LETTERS FROM D.S. MIRSKY AND HELEN ISWOLSKY T O MARGUERITE CAETANI

Archivio Caetani Collana a cura di Caterina Fiorani

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Fondazione Camillo Caetani Roma

la rivista «commerce» e marguerite caetani Direzione di Sophie Levie

III

Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith

roma 2015 edizioni di storia e letteratura

First edition: May 2015 ISBN 978-88-6372-761-6 eISBN 978-88-6372-762-3

Any copying, partial or complete, by any means, is forbidden Any reproduction that avoids the purchase of a book threatens the survival of a way of transmitting knowledge

© 2015 Fondazione Camillo Caetani All rights reserved

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Contents

Marguerite Caetani, an American Patron in Europe by Sophie Levie

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d.s. mirsky and the russian aspect of commerce

Preface by Gerald S. Smith

3

Letters to Marguerite Caetani (1926-1932)

21

Four Reviews by d.s. Mirsky (1925) 1. B. Pasternak, Stories 2. O. Mandel′shtam, The Noise of Time 3. I. Babel′, Stories 4. T.S. Eliot, Poems

53 53 55 58 62

helen iswolsky: commerce and beyond

Preface by Gerald S. Smith

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Letters to Marguerite Caetani (1925-1927)

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On Commerce (English)

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On Commerce (Russian)

101

Index of Commerce (1924-1932) Name Index

105 121

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

Acknowlegdments For bibliographical and other help and advice, Sophie Levie and G.S. Smith would like to thank the following: Rebecca Beasley, Philip Ross Bullock, Mikhail Efimov, Caterina Fiorani, Roy Groen; Nicholas Hearn and Elena Vassileva of the Taylorian Library, University of Oxford; Catriona Kelly; Charles Kratz, Kay Lopez, and Elizabeth Shomaker of the Weinberg Memorial Library, Scranton University, Pennsylvania; Carolien Moonen, Joost Poort, the staff of Southwest Harbor Public Library, Maine; and Michael Wachtel.

Amsterdam and Oxford, September 2014

MARGUERITE CAETANI, AN AMERICAN PATRON IN EUROPE

Marguerite Caetani (1880-1963) corresponded with a large and highly diverse group of authors. They eventually included Giorgio Bassani, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Paul Claudel, Archibald MacLeish, Dylan Thomas, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Paul Valéry, and Virginia Woolf. She conducted this correspondence in her capacity as a patron of the arts and the general editor (behind the scenes) of two literary periodicals: Commerce, which ran from 1924 to 1932 and was published in Paris; and Botteghe Oscure, which appeared in Rome between 1949 and 1960. Most of the letters from Marguerite Caetani’s correspondents are preserved in the archive of the Fondazione Camillo Caetani, housed on the second floor of Palazzo Caetani in Rome. Among them are the letters by D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky presented in this volume. Mirsky was responsible for the selection of Russian texts for Commerce, and Iswolsky translated three texts for the magazine, by Pushkin, Pasternak and Mandel′shtam. Unfortunately, the fate of the letters Caetani wrote to Mirsky and Iswolsky is unknown.

Mlle Chapin, an American in Paris Marguerite Caetani was born Marguerite Gibert Chapin near New London, Connecticut. Her mother, Lelia Maria Gibert, came from a wealthy family of French origin1. Her father, Lindley Hoffman Chapin, was also from

1 When exactly this branch of the Gibert family emigrated to the USA is unknown. ‘On her mother’s side, she was the great-granddaughter of a ship-builder from Bordeaux who had settled in New York at the end of the nineteenth-century’, Gloria Groom, ‘An American Princess and the “Féerie bourgeoise”: The Commission for Mlle Chapin, 1910-1911’, in her Edouard Vuillard. Painter – Decorator. Patrons and Projects, 1892-1912, BCA in arrangement with Yale University Press, 1994, [pp. 179-199; pp. 241-245], p. 180. Marguerite’s maternal grandfather, Frederic E. Gibert, was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1810.

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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a wealthy family, with roots in England2. They married in 1878, and the husband adopted the wife’s Roman Catholic faith. Their daughter was raised a Catholic. Marguerite’s mother died when she was five years old, and her father remarried in 1888, to Cornelia Garrison Van Auken. His second wife and the three children of their marriage were Presbyterians3. Marguerite’s father died in 1896. When she came of age five years later, she inherited her maternal grandfather’s fortune. She could now make her own decisions, and she had the means to carry out her plans. She was evidently determined to remove herself from her situation in America, and she left for Paris in 1902, accompanied by a Canadian chaperone4. Marguerite’s decision to leave America was probably motivated primarily by feelings of alienation, caused by the age difference between herself and her half-brother and half-sisters, their different religious upbringing, and a complicated relationship with her stepmother5.

Nothing is known about Marguerite’s American education. Her decision to move to Paris was evidently influenced by several considerations. Her mother’s side of the family lived in Paris, and the paternal side of her family also had connections there; her father is known to have been a Francophile, and his father had died in Paris in 1878. It goes without saying that the status of Paris as the cultural capital of the world around 1900 must have strengthened the appeal of that city even further. Marguerite first took up residence in the avenue des Champs Elysées, in a building where some of her maternal relatives lived, and later moved to the avenue d’Iéna, also near relatives. In February 1910 she moved into a large apartment of her own on rue de l’Université. We may assume that she led the kind of life appropriate to her position as an American heiress with artistic inclinations. She took

2 One known ancestor, the puritan Deacon Samuel Chapin, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1635.

3 Lindley Hoffman Paul Chapin (1888-1938), Katherine Garrison Chapin (1890-1977) and Cornelia Van Auken Chapin (1893-1972). In 1918, Katherine married Francis Biddle (1886-1968), who acted as the principal judge for the United States at the Nuremberg trials. Cornelia never married. Unlike Marguerite, her two half-sisters were actively creative themselves, Katherine as a poet and Cornelia as a sculptor.

4 This companion, who is referred to several times in unpublished family correspondence and is also mentioned in various publications, is never given a name.

5 These biographical details are mainly based on information from the New York Times in the years between 1878 and 1911, the relevant sections of Gloria Groom, ‘An American Princess …’ (n. 1), and Helen Barolini, ‘Yankee Principessa: Marguerite Caetani’ in her Their Other Side. Six American Women and the Lure of Italy, New York, 2006, pp. 177-231, p. 290, 291. A biography of Marguerite Caetani by the Canadian author Laurie Dennett is due to appear in 2015, and will undoubtedly contain more new information.

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singing lessons from the celebrated Polish tenor Jean de Reszke (1850-1925), who had been a friend of her father, and who had many other American pupils6. As a matter of course she would have regularly visited museums and gone to plays, concerts and the opera.

Initially, painting was her main area of interest, and her career as patron of the arts seems to have begun with commissions to painters. Bonnard portrayed her in 1910 at her own request, and Vuillard painted and drew her in various settings that same year. Vuillard was also invited to decorate the wall of the dining room of the apartment on rue de l’Université7. From that time until long after the Second World War, visual art was a prominent element in Marguerite Caetani’s life. She commissioned works from painters and sculptors, visited galleries with the aim of finding new talent, and regularly bought both larger and smaller canvases from French and later also Italian artists. During the 1930s, when her financial situation had deteriorated due to the Wall Street crisis of 1929, and Commerce could no longer be published, for some time she was actively involved in organising exhibitions of modern art in London, Paris and New York8.

The information available to us today does not provide a clear picture of the way Marguerite spent the first ten years of her life in Paris, during what must have been her ‘learning period’. Nothing is known in detail about the circles she moved in, whom she received, and where she travelled. She was very young – in her early twenties – when she settled in Paris and, as far as is known, she did not have much experience of the art world. She must surely have profited from the proximity and social contacts of her maternal relatives in this early period. She did not keep a diary herself, unfortunately, and her correspondence from this period has not been preserved. It is thus impossible to establish whether patronage was her goal from the beginning, and who initially guided her taste. Her presence in artistic circles only begins to be registered from the moment she moved into her own home in 1910. Subsequently, her name is mentioned in passing in the letters or diaries of the people she met, and these references offer glimpses into the life she

6 De Reszke made his European reputation in the 1880s, appeared with the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1891, then in 1902 retired from the stage and began giving lessons in Paris. See Marella Caracciolo, ‘Ninfa e gli ultimi Caetani’, in Marella Caracciolo e Giuppi Pietromarchi (testi), Marella Agnelli (photography), Il giardino di Ninfa, Torino, 1997, p. 82.

7 For Vuillard’s canvases depicting Marguerite Caetani and the works she commissioned from him, see Groom (n. 1).

8 Information about this activity can be found in the unpublished correspondence and other documents in the archive of the Fondazione Camillo Caetani in Rome.

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led. Vuillard recorded the sittings of 1910 and 1911, with dates and often a short commentary, in his unpublished carnets; they contain more than 20 references to meetings with ‘Mlle Chapin’, including lunches in the company of others at Marguerite’s house, sittings, and visits to various studios, including Pierre Bonnard’s9. On 16 November 1910, the Anglo-German art connoisseur and diplomat Count Harry Kessler (1868-1937) mentions her in his diary for the first time: ‘Had lunch at the Schepfers’ with Maillol and a very pretty, merry American, Miss Chapin, who has allowed herself to be painted by Bonnard10. On 14 June 1911, Kessler notes: Took D’Annunzio and Tata Golubeff to Miss Chapin’s. […] At Miss Chapin’s the gardeners were in the midst of planting the lilacs in the garden, the roses were in full bloom. She herself was especially slender and girlish in a flowing dark blue dress. D’Annunzio allowed her to lead him around and observed how she moved.

