russian Émigré literature in the context of french modernism: the case of iurii fel'zen

Russian Émigré Literature in the Context of French Modernism: The Case of Iurii Fel'zenAuthor(s): Leonid LivakSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 95, No. 3 (Jul., 2000), pp. 779-789Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3735502 .

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RUSSIAN EMIGRE LITERATURE IN THE CONTEXT OF

FRENCH MODERNISM: THE CASE OF IURII FEL'ZEN

This article explores the artistic interpretation of exile by those writers who left Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik coup of I917. I focus particularly on the 'younger' or 'second' generation of Russian emigre writers, who by virtue of their age matured artistically outside Russia. Their maturation was informed by the confrontation between Soviet Russian, older Russian emigre, and French literary sources. Rejecting the art of older emigres, they claimed their own Russian literary ancestors. Iurii Fel'zen chose Lermontov, Boris Poplavskii opted for Blok, and Vasilii Ianovskii drew on Dostoevskii's legacy, while Vladimir Nabokov and Gaito Gazdanov drew on that of Gogol'. But in coming to terms with their status as emigre writers, they relied upon the artistic authority of French modernist literature that contrasted with both older emigre and Soviet letters. Each of the writers in question created an ideal construct of an emigre writer by combining a Russian literary ancestor with a chosen French model.' I illustrate this mechanism of artistic identification, using the example of Nikolai Berngardovich Freidenstein, alias 'Iurii Fel'zen'.

From the beginning of his literary career, critics saw the affinity of Fel'zen's writings with Marcel Proust's aouvre.2 Fel'zen wrote three novels united by one narrator, one set of characters, and a 'Proustian' style: Obman ('Deceit', 1930), Schast'e ('Happiness', I932), and Pis'ma o Lermontove ('Letters About Lermontov', I935). A number of his stories shared the traits of the novels: for instance, 'Vozvrashchenie' (1934), 'Vecherinka' (1936), and 'Povtorenie proidennogo' (1938). The writer wanted to combine his works into a larger novel under a title as 'effective' as A la Recherche du temps perdu.3 He may have found this title in 1938 ('Povtorenie proidennogo'), but his death in a Nazi camp left the project unfinished.4

Fel'zen based his novels on Proust's philosophy of love, in which the writer's productivity depended on the pain inflicted by his object of desire: 'La souffrance que les autres lui causeraient, ses efforts pour la prevenir, les conflits qu'elle et la seconde personne cruelle creeraient, tout cela, interprete par l'intelligence, pourrait faire la matiere d'un livre [...] aussi beau que s'il etait imagine.'5 Proust's Marcel extracts material for his literary investigation from his own psyche by means of a romantic liaison that causes him much suffering. The more misfortune he encounters, the more fruitful his investigation becomes: 'Une femme dont nous avons besoin, qui nous fait souffrir, tire de nous des series de sentiments profonds [.. .]. Les annees heureuses sont les annees perdues, on attend une souffrance pour travailler' (Le Temps retrouve, pp. 214, 217). Fel'zen's hero also finds desperation more

I Nabokov's case is different in that a French model, Proust, was only one of several Western sources that informed his art. Furthermore, unlike his emigre peers, Nabokov was reluctant to acknowledge his indebtedness to non-Russian literary ancestors.

2 G. Struve, Russkaia literatura v izgnanii (Paris: YMCA Press, I984), pp. 297-98. 3 V. Ianovskii, Polia Eliseiskie (New York: Serebrianyi vek, 1983), p. 36. 4 This expression can mean the 'revision of the walked distance', wherein 'distance' may imply the road of

life, or the 'revision of the covered material', in reference to the preceding segments one must revisit to close the narrative circle, as Proust does in Le Temps retrouve, establishing a link to the 'bed-time drama' in Du cote de chez Swann.

5 Le Temps retrouve (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 208.



Russian Emigre Literature and French Modernism

fruitful than happiness: a writer must be what Proust calls celibateur de l'art because his creativity depends on the conscious rejection of happiness.6

In 'Deceit', an emigr6 Volodia falls in love with an emigr6e Lelia. She leaves him for her lover in Berlin, comes back to Paris, and becomes involved with Volodia's friend Bobka, whose departure restores the relationship. The truce is crowned by a session of mutual analysis. In 'Happiness', Volodia's bliss alternates with jealousy, as Lelia gets involved with his friend Shura. The suicide of her admirer Mark Osipovich brings her back to Volodia. Peace is inaugurated by a session of analysis. In 'Letters About Lermontov', an epistolary novel, Volodia writes to Lelia in Cannes, sparking her jealousy: she sees that he loves literature more than herself. The ensuing analysis brings peace to the relationship. Stories related to the novel are episodes in Volodia's jealousy.

