Some Notes on Reception
ELVIRA OSIPOVA
Reception o f American literature in Russia for two hundred years has been conditioned by several factors: prevailing tastes and literary sensibilities, the development o f literary critique, ideological dogmas, and the art o f translation.
Throughout its history the amount o f freedom in Russia deter
mined the number of publications and the choice o f authors presented to the readership. O f particular interest is the impact of political and ideological factors on the introduction and propagation of American literature. The very fact of such dependence can be illustrated by the reception of several American authors in Russia, namely, Emerson and Thoreau, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Brodsky.
After a period of enormous popularity at the turn of the 20th cen
tury, the works o f American Transcendentalists Ralph Emerson and Henry Thoreau were entirely forgotten, and their names disappeared from the literary scene. Religious and philosophic content of their works was adverse to Communist ideology; their mysticism was alien to materialistic philosophy o f the ruling class. Emerson’s and Thoreau’s ideals of individual freedom, self-reliance, and non-con- formism were not consonant with building a Communist utopia. The first appraisal of American Transcendentalism in Russian scholarship after several decades of deliberate neglect appeared as part of a gene
ral review of American literature. The publication of Volume I of The History o f American Literature in 1947 was a real academic feat in the times of totalitarianism. Incidentally, the main editor A. Startzev was subsequently harassed, and the publication o f other volumes was discontinued. His chapter on Transcendentalism presented a consistent
review o f its philosophic underpinnings, as well as a description o f the main concepts o f Transcendentalism in the context o f American thought (Startzev 1947: 194—208). However, in keeping with the spirit of the time, the scholar treated Emerson’s the philosophical mysticism as “erroneous”. He referred to Transcendentalism as a Romantic reaction against capitalism, underrating at the same time the social impact of its doctrines. The Walden experiment was interpreted by the critic as “a flight from reality”, while Thoreau’s individualism seemed to him a form o f asocial behavior. Later, when Walden, Or Life in the Woods was translated and published in 1962, Startzev suppressed this politically motivated definition. In the afterward to the publication, he mentioned Thoreau’s philosophical mysticism as “a limitation” (Start
zev 1962: 230).
A similar approach was displayed by Russian scholars the 1960s.
In line with traditions of Soviet scholarship o f the 1930s-1940s Niko
lai Samokhvalov divided Transcendentalists into “bourgeois refor
mists” and “radical protesters” (Samokhvalov 1971: 162). However, beginning with the mid-1970s a mere descriptive method, which characterized the first publications on American Transcendentalism, was superseded by detailed studies o f the works o f its exponents. A deeper interest in the aesthetics of American Romanticism brought about the publication o f a valuable source book o f translations compiled by Alexander Nikolyukin (Nikolykin 1977). It contained some essays by Emerson and Thoreau, which facilitated the reception of Transcendentalism in Russia. Further translations were published in 1990 in a volume entitled The Publicist Works o f American Romantics (Nikolykin 1980). In it Emerson’s Self-Reliance became available in Russia for the first time since 1917. Thoreau’s Plea fo r Captain John Brown and excerpts from his journals enabled Russian readers to create a more comprehensive image o f the Concord sage.
At about the same time Emerson came — again — under suspicion of the state. In the mid-1980s a collection o f Emerson’s essays (together with Thoreau’s Walden) was prepared for publication. As chance would have it, Ronald Reagan in one o f his public speeches quoted Emerson. The reaction was immediate, and the volume was doomed. It was only due to the interference of academician Georgy Arbatov that it was saved from virtual destruction. Incidentally, a short while afterwards Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev exchanged quotations from Emerson.
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An important aspect o f reception was (and is) the realization of the
“modernity” o f Emerson and Thoreau, the significance o f their “living thoughts”. Indeed, politically laden doctrines o f self-reliance and civil disobedience have rich connotations for the Russian mind. The Con
cord philosophers came to be considered by Soviet intellectuals as ideological allies in the times of conformism. It is not incidental that Thoreau’s Civil D isobedience made its first appearance on the Russian soil as late as 1977. Russian dissidents found justification of their beliefs in Thoreau’s words, “Under a Government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison”; “We should be men first, and subjects afterwards”. Ethical doctrines of the American writer helped some of his readers in Russia to endure in the atmosphere o f a repressive regime (Osipova 1985).
The most widely read American authors for a long time were — and still are — Edgar Poe, James F. Cooper, Mark Twain, and Jack London. Among the twentieth-century authors they are Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, and of a later generation — Kurt Vonnegut, Jerome Salinger, Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, Thornton Wilder. Henry James and William Faulkner, very popular in America, are much less read — and taught — in Russia than in the United States.
In American eyes, the unabating popularity of Jack London in Russia is astounding. There has never been a political problem with publishing his works, since his socialist leanings were a strong point in his favor with the literary authorities. However, there were prob
lems with interpretation. It was a standard practice to present him as a Marxist and a socialist, while his Social-Darwinist sensibilities were downplayed. London’s overtly racist views were usually not men
tioned; his late novels, where they are particularly conspicuous, were regarded as a mere deviation from the mainstream. Thus, instead of carefully assessing Jack London’s strong and week points as a writer, critics followed some unwritten rules squeezing his works into a Procrustean bed o f preconceptions. The first attempt to reassess Lon
don’s worldview was made by Aleksey Zverev in his small book on London. (Zverev 1975). Further analysis of London’s Social-Dar
winist ideas was undertaken in some o f my publications (Osipova 2003:371-378).
Another American writer, immensely popular in Russia, is Ernest Hemingway. He became a veritable cult figure in the 1960- 1970s, at
the time of growing spiritual opposition to the Communist regime. His laconic style and rich subtext, aversion to wars, his characters with their noble moral code — all this appealed to the Russian public fed with official propaganda, with its verbosity and permanent lies. The 1960s saw the publication of a two-volume and then a four-volume edition of Hemingway’s works. Many of his works became known before the war, with one notable exception. For Whom the Bell Tolls was to appear in translation in the magazine “Intemazional’naya Lite- ratura” (International Literature). However, it was not published — for an obviously political reason. The episode with General Andre Marty was considered unacceptable. At that time the leader o f French Communists was in emigration in Russia. Therefore, the state pub
lishing house was averse to print a novel, which contained a most uncomplimentary portrait o f this influential member o f the Com
munist Party. Editor-in-chief o f the magazine ordered to postpone the publication of the manuscript by some two decades. “In its character the novel is be known to a maximally small number o f persons”, such was his verdict (Quoted by Nikolyukin 2000: 52) Anyway; the novel had a wide circulation in proofs until its publication in 1968. The impact of the novel was immense. Critics believe that it influenced the Russian prose o f the 1940-1950s.
The last two decades have witnessed a return to Russia o f two great writers whose legacies are shared by Russia and America, Vla
dimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky.
Until 1985 the very name of Nabokov was a veritable taboo. For this very reason a reference book on American authors containing a profile of Nabokov was not allowed for publication for about ten years. Eventually it was published — in 1990, with an entry on Nabokov. The period o f perestroika was undoubtedly beneficial for spiritual revival. Since 1990 Nabokov’s Russian and American novels have become available. A five-volume edition o f his works has been published, as well as numerous separate editions.
The Nabokov scholarship has reached an unprecedented scale.
Over the last ten years Russian critics have regarded Nabokov as one of their most favorite subjects of research. Scholarship in translation from English is also considerable. Books by Brian Boyd devoted to Nabokov’s Russian and American years are, perhaps, the best o f its kind. Several collections of papers under the auspices of Pushkinsky
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Dom (The Institute o f Russian literature o f the Academy o f Sciences) have been devoted to various aspects o f Nabokov’s literary activities.
What the Russian public finds most appealing in Nabokov is his exquisite literary style, his prose (rather than poetry) permeated with feelings o f nostalgia, the complexity o f his plots and a certain Kafkaesque character of his Invitation to a Beheading. Among his books written in America, the most widely read in Russia are Speak, M emory and Lolita.
Our attitude to Nabokov, the writer, may be different. But one thing is certain. This “seeker o f lexical adventures” (as he wrote in The Gift), brought this GIFT to Russia from his American and European exile: his pictorial art, the loving revival o f the flavor of the Russian past, his love for Russia as a Paradise Lost. This gift, like a crystal, has many facets. One o f the brightest is his mellifluous Russian language. He painted the Past in a manner reminding us of the paintings of Art Nouveau: Borisov-Musatov, or Alexander Benois.
The Past, in Nabokov’s words, “is the taste, the tinge, the tang of our individual being”. This is the key-phrase for understanding his inimitable artistry in depicting the locus he was bom in — the city of St. Petersburg with its environs.
We shall not forget one more aspect o f Nabokov’s work. He created a homage to his father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, and thus, to the liberal tradition in Russia, which his father, a statesman and political figure of some renown, had done much to continue. His tribute sounds pertinent today.