He took a volume of one of his works from the library and spoke with her about it. Then we went to the dining room and viewed Vuillard’s wall screens. […] She leaned against the door and replied with light hand movements while he allowed his gaze to slide over her entire figure. Out of the blue he then said suddenly, “But truly, what a charming woman you are! One of those women of whom you retain a delicious memory. And we will never see each other again. Perhaps, later, seeing each other more often, one would discover faults, but, like this, it will be one of those memories that you have in life, the memory of something exquisite that you will never see again”. He insisted that they would never see each other again, with that light, half-ironic melancholy peculiar to him11.

Marguerite evidently made an impression on the men who met her. Later on, the letters of some of the Commerce authors to her also occasionally reveal feelings that go beyond mere friendship.

A Salon in Versailles In the late summer of 1910, Emmanuel Bibesco, who had himself unsuccessfully courted Marguerite Chapin12, introduced her at the Opéra to Prince

See Gloria Groom (n. 1) on the feelings Vuillard had for Caetani.

Harry Kessler, Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918, translated by Laird M. Easton, New York, 2011, p. 502. Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) is the eminent sculptor and printmaker. Jean Schepfer (also Schopfer, 1868-1931) was a prolific author and journalist who published under the name Claude Anet. He and his wife Clarisse moved in the same circle of friends as Marguerite Caetani.

11 Ibid., pp. 543-544. Natascha de Golubeff (1879-1941), the poet and translator, was d’Annunzio’s mistress at the time.

12 Barolini (n. 5), p. 190.

9

10

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Roffredo Caetani (1871-1961)13. Roffredo was born in Rome, and he had been ‘presented at the baptismal font’ by Franz Liszt. He became a composer, and visited Berlin and Vienna around 1900 to become acquainted with the music world. He lived in Paris from 1902, and his music was performed there a number of times in subsequent years. In 1903, he was given the title Principe di Bassiano; appropriately, he moved mainly in aristocratic circles. Roffredo Caetani and Marguerite Chapin fell in love and, after Roffredo had obtained his father’s permission, the pair married in London on 30 October 191114.

At the time Roffredo Caetani was 40 years old, and Marguerite Chapin was 31. In 1913, their daughter Lelia15 was born in Paris. During the first years of their marriage, they often travelled back and forth between France (Paris and the coast of Normandy), Rome, and London, where relatives of Roffredo’s mother’s side of the family lived. Their permanent place of residence was Paris, however, where they lived in Marguerite’s apartment on rue de l’Université. In Paris, Roffredo and Marguerite Caetani were known as the Prince et Princesse de Bassiano. Marguerite usually signed her letters ‘Marguerite de Bassiano’, sometimes ‘Marguerite Caetani di Bassiano’. They regularly organised intimate dinner parties for small groups mainly of aristocratic friends, and acquaintances from the art world, as Marguerite once reported to her father-in-law: ‘We have had two rather amusing dinners lately chez nous. Yesterday the Casati, the Princesse Landriano, Boldini and d’Annunzio. (…) Then our other dinner (very small and select) consisted of Messager and M. et Mme Jean de Reszke’16.

Paul Op de Coul (Amsterdam) is preparing a biography of Roffredo Caetani, and has discovered a great deal of previously unknown information about him and his family. I am grateful to him for permission to use this material.

14 Michelangelo Caetani (1804-1882), Roffredo’s grandfather, was married to the Polish countess Kaliksta Rzewuska. After her early death in 1842, he married an Englishwoman, Margaret Knight; his third wife, Harriet Ellis Howard, was also English. Among the guests at Michelangelo Caetani’s salon in Palazzo Caetani were Stendhal, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Scott, Longfellow, Mommsen, Taine, and Franz Liszt. Onorato Caetani (1842-1917), Roffredo’s father, was married to Ada Bootle Wilbraham, also an Englishwoman. Roffredo was thus the third consecutive Caetani to have an English-speaking wife.

15 Lelia Caetani (1913-1977), who eventually married Sir Hubert Howard (1907-1987). In the correspondence of at least four generations of Caetani one encounters names of Polish, English and American family members.

16 Undated letter [1912?] from Marguerite Caetani to Onorato Caetani (Fondazione Camillo Caetani). The celebrated eccentric and patroness of the arts Luisa, Marchesa Casati Stampa di Soncino (1881-1957) had a protracted affair with d’Annunzio; Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) was the most fashionable portrait painter of the time; the composer and theatre 13

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The effervescent state of the artistic world of Paris in the opening decades of the twentieth century has been described in the many cultural histories of the period. This world was internationalised from the West, that is to say from Great Britain and the United States17, and also, at least as strongly, from the East18. Substantial detailed evidence–who visited whom, which circles mingled and which did not, what people dreamed of and what ambitions they held – can be found in the diaries, correspondence and (auto)biographies that continue to appear19. Unfortunately, Marguerite Caetani did not herself keep a diary that would allow us to follow in detail what she heard and saw and whom she met. She was herself, of course, an example of Parisian internationalisation, through her American origins and her marriage to an Italian nobleman with a cosmopolitan family lifestyle and international contacts. Marguerite and Roffredo Caetani were interested in new artistic developments and took advantage of what the music scene, theatres, galleries and cinemas of Paris had to offer. He was looking for ways to become better known as a composer. Their correspondence shows that they were present at the legendary first performance of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps in 1913, that they attended other performances of the Ballets Russes, that Marguerite bought works from Picasso before he became generally known, that Roffredo went to the cinema to watch a film starring Charlie Chaplin, and that they heard Chaliapin sing several times, including his performance in Mussorgskii’s Boris Godunov.

administrator André Messager (1853-1929) was one of the most influential figures in the contemporary opera world; on de Reszke, see n. 6 above.

17 See Noel Riley Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation. A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties & Thirties, New York, London, 1983, and The Letters of Sylvia Beach, edited

by Keri Walsh, with a foreword by Noel Riley Fitch, New York, 2010. Shari Benstock gives information specifically about the contribution of women like Barney, Beach, Stein, and others in Women of the Left Bank. Paris, 1900-1940, University of Texas Press, 1986. See also the highly informative catalogue for the exhibition Americans in Paris, held at the National Gallery in London in 2006 (Kathleen Adler, Erica E. Hirshner, H. Barbara Weinberg (eds.), Americans in Paris: 1860-1900, London, 2006).

18 See especially Robert H. Johnston, “New Mecca, New Babylon”, Paris and the Russian Exiles, 1920-1945, Kingston and Montreal, 1988; Leonid Livak, How it was Done in Paris.

Russian Emigré Literature and French Modernism, Madison, 2003. On some of the more important Russian creative artists in France during Caetani’s time see Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky. A Creative Spring: Russia and France 1882-1934, New York, 1999; id., Stravinsky: The Second Exile: France and America, 1934-1971, New York, 2006; Sjeng Scheijen, Diaghilev.

A Life, London, 2009; and Viktoria Schweitzer, Tsvetaeva, London, 1992.

19 See, inter alia, the letters of Sylvia Beach (n. 17) and the second and subsequent volumes of T.S. Eliot’s letters (n. 23 below).

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After the First World War broke out, the Caetani travelled back to Italy, where Roffredo volunteered for service on a hospital train, holding the rank of major, but after his father’s death in 1917 he continued to handle the family’s affairs in Rome and on the estates to the south of the capital. Meanwhile, Marguerite and Lelia stayed in several places to the north of the capital, including Castel Gandolfo and Rocca di Papa. After the birth of their son Camillo (1915-1941) in Florence, they lived in Varese and Forte dei Marmi. In November 1917, Marguerite was able to return to Rome with the children. France was evidently her preferred abode, though; in the autumn of 1920 the family moved into the Villa Romaine on avenue Douglas Haig in Versailles. Here on alternate Sundays they received guests from the international art scene, and Marguerite Caetani developed her role as patron and intermediary in the art world, the basis of which had been laid during the Paris years before the war.

Among the guests who were received in Villa Romaine were also composers, singers, conductors, writers, publishers, and other creative people. If guest books were kept, they have unfortunately not been preserved, but the letters in the Archivio Caetani and other published and unpublished material provide a long and interesting list of guests. These documents as a whole give a vivid impression of what went on. In the late morning the hosts’ car would pick up some of the guests in Paris and take them to Versailles, while others made their way there themselves. Conversation was obviously highly valued, and there were also regular performances of music, including piano versions of Roffredo Caetani’s opera Hypatia, first performed in Weimar in 1926. People discussed books, and studied folders of sketches and drawings.

Food was served. Sometimes there were as many as thirty people at the table.

In their reports, the guests at Villa Romaine are generally positive about the atmosphere in the salon, the people they met there, and the cultural exchange that took place. However, we should not forget that many guests had a relationship of dependence with the Caetani, and benefited socially and financially from contact with them. This directed their pens, not only in letters to their host but also in their mutual correspondence. When these guests felt themselves unconstrained, in diary entries or in letters to a third party who was not part of the circle, the host and hostess were sometimes described in less parliamentary ways20. A distinctly disenchanted view of the milieu is provided in a letter from the British poet, painter and art critic Roger Fry, written on 11 November 1925 to his friend Helen Anrep:

See, for example, Mirsky’s private remarks about Marguerite to his friend Petr Suvchinskii cited in the annotation to the present volume.

