BOOKS
Russian ear (and, alas, in all the nuances
only
to a Russian ear)
this verbal flotsam and jetsam evokes - not with condescension,
always with compassion and wonderment - a whole world in
which language mirrors a desolation of the spirit such as is
everywhere closer, perhaps, to the essence of society at large
than may be readily avowed.
297
The emphasis is on the strangeness and the expressive worth of
the language, and its home in "the lower depths." Politics is not at all
remote from this kind of interest, though partisan politics
is.
In a
partisan sense it takes a certain political naivete to be for both
Solzhenitsyn and Siniavski, and in a partisan sense Max often showed
a certain naivete, as for instance when, late in his life, charmed with
his retreat on Spetsai and in love with the Greek language, he
thought of taking Greek citizenship at a time when the colonels were
in power. But when it came to cultural politics, the relationship of
culture to the political powers that be, Max had sure instincts and a
profound understanding. He knew very well that after Stalin's
death, the Soviet Union could never be the same again.
What, ultimately, were his achievements? It must be admitted
that in spite of occasionally striking passages like the one I have
quoted above, Max comes to more vivid life in the remarkable pages
of Patricia Blake's memoir than in the collection of his own writings
that follow, carefully chosen though they are. They consist mostly,
after all, of introductions, and it was Max's purpose not to express
himself but to explain and introduce the book in question. While
there are important insights in many of these essays, one cannot say
that they form an impressive oeuvre .
Max was certainly among the best known and most competent
translators from the Russian. Alone or with a collaborator he trans–
lated the best known works ofSiniavski ("Abram Tertz"), Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago,
and the memoirs of Ivinskaia, Solzhenitsyn's first
(and best) novel, Alexander Ginzburg's notes on the Siniavski-Daniel
trial, and the two volumes of Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoirs, to
name only the most prominent of the prose works that came into
English largely through him.
His reputation as a translator suffered a severe blow when Ed–
mund Wilson attacked his translation of
Doctor Zhivago.
He and his
collaborator, Manya Harrari, had worked under great pressure of
time , and with an immensely difficult prose text by a poet whose
stylistic self-consciousness was legendary. As Patricia Blake points
