O poetike Chekhova by E. s> Polotskaia Poslednii sad by Marianna Rogovskaia-Sokolova (review)

Abstract

724 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 novels is suffused(likethe Orthodox liturgy)with the New Testament;little of the Old Testament law is evident. Moreover, in Dostoevskii, legality, says Esaulov,has littleto do with morality(pp. I26-29). Thus 'theprimaryguiltof Raskolnikovdoes not consist in the fact that he committed a murder,i.e. that he committed a legal crime. His true guilt lies in that he has forfeited Grace, that he has fallen out of the communal unity of people and set himselfagainst other people' (p. 128). According to Zosima every person is guilty before everyone and everything; so, says Esaulov, salvation, in Dostoevskii, is also communal (p. 128). Lessconvincing isDavid S. Cunningham'sTrinitarianinterpretationof 77he Brothers Karamazov. The presence of 'threes'in the novel is surelyno code for the Trinity, as Cunningham seems to suggest. Moreover, to say that the brothersrelate to one another in the manner that the three members of the Trinity 'interpenetrate'(p. I44) and share characteristicsis surely to say no more than that they are brothers, and that Dostoevskii sufficientlyexercised his artisticpowers in creating them. Cunningham's conclusion, that even in the 'blacksmear'of the Karamazovfamilyisthe image of God, does, however, seem in tune with Dostoevskii'stheology. Among four case studies in the third part of the collection is a symbolic interpretation of the names and colours in Crime andPunishment by Antony Johae. It failed to convince this reviewer. Crime andPunishment gets no better treatment from Henry M. W. Russell, who interpretsthe novel's 'disturbing message' as the 'insistence that humiliation is the necessaryprecondition for Christian life'. There is humiliation in the novel, in spades, but such an idiosyncraticreading of the novel's Christianmessage is not helped by other oddities, such as the doubling of Marmeladov (whom Russell reads to have committed suicide in his nasty accident with the horse drawn carriage)with Svidrigailov. The two other case studies are both excellent. George Pattison connects Kierkegaard and Dostoevskii via Bakhtin and Rene Girard, and Vladimir Kantor's essayon temptation, originallypublishedin Russian in I994, argues persuasivelythat it is Smerdiakovwho influences Ivan Karamazov, and not vice versa.This originalreadingof Ivan'scharactersees him asvacillatingand undecided. Because he is weak, Ivan cannot resist the corruption of Smerdiakov. Ivan's deeper temptation is the temptation faced by Job, says Kantor:to rebel on the groundsof innocent suffering. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies DEREK BROWER University College London Polotskaia, E. 0 poetikeChekhova. Second edition. Nasledie, Moscow, 200 I. 239 pp. Notes. Price unknown(paperback). Rogovskaia-Sokolova,Marianna. Poslednii sad.Graal',Moscow, 2000. 126 pp. Illustrations.Priceunknown(paperback). EMMA POLOTSKAIA is alreadynoted for her sensitive scholarlyessaysand two elegantly eruditebooks,A. P. Chekhov. Dvizhenie khudozhestvennoi mysli(Moscow, i979) and Puti chekhovskikh geroev (Moscow, I983). In her second book she REVIEWS 725 remarkedthat readingand re-readingChekhov'sworks'purifiesour soul, and makesusponder aboutlife' (p. 93). Now, freedfromthe burdenof'ideological oppression' (OpoetikeChekhova, p. 9), Polotskaiahas revised six of her earlier articles,datingfrom I969 to I996, toformagracefulandwide-rangingvolume. Comparedwith itsfirstedition (Moscow, 2000), the monographincludesa few extralineson page 238, but leavesuncorrecteda handfulof misprints. Polotskaiaishumane, lucid and alwaysinteresting,whethershe isdiscussing Chekhov'suse of 'inner or objective irony', or the affinitybetween his letters and his plays (in their sub-text and oblique expression of the author's innermostthoughtsand feelings).She subtlyilluminatessuchstoriesas 'Toska' (pp. 23-24), 'Poprygun'ia'(pp. 34-35), and 'Dushechka' (pp. 36-37). One essayperceptivelycomparesand contraststhe prose of Chekhovand Pushkin, observingthatChekhovissimultaneouslyan 'objective'and 'subjective'writer (p. ioo), who valued human beings accordingto the degree of theirhumanity (pp. 107, I29). Another pioneering study, stemming from I97I, discerningly juxtaposes Chekhov and Dostoevskii. This harmonious collection concludes with articlesexploringthe attitudeof Belyiand MaiakovskiitowardsChekhov. In a more openly personal and less rigorously scholarly book, Marianna Rogovskaia-Sokolova, former director of the Chekhov Museum in Moscow and maker of four television films about Chekhov, has gathered five of her previous publications under the elegiac title Poslednii sad. 'Once you enter Chekhov's world, you can never leave it' (pp. 3, 33), she remarks, while recognizing that Chekhov is 'indefinable, elusive', an 'enigma, hidden deep within the silence and the purityof his spiritualisolation'(p. 2 I). RogovskaiaSokolova lovingly recalls her late husband, the poet Vladimir Sokolov, and chronicles her rewarding but arduous labour when director of Chekhov's...