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Dostoevsky and English Modernism 1900-1930. By Peter Kaye. Cambridge:CUP, 1999. Pp. vii + 248. 37.50.

English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance. By Rachel Polonsky.Cambridge: CUP, 1998. Pp. xii + 249. 45.00.

These two excellent studies on English-Russian literary reception coveroverlapping periods of exceptional artistic innovation, only from oppositeand asymmetric perspectives. Peter Kaye focuses on the responses of sevenEnglish modernist novelists - D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, ArnoldBennett, Joseph Conrad, B. M. Forster, John Galsworthy and Henry James-

who were most affected by their readings (p. 3) of one Russian writer,Dostoevskii. Rachel Polonskys is the first full-length study on thecontribution of an array of English writers to the literary life of fin-de-siecleRussia. Both scholars securely position their studies within their historicaland cultural contexts and thus provide fresh viewpoints on the seminalmovements of English Modernism and Russian Symbolism.

As Polonsky notes, Russia has long been a receiver culture and this wasrarely more true than at the end of the nineteenth century when Russiawitnessed an aesthetic renaissance, defined as a historical moment ofintense assimilativeness to foreign ideas and artistic forms (p. 5). Polonskysprimary topic is the poetic aspect of Russias aesthetic renaissance and hertheoretical approach is largely based on Iurii Lotmans and Hans RobertJausss ideas on the dialogic nature of cultural receptivity. Her aim is toreveal the dynamic of a double receptivity at work in the prevailingaesthetic attitude of the turn-of-the-century period; a renewed receptivity toforeign literatures that led to a receptivity towards a variety of rediscoveredpasts, Russias own past among them (p. 5). In her first chapter, MuseumPeople, Polonsky traces how Symbolism developed as a reaction of theyoung generation against the positivist fathers. However, it was they who,in the early 1870s, established comparative literature as an academic subjectand through their extensive historical, literary scholarship, laid the foundationsfor the Russian aesthetic renaissance.

Polonskys study is then divided into two parts: The Barbaric Renaissanceand The Aesthetic Renaissance. Both were markedly influenced by Englishaesthetic ideas, styles and achievements. The barbaric renaissance grew outof a pervasive feeling that the culture of books and artefacts had becomeconfining, burdensome, sealed off from life and the common man. This ledto a search for cultural regeneration, for a purer vision in Russias primitivepast as expressed in poetry, song, dance, myth and ritual, and hence to themythologizing of Russias past. As Polonsky demonstrates, the barbaricrenaissance was considerably nourished by ideas current in VictorianEngland when English writers were looking to the past, to myths, folkloreand the primitive, for inspirational aesthetic models. In this process theworks of folklorists, mythologists and ethnographers such as James Frazerand Max Miiller as well as Nietzsches ideas on history played a prominentrole. The main agents of cross-cultural mediation were translators, publishers,

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critics and scholars, especially the leader of the Symbolists, the scholar poetViacheslav Ivanov, and the critic Evgenii Anichkov.

The Russian aesthetic renaissance drew heavily on the Englishrenaissance of the Renaissance which took its inspiration from the ItalianRenaissance as interpreted by the German art historian, Richard Muther, andpropagated by Walter Pater and Matthew Arnold. In Russia, as in England,the guiding idea was the art would no longer passively reflect life but infuseit with the aesthetic (p. 186). The translator Zinaida Vengerova, whoacquainted Russians with the ideas of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites,was a central mediator. Throughout her study, Polonsky opens up new orlittle-explored English-Russian connections. Among them are KonstantinBalmonts translations of Shelley which bear the imprint of his immersion inVedic texts at Oxford, the immense importance of Edgar Allen Poe for thepoetic practice and theories of poetic language of Balmont, Valerii Briusov,Andrei Belyi, Aleksandr Potebnia and Velimir Khlebnikov, the influence ofthe Pre-Raphaelites on Vladimir Solovievs sophiological lyrics and theimpact of John Ruskins forebodings about the course of the modem worldon Aleksandr Bloks apocalyptic premonitions. There is a fine chapter onOscar Wildes popularity in Russia and a concluding one on the Russianfascination with the type of the English dandy which influenced MikhailKuzmins style. What prominently emerges from this study is the Russiansremarkably creative receptivity of foreign cultural forms and ideas.

