Studies in Russian and Polish Literature. In Honor of Wacław Lednicki by ZbigniewFolejewski; Michael Karpovich; Francis J. Whitfield; Albert KaspinReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 42, No. 99 (Jun., 1964), pp. 465-467Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205585 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 06:38

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 185.44.78.76 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:38:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 465 Studies in Russian and Polish Literature. In Honor of Waclaw Lednicki. Edited

by Zbigniew Folejewski, Michael Karpovich, Francis J. Whitfield and Albert Kaspin. Slavistic Printings and Reprintings ed. by C. H. van Schooneveld, XXVII, Mouton and Co., The Hague, I962. 250 pages. Portrait.

AMONG recent Festschrifts, the above is one of the most pleasing volumes of its kind. The editors need not regret the limitations in size which made them reject many contributions. It is this very limitation which distin- guishes the volume from the more frequent miscellanies which seem to vie in an attempt to include as much and as varied material as possible. Limitation of scope allowed the editors to concentrate on internal unity, and this in itself does more justice to Waclaw Lednicki than would mere breadth of tribute. For throughout almost half a century of his scholarly career, Waclaw Lednicki showed a remarkable consistency in his in- terests. Interaction of the Slavonic and the western worlds broadly, inter- action of Polish and Russian literature especially in the romantic period, Pushkin and Mickiewicz in particular-these are the main themes of Lednicki's life work, eloquently illustrated by the I92 items of his biblio- graphy (pp. II -25).

The contributions have been arranged chronologically, and the volume begins with a study by Professor Julian Krzyzanowski on the Polish mediaeval hymn Bogarodzica-an extension into the earlier ages of his friend's and colleague's investigation into the field of comparative study of Slavonic literatures. The essay by Claude Backvis on the baroque ele- ments of Derzhavin's poetry or, to be more exact, on the presence of a sensibility of the baroque type in texts which are entirely outside the baroque age and tradition, is written in the erudite manner of Lednicki with emphasis on the international literary setting. Claude Backvis's contribution may appear to some too speculative, 'non-scientific', but it is as thought-provoking as his study on Slowacki and the baroque inheri- tance ('Slowacki et l'heritage baroque', juliusz Slowacki. The Centenary Volume, London, 195I, Pp. 27-94).

The stimulus given by Lednicki's writings and teaching is nowhere greater however than in the field of Pushkiniana, characteristically well represented in the volume under review. Professor Lo Gatto, an enthusia- stic Pushkinist himself, pays his tribute to Lednicki in yet another mise au point on Onegin as a lyrical diary of Pushkin. It is an amusing coincidence that almost simultaneously Professor Lednicki had the opportunity of paying his tribute to the Italian scholar in a brilliant critical fantasia on Pushkin's 'Egyptian Nights', included in the dedicatory volume, Studi in onore di Ettore Lo Gatto e Giovanni Maver (Rome, I 962).

Joseph T. Shaw comes even nearer to Lednicki's heart in directly de- veloping the theme of his most suggestive articles on the prose of Pushkin in the fascinating study 'The "Conclusion" of Pushkin's Queen of Spades' (PP. I I4-26). The author unravels Pushkin's truly uncanny mastership in 'architectonics', examining the ending of Pikovaya Dama as a particular case of the formal function of the epilogue in prose fiction in general. 'In

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.76 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:38:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

466 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Puskin there is no psychological analysis', remarks Joseph T. Shaw, 'even in the psychological thriller, The Queen of Spades. Every detail counts in the structure and the meaning of the story; each may have several levels of significance or symbolical meaning' (p. II5).

In the biographical field, Mieczyslaw Giergielewicz reconstructs the two meetings of Pushkin and Krasin'ski with Nicholas I, bringing them forth as a demonstration of the tsar's efficiency in dealing with individuals he intended to attract to his political programme.

Wiktor Weintraub, on the other hand, reconstructs a famous incident in Polish literary history, the duel of improvisations between Mickiewicz and Slowacki-a truly romantic clash in which one poet addressed the other publicly in a poetic improvisation, the second instantly taking the cues from his antagonist and answering him in kind. Out of the remini- scences of the clash, of the resentment and reflections that came as its aftermath, the magnificent final stanzas of the fifth canto of Slowacki's Beniowski were born. The concept of the poet as national prophet was, as Professor Weintraub reminds us, perhaps the most characteristic feature of Polish romantic literature and was responsible for its specific intellectual and emotional climate. It originated with Mickiewicz. In the young Slowacki it is still free from mystical overtones, but the development of Slowacki's poetry was obviously leading towards them. The duel of im- provisations acted as potent catalyst. By denying to his opponent the title of poet-prophet, Mickiewicz brought Slowacki's prophetic aspirations into the open.

