH." POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo," 6 aeKa6pH.

1931 "3-a 6eceua 'Pocchh h CriaBHHCTBa.'" POCCUH U Cnaenncmeo, 24 HHBapa. [Ee3 noflnncH.] "4-aH 6eceaa 'Pocchh h CjiaBaHCTBa'." Poccun u Cnaenncmeo, 30 HHBap«. [Tloan.: Reviewer]. "HoBbift poMaH Eopnca nHJibHHKa" (peu. Ha: Eopnc FlHjibHHK, Boma enadaem e Kacnuucxoe Mope, MocKBa, 1930). Poccun u Cnaenncmeo, 1 (freBpauH. " ' L e Mois.' HoBbitt paHuy3 o Pocchh b 1840r. Flo noBoay oflHofi 3a6biToft KHHra" [Ahph MepHMe, rod e Poccuu, 1847], Poccwt u C/iaenncmeo, 11 mohh. 1933 IlepeBOfl: A. CBaH, "Ckp«6hh." POCCUH u C/iaexHcmeo, 7 h 14 HHBapa. "TypreHeBCKHe uhh b JloHaoHe." POCCUH U C/iaeHHcmoo, 1 hiojih. "TBopnecTBO ByHHHa." POCCUH U C/iaexncmeo, 1 aeKa6pa.

1936 "BjiaflHMHp CHpHH-Ha60K0B.

K ero Benepy b JIoHflOHe 20-ro (JjeBpajiH."

Pyccmu e Am/iuu (JIohaoh), 16 tfreBpajiH. "O B. Chphhc." Pyccmu e Ane/iuu (JIohaoh), 5 Ma«. 1937

"HoBbie noKyMeHTbi o IlyuiKHHe." iloc/iednue Hoeocmu , 11 (freBpajiu. "3aMeTKH o nyuiKHHe." Pyccmu e Ane/iuu (JIohaoh), 16 (j)eBpajin. "AHrnHHCKHii nepeBOflHHK FlyuiKHHa: Boppo b Pocchh." TlyuiKUH, OflHOflHeBHaa ra3eTa (FlapHHc), (freBpaub 1937. "HoBbie nyuiKHHCKHe MaTepnajibi H3 BpHTaHCKoro M y 3 e a . " BenepadcKuii

IlyMKUHCKUu CdopnuK. (Bejirpaa, 1937). 1944

"HeH3flaHHbie cthxh TyMBjieBa." Hoebiu Mypnan, kh. 8.

280

Struve

Bibliography

1947 RIACBMO B peaaKUHio: " O Bo3poxdenuu, np." Hoeoe PyccKoe Cnoeo, 4 Ma«.

Pyccxou Mbicnu,

" E m e o TOM ace. OTBCT E . fl. KycKOBott."

H . C . IIlMeneBe H

Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo, Pyccxan )Ku3Hb,

"BH6jiHorpa(i)HH: M o j i o a w e napnwcKHe n o s T b i . " IlHCbMo B peaaKUHio:

Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo,

"PyccKHe—aoKTopa K3M6pHa»cKoro

17 HIOHJI. 2 1 HK>HH.

yHHBepcHTeTa."

2 6 HKWIH.

Hoeoe PyccKoe Cnoeo,

28

Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo, 3 0 HJOJIH. Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo,

19

" n o f l 3HaMeHeM cBo6oflbi. O flByx 3 M H r p a u n a x . " HK3JTH. " r i j i a n e B H o e pa3HOMbicjiHe."

" H o B o e o CTapoM: E m e 0 6 MaKHHtJie BHnypHHe." OKTH6PH.

" H o B o e o CTapoM: PyccKHe CBH3H B a n b T e p a CKOTTa. IlHCbMo A H H M ByHHHOft K

Hoeoe PyccKoe Cnoeo, 1 9 OKTH6PH. R. U,exaH0BCK0r0 B KajiH(J>opHHHCKOM Y HHBepcHTeTe.'' Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 25 OKTH6PH. [Ilojin.: r . CTKDKOB.] BanbTepy C K O T T y . " "BbiCTynjieHHe

" H o B o e o CTapoM: P y c c w i e CBJOH B a n b T e p a CKOTTa. BH3HT H nwcbMO 6 a p . A . K . MefieHflop(J)a."

Hoeoe Pyccme Cnoeo,

2 6 OKTH6PH.

" M a T e p n a j i b i A n « 6HorpaHH H . C . ryMHJieBa: n o HeH3naHHbiM a o K y M e H T a M . "

Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo,

16

fleKa6pa.

" T p H c y a b 6 b i : BJIOK, TyMHJieB, C o j i o r y 6 . "

Hoebiu XCypnan,

KH. 16 H KH. 1 7 .

1948 " C O 6 W T H J I B MexocnoBaKHH. P a c c x a 3 OHEBHFLUA—aMepHKaHCKoro

Hoeoe Pyccnoe C/ioeo,

CTyaeHTa."

7 M a p T a . [Ilofln. r e o p r n f l CTyKOB.]

PyccKdH Mbicnb, 16 anpejia. Hoeoe Pyccnoe Cnoeo, Pyccxax Mbicnb, 2 3 anpejia.)

"PaHHHH CMepTb. riaMHTH J L B . MepHOCBHTOBa."

" A p T y p K e c T J i e p o Harnett s n o x e H TenymeM MOMeHTe." 18 anpejm. (TaKHce:

Pyccxan )Ku3Hb,

17 anpena;

" N . B . C T p y B e o MHPOBOM KpH3Hce H BTopoii MHPOBOH BofiHe. H 3 nepenncKH c cbiHOM. K 4-ofl roaoBiuHHe c M e p T H . "

Pyccxax )Ku3Hb, 1 - 2

Maa.

"IlojiHTHHecKHe 3aMeTKH: OnepeflHoii MOJIOTOBCKHH o6MaH; ' M n p a He MoaceT 6biTb,

noxa

e,aepauHfl."

coBeTCKHii

POKHM

Pyccxtm )Ku3Hb,

He

jiHKBHAHpoBaH';

POCCHH

H

eBponeftcKasi

1 5 Ma«.

"IloJiHTHHecKHe 3aMeTKH: HoBbift x o a MocKBbi; HexocjiOBauKHil nojiHTHqecKHft aeHTejib o HeaaBHHx co6biTHHx B MexocjiOBaKHH; AMepHKaHCKHe BepxoBeHCKHe."

Pyccxax 2Ku3Hb, 22 Maa. IlHCbMo B peaaKUHK): " O T 3 b i B o X V Bbinycice

Pyccxoeo Pe6ema,

JJhr Pyccxoeo PedeHxa.'" JJeHb

2 0 Mas. [Flofln. n . H . C T p y B e ! ]

"IlpesHiieHT TPIOMSH B Kajin(J>0pHHficK0M YHHBEPCHTETE."

Cnoeo,

Hoeoe PyccKoe

1 6 HIOHH.

" O CTapbix r p e x a x H HaniHX 3 a a a 4 a x . "

Pyccxou )Ku3Hb, 2 8

aBrycTa.

" O pyccKOM H3biKe. Flo n o B o a y CTaTeil BJI. KpbiMOBa, A . BncKa H a p . "

Pyccme Cnoeo, 2 9 aBrycTa. (TaioKe B: B iloMOUfb npenodaeamento n3bim e AMepuxe (CaH OpaHUHCKo), JVa 1 0 . ) " I l H C b M o B peaaKUHio: npaBonHcaHHH."

"O

Hoeoe

pyccxoeo

HHCTOTC p y c c K o r o H3biKa H 0 6 OAHOM Bonpoce

Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo

[ a a T a He ycTaHOBJieHa].

281

Struve Bibliography "NOJIHTHIECKOE 3ABEMAHNE

S a y a p a a BeHeiua." Hoeoe Pyccnoe C/toeo,

2

H

3

OKTHÖpH.

1949 "O 'TnuiHHe' Bopnca 3añueBa." Hoeoe PyccKoe CAOBO, 6 (JjeBpana. "flpyr IlyiiiKHHa—KHH3b n . B. KO3JIOBCKHÌÌ." JJeHb Pyccxoeo Peöenxa, XVI, anpenb 1949. riHCbMO B peaaKUHio: " O Kypbe3ax h KanpH3ax n3biKa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo, 22 MAN. HoBoe o c T a p o M : ÜHCBMO COBPEMCHHHUBI o BOPOFLHHCKOM cpaxceHHH H c a a i e MocKBbi." Hoeoe

Pyccxoe

CAOBO, 30 H 31 Man.

"KanpH3bi H npHnyflbi H3biKa.

O T B C T BJI.

KpbiMOBy." Hoeoe Pyccme

CAOBO,

3

HTOHH.

Marginalia puschkiniana: 1. K o e - Q T O HOBOE o nyiiiKHHCKOM ' y M H O M a t f c e e ' ; 2. M. H. KO3JTOB—NEPEBOAHHK IlymKHHa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 12 H 19 HIOHH. "MEUOBEQECTBO B 1984 roay. H O B M H poMaH o TOTajiHTapH3Me" (peu. Ha: FLHCOPJI» OPBEJIJI, 1984, London and New York, 1949). Pyccxan MbicAb, 24 HIOHH. "Hepe3 35 JieT. HoBaa c a T H p a Ha TOTanHTapH3M" (peu. Ha: fl»opfl5K OpBejin, 1984, London and New York, 1949). Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 10 HHDJIH. " O flByx (J)poHTax H O J~Inre Bopb6bi 3A HapoflHyio CBo6oxiy." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO,

1 aBrycTa.

