American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Na rubeže dvux stoletij by Andrej BelyjReview by: John E. MalmstadThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 252-254Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/309230 .

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252 Slavic and East European Journal

exactly how he went about incorporating marginal and non-literary texts, as well as literary ones, into the narratives, thereby stretching the possibilities of the novel to the utmost and how his disregard for literary institutions, genre categories, time and space, was characteristic of Modernism in general.

Slobin's book does not claim to be a complete coverage of Remizov. It raises as many questions as it answers, but it goes a long way towards answering questions concerning Remizov's contribution to modernist prose. Remizov scholars will find this work to be a seminal study on which to base further research; yet in its scope this book would be appropri- ate for the nonspecialist as well.

Sarah P. Burke, Trinity University

Andrej Belyj. Serebrjannyj golub'. "Zabytaja kniga" Series. Moscow: Xudo'estvennaja liter- atura, 1989. 462 pp., 2r. 20k. (paper).

Among the predominant intellectual moods in Moscow and Leningrad of the 1970s and 1980s was a nostalgia for the beginning of this century, for the Symbolists, Solov'ev, Godseeking, the birth of Russian philosophy, and the lively philosophical, cultural, and political debates. Although it is exhilarating in a sense to see reprints of Mereikovskij, Gippius, Gumilev, and others rolling off the presses, one cannot help feeling with some exasperation that it is long past time that they appeared.

The "Zabytaja kniga" series has been instrumental in producing affordable reprints in a good-quality, paperback format in editions typically of 100,000 copies. M. Koz'menko has done a good job editing Belyj's Serebrjannyj golub'. This is the only existing reprint (to my knowl- edge) of the original edition of 1910. The Berlin edition of 1922 has been reproduced twice, by Fink Verlag and by Ardis. According to Maria Carlson (in Andrey Bely: Spirit of Symbolism, ed. J. Malmstad, Cornell 1987), the two editions do not differ greatly, but the 1910 edition has a fuller final paragraph. Koz'menko's reprint is accompanied by two of Belyj's major articles, "Lug zelenyj" (1905), which appears only in fragments, and "Gogol' " (1909). One wonders why such an important article as "Lug zelenyj" would not be reproduced in full.

Koz'menko's introduction is a useful addition to a number of good recent reappraisals of Serebrennyj golub'. It takes issue with the still pervasive view that Belyj's first novel was too conventional in theme (slavophile) and style (realist) to be successful. Drawing on Belyj's response to Gogol', Koz'menko points out the "esthetic shifts" in Belyj's prose, for example, his experiments in narrative device and play with folkloric motifs. It is to be hoped that this new edition will contribute to the rereading of a novel that, in my view, has been unjustifiably neglected.

Edith W. Clowes, Purdue University

Andrej Belyj. Na rubee dvux stoletij. Moskva: Xudo'estvennaja literatura, 1989. 543 pp. Nacalo veka. 1990. 687 pp. Meidu dvux revoljucij. 1990. 670 pp. 10 rubles (each volume) (cloth).

"While your novel 'Epopeja' remains unwritten, you have already written an authentic 'Epopeja' in an another form: the reminiscences about Aleksandr Aleksandrovi6 [Blok], which have grown into 'The Beginning of the Century,' with which I am still unfamiliar. But

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Reviews 253

what appeared in the magazine Apopeja is truly epopean. This is the sole monument to an epoch that has been erected by a contemporary in all Russian literature. You certainly did not waste those two years abroad: evidently it was only there that you could have written this amazing epic; only in Rome could Gogol write Dead Souls. I don't want to write much about this now. I only think that you, as the author, will never appreciate the true dimensions and significance of this monument. It's more evident from the side. I impatiently await the oppor- tunity to read all the volumes in their new and final reworking." So Ivanov-Razumnik wrote on 26 November 1923 to his old friend Andrej Belyj, who was only a month back in Russia after two years in Berlin.

Ivanov-Razumnik was never to see the so-called "Berlin variant" of Naealo veka (most of the manuscript was lost by its Berlin publisher), but he did have the chance to read in still another form what had begun so modestly in 1921 as brief reminiscences about Blok and became a true monument to the Symbolist Moment in Russian culture: the three volumes of Belyj's memoirs which appeared in the early thirties, Na rubede dvux stoletij, Naealo veka, and Meidu dvux revoljucij. In them Belyj took the story of his life and times only to the beginning of 1912. Had he lived, he planned to continue through the Bolshevik coup d'etat. (How he would have managed to put into print in the Soviet Union an account of his meeting with Rudolf Steiner, his years abroad in Dornach, and events following his return to Russia in 1916 cannot be imagined; getting the first three volumes published involved so many frustrations and rewritings that the whole process contributed to undermining his health.) Ivanov- Razumnik's opinion of this version (at least, of its first two volumes) remained high, as we know from the two men's correspondence, and it is hard to disagree with him. Not since Gercen's Byloe i dumy, which, curiously enough, Belyj re-read not long before setting to work on the first volume devoted to his childhood and youth, had Russian literature produced such a masterpiece in the memoir genre. To this day it has no rivals. "By the style you know the man" goes the saying. In these memoirs we know both the man and each of the "characters" presented so vividly and individually in one of the most dazzling stylistic tours de force of modern Russian.