Slowacki's poetry is also the subject of an article by Zbigniew Folejewski based on an earlier paper read at the International Session of the Polish Academy in Warsaw in I959, held to mark the Isoth anniversary of Slowacki's birth. The author dwells in particular on the theme of crime and punishment in Slowacki's poetry, on his concept of the human striving to test the existence of divine justice through crime and to call for punish- ment in order to establish the proper relationship between good and evil. Unavoidably, he is brought to draw some comparisons from Dostoyevsky in an attempt to popularise 'certain aspects of the Polish Romantic poet's work in which he appears no less contemporary and universal, and some- times perhaps even more human, than is the great Russian realist' (p. I67').

The strange symbiosis of good and evil in Dostoyevsky's work is brought up again in Robert L. Jackson's masterly analysis of the narrator in 'Notes from the House of the Dead'. To a certain extent the essay is linked up with Lednicki's pages on Dostoyevsky in his Russia, Poland and the West (London, I954).

One of the most interesting studies in this Festschrift, especially from the point of view of the Anglo-Russian comparatist, is Donald Davie's 'Turgenev in England, I850-I950' (pp. I68-84), in which the author traces the history of the rising and falling prestige of the novelist in this country until he was firmly placed in a 'niche of literary history' and removed from the arena of heated controversy and lively issues. Turgenev is consigned in England today to the 'classic status', much to the regret of Professor Davie. He concludes his article with the words: 'It may seem that-

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.76 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:38:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 467

Turgenev has always run the risk, with his British audience, of being enshrined as an idol of the exquisites. Those who value him most highly may resent this, as one of the worst fates that could befall a writer so luminous and humane' (p. I84).

A word about the standard of presentation. Allowing for the difficulties of technical uniformity, there does not seem to be much sense in the compromise arrived at by the editors, whereby 'English transliteration' is introduced in the main body of the articles (by no means consistently), while the system preferred by the individual authors is retained in the footnotes. Quite inexcusable however are the very numerous printing errors and exceptionally poor proof-reading (if any) which marr the appearance of a very handsome book indeed.

London GEORGETTE DONCHIN

Statti, rozvidkyy bio-bibliohrafichni materiyaly. By Mykola A. Plevako. Edited by H. 0. Kostyuk. The Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., New York-Paris, I96I. 8o8 pages. Plates. Bibliography, English and French summaries.

THIS large and impressive volume contains reprints of selections from now virtually inaccessible works by a prominent scholar of Ukrainian litera- ture. Mykola Plevako's academic life extended from 1914 to the early I930S and was followed, during the reign of terror, by the usual pattern of persecution ending in his arrest in I938. Exiled, three years later he died at the hand of an assassin whose identity and motive have remained undiscovered.

Plevako's chief interest, the fruits of at least a decade's (I923-4 to I934) arduous work, was the collection of material for a standard bio- graphical and bibliographical dictionary of Ukrainian literature. This extremely valuable card index occupied several cabinets and was almost ready for publication, when this became impossible under the regime of the I 930s. Fortunately, however, much of this material had been published by Plevako earlier in the form of introductions to each of the writers presented in an anthology of Ukrainian literature of the I gth and the early 20th centuries (Khrestomatiya novoyi ukrayins'koyi literatury, i, I926, ii, Kharkiv, 1923). These introductions, now reprinted in the present volume, are of inestimable value to the serious student of Ukrainian literature. Sixty-eight writers are covered, including nearly all the most important and a number of secondary ones; there is a biographical sketch of each writer and a rich bibliography of his works and of critical writings on him. The particular value of Plevako's bibliographies lies in the fullness of their data on the first quarter of this century, since nearly all bibliographies of individual writers published lately in the Ukraine show a marked de- ficiency in this respect.

The fate of Plevako's index after his arrest, exile and death remained unknown until the end of I960 when (while the present volume must have been with the printers) it was mentioned in an article in Radyans'ke

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.76 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:38:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions