Edgar Allen Poe in Russia: A Study in Legend and Literary Influence by Joan DelaneyGrossmanReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 52, No. 127 (Apr., 1974), pp. 280-282Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4206875 .

Accessed: 17/06/2014 09:08

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.34 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 09:08:37 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

280 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

gates the critical responsibility to explain the ingenuity. As for the treat- ment of Anna Karenina, it provokes thought on many issues, yet remains in general too tentative.

This said, Professor Lampert's essays are the most substantial and provocative in this collection. They endeavour to encompass vast subjects without trivialising them while simultaneously provoking reflection and a willingness to re-appraise. That Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy cannot be con- densed, cannot be 'essayed', with proper justice, is a fact of criticism. M. H. Shotton, on the contrary, has shown how suited is a writer like Chekhov to this kind of treatment. Sober, careful, undramatic, his exploration of the central themes in Chekhov's work-in his stories, it has to be said, rather more than in his plays-is valuable for its lack of pretension and will have similar value as a guide to students. All is clear and unambiguous and nicely suited to Chekhov's own unostentatious manner. One respects as a very neat piece of hemming the final judgment that 'Chekhov is intui- tively sure, intellectually unsure; he propounds a faith, but no dogma'.

This notice has carped and sniped at this coat of many shades, but the real bombshell should be directed at the publishers for asking such an outrageous price for it. It is to be hoped that libraries will purchase it, even though students may not be able to afford their own copies. They should certainly be directed to read it for its capacity to provoke thought, to explore some of the critical treatments more fully and, not least, for the guidance offered by the select bibliographies at the end of each section. London RICHARD FREEBORN

Grossman, Joan Delaney. Edgar Allen Poe in Russia: A Study in Legend and Literary Influence. Colloquium slavicum, Band 3. Jal-Verlag, Wurz- burg, I973. 245 pp. Bibliography. Notes. Index. DM 30.

THIS fascinating chapter in the story of Russia's literary relationship with the West discloses various aspects of what the author is careful to call Edgar Allan Poe's 'presence' in Russian literature for over a century and a quarter. Aware of the perennial difficulties of comparative literature, Miss Joan Delaney Grossman could not have chosen a better subject to illustrate those very difficulties. Thus questions are raised, if not always satisfactorily answered: what determines cultural receptivity; what is the relationship between reputation and actual influence, reputation consist- ing of both legend and literary fortune; and last, but not least, what is in- fluence, and how does one determine its ramifications. The method the author adopts consists in tracing the course of Poe's introduction into Russia, noting the formation of his literary personality in the eyes of Russian readers and critics; in examining appropriate Russian works to determine the existence, type and depth of direct influence; and in analys- ing the legend of Poe and its meaning for Russian writers and their works. It is in her first task that she succeeds best.

Poe's penetration into Russia was a gradual and slow process. Poe did not come to Russia directly, but through France where his initial impact in the mid-i84os was both diffuse and complex. The timing of his appear-

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.34 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 09:08:37 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 28i

ance was awkward: he came too late to be part of European Romanticism, and in a sense, he was ahead of his time. The fact that he was both an initiator and an assimilator further complicates any attempt to assess his influence. His short-lived literary vogue in France owed much to the en- thusiasm of Baudelaire whose translations repeatedly served as inter- mediaries from which Poe was translated into Russian. The French poet also gave Poe a personality based partly on a keen sense of identification and partly on distorted American and French criticism. The Russian image of Poe between I 847 and I 885 grew by a 'process of overlay', by the repetition of stereotypes current in the Western press, and was not much more than a distant echo of the international and migratory character of his reputation. In any case, Poe had little to offer to the mainstream of Russian literature of the period. The author points to some scattered parallels amounting to no more than thematic resonances between Dostoyevsky and Poe, and Turgenev and Poe. It is to her credit that she does not pounce on every conceivable detail which might indicate in- fluence. She merely notes the resemblances, not overlooking the fact that similar themes might have stemmed from other writers.

