Pushkin: A Biography by David MagarshackReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 47, No. 109 (Jul., 1969), pp. 538-540Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4206117 .

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53^ THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

'povest" (no. 116). 'Del'nyye pis'ma' in the context of no. 381 should not

be translated by 'sensible letters'. 'Tsar' . . . otkryl mne arkhivy, s tem, chtob ya rylsya tam' is awkwardly rendered by 'so that I may hole up there' (no. 381). Equally awkward is the non-idiomatic phrase 'Here it has

already been five days that I haven't had any news' (no. 495 and passim). Terms of endearment, difficult to translate in any language, don't come out too well either. There are too many 'my dear fellow', 'my lad' etc. 'Dusha moya', 'moy milyy', and 'moy angel' are not differentiated. Pushkin's characteristic shifting from Russian to French and vice versa is lost. These criticisms, however, should not obscure the merits of Professor Shaw's painstaking, and essentially honest labour of love. London Georgette Donchin

Magarshack, David. Pushkin: a Biography. Chapman & Hall, London,

1967. 320 pages. Plates. Bibliography. Index.

Mr Magarshack is an experienced biographer, and should have realised

by now the pitfalls he is prone to fall into when presenting the life of a Rus? sian writer to the general English reader. His technique follows that used in the case of his former subjects: he pieces together various accounts and reminiscences of Pushkin's contemporaries and draws heavily on Pushkin's

correspondence. Though the picture is by no means complete, the effect is overcrowded: the story seems to tell itself in innumerable quotations strung together by a scanty and unilluminating commentary. Pushkin's life of course is rich in dramatic detail, and Mr Magarshack's own translation of the extracts quoted is lively and colloquial. Nonetheless, the overall picture lacks depth and vision. Despite the claim on the blurb, the turbulent events of Pushkin's life are not satisfactorily related to his

writing. Pushkin the man lives in his work. Mr Magarshack practically ignores it.

His reliance on Pushkin's letters doesn't really help him. However

delightful some of them may be, they contain mainly biographical detail, information on Pushkin's material circumstances and his reaction to them. We learn from them relatively little of Pushkin's own views about his works, we hardly find in them a clue to his creative process. When self-revelation

occasionally emerges, it is implicit rather than explicit. The character? istic of Pushkin's letters is the characteristic of his prose?experience is

presented in concrete terms, in action, not in analysis. Just as Pushkin does not linger on the feelings of his characters, he hardly ever lingers on his own. This explains to some extent why the man is elusive if judged merely by his letters. As Mr Magarshack doesn't choose to spend much time on Pushkin's work, we lose the perspective needed to understand the whole human being. We are merely left with the externals of Pushkin's bio?

graphy. From time to time we get some cursory information of the circum?

stances in which a work was written, and some very superficial cliche-laden criticism. About The Fountain of Bakhchisaray we learn that 'the en? tertainment value of the poem is much greater than that of The Caucasian

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reviews 539

Captive9 (p. 127); about Ruslan and Lyudmila that it 'does not reflect

contemporary life, nor does it seem to have any connection with the social and political problems which Pushkin had raised in his Liberty*, an Ode, The Village and his Epistle to Chaadaev. This to some extent explains Pushkin's dissatisfaction with himself and his environment' (pp. 89-90); about The Gabriliade, that it 'was written during Holy Week as a

protest against the growing mysticism of Alexander I and his court' (p. 128, my italics); about The Queen of Spades, that it is Pushkin's 'famous

story of a compulsive gambler' (p. 268). There is not even an attempt to

say something about The Captain's Daughter', The Bronze Horseman receives no critical treatment at all, and all we learn of its genesis is that 'The terrible floods of November 7, 1824, provided Pushkin with the plot of one of his

masterpieces, his narrative poem The Bronze Horseman' (p. 195). More

meaningless generalities would be hard to find. Boris Godunov is disposed of in half a page, the 'little tragedies' in a dozen lines, and Eugene Onegin receives a very superficial treatment in 15 lines or so, though references to it are scattered throughout the book. A fair number of short poems are

mentioned, especially when Mr Magarshack supplies his translation. Need? less to say, he fares much worse here than in his rendering of Pushkin's letters.