Fel'zen called his artistic self-fashioning 'roman s pisatelem', referring to the main preoccupation of his art and its source of inspiration (Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 22-24). Since in Russian 'roman' means a 'novel' and a 'love affair', the expression can be read as 'a novel with/about a writer' or 'an affair/liaison with a writer'. The former alludes to the central position allotted in Fel'zen's novels to the figure of its creator, making it a story about the gestation of a literary vocation inspired by Proust's novel. The notion of the artistic gift has new meaning in La Recherche. Marcel thinks that the writer's imaginative capacity is replaceable by psychological intuition; hence follows his conclusion that a scientific vocation is functionally equivalent to an artistic gift.7 In this context, Fel'zen's self-description, 'I do not have a gift. I have a calling', indicates the source of his artistic position.8

Fel'zen's project cannot be understood outside its artistic context. A French critical opinion linked La Recherche to the self-definition of the new literary generation. In I919, Paul Valery argued that the post-war intellectual was a 'European Hamlet' in spiritual crisis.9 The myth of a post-war 'malady', a revival of the Romantic 'malady of the century', became an attribute of the new generation. In 1924, Marcel Arland suggested that young writers suffered from a 'new malady of the century'. They were overcome by anxiety because the culture of positivism, which had hurried the 'death of God', was itself compromised by the war. Losing 'existential protection', they regarded literature as a means for self-study that would help reconstruct their culture.10 Interpreted as the epitome of post-war 'modernism', Proust was appropriated by the new generation. The fashion of 'contemporary Hamletism' assimilated Proust's Marcel to 'European Hamlets'."

The new generation 'liquidated its past' in a 'great cyclical rhythm' governed by regenerating 'inundations'; this rhythm was an 'eternal movement' of cultural cycles; the war was an 'inundation'.'2 These arguments reveal that young French moderns espoused the myth of the eternal return. They were attracted by Proust's

6 Iu. Fel'zen, Schast'e (Berlin: Parabola, I932), p. I5I; Pis'ma o Lermontove (Berlin: Izdatel'skaia kollegiia parizhskogo ob'edineniia pisatelei, 1935), p. I 1.

7 Le Temps retrouvi, p. 207; Contre Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Gallimard, i997), p. 307. 8 G. Adamovich, Odinochestvo i svoboda (New York: Chekhov, 1955), p. 294; G. Struve, 'Na vechere

"Perekrestka" ', Rossiia i slavianstvo, 5-7 December 1931, p. 4. 9 'La Crise de l'esprit', in (Euvres, ed. byJean Hytier, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), , 992-93. '0 Essais et nouveaux essais critiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), pp. 1 -37. 11 B. Cremieux, Inquiitude et reconstruction (Paris: Correa, 193 1), p. 69. 12 Compare B. Cremieux, P. Drieu la Rochelle, H. Martin-Chauffier, and H. Massis in Enquite sur les maitres de

lajeune littirature, ed. by H. Rambaud and P. Varillon (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1923), pp. 54, 57, 69, 94, 332.

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search for lost time as a return to the sources of regeneration evocative of Freud's 'depth psychology' and of Nietzsche's revolt against historical linearity.13 Freud's idea that one can go back into the past by recalling incidents of early childhood is especially pertinent to the myth of the eternal return. One renews one's existence by 'burning' the memories of past events. This ethos of deliverance underlay the new malady. But the assimilation of La Recherche to Freud's theory differed from Proust's project. There was an aesthetic abyss between Proust's view of literature as true reality and the European Hamlets' quest for literature as an exact painting of reality (Arland, p. 28). Marcel does not burn his past; he constructs an 'identity between the past and the present' (Le Temps retrouve, pp. I78-79). 'Return to the depths' constitutes for Marcel the 'grandeur of true art'. He affirms his existence by rediscovering his true life. Doing this in a literary investigation, he concludes that 'literature is the only true life there is' (Le Temps retrouve, pp. 202-03).

'New children of the century' denied all identity between the past and the present. They replaced Proust's formula 'literature is life' by the requirement that life should subordinate literature. According to them, Proust expressed in writing his personal search for hidden reality.14 European Hamlets thus succumbed to the 'great secular myth that language imitated ideas and that signs were motivated'.'5 Their 'referential illusion','6 the belief in the natural semantic relation of sign and referent, contrasts with Marcel's conviction that the linguistic articulation of reality is an approximation: intelligence creates a gap between an object's true impression and the 'nominal impression' of its description (Le Temps retrouve, p. I76). This discrepancy between sign and referent is perpetuated by Marcel's resolution to consider inner life, where imagination reigns, as the only true reality.

Proust's method of depicting characters from multiple vantage-points was interpreted as the fragmentation of the individual because the series of contradictory images in which each character appeared negated the possibility of integrity. Commentators insisted that Proust replaced spirituality with 'pure psychology' and banished God from his work.17 Concentrating on the destructive impetus of his analysis, Proust's interpreters ignored the subsequent regeneration, evident in Le Temps retrouve. Marcel's analytical method is based on the axiom that he cannot go beyond human appearance in an act of communication. But solitude stimulates creativity, eliminating false communication that distracts him from his ultimate quest.18 There are only mental links between him and another. The reconstruction of these mental links and the imaginary recreation of another constitute the only reality there is and correspond to Marcel's vocation. Such positive conclusions from the affirmation of solitude are possible, thanks to his cult of art.

