Dostoevsky and the Gulag

I’ve started work on a paper on the depiction of criminals in labour camp writing for a workshop later this summer, and as Dostoevsky is one of my starting points, this has led me to revisit the broader question of the role of recurrent references to him in Gulag literature. This post is not intended to be in any way exhaustive, but just to gather together some thoughts and identify a few trends.

Dostoevsky’s writings exerted a powerful influence on twentieth-century Russian and world literature, in terms of both his thought and his aesthetics, but perhaps nowhere was this influence more strongly felt than in the field of labour camp writing. Dostoevsky was not the first political prisoner in the tsarist era to write about the experience of exile, imprisonment and hard labour; the early 1860s, when Notes from the House of the Dead first appeared, also saw the first publication of memoirs by the Decembrists exiled to Siberia, and of The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself. The image of the Decembrists and their wives played a major role in cultural life in Russia in the nineteenth century (as, for example, in Nekrasov’s poem Russian Women, and Avvakum’s work, completed in 1675, is significant not only as one of the first examples of both Russian autobiographical writing and writing about the experience of prison and exile, but also because it is a very early work of Russian literature written in the vernacular. However, it is Dostoevsky’s fictionalized account of imprisonment and hard labour which established the tradition of labour-camp writing in Russia and overwhelmingly acted as the major source and point of comparison for twentieth-century Gulag writers.

Thus Solzhenitsyn says in The Gulag Archipelago that Dostoevsky is the writer prisoners should read (vol. 1, p. 214), but also uses references to Dostoevsky to show how the situation of convicts has changed for the worse since the Revolution (vol. 2, pp. 200, 203 and passim – there are over a dozen such references to Dostoevsky in this volume alone). Varlam Shalamov’s references to Dostoevsky also have the latter function, and he rejects Dostoevsky as a possible model for Gulag writers for this very reason (‘there’s no need to polemicize with Dostoevsky about the advantages of “work” in labour camps in comparison with the idleness of prison and the merits of “fresh air”. Dostoevsky’s time was another time, and hard labour then hadn’t reached the heights being told of here’; Shalamov, 1:129). On the other hand, he freely endorses the power of Dostoevsky’s approach to the people with whom he was imprisoned, even while insisting it is no longer relevant; for example, whilst claiming that Dostoevsky never encountered the true criminal world as it existed in the Stalinist era, he admits, ‘If he had come across it, we would, perhaps, have been deprived of the best pages of that book [House of the Dead — SJY] — the affirmation of faith in man, affirmation of the positive instincts found in human nature.’ (Shalamov, 2:8) Perhaps the most overt use of Dostoevsky’s work in a Gulag text relating to the Stalin era is found the Polish writer Gustav Herling’s A World Apart. The title is taken from House of the Dead, and the memoir uses several extracts from the novel as epigraphs, and details Herling’s experience of reading this book in the Gulag, as he comes to the view that violence of the state against the individual, and of individuals against each other, are an inherent part of Russian culture.

References to Dostoevsky are equally prevalent in works by the next generation of prisoners, in the 1960s and 1970s. We might expect that Valery Tarsis’s autobiographical novel of incarceration in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s, Ward 7, to have Chekhov’s short story, from which its title is clearly derived, as its main intertext. Ward 6 is indeed mentioned, and the head doctor in Tarsis’s work is compared to the doctor in Chekhov’s story, but in fact the novel contains over four times as many overt references to Dostoevsky, and is self-consciously constructed around a series of Dostoevskian dialogues on the themes of good and evil, beauty, and oppression.

In such texts, Dostoevsky is frequently viewed as a moral touchstone and a prophet, owing to the critique of oppression inherent in his characters’ “anthill theories,” and the idea from The Brothers Karamazov that ‘if there is no immortality, then everything is permitted’ (Dostoevskii, vol. 14, p. 76); his novels showed, as Andrei Sinyavsky states in Soviet Civilization, the real-life consequences of the absolute imposition of the utopian project (p. 32), as well as what happens when the ethical is subordinated to the political – as with Raskolnikov, the Grand Inquisitor and the revolutionaries in Demons. Dostoevskian references in Gulag texts therefore call for a return to the primacy of the ethical and emphasize the authors’ experience of the consequences of the prevailing ideology. Thus Eduard Kuznetsov, imprisoned in 1970, uses a metaphor from The Brothers Karamazov, among other references to Dostoevsky, to describe the entire process of revolution and terror: ‘Insofar as the kingdom of the Smeryakovs, who murdered all the Dimitris and Alyoshas in 1917 and then again the Ivan Karamazovs in 1937, appears indestructible…’ (p. 47) Although some might argue that the Ivans did the killing in 1917, Kuznetsov’s use of this construction suggests that the corruption and violence of the Soviet regime existed at its very inception, and was not a later falling away from the ideal.

This confirmation of the particular relevance of Dostoevsky’s ideas and writing to the Stalinist system has to be understood in the context of official attempts to turn the author into persona non grata, destroy his reputation and altogether de-canonize him, precisely because of his critique of socialism (James Goodwin’s Confronting Dostoevsky’s Demons gives a good account of this). Critical literature on Dostoevsky during the Stalin period took the form of savage attacks, and only Gorky and a small number of the most committed Bolsheviks were permitted to write about him at all. A typically arch passage from The First Circle, when Clara Makarygina recalls the university literature course she gave up, in which ‘there had been a quick survey of some complete nobodies like Stepniak-Kravchinsky, Dostoevsky and Sukhovo-Kobylin, the titles of whose books it was apparently not even necessary to learn’ (p. 237; translation altered; see chapter 43 of the full 96-chapter version), indicates the State’s ideal positioning of Dostoevsky among the forgotten authors of the time (but note also that the inclusion of Stepniak here suggests earlier generations of revolutionaries were equally apt to fall into disfavour). In the face of attempts to deny him a place in Russian literature, Gulag narratives re-canonize Dostoevsky and re-introduce his themes of oppression, morality, mortality into literary discourse.

Beyond the literature of the labour camps, we see a similar trend developing in the sixties and seventies. In Yuri Trifonov’s wonderful novel House on the Embankment, Professor Ganchuk, after a lifetime of admiring Gorky and polemicizing with Dostoevsky in lectures, sees the light with a phrase which elides two of Dostoevsky’s most powerful ideas:

He said that the thought that had tormented Dostoyevsky – if man’s last refuge is nothing but a dark room full of spiders, then all is permitted – had hitherto been interpreted in a wholly simplistic, trivial sense. All such profound problems had, in fact, been distorted into pathetically inadequate form, but the problems themselves were still there and would not go away. Today’s Raskolnikov’s did not murder old women moneylenders with an ax, but they were still faced with the same agonizing choice: to cross or not to cross the line. In any case, what was the difference between using an ax and any other method? (p. 343).

And Boris Pasternak was known to refer to the Ezhovshchina as the Shigalevshchina, after the character in Demons who states that starting from unlimited freedom he arrived at unlimited despotism. (Dostoevskii, vol. 10, p. 311) Thus when the literary scholar and camp survivor D. S. Likhachev, writing much later, illustrates the early development of his thinking with reference to Dostoevsky (for example, ‘If time is an absolute reality, then Raskolnikov was right’, p. 67), he is signalling a rejection of official discourse, and his approval of subsequent moves by dissidents in the Soviet period to reclaim Dostoevsky’s artistic and philosophical legacy; references to Dostoevsky become textual markers, a sign of author thinking both as an individual and about the individual.

Likhachev also notes in his memoirs (p. 291n) that whilst imprisoned on Solovki in the early 1930s, the historian and kraeved N. P. Antsiferov worked in Krimkab – where letters, drawings, and verses by criminal prisoners were collected – in order to ‘come to understand the psychology of the people of Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead.’ (p 346) The work carried out in Krimkab by the intellectuals bears other hallmarks of a ‘Dostoevskian’ approach to imprisonment; just as Dostoevsky developed an interest in forms of language and collected examples of criminal slang (in his Siberian Notebook) for later use in his writing, so Likhachev records that on Solovki, ‘questions of language and linguistic culture became one of the most important topics of our conversation’ (p.139). He notes that the philosopher A. A. Meier’s work on myth and language was begun there (p. 137), while Likhachev’s own first published work after his release was a socio-linguistic article on criminal slang (‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivisma vorovskoi rechi’). Later generations of prisoners and writers, in particular Solzhenitsyn (see The Oak and the Calf, p. 114) and Siniavsky (in Voice from the Chorus), also developed an interest in labour camp and criminal language, collected it and made great use of it in their works. The question of language represents the starting point for the paper I’m writing, so at this point I shall bring these musings to a close.

