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Review Author(s): William C. Brumfield Review by: William C. Brumfield Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 475-478Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2697102Accessed: 10-11-2015 07:14 UTC

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Book Reviews 475

The opening chapter, which deals with the association between the Russian ballad and the amphibrachic tetrameter line, defines form in terms of meter, stanza (couplets), and rhymes (masculine). The third chapter, investigating the fate of the Onegin stanza, is similarly based on a combination of meter, stanzaic form, and rhyming scheme. The final chapter stands somewhat apart from the others as it traces the development of lesenka (step- ladder verse), a purely graphic construction unconnected with meter, extensively prac- ticed by Vladimir Maiakovskii between 1923 and 1930.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this stimulating study is the variety of different approaches and findings that it encompasses. Although the book is linked by a single over- arching argument, this never leads to a sense of monotony or foregone conclusion. This is partly a result of the author's sensitivity to the broad variety of purposes that can lie be- hind a poet's choice of the same meter. These include parody and disagreement, as well as affinity and allegiance, and can serve to underline a sense of dislocation or nostalgia, as well as to mark continuity.

It is a considerable achievement to write a book on Russian poetry that is eminently accessible to the western reader, and which will be of interest to postgraduate and under- graduate students, as well as to specialist scholars. A familiarity with the basic principles of versification is assumed, but not much more. The author's style is engaging and personal, pleasingly spiced with dry humor; there is no use of jargon, and potentially tricky terms such as ephkrasis are accompanied by a tactful explanation, discreetly slipped in at first mention. Poetry is brought to life through well chosen quotations, followed by excellent translations. The reader's appreciation of verse will be enriched and deepened by the insightful close readings, and broadened by the varied range of materials; these cover less widely read poets, such as Anton Del'vig, Wilhelm Kiukhel'beker, Dovid Knut, Vera Bu- lich, Aleksandr Khazin, Naum Korzhavin, and Valerii Pereleshin, as well as the more promi- nent figures (there is, however, very little on eighteenth-century poets, or on Fedor Tiut- chev, Osip Mandel'shtam, Marina Tsvetaeva, or Boris Pasternak).

Each chapter is followed by an intelligent summary of its main conclusions, and the book is rounded off by a thoughtful afterword, which takes a broad overview of the mate- rial covered, pulls several threads together, and also examines some intriguing related is- sues. Is it possible, for example, to make similar claims for a meter as common as iambic tetrameters? To what extent does the approach followed in the book fit in with the general Russian reader's perception of tradition?

This book can be recommended most strongly. It should be bought by all libraries with a Russian collection and put on the reading list of every undergraduate and post- graduate course that involves the study of Russian poetry.

PAMELA DAVIDSON School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

Arkhitektory-stroiteli Sankt-Peterburga, serediny XJX-nachala XXveka: Spravochnik. Ed. B. M. Kirikov. Comp. B. M. Kirikov and A. M. Ginzburg. St. Petersburg: Piligrim, 1996. 397 pp. Index. Hard bound.

Wstuzbie imperium Rosyjskiego 1721-1917. By Piotr Paszkiewicz. Warsaw: Instytut sztuki pol- skiej akademii nauk, 1999. 348 pp. Index. Photographs. Paper.

The past two decades have witnessed a significant expansion of interest, by western scholars as well as by Russians, in the history of Russian architecture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The two volumes under review exemplify the impressive results pro- duced by this surge of interest. The first, compiled under the supervision of Boris Kirikov, is a comprehensive inventory of building activity in St. Petersburg between the 1840s and 1917. The second volume is an authoritative study of Russian Orthodox Church architec-

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476 Slavic Review

ture in the extensive non-Russian border areas of the former empire. Its author, Piotr Pasz- kiewicz, is one of Poland's leading historians of Russian architecture.

