Serapion Sister: The Poetry of Elizaveta Polonskaja by Leslie Dorfman s> Davis Elizaveta Polonskaja (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 5 I 7 constitutes a commendably serious attempt to understand the religious dimension of Dostoevsky'snovel, and to do so without reducingit eitherto the Orthodox tradition, or to psychology, or some other system of thought with which Dostoevsky(andMyshkin)would be fundamentallyout of sympathy. French'sbook is not only a close readingwith a powerfultheoreticaldrive, it is also a polemic with a number of strong, mostly American, precursors. Chief among these is Robin FeuerMillerwhose highly regardedDostoevsky and 'TheIdiot'.Author, Narrator andReader(Cambridge, MA, 198I) is constantly referredto in the early chapters, almost alwaysfor the purpose of expressing disagreement. Michael Holquist, who is more sympathetically treated, is subjectedto a specialcritiquein severalsectionsof the lastchapter.Othersare mentioned less frequently in passing. Elizabeth Dalton is included in the bibliographybut not mentioned in the text. While the polemic is an inessential part of the study, it nevertheless has the merit of situating French'swork in relation to that of leading English-speakingcontemporaries.'Contemporary', however, has to be taken in a special sense for which the book gives no explanation, for it is curiousthat an academic workwhich takesitsprecursors so seriouslyshould make no discerniblereference, either in the text or in the otherwiseconscientiousbibliography,to anythingpublishedsince I983. Much of relevance to both Dostoevsky and to Bakhtin'sreligiousthought has been published since then, including importantworkby the founderof the seriesin which the volume appears, Gary Saul Morson, and, of course, the extensive writings of post-Soviet Russian critics. While French'sbook loses none of its force as a consequence, his preferencefor highlightinghis disagreementswith other critics throws this lacuna into relief. Perhaps the typescript has been languishing unpublished for nearly twenty years and the author had no opportunityto update it. The formerwould be a matterof greaterregretthan the latter for, as the author would no doubt wish to remind us, it is now happilyin thepublic spherewhere it can enter into dialoguewith otherworks, some of which will reinforce its position and other subject it in its turn to radicalchallenge. Nottingham MALCOLMV. JONES Davis, Leslie Dorfman. Serapion Sister.ThePoetry ofElizaveta Polonskaja. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston,IL, 200I. 268 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $85.00. THOUGH she was unusual in belonging, albeit briefly, to a literary grouping (the Serapion Brothers highlighted by the title of this new study), Elizaveta Polonskaia(i 890- I969) was in many other ways relativelytypical of Russian women writerswho came to maturityin the firstgeneration of Soviet power. The rapid dissipationafterher death of the high reputationthat she attained in her lifetime is also characteristicof Russian women poets more broadly, fromElisavetaKul'manin the earlynineteenthcentury,to MirraLokhvitskaia in the earlytwentieth century,and VeraInber or MarniaPetrovykhin the late twentieth century. Commended in the I920S by critics such as D. S. Mirskii, Polonskaiapublished as many as nine collections of verse over the course of 5I8 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 her career, and contributed also to the familiaralternativegenres, for Soviet women writers,of children'sliterature,memoirs, and translation.But she has been almost completely neglected since her death, with even her centenary going more or less unmarked,both in Russia and elsewhere. Leslie Dorfman Davis's book is the first substantial study of Polonskaia to appear in any language, and is in this sense trulypioneering. It is based on assiduousif not quite exhaustiveresearch(manuscriptmaterialsare drawnfromthree sources alone, the private archive of the Polonskiifamily, and the holdings in lichnye fondy,such as those of Mariia Shkapskaiaand Il'ia Erenburg,held in RGALI and in RNB, though Davis has used what she has seen, especiallythe private archive,to good effect;publishedmaterialsconsultedomit, for instance, G. S. Smith's publication of two letters from D. S. Mirskii in SEER, 73, I995, 3, pp. 490-98, but cast the net quite widely otherwise). And the detailed treatment of Polonskaia'slife and works given here will undoubtedly make sure that the poet gets considerably more notice from critics interested in Russianwomen's writing,and savefutureauthorsof generalizingstudiesfrom relying on Polonskaia'sown self-censoringand life-revisingautobiographical sketch of I966, a practice for which Davis understandablyrebukes, among others, Marina Ledkovsky, Charlotte Rosenthal, as well as Mary Zirin's DictionayofRussianWomen Writers (Westport, CT, 1994), andmyownHistory ofRussianWomen's Writing I820-I992 (Oxford, I994). To what extent the studywill get Polonskaianoticed beyond the somewhat...