Thought and Vision: Zinaida Hippius's Letters to Greta Gerell by Temira s> Pachmuss Zinaida Hippius (review)

Abstract

544 SEER, 84, 3, JULY 2006 Rome, in IRLI (PushkinHouse, St Petersburg).Unfortunately,this cosmopolitan backgroundis occasionallyreflectedin the author'sEnglish,particularlyin the translations.'Molodets',for instance,is renderedas 'bravegirl'(bravefille) on p. 46 and this kind of 'common denominator'language detractsenjoyment from what might well have been a delightfulas well as instructivebook. This, however, does not alterthe fact that it is a very real contributionto knowledge. Vengerova (I867-194I) emerges as a literaryjournalist in the best sense, alwayson the look-out for the new, alwaysin the swim of things, an excellent organizer with contacts throughout Europe and in all the best journals and publishing houses. A highly-qualifiedpolyglot, she not only wrote about and translatedthe latest culturalsensationsfor the Russian readerbut contributed articles on developments in Russian literatureto suchjournals as Mercure de France and TheSaturday Revue, often working from manuscript,neck and neck with publication in the country of origin. Her erudition, moreover, had not only breadth but considerabledepths;her interest in Wilde and the preRaphaelites ,for instance,extended to precursorssuch as Keats and Blakeand to appreciationof Botticelliand Dante in their own Florentinesetting.She not only wrote copiouslyon German, French, Belgian and Scandinavianmodernism but, in the emigration, produced a serious academic publication on the 'Parisian Archive of Prince Urusov' eventually published in Literaturnoe nasledstvo in 1939. During the heyday of Russian Symbolismshe was involved, albeit peripherally,with all the main modernist initiatives:Severnyi vestnik; The Worldof Art; TheNew Wayand 'The Religious-philosophicalMeetings in St Petersburg I901-I903'; all the literary salons and personalities of the Silver Age in St Petersburgand Stanislavskii'stheatrein Moscow. She was also involved, in a way Neginsky illuminatesvividlyfrom firstsources,in one of those peculiarly heart-rendingexperiments in zliznetvorchestvo a menage-a-troiswith Nikolai Minskii(whomshe eventuallymarriedin Englandin 1924) and his wife Liudmila Vilkina, a poet and 'decadent' femme fatale in her own right. Vengerova supportedMinskiithroughoutthe debacle of his involvementwith the BolsheviknewspaperNewLifeand subsequentexile from tsaristRussia. The great value of this book is the amount of fresh material,from emigre and Russian sources, which the author has made available to shed light on the essentially international nature of European modernism and the sheer speed at which ideas travelled even before the FirstWorld War. In doing so, she has also rescued from oblivion the life and work of a perhaps minor, but talented and, in the best sense of the word, typical trendsetter. Universiy ofDurham AVRIL PYMAN Pachmuss, Temira. Thought and Vision: ZinaidaHippius'sLetters to GretaGerell. Compiled, edited, with annotations and introduction by the author. LiteraturwissenschaftlicheReihe, 26. Heidelberger Publikationen zur Slavistik. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2004. I64 pp. Notes. Illustrations.C23.OO (paperback). A welcome addition to Temira Pachmuss's invaluable publications from Hippius's epistolatory heritage, these letters in French to the Scandinavian REVIEWS 545 artistGreta Gerell give an intimateaperfue of the Merezhkovskiis'life and work in the emigration,particularly,perhaps, of the very real hardships,the handto -mouth existence they were forced to lead - and of Gerell's charity. Hippius's more abstract letters are often accompanied by warm and very human notes of thanks from Dmitrii Sergeevich Merezhkovskii.The letters written after his death have a desolate, courageous qualitythat, as Pachmuss rightlyclaims, adds a new dimensionto the portraitof Hippius conjuredup in Zlobin's 'Tiazhelaia dusha'. It is to this biographicalaspect of our knowledge of Hippius that the letters contributemost. Her correspondentwas not closely involvedwith the intellectual life of the Russian emigrationand Hippius'sexcursionsinto literatureand religion are, therefore, more subjective,less programmaticthan in the letters publishedin the magisterial'Intellectand Ideas in Action', though nonetheless interestingfor that. Pachmuss,of course, is totallyin command of her subject and presentsher publication, essentialreading for specialistson Hippius and Merezhkovskiiand desirablefor scholarsinterestedin the Russian emigration in France, with her usual meticulous enthusiasm. University ofDurham AVRIL PYMAN Osipov, V. Sholokhov. Molodaya gvardiya,Moscow, 2005. 628 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography.$27.00. IN I995 Valentin Osipov published Tainaia zAhin' Mikhaila Sholokhova (7The Secret Life of MikhailSholokhov), which thanked the writer's family for their help throughout his life. Osipov's latest work contains 628 pages as against 414 in Tainaiazhizn' and he has used this extra space largely to expand on Sholokhov 'sstrugglewith those controllingliteratureunder Stalin, Khrushchevand Brezhnev. In I93I Gorkii sent TikhiiDon (QuietFlowstheDon)to Stalin...