What Is Art? by L. N. Tolstoy; W. Gareth Jones; A. MaudeReview by: Catriona KellyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 281-282Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212062 .

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REVIEWS 28I

better deal (albeit without the humour theory) by going for a copy of Draitser's thesis, still presumably available from University Microfilms International.

The Queen's College I. P. FOOTE University of Oxford

Tolstoy, L. N. What is Art?. Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by W. GarethJones. Translated from the Russian by A. Maude. Bristol Classical Press, London, I 994. xix + 226 pp. Notes. ?I o.95 (paperback).

TOLSTOI's bull-in-china-shop aesthetic treatise is an infuriating work, but one that it is impossible to ignore. Certainly, What is Art? does little to illumine the author's own writerly practices (which, even in his 'didactic' late works, are well described by the comparison that Tolstoi draws, in his review of Chekhov's 'Dushen'ka', between writers and incompetent bicycle-riders, proceeding in a direction the opposite to that which they had intended). Yet its treatment of eite art must be acknowledged as one of the most compelling cases for the prosecution that has ever been made. Tolstoi's preference for Tishchenko over Baudelaire or Vasnetsov over Monet may seem perverse, even self-deluding, but it is perfectly logical, given that intelligibility is one of his primary criteria for artistic quality; likewise, his indictment of the wastefulness of grand opera is unanswerable on its own terms. Moreover, What is Art? foreshadows key issues in twentieth-century aesthetic debate as surely as Rousseau's Du contrat social (i 762) did those of political-debate in the nineteenth century. For this reason, rather than because of What is Art's obvious and traceable influences, the text still demands to be read.

W. Gareth Jones's new student edition reissues Aylmer Maude's out-of- print English version of I 897, the first full edition of the text in any language, reprinted in Maude's edition of Tolstoi's collected works. Maude's translation, like the early English editions of Freud, makes Tolstoi's language sound more polysyllabically technical than that of the original (the lecture-room replaces the pulpit), but that is probably inevitable, since literal versions of Tolstoi's thought, as Walter Gerhardie pointed out long ago, tend to read like laboured statements of the obvious. In any case, this version is always lucid and by no means alienatingly old-fashioned. Jones has supplied a helpful short introduc- tion, describing Tolstoi's progress towards writing the text, setting out its main arguments, and describing the rhetorical artifice with which this assault on artifice is itself composed. Though analysis is by no means exhaustive - such matters as Tolstoi's relation to earlier aesthetics, and particularly to the Sentimentalist traditions of the eighteenth century are not considered a list of further reading allows readers to follow up issues of particular interest to them. Two minor gripes are that no attempt has been made to correct Maude's occasional tiny slips, such as the mis-spelling 'Remy de Gourment' (perhaps a technical impossibility in facsimile reprints of this kind), or to supply an index, which might have been useful for those wanting to track down Tolstoi's denunciations of, say, Shakespeare or Wagner in a hurry. More extensive notes might have been useful, in order that modern readers could learn something of Tolstoi's main sources for his preliminary discussion

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282 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

of aesthetics general discussions by such as Guyau, Kralik, Mithalter, Schasler and Knight, rather than the original works of Hegel, Schopenhauer or Kant. Still, this edition makes WMat is Art? more accessible, and so more likely to be given serious consideration on 'special author' courses; it is therefore to be welcomed.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies CATRIONA KELLY University of London

Pyman, Avril. A Histogy of Russian Symbolism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York and Melbourne, I994. xviii+48I pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?50?.?: $79.95.

CHARTING the course of a literary movement is a notoriously difficult and daunting task. Avril Pyman devoted twelve years to the challenge and has emerged victorious with a detailed and engaging study of Russian Symbolism. Her narrative focuses on a span of some twenty years from the early i89os through to the symbolist crisis of I9IO, and follows the method of 'the chronicler rather than the critic' (p.. xiii). This 'empirical approach' (p. xii) has dictated the structure of the book which falls into five parts, reflecting the major chronological stages of the movement's development.

An appealing feature of the book is the fact that it succeeds in weaving a wide range of fairly disparate materials and authors into a coherent story. This is achieved by a combination of several approaches: the individual destinies of particular writers are traced together with their complex interrelationships, numerous pauses are taken for detailed comment on revealing poems or passages of prose, considered both in context and as text, the formation and key role of literary circles, journals and publishing-houses is investigated, links are drawn between Symbolist thought and other trends such as Populism, Marxism, decadence and idealism, and the narrative is spiced throughout with a generous sprinkling of mischievous anecdotes relating to the lives of its main protagonists. While the main emphasis is on poetry, prose works by Belyi, Remizov and Briusov are also covered, as is the criticism of thinkers such as Rozanov and Shestov. In considering particular authors, Pyman skilfully avoids the monotony generated by the 'life and works' type of overview. Her preferred method is to focus on a select number of characteristic themes and to illustrate these through frequent quotation (the text of all poems is given in Russian, followed by a prose translation).

In terms of overall coverage and organization, two points deserve comment. The chapter on Vladimir Solov'ev and Sophia should have been placed earlier on in the book, certainly before the discussion of the poetry of Blok, Belyi and Ivanov. One might also wish that the history of Symbolism had been carried on beyond the crisis of I g I 0 to include a more detailed survey of later journals such as Trudy i dni or Zapiski mechtatelei, of the Symbolists' varied responses to the Revolution, and of the enduring survival of the ideas and values of Symbolism beyond the parameters of its history as a literary movement. A more detailed discussion of the legacy of Symbolism to Acmeism and Futurism and to modernism in general would also have been welcome.

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