"HoBoe o CTapoM: flßa npaBOCJiaBHbix aHrjiHiaHHHa B XVIII BeKe. 1. flacoH napaziañ3; 2. J l o p a OpeaepHK H o p T . " Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 28 aBrycTa. " E m e O npefljiorax 'B' H 'Ha'." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 4 ceHTHÖpH. " M c T o p H K O - j i H T e p a T y p H b i e 3aMeTKH: 1. HeH3BecTHbie CTPOKH KH. n . A . BsneMCKoro; 2. 3aBemaHHe r p . C . P . BopoHuoBa; 3. Jloacb 'JlHTepaTypHoft RA3ETBI'; 4. nepjibi c0BeTCK0H n o 3 3 H H . " Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 9 OKTHÖP«. ")KepTBa '6e3poflHoro KOCMonojiHTa' : O COBCTCKHX n o M H H K a x no riyiiiKHHy." Pyccxan MbicAb, 28 OKTHÖPH. "Toraa H Tenepb: Koe-iTo O coBe-rcKofi jiHTepaType H KPHTHKC." Hoaoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 6 HOHÖPH. " K T O 6biji n y u i K H H C K H f i 'N0JI0H0(J)HJI'? O 6 OAHOM 3araao»moM HaöpocKe nyuiKHHa." Hosoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 18 fleKaöpa.

1950 "flHeBHHK HHTaTejia: COBCTCKHH KPHTHK jiaraeT repiueH30Ha; O HensaaHHoñ TpareflHH FyMHueBa; O BocbMHflec»THJieTHHx." Hoaoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 1 «HBap«. " H 3 npoiiiJioro: PyccKHii flnnnoMaT H no6er JliocbeHa BoHanapTa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 27 HHBAPN. "FLHEBHHK HHTaTexm: Eme O ' n p o c ß e m e H H b i x ' 3KcnepTax no p y c c K H M zienaM." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 5 (JjeBpaim. "flHeBHHK wraTejiH: KajiHiJjopHHftcKa« miioKBa no-coBeTCKH; IlapiDK BaHaw BacnneBCKofl; naMHTH fljKopaHca OpBejiJia." Hoaoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 19 (JieBpanK. "FLHEBHHK HHTaTejiH: KaK coBcrcKHe nncaTejiH nepeaejibiBaioT CBOH BemH." Hosoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 5 M a p T a .

282

Struve Bibliography

IlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): K 6Horpa(J)HH n . B. OrpyBe. PyccKan )Ku3Hb, 15 MapTa. C/ioeo, ",U,HeBHHK HHTaTejia: npH3HaHHa AneKcaHflpa B e p T a . " Hoeoe Pyccme 23 anpejiH.

" K h . n . B. Ko3jiobckhìì h ero 3HaKOMCTBO c IIIaT06pHaH0M, r-»eñ ae Qranb h

TettHe." Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 30 anpeua. " O BemeBOH noMomn pyccKHM b E B p o n e . " Hoeoe PyccKoe CAOBO, 2 Maa. "Eajib3aK h Cocfcba Ko3noBCKaH." PyccKan Mbic/ib, 10 Ma«. IlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): "HoBopoccHftcKaa TiopbMa b 1918 r o a y . " PyccKan )Ku3Hb, 10 Man. IlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): " E m e o HobopocchBckoA TiopbMe h MaTpocax. (MctophnecKaa c n p a B K a b otbct r-Hy BaHTuy)." PyccKan )Ku3Hb, 25 Maa. "JleHHH b TiopbMe h ccbijTKe. HcTopHHecKaa cnpaBKa." Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 25 Maa. "^HeBHHK HHTaTejia: B 3amHTy >Ko3etJ)a a e MacTpa; O BapaTbiHCKOM; E m e o 'BejiHKOM' h 'MoryqeM'." Hoeoe Pyccme CAOBO, 28 Man. "flHeBHHK MHTaTejTH: O coBeTCKOM nepHoae OcHna MaHflejiburraMa." Hoeoe Pyccme CAOBO, 3 ceHTaópa. ",Zl,HeBHHK HHTaTejia: P e x o p a CTajiHHonoKJiOHCTBa; O Mapmie U,BeTaeBOfi." Hoeoe Pyccme CAOBO, 1 0KTa6pa. "ílHeBHHK iHTaTena: 0 6 Hjib(|)e h I l e T p o B e . " Hoeoe PyccKoe CAOBO, 27

hoh6ph.

IlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): " 0 6 'OTpaBjieHHofi TyHHKe' TyMnjieBa." Hoeoe PyccKoe 10 aeKa6pa. PyccKuù eeponeeif. MamepuaAbi ÒAH 6uoepa0uu u xapaKmepucmuKu KH. 77. E. Ko3AoecKoeo. CaH OpamjHCKO, flejio. riepeBOfl ( c 0 B M e c T H 0 c M . Kpiirep): Feopr [Hjkopahc] OpBejiJi, CKomcKuü xymop. KeHHeM nncbMa flacopflHca OpBejuia k T. n . CTpyBe OT 17 4>eBp&na 1944 r. h c HjijiiocTpauHAMH H. H . HnxoneHKO, 1971.) CAOBO,

1951 FlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): "Ilo noBoay CTaTbH T. AaaMOBma." Hoeoe PyccKoe

1 «HBapa. "AMepHKa h Pocchh. n o noBoay Tpex hobhhok aMepHKaHCKofl jiHTepaTypbi" (peu. Ha: Max M. Laserson, The American Impact on Russia—Ideological and Diplomatic—1784-1917, New York, 1950; Thomas A. Bailey, America Faces Russia, Ithaca, 1950. Frederick C. Barghoorn, The Soviet Image of the United States: A Study in Distortion, New York, 1950). Hocee, 11 eBpajia. " n n c a T e j i b HeHyxcHbix TeM: TBopiecKHfi nyTb K)pHH OjieiiiH." Hoebiü ÌKypnoA, KH. 25. "¿lecHHua H íuyñiia r. AaaMOBHia." PyccKan MbicAb, 13 hk>hh. CAOBO,

1952 "'J1k)6obhhk 6paHH' h n o s T . " Bo3poxdeHue, " B . H. MejinmeB." PyccKan )Ku3Hb, 13 Maa.

JNs 20 (MapT-anpenb).

Struve Bibliography

283

IlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): " O lrHTjiepoparMeHT IlacTepHaKa." Hoeoe PyccKoe Cnoeo, 5 okth6p». "IlHCbMa fleHHca flaBbinoBa k BajibTepy CKOTTy: Heo6xoflHMan cnpaBKa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 26 okth6ph. Peu. Ha: B. CMoneHCKHfl, Codpanue cmuxomeopeHuu (IlapHMC, 1957). Hoebiii yKypnan, kh. 53. "CoBeTCKoe jiHTepaTypoBeaeHHe b 1957 r o s y . " Becmuux Hncmumyma no u3yteHuio CCCP (MroHxeH), JVe 3. "O PeMH30Be: K roflOBimme co ahh cMepTH (14/27-XI-1957)." BecmmiK P.C.X.a. JVe 50. "M3 nepenHCKH H. C. UlMexieBa c n . B. CTpyBe h K. H. 3aftueBbiM." Mocmw, Ns 1. "MapHHa UBeTaeBa h npyrne pyccKHe no3Tbi b lorocnaBCKOM HcypHane." Oribimbi, IX, 105-106.

1959 "naMHTH E. fl. KycKOBoii." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 5 sutBapn. "flHeBHHK HHTaTena: Eme o IOphh )KHBaro h Amhtphh CaMapHHe." Hoeoe PyccKoe Cnoeo, 18 HHBapa. (TaK»e: PyccKwt Mbicnb, 2 anpejin.) "flHeBHHK HHTaTejifl: CTanHH h IlacTepHaK." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 15 (fceBpaiiH. "CTpaHHua H3 hctophh pyccicofi 3apy6e>KHO0 neiaTH. Hahhjihhîihh; II. TeH. BpaHrejib h yKpaHHiibi." Bo3poxdeHue, N° 231 (anpejib). "JleHHH 6e3 rpHMa: CobctckhA imcaTenb o JleHHHe h neHHHH3Me." PyccKan Mbicnb, 8 anpejiH. "Koe-HTo 06 Hcae JleacHeBe h ero «ypHajie. FIo noBoay CTaTeft M. KopHKOBa." Hoeoe Pyccnoe Cnoeo, 20 mohh. "Kto 6bin nyuiKHHCKHfl 'nojiOHOiJjHji'?" Hoebiù iKypnan, kh. 103. "HeH3BecTHbift h Maji0H3BecTHbift ryMHJieB." Hoeoe Pyccnoe Cnoeo, 22 hiojm. " 0 6 0flH0M 3a6biTOM TOJiKOBaTene flocToeBCKoro." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 8 aBrycTa.

294

Struve

Bibliography

FlHCbMO b p e a a K i i H i o : "3aMenaTe.ribHoe o t k p m t h c r-Ha 3 6 e p i i i T e f l H a . " Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 1 9 a B r y c T a . r i n c b M O b peaaKUHio: " O pyccKHx Ha3BaHHHx Ha ' o ' . " Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 7 OKTHÓPH. r i n c b M O b penaKUHK): " K a x cKjioH»Tb K p w c y ? " Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo, 19 ho»6ph. "HecTBOBaHHe r . n . C T p y B e . " PyccKan Mbic/ib, 2 5 hoh6ph [ I l o f l n . : X . ] " K cTOJicTHK) c o flHH po>KfleHHa ü . B . C T p y B e . H 3 nepenHCKH e r o c c m h o m b 1 9 3 9 - 1 9 4 1 r r . " BecmnuK

P. C.X.JH.,

JVs 1 0 0 .