13 H. Daniel-Rops, 'Proust et ses quatre critiques', Cahiers du mois, 13 (I925), 70-71 (p. 71); R. Lalou, Defence de l'homme (Paris: Sagittaire, 1926), p. 244; L. Pierre-Quint, Marcel Proust (Paris: Sagittaire, 1925), p. 142.

14 Dommartin, 'Benjamin Cremieux et la litterature moderne', Disque vert, 2 (1925), 66-74 (p. 72); Pierre- Quint, p. 126.

15 Roland Barthes, Le Degre zro de lecriture suivi de Nouveaux essais critiques (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 134. 16 Gerard Genette, Figures II(Paris: Seuil, i969), p. 248. 17 E. Berl, 'Marcel Proust en jugement', Nouvelles litteraires, artistiques et scientifiques, 86 (1924), 8; B. Cremieux,

XX-e siecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1924), p. 96, and 'Ofu en est Marcel Proust?' Candide, 28 August I930, p. 3; R. Fernandez, 'La Garantie des sentiments et les intermittences du coeur', Messages (Paris: Gallimard, 1926), pp. 147-48; F. Mauriac, 'Sur la tombe de Marcel Proust', Revue hebdomadaire, I2 (1922), 5-9.

18 M. Proust, Le Cote de Guermantes (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), p. 308; La Prisonniere (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), pp. 88, 372; Le Temps retrouve, p. 293.

78I




Like the French moderns, younger Russian 6migres saw Proust's oeuvre as emblematic of the gap between literary generations. They found in La Recherche the sensibility of those who matured outside the cultural traditions of the 'fathers'.19 Echoing Arland, Georgii Adamovich argued that the anguished post-war writer had to write as if nothing existed before, renouncing imagination as insincerity.20 Older emigres pronounced Proust's art spiritually dangerous,21 encouraging Proust's appropriation by emigre Hamlets. Nikolai Otsup saw Proust as a product of the 'brilliant and dangerous atmosphere of European modernism', as its 'most poisonous flower'. This reminiscence of Fleurs du mal was a eulogy because 'everything outside the notion of modernism belonged to igth century literature': that is, that of the 'fathers'.22

The rejection of the psychological novel in Soviet letters of the g92os was another factor in the emigre view of Proust. This novel contradicted the goal of LEF: the creation of a new human being. The Serapion Brothers rejected the Russian psychological novel because literary technique in it was secondary to extra-literary preoccupations. In the writings of Lunts, Kaverin, Ivanov, Fedin, and Zoshchenko situation and event predominated at the expense of character analysis. Psychological discursivity contradicted 'Soviet external descriptiveness'; solipsistic analysis emphasized the absence of spiritual intuition in the Soviet hero; Proust's language contrasted with Soviet style.23 Proustian 'poison' was better than the crude integrity of the Soviet hero whose primitive cheerfulness revealed ignorance of things spiritual.24 Soviet critics chastised Proust for individualism, mysticism, and indiffer- ence to the 'struggle of classes',25 thereby encouraging emigres to adopt Proustian- ism. Proust epitomized French modernism; one's affinity with Proust was an affinity with the West that implied a writer's opposition to Soviet art and bestowed upon him the prestige of Western modernism.

The evolution away from the 'referential illusion' constitutes the 'story/history' of Volodia's literary vocation. Fel'zen shared Proust's view of language as an imperfect tool. Engrossed in approximating elaboration, Fel'zen uses bulky hyphenated adjectives and adverbs: 'vozmutitel'no-gorestno-lishnii', 'dobrozhelatel'no-zabot- livo-shirok', 'miagko-vrazumitel'no', 'trogatel'no-nezhno-poeticheskii'.26 In search of precision, he invents new words: 'samozhertvennyi' and 'samopozhertvennyi'

19 Fel'zen, 'Mal'ro. (Frantsuzskie "Tridtsatye gody")', Vstrechi, I (I934), 30-32 (p. 32); I. Golenishchev- Kutuzov, 'Sovremennye Zapiski. Kniga 49', Vozrozhdenie, 2557 (1932), 3; N. Gorodetskaia, 'Soiree franco- russe', Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 5 (I930), 55; P. Muratov, 'Iskusstvo prozy', Sovremennye zapiski, 29 (1926), 240-58 (p. 254). 20 'Soiuz molodykh poetov v Parizhe', Chisla, 2-3 (1930), 239-40; 'Nachalo', Sovremennye zapiski, 41 (1930),

500- I. 21 M. Aldanov, 'Marcel Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu', Sovremennye zapiski, 22 (1924), 452-55

(pp. 453-54), and 'O romane', Sovremennye zapiski, 52 (1933), 433-37 (p. 436); P. Bitsilli, 'Paralleli', Sovremennye zapiski, 48 (I932), 334-35 (pp. 341-44), and 'Zhizn' i literatura', Sovremennye zapiski, 51 (1933), 273-87 (pp. 278-80); V. Veidle, 'Mekhanizatsiia bessoznatel'nogo', Sovremennye zapiski, 58 (1935), 461-69 (p. 467). 22 N. Otsup,'Klim Samgin', Chisla, 7-8 (933), I78-83 (pp. i81-83). 23 G. Adamovich, 'O frantsuzskoi "inquietude" i o russkoi trevoge', Poslednie novosti, 2822 (I928), 2; Iu.