20

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(…) Yesterday Groethuysen, that extraordinary pig-eyed Russian, Dutch, German, Frenchman, came to fetch me to the Princess Bassiano’s; we met at Hessel’s gallery in the rue de la Boëtie. While waiting we saw his collection of negro stuff, which is very large and, though not select, has some splendid pieces, some absolutely firstrate. I must try and get a Burlington article on that. (…)

The Princess, who is a nice innocent little American with all an American’s passion for poetry, came and took us off in her car to her splendid villa at Versailles. A big grand house and horribly cold – a very good dinner; she’s celebrated for her entremets, but alas! Only champagne (tho’ good of its beastly kind), two exquisitely pretty children. The Prince is Italian and a caricature en beau of the English Lord. A family of enormous Sussex sheep dogs, which had to be continually shepherded back into the corner where they were supposed to lie. Groethuysen waving his hands in the air as he speculated in the abstract. After dinner Groethuysen and the Prince retired to work at the German translation of an opera which he has written in Italian and composed the music of – can so pretty a prince really be a musician and a poet? – and I was left to talk poetry and painting, Waley, Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, etc., with the Princess – and to go round a picture gallery, Derain, Marchand and a fine screen

by Vuillard and her latest addition, that beastly young Surrealist Masson on which she had my opinion sans réserves. To see people who’ve got Vuillard and Derain and Segonzac, now buying out of sheer docile snobbism this foul art nouveau muck made me let fly quite impolitely and impoliticly. The time began to drag heavily and at last Groethuysen and the Prince appeared and we were motored back to Paris21.

The various sets of correspondence show the way in which in addition to her activity in connection with visual art and with poetry, in the early 1920s Marguerite Caetani was consciously constructing a literary network. The Parisian publisher Gaston Gallimard brought her into contact with Valery Larbaud; Paul Valéry was introduced to her by Natalie Clifford Barney; and Léon-Paul Fargue connected her with Saint-John Perse at her request. She studied the work of these authors, who were all part of the circles around the Nouvelle Revue Française, the periodical that had been launched by André Gide and a few kindred spirits before the First World War, and which developed into a literary superpower in Paris during the twenties. During a discussion that took place on one of the Sunday afternoons in Versailles, the idea arose of founding a literary periodical that would offer its readers pure literature – prose, poetry, and drama22. There would be no place for criticism, faits divers, blurbs, illustrations, or textual commentaries, which were felt to

21 Letters of Roger Fry. Edited with an introduction by Dennis Sutton, London, 1972, p. 584.

22 For more on the founding of the magazine see Sophie Levie, Commerce 1924-1932.

Une revue internationale moderniste. Pubblicazioni della Fondazione Camillo Caetani a cura

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be amply represented in other periodicals. It is not clear whether this was a plan that Marguerite had been hatching for some time, nor whether or not she drew inspiration from the example of others, such as Natalie Clifford Barney23.

The magazine was one of several contemporary initiatives that offered creative writers the opportunity to work and publish in comparative peace, free of commercial considerations24. Whether the initiators had a specific audience in mind is similarly unclear; perhaps Commerce was originally brought into existence primarily as a platform for a small group of mutually congenial French authors25. None of these points can be answered wholly satisfactorily, but the correspondence between the founders shows that they were all raised at one point or another during the magazine’s early development.

The people who developed the plan in the Caetani salon formed a stable core among her guests: Valery Larbaud, Léon-Paul Fargue, Paul Valéry, Jean Paulhan and Alexis Saint-Leger Leger. The first three – Larbaud, Fargue, and Valéry – were appointed as directors. At the time, Paulhan was the secretary of the Nouvelle Revue Française, published by Gallimard, which precluded official involvement in a second magazine. Leger, who used the pseudonym Saint-John Perse for his literary activities after the publication of his long poem ‘Anabase’ in the Nouvelle Revue Française of 1 January 1924, had a career as a diplomat, and kept literature and diplomacy strictly separate. There are not many traces of his direct influence to be found in the magazine, which after some discussion was baptised Commerce26. Leger claimed, however, that the role he played in the project was very important:

di Luigi Fiorani, Roma, 1989, pp. 15-24 [hereafter Levie]; Ève Rabaté, La Revue Commerce.

L’esprit «classique moderne» (1924-1932), Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2012 [hereafter Rabaté].

23 Rabaté mentions that Barney presents her own activities in aid of destitute authors as having been an example for Marguerite Caetani: see Natalie Clifford Barney, Aventures de l’esprit, Paris, 1929, p. 131, 132. Caetani was certainly also aware of The Criterion, the magazine run by T.S. Eliot – who happened to be her cousin – which was funded by Viscountess Rothermere: see The Letters of T.S. Eliot. Volume 2: 1923-1925, ed. by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, London, Faber & Faber, 2009.

24 A British example is Bel Esprit, founded by Ezra Pound in 1921 with the aim of liberating T.S. Eliot from his job at Lloyds Bank by organising a number of anonymous benefactors to support him. Barney and Caetani contributed financially to this initiative, which was short-lived. See inter alia Ian Hamilton, ‘How much?’, London Review of Books, vol. 20, no. 12, 18 June 1988, p. 7, 8).

25 According to Barney, Commerce was founded to aid Paul Valéry financially (see n. 23).

I have not been able to find any evidence to support this, however.

26 In one version of the story, Valéry suggested the title Commerce des Idées; according to others, the word is taken from the first song of ‘Anabase’, where it occurs in the phrase ‘ce pur commerce de mon âme’.

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Commerce: revue littéraire fondée, en 1924, à Paris par la Princesse de Bassiano, à l’instigation de Saint-John Perse, et pour la direction de laquelle il l’assistait amicalement, la rédaction demeurant placée, ostensiblement, sous la caution apparente de trois amis du poète: Paul Valéry, Valery Larbaud et Léon-Paul Fargue. Jean Paulhan aidait parfois Saint-John Perse à recueillir des manuscrits, ou s’excerçait finalement son choix27.

These words should be treated with considerable caution. Leger edited his Œuvres complètes himself, and it is generally known that he exaggerated his own role in everything with which he was involved. Moreover, he seems to have had some sort of amorous liaison with Marguerite Caetani during this period, which was common knowledge in the literary petite histoire of the time28. It is significant that, with the exception of two short notes written

by Leger from the end of 1923 and the beginning of 1924, there are no letters by him in the Archivio Caetani, while there are large numbers of them there to Marguerite Caetani from the three editors and Paulhan.

Starting in 1921 Marguerite Caetani focused her attention on the project, and looked for ways to make it flourish. She must have seen the magazine as a chance to realise several ambitions, presumably long anticipated. In her work for Commerce she could bring together her interest in literature and her desire to support young writers. Moreover, in this way she used her fortune in a more committed way than as merely a hostess who also commissioned works of art for her own collection. She founded the Société Anonyme ‘Commerce’, a public limited company, and opened an account under the name of this foundation with capital of 60,000 francs29 at the Parisian office of the Morgan Harjès bank. The three editors each received 100 shares of 100 francs in the company as compensation for their intellectual contribution. Half of the capital remained in Marguerite Caetani’s hands, ensuring her dominant position. The painter André de Segonzac, a well-liked guest at Villa Romaine, with whom Marguerite regularly scoured museums and galleries, was appointed trustee. In his ‘Rapport du Commissaire’, which is dated on 28 November 1924, the financial side of the enterprise is recorded.

There is also a definition of what intellectual and moral advantage the magazine was to derive from the fact that Valéry, Fargue and Larbaud lent their names to it. Marguerite Caetani’s function was described as ‘statutory administrator’ (administratrice statutaire)30. The first issue of Commerce had Saint-John Perse, Œuvres complètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, 1972, p. 1304.

Rabaté, p. 34.

29 The modern-day equivalent would be about 45,000 euros.

30 The ‘Rapport du Commissaire’ is included in Levie, p. 238, 239.

27 28

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already been published at the end of August. The last was the spring issue for 1932. In total, 29 numbers of Commerce appeared, one per season.

The title page remained the same throughout: Commerce cahiers trimestriels publiés par les soins de Paul Valéry, Léon Paul Fargue, Valery Larbaud Marguerite Caetani’s name, then, was not mentioned, which can partly be explained by the fact that it did not befit her social position to play a public role in the literary world. She could not actively take part in the cultural life of Paris as did, for instance, her compatriots Sylvia Beach and Gertrude Stein31. However, a position as bookseller, publisher or advisor to young talent, like theirs, was not what she aspired to. A position on the literary stage that was too explicit would have made her vulnerable and might have forced her to make literary-political choices she did not want to make in public. It did not suit the class she had belonged to as a result of her marriage to Roffredo Caetani, a class to whose social practices she conformed.

Like Princesse Marthe Bibesco or her fellow-American Winaretta Singer, better known as Princesse Edmond de Polignac, as Princesse de Bassiano she could act as a patron of the arts and as a mediator between people and institutions32. Marguerite Caetani did not seek publicity like these two other princesses, who were active on a broader scale and also played a prominent social role. The way she executed her patronage fits in with the development that the funding of art underwent during the first half of the twentieth century. After over a century of revolutions, in France, Germany, Russia and elsewhere, the role of the aristocracy as an institution in political life was played out, while patronage of the arts remained within their ambit, especially for the women among them. Count Kessler suggested as much in a diary entry from 12 December 1919: I had breakfast with Hereditary Prince Reuss, who had telephoned me yesterday ‘to pick up our connection again’, as he put it. I had not seen him since 1915. He is

A chapter each is dedicated to these women in Hugh Ford’s classic study, Published in Paris. American and British Writers, Printers and Publishers in Paris, 1920-1939, with a foreword by Janet Flanner, New York, 1975, pp. 3-33 and pp. 231-252.