Sources

Archpriest Avvakum, The Life, written by Himself, ed. and trans. Kenneth Bostrom (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Translations, 1979) Russian | parallel text
G.R.V. Barratt, ed., Voices in Exile: The Decembrist Memoirs (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974)
 F M Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1972-1990)
James Goodwin, Confronting Dostoevsky’s Demon: Anarchism and the Specter of Bakunin in Twentieth-Century Russia (New York: Peter Lang, 2010)
Gustav Herling, A World Apart, trans. Joseph Marek (London: Heinemann, 1986; first publ. 1951)
Eduard Kuznetsov, Prison Diaries,  trans. Howard Spier (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1975)
Dmitry S. Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, trans. Bernard Adams, ed. A. R. Tulloch (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000)
D. S. Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivisma vorovskoi rechi,’ Iazyk i myshlenie, 3-4 (1935)б 47-100
Varlam Shalamov, Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow: Terra, 2004-5)
Andrei Sinyavsky, Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History, trans. Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov (New York: Arcade, 1990)
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf: A Memoir, trans. Harry Willetts (New York: Harper & Row, 1979)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (vols 1 & 2), Harry Willetts (vol 3) [publ details] vol 1 | vol 2 | vol 3
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, trans. Max Hayward, Manya Harari and Michael Glenny (London: Collins Harvill, 1988; first publ 1968)
Valeriy Tarsis, Ward 7, trans. Katya Brown (London & Glasgow: Collins Harvill, 1965)
Abram Terts [Andrei Siniavskii], A Voice from the Chorus, trans. Kiril Fitzlyon (London: Collins Harvill, 1976)
Yuri Trifonov, Another Life and The House on the Embankment, trans. Michael Glenny (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1999)
V. A. Tunimanov, ‘Dostoevskii, B. L. Pasternak i V. T. Shalamov: skreshchen’e sudeb, poeticheskikh motivov, metafor‘, in F. M. Dostoevskii i russkie pisateli XX veka (St Petersburg, 2004), pp. 272-379

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by on May 6, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on May 6, 2012

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/05/06/dostoevsky-and-the-gulag/

The Free Russian Press in London

Front cover of Polianaia zvezda, 1855

When I wrote a post on Herzen in London, my focus was primarily on the man himself, rather than his publishing activities. But much of the discussion generated by the post recently has focused on the Free Russian Press (Вольная русская типография), leading me to conduct some further research, supported significantly by the contributions of three readers: Richard Ekins, Sean Mitchell and Hilary Chapman (their comments can be read in the discussion thread here). As the comments show, the emphasis has been on building a case for the Marchmont Association in Bloomsbury to approve a plaque commemorating the Free Russian Press. Herzen has fallen somewhat out of scholarly fashion of late, but the Press played a hugely important role in Russian political and intellectual life both at home and in emigration, so it is certainly worth celebrating, particularly in this year of his bicentenary. In this post, to mark the anniversary itself (Herzen was born in Moscow on 6 April 1812), I want to bring together all the evidence into a (hopefully) more readable narrative, and untangle the confusion that for some reason has previously surrounded the Press, and has led to some rather muddled versions of events appearing in various studies of Herzen over the years.

Alexander Herzen established the Free Russian Press in the spring or early summer of 1853, less than a year after his arrival in London. In an open letter of 20 May 1853 to the editors of Democratic Poland [Польский демократ], alongside whose press the Free Russian Press would initially be housed, Herzen stated: ‘Основание русской типографии в Лондоне является делом наиболее практически революционным, какое русский может сегодня предпринять в ожидании исполнения иных, лучших дел.’ [The founding of a Russian press in London is the most practical revolutionary action a Russian can undertake today in anticipation of fulfilling of other, better actions.] Aleksandr Gertsen, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1954-65), XII, p. 79. (Further references to this edition will be given as volume and page numbers in parentheses, with links to the on-line edition which can, however, be somewhat temperamental.)

While Herzen’s initial announcement, ‘ВОЛЬНОЕ РУССКОЕ КНИГОПЕЧАТАНИЕ В ЛОНДОНЕ: БРАТЬЯМ НА РУСИ’ [A Free Russian Press in London: to our Brothers in Russia], stated that the Press would open on 1 May 1853 (‘С первого мая 1853 типография будет открыта’, XII, p. 64), other evidence points to a slightly later date. In the article ’РУССКАЯ ТИПОГРАФИЯ В ЛОНДОНЕ’ [The Russian Press in London] Herzen dates it to 1 June 1853 (XII, p. 237): : ‘С 1 июня 1853 наш печатный станок не прекращал работу, несмотря на все осложнения’ [Since 1 June 1853 our printing press hasn't ceased working, despite all the difficulties]. However, the amazingly useful Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena, 1851-1858 [A Chronicle of the Life and Works of Alexander Herzen, 1851-1858], ed. B. F. Egorov et al (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), p. 150, dates the start of the press even later, to 22 June 1853, citing as evidence a letter to Maria Reichel, dated 25 (13) June 1853  (XXV, p. 77), in which Herzen he writes ‘Типография взошла в действие в ту же середу [sic]‘ [The press went into action this Wednesday]. But the waters are muddied further by a comment a few pages earlier in another letter to Maria Reichel (XXV, p. 69), dated 30 May 1853, on the publication in the Polish journal of his article «Юрьев день! Юрьев день!» [St George's Day!]: ‘Типография шумит и идет вперед’ [The press is making a racket and moving forward]. It’s hard to see why Herzen would make such a comment about the supposedly already-established Polish press, but if the Russian press was already working by this point, why would this important article – a call for the emancipation of the serfs – have appeared in the Polish journal? Combined with the later letter, it suggests a brief period during which the setting up of the Press was in progress, but perhaps nothing had yet actually been published.

Du Developpement de Idees Revolutionnaires en Russie, imprint from the front matter

If there remains some doubt about the precise starting date of the Press, it is possible to establish its exact location: 38 Regent Square. The title pages of one of Herzen’s major publications from 1853, Du Developpement de Idees Revolutionnaires en Russie, provide evidence of both the date and address (and indeed, the original publications – or, in most cases, the facsimile versions published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, for surprisingly few of these editions have made it onto either Google books or archive.org – have proved the most reliable source of information for much of this research).

Title page of Du Developpement de Idees Revolutionnaires...

Regent Square, situated between Tavistock Place and Sidmouth Street, still has some original buildings, but sadly it seems that no. 38 was on the northern side of the square, which has been redeveloped, where the Eastern block of Rodmell House now stands.

Rodmell House, Regent Square, location of former 38 Regent Square

And although it would be lovely to discover this was the same address that housed subsequent generations of revolutionary exiles, my suspicion is that there was no such continuity. Nevertheless, Regent Square and the streets next to it certainly provided a home to Eastern European revolutionaries for many years; my post on Lenin in London records some of the residents in the vicinity.

The arrangement with the Polish Democratic Society lasted almost eighteen months, until December 1854. In Byloe i dumy [My Past and Thoughts], Herzen describes the meeting with Stanislaw Worcell in November 1854 which decided on the split of the two presses (XI, pp. 141-3). He told Worcell, ’я напишу письмо, в котором скажу, что хозяйственные распоряжения заставляют меня перевести типографию, но что это не только не значит, что мы расходимся, но, напротив — что у нас вместо одной будут две типографии. Письмо это вы можете напечатать, если желаете, или показать кому угодно.’ [I will write a letter in which I say that economic arrangements force me to move the press, but this does not mean that we are splitting up - on the contrary, instead of one press there will be two. You can publish this letter if you want to, or show it to whomever you want]. The ‘economic arrangements’ were the debts of Leon Zienkowicz, in whose name the lease on 38 Regent Square was signed, which meant the bailiffs were expected (p. 142).

