Lappo-Danilevskii , K. Iu. Zav'ialov , S. A. Alkei i Safo. Sobranie pesen i liricheskikh otryvkov v perevode razmerami podlinnikov Viacheslava Ivanova so vstupitel'nym ocherkom ego zhe (review)

Abstract

SEER, 99, 1, JANUARY 2021 162 not satisfactory to their creator, to problems that continued to plague him and are never entirely solved. Still, as with Knapp’s biography, Zorin’s account is woven together by thematic threads, including love and death, as they manifest themselves throughout the author’s life and in his writings. Zorin pays especial attention, for instance, to Tolstoi’s relation to important women in his life, from his mother, who died before he turned two, to his wife Sonia and their off again on again love story, and to Sonia’s sister Tania. When Zorin characterizes War and Peace as ‘arguably the longest and the most exquisite declaration of love ever written by any man to any woman’ (p. 79), the woman he has in mind is not Sonia, but Tania! Although Zorin does not say this, one can speculate that Tolstoi’s undeniable attraction to his irresistible sister-in-law was all the more powerful because it was not, and could never be consummated. (He defended his occasional homoerotic feelings for men as higher than those he had for women, because they were chaste.) This was not true of his relations with Sonia, with whom he had thirteen children, the last one born in 1888, when he was sixty years old. There is a trend now to publish short biographies for busy people. Such books can be assigned to provide context in one author courses. It is helpful to read more than one such biography, because great writers, even one like Tolstoi who stresses simplicity, are so complex that they deserve and need multiple perspectives. Professors Knapp and Zorin bring out different aspects of Tolstoi’s life and works. And just because they disagree in some places does not mean that either of them is all wrong. This reviewer, having read both biographies, has profited from them and recommends them both to readers who are fascinated by the genius whose life they describe. Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Donna Tussing Orwin University of Toronto Lappo-Danilevskii, K. Iu. and Zav´ialov, S. A. (eds). Alkei i Safo. Sobranie pesen i liricheskikh otryvkov v perevode razmerami podlinnikov Viacheslava Ivanovasovstupitel´nymocherkomegozhe.3rdrevisededition.Izdatel´stvo imeni N. I. Novikova, St Petersburg, 2019. lxiv + 398 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographical references. R 1,000.00. This handsome volume is a scholarly gem and labour of love. Konstantin Lappo-Danilevskii, a specialist in Russian literature at IRLI (Pushkinskii dom), and Sergei Zav´ialov, a classicist, literary critic, translator and poet, have combined their impressive textological and philological skills to produce a definitive edition of Viacheslav Ivanov’s remarkable translations of the two main lyric poets of seventh-century BC Greece, Alcaeus and Sappho. REVIEWS 163 As a classical philologist, leading Symbolist poet and experienced translator, Viacheslav Ivanov was uniquely qualified to undertake this task. Like his friend and fellow classicist Faddei Zelinskii, he strove to revive the spirit of ancient Greece in contemporary Russia and to establish connections between pagan cults and mystic Christianity. Translation was a powerful means of furthering his mythopoeic agenda. After publishing innovative versions of Pindar (1899) and Bacchylides (1904), he began translating Alcaeus and Sappho in 1910–12 for the benefit of his students at N. P. Raev’s Historical and Literary Courses for Women. The project soon took off and grew into a substantial book, published by the Sabashnikov brothers in the prestigious series, ‘Pamiatniki mirovoi literatury’. The first edition of 1914 (216 pp.) was followed by a second expanded edition in 1915 (255 pp.), incorporating new texts from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The third revised edition, prepared for publication in 1919 but not printed at the time, differed substantially from the first two editions. Ivanov merged the poems added in 1915 with the previous body of texts, added some verses, removed others, and revised the introduction and notes. The present volume (462 pp.) makes the final text of Ivanov’s authorized typescript of 1919 available for the first time, a century after its completion. The editors’ accompanying essays and commentaries contextualize and clarify the significance of Ivanov’s work. When the first two editions of Alkei i Safo appeared, they created quite a...