32 See Ghislain Diesbach, La Princesse Bibesco. La dernière orchidée, Paris, 1986, and Sylvia Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, Rochester, 2009 (2003).

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devoting himself to the theatre – very rational, because culture is all that remains where fallen princely families can still be of service33.

This is the background against which the adventure Marguerite Caetani embarked upon should be viewed. On one hand it was the enterprise of a patron who, through her marriage, had connections with the Italian court and moved in the highest aristocratic circles all over Europe, with all the attendant conventions. On the other hand it was the self-created emploi of a wealthy American with a great passion for visual art, music and literature, who personally pursued an active interest in the artistic developments of the day and also eagerly sought guidance on them. Whether she actually foresaw at the outset that the enterprise would take up a lot of her time for nine years and that she would conduct a correspondence, sometimes very intense, with some of the greats of the international literary scene during the interwar period, is impossible to determine.

A second explanation for Marguerite Caetani’s choice of anonymity in respect of Commerce lies in her awareness that she did not have a position of her own in the world of literature except as a passionate buyer of books and a reader of old and new texts. She was not herself a writer; rather, she was a conversation partner, an admirer, a sounding board for the authors she wanted to approach. The authority of the three editors of Commerce and the networks they had built up in the literary world during their careers were vital to the realisation of the kind of periodical the founders had envisioned. Firstly, it was to be a forum in which they could publish their own texts, which would also make it represent the current state of affairs in French literature. However, if Larbaud, and to a lesser degree, Valéry had had their way, Commerce would never have been given formal status. The correspondence from the founding phase shows that they were very hesitant about putting the plans into practice. They saw no real reason to make a public institution of a literary discussion that functioned well for all involved on a private and amicable basis. Larbaud argued that here were very many magazines already, and no reason to add another34. But Marguerite Caetani insisted.

33 ‘Gefrühstuckt mit dem Erbprinzen Reuss, der mich gestern antelephoniert hatte, ‘um wieder Verbindung afzunehmen’, wie er sagte. Ich hatte ihn seit 1915 nicht gesehen. Er widmet sich dem Theater; sehr vernünftig, da die Kultur das einzige geblieben ist, wo die gefallenen Fürstenhäuser noch Dienste leisten können’. Harry Graf Kessler, Das Tagebuch 1880-1937.

Siebter Band 1919-1923, herausgegeben von Angela Reinthal unter Mitarbeit von Janna Brechmacher und Christoph Hilse, Stuttgart, 2007, p. 284.

34 Levie, p. 22, 23.

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A Portrait of Commerce Besides the guests at Villa Romaine whose names have been mentioned earlier, in the early twenties the Caetani also received Erik Satie, Reynaldo Hahn, André Derain, Aristide Maillol, Jacques Rivière and André Gide.

This string of names illustrates the fact that, despite the strong international element described above, their salon functioned first and foremost as a meeting place for French artists. Commerce was indeed primarily a French affair; it was published in Paris, was controlled by a triumvirate of Frenchmen, and mainly carried French texts that had not appeared before. Commerce published literature originally written in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Danish. The foreign texts selected by the editorial staff did not appear in the magazine in the original languages, but were first translated into French, which was a second stipulation35. Altogether, the journal published a total of 46 original French texts, as against 19 English, 8 German, 7 Italian, 5 Russian, and 3 Spanish36.

The first issue of Commerce contained previously unpublished work by the three official directors37, a part of the cycle La Gloire des Rois by SaintJohn Perse, and fragments from James Joyce’s Ulysses, translated by Valery Larbaud and Auguste Morel. Commerce was the first periodical to translate sections of Joyce’s novel into French. One of the most important points of the magazine’s unwritten programme was that its contents, both the French and the translated texts, should not have been previously published. The editors stuck to this rule as far as was possible38. The rule was also used as an excuse for refusing material or finding advantageous solutions for Commerce if problems arose39. Ideally, poets would translate poets, which led to quite a number of interesting pairings: the translation of T.S. Eliot’s poem in the third issue of Commerce was made by Saint-John Perse; Paul Valéry This rule, like the others, was not applied consistently. In Commerce III, part of Eliot’s The Hollow Men was printed in both English and French. For the works by Roy Campbell, Thomas Hardy and Archibald MacLeish, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ricardo Guïraldes and Alfonso Reyes, the source texts were printed on the left-hand page, with the French translations en regard.

36 For a complete list of the contents of Commerce, and a distribution according to national literatures, see pp. 105-119 below.

37 Paul Valéry, Lettre; Léon-Paul Fargue, Épaisseurs; Valery Larbaud, Ce vice impuni, la lecture.

38 The publication of fragments from Ulysses constituted an immediate violation of this rule.

The novel had been published in English in 1922, but printed in Dijon, and distributed from Paris. See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, Oxford University Press, 1959, revised edition 1982.

39 On the selection of texts from Russian, the translation of these texts, and the many problems that ensued, see the introductions and notes to the letters by Mirsky and Iswolsky below.

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translated Hardy; and the surrealist poet Louis Aragon was involved in the translation of Büchner’s Léonce und Lena. Marguerite Caetani could always count on Valery Larbaud: for Commerce he translated from English (e.g.

Edith Sitwell), Italian (e.g. Emilio Cecchi) and Spanish (e.g. the Mexican Alfonso Reyes and the Argentinian Ricardo Guïraldes). Commerce thus strongly stimulated international dialogue, which was exactly what Caetani had had in mind for her magazine. In 1925, she approached a number of foreign authors who were already involved in Commerce or with whom she came into contact through one or other of her editors, in order to realise this literary exchange. They were invited to contribute their work to Commerce, if they had not already done so, and were also given the task of suggesting a text from their own national literature that would fit with Commerce’s programme. For English literature she invited T.S. Eliot40. Giuseppe Ungaretti became her Italian advisor41. For literature in German she chose Rainer Maria Rilke42, after his death in 1926 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and after he died in 1929, Rudolf Kassner. For Russian literature, as the letters published below demonstrate, she sought advice from D.S. Mirsky43.

A third characteristic of the magazine was the combination of young authors (‘ jeunes’, to use Marguerite Caetani’s term) and texts from the tradition (‘anciens textes’). For the jeunes, Marguerite appealed to her editors and Jean Paulhan, the consequence being that most of the young authors in Commerce were from France. For the older texts, Bernard Groethuysen’s suggestions were invaluable. He regularly looked for obscure material in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and provided Commerce with the Latin essays on fauna and flora by the sixteenth-century doctor Jerôme Cardan, a report by the seventeenthcentury trader J.B. Tavernier, who journeyed through Asia looking for precious gems, and an account by Jesuit missionaries of their travels in China in the

As previously noted, Eliot was a cousin of Caetani, and in regular touch with her. A contribution by T.S. Eliot had already appeared in Commerce I. 41 The contact with Ungaretti was established by Jean Paulhan; see Correspondance Jean Paulhan – Giuseppe Ungaretti, Édition établie et annotée par Jacqueline Paulhan, Luciano Rebay et Jean-Charles Vegliante. Préface de Luciano Rebay, Cahiers Jean Paulhan 5, Paris, 1989, p. 51, 61, passim.

42 Rilke was introduced by Paul Valéry; see Harry Graf Kessler, Das Tagebuch 18801937, Achter Band 1923-1926, herausgegeben von Angela Reinthal, Günter Riederer und Jörg Schuster unter Mitarbeit von Janna Brechmacher, Christoph Hilse und Nadin Weiss, Stuttgart, 2009, p. 657.

43 The connection with Mirsky was established either by André Gide or Bernard Groethuysen, or both; see G.S. Smith, D.S. Mirsky. A Russian-English Life, 1890-1939, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 118, 128.

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eighteenth century. Groethuysen made a selection he considered appropriate for the magazine, translated what had to be translated, and wrote introductions.

He was also involved in the selection of less exotic older texts for Commerce, for instance those by Meister Eckhart and Friedrich Hölderlin. Larbaud and the connection with the Nouvelle Revue Française made it possible for Commerce to publish Sir Thomas Wyatt, Giacomo Leopardi and others.

These three points – inédits, translations, and young and old side by side in every issue – formed the basis of editorial policy. However, since the programme was never set down on paper, it can only be reconstructed by means of literary-historical classification of the texts in the 29 issues, and what is said in the letters of the staff members. The editors never addressed their audience through a manifesto in the magazine, and never formulated a literary-political statement for or against any particular movement. Only sporadically did they provide their readers with clues that would help them place authors from distant lands or the distant past44.

Marguerite Caetani had appointed her three editors to carry out her intentions in respect of recruiting suitable authors, assessing texts, and finding translators. Initially, the enterprise was set up so that Adrienne Monnier (1892-1955), owner of the bookstore La Maison des Amis des Livres in the rue de l’Odéon45 and a close acquaintance of the editors, would act as the manager of the magazine, a position that mostly involved administrative tasks46. In an undated letter to Marguerite Caetani, Adrienne Monnier lists the duties her function will entail: contacts with the printer and the publisher; all financial affairs; setting up and managing the archive and the administrative correspondence; and corresponding with the editor and the authors, all according to the instructions of Caetani and the editors. However, Monnier was actively involved in Commerce only for a very short time. Problems escalated between her and Fargue, which were partly private and partly resulted from the fact that the charming poet was always late with the work he promised to deliver.

