The Frenzied Poets: Andrey Biely and the Russian Symbolists by Oleg A. MaslenikovReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 31, No. 76 (Dec., 1952), pp. 307-310Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204439 .

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REVIEWS 307

has been unavoidable because of the overlapping which is inevitable when a writer's work is methodically discussed in various connections.

The monograph is particularly to be recommended for its objectivity, which is a rare characteristic even in the most serious works on Obradovic. Dr Kostic is a sober writer and not blinded, as many previous writers have been, by uncritical worship of Obradovic. The examination of the

autobiography reveals how freely Obradovic omitted, invented or adapted facts, but these distortions of the truth are shown to be justified by the reasons for them: as Dr Kostic puts it, Obradovic subordinated himself to his mission as a reformer and teacher. Obradovic's reputation does not

suffer, therefore, as a result of these revelations; on the contrary. Moreover, what the autobiography has lost in value as an historical document it has

gained in the freshness and originality which make it Obradovic's best work from the point of view of literary style.

Although he does not question how immense and far-reaching was Obradovic's contribution to Serbian cultural development the writer shows that in some respects more has been attributed to Obradovic than facts justify. But if one is inclined to begin to regard the 'cult of Dositej' with suspicion and to wonder whether the debt Serbia owes him has become exaggerated during the course of time, one must turn back to the evidence of his contemporaries for proof of their opinion of his greatness and importance. Dr Kostic has collected plenty of such evidence. At the same time he has not omitted details of Vuk Karadzic's attack on Obra? dovic and discusses Njegos's disapproval of him: he puts forward a new and not unlikely theory with regard to the latter, which has never been

satisfactorily explained. By this impartial survey of Obradovic's work and its background Dr

Kostic gives his readers the opportunity of forming their own estimate of Obradovic's importance in matters where before they could only more or less passively accept assurances of it, and the effect?perhaps unexpectedly ?is to make one only the more aware of Obradovic's far-sightedness and of how great was the task which he undertook.

London. Vera Javarek.

The Frenzied Poets: Andrey Biely and the Russian Symbolists. By Oleg A. Maslenikov. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los

Angeles, 1952. x+234 pages.

Russian symbolism, known to the Western world mainly through some studies on Blok, was a most complex and heterogeneous cultural current, in which a predominantly literary movement was associated with a hazy philosophy of life and art. The symbolist poets themselves established the distinction usually made between the conception of symbolism as a literary school and as a new philosophy of life. The so-called aesthetic school, headed by Bryusov, was mainly responsible for the introduction of

symbolism into Russia, for its organisation and assessment. It is the second symbolist generation who claimed that symbolism was much more

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308 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

than a literary school?that it was a completely new Weltanschauung.

Andrey Bely (B. Bugayev) was a symbolist of the second generation. He

was probably the most original personality born of the symbolist move?

ment in Russia and deserves more attention than he has received hitherto. No large work on Bely has appeared in print until now, and it is to Pro?

fessor Maslenikov's credit that he has introduced the symbolist poet to

the English-speaking countries. Bely was 'a typical representative of the

modernist mentality, with its frantic search for a soul, for religion, for the

meaning of life, truth, and beauty' (pp. 67-8). This, as well as Bely's close relations with la melee symboliste?Bryusov, the Merezhkovskys, Blok, and

Vyacheslav Ivanov?gives the author an opportunity of widening his field of study. But in spite of his claim to have covered the entire period of Russian symbolism (p. 29), the picture is far from being complete. A

separate chapter is devoted to the early phases of the movement, yet these are too superficially treated. Balmont and Sologub are nearly ignored. Though perhaps partly imitative, the early symbolists gave a doctrine to

Bely, Blok, and the younger poets, and this may have been one of their chief claims. Maslenikov does not quote Bely's own admission that he and Blok passed into literature on the shoulders of Bryusov (Nachalo Veka,

p. 75). Bryusov was for Bely much more than a one-time personal rival and a colleague from Vesy?Bryusov was for him 'the patron' of his 'liter?

ary strivings', 'a mentor in the field of style' (ibid., p. 413), 'an epoch, a teacher '(ibid., p. 473). Professor Maslenikov's chapter on Bely-and Bryu? sov does not do justice to the elder poet and leaves unsaid Bely's indebted? ness to him.

From the symbolist credo that art is inseparable from life, the author of The Frenzied Poets concludes that biographical data are sufficient to explain all symbolist works. His book is therefore mainly biographical, although it is not a full-size biography of Bely. The life of the poet after his return to Russia in 1916 falls outside the scope of Maslenikov's study, and the reader is given only a short outline of the subsequent years. Thus the

picture of Bely, the man, is incomplete; Bely, the artist, is treated much too briefly. Maslenikov makes full use of Bely's memoirs?the poet's most

important work?for his own narrative, but does not study them critically on the ground that they belong to the post-1916 period. One would expect at least more attention to Bely's early work. This however is given only a few pages: the poet is dismissed in a few words.