BcTynHTeiTbHaa c T a T b a : M a p H H a U B e T a e B a ,

'JJeóeduHbiü

cman'

u 'IlepeKon '

(peaaKUHH T j i e 6 a C T p y B e ) . n a p « « , Y M C A P r e s s .

1972 " K npoòneMe aTpHÓyuHH c t h x o t b o p h m x nocBameHHtt. Flo noBoay oflHoro Slavistiche, XVII-XIX. "KpaTKaa JlHTepaTypHaa 3HUHKjione,gHH. IIIecToft t o m . " Pyccxan Mbic/ib, 17 (JjeBpaiiH. " 0 6 0flH0M HHTepBbK) EBreHHH EBTymeHKO." Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 11 MapTa. IlHCbMo b peaaKUHio: " O •jepHOc.nHBe h He3a6yflicax." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 16 MapTa. "M3 apxHBa n . B. CTpyBe." Hoebiü iKypncui, kh. 106. FlHCbMO b peaaKiiHio: " O h h c t o t c H3biKa h o ero BbixojiamHBaHHH." Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo, 6 Ma». " 0 6 0flH0M CTHxoTBopeHHH 3HHaHflbi rnnnHyc." PyccKan Mbic/ib, 11 hkjhh. FlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): " H o B o e o TyMHjieBe." Hoeoe Pycacoe C/ioeo, 15 hiohh. "IlaMHTH apyra h coóeceflHHKa. M . K . naBjiHKOBCKHft, 1 8 9 3 - 1 9 7 2 . " PyccKan MblCJlb, 22 HIOHH. " K HCTopHH 3apy6e»cHOH jiHTepaTypbi. MejioiH H3 koiihjikh Moeñ naMHTH: JL. H . CTpaxoBCKHfl-JI. HauKHtt." Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 25 hiohh. " K HCTopHH pyccKofi 3apy6e»Hoñ jiHTepaTypbi. Kax cocTaBJiHJiacb aHTOJionw 'JlKopb'." Hoebiü JKypnaa, kh. 107. CTHXOTBopeHHH H . B . H e f l 0 6 p 0 B 0 . " Ricerche

FlHCbMO b peAaKUHio: " n p o c b 6 a ncnpaBHTb o u i h 6 k h . " Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 14 HtOJIH. r i n c b M O b peflaKUHK): " O t b c t A . A . B o p M a H y . " Hoeoe Pyccnoe C/ioeo, 17 HKWIH. FlHCbMO b peflaKUHio: " O t b c t K). CTyKannqy." Hoeoe PyccKoe C/ioeo, 21 HIOJ1H. " K 'peaÓHjiHTauHH' Ocnna MaHflejibiiiTaMa.'' Hoeoe Pyccnoe Cnoeo, 30 hiojih. IlHCbMo b peaaKUHio: "Mbi 3aMHTHHa b A h f j i k h . " Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo, 3 aBrycTa. "H3 h c t o p h h pyccKOH 3apy6eajih.

riHCbMo b peaaKUHK): "He6ojibiuaH nonpaBKa." Hoeoe

Pyccxoe

CAOBO,

17

aBrycTa.

"^HeBHHK HHTaTejia: Eme o 8-m tomc K J I 3 : HcnpaBjieHH» h aonojiHeHHJi." Pyccxcm

MbiCAb,

11 c e H T a 6 p a .

"flHeBHHK HHTaTejijj: Eme o Bopnce >Khtkobc." Hoaoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 21 ceHTHÓpa. "ÜHeBHHK HHTaTejui: JXBÜ nncbMa Bopnca FlacTepHaKa." HoBoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 9 hoh6ph.

Struve

297

Bibliography

"JlHeBHHK iHTaTejw: O cytjxJmKce 'mHH-a' H Cnoeo, 27 HOii6pii.

O 'KOPHKOBLUHHC."

Hoeoe Pyccxoe

"PaftHep MapHH PnjibKe o 'MHTHHOÜ JIK>6BH' ByHHHa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 30 H O H 6 P « . (TaK«e: Pyccxan Mbicnb, 25 aeica6pa.)

IlHCbMO B peflaKiwio: "K nncbMy A. Tapcamne." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 4 fleKa6pa. ILHCBMO B peaaKUHio: "O TYMHNEBE B A 6 H C C H H H H . " Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 5 ijeKa6pa. 1976 IlHCbMO B peaaKiiHK): "O KoHpaae AaeHayape." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 29 HHBapfl.

IlHCbMO

B

peaaKUHio: "O rpae A. K. TOJTCTOM." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 11

MapTa.

"Cnynañ Ha paAHOCTaHUHH." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 21 MapTa. "06 A. B. HaaHOBe H ero yTonHH." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 31 MapTa. [BcTynHTejibHaa CTaTbH K nepeneiaTKe "IlyTeiiiecTBHH Moero 6paTa Anexcea B CTpaHy KpecTbHHCKOñ yTonHH" B HoeoM PyccxoM Cnoee Meacjiy 1 h 15 anpena 1976 r.] "flHeBHHK HHTaTejia: O BsmecnaBe JIe6eaeBe, 1896-1969." Hoeoe

Pyccxoe

Cnoeo, 9 Mas. IlHCbMO B peaaKUHK): "O B. B. IIIyjibrHHe." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 14 Ma». "K 6Horpa«J)HH AHflpea Eejioro: TpH aoKyMeHTa." Hoebtü iKypnan, KH. 124. "K HanaaeHHio Ha K. n . BoraTbipeBa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 15 Mas. [Be3 noariHCH.] IlHCbMO B peaaKUHio: "'ilicopb'." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 3 HIOHH. "IlaMflTH K. n . BoraTbipeBa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 11 HIOJIH. "JÍHeBHHK HHTaTejia: BoKpyr KHHrH A. Tepua o IlyiiiKHHe." Hoeoe

Cnoeo, 5

Pyccxoe

ceHT«6p«.

"ÍHHCBHHK

iHTaTenn: HoBbie H3flaHHH AxMaTOBOü." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 14

HOfl6pH.

ÜHCbMO B peaaKUHio: "IlonpaBKa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 10 CCHTH6PH. "HoBoe o TpecTe. IlpeflHCJioBHe K nyójiHKauHH Tpex Heony6jiHKOBaHHbix TeKCTOB B. B. IIIyjibrHHa, c KOMMeHTapneM C. Jl. BoüuexoBCKoro." Hoebiü iKypuan, KH. 125. "O BHKTope XoBHHe H ero »ypHanax." Russian Literature (Amsterdam), Vol. IV, No. 2. ("Rectification." Russian Literature, Vol. IV, No. 3.)

1977 "C. Jl. 4>paHK. K CTOjjeTHK) co flHH poacaeHHH." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 30 flHBapn. IlHCbMO B peflaKumo: " 0 6 'AnojinoHe 77'." Pyccxan Mbicnb, 28 anpejia. IlHCbMO B peaaKUHK): "O cTaTbe Hm. Be3pyKHX." Pyccxan Mbicnb, 16 HIOHH. "flHeBHHK HHTaTejia: O (JjaMHJiHH BaiibMOHTa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 19 HIOHH.

298

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"IlaMHTH K. A. KpHBOUieHHa." Hoeoe PyccKoe CAOBO, 24 hiohh. "flHeBHHK HHTaTeji«: IlaMHTH B. B. Ha6c>KOBa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 17

HIOJ1H. IlHCbMO b peaaKUHio: HIOJIH.

" O Ha60K0Be:

yTOHHeHHe." Hoeoe

PyccKoe CAOBO,

" E m e 06 'AnojuiOHe 77': pro domo mea." Pyccxan MbicAb, 4 aBrycTa. " K CMepTH B. B. Ha6oK0Ba." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 7 aBrycTa. IlHCbMO b peaaKUHio: " K 6Horpa$HH I L M. Ehuhjijih." Hoeoe Pyccxoe

21

CAOBO,

1 0 aBrycTa.

"3a6biToe—hjih nony3a6biToe—cTHxoTBopeHHe MapHHbi IjBeTaeBOH." Hoeoe Pyccme CAOBO, 20 aBrycTa.

1978 "ilHeBHHK qHTaTejia: Eme o BájibMOHTe-EaubMÓHTe." Hosoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, IS HHBapfl. "143 npaaccKHX cthxob Paitaepa Mapnn PnjibKe." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 12 (freBpajiH. " ' M b i ' 3aM»THHa Ha aMepHKaHCKoft cueHe." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 19

(¡>eBpajiH. "flHeBHHK HHTaTejlH: 0 6 OflHOM CTHXOTBOpeHHH PHJlbKe. (BMeCTO peueH3HH.)" Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOOO, 26 eBpajia. " M o i i jiHTepaTypHbift fleóioT." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOOO, 2 Man. (TaK»e: Pyccxan MbicAb, 4 Max.) "ílHeBHHK HHTaTejia: Koe-iTo o KHHre Ojibra Hbhhckoh." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOOO, 25 hiohh. ÜHCbMO b penaKitHio: " O Tpex SMHrpauHHX." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 7 hiojih. "¿jHeBHHK MHTaTejiH: Koii-o ieM b KHHre Ojibrn Hbhhckoh." Pyccxan MbicAb,

20 HIOJIH.

"IlaMHTH C. H. KyjiHHKOBa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 23 cchth6ph. rincbMO b peaaKUHio: " O Ha60K0Be h ero nepeBoaax." Hoeoe Pyccxoe CAOOO, 2 4 ceHT«6pH.