From August 1924 they also affected the other members of the editorial For instance, Larbaud and Groethuysen provided afterwords to the texts of Maurice Scève and Friedrich Hölderlin respectively in Commerce V, and the Edgar Allan Poe text in Commerce XIV was annotated by Valéry.

45 Adrienne Monnier’s bookstore had been situated at 7, rue de l’Odéon since 1915; in 1921 Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company at no. 12, on the other side of the street.

These establishments functioned as meeting places for the French and English-speaking literary communities in Paris. They not only sold books; customers could also borrow books, read magazines, and browse as much as they liked. See Laure Murat, Passage de l’Odéon.

Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier et la vie littéraire à Paris de l’entre-deux-guerre, Paris, 2003.

46 Ibid., p. 74, 75.

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staff. The relationship between Commerce and Monnier was already strained by the time the first issue was published47. On 16 December 1924, after the business side of the undertaking had been settled with the founding of the Société Anonyme ‘Commerce’, Marguerite Caetani sent Monnier a letter in which she asked her to return all documents concerning the administration of the magazine and relieved her of any further involvement48. The continued existence of Commerce seemed to hang in the balance for a while in the autumn of 1924 due to these troubles, despite attempts on the part of Valéry and Larbaud to mediate, but after some time a new administrator was found in the person of Ronald Davis49. He also did not work for the magazine for very long. After the editors decided he made too many mistakes, Marguerite Caetani appointed the publisher/bookseller Louis Giraud-Badin, with effect from Commerce IX. As printers as well as publishers of Commerce during the entire course of the magazine’s existence, Caetani used Levé, the director of the Parisian Société générale d’imprimerie et d’édition50. The exact distribution of duties cannot be determined, because information relating to practical business is scarce in Marguerite Caetani’s administrative archive.

It is clear that correspondence regarding content was not conducted by the successive managers, but that the ‘administratice statutaire’/patron took this upon herself. Caetani was generous toward the editors, and had the deserved reputation of paying her authors exceptionally well. So a publication in Commerce was desirable, as is regularly attested in the letters written to Caetani. Commerce’s circulation was small compared to that of other periodicals, though, and copies were expensive. All this indicates that Commerce aimed at an élite audience and did not aspire to a large share in the literary periodical market51. Whether regular meetings were anticipated initially is unknown, but in fact formal editorial staff meetings never took place. One of the reasons for this was the rupture between Larbaud and Fargue, an after-effect of the problems with Adrienne Monnier. This must have been an inconvenience, but the model Caetani worked with made meetings with These problems are described in Levie, pp. 18-24; Murat, Passage de l’Odéon, pp.

74-78; and Rabaté, pp. 75-96.

48 This letter is included in Levie, p. 20, 21.

49 Ronald Davis, an Englishman who fought in World War I and remained in France afterwards, played a marginal role in Parisian literary life as a translator and publisher; see e.g. Paul Valéry, An Evening with Mr Teste, translated by Ronald Davis. Avec une préface inédite de l’auteur, Paris, 1925.

50 For more on the management of Commerce see Rabaté, pp. 96-116.

51 Figures regarding circulation and price, and a comparison with other magazines, are provided by Rabaté, pp. 98-102 and pp. 116-127.

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the full editorial staff almost superfluous. Marguerite Caetani herself was often not at Villa Romaine but on either the Normandy or Mediterranean coast with her family, and the editors were also sometimes away from Paris.

Consultation took place through correspondence, and during the afternoons in Versailles or meetings in Paris. It is evident from the weight of surviving correspondence with Marguerite Caetani that Valery Larbaud and Jean Paulhan were her principal supports in the management of magazine.

The Substance of Commerce A literary-historical assessment of all the texts offered in Commerce yields an image of moderate innovation. The three editors were (almost) middleaged: in 1924, Valéry turned 53, Fargue 48, and Larbaud 43. They had won their literary spurs many times over. The ‘ jeunes’ they put forward were certainly no extreme avant-gardists in terms of the literary situation in 1925.

The violent attacks with which from 1910 the representatives of Futurism, Dada, and (especially in France) Surrealism had besieged nineteenth-century art and literature, had been followed by a return to more classical forms during the First World War and after. In France this change was described in a number of essays by Jean Cocteau and labelled ‘le rappel à l’ordre’52. The play on tradition, which manifested itself in a re-use of old forms and a mixing of themes from various periods and cultures, was already discernible in Picasso’s work between 1917 and 1923, when monumental classical figures and harlequins filled his canvases. A similar neo-classical ‘turn’ was made

by Stravinsky in the period around 1920 with Pulcinella, and by T.S. Eliot with The Hollow Men (1924). These three artists, who all have a presence on the margins of the Caetani milieu, played a central role in the art of the interwar period. They are the pre-eminent exponents of that amalgamation of tradition and innovation which became part of Commerce’s programme.

In literature, the search for new ways revealed itself in experiments regarding form within various literary genres, and in attempts to record the consciousness of twentieth-century man in fiction. Such quests were undertaken by Virginia Woolf in her essays and novels53, by Thomas Mann in Der

Jean Cocteau, Le rappel à l’ordre, Paris, 1926, a collection of essays on aesthetics written between 1918 and 1926.

53 Notably Modern Fiction (1919), and Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown (1924). Commerce X, (hiver 1926) included the middle part of the novel To the Lighthouse (1927). On Woolf’s contribution see Levie, pp. 174-178.

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Zauberberg (1924), and Marcel Proust in his novel sequence A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927).

This interest in the representation of consciousness and in genre experiments can be traced in the editors’ contributions to Commerce. Four texts

by Valéry, which later became part of the anti-novel Monsieur Teste, first appeared in the magazine54. Larbaud’s contributions included several prose pieces in which he experimented with stream-of-consciousness technique55. The poems Fargue contributed to the magazine come closest to Surrealism56, so it is not surprising that he was the one who sometimes objected to Commerce’s serious tone, the lack of openness in editorial policy, and the elitist air surrounding the magazine57. Only a few surrealist texts made it into Commerce, and there is nothing from Expressionism, which would have been a very obvious choice.

Missed chances, perhaps, but an overview of the complete contents of the magazine demonstrates that an accusation of repetitiveness is not justified.

The selection of international literature from the twenties and early thirties is diverse, as is the juxtapositioning of sometimes very surprising items from the tradition with the contemporary choices made by Marguerite Caetani and her editors. The result was the creation of one of the most noteworthy bodies of literary texts from the period between the two world wars.

54 Lettre in Commerce I, Lettre de Madame Emilie Teste in Commerce II, Préface pour une nouvelle traduction de la Soirée avec M. Teste in Commerce IV, and Edmond Teste: Log Book (extraits) in Commerce VI. 55 On Larbaud’s contributions and the technical experiments in his stories, see Levie, pp. 84-104. On stream of consciousness, see e.g. Art Berman, Preface to Modernism, University of Illinois Press, 1994 and Pericles Lewis, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

56 Fargue contributed a total of nineteen texts to Commerce, poetry and prose poems that occasionally display Symbolist roots, while in other texts a feverish dream or a walk through Paris provide surrealistic leaps and an appropriate frame.

57 See Fargue’s letter to Marguerite Caetani from 1925, cited in Levie, p. 105.

D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

preface

Until quite recently, relatively little was known about the private life and thoughts that went along with the copious published writings and public actions of D.S. Mirsky (Prince Dimitrii Petrovich Sviatopolk-Mirskii, 18901939)1. This situation existed in large part because relatively little appears to have survived of what would have been an imposing personal archive. The probable destruction of this material occurred not once but three times, at the critical junctures of Mirsky’s life: when he left Russia in 1920, eventually to settle in London; when he went back to Russia from London in 1932; and when he was arrested in Moscow in 1937. The most significant documents lost on these occasions are without doubt the letters Mirsky received from some of the leading literary figures of his time: they include T.S. Eliot, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva. And his attested contacts with the lesser literary lights of England, France, and Russia abroad suggest that his letters from them would have been hardly less important for a reconstruction of the intellectual and cultural context in which he lived and worked. Against this, a good many of the letters Mirsky wrote were preserved by the recipients, and the location and publication of them has radically expanded our knowledge and understanding of this remarkable man even though we lack the reciprocal side of the correspondence. In terms of Mirsky’s relations with the non-Russian literary world, the most important single constituent of this body of material whose existence has been known to scholars is his letters For a general account of Mirsky’s life and writings see O.A. Kaznina, Russkie v Anglii: Russkaia emigratsiia v kontekste russko-angliiskikh literaturnykh sviazei v pervoi polovine XX veka, Moscow, 1997, esp. pp. 119-155; G.S. Smith, D.S. Mirsky: A Russian-English Life, 18901939, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000 (hereafter Smith, DSM); N. Lavroukine and L. Tchertkov, D.S. Mirsky: Profil critique et bibliographique, Paris, Institut d’Etudes slaves, 1980; the latter bibliography has now been superseded by O. Korostelev and M. Efimov, ‘D. Mirskii (D.P. Sviatopolk-Mirskii): Materialy k bibliografii’, in D.S. Mirskii, Nesobrannoe (Stat′i i retsenzii o literature i kul’ture: 1922-1937), sost., podg. teksta, primech. O.A. Korosteleva i M.V. Efimova, predislovie Dzh. Smita, Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014, pp. 528-572.

1

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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to Marguerite Caetani. They concern his contribution as Russian consultant to the spectacular literary journal she founded and edited, Commerce. The existence of these letters, and some details of their contents, were made known in the 1980s through Sophie Levie’s publications2, but the complete texts of the letters are published here for the first time.

The correspondence begins late in 1926, and continues until just before Mirsky made his fateful return to Russia. During this period, Mirsky’s life included three principal spheres of activity. The first, in London, was centred on the academic post he held between 1921 and 1932, as a lecturer in Russian at the School of Slavonic Studies, then part of King’s College, University of London. This job was not very demanding in terms of teaching time. Mirsky would hurry off to Paris whenever he could, and in London during term-time he devoted his energies as far as he could to writing, partly in the line of duty as a reviewer for the School’s house journal, The Slavonic Review, but mainly as a freelance critic and historian of literature. Mirsky’s academic activity is mentioned hardly at all in the letters to Marguerite Caetani, but is perceptible throughout as a constraint on his time and movements. The second sphere of activity was the cultural life of the post-revolutionary Russian emigration, and in particular the Eurasian movement3, in which Mirsky became involved partly through his friendship with P.P. Suvchinskii, one of its leading lights4. Out of this relationship, but conceived as an enterprise ‘parallel’ to the Eurasian movement rather than represent-

2 S. Levie, ‘Commerce’ 1924-1932. Une revue internationale moderniste, Roma, Fondazione Camillo Caetani, 1989, esp. ‘D.S. Mirsky et la littérature russe’, pp. 198-204; id., La rivista Commerce e il ruolo di Marguerite Caetani nella letteratura europea, 1924-1932, Roma, Fondazione Camillo Caetani, 1985.

3 For a specific study of this activity, see O.A. Kaznina, ‘D.P. Sviatopolk-Mirskii i evraziiskoe dvizhenie’, Nachala, 4 (1992), pp. 81-88; also Smith, DSM, pp. 136-140, pp. 168-181.

4 Petr Petrovich Suvchinskii (1892-1985), the musicologist and leading figure in the Eurasian movement. On his relations with Mirsky, see G.S. Smith, The Letters of D.S. Mirsky to P.P. Suvchinskii, 1922-1931, Birmingham, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 1995 (Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 26), referred to below as Suvchinskii letters. On his activities as a Eurasian during the initial period of the movement, see especially E. Krivosheeva, ‘K istorii evraziistva, 1922-1924gg.’, Rossiiskii arkhiv: Istoriia Otechestva v svidetel’stvakh i dokumentakh XVIII-XX vv., 5, Moscow, 1994, pp. 475-503. On Suvchinskii as musicologist, see Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, Oxford, 1996, pp. 1120-1134; Pierre Souvtchinski, cahiers d’étude, ed. Eric Humbertclaude, Paris, 2006; Petr Suvchinskii i ego vremia, Moscow, 1999; Vadim Kozovoï, ‘O Petre Suvchinskom i ego vremeni’, in his Tainaia os′, Moscow, 2003, pp. 83-162; Igor Vishnevetskii, “Evraziiskoe uklonenie” v muzyke 1920-1930-kh godov: Istoriia voprosa. Stat′i i materialy, Moscow, 2005; Katerina Levidou, ‘The Artist-Genius in Petr Suvchinskii’s Eurasianist Philosophy of

preface

5

ing it, came the decision to found a Russian-language literary review, which was entitled Versty. Aleksei Remizov, Lev Shestov, and Marina Tsvetaeva were named as having ‘the closest cooperation’ with the editors; Tsvetaeva’s husband, Sergei Efron, was a nominal editor, but seems to have functioned – very badly – as business manager. Three annual issues were published (1926-8), and the enterprise cost Mirsky an enormous amount of effort and eventually, considerable frustration. After the Russian emigration, the third sphere of Mirsky’s existence consisted of his activities in the non-Russian European intellectual world, and this sphere is represented in a more concentrated way than anywhere else in the letters to Marguerite Caetani5.

For most people, a substantial fourth sphere of activity would be represented by a private or family life, but in this respect Mirsky was strikingly deficient, apparently by choice. After his active military service between 1914 and 1920, first in the Imperial Russian army and then on the White side in the Civil War, he became a somewhat solitary and truly hyperactive intellectual worker. Mirsky’s father had died in 1914, and into emigration with him came his mother and two sisters; they found refuge first in Athens, and then moved to Courbevoie in what was then the western outskirts of Paris. The mother died in 1926, and from soon after that Mirsky had no family home.

The only trace of his family now is the occasional appearance of one or other of his sisters’ addresses as a pied-à-terre; normally, though, he writes as before from the London University Club at 17 Gower St, or from hotels. He had no close personal relationships with anyone of either sex, with the exception of Suvchinskii and then Vera, Suvchinskii’s wife, who is mentioned in letter 6 below. The letter to Caetani of 28 June 1927 (letter 9) pleading to be let off a visit to her salon contains almost the only autobiographical evidence we have of the somewhat anti-social personality that lies at the centre of this unquiet development. Exactly how accurate this passage might be with particular ref-

History: The Case of Igor Stravinskii’, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 89, no.

4, October 2011, pp. 601-629.

5 For the broad historical context of Mirsky’s involvement with Commerce, see Leonid Livak, ‘Russian Emigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Interwar France: A History’, in his Russian Emigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Interwar France. A Bibliographical Essay, Montreal-Kingston-London-Ithaca, McGill-Queens University Press, 2010, pp. 12-44; on Commerce, see p. 21. According to Livak’s extremely questionable definitions, though (p. 8), Mirsky cannot be considered an émigré on two counts: he joined a Communist Party, and returned to Russian before 1939. Among other serious distortions, this means that he is not mentioned in connection with two of the cardinal foci of inter-war Franco-Russian cultural interaction, Caetani’s salon and the Pontigny décades, at both of which he was in fact the most prominent and sustained individual Russian presence.

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erence to Caetani’s celebrated Sunday gatherings, though, is hard to judge6.

In the same letter Mirsky adverts to the nature of his life in London, perhaps with greater justification than is the case with his life in Paris: ‘I see so few English people’. In letter 18, written on 2 March 1929, Mirsky writes: ‘… in general I am dreadfully busy – writing my book which should have been ready long ago, writing every week for our Russian paper, doing my usual university [work] (not much of that, fortunately) and seeing nobody’.

Mirsky was thus a free agent in personal terms, and because of this (or perhaps as the principal reason for it) his actions were dictated by his convictions, to an extent rarely encountered even among people whose principal mode of perception is intellectual and verbal. These convictions were constantly re-evaluated as historical events unfolded. He came into emigration as almost a caricature figure: Russian prince, veteran of the White army, loser of a substantial birthright as a result of the revolution, even minor poet. By the late 1920s, in a development contemporary with the bulk of these letters to Caetani, Mirsky had reconciled himself with the revolution and become a Marxist-Leninist; and in 1932, again acting on his convictions, he went back to Russia. His unslaked commitment to ideological development in the circumstances of Stalin’s regime inevitably led him into conflicts with authority, and like millions of others he was arrested, to die in the Gulag in 1939. As the annotation will show, the letters to Caetani contain little or no evidence concerning the development of Mirsky’s political stance in the later 1920s. She was clearly a person he considered to belong to a sphere centred in aesthetics rather than politics; by the late 1920s Mirsky would have denied the possibility of such a separation, but in his relations with Caetani he evidently maintained it.

For the first two years of the correspondence with Marguerite Caetani, Mirsky was involved in finding financial backing, choosing contributors, editing, and writing for Versty, which has proved to be one of the most impressive literary achievements of the inter-war Russian emigration7. The

In his Journal under 26 September 1929 André Gide (1869-1951), whom Mirsky had known since at least 1924, reports: ‘At three-thirty the Princess de Bassiano’s motor comes to pick me up and take me, together with Alix Guillain, Groethuysen, and Prince Mirsky, to Versailles, where I spend the rest of the day’. The Journals of Andre Gide, translated from the French and annotated by Justin O’Brien, vol. III, 1928-1939, New York, 1949, p. 62. How often Mirsky was present on these occasions remains unknown; Iswolsky said he came ‘as often as he visited Paris’: see Helene Iswolsky, No Time to Grieve, Philadelphia, 1985, p. 167.

7 On Versty, see Willem G. Weststeijn, ‘The Russian émigré-journal Versty’, in Reviews, Zeitschriften, Revues, ed. Sophie Levie, Amsterdam-Atlanta, Rodopi, 1994, pp. 169-197.

6

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7

idea of this journal is mentioned in Mirsky’s first letter to Suvchinskii, written on 11 October 19228, but practical work on the project was postponed for some time. The first issue came out in the early summer of 1926, somewhat delayed by a printer’s strike. In a letter to Suvchinskii written on 31 October 1926, ten days before his first letter to Caetani, Mirsky refers to discussions between the two men about how Versty might interact with Commerce. Suvchinskii evidently mentioned Caetani as a funding source, and Mirsky asks for further information concerning …under what specific conditions Princess Bassiano would give us money. Phps it might be possible somehow simply to amalgamate Versty and Commerce? As far as concerns an obligation to give Commerce “all Russian literature/poetry”, then if that means keeping them abreast of things, I would be happy to take that upon myself, and in general as far as my labour is concerned, I’m happy to sell myself to Italo-American capital9.

