The Poets of Russia, 1890-1930 by Renato PoggioliReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 40, No. 95 (Jun., 1962), pp. 532-534Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205382 .

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532 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Yet nothing can excuse the charge of plagiarism made against him: it was mean, sensational and based on an ignorant use of misleading parallels.

Miss Kosko's book contains over forty pages of bibliographical material. A number of Sienkiewicz's letters is printed in the appendix. But the real surprise comes from the distinguished modern writer, Henry de Monther- lant, who as a child of nine read the French translation of Quo vadis: his letter to Miss Maria Kosko, dated 2 Ist May I959, adds a very civilised final touch to this intelligent and well-informed study.

London J. PIETRKIEWICZ

The Poets of Russia, i89o-i93o. By Renato Poggioli. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., I 960. xxii + 383 pages. Bibliography, index.

PROFESSOR POGGIOLI set out to outline 'the development in Russia of what is commonly designated as "modern" or "contemporary" poetry', and for this first attempt at a comprehensive history of a comparatively little studied period we should be grateful to him. Our debt to the writer increases as we realise the breadth of his canvas. It is indeed perhaps the greatest merit of the book that it supplies a broad view of the cultural background to Russian modern poetry, that it compares this cultural background with parallel western poetical movements, and that it follows this with an excursus into Soviet and emigre literatures. In a word, Professor Poggioli achieves some- thing long overdue-he gives a certain perspective to the 'silver age' of Russian poetry.

Perhaps because of the very scope of the book, we resent even more its shortcomings. The summary review of the masters of the past fails to make clear what they bequeath to the modern poets, or in what way they differ from them. Professor Poggioli's sweeping statement that 'the poetry we call "modern" or "contemporary" is a new kind of poetry, the like of which has never existed before' (p. xi) cannot remain unqualified, unless we are prepared to isolate the Russian symbolist movement as an entirely alien growth in the development of Russian literature. Within the scope of his book, the author had an excellent opportunity of relating modern poetry in Russia to the native tradition, of bringing out the continuity which un- doubtedly existed side by side with the foreign elements which enriched it. Instead, we merely get a short survey (unsatisfactory as far as the i8th century is concerned) of Russian poets up to and including Fet. The latter, incidentally, is bracketed with Nekrasov under the rather unexpected title of 'Realism'.

This brings us to the most irritating facet of the book under review, namely the author's determination to tabulate every single name in Russian literature, and his highly arbitrary and somewhat startling classification of the individual poets.

It is true that all classification is bound to be artificial and, at a closer glance, unsatisfactory. The distinction between decadents and symbolists has always been a very subtle one, and the demarcation obscure. Literary critics have vaguely treated both as two phases of the symbolist movement

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REVIEW 533

(so many arguments could have been avoided if it had been agreed to designate decadence and symbolism as two phases of the modernist move- ment), and Professor Poggioli too has to admit that 'from a broad historical viewpoint Decadence and Symbolism must be considered as different branches of the same tree' (p. I47), 'different faces of the same coin, or parallel variants of the same historical situation' (p. I49). Decadence, he himself feels, is a more inclusive term, but if one reversed Ivanov-Razum- nik's statement and maintained 'that all the Russian and Western poets of that age were born Decadents, although many of them made themselves into Symbolists' (p. I 49), one could solve all terminological confusion with a simple rule: 'that there were Decadents who were not Symbolists, but that there was no Symbolist who was not a Decadent as well' (p. I49). Professor Poggioli presumably does not feel inclined to solve terminological confusion. Applying a simplification of his own, he sharply divides the decadent trend from the symbolist one; the demarcation itself would per- haps be acceptable for practical purposes if one could only distinguish the decadent and the symbolist phases respectively in any one poet-a most tortuous task, no doubt. Aware of the difficulties, the author places his statues in peculiar niches, rightly pointing out that 'any classification is but an attempt to square the circle, which ends by producing odd shapes of its own' (p. xiv). Yet the reader finds it hard to put up with such odd shapes as theinclusionofBunin-as a poet and as a novelist-side by side with Bryusov and Bal'mont on the one hand, and Zinaida Hippius and Sologub on the other, in a chapter entitled 'The Decadents'. In the two pages assigned to Bunin, less than half a page is devoted to his poetry, the mainstay of which, we are told, is description, and which often reveals 'a good will toward life' (p. I 15). Does this make Bunin a decadent poet? It is equally difficult to see why Voloshin joins company with Blok, Bely, and Vyacheslav Ivanov as a symbolist, or why Klyuyev is thrown in with the acmeists, or why Mandel'- shtam and Georgiy Ivanov are omitted from the discussion of the acmeists.

