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Imagination Governs the World
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14519 |
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BOOK WORLD
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3 / 1988 |
5,922 Words |
| Author
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Michael Scammell
Michael Scammell is the author of Solzhenitsyn: A Biography
and chairman of the Department of Russian Literature at
Cornell University. |
A CAPTIVE LION
Elaine Feinstein
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1987
304 pp., $19.95
THE SELECTED POEMS OF MARINA TSVETAYEVA
Elaine Feinstein, trans.
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1987
112 pp., $12.95
The tragic history of Russian literature since the October Revolution mirrors the melancholy progress of the country itself. From the very first days after the Bolshevik coup, and during the civil war that followed it, the literary community was split three ways. For every poet--like Blok and Mayakovsky--who supported the Reds from the outset, there were equally talented writers (e.g. Bunin, Ivanov, Gippius) who threw in their lot with the Whites and emigrated when the Whites were defeated. Many more, including Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and Pasternak, to name just a few, while not terribly sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, were unable to bring themselves to accept exile. They decided to await events and to become, as Leon Trotsky later dubbed them, "fellow travelers."
In the case of these ambivalent writers, patriotism and attachment to the language eventually prevailed. In 1922 Akhmatova even boasted of her decision not to leave and expressed pity for the exile's lot. Yet the "bitter wormwood" she detected in "alien bread" had already invaded her own diet and was to remain an inescapable ingredient until the end of her days. The fatal moment of illumination for her, as for so many
... (1996 of 34654 Characters)
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