This seems to have been broadly the arrangement that in fact was put in place, as Mirsky’s first letter to Caetani goes on to demonstrate. Here, Mirsky makes a pitch for Versty as a bona fide literary enterprise: ‘For, honestly, we [Versty] are the only Russian publication that is free from allpervading political one-sidedness, and who pay our attention to cultural and truly literary values’10. Though here he was obviously drawing an implicit parallel with the standpoint of Commerce in order to engage the sympathies of Marguerite Caetani, this was not the only occasion on which Mirsky set out this view of Versty as ‘uniquely above politics’11. To people on both left

Mirsky’s subsequently published letters to Suvchinskii provide a detailed account of how the publication was financed and managed.

8 Suvchinskii letters, p. 17.

9 ‘… на каких конкретных условиях княгиня Бассиано дала бы нам деньги. М.б. можно было бы просто как-нибудь амальгамировать Версты с Commerce? Что же касается обязательства насчет того, чтобы давать Commerce’у “всю русскую

литературу/поэзию”, то если это значит держать их в курсе, я с удовольствием возьму это на себя, и вообще что касается моего труда, рад продаться италоамериканскому капиталу’ (Suvchinskii letters, p. 64).

10 Mirsky makes this same representation of Versty in his letter to Leonard Woolf; through Woolf he eventually secured a contribution from Maynard Keynes. See Andrei Rogachevskii, ‘Neizvestnye pis′ma D.P. Sviatopolk-Mirskogo serediny 1920-kh godov’, Diaspora, 2, Paris-St Petersburg, 2001, pp. 349-367.

11 Compare the flyer Mirsky enclosed with his letter to Suvchinskii of 27 November 1926 (Suvchinskii letters, 66), which inter alia states that the editors of Versty were ‘contemplating a parallel English translation of the more important matter’; no such translation came about.

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

and right wings of the Russian literary emigration, of course, the enterprise was anything but: to those on the Right, the demonstrative inclusion of writers resident in the USSR meant that it was hopelessly compromised with regard to acceptance of the legitimacy of the Soviet regime, while to those on the Left the inclusion of the émigré writers Remizov, Shestov, and Tsvetaeva among the ‘close collaborators’ of the editorial board as well as contributors meant that the journal’s stance was anti-Soviet. As we shall see, such considerations probably played a part in Mirsky’s choice of Russian material to recommend to Caetani.

Mirsky goes on to refer to a letter from his friend Bernard Groethuysen, which apparently conveyed Caetani’s wishes concerning the relationship with Versty; unfortunately, this letter has been lost along with the rest of Mirsky’s London archive. Mirsky had met Groethuysen at the Pontigny décade in 192412, and the friendship that developed might well have been the initial connection with Marguerite Caetani. Mirsky also refers to Groethuysen’s letter when writing to Suvchinskii on 10 November 1926, the same day as his first letter to Caetani. Here, Mirsky is advising Suvchinskii about what to say to Caetani when he meets her (as he advises Caetani in the last paragraph of his first letter): ‘I’ve just written to her. I, on my own personal account, accept whatever obligations she might ask. As far as I could understand from Groethuysen’s letter, she wants us to give Commerce in manuscript everything we have that will be of interest for them. One can, of course, agree to that’13.

Whatever may have been the particulars of the meetings between Caetani and Suvchinskii, the Princess seems to have been moved in favour of the Russians, for in his letter of 5 December 1926, Mirsky tells Suvchinskii that he has received £50 from her. He then set about producing what became the second volume of Versty. From this point on, however, Mirsky complains to Suvchinskii ever more forcefully that he is sick and tired of the organisational work involved in the journal. The letters to Suvchinskii of June The Décades at the abbey of Pontigny were invited meetings of European intellectuals, held annually between 1910 to 1939, with suspension during World War I. Mirsky attended the literary section of the meetings in 1924, 1925, and 1927; whether or not he attended in 1926 is not clear. See Smith, DSM, pp. 100-103. On the history of these meetings, see François Chaubet, Paul Desjardins et les Décades de Pontigny, Paris, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2000.

13 ‘Ей я только что написал. Я, лично за себя, принимаю все обязательства, какие 12

она только просит. Сколько я мог понять из письма Гротхейзена, она хочет, чтобы мы давали Commerce’у в рукописи все, что у нас будет интересного для них. На это, конечно, можно согласиться’ (Suvchinskii letters, pp. 64-65).

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1927 give a detailed account of his proposals and measures for terminating Versty with the third issue; commitments had been made to authors and subscribers, but little funding was forthcoming from donations or (even less) sales. As letter 7 (8 June 1927) shows, Caetani then sent another donation to Versty. Four days later, Mirsky confesses his difficulties, and asks for a further subsidy (letter 8). Writing to Suvchinskii on 15 June 1927, Mirsky says of this letter: ‘I’ve written a heart-rending letter to the Bassianikha’14, and then on 25 June: ‘The Bassianikha’s a low-down woman, I’ve not had a peep out of her’15. But by 28 June (letter 9) she had sent yet another cheque, and to judge by Mirsky’s words, an encouraging letter. Later on that summer, he visited her at La Baule (letter 10), and again on the Côte d’Azur that December. Caetani sent Mirsky a final cheque, for £40, in late February 1928; Suvchinskii had done the asking this time, which apparently offended the princess16. Mirsky’s letter 12 (21 February 1928) begins with his efforts to smooth matters over. This is the last substantial reference to Versty to be found in these letters.

In 1928, in the context of one of his survey articles for Versty, published in its final issue, Mirsky set out the following description of Commerce, offering a uniquely authoritative Russian perspective on what the journal stood for and had achieved since its foundation in 1924: Among current French periodicals a completely special place is occupied by Commerce, which is now entering the fourth year of its existence. This is as it were the citadel of French literary culture, not of the old academic kind, but of a living, contemporary kind. Commerce is not a revue d’avant garde, but the organ of mature and adult people, it looks forward rather than back, and among its contributors are the surrealists Aragon and Vidrac (the principal core of surrealists do not get involved out of party discipline considerations). The closest participants in Commerce are Paul Valéry, Léon-Paul Fargue, and Valery Larbaud, a writer of no great creative powers, but enormous understanding, perhaps the most open, sensitive, and advanced critic of the contemporary West. Commerce carried one of Valéry’s most astonishing works, Lettre d’Emilie Teste. The principal adornment of the latest issues of the journal, however, has been the poems (in prose) of Léon-Paul Fargue, whom these works (especially Esquisse pour un Paradis and La Drogue) make into one of the leading French poets. Two other first-rank poets, Paul Claudel and St John Perse, also participate closely in Commerce. A great deal of attention is paid

14 15 16

‘Написал Бассианихе раздирающее письмо’ (ibid., p. 85). ‘Бассианиха подлая – ни гу-гу’ (ibid., p. 86). ‘…получил £40 от Бассианихи. Она вроде как в обиде на меня, что не я ей

писал’ [‘… I’ve had £40 from the Bassianikha. She seems to be offended at me because it was not I who wrote to her’ (ibid., p. 100)].

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to foreign literature, especially English, including extracts from Joyce’s Ulysses in Larbaud’s translation and Eliot’s poetry translated by Perse. In its choice of foreign material the journal does not limit itself to what is near at hand and contemporary; the latest issue (XII) has selections from the Byzantine chronicle of Psellus. As far as Russian is concerned, The Negro of Peter the Great, and poetry by Mandel′shtam and Pasternak have appeared, translated by our contributor Elena Izvol′skaia17.

In the subsequent correspondence, Mirsky carries out the undertaking incurred from Caetani’s support for the Russian venture by advising about current Russian literature and who might best serve as translators. They also show him offering advice about English texts for Commerce, both fiction and non-fiction, an aspect of his advocacy that was previously unknown, though not surprising in view of his many published reviews of such texts during the 1920s.

To begin with the Russian authors and texts. Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva, both close contemporaries of Mirsky, were the writers with whom he had the most extensive and productive dealings, and in the case of his activities concerning Commerce, their names are constantly linked18. In 1925, as

‘Среди современных французских журналов совершенно особенное место занимает «Commerce», вступающий теперь в четвертый год своего существования. Это – как бы цитадель французской литературной культуры, не старой академической, а живой, современной. «Commerce» не «revue d’avangarde», a орган зрелых и взрослых, но он смотрит вперед, а не назад, и среди его сотрудников встречаются имена сюрреалистов Арагона и Витрака (главное ядро сюрреалистов не участвует в нем по соображениям партдисциплины). Ближайшие участники «Commerce»’а – Поль Валери, Леон-Поль Фарг и Валери Ларбо, писатель небольших творческих сил, но огромного понимания, может быть, самый открытый, чуткий и передовой критик современного Запада. Из произведений Валери в «Commerce»’е напечатано одно из самых удивительных, «Lettre d’Emilie Teste». Но главное украшение последних номеров журнала – поэмы (в прозе) Леона-Поля Фарга, которого эти произведения (особенно «Еsquisse pour un Paradis» и «La Drogue») делают одним из самых первых французских поэтов. Два других первостепенных поэта, Поль Клодель и С.-Ж. Перс, тоже принимают близкое участие в «Commerce»’е. Большое внимание обращено на иностранную литературу, особенно английскую, между прочим – отрывки из «Ulysses» Джойса в переводе Ларбо и стихи Элиота в переводе Перса. В выборе иностранного материала журнал не ограничивается близким и современным: в последнем (XII) номере даны отрывки из византийской хроники Пселла. Из русских были напечатаны «Арап Петра Великого» и стихи Мандельштама и Пастернака в переводах нашей сотрудницы Елены Извольской’.