At this point the Free Russian Press moved into its first independent premises at 82 Judd Street, Bloomsbury. The announcement ‘РУССКАЯ ТИПОГРАФИЯ В ЛОНДОНЕ’ (XII, pp. 237-8) states: ‘Можно непосредственно обращаться в русскую типографию, 82, Judd street, Brunswick Square, Londres, à M. L. Czerniecki’ [The Russian Press can be addressed immediately at 82 Judd Street...]. This is the final entry in the volume of the Complete Works listed under 1854, and the editors’ commentary (XII, pp. 531-2) gives several indicators in the text to confirm this date. Moreover, a letter from Herzen to Worcell of 22 (10) December 1854 (XXV, p. 221) states: ‘вы уже знаете от гражданина Жабицкого, что перемещение Русской типографии было вызвано чисто экономическими соображениями. Позвольте же мне еще раз повторить вам это. Ничто не изменилось в наших отношениях — только у нас теперь две типографии вместо одной.’ [You already know from citizen Zabicki that the relocation of the Russian press arose out of purely economic considerations. Allow me to repeat that to you once more. Nothing has changed in our relations - only we now have two presses instead of one.] The use of the past perfective here implies the move has already happened, and Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena agrees, dating the separation of the Free Russian Press from the Polish Democratic Society and move to 82 Judd Street to around 20 December 1854 (p. 216).

Happily, 82 Judd Street is one of the few original buildings from that period to survive on the street, and has been located by Richard Ekins as the present-day 61 Judd Street, now home to Bloomsbury Design.

 

82 (61) Judd Street

It was at this address that the work of the Free Russian Press really took off. In 1855, Herzen published the first volume of Poliarnaia zvezda [Polar Star].

Title page of Poliarnaia zvezda, 1855: 82 Judd Street

Much of the first volume was written by Herzen himself, although there were also letters by Michelet, Proudhon, Mazzini, and Hugo, and the correspondence between Belinsky and Gogol. In the following year, in addition to the second volume of Polianaia zvezda, the first volume of the collection Golosa iz Rossii [Voices from Russia], which featured articles by Konstantin Kavelin and Boris Chicherin, was also published at the same address:

Title page for Golosa iz Rossii, 1856: 82 Judd Street

In April 1856 Nikolai Ogarev arrived in London and joined Herzen in working on the Press. Perhaps this, and the success Poliarnaia zvezda in particular was enjoying precipitated the next move. On 11 December (29 Nov) 1856, the Press was still located at 82 Judd Street; in a letter to Malwida von Meysenbug on that date (vol XXVI, p. 53), Herzen wrote, ‘вы можете по-прежнему писать Чернецкому: 82 Judd Street, Brunswick Sq<uare> (т. е. на типографию), так как я не знаю его домашнего адреса.’ [You can always write to Czerniecki at 82 Judd Street ... (that is, to the press), as I don't know his home address].

But less than a week later, the Press had already moved. Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena (p. 315) states that the second edition of the pamphlet Kreshchenaia sobstvennost’ [Baptised Property] was published (with a new introduction) in 1857 with a new address: 2 Judd Street. ‘На этой брошюре впервые обозначен новый адрес В.Р.Т.: 2 Judd Street, Bruswick Square. Помещалась здесь до 1 Марта 1860.’ [This pamphlet contains the first reference to the new address of the F.R.P: 2 Judd Street, Brunswick Square. The press was based here until March 1860]. The official publication date for this second edition is 1857 (see item no. 22 in this bibliography), but the new introduction is dated 25 October 1856 in the Complete Works (XII, pp. 94-6).

Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena (p. 315) in fact dates the publication to ‘Around 16 December 1856,’ which seems to be confirmed by a letter to Maria Reichel of 16 (4) December 1856 (XXVI, p. 53): ‘Еще посылаю вам втор<ое> изд<ание> «Крещеной собственности» — там следует прочесть введение.’ [I am also sending you the second edition of 'Kreshchenaia sobstvennost'' - it's worth reading the introduction.] This does strongly suggest that it was already in print.

As established by Ricci de Freitas, Chair of the Marchmont Association, the building at 2 Judd Street – straight across the road from the first independent premises of the Press – has long since disappeared, replaced by the dog-walking area and toilet.

Judd Street dog toilet

(Insert appropriate comment about the dustbin of history here.)

Other evidence supports the fact that 2 Judd Street was the second independent address of the Press, following 82 Judd Street (the reverse order has been given in more than one publication), for example a letter to Maria Reichel from 24 (12) October 1857 (XXVI, p. 133): ‘Говорите всем русским, чтоб адресовались в типографию к Чернецкому, — это гораздо вернее, и рукописи бы посылали так же. Адрес на всякой книжке найдут: 2 Judd Street, Brunswick Square.’ [Tell all the Russians to address things Czerniecki at the press - that's more correct, and manuscripts could also be sent there. The address can be found on any [of our] books: 2 Judd Street, Brunswick Square.’]

It was at 2 Judd Street that the Free Russian Press achieved its greatest success, as it was here that Kolokol [The Bell] was first produced. The publication was initially announced in the third volume of Poliarnaia zvezda (giving the 2 Judd Street address), dated 13 April 1857 (XII, pp. 357-8), and the first edition of Kolokol was published on 1 July 1857, the 2 Judd Street address appearing beneath the title.

Front page of Kolokol issue 1 (1 July 1857): 2 Judd Street

Kolokol (as well as the other publications) continued to be produced at 2 Judd Street for more than two and a half years. The final issue of Kolokol to appear from that address was no. 63, dated 15 February 1860:

Front page of Kolokol issue 63 (15 February 1860): 2 Judd Street

The next issue, dated 1 March 1860, is addressed 5 Thornhill Place, Caledonian Road:

Front page of Kolokol issue 64 (1 March 1860): 5 Thornhill Place

As we’re now moving out of the immediate Bloomsbury area, this is essentially where my research ends for the time being, so just to sketch in the rest of the history of the Free Russian Press in London: 5 Thornhill Place was incorporated into Caledonian Road whilst the Press was sited there. The change must have taken place around June 1862, as the 1 July 1862 edition of Kolokol has the address 136 & 138 Caledonian Road. (See Sean Mitchell’s and Hilary Chapman’s notes dated 24 and 27 February, and 4 April, in the original comments thread on this question.) This address does still exist, although I was surprised to find that the two houses were in separate blocks (138 on the left of the picture is part of the block that was obviously originally on Thornhill Place, but which has now been opened up to form a sort of square on Caledonian Road itself).

136 and 138 Caledonian Road

I wonder whether the Press initially occupied only one of these buildings (138?), and then expanded operations into the other – this seems to me the most likely solution, though I need to do a bit more digging to see if there is any evidence for this.

The Free Russian Press moved from Thornhill Place/Caledonian Road in July 1863, with Herzen’s address at Elmfield House, Teddington being given on subsequent issues of Kolokol. This was the period of the Press’s decline following its support for the Polish uprising in that year, as I described in my previous post; one assumes that by this stage larger premises were no longer either required or possible. Then, as Hilary Chapman states in the comments (9 March 2012), from July 1864 ‘until the final edition of Kolokol published in England [in 1865], the address of the press was given as Jessamine Cottage, New Hampton, Middlesex.’ I have also come across this final address elsewhere, but more research into the post-Judd Street addresses will have to wait for now, in particular the question of whether the Press was in fact also situated here during the Elmfield House period. (I’m not sure, however, that Hampton could be described as a ten-minute walk from the Herzen residence.)

Having collated the evidence here, I’ll return to other aspects in future posts, including Herzen’s place in Bloomsbury’s literary history, and my thoughts on undertaking and presenting collaborative on-line research. But I would like to reiterate my thanks to Richard Ekins, Sean Mitchell and Hilary Chapman for their contributions and for making this process so interesting and enjoyable.

