The Silver Dove by Andrey s> Bely John Elsworth (review)

Abstract

522 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 physical transmutation'(p. Io6). A sparklinganalysis of 'The Cherry Stone' bears out that thiswas certainlythe direction of Olesha's artand, by analogy, perhaps, of much post-Symbolist modernism in Russia: 'Olesha's newly mythic art bears only the faintest imprint of the newly artisticmyths that it transforms'(p. I09). It is hard not to regret the implied emasculation of the subject of the symposium, which might have been counterbalanced by contributions on Khlebnikov, Mandel'shtam and Platonov. Nevertheless, within his chosen sphere,Hutchings'sconclusion is indisputablycorrect. Irene Masing-Delic, writing on 'Sansculotte improvisers and clouds in trousers: Poetic metamorphosis in Pushkin and Mayakovsky' (pp. II3-47) goes furtherdown the same road. This is an exquisite study of Mayakovskii's self-perception as rival and supplanter of Pushkin, of his doomed rebellion against the very romantic image he tried to incarnate. The concept of metamorphosis,however, althoughbattedaboutwith precisionand dexterity, does not reallyemerge as centralto this article. The subjectof the symposiumis broughtbackfirmlycentre stage and in all its unpredictable vitality by Anne Nesbet's concluding article, 'Savage thinking:metamorphosisin the cinema of S. M. Eisenstein'(pp. 149-79). The authoremphasizesthe director'sintense interestin and acknowledgeddebt to primitivecultures:'The relationshipbetween image and idea in Eisensteinis likethatperceivedby the Bororobetween man and redparrot:neitheridentity in thrallto the other. Instead, the identities are enmeshed in the ongoing ebb and flow of metamorphosis' (p. I53). Eisenstein likened his 'montage' technique, Nesbet reminds us, to 'copulation', 'a physical as well as an intellectualclash' and, in the same passage, she refersto 'the emphasison sex as a part of transformation(so many classical instances of metamorphosis involved either "girls running from Zeus" or "Zeus chasing after girls")' (P. 154). In the article, the balefulpriestwith his Methuselah locks glowering down upon the mutineers in Battleship Potemkin is himself transformedinto a windblown female at the beginning of the Odessa steps sequence but the slip, if slipit is, mattersnot at allto the thrustof the argument.What has frequently been identified as the Freudian subtext of Eisenstein's imagery is indeed extremely close to the primeval chaos of the earliest tales of metamorphosis and his cinema standsas near to myth as the modern world is likelyto come: a magnificent shaggy bearskin to protect the nakedness of poor Augustan Ovid fromthe ragingwinter stormsof his long exile on the edge of the GrecoRoman world. Department ofRussian AVRIL PYMAN University ofDurham Bely, Andrey. ne SilverDove.Translated by John Elsworth. Angel Books, London, 2000. 3I6 pp. Introduction.Notes. ? 10.95 (paperback). ALTHOUGH the novel Petersburg is by common consent regarded as Andrey Belyi's greatest and most influentialartisticachievement, TheSilver Doveis in some ways a more accessibletext, filledwith modernistindirection, of course, but by no means lacking traditional qualities of mystery and character REVIEWS 523 delineation which could appeal to a wider audience. While an earlierEnglish version by George Reavey has long been available in America (Grove Press, New York, I974), it has never been widely on sale in the UK, so Elsworth's new translation should fill a significant gap in the market, especially for university courses. Nor is this the only reason for welcoming the volume. Although Reavey's English rendering reads easily enough, it teems with mistranslationsand for some unaccountable reason omits a whole page of Belyi's original text. The new translation, by contrast, is as complete and authoritativein its rendering of Belyi's precise meanings as it is successfulin conveying the feel of his lush, supersaturatedprose. For an example of the latter, take Elsworth'ssuperbrenderingof the passage which evokes the hero Daryalsky's visual perception of the links binding him to the carpenter Kudeyarov, the leader of the sectarian'Dove' commune which he hasjoined: 'Daryalsky looked, and saw that an autumnal thread of gossamer was stretchingup towardsthe blue of the sky;a brightthreadranto the carpenter's cottage, and fromthere,out of the slopinghollow, a windowflasheda rainbow brilliance; and that too seemed made not of flashes, but of gossamer: everything around was covered in gossamer;in the sweet blue day gossamer settledon the grasses,stretchedtautin the air;a wisp of smokefloatedout of a hut;it too seemed to be of gossamer'(p. 242). The main literary influence on Belyi during the writing...