REVIEWS 505 Not everythinghere is tried and true, including some archivalbentrovati from Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik. Literaryanthologies reflectthe contemporarynotion of the canon, and can also influence it. Most strikingis the now dominant place of poets from the firsthalf of the twentiethcentury.In makinghis compilation of poets fromthe early Soviet period, Obolenskyconfrontedboth an incomplete corpusof texts and reputations largely untested over the preceding decades. In placing Mandel'shtam and Tsvetaeva within the same covers as Pushkin and Baratynsky,he was makingthe case fortheirimportancein the canon. Almost forty years on from Obolensky, Rayfield's marvellous collection reflects a verse traditionwhere the achievement of the greatesttwentieth-centurypoets fromAkhmatova to the early Brodskyhas been fullyassimilated.Perhapsthe most lavish sample belongs to Mandel'shtamwhose selection, apartfrom his widely known masterpieces, includes poems from the very end of his life, a decision that deservedly corrects a tendency to emphasize the verse written before 193I. Akhmatova, Gumilev and Maiakovskiifare well, while even a substantialsection of Tsvetaeva seems to convey only a limited sense of her multifaceted genius. Uncertainty over the value of contemporarywill always bedevil any editor. Conscious of the value of tested reputations,and aware of themistakeninclusionofpoetic samozvantsy Bagritskii,Tikhonov,Voznesenskii , Akhmadulina, Yevtushenko are out Professor Rayfield elects from poets of the Soviet period Tarkovskiiand Mikhalkov,but no Slutskyor Guitar Poets. From the post-Thaw Garnett includes some fine examples of Brodsky, but poets of the Blue Lagoon are absent. Their place, and the place of others, in a lyriccanon willbe, as Rayfieldnotes, forfutureanthologiststo determine, although recent collections by Smith and Kates may have alreadymade such canon-reformation possible by separating the lasting from the ephemeral in post-I960 poetry. The layout of the book is user-friendly and the texts are accurately reproduced. A prose-translationof each poem comes at the bottom of the page; the standardof lucidity of these cribs is high, and in the case of some poets, like Lermontov, the translations achieve a certain euphony, while Khlebnikov's 'Smekhachi' provokes a punning tour de force. Annotation is minimal, and it is to be hoped, space permitting,that the editorsmight decide to include briefbiographicalsketchesin a futureedition. StEdmund Hall,Oxford ANDREW KAHN Eile, Stanislaw.Literature andNationalismin Partitioned Poland,I795-1918. Studiesin Russiaand EastEurope.Macmillan,Basingstokeand London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 2000. XVi+ 234 pp. Notes. Index. ?47.50? STANISLAW EILE's study fills a gap in Polish literary and cultural history. Scholarship has, thus far, been missing a coherent investigation into Polish literatureas a means of negotiatingproblemsof nationalidentity.Although in recent years much attention has been paid to trends of internationalization 506 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 and transculturality,this study clearly focuses on the process of installing, developing and, eventually,dischargingnationalismin Polishliterature. Eile rightlymakesthe point that basic ideas about the national characterof the 'Republic of Nobility' (Rzeczzpospolita szlachecka) have to be traced back to the sixteenth century.Accordinglythe rootsof Polishmessianismare outlined in a profound introduction: 'The Character of Polish Nationalism its Literary Foundation before I795' (pp. I-29). Chapter one (pp. 30-45) is devoted to the 'Formation of Nineteenth-Century Nationalism in Polish Literature'.The author describes phenomena such as the conceptualization of Russia as a realm of evil and the praise of Poland as a land of peaceful farming.Attention is also given to culturalkeywordssuch as zgoda, kresy, honor, MatkaPolkaand others.Chapter two (pp. 46-67) dealswith the occurrence of 'Messianismand the National Cause' in some of Mickiewicz'sand Krasin'ski's major works. Chapter three (pp. 68-83) is mainly devoted to Slowacki's 'Poetry of Suffering and Rebellion'. Similarly, as in the case of Mickiewicz and Krasifiski, Eile identifies specific aspects of nationalism and religious fundamentalism and also a number of contradictions in the writings of the 'bards'.Special attentionisgiven to Slowacki's'spiritualization'of Polandand to the cult of political prisoners. In chapter four (pp. 84-I05) another item mentioned earlier is developed further 'The Domestic Utopia of Rural Paradise'.Eile outlines how the 'ideasof national martyrdomand messianism were supplementedby the cult of domesticvalues'. This aspect is examined in Mickiewicz'sPanTadeusz, in some of Fredro'scomedies, but also in Wincenty Pol'swritingsand in the narrativeprose of the Positivists.The cult of the kresy and the idea of...