Sources consulted

E. H. Carr, The Romantic Exiles: A Nineteenth-Century Portrait Gallery (London: Victor Gollancz, 1933)

B. F. Egorov et al, Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena, 1851-1858 (Moscow: Nauka, 1976)

A. I. Gertsen, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1954-65)

Francoise Kunka, Alexander Herzen and the Free Russian Press in London, 1852-1866 (Saarbrucken: Lmbert Academic Publishing, 2011)

Martin A. Miller, The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 1825-1870 (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1986)

Monica Partridge, Alexander Herzen, 1812-1870 (Paris: Unesco, 1984)

Monica Partridge, ‘Alexander Herzen and the English Press’, Slavonic and East European Review, 36 (1958), 453-470

Kate Sealey Rahman, ‘Russian Revolutionaries in London, 1853-70: Alexander Herzen and the Free Russian Press’, in Foreign-Language Printing in London 1500-1900, ed. Barry Taylor (Boston Spa and London: The British :Library, 2002), pp. 227-40

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by on April 6, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on April 6, 2012

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/04/06/the-free-russian-press-in-london/

BASEES 2012 highlights

I was quite busy with committee business during the BASEES conference, but did manage to attend a few panels, and want to pick out a few highlights from what everyone I spoke to agreed was a very stimulating and enjoyable weekend.

A Monday morning panel on Gulag literature may not be everybody’s idea of fun, but it was very lively. Josephine von Zitzewitz’s paper on the nature poetry of Shalamov and Zabolotsky was particularly interesting for me, not least in terms of her discussion of his use of classical forms and the absence of formal experimentation. It seems to me that Shalamov was consciously splitting off the ‘positive’ sides of his experience into his poetry in order to use his stories to develop his ideas about the negative side of the camps – the side that nobody should ever have to see or experience – and Josie’s analysis made me realize that happens on a formal and stylistic level as well as in the content.

There was also an inevitably inconclusive discussion of what counts as ‘Gulag literature’ and whether we should even use the terms. One of the problems is that there are so many different experiences of the camps – Andrea Gullotta’s paper on the literature produced in the Solovki camps in the 1920s being a case in point – that defining it according to a single set of common tropes, in the way that has been attempted by certain critics, is extremely problematic. Do we include literature about the repressions more generally, such as Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna or Akhmatova’s Requiem, as one contributor suggested? Are these really ‘Gulag literature’? If they are, then there’s an argument for saying that for a significant proportion of the twentieth century, Gulag literature and Russian literature are practically identical. And what about the term ‘Gulag literature’ itself? It defines the genre (if we can so describe it) in Solzhenitsyn’s terms, and therefore already suggests a particular interpretation (Shalamov, for example, rarely used the term ‘Gulag’, and conceived of his writing in a very different way). Partly because of my work on Shalamov, and partly because I also work on nineteenth century works, I’ve started avoiding ‘Gulag’ and often refer to ‘labour camp’ instead, but this perhaps risks a loss of recognition, as ‘Gulag’ has become so ubiquitous.

In a panel on late Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Katia Shulga discussed the uncanny imagery of dead brides in Dombrovsky’s novels The Keeper of Antiquities and The Faculty of Useless Knowledge. An interesting comparison between the Stalinist context and the Roman empire was briefly discussed, which started me thinking about the idea of empires in the novel. Also, given the recurring references to snakes and skulls that Katia also identified, I wonder whether there is an allusion to Oleg Veshchii, or Pushkin’s version of this story, and the foundations of Rus’. It really made me realize how richly textured Dombrovsky’s works are – I really wish I had time to re-read those books to explore this further. Sarah Hudspith’s paper on the same panel on women writers’ depictions of Moscow in the 1990s generated a lot of interest. I didn’t know all of the texts (but obviously now need to read them too…), but was fascinated by the transition from Moscow as a hostile space to becoming a more welcoming milieu, and the fact that this was also accompanied by a sense of the city becoming less mappable. I would have expected the opposite to be the case, so this raises a question about the connection between the readability of the city in de Certeau’s terms, and its liveability.

Lots to think about there, and some parallels emerging with my own topic – I gave a paper on street theatre and Petrushka motifs in Crime and Punishment and Nekrasov’s Physiology of Petersburg, a topic that arose out of the spatial analysis I undertook for the pilot for Mapping St Petersburg. I got a really good response from the audience, and some great suggestions to follow up – forays into German and French literature beckon. I was thinking about an article on this material, but it’s already looking bigger than that.

I also learned a lot from a very entertaining panel I chaired on the image of the scientist in east European socialist fiction, which featured lots of life (and death) rays. Once again I’ve vowed to put the Strugatsky brothers on my reading list – one day I will get round to reading them! Finally, the following panels all looked really interesting, but I didn’t manage to get to any of them, because of clashes or other duties: Russia’s 2011-12 electoral cycle: first reflections; the politics of deviance in Socialist states; the Soviet past in the Post-Soviet present; Stalinism and its legacy (particularly sad to miss the paper about the Road to Magadan); Memory, Identity and the writing of History; For a National Cause? Hapsburg, Ottoman and Russian Urban Tourism in the 19th and early 20th centuries; Russian presence in Britain: Historicising the Recent Past; Russian Geopolitics, History and National Identity; Literature and Culture: Russia and the West.

Next year’s BASEES conference is a larger scale European congress, to be held from 5 to 8 April 2013.

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by on April 2, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on April 2, 2012

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/04/02/basees-2012-highlights/

Four short links (and more): the art of protest

I don’t do politics on this blog, but political art is allowed, and there have been some particularly good examples of creative protest and subversive art in Russia recently. So, while I’m stuck at home with pneumonia, a little round-up to pass the time, because I haven’t got the energy to do anything more taxing. It has, however, turned out to be rather more than four links…

1. Toy protests. First in Barnaul, then in Minsk, the idea of miniature protests really captures the imagination, and has taken on a distinctly kafkaesque dimension as the toys have been banned from protesting on the grounds that they are not Russian citizens. The best photo gallery is Ivan Krupchik’s Nanomeeting in Barnaul and France 24 has a couple of good videos in this report. See also The Guardian’s video of the repeat performance in Barnaul, and Charter 97′s video of the Minsk protest.

2. Pussy Riot. The anonymous feminist punk band has made quite a splash with performances in Red Square and – my favourite (blasphemy as well!) – in the church of Christ the Saviour earlier this week. Miriam Elder’s interview in The Guardian gives a good account of their rise to prominence.

3. Videos. Some brilliant satirical videos have appeared lately, from Putin behind bars, to the cat kompromat interview with ‘Boris Nemtsov’, to a new favourite I’ve just seen – this great Putin cartoon (‘Putin can do anything he wants’, the chorus goes).

4. Gruppa Voina. Voina’s scandalous artworks, most famously the giant penis painted on Liteinyi bridge next to the FSB headquarters in Petersburg, predate the current protests, but have received renewed attention in the light of recent events. Their latest activities, notably burning a police truck, have divided opinion: Anna Nemtsova in The Daily Beast sees it as a step too far, while Sarah Swong in The Globalist uses the event to discuss whether Voina’s work is art. Nick Sturdee’s article from November last year provides the best and most in-depth coverage of the group’s work.

Plus an honourable mention for posters: The Daily Beast has a decent gallery, and this article from RT also has pictures of some good examples.

And if you only follow one link from this post, The Stream has an excellent discussion of the protests and the art they have inspired, featuring Sean Guillory, with photos and links to other videos.

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by on February 24, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on February 24, 2012

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/02/24/four-short-links-and-more-the-art-of-protest/

Four short links: intergalactic zombie agriculture!

… or Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov’s Philosophy of the Common Task. One comes across many extraordinary figures and ideas in Russian literature and intellectual history, but Fedorov stands out even in this exalted company. Fedorov’s ‘common task’, to which all human activity should be directed, was achieving immortality for all, including the dead, who would thereby be resurrected. He advocated space flight in order to find cosmic elements that would advance the science of resurrection, and then, once universal resurrection had been effected, to colonize other planets, because obviously all these undead folk would need somewhere to live. And he proposed using technology to transform agriculture in the aid of man’s search for immortality, for example by changing weather patterns. Hence ‘intergalactic zombie agriculture’, the term coined by a non-Russianist friend I was explaining this to, who – not unreasonably, in my view – felt it was quite possibly the best idea ever. Fedorov was extremely influential, and highly regarded by the likes of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Solov’ev. Quite a few of the technological developments he envisaged have come into existence or been experimented with, so dismiss him at your peril. And if that wasn’t enough, he rejected copyright and was an early proponent of open access publishing.

