The Tolstoys' Correspondence with N. N. Strakhov by A. s> Donskov (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 501 chronological limits,Jentsch thus makes one of the most interestingpoints in the whole book. After I840, stimulatedby the national awakening,the vocabularybegan to grow by borrowing from Czech (and, occasionally, from Polish), thus producing words so thoroughlyintegratedinto the literarylanguage that it is difficultto identify them. Here Jentsch courteously acknowledges his use of my 'Lexical changes in the Upper Sorbian literary language during and following the National Awakening', L&topis InstitutaZaserbski ludospyt, A I8, 1971, pp. I-127. The main criterion for detecting a Slavonic borrowing, apart from the existence of a model in the loaning language, is its absence from the dialects and from the literary language before i840. It is hard to prove a negative, but Jentsch manages to do so by noting absentees from his pre-184o database. The difficulty (usually the impossibility) of identifying them as borrowingsby their external form he attributesto their having been adapted and even specifiessome of the sound changes thought to have been imposed on them anachronistically. For example, Upper Sorbian d&iwadlo 'theatre'(fromCzech divadlo), firstattested I850, is said to have been adapted to make it conform to the medieval metaphony: 'd' before frontvowels > dt (P. 177). But it seems to me that the high degree of linguistic sophistication which this theory attributesto the borrowersmakes it less attractivethan an explanation in termsof loan translationor Weinreich'sautomatic conversion formula (Czech diva-'look'being identifiedwith Upper Sorbian dziwa-'look' and Czech -dlo with Upper Sorbian -dlo). The 'departurefrom the normal phonetic adaptation' which Jentsch thinks he sees in kho/dba 'passage', when comparedwith hudzba 'music'(p. I78), is explained in my 'ZurPalatalisierung vor dem Suffix -bba im Obersorbischen', Zeitschrifl fur Slawistik,22, 1977, pp. 541-45. -Whateverthe natureoftheborrowingprocess,however,Jentsch's skillin identifyingits resultsis not in doubt. His book is a significantadvance on allpreviousworkin thisfield. HertfordCollege GERALD STONE Oxord Donskov, A. (ed.). 7The Tolstoys' Correspondence withN. N. Strakhov. Tolstoy Series, vol. 3. Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa and State L. N. Tolstoy Museum, Moscow, 2000. xii + 308 pp. Notes. Bibliography .Index. Cdn $42.00: US $28.oo (paperback). IT is well known that the St Petersburgphilosopher, librarian and literary critic Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov (I828-I896) was one of Lev Tolstoy's closest friends and principal correspondents. He was also one of Tolstoy's most perceptivecritics.Lesswell known is the factthat Strakhovand Tolstoy's wife, Sof'ia Andreevna(i 844- I9 I9), alsomaintaineda livelycorrespondence, beginning in July I872 and ending in August I895. Tolstoy had come upon Strakhov's journal writings in the late I86os and first wrote to him in March I 870 having just read and thoroughly approved of his article 'Zhenskii vopros' in Zaria (no. 2, pp. 107-49) disputing John Stuart Mill's contention that women and men should enjoy equal rights. Although Strakhov remained a 502 SEER, 79, 3, 200I bachelor all his life, he shared Tolstoy's belief that the woman's place was in the home, exercisingherunique giftof femininityby bringingup childrenand caring for the family. That first letter in which Tolstoy also defends the 'honourable calling' of London's 8o,ooo prostituteswas actually never sent, but between I870 and Strakhov'sdeath the two men exchanged some four hundred letters. The greater part of this correspondence has already been published. The fullestcollection of Tolstoy's letters to Strakhov,written over the whole period of their intercourse, right up to Strakhov's death, was published in the ninety-volume jubilee Edition' of Tolstoy's works(Moscow I 928-58). Some two hundredof Strakhov'slettersto Tolstoywrittenbetween I87I and I894, and seventy from Tolstoy to Strakhovwritten over the same period, appearedsoon afterTolstoy'sdeath (B.L. Modzalevskii,Perepiska L.N. Tolstogo s N N Strakhovym. i870-i894, Obshchestvo Tolstovskogomuzeia, St Petersburg, I914). The twenty-fourletterswritten by Strakhovto Tolstoy in I894 and I895 were, however,not availableto Modzalevskiiand arepublished here in full (PartI) for the firsttime. Also published for the firsttime in the present volume (PartII) is the correspondence between Strakhovand Sof'ia Andreevna, eighty-seven letters in all, forty from Strakhov and forty-seven from Sof'ia Andreevna. Eight of the latter are accompanied by a separate letteror an addendumfromTolstoy. Strakhov'slettersto Tolstoy arehelpfully interleaved with fourteen of Tolstoy's letters...