Among the younger generation of Russian scholars, Boris Kirikov is one of the most productive historians of St. Petersburg's turn-of-century architecture. He has not only published numerous articles illuminating the careers of major architects of the period, but has also been involved for many years in the demanding archival work needed to establish the authorship of Petersburg's several thousand buildings erected during the latter half of nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The fact that these archival docu- ments and plans of building projects were finally made accessible, at least to Russian schol- ars, was itself an important step in the study of urban planning in modern Russia. This de- velopment did not come easily, for not only were security services involved (architectural plans were long considered their purview), but the topic of late nineteenth-century ar- chitecture was itself considered of little value and unworthy of serious scholarly atten- tion and support. Nevertheless, a small group of Leningrad historians interested in the de- velopment of their city during the "capitalist" period persisted in gathering the archival information necessary to identify every significant building from the city's prerevolu- tionary past. The Museum of the History of St. Petersburg played a critical role in sustain- ing this process.

Publishing the information proved yet another challenge. I remember the excitement of discovering, through Leningrad colleagues in the spring of 1984, one of the very few copies of a mimeographed "publication" entitled Arkhitektory-stroiteli Peterburga-Petrograda nachala XX veka: Katalog vystavki edited by V G. Isachenko, B. M. Kirikov, S. G. Fedorov, and A. M. Ginzburg (1982). Soon thereafter I acquired a copy of a companion volume by V G. Isachenko, Zodchie Peterburga vtoroi poloviny XIX veka: Katalog vystavki (1985). I found these modest volumes a mine of information but had little idea as to their genesis. Where were these exhibits, for which the volumes claimed to be catalogs? In his introduction to the volume under review, Kirikov explains the mystery: the "exhibits" were fictitious; but by claiming to be a "catalog" for an "exhibit," the compilers could avoid the severe economic, editorial, and censorial restrictions involved in the publication of an indepen- dent book.

These early works have now been superseded by the more authoritative, detailed 1996 volume-handsomely printed and bound, one might add. The mass of information com- piled by Kirikov, Ginzburg, and their assistants for this book is presented under the names of the architects, alphabetically ordered. Each name is followed by the dates of birth and death, the architectural school or institute attended, and the year of graduation. Where available, brief additional information on the architect's career is provided, as well as a ba- sic list of published sources. Within the entry-for each architect, buildings are identified by street address and, in some cases, by the name of the owner. Buildings with more than one recorded architect are listed under each name. Structures are presented in order of date of construction and include significant documented buildings that no longer exist. Sur- prisingly, almost all of the more than four thousand structures listed in this volume still stand. Many have been modified or rebuilt, a fact noted in parentheses.

Ordering this copious material by architect has much to recommend it, particularly for the study of specific architects. Yet, there are other advantages to a listing by streets, particularly for those who wish to explore certain areas on foot. Kirikov partially addresses this need by adding a street index with the numbers of buildings followed by the numbers of the pages on which they appear in the main list. This index is in very small print, how- ever, and one is still faced with the effort of scanning the referenced page in the main list- ing. Nonetheless, Kirikov and his colleagues are to be commended for bringing order to an enormous array of factual detail about the architecture of St. Petersburg.

Some of the Petersburg architects listed by Kirikov also figure prominently in Paszkie- wicz's book, which is the first major scholarly study of Russian Orthodox Church architec- ture in territories that were primarily non-Russian in ethnic composition. Certain of these areas were borderlands of the former empire (particularly Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic lands), while others were entirely separate countries, such asJapan and the United States. It should be emphasized from the outset that Paszkiewicz is concerned primarily with the

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Book Reviews 477

ideological program represented by these structures, rather than with questions of tech- nical and stylistic development in the larger context of contemporary Russian architec- ture. For Paszkiewicz, the expansion of Russian church construction in non-Russian areas from the early nineteenth century until 1917 was an expression of nationalism and im- perialism often directly supported by the Russian state. This is a question with which he has long grappled, and the current volume is an extension of his earlier book, Pod Berlem Romanow6w: Sztuka rosyiska w Warszawie 1815-1915 (1991), which dealt primarily with Rus- sian church construction in Warsaw after the Napoleonic wars.

