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Re: Soviet provincialism?
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Date
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Sergie: yes, indeed. I think the underlying Soviet horror was the
uncertainty: Stalin’s arbitrary whims of approval and oft-fatal rejection
almost regardless of the artist’s devotion to the party-line. There were
those abject CONFESSIONS from artists under threat. The whole confessional
phenomenon was as irrational as the accusations, as captured by Nabokov in
ITAB. The crimes of Cosmopolitanism and Enemy of the People are as
unanswerable as VN’s chilling GNOSTIC TURPITUDE.
Refusal to confess implied guilt, but so did a confession! As Victor Fet has
pointed out, we have the reality behind Lewis Carroll’s “Sentence first,
Verdict afterwards,” significantly modified in VN’s translation as “At first
the Penalty, then the Verdict”
«Сперва казнь, а потом уж приговор!»: о переводе Льюиса Кэрролла Набоковым.
В кн.: «Побережье» (Филадельфия), 2009, 18 (опубл. 2010)
Sergie reminds us that Gorky’s own death was probably a Stalin-instigated
murder, even though Uncle Joe was a mournful pall bearer at Gorky’s lavish
funeral. (BTW, Lenin was no better. Gorky’s personal friendship with VIL
failed to save the life of writer Gumilyov in 1921.) Mysteries abound over
the sudden death of Gorky’s son, May 1934, and Gorky’s reported house-arrest
following the infamous Kirov assassination in December 1934. The latter,
also probably Stalin-instigated, triggered mass arrests and the pretence for
Stalin to remove many a fine comrade. Moving ahead to the Bukharin show
trials of 1938, the pattern of Stalin’s squad of killers being themselves
purged was repeated: Yagoda's NKVD were charged with Gorky’s murder! See,
the TRUTH will out! To paraphrase Monty Python and Mel Brookes, “It’s FUN
being absolute Dictator.”
Carolyn seems to misread my quick answer to her hypothetical question, What
kind of a Soviet writer would VN have made? I wrote: a MURDERED Soviet
writer LIKE Mandelshtam and Babel. CK objects that VN was UNLIKE either
Mandelshtam or Babel, which nobody can deny. My use of LIKE, a common
English idiom, means only that VN would have shared the FATE of the named
writers, viz., beyond doubt murdered at Stalin’s behest. Space precluded a
full list of victims! We have seen that this list includes many devoted
Stalinists as well as many devoted anti-Stalinist Communists (Trot being the
shorthand) and many outright anti-Communists of diverse shades of Liberal
Pink and Tsarist White. In other words, there was no guarantee of survival
whether you “toed the line,” or played hard in seeming to conform, or were
bravely suicidal enough to openly attack the Party. Some of the latter
escaped murder-by-bullet, but died in the Gulags. Some, LIKE Solzhenitsyn,
(but also UNLIKE Solzhenitsyn!!) even miraculously survived the camps.
Others LIKE Pasternak (but also UNLIKE Pasternak) kept their noses clean
enough, suffering occasional bullying and censorship (Pasternak’s Zhivago,
of course, was banned but leaked abroad; so were innocent poems like Gamlet)
but lived to die natural deaths in comfort!
Wiki records how lucky Pasternak and Bulgakov were:
Although Pasternak was widely panned for excessive subjectivism, Stalin is
said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an arrest list during the purges,
saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller." According to Simon Sebag
Montefiore, "He recognized that Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Bulgakov were
geniuses, but their work was suppressed. Yet he could tolerate whimsical
maestros: Bulgakov and Pasternak were never arrested. But woe betide anyone,
genius or hack, who insulted the person or policy of Stalin -- for the two
were synonymous."
To usefully speculate further on possible scenarios for VN’s fate as a
Soviet writer, we must decide on the hypothetical historical background. Do
we imagine that the 18-year-old VN was unable to escape the Bolsheviks? We
might try and guess his career had he survived (some aristocrats managed
that unlikely trick) into adulthood. There are more WHAT-Ifs than I care to
pursue. Would he have attended a University or been coopted to dig grandiose
canals? During the brief so-called Leninist Flowering, he might have
established his name as an experimental writer. To survive, always a high
human priority, I’ve no doubt he could, to borrow your phrase, “bow to
authority.” Biding his time; planning escape; inventing samizdat? A
fascinating and safer route would have him become a respected Lepidopterist
working under Lysenko at the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural
Sciences. (This joke is dedicated to Stephen Blackwell and Victor Fet!)
The other scenario (hardly more plausible) that I had in mind when invoking
the fate of Gorky, was that VN escapes the Bolsheviks as per BB’s biography,
becomes a famous writer in exile, and, at some date to be debated (the
choice of date could be critical: pre- or post-Stalin? Pre- or Post-
Khrushchev’s 20th Congress?), is enticed into returning. In these unlikely
contexts the question of “bowing to authority” could be variously relevant.
Under, or shortly after Stalin, most Slavs on this list would surely agree
that VN’s fate would be LIKE that of Stalin’s many victims REGARDLESS of
what VN wrote. A Soviet Socialist novel+poem called STALIN’S FIRE (written
to protect Véra and Dmitri?) would not guarantee his survival.
Did VN ever have such a work in mind? JS = John Shade = Joseph Stalin!
ADMIRABLE REDS? Hardly a coincidence. Suitable pastiches invited. Note: VN’s
Stalin’s Fire poses no elitist-intellectual puzzles about the afterlife. JS
lives forever.
Carolyn now completely reframes her original question:
What I am saying is, did Nabokov have the right to criticize those who
stayed behind? I am thinking for example of Pasternak. Did Nabokov forgive
the murdered? -- CK
My answer is YES, VN has the right to criticize anything/anyone about
which/whom he is critical. We, in turn, have the right to review specific
criticisms and judge their merits. (To avoid any confusion, it should be
noted that Pasternak died of lung cancer, to the best of our knowledge! He’s
far from typical of ‘those who stayed behind.’) As to whether VN ‘forgave
the murdered’ we really need to be more specific. ALL murdered Soviet
writers or just those VN knew and expressed opinions about? Or the 10+
million Soviet non-writers? NOT sure if FORGIVING the dead, however they
died, is at all meaningful, even if you SPECIFY their presumed SINS? You can
feel deep sorrow over someone dying, whether known or unknown, and this
sorrow is amplified if that death was unnatural. So, name the murdered, name
the sin. Ask if forgiveness is relevant? Isn’t it a tad too LATE? Jesus said
LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD. He, they say, handles the sins of the dead. Our
limited powers of forgiveness extend only to the LIVING. Did Nabokov forgive
the murdered? We know he was highly (sometimes idiosyncratically) critical
of many writers, some of whom were Soviet and later murdered. He may have
been devastated at their cruel demise, but that’s unrelated to VN’s literary
judgment. Also note that not all VN’s strong opinions remained fixed for
life. We too must remain open to changing our minds in the light of new
evidence and tolerant exchange of ideas.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 22/05/2010 04:07, "NABOKV-L" <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU> wrote:
> Dear Stan,
>
> just a little "headnote" - the fact that Stalin named the whole city
> for Gorky didn't stop (very probably) Gorky to be murdered by an
> order of Stalin, or, more likely, with Stalin's consent or hint. Murder
> at this time didn't contradict praise. (Nabokov probably would be
> murdered without...)
>
> All the best
>
> Sergei Soloviev
>
>> > Adding to Victor Fet¹s comment on the Soviet¹s brutal attack on artistic
>> > freedom and creativity, I see a new book on the subject reviewed by
>> > Wendell
>> > Steavenson in the latest Sunday Times: ENGINEERS OF THE SOUL, In the
>> > Footsteps of Stalin¹s Writers, by Frank Westerman (Harvill Secker, £14.99
>> > pp
>> > 306.)
>> >
>> > Westerman reminds us of the romantic novel under Soviet Socialist Realism:
>> > Boy meets Girl, Girl meets Tractor.
>> > He tells of Akhmatova reduced to writing poems in praise of Stalin to try
>> > and get her son released from the camps.
>> > And who dare blame her for that? ³Stalin corralled the liriki to match the
>> > efforts of the fisiki, to serve the breakneck industriaiization of the
>> > 1930s.² ³If workers can pour concrete in brigades, why can¹t brigades of
>> > writers produce a collective book?² (M Gorky)
>> >
>> > The reviewer warns us not to expect a comprehensive study on Soviet
>> > Literature (a well-ploughed field). Rather, Westerman seeks new ground,
>> > covering lesser-known writers, especially the hangers-on¹ who suffered
>> > but
>> > survived.
>> >
>> > Carolyn asks: Has anyone ever speculated, by the way, as to what kind of
>> > soviet writer Nabokov would have made?
>> > The quick answer is a MURDERED Soviet writer, like Mandelstam and Babel.
>> >
>> > The gruesome tale of Stalin coaxing Maxim Gorky back to the CCCP offers
>> > scant food for further speculation. Gorky succumbed and was richly
>> > rewarded
>> > for becoming ³Godfather of the subversion of literature to the efficacies
>> > of
>> > the Five-Year Plan!²
>> >
>> > But, a huge BUT, to even THINK of that happening to the exiled Vladimir
>> > Nabokov is UNTHINKABLE! Still, just imagine: Stalin naming a whole city
>> > for
>> > Nabokov, an honour Uncle Joe bestowed on the obsequious Gorky in 1932 (it
>> > reverted to Nizhny Novgorod in 1991).