Fel'zen, 'Razroznennye mysli', Krug, 2 (1937), 129-31 (p. I30). On the impressionistic description as a reaction to the old psychological novel in Soviet letters, see M. Chudakova, Masterstvo Iuriia Oleshi (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), pp. 34-40; R. Maguire, Red Virgin Soil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 97-99. On the style of Soviet prose, especially the 'abridged phrase', see Chudakova, pp. 25-34, 41-50.

24 Fel'zen, 'Krug. Beseda piataia 16 dekabria 1935 goda', Novyigrad, I I (1936), 138-39 (p. 139). 25 I. Erenburg, M. Gorkii, and K. Radek, in Stenograficheskii otchetpervogo vsesoiuznogo s'ezda sovetskikh pisatelei, ed.

by I. Luppol (Moscow: OGIZ RSFSR, 1934), pp. i0- I, 182, 315. 26 'Vecherinka', Krug, I (1936), 24, 28, 29.

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LEONID LIVAK

instead of the normal 'samootverzhennyi';27 'oshchutitel'nyi' instead of 'oshchuti- myi' (Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. 41). Like Proust, he uses approximating parenthetical digressions that expand his sentences to shocking proportions. These violations of usage are intentional. In 'Happiness', Volodia insists on this point: As I say my specially selected words, you frown in dismay at the'discoveries' which were supposed to enrapture you [...] I am convinced that language exists for the human being, not vice versa. [.. .] We have the right to break the existing language; yielding cowardly to the language is a sin both against human dignity and purpose in life. (Schast'e, pp. 67, 69)

Fel'zen stressed the secondary function of plot and dramatic action in his novels

('Razroznennye mysli', p. 130). As a truthful writer, he strove to write 'seriously, candidly, and without inventions'.28 Yet, under Proust's influence, he doubted the

possibility of truthful literature. 'Deceit' is a diary in which Volodia relates the vicissitudes of his inner life, writing 'for himself. 'Happiness' is also a diary but Volodia addresses his words to Lelia. He is convinced that she or another might read his notes some day. He thus establishes an audience that will choose to treat his text as a diary or a novel. In 'Letters About Lermontov', the narrative mode is

reversed, as if Fel'zen feared to have come too close to literature in 'Happiness'. The tension between the desire to write a 'document' and what Volodia calls 'the

persistently passionate need for creative activity' is ubiquitous in Fel'zen's wuvre.29 He makes Volodia a transparent adaptation of himself but gives him a fictional

name. Volodia emphasizes that his method relies on the documentary recording of

reality, while Fel'zen admits that Leia's image is 'pure chemistry' (Ianovskii, p. 36). Denouncing imagination as insincerity in Nabokov's novels, Fel'zen criticizes Sergei Sharshun for 'replacing art with life' in his novel that looks like a real diary rather than a 'responsible literary form'.30 Critics added to this tension, seeing Fel'zen's

writings as an attempt to establish new realist conventions rather than to write a confession. Some treated his novels as experiments in truthfulness and a self-

imposed artistic task.31 The contradiction between the ideal of sincerity and the fact of fiction is

reconciled in the concept of true reality passed down from Proust. Volodia lives in inner reality and loves an 'artificially self-imposed image' of Lelia rather than its

living prototype (Schast'e, p. 73). He falls in love with this product of his imagination before he even meets Lelia:

Closing my eyes, I try to see Lelia the way I used to imagine her [.. .]. The imagined and hardly familiar Lelia was a repository of my quiet trust [...]. Now, however, I only seldom reach that nonchalant and generous sensation of shared feeling which the memory of my senses preserves and which I mistakenly attributed to Leiia and our imagined relationship.

(Obman, pp. 59-60)

The incompatibility of the prototype and its image constitutes the deceit ofVolodia's relationship. The source of contradiction between sincerity and fiction resides in the fact that Volodia cannot decide which reality is 'truer'. Like for Proust's Marcel, the

27 Obman (Paris: Povolozky, 1930), pp. 25, 29, 2 8. 28 G. Adamovich, Odinochestvo i svoboda, p. 293; V. Ianovskii, p. 212.

29 'Probuzhdenie', Sovremennye zapiski, 53 (1933), 154. 30 'Sergei Sharshun. Put'pravyi', Chisla, 10 (I934), 283-85 (p. 285). 31 G. Khokhlov, p. i98; L. Kelberin, 'Iurii Fel'zen. "Pis'ma o Lermontove"', Krug, I (1936), I83; Iu.