The history of Russia ... could be considered from two points of view... first, as an evolution of the police...
and second, as the development of a marvelous culture.
Under the tsars... despite the fundamentally inept and ferocious character of their rule, a freedom-loving Rus
sian had had incomparably more means of expressing himself, and used to run incomparably less risk in doing so, than under Lenin. Since the reforms of the eighteen- sixties, the country had possessed (though not always adhered to) a legislation of which any Western demo
cracy might have been proud, a vigorous public opinion that held despots at bay, widely read periodicals of all shades of liberal political thought, and what was espe
cially striking, fearless and independent judges (Nabo
kov 1967: 263-264).
An extraordinary popularity o f Nabokov’s novel Lolita in Russia is understandable. For many years Russian readers were denied much of the Western stuff because of a persistence of “puritan” tastes, culti
vated by literary and party authorities. A system o f ideological taboos was complemented by “moral” taboos. The publication o f Lolita has had a particular significance: it broke a hole in the bulwark of rigorist policies of our publishers.
Due to a newly gained freedom o f publication, in the last years of the 20th century, there appeared translations o f two trilogies o f Henry Miller, this enfant terrible o f American letters. Apart from that, Miller’s documentary utopia Big Sur and the Oranges o f Hieronymus Bosch appeared in Russian translation in 2004. So far it has not attracted critical attention, which it certainly deserves.
Another forced expatriate, who became part o f American culture and literature, was Joseph Brodsky. His essays as well as his Nobel Lecture have recently been translated and published in Russia. They convey the spirit o f freedom, a most fundamental prerequisite of democracy. Now, in the atmosphere of the 2000s, his essays Room and a Half, Less Than One come as a reminder of our recent past and a warning. In his Nobel Lecture he spoke — among other things — about aesthetic forms o f resistance. One o f the main ways o f oppo
sition to the state, in his words, is literary taste. As if echoing Edgar Poe’s idea o f interdependence o f taste and ethics, Brodsky stated:
Literary (or some other) taste, can in itself turn out to be, if not as guarantee, then a form of defense against enslavement. For a man with taste, particularly literary taste is less susceptible to the refrains and the rhythmi
cal incantations peculiar to any version of political demagogy (Nobel Prize in Literature 303).
Though Brodsky was very pessimistic about “saving the world”, he expressed hope in individual salvation. The path, open to us now, is to develop and cultivate aesthetic taste. To paraphrase Brodsky, the firmer is our taste, the more definite is our ethical choice. He put his finger on a very sensitive issue, which is characteristic of our time: the level o f aesthetic taste is rapidly falling, reflecting as it were, a catastrophic deterioration of the morals. The more important, then, is Brodsky’s message.
To sum up this short review o f the way American authors are represented in Russia now, I will say the following. A greater political
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freedom in the 1990s brought about wider opportunities in the ways of expression. The amount of liberty has proved to be in direct ratio to the influx o f new translations and a scholarship unrestricted by ideological dogmas or inner censorship. This appears to be the case with American literature, its reception in Russia and incorporation into our cultural legacy. All leading American authors are being translated now, without any limitations as to the list of authors, or even, unfortunately, the artistic quality of their works. What will remain to live as a part o f our own spiritual culture — time will tell.
References
Nabokov, V. V. 1967. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Nikolykin, A. N. (Ed.). 1977. The Aesthetics o f American Romanticism.
Moscow: Iskusstvo Publishers.
Nikolykin, A. N. (Ed.). 1980. The Publicist Works o f American Romanticism.
Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Nikolyukin, A. N. 2000. American Writers as Critics. Moscow: INION.
Nobel Prize in Literature. Laureates 1901-2001 (in Russian). Compiled by E. Belodubrovsky. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Press. 2003.
Osipova, E. 1985. Henry Thoreau: His Life and Work. Leningrad: Leningrad University Press.
Osipova E. 2003. The changing concept o f violence in Jack London. — Comparative American Studies. Vol. 1. Number 3.
Samokhvalov, N. I. 1971. Transcendentalism. — History o f American Litera
ture. Vol. 1. Moscow: Prosveschenie Publishers, 162.
Startzev, A. I. 1947. The Transcendentalists. — History o f American Litera
ture. Moscow-Leningrad: Publishing House o f the Academy o f Sciences o f the USSR.
Startzev, A. I. 1962. Henry Thoreau and his “Walden”. — Thoreau H.
Walden, or Life in the Woods. Moscow: Publishing House of the Academy o f Sciences o f the USSR.
Zverev, A. 1975. Jack London. Moscow: Znaniye.