For years readers had to rely on the original editions or on reprints issued in the West. Now, almost sixty years after their first publication, we have all three volumes in a splendid new edition. This is a major event for scholars and for a new generation of readers in Russia, who are so hungry for accounts of their past after decades of official attempts to erase cultural memory and create a spurious history. The set (and it is a set: the index for all three volumes comes at the end of the last one) includes a fine article-length preface on the genesis of the trilogy. Each volume in turn offers a detailed account of the writing and publication of its text, along with extensive annotations. Finally, the editor introduces into the third volume those parts of its projected second part (which the author sometimes referred to as "volume four") which were completed before Belyj's hospitalization in December, 1933, and which his widow succeeded in publishing in 1937 in volume 27-28 of Literaturnoe nasledstvo. With Aleksandr Lavrov as editor, readers know they are in the best possible hands. The whole enterprise is really a testament to his unrivalled knowledge of the period. The meticulous and far-ranging annotations, which draw on voluminous reading of published and unpublished sources, are a model of scrupulous scholarship. They reveal, too, how remarkably reliable factually are Belyj's often maligned memoirs. Matters of emphasis and attitudes to people and events may have changed over the years, but Belyj never played loosely with facts. Lavrov has consulted all the available manuscripts and galley proofs, and the text he presents is as authoritative as we shall have for a long time. Sometime in the future we will want to see a full scholarly collection of all the cuts and rewritings Belyj was forced to do by the censors. For now we have a generous sampling in the annotations. I regret having to end on one mildly sour note (and I refuse to niggle about the very few factual errors I spotted), but readers, who will rely on this edition not only for the texts themselves, but for the virtual history of Russian Symbolism

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254 Slavic and East European Journal

contained in the annotations, should be alerted to one problem: at some time in the produc- tion process pagination must have changed here and there. Consequently, page references in the index (thank God for it, given the infrequency with which Russian editors and publishers include them) do not in all cases match the correct place in the text. Keep pencil in hand for such occurrences while enjoying and admiring this magnificent achievement of both author and editor, all too rare at a time when reprints, most of them shoddy beyond belief, are flooding the Russian book market.

John E. Malmstad, Harvard University

Ronald Vroon. Velimir Xlebnikov's KRYSA. A Commentary. Stanford, CA: Stanford Slavic Studies, Vol. 2, 1989. xiv, 200 pp., $30.00 (paper).

Xlebnikov's oeuvre is notorious for its chaotic state. The works published during his lifetime are rife with typographical errors, misreadings and other forms of well-intentioned textual distor- tion by his friends, and they were usually printed without the supervision of the author. At the same time, Xlebnikov was both a careless custodian of his own manuscripts and a tireless reviser of them. Sometimes rough drafts or fragments ended up being published as if they were finished works and page proofs reportedly had to be kept away from the poet to prevent him from completely rewriting the texts at the last minute. This textological nightmare is finally beginning to be sorted out by the painstaking work of expert scholars like Vroon. The present edition is of "an intergral collection of verse presented for the first time in the manner designated by Xlebnikov himself" (vii) and is from a manuscript "among the most reliable and unambiguous in the poet's archive" (1). It is based on the holograph prepared by the poet in 1922, shortly before his death, with an introduction and detailed annotations by Vroon.

The title of the collection was given to it by Petr Mituri', who was taking care of the poet during the last months before his death, and is provisional, being drawn from the first poem rather than from any indication by the poet. The fifty-two poems in the collection include final versions of earlier works from 1912-22, published and unpublished, and a number of new poems for which this holograph is the only source. Even here Xlebnikov made changes, and all the variants are given in an appendix. Vroon's Introduction provides a full history of the circumstances under which the manuscript was produced, which in turn is a history of Xlebnikov's last days. The annotations give full textological details, including previous publica- tions and complete variora, discussion of themes and context with relation to the poet's other works, and interpretations of problematic words and references. Vroon does not here engage in thorough literary analysis, but he has provided everything we need to know in order to analyze the poems with confidence that we are dealing with the author's final versions. Moreover, we gain a good feel for Xlebnikov's methods of composition and revision from the information provided. An index and concordance would have been assets, but the scholarly apparatus is so adequate that one does not seriously miss them. Errata are minimal.

At last we have an edition of Xlebnikov that is truly rigorous and scholarly. It will be the source of choice not only for the poems as contained here, but also as an important reference for them when they were incorporated by Xlebnikov into other works, primarily Vojna v myfelovke. In addition, Vroon has provided a fine model for future editions of Xlebnikov. However, the task ahead will be even more formidable because it will be lacking the good fortune of the legible, datable holograph that Krysa provides.

Gerald Janecek, University of Kentucky

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