Terapiano, 'Iu. Fel'zen. "Schast'e"', Chisla, 7-8 (1933), 268; M. Tsetlin, 'Iurii Fel'zen. Schast'e', Sovremennye zapiski, 51(1933), 460.

783




definition of true reality is the most important ingredient in the maturation of his literary vocation.

Volodia's task of sincerity strips his writings of artistic value. He curses his method as 'boring', 'dead and dry', and 'naively serious' (Obman, pp. 20, 58, 182; Schast'e, p. 7'; Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. 42). Devoting his life to art that will recapture lost time, Proust's Marcel thought that such art posed great difficulties, owing to the constant transformation of the objects of observation and required the great effort of tracing the reflections of images by means of memory.32 Volodia's view of his own method echoes that of Marcel. His creative activity is 'the most intense labour and merciless struggle with himself'; ultimately it is 'creativity through refusal' (Obman, p. 190; Schast'e, p. 84). But he dreams that one day he will go from diary work to creative writing. Like Marcel, he cherishes the idea of a novel he would write had he not been committed to 'sincerity in an attempt to stay faithful (even in failure) to some human calling' (Obman, pp. I9, 220; Schast'e, p. 37). This calling is the backbone of his literary vocation; it requires truthfulness, contradicting Volodia's vocation to write a novel in which his own image would be based on a mental ideal (Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. 23). The reconciliation of these aspirations comes when Volodia reaches the level of artistic maturity where the tension between two realities is resolved in favour of inner reality as unquestionably 'truer'.

Volodia makes this decision in the last published part of the novels. In the story 'Composition',33 he tells about Tonia, his first love in Russia, whom he later meets in Berlin. During this meeting he discovers that he is indifferent to Tonia and only a 'compositional miracle of life' could resurrect his passion. He feels that their meeting resembles a banal literary plot from a psychological novel. Before leaving Berlin, he receives flowers; he knows that they came from another woman but can convince himself that they are from Tonia and 'the old story could finish impressively and elegantly' like a 'ready-made story with a stock vocabulary' (p. 112). His truthfulness does not permit such effects in life. He realizes that his reminiscences about his first love were shaped by literary cliches. He sees that he composed his external reality, following the very literary commonplaces he eschewed in his writings through analysis. Thus, inner life is the only true reality; its notation in writing is the only form of art free from the falsehood of conventions: In spite of all the evidence and our basic precepts, it seems to me that only in art (where we are stronger and more courageous than in life, at least spiritually and creatively) we can overcome ourselves, get rid of the conventions we need, and become fully free, the way we would be in life, if we did not want to control and slightly to compose it. (p. I 13)

Hence follows Volodia's conclusion that 'art is life', linking his method to Marcel's aesthetics. Like Marcel's, Volodia's imaginary novel has already been written. In his diaries his image is much closer (by virtue of truthfulness) to the mental ideal he wanted to express in the novel than to his external self trapped in automatized conventions.

The story of Volodia's vocation is inseparable from his 'romance' with Proust. Volodia's choice of models is dictated by his human calling as an emigre writer who opposes the subordination of the individual to ideology. Proust is his point of orientation as humane and modern, in contrast to Soviet inhumanity and

32 A l'ombre desjeunesfilles enfleurs (Paris: Gallimard, I997), pp. 478-79; Le Temps retrouve, p. 177. 33 'Kompozitsiia', Sovremennye zapiski, 68 (1939), I o8-o9.

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LEONID LIVAK 785

provincialism.34 Writing about contemporary French and Russian literatures, Volodia advocates French literature for 'its spiritual candour, its dull and truthful poverty, and the human being in it' (Schast'e, p. 56). Volodia reiterates Fel'zen's own anti-Soviet position in art, which earned him renown as 'the most un-Soviet emigre writer' (Kel'berin, p. i84). Fel'zen opposed his art ('the cult of the individual and love') to 'the Bolshevik crudeness and dissolution in the collective'.35 He was unequivocal about the spiritual and artistic inferiority of Soviet literature with respect to emigre letters enriched by the French literary tradition: 'Notwithstanding their talent and method, [contemporary French writers] struck Russian readers with their genuine sincerity, lack of effects and embellishments, and seriousness of world view [.. .]. In Russia, these traits were drowned in Maiakovskii's drum beat and Gorkii's official optimism'.36

The maturation of Volodia's vocation is steeped in the vicissitudes of the 'new malady of the century'. His generation is separated from older emigres by the rupture of the war and revolution. He sees himself as an 'emigre Hamlet', a disoriented and isolated being whose life is a social failure (Obman, pp. 83-84, 150; Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 17-20, 76). This modelling is evident in 'Letters About Lermontov', in which Volodia projects his own image upon those of Lermontov and Proust, creating the ideal model of the writer about whom he would like to write his imaginary novel. This combination comes from his belief that younger emigres cannot rely on the Russian literary tradition alone to describe 'their time'.37 Seeing Proust as the father of the modern French psychological novel, Fel'zen endows Lermontov with a similar function: he is the founder of the Russian psychological novel ('Mal'ro', p. 32; Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. 51). Lermontov is the author of Geroi nashego vremeni ('A Hero of Our Time', 1838-40), whose protagonist exemplifies a Russian 'child of the century'. He links Volodia, a new child of the century, to his Romantic prototypes. Critics understood this reference to Lermontov as an allusion to Volodia's status as a 'new child';38 the term 'hero of our time' was commonly used as a synonym for 'emigre Hamlet'.39

