American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Russian Critical Essays--XIXth Century by S. Konovalov; D. J. Richards; Russian CriticalEssays--XXth Century by S. Konovalov; D. J. RichardsReview by: Hugh McLeanThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 317-319Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/306264 .

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Reviews 317

the rather one-sided bibliography. The choice of material on the metaphor as a device is rich, though exclusively from Western sources. The bibliography on Pu'kin, on the other hand, is surprisingly limited, and it appears that the only author whose works were systematically consulted is Dmitrij Tschilewskij. Since in approach the study is in many ways a continuation of Formalist criticism, one would expect some utiliza- tion of that school's works on Puikin, e.g., Tynjanov's "Arxaisty i Puskin" (in his Arxaisty i novatory). My third criticism concerns the preparation of the book, which was first presented as a Heidelberg dissertation and then published in the same form, i.e., typewritten and photo-offset. With its careful division into divisions and subdi- visions, it has the air of a meticulously prepared, scholarly thesis. I was therefore sur- prised to find some 34 errors in the typing, punctuation, and even grammar of the German, and no less than 46 errors in the Russian quotations (given in translitera- tion), some of which necessitated consultation of the original Russian in order to understand the quotation.

With these reservations, we may characterize the Forberger study as a useful contribution to our understanding of the metaphor, combined with a technical, but at times illuminating account of the role of the metaphor in Puicin's verse.

J. Douglas Clayton, University of Ottawa

S. Konovalov and D. J. Richards, eds. Russian Critical Essays-XIXth Century. (Oxford Russian Readers.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. xi, 224, $13.75.

S. Konovalov and D. J. Richards, eds. Russian Critical Essays-XXth Century. (Oxford Russian Readers.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. x, 246, $10.25 (cloth), $5.00 (paper).

Two anthologies of Russian criticism, published in England in Russian! What a monu- ment to the burgeoning of our field! Apparently there now exist (or at least the Oxford Press thinks there exist) enough potential readers to make such compendia com- mercially viable. If this is true, we can only rejoice: we have indeed grown up.

But is it true? Who and where are these readers? To whom are these books ad- dressed? In the series to which they have been added most of the texts hitherto pub- lished have been designed mainly for language classes (like the Birkett-Struve edition of

(iexov's stories on which so many of us cut our Russian teeth, or our students').

More recent additions to the series, however, such as the Drage-Vickery XVIIIth Century Russian Reader, obviously have moved from the language into the literature classroom, if not into the scholar's study; and this is presumably also the case with these two chrestomathies of criticism. Though a few specimens of critical prose might perhaps be appropriate readings in an advanced language class, one would hardly want to immerse hapless students in a whole volume of them, let alone two: too few would ever surface again.

Viewed from the other side, however, it seems equally clear that scholars will have little use for these volumes. It is not just that they may not find the particular essay they need or cherish-that is true of all anthologies, except perhaps the ones we compile ourselves. But selection apart, the fact is that here all the texts are presented in mutilated form, clipped and pruned to what the editors consider manageable size. They are in fact not "essays," but extracts. Evidently the editors thought range of coverage more important than punctilious insistence on the completeness of the ex- amples chosen, especially in view of the fact, which the editors carefully note, that the Russian critical essay (unlike the English) has very seldom risen to the level of an art form. Its practitioners have cared much more about substance than about style,

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318 Slavic and East European Journal

structure, or wit. And since most Russian critics, especially in Belinskij's tradition, are pretty turgid and long-winded anyway, why not trim off some of their verbal fat? However, fat or not, scholars can seldom indulge themselves in reading such basic texts purely for their own gratification. They must know what is there, and they can never be sure that any omission, however dispensable it may have seemed to someone else, may not contain something vitally important to them. For that reason alone, I am afraid that scholars cannot use these books, except perhaps for the self-educative purpose of cursorily acquainting themselves with the general contours of a body of material.

By the process of elimination, therefore, we must conclude that these anthologies are addressed to students of Russian literature (or to "general readers," if there are any such for books like these): in short, people who want, or are obliged to take, a guided tour through two centuries of Russian criticism. Such a trip is by no means an easy one, of course, even linguistically, and only very advanced students are likely to be up to it. In the United States, at any rate, that means mainly graduate students in Slavic departments; and one wonders how many even of them will have the ambition to ride to the end.

Certainly the editors have done little enough to ease the pains of the journey. Linguistically, they offer no cushions at all-no vocabulary, no explanations of difficult passages, no interpretations of obsolete lexical items, in short, none of the assistance that makes D.P. Costello's edition of Gore ot uma in the same series so valuable. In- stead, we have here a totally hands-off linguistic policy. And even Konovalov and Richards' substantive editing is hardly less abstemious: scrappy, minimal factual notes, headed by a tiny paragraph identifying each author, and excessively brief, noncommittal general descriptive essays introducing each volume. Even the excerpts themselves are in most cases not dated, the source of each text is not stated, and the reader is given no idea of how it fits into the particular critic's life work. It seems that fear of pedantry has been carried here to the point of pedantry.