>> >
>> > Stan Kelly-Bootle
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uncertainty: Stalin’s arbitrary whims of approval and oft-fatal rejection
almost regardless of the artist’s devotion to the party-line. There were
those abject CONFESSIONS from artists under threat. The whole confessional
phenomenon was as irrational as the accusations, as captured by Nabokov in
ITAB. The crimes of Cosmopolitanism and Enemy of the People are as
unanswerable as VN’s chilling GNOSTIC TURPITUDE.
Refusal to confess implied guilt, but so did a confession! As Victor Fet has
pointed out, we have the reality behind Lewis Carroll’s “Sentence first,
Verdict afterwards,” significantly modified in VN’s translation as “At first
the Penalty, then the Verdict”
«Сперва казнь, а потом уж приговор!»: о переводе Льюиса Кэрролла Набоковым.
В кн.: «Побережье» (Филадельфия), 2009, 18 (опубл. 2010)
Sergie reminds us that Gorky’s own death was probably a Stalin-instigated
murder, even though Uncle Joe was a mournful pall bearer at Gorky’s lavish
funeral. (BTW, Lenin was no better. Gorky’s personal friendship with VIL
failed to save the life of writer Gumilyov in 1921.) Mysteries abound over
the sudden death of Gorky’s son, May 1934, and Gorky’s reported house-arrest
following the infamous Kirov assassination in December 1934. The latter,
also probably Stalin-instigated, triggered mass arrests and the pretence for
Stalin to remove many a fine comrade. Moving ahead to the Bukharin show
trials of 1938, the pattern of Stalin’s squad of killers being themselves
purged was repeated: Yagoda's NKVD were charged with Gorky’s murder! See,
the TRUTH will out! To paraphrase Monty Python and Mel Brookes, “It’s FUN
being absolute Dictator.”
Carolyn seems to misread my quick answer to her hypothetical question, What
kind of a Soviet writer would VN have made? I wrote: a MURDERED Soviet
writer LIKE Mandelshtam and Babel. CK objects that VN was UNLIKE either
Mandelshtam or Babel, which nobody can deny. My use of LIKE, a common
English idiom, means only that VN would have shared the FATE of the named
writers, viz., beyond doubt murdered at Stalin’s behest. Space precluded a
full list of victims! We have seen that this list includes many devoted
Stalinists as well as many devoted anti-Stalinist Communists (Trot being the
shorthand) and many outright anti-Communists of diverse shades of Liberal
Pink and Tsarist White. In other words, there was no guarantee of survival
whether you “toed the line,” or played hard in seeming to conform, or were
bravely suicidal enough to openly attack the Party. Some of the latter
escaped murder-by-bullet, but died in the Gulags. Some, LIKE Solzhenitsyn,
(but also UNLIKE Solzhenitsyn!!) even miraculously survived the camps.
Others LIKE Pasternak (but also UNLIKE Pasternak) kept their noses clean
enough, suffering occasional bullying and censorship (Pasternak’s Zhivago,
of course, was banned but leaked abroad; so were innocent poems like Gamlet)
but lived to die natural deaths in comfort!
Wiki records how lucky Pasternak and Bulgakov were:
Although Pasternak was widely panned for excessive subjectivism, Stalin is
said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an arrest list during the purges,
saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller." According to Simon Sebag
Montefiore, "He recognized that Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Bulgakov were
geniuses, but their work was suppressed. Yet he could tolerate whimsical
maestros: Bulgakov and Pasternak were never arrested. But woe betide anyone,
genius or hack, who insulted the person or policy of Stalin -- for the two
were synonymous."
To usefully speculate further on possible scenarios for VN’s fate as a
Soviet writer, we must decide on the hypothetical historical background. Do
we imagine that the 18-year-old VN was unable to escape the Bolsheviks? We
might try and guess his career had he survived (some aristocrats managed
that unlikely trick) into adulthood. There are more WHAT-Ifs than I care to
pursue. Would he have attended a University or been coopted to dig grandiose
canals? During the brief so-called Leninist Flowering, he might have
established his name as an experimental writer. To survive, always a high
human priority, I’ve no doubt he could, to borrow your phrase, “bow to
authority.” Biding his time; planning escape; inventing samizdat? A
fascinating and safer route would have him become a respected Lepidopterist
working under Lysenko at the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural
Sciences. (This joke is dedicated to Stephen Blackwell and Victor Fet!)
The other scenario (hardly more plausible) that I had in mind when invoking
the fate of Gorky, was that VN escapes the Bolsheviks as per BB’s biography,
becomes a famous writer in exile, and, at some date to be debated (the
choice of date could be critical: pre- or post-Stalin? Pre- or Post-
Khrushchev’s 20th Congress?), is enticed into returning. In these unlikely
contexts the question of “bowing to authority” could be variously relevant.