Volodia grounds Lermontov's image in the mythology of the new malady and admits that he composes it according to the ideal model to which he aspires himself (Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 32, 47, 113). His Lermontov is a social failure, an imperfect but sincere writer, an anxious child of the century, and an isolated self-analyst who shuns the collective for the individual. His failure in art and tormented inner life are closer to the post-war sensibility than Pushkin's 'success' and 'integrity' (Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 38-39, 42-43, 49, 6o, 64, Ioo). One recognizes in this image of Lermontov the ideal model of an emigre writer as promoted by the Paris school, the circle of writers and poets around Georgii Adamovich and the review Chisla. The Paris-school writers juxtaposed Pushkin and Lermontov to symbolize their rupture

34 'Vozvrashchenie', Chisla, 10(1934), P. 178. 35 Kalforniiskii Al'manakh (San Francisco, CA: Izdanie Literaturno-Khudozhestvennogo Kruzhka goroda San Frantsisko, 1934), P. 2 I. 36 'My v Evrope. Krug. Beseda 1 I, 3 maia 1936', ovyigrad, 11 (1936), 154-60 (p. 155). 37

Iu. Fel'zen, '0 literaturnoi molodezhi', Mansarda, I (1930), 26-28 (p. 27). 38 G. Adamovich, 'Pis'ma o Lermontove', Poslednie novosti, 5411 (1936), 2; V. Khodasevich, 'Pis'ma o

Lermontove', Vozrozhdenie, 3858 (1935), 4. 39 N. Otsup, 'Iz dnevnika', Chisla, 9 (1933), 130-34 (p. 134).



Russian Emwire' Literature and French Modernism

with the aesthetics of the 'fathers'.40 According to them, Pushkin's harmonious art and world view were inconceivable for the modern man with fragmented consciousness. Lermontov, to the contrary, was seen as a social outcast and a literary failure: his art was inherently pessimistic, his lack of integrity and inner contradictions made him a prototypical 'modern man', and his sense of crisis appealed to the sensibility of the emigre Hamlets.41

Volodia uses Proust to modernize his ideal model of an emigre writer and to shed the 'confining skin of uni-nationality' (Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. 30). Proust is not just closer to his own sensibility because he is 'more modern' than Lermontov. He is the discoverer and precursor of Volodia's generation, and as such he epitomizes its characteristic qualities (Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. 48). Similarly to other 'new children', Volodia tries to forget his past for the sake of the future. He avoids describing his life in Russia as the source of all that is negative in his present (Pis'ma o Lermotove, pp. 20, 74). He tries to go back in time only twice in order to find the origins of his spiritual anxiety: I have an urgent (if unrealizable) need to storm into the past and to fixate those vague years neither for the sake of the 'poetry of defunct daily life', nor for the sake of the poetry of reminiscences proper, but to trace [. . .] the birth of my independence in the dark confusion of pre-conscious childhood and how it was immediately marked by the terrible time which had prepared our desperate present. ('Probuzhdenie', pp. 146-47)

He finds these origins in the corpus of ideas he absorbed in school, in the Decadent atmosphere of his adolescence, and in the religious and political intolerance, 'sacred hatred', taught to his generation by the 'fathers' ('Probuzhdenie', pp. I60, 168, 173; Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 20-2 I). He knows that he must 'burn' this past but refuses to do so, just as he refuses to 'compose' the story of his first love. He does not believe in the possibility of the eternal return. He believes in progress: 'You will say sarcastically: "Well, the progress theory"; you know how embarrassing this sounds, but I am not ashamed of "progress", it could even be our salvation' (Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. 8).

This belief is at odds with the anti-positivist ethos of the 'new malady'. Volodia likens the procedure of 'burning' the past to the publication of memoirs, thus highlighting the literary and conventional nature of the eternal return (Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. o09). He also refuses to flirt with the fashionable notion of the unconscious. He thinks that spiritual depth is impermeable to conscious investigation, implying the artificial nature of its exploration through psychoanalysis and surrealism (Obman, p. 48; Schast'e, p. 152; Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. I I). Once again, he echoes Fel'zen's own view of the 'two negative elements in contemporary literature: spiritual automatism (psychoanalysis, surrealism) and verbal automatism' ('Razroz- nennye mysli', p. I30). Fel'zen separated Freud and Proust, whose names were almost synonymous in French and emigre critical discourses.