However, if the student is enrolled in a course in the history of Russian criticism, where the teacher will supply those linguistic aids and literary explanations these edi- tors have so signally failed to provide, then these anthologies may prove a convenient textbook. At any rate the wayfarer will emerge from his toils through the two volumes with a pretty thorough exposure to the varieties of Russian critical experience, though doubtless still far from a comprehensive knowledge of the subject.

There are, of course, important omissions, perhaps unavoidably. The volume en- titled "XIXth Century" in fact begins in the 1840's with Belinskij, the Puskin era being excluded, apparently as too out of character or remote (a pity, since in many ways the period's critical values are closer to ours than Belinskij's, and it produced some quite original critics, such as Vjazemskij and Bestuiev-Marlinskij, the latter un- fairly neglected in this role). The "civic critics" thus receive pride of place, with about half the text, which is probably about right, at least from a historical point of view. Then five critical pieces by the writers themselves are presented, pretty much the obvious ones, such as Gogol's "Neskol'ko slov o Puskine," Turgenev's "Gamlet i Don-Kixot," Dostoevskij's Puskin speech, and a snippet from Cto takoe iskusstvo. A group of "individualist" critics brings up the rear, consisting, among others, of Grigor'ev, Straxov, Leont'ev, and Volynskij. Drulinin is notably missing; and oddly, the 19th-century volume terminates with a 1901 essay by Sergej Bulgakov (d. 1944), while the 20th-century one leads off with an essay by Vladimir Solov'ev (d. 1900), written in 1897.

The 20th-century volume, by contrast, is arranged not by critical schools, but by writers dealt with, plus a supplement of five "general essays." In some cases one is

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Reviews 319

thus enabled to observe critics of different persuasions test their method on the same writer or material, but this principle is not held to systematically. The quality of Russian criticism in the early 20th century is, of course, notably higher than in the preceding age; and to be at all comprehensive the second volume should have been much larger. Granted the inevitable limitations of space, however, some of the choices seem odd in the extreme. Klju6evskij, Vengerov, and Maklakov are included, but not Sklovskij, Tynjanov, or Tomasevskij (in general, the formalists seem underrepre- sented, and the contemporary structuralists are entirely ignored). Of the Marxists, only Lunacarskij and Timofeev (!) are included, but not Trockij, Polonskij, Voron- skij, or Leinev. The Symbolists are heavily represented, but there is not a single Acmeist. Of the emigr6s only Weidl is present, but not Xodasevi6 or Adamovih. And so on. Clearly, for a course on 20th-century Russian criticism this volume would need a lot of supplementing. Finally, many of the selections themselves seem all-too-ob- vious items, easily accessible elsewhere. The connoisseur will make few discoveries here.

Two volumes, then, of unimaginatively chosen and perfunctorily edited sam- plings of Russian literary criticism-is this what we needed from the Oxford Russian series?

Hugh McLean, University of California, Berkeley

Sigurd Fasting. V. G. Belinskij: Die Entwicklung seiner Literaturtheorie. Vol. 1. Die Wirklichkeit ein Ideal. (Scandinavian University Books.) Bergen, Oslo, and Tromso: Universitetsforlaget, 1972. 470 pp., $19.00 (paper).

This first volume of a projected two-volume study of Belinskij's literary theory em- braces the period 1834-40, tracing Belinskij's theoretical evolution from his first critical work "Literary Reveries" through his major article on Lermontov's Hero of Our Times. The second volume is to deal with the evolution of Belinskij's literary theory in the 1840's. The author, professor of Russian literature at the University of Bergen in Norway, prefaces his study with a lengthy discussion of the German philo- sophical tradition in which Belinskij's views were rooted. He then proceeds to analyze Belinskij's work in chronological order. Using articles, reviews, and letters he attempts to "compile ... a code of [Belinskij's] ideas of the beautiful" (p. 11). Three phases in Belinskij's evolution are distinguished: chaotic beginnings, a period of "reconcilia- tion with reality," and a final phase. The real turning point is said to have occurred in 1840, when the critic underwent a spiritual crisis which destroyed his belief in ra- tional reality. For this reason Fasting concludes volume 1 at that point.

Most critics would agree that Belinskij's views, certainly his political ones, changed after 1840. There are, however, important constants in Belinskij's aesthetic theory which should not be overlooked. Fasting emphasizes the German idealist tradi- tion as the source of Belinskij's ideas, and the critic never abandoned the basic con- cepts of idealism. The Puskin articles, written between 1843 and 1846 in his allegedly postidealist phase, are evidence of this. In these essays the same concerns are mani- fested which were evident in "Literary Reveries." In both Belinskij is preoccupied with the development and growth of Russian literature, and in both the criterion by which Russia's literature is judged is wholeness, a fundamental concept of German idealism. In the Pu'kin articles as in "Literary Reveries," Belinskij surveys the whole of Russian literature. He starts from the same premise used in that first work that Russian literature did not grow organically out of Russian life but was transplanted from Europe. But while in 1834 he concluded that Russia had "no literature and con-

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