Anyway, I’m teaching him on my Russian Thought course next week, which seemed like a good opportunity to gather together a few links.

1. N. F. Fyodorov, What Was Man Created For: The Philosophy of the Common Task. Selected works translated and abridged by Elisabeth Koutaissoff and Marilyn Minto. The key text ‘The Question of Brotherhood or Relatedness…’ (Vopros o bratstve, ili rodstve…’) is available in Russian here, while this site also provides a list of links to Fedorov’s works.

2. Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A useful introduction to his thought.

3. N. A. Berdyaev, The Religion of Resusciative Resurrection. A seminal essay on Fedorov from 1915, Berdyaev’s argument that Fedorov was a pragmatist may seem counter-intuitive at first, but it makes a lot of sense. The Russian text is available here.

4. Nikolai Fedorov and the Dawn of the Post-Human, by Nader Elhefnawy. A decent account of Fedorov’s legacy for the development of space flight. See also Resurrecting Nikolai Fedorov.

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by on February 15, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on February 15, 2012

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Mapping Gogol: Methodology

As part of our work to expand Mapping St Petersburg and develop the idea of experimenting with literary cartography, we have produced two maps visualizing the spatial arrangement of Gogol’s Peterburg Tales. The first marks all the place references in the five stories, Nevskii prospekt, The Portrait, The Diary of a Madman, The Nose and The Overcoat, while the second differentiates between the places where the action occurs, and the spaces to which the characters and narrators refer. Both maps represent the starting point of a distance-reading analysis that will in due course result in additional maps. I’ll discuss the idea behind the second map in another post, but today I want to address a rather more general and basic question about the placement of markers, and consider how to map Nevskii prospekt, both the story and the street.

When mapping Crime and Punishment, the question of where to place markers seldom arose; Dostoevsky’s novel is so detailed in its use of Petersburg locations, and so much extra-textual information is available, for example to confirm the prototypes of the dwellings of most of the main characters, that whatever the other problems presented by the topography of that work (mainly because of its complexity) knowing which buildings required markers was not one of them. Gogol’s stories present a very different picture; while particular institutions, bridges, and named buildings do appear, the majority of references are to streets and general areas, with no further specification.

The lack of a strong reason to place a marker at one point on a street rather than another is not the only issue. The incompatibility of points and polygons presents an additional conundrum; if placing a single point marker is not ideal, then marking the entire street equally fails to resolve the problem. It might be appropriate when a character is walking down a street, as with Pirogov in Nevskii prospekt:

One day, when strolling down Meshchanskaia, he kept glancing at the house adorned by Schiller’s signboard with its coffee pots and samovars; to his great joy, he saw the blonde woman’s head leaning out of the window and watching the passers-by. (pp. 39-40; marker no. 28)

But this is not always the case. Consider Chartkov’s first steps following his change of fortune in The Portrait: ‘… he bought lots of scents, pomades; rented, without bargaining, the first magnificent apartment on Nevskii prospekt that came along…’ (p. 89; marker no. 36)

Obviously here the character moves to a particular apartment in a particular building, not the entire street. It’s an important moment in changing the spatial trajectory of the story, but how and where to geo-reference it is unclear. So far I haven’t found a better answer to this question than Richard Dennis’s comment from his brilliant and thought-provoking essay on mapping Gissing: ‘faced with less than perfect topographical information, mapping is an imprecise art. [...] the mapmaker has to be granted some creative licence!’ (Richard Dennis, ‘Mapping Gissing’s Workers of the Dawn‘, Maps, ed. Ross Bradshaw (Nottingham: Five Leaves, 2011), pp. 49-74 (p. 51))

Bearing this in mind, my thinking in producing the Gogol maps was that in assessing whether there is any reason to place a marker at a particular point, to take the stories as a whole, rather than as isolated works. For example, the view of the Neva in Piskarev’s painting of his room in Nevskii prospekt gives no indication of which part of the river should be marked:

He paints his room in perspective, with all sorts of artistic rubbish appearing in it: [...] broken easels, an overturned palette, a friend playing a guitar, paint-stained walls, and an open window through which comes a glimpse of the pale Neva and poor fishermen in red shirts. (pp.14-15)

But here reference to another artist, Chartkov in The Portrait, living on the 15th Line of Vasilevskii Island (no. 33), suggested sufficient similarity to place the Neva marker as though viewed from such a location (no. 21). Elsewhere, in the absence of any reason to do otherwise, I placed markers approximately at the mid-point of the street (Nevskii prospekt is an exception I discuss below); avoiding overlapping markers was a reason to choose a different point where possible.

So in its detail, the map does not make any claims to absolute accuracy; many of the points should be seen as general rather than specific indicators, and what is important is the clusters of points around particular streets and areas, rather than pin-pointing exact locations. I hope the reasons for this will become clear when we publish more maps.

Nevskii prospekt presents a somewhat different problem. The opening of the story Nevskii prospekt, with its seven-page hymn to the street, ‘There’s nothing better than Nevskii prospekt, at least in Petersburg…’ (p. 7), cannot simply be marked by a single point, not least because the emphasis in the description is on its varied characteristics and changing appearance throughout the day. And that temporal aspect creates another challenge: how to convey the passage of time (a significant problem for mapping any narrative, and one I will definitely return to in the future)?

My solution – and again I stress this was a creative decision – was to plot the passage of time as movement through space, by marking the transitions in the narrator’s focus as progressive points along Nevskii prospekt. My reasoning here was that Nevskii itself is always on the move and never static; not only is it a main artery for moving people around the city, but in this story and others by Gogol, as well as in the writings of Dostoevsky and many other Petersburg authors, Nevskii is precisely the place for strolling. Given that the street as he describes it in this extended passage is so full of movement, it seems natural to envision the narrative perspective is similarly mobile; moreover, the story that emerges at the end of the description is of two men who have been strolling down Nevskii pursuing the women they see there, which suggests this final transition is a continuation of the previous mode of narration. This final point also influenced the direction of travel, from East to West, as the switch to action is signalled by a reference to the shadows reaching the Police Bridge (now Green Bridge) over the Moika (marker no. 20), suggesting this is the point where they go their separate ways.

This seems to me therefore to be a solution that works and is justified, though others may, of course, beg to differ. But as well as making me find a solution, mapping the story also made me realize that while I might be able to geo-reference certain points in certain texts easily, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to literary cartography; it is always going to have to take account of the different features of individual texts, and even references to the same street, square or building may have to be treated various ways according to how they appear in the texts. Mapping can be an aid to interpretation, but it is already interpretation itself.

Quotations from Gogol are taken from: N. V. Gogol’, Sobranie sochinenie v shesti tomakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1952), vol. 3.

Cross-posted with Mapping St Petersburg.

2 Comments
by on January 29, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on January 29, 2012

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/01/29/mapping-gogol-methodology/

Dostoevsky in English

I haven’t posted anything for a while, but having got over pre-Christmas flu, festivities, and catching up with work after both, I am now back in the saddle. I decided to post a list of links to English translations of Dostoevsky’s works, partly because someone suggested it would useful, partly to have an overview what’s available and in how many versions, and also so that I can find the links when I need them – for original Russian texts, lib.ru has everything except most of Dostoevsky’s correspondence, so one rarely needs to look further (I would however recommend conradish.net for Russian learners, as it has useful reading aids), but translations are a bit more scattered, and even the most complete collection – the University of Adelaide Ebooks series – does not have everything that is available. I’ve included links to everything I could find, giving multiple versions because different formats may be useful for different things, and you never know whether some may disappear. Most of the translations available on-line are Constance Garnett’s, but there are also a few versions by other people, including Fred Whishaw and Marie von Thilo – I’ve used * in the separate works lists to indicates those that are not by Garnett, but I may have missed a few, and there are a couple where I’m not 100% sure whose version it is.

It comes as no surprise to discover that Crime and Punishment is available on the largest number of websites, but it is perhaps more surprising that this is the only text available in a dual language version – I would have thought the internet was ideal for presenting side-by-side texts, and it would be really useful for students. Let’s hope someone takes the hint and we see more parallel texts in future. At the other end of the scale, there were a few stories that were proving rather elusive, including a couple of my favourites, A Nasty Story and Another Man’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed, but I did eventually manage to track them down in a collection on Archive.org (translated as An Unpleasant Predicament and Another Man’s Wife - managing to turn possibly the best story title ever into something quite mundane!), while The Landlady (definitely not a favourite) eventually turned up in two different collections, with Garnett’s version of The Gambler and Hogarth’s version of Notes from Underground.