If the Russians enthusiastically embraced foreign cultural ideas, theBritish, as Kaye shows in his discussion of the modernist novelists reactionsto Dostoevskii, were more reserved. Dostoevskii, with his exposures of thedark and irrational depths of the human soul, was generally seen as adisruptive presence in the English house of fiction (p.6). However,Dostoevskii was a writer they could not ignore; he forced them to clarify andconfront their own literary values and their own visions of modernism thatwas then sweeping over Europe. Whilst their responses ranged fromadmiration to denigration, they all conspicuously failed to see Dostoevskii asa conscious artist working within the European literary tradition, and this,Kaye argues, led to some serious misperceptions. Lawrence had the mostviolent reaction, based in part on his hostility to the life-denying aspects ofChristianity, and on his perception of Dostoevskii as a rival prophet. Thus,Lawrences occasional insights jostle with downright misreadings, e.g., hiswrongheaded insistence that Dostoevskii was on the side of the GrandInquisitor. Conrad, not surprisingly, was hostile to all things Russian. Hisfew comments on Dostoevskii were negative, e.g., The Brothers Karaiiiazot)was nothing more than fierce mouthings from prehistoric ages (p. 26).Nevertheless, only with Conrad can we speak of creative receptivity. Kayedetects a rivalrous, productive but ultimately exhausting sullen strugglewith Dostoevskii in Conrads fiction, especially in Under Westora Eyes, afterwhich his fiction greatly diminished in output and literary quality (p. 154).Conrad and Lawrence are prime examples of the anxiety of influence; theyhad to misread Dostoevskii, remarks Kaye, in order to protect their owncreative identities (p. 8). Woolfs attitude was ambivalent; on the one hand,

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Dostoevskii represented freedom from the complacencies of class, anexample of modernist liberation and experimentation when she was tryingto break new ground in the novel. On the other, Dostoevskii, with hisseething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms (p. 26) was ultimately toodisruptive and lacking harmonious order (p. 8) and she remained, findsKaye, fully within the conventions of the English novel. Bennett was themost sympathetic reader and promoter of Dostoevskii, but he too, accordingto Kayc, distorted him while enlisting him in his quarrel with modernism(p. 98). However, Dostoevskii would have shared Bennetts anxieties aboutmodernism, and Bennett, better than the others, understood the primacy ofDostoevskiis moral concerns. Kaye groups the remaining three Englishnovelists under the telling term the gentlemen-writers. Forster made someperceptive remarks about Dostoevskii and especially appreciated his moralvalues and prophetic gifts, but found his emotional explicitness toouncomfortable (p. 8). Galsworthy saw in Dostoevskii an expression of thechaos of the modem world, and thus an anarchic threat to gentlemanlycodes and decorum. James regarded Dostoevskii as a corrupting influence inthe sanctuary of novelistic artistry, a purveyor of monstrous excess (p. 9).He took particular exception to Dostoevskiis religious, philosophical andideological preoccupations, which he thought had no place in the novel. Notsurprisingly, the responses of the English writers often tell us more abouttheir own aesthetic practice and convictions than about Dostoevskii. Yet, thecultural dialogue works both ways: as our understanding of the modernistsaesthetic principles, filtered through their responses to Dostoevskii, becomesmore informed, our perceptions of Dostoevskii become sharper as we realizewhat he is not. Thus, one of the principal pleasures of this study, as of allsuccessful comparative studies, is that we receive a double insight. Anotherlies in Kayes astute explanations of the personal, social and historical factorsshaping the English modernists reception of Dostoevskii.

Those interested in English Modernism will find in Kayes admirablestudy a new and vivifying angle on the modernist novel. Dostoevskii fansand scholars will find much to stimulate their thinking from seeing himdialogically pitted against the responses of a quite different culturaltradition. Scholars of Russian Symbolism and the Silver Age, as well ascomparativists of Russian/English literary reception will greatly benefitfrom Polonskys elegantly written study, both as a rich source of informationand as a model of how such comparative studies may be pursued. Many willwant to read both.

DIANE OENNING THOMPSON