Apart from the controversial architectonics and many disputable state- ments ('Prince Serebryanyy'-the best Russian historical novel after 'The Captain's Daughter', p. 38; Bunin's 'Dry Valley'-the only genuine master- piece which Russian symbolism produced in narrative form, p. I I 4; the cult of Sophia-the main motif of Russian symbolism, p. I 22, to quote only a few) there are unfortunately many factual mistakes in the book, especially in dates (e.g. dates of death of Zhukovsky, Nekrasov, Bal'mont, Bunin), some omissions which should not have occurred (symbolist controversies in Trudy i Dni; the absence of Sumarokov, Remizov, Zaytsev), and some biblio- graphical gaps. It is a great pity that there are no footnotes at all and that most of the numerous quotations are unacknowledged.

In spite of these blemishes however, Professor Poggioli's book is one of the most important ones written on the subject. The author is more success- ful in supplying a broad view of the cultural background of the period than in providing a detailed appraisal of the works of art created against that background. Attempted intensity of statement does not always compensate for brevity, and the author's presentation of many a minor poet gives us neither a comprehensive picture of his work nor a full account of his career.

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534 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Yet our understanding of the period is greatly enriched by those general chapters which at once reveal the wide knowledge and the certain hand of a comparatist of long standing. It is in his digressions, in his extended parallels, in the filling up of the historical and spiritual canvas that Professor Poggioli is at his best. His pages on the historical background, on the arts and the theatre, on new trends of thought, recreate more than anything else the atmosphere within which the poetry of modern Russia grew and flourished. There are many advantages and many disadvantages in a book of this kind being written by a specialist in comparative literature rather than by a specialist in Russian literature. As to the advantages, Professor Poggioli exploits them to the full. Though his comparisons and contrasts between Russian and western symbolism, as well as between Russian futur- ism and the western advance-guard movements, are undoubtedly contro- versial, they are in their way-like the symbolist poetry which forms the subject of his study-highly seminal.

London GEORGETTE DONCHIN

The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia. A Translation with Introduction and Notes. By James A. Brundage. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 196I. 26I pages. Index.

THE great expansion of the Germans to the east gradually ceased as they came up against two strong national groups in Poland and Bohemia. The advance, however, had led Germans to found cities on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and into this region were diverted all the forces of German knighthood, merchants and missionaries. Unlike the Mediterranean there were no rivals such as the Italians and Greeks. The Scandinavian peoples, after their great expansion over Europe, had settled down to a peaceful Christian mode of life. Sweden had developed the great port of Wisby and had begun to expand to the east into the land of the Finns. Denmark, though ultimately a sea power and a rival of the Germans, was not unfriendly, and the archbishop of Lund often reconciled conflicting interests. There were great men interested in religious, commercial, and national expansion. Henry the Lion had only recently died, but the spirit of expansion burned high among the Saxon nobles, and the spirit of gain attracted the merchants. The great Saxon prelates were keen to send out missionaries into these pagan regions, supported by Innocent III and his successors.

The missionary and commercial movements gradually, after some failures, coalesced into a major crusade. The leader and inspirer, Albert, resolute and indefatigable, led the movement for a quarter of a century to a successful conclusion in I 229.

To understand this crusade it is necessary to know the names and characters of the native inhabitants of the south coast of the Baltic Sea. The sea coasts were inhabited chiefly by Finnish tribes: the Ests in the north, the Livs in the Dvina region and possibly the Kurs. When the crusaders landed they came first into contact with the Livs and named the colony Livonia, a name subsequently and wrongly extended to the whole country

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