There is, on the other hand, hardly any of Dostoevsky’s non-fictional work available, which is a great pity, because it deserves a wider readership than it usually gets. There is Google books preview of Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, but not the complete text. There’s very little of his journalism, because very little of it has been translated. The only bits of Diary of a Writer that are available are the short stories and one slim volume that features a couple of pieces, while from the earlier period I particularly regret the absence of his brilliant Petersburg feuilletons. On the other hand, there are two early volumes letters and reminiscences, which I wasn’t really expecting to find. So I think there’s enough to keep most people going. I hope other people will find the list useful, and if you do come across any versions I’ve not included – particularly if you find any more of the non-fiction – please let me know and I’ll update.

Pre-exile works

Poor Folk Ebooks@Adelaide | Literature Network | Project Gutenberg | Archive.org

The Double Ebooks@Adelaide | Eserver Collection | Literature Network

White Nights Ebooks@Adelaide

Mr Prokharchin Ebooks@Adelaide

A Faint Heart Ebooks@Adelaide

Polzunkov Ebooks@Adelaide

A Little Hero Ebooks@Adelaide

A Christmas Tree and a Wedding Ebooks@Adelaide | Literature Network

Works of the 1860s

Insulted and Injured Ebooks@Adelaide | Eserver Collection (incomplete) | Literature Network |Archive.org* | other

House of the Dead, or Prison Life in Siberia Project Gutenberg | Archive.org | Free Fiction Books| Archive.org [2]*

Uncle’s Dream Ebooks@Adelaide

The Permanent Husband Ebooks@Adelaide

The Crocodile Ebooks@Adelaide | Eserver Collection | Literature Network

Notes from Underground Ebooks@Adelaide | Eserver Collection | Literature Network | Project Gutenberg | Archive.org | Free Fiction Books

Crime and Punishment Ebooks@Adelaide | Eserver Collection | Literature Network | Archive.org | Russia Today | dual language version | Free Fiction Books | other

The Gambler Ebooks@Adelaide | Literature Network | Project Gutenberg | Free Fiction Books*

The Idiot Ebooks@Adelaide | Literature Network | Project Gutenberg | Archive.org* | The Free Library | Free Fiction Books*

Works of the 1870s

The Possessed Ebooks@Adelaide | Literature Network | Project Gutenberg | Free Fiction Books

A Raw Youth Ebooks@Adelaide | Archive.org

Bobok Ebooks@Adelaide | Literature Network | About.com

A Gentle Spirit Ebooks@Adelaide | Eserver Collection | Literature Network

The Little Orphan (A Little Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree) Literature Network | other

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Ebooks@Adelaide | Literature Network

The Brothers Karamazov Ebooks@Adelaide | Eserver Collection | Literature Network | Project Gutenberg | Archive.org | Free Fiction Books | other

Collections

Short stories by Fiodor Dostoievski [includes An Honest Thief, A Novel in Nine Letters, An Unpleasant Predicament, Another Man's Wife, The Peasant Marey, and others]

The Novels of Dostoevsky: Nyetochka Nyezvanov [sic] and The Friend of the Family (The Village of Stepanchikovo and its Inhabitants)

The Friend of the Family, and The Gambler

Poor Folk and The Gambler

The Gambler and Other Stories [includes Poor People and The Landlady]

Letters from the Underworld, trans. C. J. Hogarth [includes A Gentle Maiden (A Gentle Spirit) and The Landlady]

Uncle’s Dream and the Permanent Husband, trans. Fred Whishaw

Pages from the Journal of an Author, trans. S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry (1916), including the speech delivered at the Pushkin Memorial on 8th June 1880

White Nights and Other Stories (also on Free Fiction Books)

Correspondence & reminiscences

Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his family and friends, trans. Ethel Colburn Mayne (1914)

Dostoevsky: Letters and Reminiscences, trans. S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry (1923), including selections from Anna Grigorevna Dostoevskaya’s reminiscences.

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by on January 16, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on January 16, 2012

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/01/16/dostoevsky-in-english/

Top ten letters in Russian literature

Letters play a significant role in some of my favourite works of Russian literature, and a couple in particular have been very much on my mind lately. So here is my top ten, which manages to encompass everything from the absurd to the tragic. Apologies for the plot spoilers (especially in entries 10, 7 and 4), which were unavoidable. I adhere to my usual rule that no writer may appear more than once.

10. Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time. The letter Vera writes to Pechorin in ‘Princess Mary’, in which she informs him she is leaving and will never see him again, is remarkable not so much in itself as for the reaction it causes. Pechorin, so cool and calculated in his actions elsewhere, rides after her in such a frenzy that he kills his horse. The image of his anguish outlasts his own acid comment, ‘anyone who saw me at that moment would have turned away in contempt’. Russian text | English text

9. Olesha, Envy. Two letters feature prominently in part one the novel as important expressions of their authors’ personalities. Kavalerov’s outburst of hatred for the man who saved him, in chapter 11, fixes the dominant characteristics we have already defined, but Volodya’s letter, in chapter 13, is downright sinister, admitting his jealousy of Kavalerov, and hinting at a viciousness we might otherwise not suspect in his character. Meanwhile his paean to the machine has become a key passage in the formation of the New Soviet Man. Russian text

8. Babel, Salt. This skaz narrative takes the form of a letter from a soldier, Nikita Balmashev, describing an incident on a train, in which a woman’s deception is discovered and punished. Full of mangled Bolshevik jargon and horrifying in its casual violence, this is far from being the only letter in Red Cavalry, but it is, I think, the most memorable. Russian text

7. Shalamov, Injector. There are, understandably, few humorous moments in Kolyma Tales, but this story – a classic urban myth-type tale about a machine being mistaken for a convict – is a notable exception. Many letters feature in the stories, because receiving them was such an important moment in the lives of the convicts, but I love this one in particular, although the context is very different, because it provides such a rare glimpse of Shalamov’s playful side, but also because of its brilliant execution of Soviet officialese. Russian text

6. Pushkin, Evgeny Onegin. In a work that in so many ways turns on reading and writing – and was probably responsible for the persistence of these themes in Russian literature – Tatyana’s letter to Onegin acts as the culmination of her literary education. Was ever a love letter so misplaced? Russian text | English text

5. Gogol, Diary of a Madman. Letter-writing dogs – what more could you want? (Letter-writing cats is the obvious answer to that, but we can’t have everything, and in any case cats clearly wouldn’t be interested in the minutiae of their owners’ – sorry, servants’ – lives.) Punctuation and spelling are all correct, even if Poprishchin notes something a bit ‘doggy’ in the style. Russian text | English text

4. Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna. Another work in which letters play a significant role, it is the final one, from the heroine’s incarcerated son Kolya, that is really heart-rending, in part because of his innocent inquiries about friends whose fates we have witnessed, but of which he is unaware, but mainly because of his mother’s response. Having devoted her entire life to Kolya, Sofia Petrovna’s final act is to betray him, destroying the letter and deciding not to write an appeal as he requests. One of the best depictions of the madness and moral compromises of the Stalin era. English text

3. Teffi, Subtly Worded. Teffi’s evocations of emigré life are hilarious, and this fabulous little anecdote about the complexities of aesopian language and evading the censorship is possibly my favourite. Russian text | English text

2. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. Letters abound in Dostoevsky’s fiction, from his first, epistolary novel, Poor Folk, to Prince Myshkin’s letter to Aglaya in The Idiot that becomes central to our understanding of his character, particularly when it is placed in a copy of Don Quixote, to The Adolescent, where the entire plot revolves around the possession of a letter and its contents. But the winner has to be the letter Raskolnikov receives from his mother – a masterpiece that places him in an untenable position; defining him as the perfect son and brother for whom every sacrifice is worthwhile, she equally makes it plain to him that such a perfect son would in no way allow his sister to sacrifice herself. Unpicking her contradictory messages is one of the great pleasures of literary analysis. Russian text | English text

1. Grossman, Life and Fate. Anna Semyonovna’s letter to her son Victor Shtrum, written from the Berdichev ghetto on the eve of the massacre of the town’s Jews, is one of the most moving things I’ve ever read in my life, and it is all the more remarkable because Grossman wrote it as an expression of his own grief for leaving his mother to that fate. I find it unbearable to read, so one can only imagine how unbearable was the burden of his guilt. Russian text

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by on December 15, 2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on December 15, 2011

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/12/15/top-ten-letters-in-russian-literature/

The Crystal Palace fire

Seventy-five years ago, on 30th November 1936, the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. Contemporary newsreels give a good impression of the events of that evening:




You can also see the Pathe newsreels here, and parts of the Crystal Palace is on Fire video made by the Crystal Palace Foundation.

