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PAR.TI SAN REVIEW
reread
Th e R ed alld th e Black ,
I could no t escape th e fee lin g that the
French concern with romantic escapades and their politi cal overtones was
at th e heart of the story. I al so felt that th e rather rituali zed sexual adven–
tures somehow made the pl o t appea r to be mo re o rdinary than I had real–
ized at the time of my first readin g. Maybe I had bee n dazz led by the
name of Stendhal.
On the o ther hand , when I reread th e poetry of Pasternak in transla–
ti on , I was stru ck by the sureness of images, and I th o ught I had perhaps
underestimated Pasternak's poems w hen they appea red in
Doctor Z hivago.
I also became aw are of th e re£kcti o n of the Ru ss ian nati onal character in
Pasternak's reaching fo r the heights of th e Ru ssian experi ence in his po–
etry . This was tru e of th e o th er Ru ssian w riters I reread. Akhmatova's
poetry, whi ch , however, I had no t underestimated , appea red to me in a
new li ght. I now saw th e auth o rity with whi ch she seemed to convey a
sens e of li ving at the ce nter o f Ru ss ian life bo th befo re and afte r the
R evo luti o n . It was bu oyed by fee lin gs o f sadn ess, o f th e proximity of
death , of resignati on , and of spiritual loss . Bo th Akhmatova and Pasternak
w ere unmi stakably Russian in th eir sto ic exhil arati o n and de spair.
By
some imagin ati ve miracle, their poetry was bo th personal and nati onal–
unlike, for example, so much of Ameri can poetry today.
Similarly, ano ther piece of fi cti o n I have reread recentl y, Gogol's
Tile
O vercoat,
is a personali za ti on of the bureau crati za ti o n o f Ru ssian society. It
actually crea tes a stru cture of fa ntasy out of th e mytho logized hi erarchy of
status that di ctated all human rcl ati o ns in o ld Ru ssia. Perhaps O blomov
and
The O vercoa t
are obvio us examples of literature reachin g fo r the na–
ti onal charac ter. But o ll e cann ot escape th e impressio n that Russian litera–
ture is about Ru ss ia, o r perhaps I sho uld say it is a proj ec ti o n of the
writer' s visio n onto the national scene. Thus O bl omov , th ough not de–
prived of hi s individual existence, is a metaph o ri cal fi gure of the inertia of
th e Ru ssian people. Even in a mo re complex wo rk , such as D ostoevsky's
The Possessed,
we can see the same fu sio n of th e pri va te w ith the public
myth . The tensions of th e narrati ve and th e ideologica l fo rces in the lives
of the main characters are connected with the crucial destiny of Ru ssia.
Last yea r , I also re read
Hll ckleberry Fillll ,
a wo rk cl ea rl y in the
Ameri can grain , tho ugh zealous ideologists recently have been trying to
excommuni ca te the book on th e gro unds that Mark Twain was not suffi–
ciently pro-black. In any case , it cannot be sa id that the novel creates the
central image of the nati o nal experi ence . It is o ne of the many marginal
wo rks, as it re nders one aspect - among many - of Ame ri can existence. It
is no more typi cal than the writin g of H enry J ames o r Willi am Faulkner,
fo r exampl e. The qu esti o n naturally arises as to why Ameri can literature
does not so direc tly refl ec t what mi ght b e presumed to be the national