" K h . fl. n . CBHTonojiK-MnpcKHtt o pyccKoií noD3HH b 1922 r o a y . " ny6jiHKaiWH XCypnaa, kh. 131. Peu. Ha: SMMaHynji IIlTeiíH, no33wt pyccxoeo paccennwi: 1920-1977 (H3aaTejibCTBO 'JlaflbH,' 1978). Hosbiii MypnaA, kh. 131. "flHeBHHK HHTaTejin: 0 6 OflHOM 3a6biTOM io6Hjiee: C. K . MaKOBCKHii (1877-1962). [C npHJioHceHHeM BapnaHTa cthxotbopchhh MaKOBCKoro "Kpbijibn"]. Hosoe Pyccxoe CAOBO," 10 neKa6pH. "flHeBHHK HHTaTejm. Pyccxan jiHTepaTypa b nncbMax 3flMyHfla BnjibcoHa." Hosoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 24 fleKa6pn. Peu. Ha: EapoH B. 3 . Hojibfle, lOpuü CaMapuH u eeo speMA (llapnac, 1978). Russian Language Journal (East Lansing), XXXII, No. 113.

h BCTynHTejibHaH 3aMeTKa. Hoebiü

1979 IlHCbMO b peaaKUHK): "'FIponaraHflHbiil (JmjibM'." Hosoe Pyccxoe CAOBO, 20 (J)eBpajTfl.

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Bibliography

299

" f l H e B H H K HHTaTejlH. O fleBHTOM TOMe K J I 3 . " PyCCKOH MblC/lb, 1 H 8 M a p T a . "naMHTH Manca XaftBopaa." Hoeoe Pyccxoe Cnoeo, 8 anpena. (Taione: PyccKcut Mbic/ib, 19 anpejiH. IlHCbMO b p e a a K u m o : " I l o n p a B K H k CTaTbe o K J I 3 . " PyccKan Mbic/tb, 12

anpejiH.

IlHCbMO b penaKUHio: "Pro domo mea: Otbct r-Hy IIlTeftHy." Pyccnan Mbic/ib, 3 Maa. IlHCbMO b p e a a K U H i o : " M a n e H b K H e n o n p a B K H . " Hoeoe Pyccme Cnoeo, 2 4 M a n . AHeBHHK HHTaTejia: 0 6 ozihom ManoH3BecTHOM acypHajie." Hoeoe Pyccxoe C/ioeo, 5 HK3HH. (TaKKe: Pyccxan Mbic/ib, 5 hk>hh.) LIST O F

PERIODICALS

The AATSEEL Journal (quarterly, Bloomington, Ind., 1954-1956). The American Slavic and East European Review (quarterly, Menasha, Wis., etc., 1945-1961). Books Abroad (quarterly, Norman, Okla., 1927). Le Mois (monthly, Paris, 1931-1939). [Contributions by G. S. unsigned.] The New Leader (weekly, New York, 1927). The Russian Review (quarterly, New York, etc., 1941). Slavic and East European Journal (quarterly, Bloomington, Ind., etc., 1943). Slavic Review (successor to The American Slavic and East European Review; quarterly, Seattle, etc., 1962). The Slavonic (and East European) Review (quarterly, London, etc., 1922). The Times Literary Supplement (weekly, London, 1902-1978).

1919 "Bolshevism as I saw it." The Oxford Outlook, I, No. 2 (June).

1920 "Russia: A Problem." The Oxford Outlook, II, No. 7 (May).

1930 "Prosper Mérimée membre d'une Société littéraire russe." Le Figaro (Paris), 18 janvier.

1931 "Le nouveau roman de Rosamond Lehmann: Une note de musique" (review of: Rosamond Lehmann, A Note in Music, London, Chatto and Windus, 1930). Le Mois, No. 1. "Une 'extravagance politique' de Bernard Shaw" (review of: Bernard Shaw, The Apple Cart, London, 1930). Le Mois, No. 1. "Vingt-quatre heures" (review of: Louis Bromfield, Twenty-Four Hours, New York, 1930). Le Mois, No. 1.

300

Struve Bibliography

"Du Dostoïevski 'pilniakisé'" (review of: Boris Pil'njak, Volga vpadaet v Kaspijskoe more, Moscow, 1930). Le Mois, No. 2. "Une adaptation moderne du mystère médiéval" (review of: M. Connelly, The Green Pastures, New York, 1929). Le Mois, No. 2. "J. B. Priestley et l'Angleterre contemporaine." Le Mois, No. 2. "Un roman villageois anglais et la naissance d'un néo-romantisme" (review of: H. A. Manhood, Gay Agony, London, 1930). Le Mois, No. 3. "Le fantastique dans les récits d'Osbert Sitwell." Le Mois, No. 4. "Les 'romans-escamotage' de Vladimir Sirine." Le Mois, No. 4. "Essai de pathologie littéraire" (review of: Aldous Huxley, Vulgarity in Literature, London, 1930). Le Mois, No. 5. "Un écrivain anglais d'origine arménienne" (review of: M. Arien, Men Dislike Women, London, 1931). Le Mois, No. 5. "La France devant les écrivains russes" (review of: I. Ehrenbourg and O. Savitch, Nous et eux, Paris, 1931). Le Mois, No. 6. "Vladimir Nabokoff-Sirine, l'amoureux de la vie: Un portrait." Le Mois, No. 6. "Les 'romans-cauchemars' de M. Hugh Walpole." Le Mois, No. 6. "M. L.-P. Smith, moraliste désabusé" (review of: Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts, London, 1931). Le Mois, No. 7. "Les derniers jours de Shylock, Suite du 'Marchand de Venise'" (review of: Ludwig Lewisohn, The Last Days of Shylock, New York and London, 1931). Le Mois, No. 7. "Le dramaturge moderne doit-il disparaître pour que renaisse le théâtre?" (review of: Granville Barker, On Dramatic Method, London, 1931). Le Mois, No. 7. "L'art dramatique et le cinéma parlant" (review of: G. Nathan, Testament of a Critic, New York, 1931). Le Mois, No. 8. " ' L a dixième symphonie' de M. Aldanov et l'art de la miniature." Le Mois, No. 8. "L'oeuvre de David Garnett." Le Mois, No. 8. "George Bernard Shaw: Un portrait." Le Mois, No. 8. "Un roman dostolevskien sur l'émigration russe" (review of: Nina Berberova, Poslednie i pervye). Le Mois, No. 8. "Friedrich Gundolf, l'apôtre du néo-classicisme." Le Mois, No. 8. Nécrologues: Vassily Loujsky; Tor Hedberg; Marie Hübnerova. Le Mois, No. 8. "La création de personnages en littérature (conference de M. John Galsworthy)." Le Mois, No. 9. "Nécrologue de Frank Harris." Le Mois, No. 9. "Théodore Dreiser ou l'idealiste malgré lui: Un portrait." Le Mois, No. 10. "Un nouveau roman de Mrs. Virginia Woolf" (review of: Virginia Woolf, The Waves, London, 1931). Le Mois, No. 10. "Un roman freudien de Robert Musil" (review of: Robert Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless, Berlin, 1930). Le Mois, No. 11. Courts échos sur les pièces de P. Soukhotine, A. K. Tolstoï et W. B. Yeats. Le Mois, Nos. 6, 8 and 11. "L'amour de la vie et le sens de la mort dans l'oeuvre d'Ivan Bounine." Le Mois, No. 12.

1932 Translation of: Vladimir Sirin, "The Return of Tchorb." This Quarter (Paris), No. 4 (June).

Struve

Bibliography

301

Translation of: Lucienne Ercole, Gay Court Life. France in the Eighteenth Century (with Hamish Miles). New York and London, Harper and Bros.; London, Hutchinson and Co.

1933 "The Art of Ivan Bunin." The Slavonic and East European Review, XI, No. 32 (January). Review of: Rainer Maria Rilke, Stories of God ([trans. N. Purtscher-Wydenbruck and H. Norton] London, 1933). Life and Letters (London), March-May. "Maximilian Voloshin" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XI, No. 33 (April). Translation of: S. Chevyriov, "Une visite â Balzac en 1831." Revue de littérature comparée. Troisième année, No. 2 (Avril-Juin). "Current Russian Literature: Leonid Leonov and His 'Skutarevsky'." The Slavonic and East European Review, XII, No. 34 (July). Translation (with Hamish Miles) of: Ivan Bunin, The Well of Days. London, Hogarth Press. (Second edition, 1946.)

1934 "M. Andrey Bely. The Russian Symbolist Movement" (obituary). The Times (London), January 26. Review of: Soviet Literature: An Anthology, ed. and trans. G. Reavey and M. Slonim (London, 1933). The Slavonic and East European Review, XII, No. 35 (January). (Also in: Life and Letters [London], December 1933-February 1934.) "Current Russian Literature: Vladimir Sirin." The Slavonic and East European Review, XII, No. 35 (January). "A Soviet 'Production' Novel" (review of: Valentine Kataev, Forward, Oh Time! [trans. Charles Malamuth] London, 1934). The Observer (London), February 4. "Ivan Bunin" (review of: Ivan Bunin, The Gentleman from San Francisco [trans. D. H. Lawrence, S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf], Richmond, 1922; The Village [trans. Isabel Hapgood], New York, 1923; Fifteen Tales [trans. B. G. Guerney], London, 1924). The Observer (London), February 25. Translation of: Ivan Bunin, "My Meetings with Tolstoy." The Contemporary Review (London), May. Translation of: Vladimir Nabokov-Sirin, "The Passenger." Lovat Dickson's Magazine (London), II, No. 6 (June). Review of: Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don trans. Stephen Garry] London, 1934). Life and Letters (London), June. "Current Russian Literature: Constantine Fedin." The Slavonic and East European Review, XIII, No. 37 (July). "Andrey Bely" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XIII, No. 37 (July).