The French vogue for Poe was revived later in the century and had a more decided impact in a Russia now readier to understand it on the threshold of novyye veyaniya. The gradually changing aesthetic concepts, the new intellectual concerns, and finally the sparking point created by the appearance in 1895 of four separate volumes of Poe's work (two of them Bal'mont's translations) caused a renewal of his reputation which parallels the treatment accorded him in France and the United States. The name of Poe is now mentioned regularly beside that of Baudelaire, but Bal'mont's translations are the most significant single event in the whole course of Poe's fame in Russia. The Russian poet came close to duplicat- ing in Russia Baudelaire's services towards Poe. The relationship was re- ciprocal: the romantic image of Poe offered Bal'mont and his circle a model with whom they felt some affinity and affected more. It is in Bal'- mont that the Baudelairean Poe became naturalised at last in Russia.

Poe had become a symbol in Russia, evoking the ideal of art for art's sake, a striving beyond the external appearances of this world, a name whose taint of decadence was not the least of his attractions. Poe's pre- occupation with death and beauty, along with his study of the perverse, is no doubt chiefly responsible for his position among the Russian Decad- ents. Miss Grossman points out the extent to which the new Poe vogue was carried through the medium of prose, his tales being more influential than his poetry. This extended to matters of form and content, technique and theme, mood and atmosphere. Yet when the author takes for closer analy- sis the works of Fyodor Sologub, Leonid Andreyev and Valery Bryusov, she does not manage to convince us of real influence. It is true that death, beauty and perversity are the ingredients of both Poe's tales and Sologub's short stories, but they are also the hallmarks of any Decadent work. Miss Grossman does admit that Sologub's themes are typical of thefin de siecle, however individual his treatment (p. i I8). They are strikingly related to those themes in Poe which appealed to the Decadent mentality. The direct

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.34 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 09:08:37 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

282 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

influence is inconclusive, but the author makes a valid point: the changes which Poe's themes undergo before they are found again in the work of Sologub provide an interesting commentary on the transmutation of Romanticism into Decadence. Bryusov's case is more tangible, for the in- fluence here is totally conscious. Zemnaya os' provides many echoes and cross-echoes from Poe, and the resonances of Poe are deliberately multi- plied. There is a whole range of themes associated with Poe's tales which obviously fascinated Bryusov and proved rich material for experiment with new short-story forms. On another level, the readiness with which the name of Poe is invoked can be illustrated by the case of Andreyev. Despite his awareness of more subtle values in Poe, he seems to have been drawn mainly to physical and psychological horror for their own sake and to have learned little from a detached way of presenting them. Miss Grossman's conclusions are valid: to anyone at all touched by the Decad- ent or symbolist trends, Poe was an inescapable presence (p. 154). She appreciates the profound differences between the three Russian authors and Poe, but her examination of the texts is somewhat disappointing. One would wish a deeper critique of the relevant works, a mention of the theory which illuminates some of their aspects, and altogether a wider context.

Poe's relationship to Russian poetry is even more elusive. Broadly speaking, his own practice held something for those who felt there was a higher reality which was attainable through poetry, and for those who held that the poet created his own other worlds through the magic of the language. He certainly captivated the Symbolists by his attitude towards music in poetry.

Despite the ambiguity of Poe's influence in Russia, his 'presence' is an inescapable fact. When all is said and done, the formative effect of his personality on the Symbolist generation was perhaps stronger than the effect of his technique or themes on their literary works. By the time the Symbolist age came to an end, Poe was firmly established as a minor classic and the forerunner of a variety of trends.

If Miss Grossman's study lacks some conviction, this is not so much her fault as that of her subject. Literary influence is elusive and has to be seen as operating on several levels. The author is fully aware of this. Echoing Haskell Block, she concludes: 'Influence is part of the way in which literature happens' (p. I89). She has produced an extremely readable book whose fluent narrative makes light of the impressive scholarly appar- atus that has gone into its making. London GEORGETTE DONCHIN

Matich, Olga. Paradox in Ihe Religious Poetry of Zinaida Gippius. Centrifuga, 7. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, I972. 127 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. DM 28.

ZINAIDA Hippius's poetry is her most important contribution to Russian literature, and her religious verse, particularly the first two volumes, is the best of her poetry. Therefore Olga Matich's monograph on Zinaida Hippius's religious poetry is a welcome addition to the slowly expanding

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.34 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 09:08:37 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions