The Diaries of Nikolai Punin, 1904-1953 by Sidney s> Monas Jennifer Greene Krupala , Nikolai Punin (review)

Abstract

326 SEER, 79, 2, 2001 Monas, Sidney and Krupala,Jennifer Greene (eds). 7The DiariesofNikolai Punin, I904-I953. TranslatedbyJennifer Greene Krupala.Universityof Texas Press, Austin, TX, I999. xliv + 26I pp. Photographs. Glossary. Index. $29.95. SINCE the collapse of the Soviet Union the privatediaryhas proven to be one of the most eloquent and occasionally disconcerting testaments to the real force of terror and repression. Since I99I we have seen the publication of diariesby Mikhail Prishvin, Ol'ga Berggol'ts,FedorAbramov, David Samoilov , and the literary critics Igor' Dedkov and Vladimir Lakshin, among others, all of which have cast a distinctly personal eye over momentous historical events. Not only do we get a clear picture of how these events affectedindividuals,but the diary as a specificallyRussian literarygenre has come into itsown. Nikolai Punin (I888- I953) was one of the best-known art criticsin Soviet Russia, and was particularlyinvolved with the Constructivistand Futurist movements. He is perhaps better known, however, for his long and often tempestuous relationship with Anna Akhmatova (between 1922 and 1936). These diaries,collected and translatedfromarchivesboth in the Universityof Texas at Austin and the Punin family archive in St. Petersburg,cover almost half a century, beginning when Nikolai Punin was still an adolescent and ending in 1946. Punin'slast yearswere spent in the Abez prison camp in the Komi peninsula (he was arrestedin 1949), and are covered here by various documentarymaterials,includingPunin'scorrespondencewith MarfaGolubeva , his thirdwife. What is remarkableabout these diariesis the sheerbreadthof emotion and subjectmatter. Punin conveys brilliantlythe atmosphereof Petrogradduring FebruaryI91 7, the anxietiesand the fearsof ordinarypeople as criticalevents are taking place in the streets outside. The diary form here expresses the feelingsand thoughtsof the moment, an immediate responseto events such as Kornilov'sattemptedputsch in August 19I7: 'Getting readyfor bed, I loaded my revolver [. . .] I await what might happen in the streets in the morning, anxiouslylisteningto even the slightestrumble is it a cannonade?The wind howls;today there is a terriblewest wind. How many days, hourswill I live?' (p. 52). There are many vivid passages, none more so than his description of the Leningrad flood in September I924. Punin's prose brilliantlyand unforgettablyrecreatesthe terrorfacing the people of Leningradwhen war breaksout in 1941, the fear and day-to-day uncertainty as bombs fall and food runs scarce.Buttherearemany otherpages of a distinctlyprivatenature,including letters between Punin and Akhmatova. Punin's love for his 'olenik'is unbounded, and the modern readercannot help but be touched by the depth of his feelingsover the decades (even aftertheirrelationshipended). There are also many pages devoted to Punin's reflectionson God, art and science, and the roll-call of famous names that drop in and out of the text is highly impressive. This book will thus help (re)establishNikolai Punin as a majorfigurein Russian art and culturein the twentieth century.We get a full picture of an eager, inquisitivemind, and of a man very often at the mercy of REVIEWS 327 his own emotions. The edition also contains excellent introductoryessaysby Sidney Monas on Punin and Futurism,and by Jennifer Greene Krupala on the relationship between Punin and Akhmatova. The final few pages of the text, containing letters and transcriptsrelating to Punin's arrest, trial and death in the Gulag offer a bitter, somewhat ironic conclusion to the story of one talented and eruditeman'slife in a brutaltotalitarianstate. Unrizversi{y ofBath DAVID GILLESPIE Pasternak,BorisL.; Pasternak,Leonid, and Pasternak,E. B. Pis'makroditeliam i sestram. Stanford Slavic Studies I8 and I9. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, I998, 2 vols. 328 and 334 pp. Photographs. Notes. Indexes. $70ooo. ONE of the paradoxicaltwistsin the heritageof Russianpoetry in Soviet times is that a privateletter was more a public document than a poem: likely, even certain to be intercepted, it would be subject to a critical reading far more gravidwith consequences for the authorthan any of his poems. This, and the inefficiency of the Soviet postal system, national and international, partly explains why the epistolarywork of Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Pasternak is far less interestingin itselfand farless revealingas an adjunctto the poetry than, say, the letters of Pushkin, Tiutchev or Blok. Soviet constraintsmade poets better and more prolific translatorsbut turned their letters either to overblowneuphuismsor shrunkencrypticwarnings. In the case of Pasternak,the...