1935 "Literature in Soviet Russia." The Nineteenth Century and After (London), CXVII, No. 695 (February). (Translation: "Knjizevnost u savremenoj Rusiji." Srpski Knjizevni Glasnik [Belgrade], N. S. XLVI, Br. 4, December, and XLVII, Br. 1, January 1936.)

302

Struve Bibliography

"The Pan-Soviet Literary Congress." The Slavonic and East European Review, XIII, No. 39 (April). Translation (jointly with Bernard Pares) of: N. Misheev, A Heroic Legend: How the Holy Mountains let out of their deep caves the modern heroes of Russia. A modern bylina taken down by N. Misheev. London, Centenary Press. (Reprinted from: The Slavonic and East European Review, XIII, No. 38, January 1935.) "Current Russian Literature: Yury Olesha." The Slavonic and East European Review, XIII, No. 39 (April). "Russian Studies" (jointly with Dr. S. Yakobson). The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies (Cambridge). VI. Soviet Russian Literature. London, Routledge.

1936 Letter to the Editor: "Russian Names." The Times Literary Supplement, January 5. Review of: Max Eastman, Artists in Uniform (London, 1935). The Slavonic and East European Review, XIV, No. 41 (January). "Russian Studies" (jointly with Dr. S. Yakobson). The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies (Cambridge). VII.

1937 "Pushkin and His Place in Russian Literature." The Slavonic and East European Review, XV, No. 44 (January). "Current Russian Literature: New Novels of Fedin and Leonov." The Slavonic and East European Review, XV, No. 45 (April). "Unpublished Pushkin Documents in the British Museum." The Slavonic and East European Review, XV, No. 45 (April). Review of: Centennial Essays for Pushkin, ed. S. H. Cross and E. J. Simmons [Cambridge, Mass., 1937]; Hommage à Pouchkine, 1837-1937 (Bruxelles, 1937); Wactaw Lednicki, Puszkin (Krakow, 1937). The Slavonic and East European Review, XVI, No. 46 (July). "Pouchkine et la littérature européenne." Hommage à Pouchkine, 1837-1937. Bruxelles, Les Cahiers du Journal des Poètes, No. 28.

1938 Review of: Pushkin in English, ed. with an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky (New York, 1937). The Slavonic and East European Review, XVI, No. 47 (January). "Current Russian Literature: Some Recent Novels." The Slavonic and East European Review, XVI, No. 48 (April). "Evgeny Zamyatin" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XVI, No. 48 (April). Review of: E. H. Carr, Michael Bakunin (London, 1937). The Slavonic and East European Review, XVI, No. 48 (April).

1939 "Current Russian Literature: Boris Zaytsev." The Slavonic and East Review, XVII, No. 50 (January).

European

Struve Bibliography

303

1943 Review of: A Book of Russian Listener (London), December 30.

Verse, ed. C. M. Bowra (London, 1943). The

1944 Scott Letters Discovered in Russia. Manchester University Press (Reprinted from the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library [Manchester], Vol. 28, No. 2, December.) 25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature 1918-1943. London, Routledge. (New and enlarged edition of Soviet Russian Literature, 1935.) "Peter Struve. Obituary." (With a partial bibliography.) The Economic Journal (London), LIV, Nos. 215-216 (December).

1945 Addendum to: Bernard Pares, "Two Great Russian Liberals, Peter Struve and Sergius Bulgakov." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIII, No. 62 (January). "Yury Tynyanov" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIII, No. 62 (January). "Konstantin Balmont" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIII, No. 62 (January). "Dmitry Merezhkovsky" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIII, No. 62 (January). "Vladimir Burtsev" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIII, No. 62 (January). "Evgeny Baratynsky." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIII, No. 62 (January). Review of: Joseph Macleod, The New Soviet Theatre (London, 1943) and André van Gyseghem, Theatre in Soviet Russia (London, 1943). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIII, No. 62 (January). "A Russian Traveller in Scotland in 1828: Alexander Turgenev." Blackwood's Magazine (London), November.

1946 "Zinaida Hippius (1869-1945)" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIV, No. 63 (January). "Some New Russian Readers." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIV, No. 63 (January). Review of: F. J. Whitfield, A Russian Reference Grammar (Cambridge, Mass., 1944) and A. Jacques, A Russian Primer (Chicago, 1944). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIV, No. 63 (January). "Vikenty Veresayev (1867-1945)" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIV, No. 63 (January). "Alexey Tolstoy (1882-1945)" (obituary). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIV, No. 63 (January). "Slovo o polku Igoreve—an Eighteenth-Century Fake?" (review of: André Mazon,

304

Struve

Bibliography

Le Slovo d 'Igor, Paris, 1940). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXIV, No. 63 (January). Review of: Istoriya russkoy literatury. Vols. I, III, V, ed. A. S. Orlov et al. (Moskva-Leningrad, 1941). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXV, No. 64 (November). "Blok and Gumilev. A Double Anniversary." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXV, No. 64 (November). "A Chapter in Russo-Polish Relations: I. Woronzow and the Second Partition of Poland; 2. Woronzow and Kosciuszko." The Russian Review, VI, No. 1 (Autumn). (French version: Revue d'histoire diplomatique, juillet-décembre 1947.) Histoire de la littérature soviétique. Paris, Ed. du Chêne. Practical Russian, Book I (jointly with E. A. Moore). London, Arnold.

1947 Review of: M. Hofmann, Histoire de la littérature russe (Paris, 1946). Erasmus (Amsterdam-Bruxelles-Kjöbenhavn), I, No. 5 (March 1). Review of: Slownik rosyjsko-polski i polsko-rosyjski, ed. Wiktor Jakubowski (Warszawa, 1946). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXV, No. 65 (April). Review of: M. Hofmann, Histoire de la littérature russe (Paris, 1946). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXV, No. 65 (April). "Mickiewicz in Russia." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXVI, No. 66 (November). Introduction: Y. Olesha, Envy and V. Kaverin, The Unknown Artist. London, Westhouse. Practical Russian, Book II (jointly with E. A. Moore). London, Arnold.

1948 Review of: Janko Lavrin, Pushkin and Russian Literature (London, 1947). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXVI, No. 67 (April). Review of: George Reavey, Soviet Literature Today (New Haven, 1947). The Slavonic and East European Review, XXVI, No. 67 (April). Letter to the Editor: "History." San Francisco Chronicle, August 13. Review of: George Reavey, Soviet Literature Today (New Haven, 1947). The Russian Review, VII, No. 2 (Spring).

1949 "From Peter Struve's Unpublished Correspondence." The Russian Review, VIII, No. 1 (January). "Introducing Peter Pavlenko." The New Leader, March 26. "Witch-Hunt: Russian Style. The Soviets Purge Literary Scholarship." The New Leader, April 2. "A Belinsky Centenary Bibliography: An Annotated List of 1948 Publications." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXVII, No. 69 (May). "John Paradise—Friend of Dr. Johnson, American Citizen and Russian 'Agent'." The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Richmond), LVII (October).

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Bibliography

305

Introduction: N. K. Gudzy, History of Early Russian Literature. New York and London, Macmillan. Letter to the Editor: "A Literary Find in Russia." The Times Literary Supplement, September 2. "Anti-Westernism in Recent Soviet Literature." The Yale Review (New Haven), XXXIX, No. 3 (December). (Translation: "La Littérature soviétique et l'occident," Documentation française. Articles et Documents, 18 mars 1950.) "Puskin in Early English Criticism (1821-1838)." The American Slavic and East European Review, VIII, No. 4 (December). "A Selective and Critical Bibliography of Studies in Prose Fiction for the Year 1948," Russian section. The Journal of English and German Philology (Urbana), XLVIII.

1950 "Russian Fear." Boston Herald, March 27. Translation (jointly with Mary Kriger) of: Alexander Blok, "The Puppet Show." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXVIII, No. 71 (April). "Marginalia Puschkiniana: Pushkin's 'only intelligent Atheist'." Modern Language Notes, May. Review of: A. S. Dolinin, V tvorcheskoi laboratorii Dostoevskogo: Istoriia sozdaniia romana 'Podrostok' (Leningrad, 1947). Books Abroad, 24, No. 1 (Winter). Review of: Trudy Otdela novoi russkoi literatury (Moskva-Leningrad, 1948). Books Abroad, 24, No. 1 (Winter). Review of: Istoriko-literaturnyi sbornik, ed. S. P. Bychkov et al. (Moskva, 1947). Books Abroad, 24, No. 1 (Winter). Review of: Pis'makA. V. Druzininu (1850-1863). Letopisi, Vol. 9 (Moskva, 1948). Books Abroad, 24, No. 1 (Winter). Review of: Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, Zhizn'Pushkina, Vol. II: 1824-1837 (Paris, 1948). Books Abroad, 24, No. 1 (Winter). Review of: Boris Zaitsev, Tishina (Paris, 1948) and Zhizn ' Turgeneva (Paris, 1949). Books Abroad, 24, No. 2 (Spring). Review of: Vozrozhdenie, Nos. 1-4, ed. I. I. Tkhorzhevsky. Books Abroad, 24, No. 2 (Spring). "A Selective and Critical Bibliography of Studies in Prose Fiction for the Year 1949," Russian section. The Journal of English and German Philology (Urbana), XLIX. "Russian Friends and Correspondents of Sir Walter Scott." Comparative Literature (Eugene), II, No. 4. "Un Russe européen: le Prince Pierre Kozlovsky." Revue de littérature comparée (Paris), XXIV, No. 4 (octobre-décembre). "Russian Literature." Brittanica Book of the Year.

1951 "Who Was Pushkin's 'Polonophil'?" The Slavonic and East European XXIX, No. 73 (June).

Review,

306

Struve Bibliography

Contributions to: Chambers's Encyclopaedia. (Including the main article on Russian Literature.) London, Oxford University Press. "A Look at Russia's Classics" (review of: Marc Slonim, The Epic of Russian Literature, New York, 1964). The New Leader, January 8. Review of: Dimitrij Tschizewskij, Geschichte der altrussischen Literature im 11, 12 und 13 Jahrhundert. Kiever Epoche (Frankfurt/M., 1948). Books Abroad, 25, No. 2 (Spring). Review of: Cyrille Wilczkowski, Ecrivains soviétiques (Paris, 1949). Books Abroad, 25, No. 2 (Spring). "East faces West: the Curtain of Distortion." The Yale Review (New Haven), Spring. Review of: Books Available in English by Russians and on Russia Published in the United States, ed. Nicholas N. Martianoff (New York, 1950). Books Abroad, 25, No. 2 (Spring). Review of: N. Berberova, Oblegchenie uchasti (Paris, 1949). Books Abroad, 25, No. 2 (Spring). Review of: Sergei Makovskii, Somnium breve. Stikhi (Paris, 1948). Books Abroad, 25, No. 2 (Spring). Review of: V. A. Maklakov, Rechi: sudebnyia, dumskiia i publichnyia lektsii, 1904-1926 (Paris, 1949). Books Abroad, 25, No. 2 (Spring). Chekhov: Selected Stories. Ed. Gleb Struve and G. A. Birkett. London and New York, Oxford University Press. Soviet Russian Literature: 1917-1950. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press. Translation of: E. Romanova, "The Theory and Practice of Literary Businessmen," attacking The Saturday Review in Novyj Mir. The Saturday Review (New York), March 8.

1952 Translation of E. Romanova, "The Theory and Practice of Literary Businessmen," attacking The Saturday Review in Novyj Mir. The Saturday Review (New York), March 8. "A Selective and Critical Bibliography of Studies in Prose Fiction for the Year 1951," Russian section. Journal of English and Germanic Philology (Urbana), July. Review of: Gonzague de Reynold, La formation de lEurope. VI: Le monde russe (Paris, 1950). Books Abroad, 26, No. 3 (Summer). Review of: B. V. Varneke, History of the Russian Theatre: Seventeenth through Nineteenth Century ([ed. Belle Martin, trans. Boris Brasol] New York, 1951). Books Abroad, 26, No. 4 (Autumn). "Hovudliner i den nyare Sovjetlitteraturen." Vinduet (Oslo), VI, No. 2.

1953 Letter tö the Editor: "Russian 'Anti-Utopia' Anticipated Huxley, Orwell." The New Leader, March 9. "Uneven Mixture" (review of: Through the Glass of Soviet Literature, ed. Ernest J. Simmons, New York, 1953). The New Leader, August 31.

Struve Bibliography

307

"From Chekhov to Zhdanov" (review of: Marc Slonim, Modern Russian Literature, New York, 1953). The New Leader, September 28. "The Hugeness of Tolstoy" (review of: Alexandra Tolstoy, Tolstoy: A Life of My Father [trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood], New York, 1953). Saturday Review (New York), October 3. "The Chekhov Publishing House." Books Abroad, 27, No. 3 (Summer). Letter to the Editor: "Refugees." The San Francisco Chronicle [date not established]. "Recent Russian Literature." The Yale Review (New Haven) XLIII, No. 1, (Autumn). "Some Observations on Past Imperfective Gerunds in Russian." Word (Slavic Word Supplement, New York), IX, No. 4 (December). "Bibliography of Comparative Literature," Slavic section. (Jointly with Thomas G. Winner.) Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, Vol. II. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

1954 Letter to the Editor: On an article by Mr. Harold Orel about Maurice Baring. The American Slavic and East European Review, XIII, No. 2 (April). Letter to the Editor: Concerning Senator Joseph McCarthy. The San Francisco Chronicle, June 21. "Tchékhov deux fois censuré." Preuves (Paris), No. 43 (September). Review of: Harvard Slavic Studies, Vol. II, ed. Horace G. Lunt. The AATSEEL Journal, XII, No. 3 (October 15). "Chekhov and Soviet Doublethink." The New Leader, November 22. Review of: Edward J. Brown, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature: 1928-1932 (New York, 1953). The AATSEEL Journal, XII, No. 4, (December). "Monologue intérieur: The Origins of the Formula and the First Statement of its Possibilities." PMLA, LXIX (December). "The Double Life of Russian Literature." Books Abroad, 28, No. 4 (Autumn). "Bibliography of Comparative Literature," Slavic section. (Jointly with Thomas G. Winner.) Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, III. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

1955 Review of: Oxford Slavonic Papers, Vol. III, ed. S. Konovalov (Oxford, 1952). The AATSEEL Journal, XIII, No. 1 (March 15). "Soviet Literature Under the RAPP" (review of: Edward J. Brown, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature: 1928-1932, New York, 1953). The New Leader, April 11.

"Chekhov in Communist Censorship." The Slavonic and East European Review, XXXIII, No. 31 (June). Review of: Horace G. Lunt, ed. Harvard Slavic Studies, Vol. II (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). Journal of Central European Affairs (University of Colorado), July.

308

Struve Bibliography

"The Second Congress of Soviet Writers." Problems of Communism (Washington, D.C.), IV, No. 2 (March-April). (Reprinted in: Problèmes de communisme, II, No. 2, 1955, La Documentation française: Notes et études documentaires, 13 août, 1955, and Problemas del Comunismo, II, No. 2, 1955. "Comparative Literature in the Soviet Union, Today and Yesterday." Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, IV. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Babel Reissued" (review of: Isaac Babel, The Collected Stories [ed. and trans. Walter Morison], New York, 1955). The New Leader, September 12.

1956 "Mickiewicz in Russian Translations and Criticism." Adam Mickiewicz in World Literature, ed. W. Lednicki. Berkeley, University of California Press. Translation: "Vladislav Khodasevich on 'Pan Tadeusz'." Ibid.

1957 "Comparative Literature in the Soviet Union: Two Postscripts." Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, VI. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Russian Eighteenth-Century Literature Through Party-Colored Spectacles." Slavic and East European Journal, XV, No. 1 (Spring). "Soviet Literature After De-Stalinization." Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of the USSR (München), No. 5. Geschichte der Sowjetliteratur. München, Isar Verlag. (New edition: München, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1964.)

1958 "Dead Souls and Living Reputations: Re-Assessing the Past of Soviet Literature." Soviet Survey (London), No. 23 (January-March). "Russia 5 Years After Stalin: Literature." The New Leader, April 7. (Reprint: "The U.S.S.R. Five Years After Stalin: Literature." Magazine Reprint, USIA.) Review of: R. Poggioli, The Phoenix and the Spider (Cambridge, Mass., 1957). The Russian Review, XVII, No. 2 (April). "The Literature That Freed Itself" (review of: Flashes in the Night, ed. William Juhasz and Abraham Rothberg, New York, 1958; The Broken Mirror, ed. Pawel Mayewski, New York, 1958; Marek Hlasko, The Eighth Day of the Week [trans. Norbert Guterman], New York, 1958). The Nation (New York), September 27. Letter to the Editor: "Doctor Zhivago." The Times Literary Supplement, October 3. "Russia's Terrible Years." The New Leader, October 27. Review of: E. J. Simmons, Russian Fiction and Soviet Ideology (New York, 1958). Slavic and East European Journal, XVI, No. 3 (Fall). "Slavonic Arts and Letters." Chambers' Encyclopaedia Yearbook for 1958.

1959 "Soviet Literature Before 1930" (review of: V. Zavalishin, Early Soviet New York, 1958). The New Leader, January 19.

Writers,

Struve Bibliography

309

"Czarodziej slowa i snowidz." Wiadomosci (London), No. 669, January 25. "Pasternak's 'I Remember'." The New Leader, March 30. Review of: Short Stories of Russian Today, ed. Yvonne Kapp ([trans. Tatiana Shebuninal], London, 1959). The Nation (New York), April 4. Review of: V. Zavalishin, Early Soviet Writers (New York, 1958). The Russian Review, XVIII, No. 2 (April). Letter to the Editor: "Memories of '38." San Francisco Chronicle, June 9. "A Pioneer of the Modern Novel" (review of: Andrey Bely, St. Petersburg [trans. John Cournos], New York, 1959). The New Leader, October 5. Review of: Michel Gorlin and Raïssa Bloch-Gorlina, Etudes littéraires et historiques (Paris, 1957). Slavic and East European Journal, XVII (New Series III), No. 1 (Spring). Review of: Marc Slonim, An Outline of Russian Literature (New York, 1958). Slavic and East European Journal, XVII (New Series III), No. 1 (Spring). Review of: Richard Hare, Portraits of Russian Personalities Between Reform and Revolution (New York, 1959). Slavic and East European Journal, XVII (New Series III), No. 4 (Winter). "La Science littéraire soviétique à la veille et au lendemain de la mort de Staline." Problèmes soviétiques (Munich), No. 2. "Die sowjetische Literaturwissenschaft in jüngster Zeit." Sowjet-Studien (Munich), No. 7. "Slavonic Arts and Letters." Chambers' Encyclopaedia Yearbook for 1959. "The Puzzling Theory of Socialist Realism." The Creative Artist in Communist Society, ed. Henry W. Burke. Washington, D.C. "Andrej Belyj's Experiments with the Novel Technique." Stil-und-Form-Probleme in der Literaturwissenschaft. Heidelberg, International Federation of Modern Languages and Literatures. "Russian Writers in Exile: Problems of an Emigré Literature." Comparative Literature, Proceedings of the ICLA Congress (ed. W. P. Friederich). Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina. "More about Comparative Literature Studies in the Soviet Union," Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, VIII, 1959. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

1960 "Pasternak's Poetry in America" (review of: Boris Pasternak, Poetry of Boris Pasternak: 1917-1959 [ed. and trans. G. Reavey], New York, 1959; Poems [trans E. M. Kayden], Ann Arbor, 1959). The New Leader, March 28. "Tolstoy in Soviet Criticism." The Russian Review, XIX, No. 2 (April). "Tolstoi e la critica soviética." Tempo Presente (Roma), V, No. 9-10 (settembreottobre). Review of: A. M. van der Eng-Liedmeier, Soviet Literary Characters ('S-Gravenhage, 1959). Slavic and East European Journal, XVIII (New Series IV), No. 3 (Fall). Review of: A. Yarmolinsky, Literature Under Communism (Indiana, Russian and East European Series, 20) and G. Gibian, Interval of Freedom (Minneapolis, 1960). Slavic and East European Journal, XVIII (New Series IV), No. 4 (Winter). "Slavonic Arts and Letters." Chambers' Encyclopaedia Yearbook for 1960.