In his introduction Paszkiewicz acknowledges that his approach might be questioned by those with a different political perspective on the relation between Russian culture and the Russian state. At the same time he notes that the topic of Russian church architecture in eastern Europe was long discouraged by the Polish academic and political establish- ment as potentially damaging to Soviet-Polish relations. Irony is piled upon irony: a study that might appear critical of the tsarist government's aggressive political support of Rus- sian Orthodoxy in eastern Europe could also be seen as a tacit attack on the domination of eastern Europe by a Soviet state that was avowedly anti-tsarist and anti-Orthodox. Pasz- kiewicz overcame that resistance, although in the process he seems to have adopted a rather single-minded approach to the question of late imperial church architecture.

His introduction uncovers a further irony in the fate of late Orthodox church archi- tecture: just as hundreds of Orthodox churches were converted or destroyed in the new Polish state in the 1920s and 1930s, so thousands (built primarily after the eighteenth cen- tury) were destroyed by the Soviet state during the same period. Despite their very differ- ent reasons for closing Russian Orthodox churches, both the anticommunist Polish state and the Soviet Union pursued similar actions largely because Orthodox church archi- tecture from the 1830s until 1917 was frequently seen as the most obvious expression of a Russian nationalist, imperialist mission. The contemporary quotations cited by Paszkiewicz make it clear that this linking of politics and church construction was enthusiastically pro- moted-to the ultimate detriment of the church after the collapse of the political order that sustained it.

After a survey in the first chapter of russification policies toward non-Russian peoples and cultures acquired during the western expansion of the empire, Paszkiewicz examines in his second chapter the evolution of Russian church architecture as an instrument of politics in the western part of the empire, with particular emphasis on Poland. This is the area with which the author is most familiar, and he builds an impressive case for a method- ical, aggressive expansion of Orthodoxy, and Orthodox churches, into Catholic, Uniate, and Lutheran territories. Chapter 3 surveys the building of Orthodox churches in western Europe and in the Balkans, where construction was used to foster pan-Slavic solidarity and anti-Ottoman sentiment.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine the Russian patronage of architecture in two of Ortho- doxy's holiest sites: Mount Athos and Jerusalem. The role of great power politics (Russia, France, Prussia, and England) in the expansion of rival religious missions and consulates in Jerusalem is told with a commanding breadth of knowledge that, among other things, reminds us of the dangerous, volatile mixture of religion and foreign policy. Chapter 6 de- scribes the expansion of Russian Orthodox missions into China, Mongolia, andJapan. Har- bin receives special attention as the center of Russian economic expansion in China. In the Far East, as in eastern Europe, Paszkiewicz argues that church construction was promoted during the late imperial period as an expression of political presence and economic power. The final chapter, on the western hemisphere-primarily Alaska, and the east and west coasts of the United States-is the least detailed of the chapters. The author's interests are clearly in (eastern) Europe, where his topic has its sharpest definition.

The book is generously illustrated and includes many color photographs taken by the author himself. (His industry in recording so many churches in such disparate locations is laudable, but he should learn to use a perspective control lens, essential to architectural photography.) For those without a reading knowledge of Polish, the book has an extensive English summary and a list of illustrations in English. Whatever the book's lacunae and whatever the differences of opinion on the relation between church construction and the

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478 Slavic Review

promotion of imperial politics, Paszkiewicz has produced a monumental work that should be read by anyone interested in modern Russian church architecture.

WILLIAM C. BRUMFIELD Tulane University

Understanding Chekhov: A Critical Study of Chekhov's Prose and Drama. By Donald Rayfield. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1999. xvii, 295 pp. Bibliography. Chronology. Glos- sary. Index. $22.95, paper.

Donald Rayfield envisions this book as a companion volume to his 1997 biography of An- ton Chekhov, which "adamantly refused to be a literary critique" (vii). The literary criti- cism presented here -unlike the biography- offers few fresh perspectives. Although the author states that "this new study is an expansion by nearly half" (xvii) of his Chekhov: The Evolution of His Art, published in 1975, a close comparison suggests that Understanding Che- khov represents something more along the lines of an updated paperback edition of that earlier book. With the exception of a few dozen pages worth of new material-some of it shared with the biography-and discounting realigned chapter and paragraph divi- sions, new chapter headings, and numerous stylistic adjustments (a typical example: "Years passed before Tolstoy's spell weakened" in Evolution [87] becomes "Tolstoy's spell took years to weaken" in Understanding Chekhov [65]), the substance and analysis of this recent book correspond almost entirely with Rayfield's earlier study.

