630
PARTISAN REVIEW
DISSIDENTS ABROAD
A
VOICE FROM THE CHORUS. By Abram Tertz (Andrei Siniavsky).
Translated from the Russian by Kyril Fitzlyon and Max Hayward. With
an introduction by Max Hayward. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $10.00.
"Literaturnyi protsess v Rossii " [The Literary Process in Russia] . By
Abram Tertz. In Kontinent, No.1 (1974), pp. 143-190.
"Liudi i zveri (Po knige G. Vladimova Vernyi Ruslan: Istoriia karaul 'noi
sobaki)" [Men and Animals (based on G. Vladimov's book Ruslan the
Faithful: The Story of a Guard Dog)]. In Kontinent , NO. 5 (1975), pp.
367- 404.
In September of 1965 Andrei Siniavsky (b. 1925), a critic and
scholar of some note, was arrested on charges that he had pu blished
several works in the West, under the pseudonym Abram Tertz: a
novel-The Trial Begins,
short
stories-Fantastic Stories,
and an
essay - "On Socialist Realism," all brilliant and devastatingly critical
of the Soviet order. The trial of Siniavsky and Iul y Daniel, arrested on
similar charges a few days after Siniavsky, became a
cause celebre,
drawing the attention of the international intellectual communit y to
the dissident movement in the Soviet Union. It is perhaps due
to
this
publicity that the story of Siniavsky and Daniel eventually had a happy
ending. After having served their sentences in a labor camp (seven and
five years, respectively), Siniavsky and Daniel were able
to
continue
their careers in literature: Daniel in Russia, mostl y as a translator, and
Siniavsky in the West, where he was allowed
to
immigrate in 1973.
Tertz-Siniavsky's creative personality has many facets. Here, we see
him as a publicist, satirist, aphorist, aesthetic theorist, and critic. His
subjects are, basically, Russia and art. Often they are linked.
"The Literary Process in Ru ssia" is programmatic, polemic, and
provocative. Its pathos is that of Belinsky's "Letter to Gogo\. " The
Russian writer is defined as a dissident.
If
he is not a dissident, he is not
a writer. The writer must speak in "ali en words." (Here, Tertz gives a
broad existential meaning to a literary term coined by M. M. Bakhtin to
describe a device of Dostoevsky's style.) The writer must combat "our
own word." (The Russian
svoe slovo
is difficult to translate, particu–
larly since Tertz puns
svoe slovo
with
sovetskoe slovo.)
He must
overcome the familiar cliche, and its power. Hence, "all poets are
Jews." (Tertz does not actuall y quote this line by Tsvetaeva but says