310

Struve Bibliography 1960-1961

Contributions to: Lexikon der Weltliteratur im 20. Jahrhundert. Freiburg, Basel, Wien, Herder Verlag (including the main entry on Russian literature and the individual entries on: Bunin, Fedin, Kaverin, Leonov, Nabokov, Olesha and Sologub).

1960-1970 California Slavic Studies, Vols. I-V. Ed. Gleb Struve and Nicholas Riasanovsky. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press.

1961 Review of: R. Poggioli, The Poets of Russia: 1890-1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960). The Russian Review, XX, No. 1 (January). "On Chekhov's Craftsmanship: The Anatomy of a Story." Slavic Review, XX, No. 3 (October). [Reprinted in: Anton Chekhov's Short Stores. Selected and edited by Ralph E. Matlaw (New York, 1979).] Review of: G. Dox, Die russische Sowjetliteratur: Namen, Daten, Werke (Berlin, 1961). Slavic and East European Journal, XIX (New Series V), No. 4 (Winter). Translations (jointly with M. Kriger) and introduction: Russian Stories. Ed. Gleb Struve. New York, Bantam Books. "Some Observations on Boris Pasternak's Verse." (A Summary.)Langue et Littérature. Actes du VIII e Congrès de la FILLM. Paris, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège.

1962 Letter to the Editor: "Mikhail Zoshchenko." The Times Literary Supplement, April 27. "The Aesthetic Function in Russian Literature." Slavic Review, XXI, No. 3 (September). (Reprint: The Development of the USSR: An Exchange of Views, ed. D. W. Treadgold, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1964.) "Dostoevsky's Letters" (review of: Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends, New York, 1961). Books Abroad, 36, No. 3 (Summer). Review of: Turgenev's Letters: A Selection, ed. and trans. E. H. Lehrman (New York, 1961). Books Abroad, 36, No. 1 (Winter). "Sense and Nonsense About Doctor Zhivago." Studies in Russian and Polish Literature in Honor of Waclaw Lednicki, ed. Zbigniew Folejewski et al., s'Gravenhage, Mouton. "Slavonic Arts and Letters." Chambers' Encyclopaedia Yearbook for 1962.

1963 "Boris Pasternak's Last Poems" (review of: Boris Pasternak, In the Interlude: Poems 1945-1960 [trans. Henry Kamen], Oxford, 1963). The New Leader, January 7. "The Fate of Osip Mandelstam." Survey (London), No. 46 (January). [Signed: George Stuckow.]

Struve Bibliography

311

Review of: S. Makovskij, Na Parnase Serebrjanogo veka (München, 1962). The Russian Review, XXII, No. 1 (January). Review of: H. Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946-1959 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). The Russian Review, XXII, No. 1 (January). "After the Coffee-Break." The New Republic, February 2. Letter to the Editor: "Writing to Dictation." The Times Literary Supplement, February 15. "How Horrible." (Published anonymously; on Soviet reaction to the article, "After the Coffee-Break."). The New Republic, April 27. Review of: G. Wytrzens, Pjotr Andreevic Vjazemskij. Studie zur russischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1961). The Russian Review, XXII, No. 3 (July). Review of: Turgenev's Letters: A Selection, ed. and trans. E. H. Lehrman (New York, 1961). Slavic Review, XXII, No. 3 (September). Review of: E. J. Simmons, Chekhov: A Biography (Boston, 1962). Slavic Review, XXII, No. 3 (September). "A Soviet Political Satire." The New Republic, September 23. "On Some Malpractices in Soviet Literary Scholarship." Slavic and East European Journal, VII, No. 2 (Summer). Review of: R. Conquest, The Pasternak Affair: Courage of Genius (Philadelphia and New York, 1962). Slavic and East European Journal, VII, No. 2 (Summer). Review of: F. D. Reeve, Aleksandr Blok: Between Image and Idea (New York, 1962). Slavic and East European Journal, VII, No. 2 (Summer). "The Transition from Russian Literature to Soviet Literature." Literature and Revolution in Soviet Russia, 1917-1962, ed. M. Hayward and L. Labedz, New York, Oxford University Press. (Reprinted in: Letteratura e rivoluzione, Milano, 1965.) Introduction and prefaces: Anton Chekhov, Seven Short Novels. New York, Bantam Books. "Literature in Perspective. Some Unorthodox Reflections." Studies on the Soviet Union. Soviet Literature: Conflict and Control (Munich), New Series, III, No. 2. Untitled survey of English translations of Boris Pasternak's poetry. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, XII, 1963. Indiana University, Bloomington.

1964 "Western Writing on Soviet Literature." Survey (London), No. 50 (January). "Boris Pasternak About Himself and His Readers." Slavic Review, XXIII, No. 1 (March). Review of: Walter N. Vickery, The Cult of Optimism: Political and Ideological Problems of Recent Soviet Literature (Bloomington, Indiana University). Slavic and East European Journal, VIII, No. 1 (Spring). Review of: Boris Pasternak, In the Interlude: Poems 1945-1960. (trans. Henry Kamen, London, 1962). Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, XII. Indiana University, Bloomington. Kleines Lexicon der Weltliteratur im 20. Jahrhundert. Herausgegeben von Helmut Olles. (Freiburg, Basel, Wien: Herder Verlag). Entries on: Bunin, Leonov, Nabokov, Olesha and Sologub.

312

Struve Bibliography

"Soviet Literature in Perspective." Soviet Literature in the Sixties, ed. M. Hayward and E. Crowley. London and New York, F. A. Praeger. (Reprinted in: Studies on the Soviet Union. Soviet Literature: Conflict and Control, II, No. 2 [München, 1963].) "Russian Arts and Letters." Chambers' Encyclopaedia Yearbook for 1964.

1965 "A Note on Osip Mandelstam." A Homage to Dante (special issue of Books Abroad), May. (Reprinted in: Dante en su centenario, Madrid, 1965.) Review of: Vsevolod Setchkarev, Studies in the Life and Works of Innokentij Annenskij (Hague, Mouton & Co., 1963). The Russian Review, XXIV, No. 1 (January). Letter to the Editor: "Sinyavsky Case." The Daily Californian (Berkeley), December 8. Letter to the Editor: "What Sholokhov Said." New York Times, December 12. Collective Letter to the Editor (signed by many U.C. professors): "No Alternative" (condemning the "distorted propaganda of the Vietnam Day Committee"). The Daily Californian (Berkeley), December 24.

1966 Letter to the Editor: "Poet Mandelstam." Time (New York), January 28. Letter to the Editor: Concerning disturbances on the University of California, Berkeley, campus. Berkeley Daily Gazette, December 8. Letter to the Editor: "Meeting of Opposites." San Francisco Examiner, December 12.

Review of: André Mazon, Deux russes écrivains français (Paris, 1964). Slavic and East European Journal, X, No. 2 (Summer). "Kataev, Valentin Petrovich." Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Kuprin, Aleksandr Ivanovich." Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Merezhkovski, Dmitri Sergeevich." Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Pisemski, Aleksei Feofilaktovich." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Review of: Donald Fanger, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism (Harvard, 1965). The Russian Review, XXV, No. 4 (October). Letter to the Editor: "UC Course." The San Francisco Chronicle [date not established, after October 20],

1967 "Notes on Nabokov as a Russian Writer." Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring). (Reprinted in: Nabokov the Man and His Work, ed. L. S. Dembo, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press.) Letter to the Editor: Concerning the dismissal of University of California President Kerr. Berkeley Daily Gazette, February 8. Letter to the Editor: "A Classic of the Purge." The Times Literary Supplement, March 9. A Century of Russian Prose and Verse: From Pushkin to Nabokov. Ed. (jointly with

Struve Bibliography

313

Olga Raevsky Hughes and Robert P. Hughes) and with preface and introductory notes by Gleb Struve.New York, Harcourt, Brace and World.

1968 Review of: Marc Slonim, Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems, 19171967 (revised edition, New York, 1967). Slavic Review, XXVII, No. 2 (June). "The Re-Emergence of Mikhail Bulgakov." The Russian Review, XXVII, No. 3 (July). Letter to the Editor: Concerning a resolution adopted by the University of California Academic Senate. Berkeley Daily Gazette, October 14. Letter to the Editor: "Russian Writers and Politics." The Observer (London), October 27. Letter to the Editor: "A Wrong Note" [on William Gass's article on Nabokov], New York Review of Books, August 8. Review of: George Gibian, Soviet Russian Literature in English: A Checklist Bibliography (Ithaca, 1967). Slavic Review, XXVII, No. 4 (December). "Russian Literature." Collier's Encyclopedia (Crowell-Collier Educational Corporation), vol. 20. "Some Observations on Pasternak's Ternary Metres." Studies in Slavic Linguistics and Poetics in Honor of Boris O. Unbegaun, ed. Robert Magidoff et al., New York, New York University Press.

