Indiana Slavic Studies, I by Michael Ginsburg; Joseph Thomas ShawReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 36, No. 87 (Jun., 1958), pp. 582-583Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205000 .

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582 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

and furthermore that it was then that the first general map of Russia-the 'Great Map'-was drawn. The hypothesis is fascinating, but doubtful, since as yet not one map of that date has been found.

The author lays stress on the Russian contributions to the history of geographical science. It is a great pity therefore that he omits generally to mention Western geographical works. The inclusion of an adumbration of i6th-century Western geographical knowledge would have been most valuable and would have rendered the reader less vulnerable to some of the author's exaggerations.

Cambridge N. ANDREYEV

Indiana Slavic Studies, L Edited by Michael Ginsburg and Joseph Thomas Shaw. Indiana University Publications: Slavic and East European Series 2. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 1956. 240 pages.

THIS is the first issue of a new American series: it contains contributions by members of the faculty of Indiana University, ranging from Dr Zenkovsky's paper on Avvakum in the literature section to Mr Mikofsky's linguistic study on the origins of Slavonic sobota.

Professor Ginsburg presents what is part of a forthcoming larger study on A. F. Koni, whose Na zhiznennom puti occupies a unique place in the rich collection of memoirs covering the last half-century of prerevolu- tionary Russia. Professor Ginsburg deals here with Koni and one group of his contemporaries-the Russian writers of his day, many of whom were his personal friends. Among their number are Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Chekhov, Goncharov, and Vladimir Solov'yov. Koni has no peer in Russian literature in the genre of literary portraiture: he was particularly brilliant in miniature portraits, where the subject is presented with a few colourful strokes. But Koni was not only a raconteur. A senior member of the judiciary, he saw much of the sordid side of life, and the things seen in the court-rooms, as told to his writer friends, gave them some of their best plots. Tolstoy's 'Resurrection' owes much to Koni, and so does Apukhtin's 'The Last Night', later pointedly renamed 'From the Papers of a Public Prosecutor'. There is little doubt that a full- scale portrait of Koni will greatly contribute to the understanding of much of Russia's literary and social history.

Dr Zenkovsky's substantial paper on Avvakum deserves attention. He argues that the archpriest's most distinctive quality as a writer was not the novelty of form or language, but rather the remarkable artistic talent and spiritual power which informs his works. He holds no brief for the view that Avvakum was 'a daring innovator' and 'iconoclast'; for, he says, Avvakum's writings should be studied against the background of pre-Petrine Russian literature. Dr Zenhovsky draws attention to the numerous ecclesiastical and lay works, many of which were no doubt available to Avvakum for his Zhitie, and to the fact that early 17th-century literature abounds in various vitae-biographies of saints, tsars, and prominent personalities of the period. All the component elements of

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REVIEWS 583

Avvakum's writings can be found in the works of his predecessors, and yet his extraordinary literary talent undoubtedly makes Avvakum the greatest writer of Muscovite Russia.

Professor J. T. Shaw's contribution deals with the Byronic tradition of the romantic verse-tale in Russian literature and with Lermontov's Mtsyri. He claims that in spite of several general studies of the relation- ship between Byron and Lermontov, no detailed study of any major work of Lermontov in the light of his indebtedness to Byron exists,' with the exception of The Hero of Our Time. Thus Professor Shaw concentrates on the complicated problem of the genesis of Mtsyri. Though written in 1839, Mtsyri is based on material collected in I830, a period in which Lermontov exhausted the adaptations from Pushkin, and went directly to Byron for the features of the Oriental tales which Pushkin had not adopted.

Other contributions include an interpretative sketch on Soviet thought in the I93os, a discussion on panslavism and Czechoslovak policy during the last war, a study of Russian calques in the West Finnic languages, and the texts of five Hutsul healing-incantations published for the first time.

London GEORGETTE DONCHIN

Canadian Slavonic Papers, L. Edited by G. S. N. Luckyj, W. J. Rose, and L. I. Strakhovsky. Published for the Canadian Association of Slavists by the University of Toronto Press in co-operation with the Univer- sity of British Columbia, Toronto, 1956. vi + Io6 pages.

THE appearance of this new journal is a promising sign of the vigour with which Slavonic studies are being pursued in Canada, the home of about a million people of Slavonic origin, and the writers represented in this first volume include both European-trained slavists and Canadian-born scholars. Professor G. W. Simpson, the President of the Canadian Associa- tion of Slavists-the body sponsoring this publication-expresses the hope that the volume will serve as a modest beginning towards domesticating Slavonic studies in the Dominion for their 'broad humanistic values alone and by scholars without any bias of ethnic or political colouring'.

Readers of this journal and the many friends and former students of Professor W. J. Rose, formerly director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and subsequently Visiting Professor in the University of British Columbia, will greet with pleasure his editorial association with the new publication. To this issue he contributes a penetrating article on the Mickiewicz centenary, prompted by Dr Weintraub's book (The Poetry of Adam Mickiewicz) which, he says, is a signal contribution to a synthesis of the various appraisals of the great Polish poet.

A Polish poet of another generation is discussed by Mr Dembowski in I Editor's Note. I dealt with this subject in my Ph. D. (Lond.) thesis in I926. The thesis

was published in a revised form with the title The Influence of Byron on Russian Poetry in Latvijas Universitates Raksti, Filologijas un Filozofijas Fakultates Serija, VI, I, Riga, 1940. Lermontov's indebtedness to Byron is covered in detail in chapter VII (pp 96-13I), where there is an analysis of Mtsyri.

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