The author clearly aims Understanding Chekhov at a popular audience, something un- derscored by the new title. This is not a bad thing. But it is curious that he should insist that Chekhov's "stories are still ill-served, largely by academic tomes of articles which are often abstruse or irrelevant to the educated but non-specialist reader" (vii). This apparent disdain for the scholarly art seems odd coming from a scholar who justifies the revision of his earlier study because "Chekhov research has moved on" (xvii). Evolution was a sturdy book for its time. The contents of Understanding Chekhov, however, give inadequate credit to the changed face of Chekhov studies.

To start with, his argument about the "evolution" of Chekhov's art proves damaging to Chekhov's early prose. Rayfield views Chekhov up to 1886 as a talented hack who trafficked in stereotypes, flawed plots, and melodrama. Over the past two decades scholars have re- claimed the early Chekhov, showing the ingenuity he brought to genre-bound "lowbrow" production and explicating the enormously sophisticated ideas behind individual stories. At times, too, one detects an annoying condescension toward the young Chekhov, who pens authorial asides that are "embarrassingly naive" ( 11), exhibits "touching emotional imma- turity" (33), and echoes Lev Tolstoi with "an embarrassing number of coincidences" (65).

More seriously-from a scholar's point of view-uncredited fragments of recent scholarship appear in the book. This holds true for Rayfield's 1997 biography, as well, where the first footnote to chapter 1 refers to Chekhov's grandfather Egor and "characters in his work [bearing this name and its variations] who are associated, however ironically, with the warrior St. George" (Anton Chekhov: A Life, 3, 605). Rayfield fails to mention that this idea belongs to Savely Senderovich, who has written extensively on the theme of St. George in Chekhov. In Understanding Chekhov Rayfield again borrows silently from Senderovich and from Laurence Senelick's work on the origins of the name Elena (from Offenbach's La Belle Helne) in his analysis of The Wood Demon. Reference to Michael Finke's article on Chekhov's "At Sea" is side-stepped with the locution "critics have singled out. . ." (22). The lack of citation in these instances-and the absence of footnotes altogether- may make for a smoother "read," but certainly challenges conventions of scholarship.

Detailed walk-throughs of the plays represent the major expansion of Understanding Chekhov in relationship to Evolution. While the biographical additions (many of them treat- ing Chekhov's relationship to Aleksei Suvorin and to women) will not seem new to read- ers of Rayfield's biography, the additions that touch on source texts for the plays prove

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Article Contentsp. 475p. 476p. 477p. 478

Issue Table of ContentsSlavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer, 2000) pp. i-vii+267-497Front Matter [pp. i-vii]DiscussionThe Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation: A Reexamination [pp. 267-289]Zemstvos, Peasants, and Citizenship: The Russian Adult Education Movement and World War I [pp. 290-315]Citizenship and the Russian Nation during World War I: A Comment [pp. 316-329]More Than Imagined: A Few Notes on Modern Identities [pp. 330-335]Peasants, Nation, and Local Government in Wartime Russia [pp. 336-342]

Marfa Boretskaia, Posadnitsa of Novgorod: A Reconsideration of Her Legend and Her Life [pp. 343-368]The Enlightenment of Anna Labzina: Gender, Faith, and Public Life in Catherinian and Alexandrian Russia [pp. 369-390]Invented Traditions: Primitivist Narrative and Design in the Polish Fin de Sicle[pp. 391-405]To Market! To Market! The Polish Peasantry in the Era of the Stolypin Reforms [pp. 406-426]Film ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 427]Review: untitled [pp. 428-429]Review: untitled [pp. 429-430]

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Collected Essays [pp. 485-487]Books Received [pp. 488-490]Letters [pp. 491-495]ObituaryPeter F. Sugar, 1919-1999 [pp. 496-497]

Back Matter