What really struck me as I was looking for accounts and images of the fire is the extent to which it was and continues to be seen as a spectacle, comparable with all the palace’s previous performances. This letter by Edgar McWilliam, written the day after the fire, describes traffic and pedestrians surging up the hill to watch. The report from The Guardian on 1 December 1936 also focused on the crowds of on-lookers:

The immensity of the crowd destroyed the possibility of evacuating the area around the tower. Anerley Hill, where the tower was most likely to fall, was one solid, seething mass of people. Mounted and foot police struggled to force the crowd back. Even the fire engines were hemmed in. [...] It was a strange crowd which came out to see the end of a famous London landmark. There were the connoisseurs forearmed with a knowledge of local topography. There were the sort of young men and women to be seen at almost any free entertainment in the streets. There were vast numbers of cyclists, both men and women. There were youngish men and women with traces of Bloomsbury, Hampstead and Chelsea in their clothes and speech, taking the whole affair very gravely. But among these were to be seen many elderly men and women to whom the destruction of the Palace meant the end of a chapter in their lives.

That sense of both the spectacle of the fire, and what the building meant to people, is also apparent in this lovely animation, The Crystal Palace is on Fire, by Peter Rest. And this ‘souvenir’ postcard of the fire is a good indication of the perception of the fire as the palace’s final performance:

This all seems to present a distinct contrast with how the fire was reported internationally, where it seems its significance wasn’t always understood, as a feature in Life magazine, 23 December 1936, shows (pp. 33-35). Describing the palace as a ‘gigantic greenhouse,’ the article rather sniffily labels one of the pictures, ‘Wreckage of Crystal Palace art consisting of hideous plaster copies from the Egyptian, Greek, Pompeian, Byzantine and Gothic. If it had been real art, the fire would have done a billion dollars damage’, which rather misses the point. Here, the spectacular nature of the fire lies merely in its size, but the innate sense of the palace itself as a show, and its copies as architectural, archaeological and artistic theatre, eludes the author.

Seventy-five years later, the sphinxes and statues adorning the terraces have been transformed from archaeological pastiche to real ruins, but that sense of spectacle is still apparent.

Sphinx, Crystal Palace park, November 2011

Walking through the ruins gives a taste of what an extraordinary sight the palace must have made. It indicates how powerful the trace of something that has essentially vanished can be. In the case of the Crystal Palace, I think that’s because its real power lay not in Joseph Paxton’s innovative design for the iron-and-glass structure alone – it was always its appeal to the imagination that mattered most.

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by on November 30, 2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on November 30, 2011

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/11/30/the-crystal-palace-fire/

In Herzen’s footsteps: a visit to Ventnor

You never quite know where your research is going to take you, but I have to admit I didn’t expect it to be to the Isle of Wight. That, however, is where I ended up a couple of months ago as a result of my Russians in London post on Alexander Herzen, after I was contacted by Bob and Esme Williamson, owners of St Augustine Villa, a charming hotel on the Esplanade in Ventnor, and probably the most distinctive building in the town.

St Augustine Villa, Ventnor, Isle of Wight

Whilst researching the history of hotel, which was built in 1846 by the Reverend Richard John Shutte (1800-1860), who had earlier been a canon at St Paul’s Cathedral and by 1855 was rector at Halden, Kent, the owners discovered that Herzen and his family had rented the house – then barely ten years old – during their stay in September 1855.

Reverend Shutte's tombstone, St Catherine's Church, Ventnor

The Williamsons learned about Herzen’s stay when they were contacted by a Dutch researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, who had made a remarkable discovery whilst looking through Thomas Carlyle’s letters to Herzen in the Institute’s archives. Among the Herzen papers, there were several drawings, by an unknown hand, and depicting unknown scenes. By an extraordinary coincidence, the researcher had spent time in Ventnor as an au pair in the 1960s, and she recognized two of the pictures as being of St Augustine Villa:

St Augustine Villa, Ventnor, 1855

The others are of the coast around Ventnor. It was easy to establish that Herzen stayed at the house – two of the letters he sent from Ventnor in 1855 are addressed ‘St Augustins Villas’ (the inaccuracy is fairly typical). But the authorship of the drawings was much initially less certain. It seemed unlikely that Herzen himself would have drawn them – his sketch-maps and the other little doodles that appear in his letters are distinctly amateurish, and in any case one rather suspects he would have viewed art as something of a distraction (his letters overall reveal a man consumed with work and family life, with little time or inclination for other pursuits). There was a suggestion that his son Sasha might have been responsible, but it soon became apparent that there was a trained artist in their entourage: Malwida von Meysenbug (see her Memoirs of an Idealist, pp. 44-46).

Comparing the sketches of Ventnor to pictures by von Meysenbug in Vera Leuschner’s book, Malwida von Meysenbug: Die Malerei war immer meine liebste Kunst [Painting has always been my favourite art], leaves one in no doubt; the style is so similar that the pictures must be hers.

Coast near Ventnor, by Malwida von Meysenbug, 1855

This, incidentally, is why I was so disgusted with E. H. Carr (see my previous post): Malwida von Meysenbug was a talented artist and writer, and he reduces her to an unutilized (ergo, hysterical) womb. One knows only too well the extent to which women’s achievements have been denigrated or ignored, and Carr was hardly the only guilty party, but it does feel particularly offensive when it’s being done right in front of your eyes. It’s also very unfortunate that Tom Stoppard’s characterization of von Meysenbug in Salvage, the final part of his Coast of Utopia trilogy, seems based entirely on Carr’s opinion; her art, as far as I could see, is never mentioned, and she does not step beyond her role as governess and surrogate mother. Anyway, I’ve already said my piece on that subject, so back to today’s topic.

So off we went to Ventnor to follow in Herzen’s footsteps and stay at St Augustine Villa. And I can only recommend that you, dear reader, do the same. The hotel is lovely, and in a fabulous position, as the pictures show. Bob and Esme are very welcoming hosts, and provide excellent (and enormous) breakfasts (be warned – you won’t want much lunch). It was really interesting thinking about Herzen, von Meysenbug and the children staying there, and imagining how they spent their time. Although he doubtless spent a lot of time in the house working (what precisely he was working on while he was there I have yet to establish), I conjured up an entirely fanciful and anachronistic picture of Herzen strolling down the Esplanade eating an ice cream (probably because of the very memorable Minghella’s blackcurrant and cream ice cream I sampled) and having a pint in the Spyglass Inn. We spent a lot of time looking at old photographs of Ventnor – which is a really interesting place – and working out what has changed, mainly due to reconstruction after the war, in order to get an idea of what it was like in the mid-nineteenth century.

So what do we know about the family’s stay there? To be honest, not a huge amount, because the letters are concerned, as usually, overwhelmingly with Herzen’s work and domestic arrangements. There were in fact two trips to the town. The first, at the end of September 1854, lasted around a week. So far, I’ve not managed to find out where they stayed, but it’s clear that Herzen was as taken with Ventnor as we were; in the one letter he wrote during this visit, to his regular correspondent Maria Reichel, on 28th September, he comments, ‘this is an amazing place, i.e., one never expected to find such charms in England.’ (Sobranie sochinenii v 30-i tomakh, 25, p. 202) Von Meysenbug expands slightly on this in her Memoirs:

[Herzen] proposed a small trip to the sea which I had previously suggested to him and which he had turned down.

