Comparative Literary Studies: Lermontov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoj, Blok: Lavater, Lessing, Schiller, Grillparzer by Edmund s> Heier (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 5 I I analysis of Gumilev's 'Iz logova zmieva' and its linking of autobiographical impulse with a belief in the centralityof the ballad to acmeist poetics, or her linkingof the topos of a night-timeflight in Akhmatova's'Pobeg'with poems by earlierRussianpoets as well as Keats. However, forallheringenuity,to my mind Ketchian isnot alwayssuccessful in demonstratingthat a linkbetween Keats and her chosen Russiantext really exists. Does Pushkin'suse of the motif of the real or postponed seduction of a sleepinglover in RuslanandLiudmila reallyreflectparallelsituations(withquite different outcomes) in Keats's Endymion and 7JieEveof StAgnes,or do both authors rather draw independently on models in the classical or folkloric tradition?Is Mandelstam's I937 poem 'Kuvshin',which describesan ancient Greekjug in the Voronezh museum and perhaps hints at the simultaneous power and vulnerabilityof art, reallya responseto Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', with which Mandelstam may or may not have been familiar, or is it more productively read in the context of Mandelstam's own long-standing preoccupationwith Greekantiquity? Ketchian pays relativelylittle attentionto two pieces of evidence which link Keats and Russian poetry together much more firmly- the role of Keats's 'LaBelle Dame sansMerci' in the development of the balladas a majorgenre in Russian symbolism, and the presence of direct quotations from Keats, in English, in the poetry of Akhmatova. Both of these have admittedly been discussedelsewherein the literatureand Ketchian does considerthem briefly, but a more detailedtreatmentin the context of her own discoveriesmightwell have reinforcedher pictureof the Keatsian layerin Russianpoetry. Ketchian does linkBlok's'Solov'inyisad' to 'LaBelle Dame sansMerci', but gives little indication of how Blok might have been influenced notjust by Keats himself, but also by the traditionestablishedby Bal'mont,Fofanov,Briusovand others in responseto Keats's poem. With AkhmatovaKetchian prefersto focus on a groupof earlypoems and to mention the Keats epigraphto 'Shipovniktsvetet' and the allusions in Poemabezgeroiachiefly as evidence that Akhmatova was familiar with the work of Keats rather than to re-examine their structural significancein herpoetry. In brief, although Ketchian's book contains much of interestand contains veryhelpfulindexesto allowthereaderto findcommentson individualauthors and poems, she fails to carry her main point. If Keats is indeed a major influence on Russianpoetry, this book may be a necessaryfirststep towardsa criticalevaluationof hisrole, butitisby no means theend of the road. Library andInformation Service D. N. WELLS Curtin University ofTechnology, Western Australia Heier, Edmund. Comparative LiteraryStudies.Lermontov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoj, Blok Lavater, Lessing., Schiller, Grillparzer. Vortrageund Abhandlungen zur Slavistik, 39. Otto Sagner, Munich, 2000. 20I pp. Notes. Index.e I8.41 I THESE comparative literary studies have the form of articles contributed to journals and Festschriftenover approximatelya quarterof a centuryfromthe 512 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 early I970S onwards, the most recent dating from the mid-iggos. They enlargeupon EdmundHeier's earlierstudiesdevoted to literaryportraiturein nineteenth-century Russian prose published in I993, which were parts of a largerexamination of prose portraiturein his studyof the literaryportraitsin the novels of Dostoevskii published in I989. The earlier studieswere at least linked by a general theme, whether Dostoevskii'snovels in the latterinstance or the influence of the SwissphysiognomistLavaterand the phrenologistGall on Russian literaryportraiturein the former,but these 'comparativeliterary studies',asthey arecalled, have no suchthematiccoherence and consequently jostle together in a somewhat haphazard fashion, both linguisticallyand in termsof content. Two of the studies on Goncharov, particularlyObgyv (T77e Precipice) and on Blok's translation of Grillparzer'sDie Ahnfrau -are in German and not readily accessible to an English readership, whereas the 'comparative'element in terms of literarystudy is not clearly evident in the article on Tolstoi and the evangelical revival among the Russian aristocracy, nor is it internationally meaningful in the article on the second Heroof Ouir Time.It is arguable, of course, that most of these studies have a common purpose in the sense of demonstratingthe likelyinfluence of German culture, particularlyGoethe and Schiller, on Russian writing during the nineteenth century. It opens, though, where the earlier studies of Lavater and Gall left off, as it were, with a usefulshortguide to 'The LiteraryPortraitas a Mode of Characterization'. The role of Lessing in the evolution of literary portraiture is contrasted largely with Balzac's approach, although the final verdict on the subject is given as 'a portraitwhich oscillated...