Maslenikov painstakingly reconstructs the literary and social back?

ground of the first decade of the 20th century and amasses innumerable anecdotes. Details of the symbolist poets' lives, their quarrels and

jealousies, and conjectures as to Bely's love affair with Blok's wife are

brought to the fore. While the symbolist poets were primarily individual?

ists, their work cannot be explained merely by details of their lives. In

spite of its many shapes, symbolism was united by a single creed which determined the character of its poetry and made most exacting demands on its exponents. Without going to the 'decadent' extreme of claiming that life follows art, one can say that in many a case the personal experi? ences of the symbolists were interpreted in terms of life admirably suited to

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REVIEWS 309

be expressed by symbolist methods. Maslenikov rarely mentions symbolist technique. Thus it is typical of him to qualify summarily Bely's Uma (1909) as 'subjective' (p. 80), while the importance of this collection of verse lay in the conscious use of new forms (disrupted, conversational language, insistent repetitive devices, considerable use of assonances), and in its

perfect balance between form and idea, the book having been planned as a

complete whole. The symbolists were extremely conscious of their art; they insisted on the choice of means to produce chosen effects and left

nothing to chance. Symbolist 'control' entirely superseded the spontaneous creation and improvisation of the romantics. The new poets may have been?and often were?inspired by their subjective experiences, as Maslenikov asserts, but their inspiration was firmly enclosed in form, and one has to examine both in order to understand their work. Maslenikov fails to do so. Even when speaking of Bely's Weltanschauung, he tends to

identify it with the life of the poet. 'Conception of life' however is too

ponderous a phrase to be applied to the vague philosophy of the young poet for whom this was part of the theory of symbolism rather than of life itself. And yet the significance of the Russian symbolists as systematic thinkers was quite negligible. Their importance lay in their call for a complete reassessment of poetry and in their experiments in the

technique of verse?in their discovery that poetry is no longer simply vocal, but musical, no longer peremptory, but suggestive. The symbolist poets bequeathed to Russian literature a new understanding of poetry: this is their most lasting achievement. Bely's researches in prosody played an important role in this renascence of poetry; Maslenikov however mentions them only in passing. Bely greatly contributed to the disruption of metro-tonic versification; he had a remarkable sense of rhythm, and his obsession with 'music' made him embark on several 'instrumentalist'

experiments to the extent of being accused of killing the sense in his writings by a preponderance of sound. But Bely understood 'music' in a different and much wider sense. 'Music' ideally expressed the symbol and was therefore a revelation of the inner essence of life. He wanted poetry to

approach music in order to intensify its means of alogical expressiveness. Maslenikov does not stress the fact that the generations of 1890 and 1900 were seeking to express a new, or partly new, view of art. Not only does he not attempt to explain by what this view differed from the preceding one, but he does not even deem it necessary to define the new understanding of poetry. It is regrettable that these points are only implicitly recog? nised in a book dealing with a movement which was predominantly poetic.

The biographical material is adequately treated. One may wonder however why Maslenikov quotes Vladislav Khodasevich's memoirs

extensively, though he admits that they are unreliable (pp. 1 io and 166). But the bulk of published correspondence and diaries as well as most of the collected autobiographical data are fully exploited. Bely's own memoirs, extremely vivid and colourful, provide the very foundation of the narrative, and the author's success as a raconteur is largely due to them. The secondary sources are not included in the bibliography, otherwise

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310 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

exhaustive. It seems that Maslenikov was unacquainted with a well- documented work published in 1930 (V. Yevgen'yev-Maksimov and D.

Maksimov, Izproshlogo russkoy zhurnalistiki, Leningrad, pp. 87-127) which throws a completely new light on the history of Severnyy Vestnik and its editors. He relies on data collected twenty years earlier (p. 12) and draws a

picture of Mlle Gurevich as a crusader of modernism, which can hardly be substantiated on the basis of all the evidence available.

Presenting Bely from several angles in his relations with other members of the Russian symbolist movement, the author not only falls into super? fluous repetitions, but introduces a certain confusion into the general picture of the movement. Maslenikov no doubt put much work into the translation of numerous symbolist poems, wishing to preserve the meaning and the characteristic rhythm of the Russian. The result however is dis?

couraging, for far too much of their poetic value has been lost. Neither are some renderings of Russian idioms very happy: thus a mother's term of endearment moy kot becomes 'my cat'.

Maslenikov's book will perhaps prove disappointing to the student of the period. Yet it may be appreciated by the non-Russian-speaking reader to whom the author discloses a wealth of information unavailable in

English and presented in a most readable form. The book would have

gained however by a more serious treatment of the subject. After all, the Russian symbolists were not merely 'frenzied poets'.

London. Georgette Donchin.

Summary Notices

Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, Vol. II, 1925-32. Selected and edited by Jane Degras. Oxford University Press, for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1952. 560 pages.

Volume II of Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy is the second volume of a three-volume collection sponsored by the Royal Institute of International

Affairs, the first volume of which appeared in 1951. It deals with Soviet

foreign policy during the period from 1925 to 1932 and contains the text in translation of some 250 documents given either in full or in extract. The editor has again omitted treaties and agreements printed in the

League of Nations Treaty Series. Considerations of space have also led her to exclude from Volume II speeches and proposals made by the Soviet

delegation to the preparatory commission of the League of Nations dis? armament conference. As the preface says, they are long and repetitive, and the substance of them is contained in the selected extracts from

reports to the Central Executive Committee and the Congress of Soviets. Volume II wisely gives appreciably more documents emanating from the Communist Party than were included in Volume I. This applies particu? larly to the extracts from Stalin's newspaper articles and from his reports to party gatherings in 1925, 1927, 1928, and 1930. These latter show the reader the ideological framework within which Stalin and his colleagues

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