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the former, they were nevertheless poets of genuine lyric talent, if
not of the order of talent many were overeager to attribute to them at
first.
For Max, that perhaps "vulgar" but by no means commonplace
"factologist," life was at its greenest and had its deepest charge where
a vernacular language showed its roots in a folk culture. And
literature was interesting to the degree that it spoke for the aspira–
tions of the folk, preferably in some fragment of the vernacular, or at
least (as with Pasternak) in a way that recognized its dignity and its
link with freedom. That was why he could commit himself pas–
sionately to writers whom more specifically
literary
critics might see
as antithetical: Leonov
and
Pasternak; Voznesensky
and
Nadezhda
Mandelstam; Solzhenitsyn
and
Siniavski. His commitment to the
last-named pair is particularly striking, since the entire recent Rus–
sian emigration, or at least that part of it with literary leanings, is
split over these two names; the followers of Solzhenitsyn excoriate
Siniavski; the followers of Siniavski look at least critically and more
often with disdain at Solzhenitsyn. Max's politics were deeper and
broader and less partisan than that. He did indeed have some sense
of identification with Russian nationalism, with those aspirations of
nationalism that were accompanied by a sense of obligation and
responsibility to the folk and folk-culture and to freedom for the
common people. Clearly, both Solzhenitsyn and Siniavski shared
these aspirations, whatever their feelings towards each other.
Here is a passage from Max's introduction to the translation he
did (with Kyril Fitzlyon) of Siniavski's
A Voice from the Chorus.
The
book consists of letters Siniavski wrote his wife during his seven
years' confinement in Gulag, and in these letters Siniavski sets his
thoughts on life, death, literature, the world, over and against the
overheard speech of his fellow inmates.
It
is a typical passage in
Max's writing in that it reflects his deepest and most intense in–
terests; it is also a passage of brilliant insight into the book in ques–
tion, and it is both eloquent and simple:
The meaning of what the chorus says is, however, ofless concern
than its tone or flavor; in vocabulary and phonetic coloring, it·
vividly echoes the submerged vernacular of the Russian lower
depths into which the author was cast; it is a speech abounding in
malapropisms, non sequiturs, grotesquely garbled forms , pa–
thetically inadequate attempts at "educated" parlance, slang
words from the criminal underworld, camp jargon , etc. To a