It is by means of involuntary memory that Volodia goes back in the past being sure that he is not composing it (Obman, pp. 130, 135, 144; Pis'ma o Lermontove, p. I I). But involuntary memory is too rare to be of use in systematic exploration. Volodia

40 A. Dolinin, 'Tri zametki o romane Vladimira Nabokova "Dar"', V. V. Nabokov: Pro et Contra (St Petersburg: Russkii khristianskii gumanitarnyi institut, I997), 697-740 (pp. 704-06); G. Fedotov, 'O parizhskoi poezii', Kovcheg (New York: Association of Russian Writers in New York, I942), pp. 189-98 (p. I97).

41 G. Adamovich, 'Kommentarii', Chisla, I (I930), I36-43 (p. I42); B. Poplavskii, 'Po povodu . . .' Chisla, 4 (I930-3I), I61-75 (p. I71).

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undermines the precepts of the 'new malady' by suspecting their constructed nature. He argues that the source of his anxiety lies beyond the shock of the war. His anxiety is rooted in the fear of death, discovered on his trip to childhood ('Probuzhdenie', p. 155; Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 8-9). The reconstruction of the ruined culture is a secondary issue, since much of this destruction was invented. The most important problem is the affirmation of the individual in the face of death when the existential protection of the 'fathers' has been lost. Volodia sees one means of struggle against the fear of death: love, more precisely, Proust's philosophy of love.

Volodia considers Proustian analysis synthetic, for it restores his spiritual integrity and allows him to look death in the face (Schast'e, p. ii8; 'Probuzhdenie', p. 173; Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 77-78). He espouses Marcel's view of romantic liaisons as stimuli for self-study. His belief in love replaces belief in God, for he is incapable of irrational faith. His affair with Lelia, imaginary and tormenting as it is, fills his life with meaning and supports his 'human calling' and artistic vocation:

Only love equals and opposes death. Naked existence without love excites animal fear of the end [.. .]. I am becoming convinced that my calling, similarly to that of some people with whom I feel an affinity, is to recreate seemingly unnecessary details of love and slowly to draw generalizing conclusions, hypothetical but not constructed. (Schast'e, p. 193)

It is of great importance for Volodia's vocation that Soviet culture professes ideological intolerance similar to the 'sacred hatred' he discovered in his childhood. His own artistic method was condemned in Soviet literature as bourgeois individualism, along with its model, La Recherche. Commenting on Proust's novel at the first congress of Soviet writers, Il'ia Erenburg scornfully observed that the hero of the 'degenerating bourgeois novel' did only one thing: he loved. According to Erenburg, this detail was minor in relation to the hero's socio-political existence.42 Volodia takes on the Soviet challenge, defending his artistic method and his world view as a young emigre writer:

Our generation has nothing left except for truthful, aimlessly curious modesty, the contemplation of life [...] and candid, ascetic words (the war and the example of our appallingly loud 'fathers' have disposed us against irresponsible and boastful brilliance) [...]. As the witnesses and victims of tremendous tragedies, we have wound up without any help, with no 'heavenly' or vain distractions. Hence, it seems to me, proceeds our unprecedented appreciation of brotherly, kind, doubtless, palpable love [.. .]. This voluntary, not divine, not prescribed love is especially gratifying and necessary thanks to the hatred around us which is, for the first time, 'conscious', 'class oriented', and 'Bolshevik'.

(Pis'ma o Lermontove, pp. 18-19)

Volodia's rejection of the cyclical concept of time, his opposition to religious and

political beliefs, his implicit attack on the artistic exploitation of the unconscious, and his view of Proust's method as constructive acquire special poignancy in the context of the anti-Proustian reaction in French and emigre letters in the early I930s. Since Proust had symbolized the 'new sensibility', attacks against his oeuvre were extended to all literature written by the European Hamlets. Proustian

disintegration of the individual was proclaimed 'dehumanizing' and had to be

replaced by a new humanism that reconstructed the human being by breaking his

42 Stenograficheskii otchet pervogo vsesoiuznogo s'ezda sovetskikh pisatelei, ed. -by L- Luppol (Moscow: OGIZ RSFSR, 1934), p. I83.

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solipsistic seclusion.43 The utilitarians in French writing demanded that authors abandon self-contemplation and turn to social issues.44 The increasing involvement of French writers in ideological battles was the opposite of Proust's artistic vision.45 His art was also criticized by Jacques Maritain's movement of 'Catholic renewal', which proposed a Christian alternative to Communism and Fascism. Proust did not appeal to those who envisaged metaphysics as the 'most important' in literature.

