Reconstructing the Canon: Russian Writing in the 1980s by Arnold s> McMillin (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I27 Although the emphasis is clearly on the Polish writers, the comparative dimension provides a different and interestingperspective, the comparisons being mostlywith the Polishpoets' Hungariancontemporaries.Gomori'sown backgroundas a Hungarianpoet who experienced the events of I956 addsan element of authenticityand commitment, reflectedfurtherin his emphasison emigre writers. He often alludes also to the wider European philosophical context, especiallyin the essayson Herbert and Gombrowicz. But here again one is left with a sense of frustration; whilst on the whole Gomori's interpretation of these two writersat least does not provoke any serious disagreement, one feels a need for the arguments to be taken further and deeper. Several of the essays seem rather superseded now and would have benefited from some updating:'The Antimonies of Gombrowicz', written (or published?)in I977, forexample, providesa competent analysisof the cultural and psychological roots of Gombrowicz's theories about Form; it refers, however, to two early critics of Gombrowicz (Artur Sandauer and Bruno Schulz)yet it failsto acknowledgethe past quartercenturyof both Polish-and English-languagecriticismdevoted to thistheme. One is therefore led to ask for whom these essays are intended. They provide a sound introduction to a select few Polish literary figures of the twentieth century. Readers looking for a more balanced and incisive history of Polishliteraturewill have to look elsewhere. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies URSULA PHILLIPS University College London McMillin, Arnold (ed.). Reconstructing theCanon.RussianWriting in theig80s. Studies in Russian and European Literature, 3. Harwood Academic Publishers,Amsterdam,2000. ix + 324 pp. Tables.Notes. Bibliographies. Index. E55.oo: f37.00: $6o.oo. IT seems rather amusing to talk about the 'Soviet literarycanon' (bearingin mind the religiousconnotations of thatlastword)in the I98os, but it would be interesting to compare and contrast the works of recent and contemporary Russian-language literaturethat were on the 'set books' and 'recommended reading' lists in Soviet and in Western universities at that time. Naturally, since then much more has changed in Russia than, to take one example, in Britain, where, as before, few undergraduatestaking Russian are studying, even in translation, many (or even perhaps any) works by Sedakova, Elena Shvarts,Aizenberg, Zinik, Siniavskii,Zinov'ev, Sokolov, Slavkinor Sorokin. The volume under review contains chaptersdevoted to each of these writers, thus helping Western academics to decide whether or not it is time to try to change the 'canon' of recent Russian literaturetaught and prescribedoutside Russia. All the chapters devoted to single authors are well worth reading, together with their appended bibliographies. This reviewer was particularly impressed and excited by the long interview with Sedakova, Hanna Kolb's perceptive reading of Sokolov'sMezhdusobakoi i volkom and David Gillespie's briefand well-writtenanalysisof Sorokin'sNorma. However, theworksof these three writers are very intertextual and, to put it mildly, 'difficult'as well as 128 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 difficultto translateadequately, so it looks as though the Western 'canon' of recent Russian literature will continue to differ considerably from the 'in house' 'canon' of recent Russianwriting. It should be said that the scope of this collection of articlesis broaderthan the title suggests:severalof the worksdiscussedor mentioned were writtenin the I970S or I990S, some of them by authors outside or on the margins of, ratherthan well inside, any 'canon' at all. This comment appliesin particular to the three survey articles, on village prose, urban prose and the treatment (or rather non-treatment) of non-Russians and their particularproblems in recent Russianfiction.This last article,by Ewa Thompson, is more polemical and less well grounded than the others, but it does open up new vistas for researchersand budding thesis-writers,because it reminds us of the fact that the Russian Federation is still an empire, and that the future of its national minorities (not only the Chechens) is even more problematical than is the futureof the ethnic Russians.This subjectis addressed,or at least touched on, by more authors than Thompson suggests(she has some harsh things to say about Rybakov and Solzhenitsyn), and it certainly deserves more attention than it has received so farfromWesternliteraryscholars. Perhapsthe best, and best written, contributionto this volume comes first; it is David Bethea's 'IuriiLotman in the I98os: The Code and Its Relation to Literary Biography'. Lotman owed a lot to Bakhtin (who...