So we left. Domengé came with us, and we took the boat over to Wight Island, the natural beauty of which I had long wanted to see. On the journey across the island to the little city of Ventnor on the southern side, Herzen, his son, and Domengé sat atop the stagecoach, the children and I sat inside. Delighted by the glorious road, I called up to them: ‘Isn’t that beautiful? Wasn’t I right in suggesting this?’ Laughingly, Herzen called down: ‘I didn’t want to tell you, but yes, you were right: its glorious and I’m glad we came.’

We spent happy days in beautiful Ventnor. In the evenings we were usually with the Pulszkys, who were spending the summer there. Therese’s mother, an educated and intelligent Viennese lady, had come to visit them, and this made for many a pleasant hour with her keen humor and wit. The Kossuths were also there, and he was much more pleasant in a more intimate setting than he had been at the formal gatherings in London. At the time, our thoughts were preoccupied by the war Russia had started with Turkey. Herzen, more so than the others, was very excited. He prophesied the Russian defeat and wished for it, since he believed it would lead to the downfall of autocracy. (pp. 222-3)

Von Meysenbug also, Herzen informs us, spent all her time in the water, presumably using a bathing machine like those in this photo from 1911:

probably hired from Blakes, providers of beach huts, deck chairs and the like since 1830 – an unexpected sign of continuity, and a strong indication of how established Ventnor was as a resort years before Herzen’s and Meysenbug’s visit.

No further details are given, and the rest of the letter is taken up with recipes for treating cholera, which was then raging in London – a stark reminder of the differences between life then and now, which are often easy to overlook.

The trip was clearly enjoyable enough to ensure a return the following year for a more extended stay. Again, von Meysenbug’s description is brief:

Herzen himself suggested that we again go to Ventnor on the Island of Wight for a few weeks. Of course, the children and I welcomed this suggestion. We rented a comfortable home on the ocean, and the wonderful sea air and charmingly beautiful coast revived our good spirits. The Pulszkys were also there again. They frequently came in the evening, and I enjoyed being together with Therese, whose sensitive personality became less of a mystery to me than it had been in the political excitement of London life. News reached us there about the taking of Malakoff. This meant that Sebastopols [sic] would probably fall and the war would be over. We rejoiced at the news, not only out of consideration for human life, but especially for Russia, since it could be assumed that the new emperor would attempt domestic reforms after the close of this war he had inherited. (pp. 240-1)

Herzen is even more sparing in his details. He writes to the Italian activist Luigi Pianciani on 8th September that Ventnor was chosen largely because of the cost of going to Jersey, their first idea, and because the children’s seasickness would have been a problem on the longer voyage (p. 299). The following day, a letter to Maria Reichel includes a note from Tata (Natalya), about her nameday party, which is, typically, somewhat more informative than her father’s missives:

Daddy gave me two wonderful books, «Die Völker des Erdballs» [The Peoples of the Globe] by von Burghaus, and there are wonderful pictures in them. Sasha gave me a little knife, Mselle Buch – a toy boat, oysters, and a scarf, Louisa – a glass basket, Olya had been saving a penny for a long time, and she bought me some chocolate by herself. (p. 300)

In his next letter to Reichel, dated 20th September, Herzen is slightly more forthcoming about his activities: ‘For three days the weather has been like June – and I’m bathing recklessly in the sea. But before that there were four days of storms, rain and bitter cold. [...] The children are perfectly healthy. Tata and Olya bathe every day. Sasha, too.’ (p. 301) Some fondness for Ventnor is evident, but it’s tinged with his usual ambivalence about England as a whole: ‘If it were not so boring, I would live here, but there are no resources at all. And getting to Ryde is expensive. Another winter in England – it’s awful to contemplate. But where can we go?’ The complaints then take over; in another letter, dated 25th September, Herzen reports catching a cold (p. 302), and in his final letter from Ventnor to Reichel, he notes that the weather has recently been ‘dreadful’ (p. 304), while a postscript from Sasha to the same letter reads: ‘we’re already preparing to leave for Richmond; however, it’s quite boring here – the weather is awful, you go walk anywhere – and in that case it’s better to be at home’ – clearly he was his father’s son.

And that’s it. I’ll publish the translations in full in a separate post, but essentially they show the extent to which Herzen, even on holiday, was preoccupied with work, his household, and his business and domestic affairs back in London. He pays far less attention to his own present circumstances than those of his family and entourage elsewhere. A bit of bathing aside, there doesn’t seem to have been much to distinguish the holiday from his usual life, and given that a number of other exiles, such as the Hungarians Lajos Kossuth and Ferenc Pulszky, were in Ventnor at the same time, even his evening socializing must have very much resembled his normal London activity, discussing the Crimean war and the political situation in Russia. With Malwida von Meysenbug’s pictures we have a glimpse of another side of the visit, of walks along the beautiful coastal path and an appreciation of the landscape that seems to escape Herzen, his enthusiastic initial response to their first visit aside.

Although I appreciate Herzen very much as a writer, and admire his commitment, there are times when I wish he had been a bit more well-rounded. His lack of engagement with his surroundings means that for me at least he sometimes seems quite an elusive figure despite his copious memoirs and letters. A comparison with Turgenev, who visited Ventnor in 1860, reveals a much more concrete sense of the person in the place, because he responded to it as an artist; as both Freeborn (pp. 407-12) and Waddington (pp. 95-110) have shown, Ventnor played a significant role in the development of Turgenev’s idea for Fathers and Sons, and the nearby Blackgang Chine appears in the story Phantoms. This, I would suggest, is also why Turgenev’s visit to Ventnor has not only been fictionalized by Richard Freeborn in his novel The Russian Crucifix: A Victorian Mystery, but also features in Stoppard’s Salvage (pp. 303-8), whereas Herzen’s does not, despite his being the major focus of that play. In fact, his absence from the scene is emphasized because Malwida von Meysenbug and Olya Herzen are present, shrimping and collecting shells on the beach; it is they who notice Turgenev, talking to the doctor who supposedly becomes the model for Bazarov. (The Herzen family actually holidayed in Bournemouth that summer, apparently after Herzen realized that Ventnor was going to be overrun by Russians.) It suggests a figure who is curiously absent from parts of his own life.

Turgenev’s stay in Ventnor is commemorated in a local heritage museum plaque.

Herzen’s visit may not have left as much of a trace in his works, but with the identification of von Meysenbug’s drawings of Ventnor, I hope that their stay at St Augustine Villa will be similarly marked. Theirs was obviously an odd household, but whatever the personal shortcomings of the one and marginalization of the other by history, they were both figures of some distinction and importance.

My thanks to Bob and Esme Williamson for their hospitality, to Mieke Ijzermans, whose research contributed greatly to this post, and to John Levin for being a wonderful companion with whom to explore the area, and for his permission to use the photographs of Richard Shutte’s gravestone and Blakes’ deckchair hire. The photos of St Augustine Villa and of the Turgenev plaque are my own. Both my own and John Levin’s photographs, and the copies of the drawings by Malwida von Meysenbug, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative works 2.0 England and Wales License.

Sources

E. H. Carr, The Romantic Exiles: A Nineteenth-Century Portrait Gallery (London: Peregrine, 1968; first publ. 1933)

Carol Deithe, ‘Keeping Busy in the Waiting Room: German Women Writers in London following the 1848 Revolution, in Exiles from European Revolutions: refugees in mid-Victorian England, ed. Sabine Freitag (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 253-74

Richard Freeborn, ‘Turgenev at Ventnor’, Slavonic and East European Review 51, no. 124 (July, 1973), 387-412

Richard Freeborn, The Russian Crucifix: A Victorian Mystery (London: McMillan, 1987)

A. I. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh. Tom dvadtsat’ piatyi: pis’ma 1853-1856 godov (Moscow: Nauka, 1961)

Vera Leuschner, Malwida von Meysenbug: Die Malerei war immer meine liebste Kunst (Bielefeld: Verlag fuer Regionalgeschichte, 2002)

Malwida von Mysenbug, Memoiren einer Idealistin (1869) | Memoirs of an Idealist, trans. Monte B. Gardiner (1999)

Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia (London: Faber and Faber, 2008)

Patrick Waddington, Turgenev and England (Basingstoke: McMillan, 1980)

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Posted by Sarah Young on November 10, 2011

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/11/10/in-herzens-footsteps-a-visit-to-ventnor/

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