Since for most younger emigres ideological engagement in literature was marked as 'Soviet', many opted for the Christian alternative in art. Many emigre intellectuals, among them Nikolai Berdiaev, Lev Shestov, and Vladimir Veidle, were close to Maritain's circle, whose mouthpiece, the review Esprit, had numerous emigre collaborators and sponsored the review Utverzhdeniia. The emigre critical opinion with regard to Proust and the 'new malady' was close to that of Maritain's group: the post-war spiritual crisis could be helped only by means of a religious renaissance. Proust's 'psychology without soul' was a product of Western culture in which the individual had 'lost God' as his unifying principle. Salvation was in the return to the Christian foundations of culture.46

In this context, Volodia's rejection of religious and ideological beliefs is consistent with his faithfulness to Proust's method. His 'human calling' counters the new humanism of the anti-Proustian reaction and echoes Fel'zen's own opinion expressed in response to the accusations of his 'stubborn Proustianism'.47 For Fel'zen, literary engagement resembled the pressure put by the Soviet regime on its literature: 'The writer's spiritual tension does not correspond to the enthusiasm of barricade fighters [.. .]. Immediate participation in a debate makes him a banal "propaganda agent"; this is what the Bolsheviks required from writers, eventually killing their literature.'48

Proust's fall from grace coincided with that of Freud. Both were accused of destroying the individual; the banalization of the concept of the unconscious in literature brought the accusation that Freud and Proust invented their analyses.49 This went against the ideal of sincerity and the perception of inner life as true reality, favouring the reorientation of writers toward action. Hence Volodia's and Fel'zen's own desire to separate Freud and Proust, reserving the blame of 'construction' to Freud and his aficionados. The shift away from the perception of Proust's writings as truthful fed Fel'zen's apprehension of the 'referential illusion' because it was expressed in personal animosity toward Proust. Critics looked for

43 Compare M. Arland and T. Maulnier in H. Massis, Dix ans apres: Reflexions sur la litterature d'apresguerre (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1932), pp. 122, 128, 132; B. Cr6mieux, Inquiitude et reconstruction, pp. 27-28, 33, 74. 44

Compare H. Daniel-Rops and R. Fernandez, in Le Rajeunissement de la politique, ed. by H. Daniel-Rops (Paris: Correa, 1932), pp. 66, 68, 82, 85; N. Frank, 'A la recherche du temps perdu', Vendredi, 71 (1937), 7. 45 Le Temps retrouve: 'Quand au livre int6rieur de signes inconnus [.. .] cette lecture consistait en un acte de

creation ou nul ne peut nous suppleer ni meme collaborer avec nous. Ainsi combien se d6tournent de l'ecrire! Que de taches n'assume-t-on pas pour eviter celle-la! Chaque 6evnement, que ce fit l'affaire Dreyfus, que ce fit la guerre, avait fourni d'autres excuses aux ecrivains pour ne pas dechiffrer ce livre-la' (p. I86). 46 G. Fedotov, 'Bor'ba za iskusstvo', Novyi grad, IO (I935), 29-43 (pp. 34-35, 4I); V. Veidle, 'Odinochestvo

khudozhnika', JNovyigrad, 8 (1934), 52-62 (pp. 57, 62). 47 G. Adamovich, 'Chisla. Kniga desiataia', Poslednie novosti, 4844 (i934), 2; D'Artan'ian, 'Iurii Fel'zen.

Obman', Nord-Ost, 2 (1931), 31-32. 48 'O sud'be emigrantskoi literatury', Mech, 13-14 (1934), i8-20 (p. 8). 49 B. Cremieux, 'Ou en est Marcel Proust?', p. 3, and Inquietude et reconstruction, pp. 75-76; H. Daniel-Rops,

'Notes sur le realisme de Proust', Rouge et le noir, April 1928, pp. 6-26 (p. I9).



LEONID LIVAK

biographical contradictions between the writer and his protagonist, aiming to prove Proust's 'insincerity' and hypocrisy.50

Fel'zen remained faithful to his 'affair with Proust' and Proust's model of salvation: the affirmation of personality through art: 'Those unable to adhere to religious or party beliefs gladly accept Proust's apology for artistic activity which creates life in the potentially possible combination of love, inspiration, and memory' ('My v Evrope', p. 155). Volodia's belief in love is also belief in art. He treats love as the means and metaphor of writing. Writing is 'love's substitute' and it is often unclear whether Volodia is speaking about his love for Lelia or about his vocation as a writer.51 The two share in the analytical method and in the ethos of his 'human calling'. Volodia's belief in love affirms the value of human personality; his writing is equally affirmative of the individual against the ideology of collectivism. Together they constitute the meaning of Fel'zen's artistic endeavour, 'stubborn creative activity "despite everything" -the only dignified rebuttal that a resisting individual can offer to robots and slaves'.52

Fel'zen creatively reworked Proust's analytical method and philosophy according to his own artistic and existential needs. He overcame the inertia of literary fashions and critical filters that mediated between Proust's otuvre and its readers. Remaining in the artistic camp of 'emigre Hamlets', Fel'zen found himself in opposition to the developments in both French and emigr6 letters in the I930s. His project, forgotten after the writer's death, certainly merits a critical revaluation, along with many other neglected works by the 'unnoticed generation' of Russian 6migre writers to which he belongs.

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT MADISON LEONID LIVAK

50 D. W. Alden, Marcel Proust and his French Critics (Los Angeles, CA: Lymanhouse, 1940), p. '44. 51 Iu. Fel'zen, 'Neravenstvo', Chisla, i (I930), 113. 52 Iu. Fel'zen, 'Lichnost' i obshchestvo. Anketa', Vstrechi, 3 (1934), 133.

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