312
CLARENCE
BROWN
on speaking -tenns, written oI1lly one year later. In a note appended to
some translations from Pushkin, Nabokov wrote: "It seems unnecessary to
remind the reader that Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) was Russia's
greatest poet but it may be preferable not to take any chances." The
readers of this wOWlding little reminder knew, of course, nothing of the
kind. Wilson took even fewer ahances, but it is almost amazing to read,
at this early date, his assessment of
Pushkin'~
status. Setting him among
certain other writers born between 1788 and 1857 (Byron, Keats, Shel–
ley, Heine, Poe, Musset, Jane Austen,and Stendhal), Wilson concludes
that Pushkin "is the great figure of this short-lived group and the
uni–
versal figure of that moment." Indeed, he goes further and concurs in a
judgment still harder for the West to take, that Pushkin is "the only
modem poet in the class of Shakespeare and Dante." Any cultivated Rus–
sian might have told him that, but the essay makes clear that Wilson
has
not relied upon hearsay evidence, for his rterse little essay is replete
with a detailed and particular illumination of Pushkin's work. It also
conveys a true sense of Pushkin's career and of the contours of his
artistic personality for an appreciation of which at their real worth
readers wouJd themselves have to do much of rthe labor that Wilson
imposed upon himself. For balanced enlightenment, it is hard to praise
this piece - and certain other things, such as the essay on Gogol - too
highly.
The diligence underlying the better essays here - those on Push–
kin, Gogol, Tyutchev, Turgenev, and Chekhov - is really quite edify–
ing. Not only did Wilson school himself in one of the most difficult of
the great modern languages, but he was never content to write even
the briefest essay on a Russian author U!l1ltil he had read straight rthrough
the entire
oeuvre,
or as much of it as he could lay his hands on. But
he realized that not all his diligence could make up for the lack of
a Russian child:hood.
Were there compens·ating advantages in the very condi,tion of being
a foreigner? From his having several times answered this question in the
affinnative in these pages, I take it that Wilson found it not a little
consoling. Having noted the non-Russian's obvious handicaps, he con–
tinues in a typical passage:
Yet the very necessity for the foreigner of paying close attention to
every sentence may prevent the story from carrying him along so
fast that he fails to notice exactly what is being said and how the
author is saying it; and to come fresh to an accepted classic with a
matU!l"e and unprejudiced mind may make it possible for
h~
to see
certain things that have been obscured for readers to whom the
