Livak , Leonid A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's ‘Petersburg’ (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 553 knew Russia perfectly well. He understood the government’s requirements and could flatter it until the flattering became sickening — not out of conviction, surely, but out of the (fundamentally flawed) principle that this is what needs to be done.’ UiT The Arctic University of Norway Andrei Rogatchevski Livak, Leonid (ed.). A Reader’s Guide to Andrei Bely’s ‘Petersburg’. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2021. vii + 272 pp. Notes. Recommended critical literature in English. Index. $21.95 (paperback). This compendium of articles by fifteen scholars offers an informative and well-coordinated course-book for an English-speaking seminar on Russian or international literary Modernism, the Twentieth-Century Novel, the Russian Silver Age or, indeed, as the title claims, ‘Andrei Belyi’s Petersburg’. Leonid Livak’s excellent editing ensures that contributors, unless otherwise specified, have used the same translation: John Elsworth’s (Pushkin Press, London, 2000) version of Leonid Dolgopolov’s 1981 edition of the original text, first published in 1916. The translator, who has himself written extensively on Belyi’s life and work, contributes an engaging piece ‘On Translating Petersburg’, in which he explains why he chose this particular edition and some of the difficulties met with in the course of his work. Further, to Livak’s credit, he has avoided unnecessary repetitions by seeing his authors make cross-references to each other’s work. Finally, he has provided an introductory article on the symposium as a whole and its separate authors and, in the last, fourth section, a clear and concise ‘Annotated Synopsis of Petersburg’s First Edition (1913)’, a list of ‘Recommended Critical Literature in English’, an annotated list of contributors and a serviceable index. Footnotes to individual articles are kept brief and provided, in user-friendly fashion, at the end of each paper. Part One of the book offers eight papers on ‘The Intellectual Context’: Lynn E. Patyk,‘RevolutionaryTerrorismandProvocationinPetersburg’;MariaCarlson, ‘Petersburg and Modern Occultism’ (useful on theosophy and anthroposophy); E. W. Clowes, ‘Petersburg and Russian Nietzscheanism’; Timothy Langen, ‘Neo-Kantianism in Petersburg’; Hilary Fink, ‘Petersburg and the philosophy of Henry Bergson’; Judith Wermuth-Atkinson, ‘Petersburg and the New Science of Psychology’; Henrietta Mondry, ‘Petersburg and Contemporary Racial Thought’; and David M. Bethea, ‘Petersburg as Apocalyptic Fiction’. Part Two concentrates on ‘The Aesthetic Context’: Steven Cassidy, ‘Petersburg and Music in Modernist Theory and Literature’; Colleen McQuillen, ‘Russian Modernist Theatricality and Life Creation in Petersburg’; Olga Matich, ‘Petersburg and Modernist Painting with Words’; Taras Koznarsky, ‘Petersburg and Urbanism SEER, 99, 3, JULY 2021 554 in the Modernist Novel’; and Violeta Sotirova, ‘Petersburg and the Problem of Consciousness in Modernist Fiction’. The question remains, as so often with publications of collections which, of necessity, lack a single authorial ‘voice’: who is the potential ‘reader’ of this Guide? The answer, most probably, depends on whether we are to understand the title as promising a ‘companion volume’ to a difficult and fascinating book for a reader not particularly well-versed in Russian language and literature or as a collection of specialist articles designed to facilitate the teaching of a university course on a hitherto somewhat neglected classic? As a teaching aid, I would recommend the book unreservedly. As a ‘companion volume’, I regretted the absence of the map of St Petersburg, an internet reference to which is given by the editor, and, perhaps, some other visual material, and found Part Two more reader-friendly than Part One, perhaps because the apt and insightful contributions tend to be more tightly interwoven with Belyi’s enchanting text. Part One, with its greater emphasis on general background and what Belyi read when, though useful and scholarly, provides information rather than involves the reader in a voyage of discovery, though contributions by Lange, Fink and Bethea provide agreeable exceptions. These reservations notwithstanding, this ‘Reader’s Guide’ is to be heartily recommended to all serious students and teachers of European modernism and should be available in every university library. Department of Russian Avril Pyman University of Durham Efimov, Mikhail and Smit, Dzheral´d [Smith, Gerald]. Sviatopolk-Mirskii. Zhizn´ zamechatel´nykh liudei, vol. 2025 (1825). Molodaia gvardiia, Moscow, 2021. 701 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. R792.00. Prince Dmitrii (occasionally Dimitrii, but Dim to his...