Belarusian Literature of the Diaspora by Arnold McMillin (review)

Abstract

268 Reviews his source which failed to understand that 'curved trees of skulls' referredto drinking horns. The published pieces mostly have some connection with England; the action of the 'Dying Ode of Regner Lodbrog' and 'Ransome of Egill the Scald' takes place in England, while 'The Complaint of Harold' is that of Haraldr Sigurdarson, who died at Stamford Bridge. Hakon (commemorated in the 'Funeral Song of Hacon') was brought up at the court of King Athelstan. This edition is an achievement which only someone with Clunies Ross's extensive knowledge of skaldic poetry, Norse tradition, and the eighteenth-century intellectual background could have brought off,and such eclectic individuals are rare indeed. The edition will be of enormous value to historians of Norse reception and eighteenthcentury specialists alike. St John's College, Oxford Carolyne Larrington BelarusianLiteratureofthe Diaspora. By Arnold McMillin. (Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 34) Birmingham: Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. 2002. 503 pp. ?30. ISBN 0-7044-2327-8. Divided into three parts, Belarusian Literature of the Diaspora reminds us that there are serious rivals to the Russian literarygenius in Eastern Europe. Part I covers emigre Belarusian literature and includes a detailed discussion of poetry. Following on from this are detailed chapters on individual poets, including Masiej Siadniou, who was considered a candidate forthe Nobel prize forliterature in the 1980s. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with, respectively, emigre prose and drama. In Part 11Arnold McMillin examines writing in contemporary Eastern Europe and in Part III he examines Belarusian literature in Poland, which, as he rightly argues, is a special case. BelarusianLiterature of theDiaspora leaves one with an enduring feeling of sadness and helplessness on behalf of all those writers who were driven into exile, impri? soned, executed, or had their lives otherwise blighted by Communism. Consider, for example, the fate of Uladzimier Dudzicki, whose vision of his country's fate is one which has been subjected to the ravages of the 'two-legged beast', which, notes McMillin, is 'a cruelly destructive figure apparently embodying in the poet's mind the evil of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler' (p. 27). Expelled from the Miensk Belarusian Pedagogical Institute forbeing a 'national democrat', Dudzicki was later arrested and sent to various camps and then exile. During the German occupation of Belarus he devoted himself to the cause of Belarusian culture. Such activities marked him out as an ideological foe of the Soviet Union and lefthim with no choice other than to leave Belarus as the Red Army advanced, in the hope that he could make some kind of a life in the West. Of the many writers and poets discussed by McMillin, the two that this reviewer would recommend to the uninitiated reader are JanCykvin, whom McMillin describes as 'the outstanding Belarusian poet living in Poland' (p. 367), and Sakrat Janovic, the miniaturist. English translations of these and other authors are either sparse or do not exist but McMillin manages to alert us to the existence of these riches through his own translations. Regarding the work of Janovic, McMillin notes the influence of Isaac Babel, especially in Janovic's firstminiature, Festival (1962): 'This influence', observes McMillin, 'is felt clearly at the most basic level in the careful and very skilful polishing which Janovic gives to all his miniatures' (p. 423). Having established an important Russian connection in Janovic's work, which has a pronounced rural theme, McMillin then proceeds to dismiss another: 'Russian village writers like Viktor Astaf'ev, Vasilii Belov and Valentin Rasputin probably deserve to be passed over in silence, in view of their move from literature to extremist politics. At the present MLRy 99.1, 2004 269 time comparing them to Janovic is like comparing such feeble and venal war writers as Ivan Stadniuk and Leonid Brezhnev with Vasil Bykau' (pp. 424-25). This is a totally unjustified attack on three very important Russian writers, especially Astaf'ev, who in the 1990s emerged as Russia's greatest living writer, one who was equally adept at writing on the fate of the village or the Great Fatherland War. Astaf'ev's cycle of war stories written in the 1990s, Tak khochetsya zhit' (I Really Want to Live...