Russians abRoad Literary and Cultural Politics of diaspora (1919-1939) The Real Twentieth Century Series Editor – Thomas Seifrid (University of Southern California) Russians abRoad Literary and Cultural Politics of diaspora (1919-1939) GReta n. sLobin edited by Katerina Clark, nancy Condee, dan slobin, and Mark slobin Boston 2013 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: The bibliographic data for this title is available from the Library of Congress. Copyright © 2013 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-61811-214-9 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61811-215-6 (electronic) Cover illustration by A. Remizov from "Teatr," Center for Russian Culture, Amherst College. Cover design by Ivan Grave. Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013. 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Effective December 12th, 2017, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. 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Published by Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Table of Contents Foreword by Galin Tihanov ........................................ 9 How this Book Came About ....................................... 13 Introduction: The October Split and Its Consequences ................ 14 Part I. DEFINING ÉMIGRÉ BORDERS AND MISSIONS IN THE TWENTIES Chapter IA. Border-Crossings in Postrevolutionary Exile (1919-1924): The Embrace of Shklovskian “Estrangement” ..................... 38 Chapter IB. Language, History, Ideology: Tsvetaeva, Remizov ........................................... 57 Chapter IC. Double Exposure in Exile Writing: Khodasevich, Teffi, Bunin, Nabokov ............................. 74 Part II. DIASPORA: THE CLASSicAL LITERARY CANON AND ITS EVOLUTIONS Chapter IIA. The Battle for the Modernists’ Gogol: Bely and Remizov ............................................. 94 Chapter IIB. Sirin/Dostoevsky and the Question of Russian Modernism in Emigration ........................... 113 Chapter IIC. Russia Abroad Champions Turgenev’s Legacy ........... 136 Part III. MODERNISM AND THE DIASPORA’S QUEST FOR LITERARY IDENTITY Chapter IIIA. Modernism/Modernity in the Postrevolutionary Diaspora ............................. 164 Chapter IIIB. Double Consciousness and Bilingualism in Aleksei Remizov’s Story “The Industrial Horseshoe” and the Literary Journal Chisla ................................. 180 Part IV. EpiLOGUE: THE FIRST-WAVE DIASPORA IN THE POST-WAR YEARS Chapter IVA. The Shift from the Old World to the New ............... 200 Chapter IVB. “Homecoming” .................................... 210 Greta Slobin: Bio-Bibliography ................................... 225 Works Cited ................................................... 231 Index ..........................................................246 Foreword reta Slobin’s range as scholar was impressively broad: from Soviet G fiction to post-Soviet society and culture to film. At the core of her pursuits was Russian émigré literature, particularly that of the “First Wave.” Writing the history of Russian émigré literature, and of émigré literary criticism and theory between the world wars, had confronted us with a number of challenges after the end of the Cold War. To begin with, we still knew relatively little about the ways in which émigré writ- ing began, over time, to interact with the various host cultures, and what implications this interaction had had for the relation of émigré literature and cultural and political processes in Soviet Russia. Earlier historians of Russian émigré culture, notably Marc Raeff, believed that “Russian literature in emigration remained as isolated from Western literatures as it had been in pre-revolutionary Russia, perhaps even more so.”1 More re- cent research, foremost by Leonid Livak, has persuasively demonstrated the Paris émigrés’ intensive appropriation of French culture and, more widely, the European modernist novel, as well as their participation in French cultural life, not least as regular reviewers and critics writing for French periodicals (e.g. Yuliya Sazonova, Gleb Struve, Wladimir Weidle). The second difficulty stemmed from the fact that we knew very little about what specific impact émigré literature and criticism actually had in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. This was, and remains, a vastly under-researched area. Thirdly, we were yet to begin to conceptualize Russian émigré literature in the wider context of European literary move- ments, although some work had already been done (notably by Simon Karlinsky in his early article on Russian surrealism). Greta Slobin’s research, in both her articles and the present book, an- ticipated and contributed to shaping this evolving agenda. Her book is a testimony to her foresight and ability to identify areas of work that would 1 Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad. A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 115. 9 Foreword yield original contributions to knowledge. In particular, I should like to draw attention to four particular aspects that make her book a significant participant in our ongoing endeavor to reach a deeper understanding of the culture and the anxieties—artistic and civic—of the Russian exiles between the wars. To start with, Slobin offers a different, in many ways better substanti- ated, periodization of Russian émigré literature. Unlike the classic peri- odization propounded by Struve, who saw émigré literature subdivided into two chronological segments (1919-1924; 1925-1939), Slobin calls for a more nuanced picture by singling out an intermediate stage (1925- 1929), which she conceives of as a time of defining borders, and of “the quest for identity and establishing the nature” of the émigrés’ mission. More important still, Slobin urges us to think of Russian émigré writing of the “First Wave” as performing, and always dependent on, a process of “triangulation.” By “triangulation,” she means the overlapping responses of émigré writing to the pre-1917 Russian literary traditions that the émigrés, particularly the older generation, had taken abroad as their treasured possession; to literary developments in the Soviet Union; and to the Western literary scene they now inhabited. Any future history of Russian émigré literature will have to rest on this framework, recognizing the effects of triangulation as foundational to Russian literature in exile. Thirdly, in a number of the chapters that constitute the present book, Slobin identifies modernism as the discursive space in which the ideolog- ical and aesthetic boundaries of émigré writing were drawn and redrawn by its most distinguished actors, and in which continuity and rupture would sometimes appear entangled in an inseverable knot. Slobin re- minds us that modernity and modernism did not always coincide, and her insightful analyses of Tsvetaeva and Remizov, her beloved story-teller, furnish evidence of the intricate politics of modernism as the true battle- ground of émigré literature, the terrain on which divergent ideological and aesthetic orientations met. She admonishes us that modernism can also be a force for cultural conservatism, and she insists—with good rea- son—that any meaningful discussion of modernism in Russian émigré writing must take into account its relativity vis-à-vis, and mediation by, European, especially French, artistic practices. In what is perhaps the single best chapter in the book to deal with a particular literary work, Slobin, with sophistication and erudition, 10 Foreword detects in “The Industrial Horseshoe” a subtle ironic take by Remizov on Proust’s popularity amongst the younger émigrés, laying bare the me- chanic imitation and passive mirroring of his style by the literati around Chisla. Last but not least, amongst Slobin’s distinctive contributions in this book is her chapter on Turgenev’s posthumous fortunes as a writer. While by now we do have solid and well-documented work on the repu- tations in emigration of Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Chekhov, the major missing piece in the puzzle was Turgenev. The connection she produces between Turgenev and Bunin is an especially helpful illumination of the way in which émigré writing would in turn impact on the cultural capital held by figures from the canon of mainland literature: it is Bunin’s own recognition and Nobel glory in 1933/1934, Slobin demonstrates, that leads to a positive reassessment of Turgenev’s own standing, haphazardly lowered by some of the most influential Paris émigrés just a year before that. This text is a tribute not just to Greta Slobin’s scholarship but also to her charitable and engaging personality. Communicating with her was a privilege and a pleasure, and memories of her extraordinary human presence linger on, enriching the lives of