Mr Magarshack's predilection for the dramatic leads him to some un? warranted speculation. The role of the tsar in 'disposing' of the poet has never been substantiated, nor should Pushkin's revolutionary, anti-tsarist and atheist feelings be taken too seriously.

Mr Magarshack's book, eminently readable within its limitations, entertaining in parts, and pleasantly illustrated, is seriously marred by points of detail. Misprints and mis-spellings are numerous, transliteration is entirely haphazard (Yekaterina and Elizaveta, Sergey and Nikolai, Ozerov and Vyelgorsky, Nikolayevna but Panaev, Mikhail but Pul-

cheria); mistakes in French abound, viz. 'aller metre un frac' (p. 270), 'je m'eprise ta mere' (p. 183), 'ma foie' (p. 39), 'Duce de Berry' (p. 69). Even more annoying are the errors which crept in under the guise of

scholarly documentation: Pushkin's words on The Caucasian Captive quoted on p. 125 do not come from his letter to Gnedich of 29 April, 1822. The first line is from an unsent draft of the letter, but the remainder of the

quotation is from a letter to Gorchakov of 22 November. The description of Pushkin's encounter with Count Litta does not come from his diary (p. 275) but from a letter to his wife dated 17 April 1834. Pushkin's letter to Vyazemsky quoted on p. 150 is dated 24 June 1824 an<^ not x8i4- Pushkin's letter to Rayevsky quoted on p. 193 was not written on 19 July 1825, but some time after 19 July, moreover it is a draft of a letter which was not sent. Pushkin's letter to Bestuzhev (p. 194) was written on 30 November 1825, anc^ not on 10 November. Pushkin's letter to his brother

(p. 196) is dated 14 March 1825, an<^ n?t 24 March These few examples make the whole reliability of the quotations suspect. The reviewer does not see any reason why the poor 'general reader' should be treated in such a

way. Neither can the bibliography be of any use to him. Out of the 27 items quoted, 5 are in English or French. The Russian entries are poor,

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540 the slavonic review

unrepresentative, and badly classified. It seems superfluous to insist that Mr Magarshack's non-analytical and non-critical book should not be recommended to students of Russian as a short-cut to Russia's greatest poet. London Georgette Donchin

Mickiewicz, Adam. Forefathers. Translated into English verse by Count Potocki of Montalk. Foreword by W. Weintraub. The Polish Cultural

Foundation, London, 1968. xxii + 288 pages.

This is a much welcome publication. Parts of the present translation

appeared in limited editions over twenty years ago and were not easily accessible. Recent events brought Mickiewicz's drama to public attention outside Poland. The Warsaw production of 1968 created a stir: the Fore?

fathers became so topical, in fact, that the authorities decided to suspend further performances.

It is this fusion of topicality with mysticism and folklore archetypes that

requires inventiveness and skill from a potential translator. On the whole, Count Potocki of Montalk has acquitted himself well. He varies his tone whenever the mood of scenes in Part Three changes abruptly from mystical rhetoric to political invective, from sophisticated dialogue to rustic dog? gerel and grotesque. The difficult scene VIII (The Senator) comes off as a dramatic statement in English. The sentimental monodrama of Part

Four, however, demands yet another treatment, and here perhaps the translator produces too many awkward lines and phrases. He could have been far more ruthless in adaptation. His rhymes, too, seem unduly obvious at times. But, in fairness to him, one has to concede that the

original often sounds irritating to the modern ear. Count Potocki of Montalk deserves praise for his courage in having

undertaken a work of such dimension and complexity. The Polish Cul? tural Foundation has produced a handsome volume, well bound and

printed on good paper. London J. Pietrkiewicz

Archambault, R. D. (ed.) Tolstoy On Education. Trans, by Leo Wiener, introd. by R. D. Archambault. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1967. xviii + 360 pages.

The title of this book, like the sleeve photograph of the University of

Chicago Press Building, is slightly misleading. Tolstoy planned the most famous of the Yasnaya Polyana schools for peasant children in the autumn of 1859. After only six months practical experience he sought a solution to the problems of elementary education in a tour of European schools. On his return to Russia he announced the publication of a new magazine Tasnaya Polyana. The present book is a translation of seven of the essays (not arranged in chronological order of publication, or any apparent order) that Tolstoy himself contributed to the twelve issues of the magazine that

appeared during 1862-3. The essays are a mixture of criticism of the

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