Under, or shortly after Stalin, most Slavs on this list would surely agree
that VN’s fate would be LIKE that of Stalin’s many victims REGARDLESS of
what VN wrote. A Soviet Socialist novel+poem called STALIN’S FIRE (written
to protect Véra and Dmitri?) would not guarantee his survival.
Did VN ever have such a work in mind? JS = John Shade = Joseph Stalin!
ADMIRABLE REDS? Hardly a coincidence. Suitable pastiches invited. Note: VN’s
Stalin’s Fire poses no elitist-intellectual puzzles about the afterlife. JS
lives forever.
Carolyn now completely reframes her original question:
What I am saying is, did Nabokov have the right to criticize those who
stayed behind? I am thinking for example of Pasternak. Did Nabokov forgive
the murdered? -- CK
My answer is YES, VN has the right to criticize anything/anyone about
which/whom he is critical. We, in turn, have the right to review specific
criticisms and judge their merits. (To avoid any confusion, it should be
noted that Pasternak died of lung cancer, to the best of our knowledge! He’s
far from typical of ‘those who stayed behind.’) As to whether VN ‘forgave
the murdered’ we really need to be more specific. ALL murdered Soviet
writers or just those VN knew and expressed opinions about? Or the 10+
million Soviet non-writers? NOT sure if FORGIVING the dead, however they
died, is at all meaningful, even if you SPECIFY their presumed SINS? You can
feel deep sorrow over someone dying, whether known or unknown, and this
sorrow is amplified if that death was unnatural. So, name the murdered, name
the sin. Ask if forgiveness is relevant? Isn’t it a tad too LATE? Jesus said
LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD. He, they say, handles the sins of the dead. Our
limited powers of forgiveness extend only to the LIVING. Did Nabokov forgive
the murdered? We know he was highly (sometimes idiosyncratically) critical
of many writers, some of whom were Soviet and later murdered. He may have
been devastated at their cruel demise, but that’s unrelated to VN’s literary
judgment. Also note that not all VN’s strong opinions remained fixed for
life. We too must remain open to changing our minds in the light of new
evidence and tolerant exchange of ideas.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 22/05/2010 04:07, "NABOKV-L" <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU> wrote:
> Dear Stan,
>
> just a little "headnote" - the fact that Stalin named the whole city
> for Gorky didn't stop (very probably) Gorky to be murdered by an
> order of Stalin, or, more likely, with Stalin's consent or hint. Murder
> at this time didn't contradict praise. (Nabokov probably would be
> murdered without...)
>
> All the best
>
> Sergei Soloviev
>
>> > Adding to Victor Fet¹s comment on the Soviet¹s brutal attack on artistic
>> > freedom and creativity, I see a new book on the subject reviewed by
>> > Wendell
>> > Steavenson in the latest Sunday Times: ENGINEERS OF THE SOUL, In the
>> > Footsteps of Stalin¹s Writers, by Frank Westerman (Harvill Secker, £14.99
>> > pp
>> > 306.)
>> >
>> > Westerman reminds us of the romantic novel under Soviet Socialist Realism:
>> > Boy meets Girl, Girl meets Tractor.
>> > He tells of Akhmatova reduced to writing poems in praise of Stalin to try
>> > and get her son released from the camps.
>> > And who dare blame her for that? ³Stalin corralled the liriki to match the
>> > efforts of the fisiki, to serve the breakneck industriaiization of the
>> > 1930s.² ³If workers can pour concrete in brigades, why can¹t brigades of
>> > writers produce a collective book?² (M Gorky)
>> >
>> > The reviewer warns us not to expect a comprehensive study on Soviet
>> > Literature (a well-ploughed field). Rather, Westerman seeks new ground,
>> > covering lesser-known writers, especially the hangers-on¹ who suffered
>> > but
>> > survived.
>> >
>> > Carolyn asks: Has anyone ever speculated, by the way, as to what kind of
>> > soviet writer Nabokov would have made?
>> > The quick answer is a MURDERED Soviet writer, like Mandelstam and Babel.
>> >
>> > The gruesome tale of Stalin coaxing Maxim Gorky back to the CCCP offers
>> > scant food for further speculation. Gorky succumbed and was richly
>> > rewarded
>> > for becoming ³Godfather of the subversion of literature to the efficacies
>> > of
>> > the Five-Year Plan!²
>> >
>> > But, a huge BUT, to even THINK of that happening to the exiled Vladimir
>> > Nabokov is UNTHINKABLE! Still, just imagine: Stalin naming a whole city
>> > for
>> > Nabokov, an honour Uncle Joe bestowed on the obsequious Gorky in 1932 (it
>> > reverted to Nizhny Novgorod in 1991).
>> >
>> > Stan Kelly-Bootle
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/