Slavistische Beiträge ∙ Band 409 (eBook - Digi20-Retro) Walter N. Vickery M. Iu. Lermontov His Life and Work Verlag Otto Sagner München ∙ Berlin ∙ Washington D.C. Digitalisiert im Rahmen der Kooperation mit dem DFG-Projekt „Digi20“ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, München. OCR-Bearbeitung und Erstellung des eBooks durch den Verlag Otto Sagner: http://verlag.kubon-sagner.de © bei Verlag Otto Sagner. Eine Verwertung oder Weitergabe der Texte und Abbildungen, insbesondere durch Vervielfältigung, ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages unzulässig. «Verlag Otto Sagner» ist ein Imprint der Kubon & Sagner GmbH. Walter N. Vickery - 9783954790326 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:27:08AM via free access 00056058 SLAVISTICHE BEITRÄGE Herausgegeben von Peter Rehder Beirat: Tilman Berger • Walter Breu • Johanna Renate Döring-Smimov Walter Koschmal ■ Ulrich Schweier • Milos Sedmidubsky • Klaus Steinke BAND 409 V erla g O t t o S a g n er M ü n c h en 2001 Walter N. Vickery - 9783954790326 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:27:08AM via free access 00056058 Walter N. Vickery M. Iu. Lermontov: His Life and Work V er la g O t t o S a g n er M ü n c h en 2001 Walter N. Vickery - 9783954790326 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:27:08AM via free access PVA 2001. 5804 ISBN 3-87690-813-2 © Peter D. Vickery, Richmond, Maine 2001 Verlag Otto Sagner Abteilung der Firma Kubon & Sagner D-80328 München Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier Bayerisch* Staatsbibliothek Müocfcta Walter N. Vickery - 9783954790326 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:27:08AM via free access When my father died in 1995, he left behind the first draft of a manuscript on the great Russian poet and novelist, Mikhail Lermontov. He had been working on the manuscript for eight years and, given the distinction of my father’s previous scholarly works, it seemed a terri- ble waste not to have it published. But how? Although my sister, Helen Vickery, had typed the entire manuscript into a computer, none of Dad's six children have an academic background in Russian literature, and we did not know how to proceed. We soon contacted Hugh McLean of the University of California, Berkeley, Dad’s long-time friend and colleague. Hugh was good enough to read the manuscript and felt strongly that it should be published, although he recog- nized that it needed substantial editing. With his encouragement, we agreed to move ahead on this project. Once again, through Hugh’s efforts, Ellen Rosenbaum Langer, herself a qualified Slāvist as well as a skilled editor/typographer, agreed to undertake the responsibility of editing my father’s manuscript, despite her own research and need to finish her dissertation. Ellen’s thoughtful questions during this exercise displayed a keen understanding of Dad’s work, and I thank her for her careful, delicate editing, which has clearly improved the manuscript. Paul Debreczeny, my father’s former colleague at the University of North Carolina, found a publisher, and we are grateful to the Slavistische Beiträge for making this volume avail- able to scholars and interested readers of Lermontov. It is impossible adequately to express my deep appreciation to Ellen and Hugh for the enormous amount of time and diligence they have spent on this book. My father could not have wished for a better outcome. Peter D. Vickery Richmond, Maine Walter N. Vickery - 9783954790326 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:27:08AM via free access 000560БѲ I ntroduction It is an honor and privilege to introduce to the reading public thismagnum opus by my esteemed friend and colleague, the late Walter Vickery. I am especially pleased to acknowledge the support of Vickery’s family, and especially of his sister Anne, in making this publication possible. * ♦ * Walter Neef Vickery was born on 14 September, 1921, in London, where he grew up. An excellent humanistic education gave him a good command of Latin and ancient Greek, near native fluency in French, and some knowledge of other European languages, notably German and Italian. Like most men of his generation, he had a large chunk of his youth swallowed up by the Second World War. He enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1940, serving until 1945 as a gunner, partly on Norwegian vessels. Returning at last to civilian life, he read Russian at Oxford, un- dertaking to add that language and its literature to the considerable list of those he had already mastered. He received the A.B. with First-Class Honours in 1948. He remained at Oxford as a lecturer from 1948 until 1953, except for the year 1951-52, which he spent in Moscow, assigned to the U.S.