1969 "75-lecie M. K. Pawlikowskiego." Wiadomosci (London), No. 1191, January 26. Review of: Mary F. and Paul Rowland, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (Carbondale, London and Amsterdam, 1967); Dale L. Plank, Pasternak's Lyric: A Study of Sound and Imagery (The Hague and Paris, 1966); and Boris Pasternak, Letters to Georgian Friends (New York, 1968). Slavic Review, XXVIII, No. 4 (December). (Letter of correction: Slavic Review, XXIX, No. 2, June 1970.) "The Cultural Renaissance." Russia Under the Last Tsar, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

1970 Review of: Nina Berberova, The Italics Are Mine ([trans. Philippe Radley] New York, 1969). The Russian Review, XXIX, No. 1 (January). Letter to the Editor: "U.C.'s Class Disruption." San Francisco Examiner, May 26. "Arkadij Bielinkow." Wiadomosci (London), August 8. "Alexander Turgenev, Ambassador of Russian Culture 'in Partibus Infidelium'." Slavic Review, XXIX, No. 3 (September). "The Hippodrome of Life: The Problem of Coincidences in Doctor Zhivago." Books Abroad, 44, No. 2 (Spring). "The Writers." The Development of Soviet Society. Plan and Performance, ed. John G. Eriksen. Munich, Institute for the Study of the USSR. "An Anglo-Russian Medley: Woronzows, Pembrokes, Nicolays and Others: Unpublished Letters and Historical Notes." California Slavic Studies, V.

314

Struve

Bibliography

1971 Letter to the Editor: "Dlaczego rok 1984?" Tydzien Polski (London), January 9. (Also in Russian: Russkaja Mysl', March 4.) Review of: C. Nicholas Lee, The Novels of Mark Aleksandrovic Aldanov (The Hague and Paris, 1969). Slavic Review, XXX, No. 1 (March). Review of: Hans-Erich Volkmann, Die russische Emigration in Deutschland, 19191929 (Würzburg, 1966). Slavic Review, XXX, No. 1 (March). Letter to the Editor: Concerning the Berkeley City Council election. Berkeley Daily Gazette, April 7. Letter to the Editor: Concerning the Berkeley City Council election. Berkeley Daily Gazette, April 14. Letter to the Editor: "Nabokov's Mashenka." The Times Literary Supplement, April 16. Letter to the Editor: "Karl Radek." The Times Literary Supplement, April 23. Review of: Helen Muchnic, Russian Writers: Notes and Essays (New York, 1971). The Russian Review, XXX, No. 4 (October). "Nadezhda Mandelstam's Remarkable Memoirs." Books Abroad, 45, No. 1 (Winter). "Developments on the Soviet Literary Scene." The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev and Kosygin: The Transition Years, ed. John W. Strong. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Russian Literature Under Lenin and Stalin: 1917-1953. Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press. (English edition: London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.)

1972 Letter to the Editor: "Life of Mayakovsky." The Times Literary Supplement, March 24. Letter to the Editor: "Twqrczosc Twardowskiego." Tydzien Polski (London), March 25. Letter to the Editor: "Denker Assailed." Berkeley Daily Gazette, May 11. Letter to the Editor: "Carefully Edited Nixon Speech." San Francisco Examiner, June 11. [Also: Berkeley Daily Gazette.] Review of: Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing ([trans. Thomas P. Whitney] New York, Evanston, San Francisco and London, 1972); and Vse techet (Possev-Verlag, 1970). Slavic Review, XXXI, No. 4 (December). Review of: Ludmila A. Foster, Bibliografija russkoj zarubeznoj literatury 19181968 (Boston, 1970). Slavic and East European Journal, XVI, No. 1 (Spring). (Letter of correction: Slavic and East European Journal, XVI, No. 2, Summer 1972.) "Die russische Literatur." Moderne Weltliteratur: Die Gegenwartsliteraturen Europas und Amerikas, herausgegeben von Gero von Wilpert und Ivar Ivask. Stuttgart, Alfred Kroner Verlage. Reprinted extracts (on 27 Russian writers): Modern Slavic Literatures: A Library of Literary Criticism, Vol. I, ed. Vasa D. Mihailovich. New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.

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315

Letter to the Editor: "For Moderate Coalition." Berkeley Daily Gazette, November 20.

1973 Review of: Robert C. Williams, Culture in Exile: Russian Emigres in Germany, 1881-1941 (Ithaca, 1972). Slavic Review, XXXII, No. 1 (March). Letter to the Editor: "Brodsky's Poetry." New York Review of Books, July 19. Letter to the Editor: "Shafarevich." San Francisco Chronicle, September 17. Letter to the Editorr "Liked Lerner Letter." Berkeley Daily Gazette, October 6. "Nadezhda Mandelstam's 'Hope Abandoned'" (review of: Vtoraja kniga, Paris, 1972). The Russian Review, XXXII, No. 4 (October). "Osip Mandelstam's Versions of Barbier's Iambes." (A Summary.) Expression, Communication and Experience in Literature and Language, ed. Ronald G. Popperwell. (Proceedings of the XII Congress of the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures held at Cambridge University, 20-26 August, 1972). The Modern Humanities Research Association. Review of: Clarence Brown, Mandelstam (Cambridge, 1973). Slavic and East European Journal XVII, No. 4 (Winter). "Russian Literature." World Literature Since 1945, ed. Ivar lvask and Gero von Wilpert. New York, Frederick Ungar. "Gorky in the Soviet Period." Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism, ed. Edward J. Brown. London and New York, Oxford University Press.

1973-1979 California Slavic Studies, Vols. VII-XI. Ed. Gleb Struve, Nicholas Riasanovsky, and Thomas Eekman. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press.

1974 Letter to the Editor: "Oksman." New York Times, October 3.

1975 Review of: W. Weidle, O poetakh i poezii (Paris, 1973). The Russian Review, XXXIV, No. 1 (January). Review of: Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Studies of Ten Russian Writers, ed. John Fennell (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973). Slavic Review, XXXIV, No. 1 (March). Review of: Andrew Field, Nabokov: A Bibliography (New York, 1973). Slavic Review, XXXIV, No. 2 (June). Review of: Harry T. Moore and Albert Parry, Twentieth-Century Russian Literature (Carbondale, 1974). The Russian Review, XXXIV, No. 3 (July). Review of: R. H. Stacy, Russian Literary Criticism: A Short History (Syracuse University Press). The Russian Review, XXXIV, No. 3 (July).

316

Struve Bibliography

Review of: Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, Vol. 84. Ivan Bunin, 2 volumes, ed. V. G. Bazanov et al. (Moscow, 1973). Slavic Review, XXXIV, No. 3 (September). Letter to the Editor: Slavic Review, XXXIV, No. 3 (September). "Osip Mandelstam and Auguste Barbier: Some Notes on Mandelstam's Versions of Iambes." California Slavic Studies, VIII. Letter to the Editor (about the name of D. S. Mirsky): The Polish Review (New York), XX, No. 4.

1976 Letter to the Editor: "Before and After Solzhenitsyn." New York Review of Books, January 22. "Russia Abroad" (review of: Kontinent, Nos. 1-4, 1974-1975). The Russian Review XXXV, No. 1 (January). Letter to the Editor: "The Ace of Spades." The Daily Telegraph (London), February 21. Letter to the Editor: "Modest Tchaikovsky." The Daily Telegraph (London), March 2. Letter to the Editor: "Books in the Soviet Union." The Times Literary Supplement, August 13. "The Hero of Imagism" (review of: Gordon McVay, Esenin: A Life, Ann Arbor, 1976). The Times Literary Supplement, December 17. "Marc Slonim, 1894-1976." Slavic Review, XXXV, No. 4 (December).

1977 "Pandering to the Philistines" (review of: Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, New York, 1976). The Times Literary Supplement, May 20. Letter to the Editor: "Nabokov's Uncle." The Times Literary Supplement, August 19. Letter to the Editor (on razvesistaya klyukva): The New York Review, November 24. Review of: Maurice Friedberg, A Decade of Euphoria: Western Literature in PostStalin Russia, 1954-1964 (Bloomington and London, 1977). Slavic Review, XXXVI, No. 4 (December). Storia della letteratura sovietica. Da Lenin a Stalin. (Translation by Silvio Bernardini of Russian Literature under Lenin and Stalin.) Milano, Garzanti.

1978 Review of: Jane Grayson, Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov's Russian and English Prose (London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1977). The Russian Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1 (January). Introduction to Paul Celan's and E. M. Rais's letters to himself in: Victor Terras and Karl S. Weimar, "Mandelstamm and Celan," Germano-Slavica (Waterloo, Ontario), Vol. II, No. 5 (Spring). Review of: Olga Ivinskaya. A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak (trans. Max Hayward, New York, Doubleday, 1978). The Russian Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3 (July).

Struve Bibliography

317

"Andrey Bely Redivivus." Audrey Bely: A Critical Review, ed. Gerald Janecek. Lexington, The University Press of Kentucky. Review of: Henry Gifford, Pasternak; A Critical Study (Cambridge University Press, 1977). The Russian Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 (October). Review of: Robert Auty and Dimitri Obolensky, eds., An Introduction to Russian Language and Literature (London, Cambridge University Press, 1977). The Russian Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 (October).