“I’m Happy for Your Progress in Connection with the Fountain...” (Three Letters from the Archives of G. O. Vinokur and B. V. Tomashevsky)

Abstract

The two letters of G.O. Vinokur and the letter of B.V. Tomashevsky of February 1936 offered here for their first publication represent an integral episode from the correspondence of these scholars (1927–1947): there are no gaps in it, which are numerous in other parts of the correspondence. One of the main topics discussed in the letters is the commentary for the fourth volume of the Academic Complete Collection of Pushkin’s Works (1937–1959): Vinokur commented on the Fountain of Bakhchisarai, Tomashevsky – on Gavriiliada. The texts of both commentaries, as well as Vinokur’s commentary on Gypsies for the same volume, remained unpublished due to unfavorable external circumstances; however, if Tomashevsky managed to express his ideas in other works (he lived longer than Vinokur), then many of Vinokur’s discoveries remained the property of the home archive, the Pushkinists of the new generation had to make them anew. For a long time, it was believed that the scholar’s commentaries on these poems by Pushkin were lost, but they were preserved; the authors draw on fragments of Vinokur’s commentary on the Fountain of Bakhchisarai to comment on the letters of the scholars themselves, as well as the situation that has developed in scholarship. The letters also discuss works for other volumes of the academic edition, as well as for the Annals of the Pushkin Commission and other publications; news of science and culture — all this adds up to a broad picture of the life of scholars in a difficult time for the country and the humanities.