-British Joint Soviet Press Reading Agency, a combined effort by the two allies to discover some inklings of truth about Russian life through the murky glass of Soviet publica- tions. This was one o f the darkest periods of Soviet history, the last years of Stalin’s malignant and xenophobic reign, and opportunities for exploration in Russia by foreigners were drastically limited. The U.S.-British press enterprise focussed primarily on political and economic matters, but Vickery early developed a fascination with literature. What could Russian fiction and poetry, despite the straitjacket o f propaganda they were obliged to wear, tell us about the realities of So- viet life, the real feelings o f its citizens? It was an interest that would bear much fruit later. Returning first to England, Vickery emigrated to Canada in 1953. A man of enormous physical vigor—before he died he had climbed all the 14,000 ft. peaks in Colorado— for a time he thought of giving up the intellectual life for the simpler one of physical labor. But his ener- getic and inquisitive brain would not be denied for long. By 1955 he was enrolled as a graduate student at Harvard, studying for the Ph.D. in Slavic. He obtained that degree in record time, in 1959, with a dissertation that later was transformed into his first book: The Cult of Optimism: Political and Ideological Problems o f Recent Soviet Literature (1963, reprinted 1976). A year earlier he had published his translation of a famous novel by Viktor Nekrasov,Kira Georgievna, one of the first attempts to deal with the sensitive topic of reassimilation into Soviet society of returnees released from the labor camps. Vickery and I had become friendly during his (and my) Harvard period. Since I shared some of his interests in current Soviet literature, we decided to collaborate on a volume of selections of revealing texts that had appeared during the “thaw” year of 1956, the year Nikita Khrushchev made his famous “secret speech” denouncing the crimes of Stalin. The volume, entitled The Year of Protest. 1956, appeared in 1961 (reprinted 1974). During those years Vickery moved rapidly through a series of academic positions: As- sistant to Associate Professor at Indiana University (1958-64); Professor at the University of Colorado (1964-69); and finally, Professor at the University of North Carolina, which remained his academic home unti! his retirement in 1992. From his early scholarly writings one might have expected that Vickery would remain a committed literary Sovietologist, keeping his finger on the literary pulse of contemporary Rus- Walter N. Vickery - 9783954790326 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:27:08AM via free access 00056058 sian society. Such an expectation proved quite false. Soon he moved his career to an entirely dif- ferent track. He had long had an interest in poetics, especially versification, manifested early by ־ his edition, with Edward Stankiewicz, of an English translation of Viktor Zhirmunskii’sintro duction to Metrics (1966). Vickery’s interests, however, went far beyond the technical aspects of versification, important as these are. In the last three decades of his life he devoted himself as a scholar almost exclusively to the study of classical Russian poetry, first Pushkin and finally Lermontov. Vickery’s Pushkin studies resulted in many articles and two books, the biographical Death of a Poet (1968) and the more comprehensive Alexander Pushkin in the Twayne series (1970; second, revised edition, 1993). Vickery’s engagement with Lermontov likewise gener- ated many valuable articles and culminated in the present formidable book. * * * The “life and works” genre to which this book belongs has a long and honorable tradi- tion in Russian, as in other literary studies. We all like to know something about the authors whose works we admire and enjoy, especially when, as in Lermontov’s case, the life is itself a sort of “poem,” full of dramatic events. Displaying his characteristic balance between sympathy and detachment, Vickery has first provided a concise, but richly detailed account of Lermon- tov’s brief and tragic life. His approach is above all sensible— down-to-earth and fair. Lermon- tov was a romantic, really the only Russian poet who fully fits that designation. Vickery understands very well the romantic ethos, but he is no romantic himself. He treats with tolerant but ironic amusement the adolescent posturing of Lermontov’s early Byronism. He is less toler- ant of the frequent arrogance and even cruelty in Lermontov’s behavior toward those close to him, especially women. On the other hand, Vickery recognizes Lermontov’s genuine longing for intimacy and affection and credits his capacity for friendship and generosity. He also effectively traces all these conflicting impulses in Lermontov’s poetry. Perhaps the most notable manifestation of Vickery’s unsentimental, “common sense” approach to Lermontov’s life—and also his politically charged works—is his treatment of the poet’s long struggle under the oppressive regime of Nicholas I.