American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Arabesques by Nikolai Gogol; Alexander TullochReview by: George J. GutscheThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring, 1983), p. 99Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/307251 .

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Reviews 99

Nikolai Gogol. Arabesques. Tr. Alexander Tulloch, introd. Carl R. Proffer. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982. 262 pp.

Arabesques (1835) and Selected Passages from a Correspondence with Friends (1847) have the unique distinction of being books by Gogol which have not been republished in Russian as separate books since their first editions. As Carl Proffer points out in his engaging introduction to this translation of Arabesques, the publication history of Ara- besques can be explained primarily in terms of ideology: Gogol"s rather conservative later pronouncements (in Selected Passages . .) have been represented in the mainstream of Russian literary criticism as late aberrations in the writer's world-view, even mental lapses-a notion first given currency by Belinskij in his famous letter. Thus, Proffer suggests, it will not do to have conveniently collected in one volume essays and stories (three: "The Portrait," "Nevsky Prospect," and "Diary of a Madman"), material that might suggest that the early and the late Gogol' were indeed not so far apart after all. Much of the value of reprinting, and even translating, the original essays of Arabesques lies in the fact that it gives readers the opportunity to discern for themselves the continuity in Gogol"s thinking.

Gogol"s essays are far from brilliant, although there are occasional insights (espe- cially in his essays on literature and music). Surely one of the best of the lot is the piece on Pugkin, which aptly centers on the poet's laconism and does an excellent job of charac- terizing the virtues of later works which many at that time (including Belinskij) failed to discern.

The essays fall into several categories: historical (on world history, Ukrainian history, the middle ages, ninth-century Baghdad, historiography, migration at the end of the fifth century); art (including architecture, painting, sculpture, and music); literature (Pu'kin); and geography. The fiction-three stories from the Petersburg cycle-is clearly the most important material in Arabesques. "The Portrait" here is from the original 1835 text (the hero's name is (ertkov, not Cartkov), the one that drew Belinskij's disapproval, and not the 1842 revised version, with its European Romanticism somewhat toned down, and its references to the Antichrist eliminated. The translations by Alexander Tulloch are good for the most part, although occasionally there are errors of translation, mis- spelled words, British idioms, and misprints. "The Portrait" seems to have suffered the most (but there are problems in other pieces as well): on page 58, for example, "dis- cernible" is spelled as "discernable," "inhabitants" as "inahbitants" (an obvious misprint), "strannaja 2ivost"' is translated as "a certain vivacity," and "odnogo iz tex nesiastnyx, kotoryx vsju 2izn' mu'it seastie drugix. . ." as "one of those unfortunates who all their lives mar the happiness of others." Further in the story, in the second part (page 84 at the bottom) there is real trouble: several lines are transposed, words are missing, and not much makes sense. Since this presumably is the first translation of the 1835 text, these problems, which are by no means characteristic of the collection as a whole, are unfortunate. They should not be blown out of proportion, however, so that they obscure the substantial virtues of the book. On the whole this is a useful translation that needed to be done; moreover, the introductions by Proffer and by Tulloch nicely place the pieces of the collection in context, and even provide a framework for perceiving the overall unity of the essays and stories.

George J. Gutsche, Northern Illinois University

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