17

Kn.D.Sviatopolk-Mirskii, ‘Kriticheskie zametki’, Versty, 3, 1928, pp. 155-160.

18 The relationship between Pasternak and Tsvetaeva is discussed with profound insight in Catherine Ciepiela, The Same Solitude. Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2006; for their dealings with Mirsky, see Index.

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mentioned in Mirsky’s article, Commerce carried some pioneering translations of Pasternak into French by Helen Iswolsky19. Some two years later, Mirsky was evidently asked by Marguerite Caetani to sort out the question of the fee due to the poet. On 8 January 1927 he wrote to Pasternak from London: Profoundly Esteemed Boris Leonidovich, Forgive me for daring to bother you with this letter. The matter is as follows. The French journal Commerce some time ago published translations of two of your poems (‘Nakrapyvalo, no ne gnulis′,’ and another from Russ[kii] Sov[remennik], the translations are so-so). They wish to pay you a royalty for them, and in all probability a good one. What would be the most convenient way for you to be sent the money – where to, and in what form (cheque, transfer, currency)?20

Pasternak replied from Moscow on 10 May 1927. After some characteristically orotund discussion of Mirsky’s father and his role as Minister of the Interior during the difficult events of 1905, he continues: It’s probably completely inept to refer now to the proposal made by Commerce.

Those people are undeservedly kind. What was translated decidedly doesn’t amount to much, after all. For me the great happiness was that it was in this journal in particular that the translations found a place. If they haven’t abandoned the idea of a fee, then probably it could be transferred here to my address via a bank.

A much more perceptible reward was specifically the attention paid by the journal, and, above all, the translations themselves. I liked them. If you know E. Izvol′skaia, please convey to her my most profound gratitude21.

19 For details of this episode, see the letters of Helen Iswolsky and accompanying material below.

20 First published in Fleishman, pp. 535-536; collected in Marina Tsvetaeva–Boris Pasternak, Dushi nachinaiut videt′. Pis′ma 1922-1936 godov. Izd. podgotovili E.B. Korkina i I.D. Shevelenko, Moscow, Vagrius, 2004. ‘Глубокоуважаемый Борис Леонидович,

простите, что осмеливаюсь беспокоить Вас этим письмом. Дело в следующем: французский журнал «Commerce» напечатал некоторое время тому назад переводы двух Ваших стихотворений (Накрапывало, но не гнулись, и другого из «Рус‹ского› Совр‹еменника›», переводы так себе). Они хотят Вам заплатить за них гонорар, и вероятно хороший. Как Вам было бы удобнее всего, чтобы Вам выслали деньги: куда и в какой форме (чек, перевод, валюта)?’.

21 ‘Совершенно нелепо наверное поминать теперь про предложенье «Commerce». Там назаслуженно любезны. Переведены ведь решительно пустяки. Для меня большим счастьем было помещенье переводов именно в этом журнале. Если они не оставили мысли о гонараре, то вероятно можно его перевести сюда по моему адресу через какой-нибудь банк. Гораздо ощутительнейшим вознагражденьем было именно вниманье журнала и, прежде всего, самые переводы. Они мне понравились. Если Вы знаете Е.Извольскую, передайте, пожалуйста, ей мою глубочайшую признательность’. Boris Pasternak, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii s prilozheni-

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In his letter of 8 January 1927 Mirsky had also said: ‘I’m busy translating ‘Detstvo Liuvers’ [‘The Childhood of Liuvers’] into two languages, French (for Commerce, again) and English (I still don’t know for whom)…’22 Pasternak duly responds: I thank you warmly for the notion of translating ‘The Childhood of Liuvers’. Even allowing that the piece merits your labour and the attention of the French, and won’t be set aside by you before being finished – where can the fee you speak of come from if not from your being prepared to reduce your own or assign a portion of it to me? It goes without saying that this is in no wise permissible, and discussion of it must be set aside23.

This is the letter which Mirsky summarises to Caetani in his letter 7 below, written on 8 June 1927. In letter 3 (23 February 1927) Mirsky had apologised to Caetani for delay with the project of translating Pasternak.

After letter 7 there was an interval of silence on this subject. The very last letter here (26) refers to ‘the Pasternak typescript’, and the work concerned is almost certainly still the translation into French of ‘Liuvers’. Whatever the case, in the end the work did not appear. Robert Hughes has pointed out that two other translations of ‘Liuvers’ were in play at the time Mirsky first considered the idea, and he would certainly have known about them both24.

These translations are by Moura Budberg into English, and by Vladimir

iami, 11 vols., VIII, Pis′ma 1927-1934, Moscow, Slovo/Slovo, 2005, pp. 29-30; see also Marina Tsvetaeva–Boris Pasternak, Dushi nachinaiut videt′, p. 342. Characteristically, Pasternak makes a point of countering Mirsky’s casual denigration of the Iswolsky translations, for transmission to Iswolsky.

22 ‘Я занимаюсь переводом “Детства Люверс” на два языка, французский (для Commerce же) и английский (еще не знаю, для кого…’). Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Pis′ma 1922-1936 godov. In 1925 Mirsky published one of the earliest reviews of Pasternak’s prose, paying particular attention to ‘Detstvo Liuvers’; see ‘B.L. Pasternak, Rasskazy’, Sovremennye zapiski, XXV, 1925, pp. 544-545, reprinted in D.S. Mirsky, Uncollected Writings on Russian Literature, Edited, with an Introduction and Bibliography,

by G.S. Smith, Berkeley, Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1989, pp. 206-207.

23 ‘Горячо Вас благодарю за мысль перевести «Детство Люверс». Допустив

даже, что вещь заслуживает Вашего труда и вниманья французов и до конца не будет Вами брошена, – откуда быть и тут гонорару, о котором Вы говорите, если не из готовности Вашей урезать свой собственный или уделить мне его долю? Разумеется, это ни с какой стороны не допустимо, и разговоры об этом должны быть оставлены’. Ibid.

24 See ‘“…S Vami beda – ne perevesti”. Pis′ma D.P. Sviatopolk-Mirskogo k A.M. Remizovu, 1922-1929’, ed. Robert Hughes, in Diaspora V. Novye materialy, Paris-St Petersburg, Athenaeum-Feniks, 2003, pp. 335-402. The introduction and notes to this publication give a comprehensive overview of the relationship between Remizov and Mirsky.

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Pozner into French. The Pozner translation was partial, and was included in his anthology of 192925, which obviously would have been a disincentive even to a complete publication in Commerce. The Budberg translation was completed, and furnished with a preface by Maksim Gorky. On 4 October 1927 Gorky wrote to Pasternak from Sorrento saying that the English translation of ‘Detstvo Liuvers’ was due to be published in the next few weeks by Robert M Bride & Co, New York, but it never appeared 26. It is inconceivable that this translation was not discussed when Mirsky visited Gorky in Sorrento in January 1928, especially as Moura Budberg was a member of the Gorky ménage at the time. If Mirsky subsequently mentioned this project to Caetani, it is quite possible that she would have considered the potential public association with Gorky, who at the time was the world’s leading front man for Soviet Communism, sufficient cause to decide against publishing the French translation of Pasternak’s story.

Mirsky’s letter to Pasternak of 10 May 1927 is notorious; it had to be sent via Tsvetaeva after she persistently refused to divulge Pasternak’s Moscow address to him, and it was posted only after considerable delay.

She displayed this obstinacy despite the fact that after her move to Paris in December 1925, Mirsky had persistently championed her work in print, and invited her to London to give a reading27. In letter 2 (4 December 1926) he mentions translating a poem by Tsvetaeva into French for Commerce; the work concerned is ‘Poema gory’ (‘Poem of the Mountain’), a masterpiece of 1923, which Mirsky and Suvchinskii had given its first publication, in the first issue of Versty. From letter 7 (8 June 1927) it would seem that this translation was in fact completed and submitted to Caetani, but no further trace of it has ever come to light28.

Whatever may have been the ultimate results, Mirsky had the self-confidence to undertake the translation of difficult writers like Pasternak and Tsvetaeva into French as well as English. The method with the translations into French, as we may gather from these letters, was for Mirsky to prepare Boris Pasternak, ‘L’Enfance de Luvers’, in Vladimir Pozner, Anthologie de la prose russe contemporaine, Paris, Hazan, 1929, pp. 176-188.

26 For Gorky’s preface, which was written between September 1926 and September 1927, see Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70, Moscow, 1963, pp. 308-310.

27 On the relations beween Mirsky and Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), see G.S. Smith, ‘Marina Tsvetaeva i D.P. Svyatopolk‑Mirsky’, in Marina Tsvetaeva. Actes du 1er colloque international, ed. Robin Kemball, Bern, 1991, pp. 192-206; and id., DSM, pp. 145-148.

28 A translation into French was published many years later: Marina Cvetaeva, Le Poème de la montagne, Le Poème de la fin, traduit et présenté par Ève Malleret, Lausanne-Paris, l’Âge d’homme, 1984.

25

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a first draft with notes, and then submit them to a native speaker for the preparation of a version presentable to Marguerite Caetani. This method resulted in a successful outcome in the case of Mandel′shtam’s The Egyptian Stamp (Egipetskaia marka), translated by Mirsky and Georges Limbour and carried in Commerce XXIV in the summer of 1930. Surprisingly, there is no mention of any proposal to translate this work, nor reports on progress with it, in the letters to Caetani. Perhaps the experience of struggling with these translations led Mirsky in other cases to suggest an alternative translator instead of undertaking the work himself.

Earlier, he had spoken up for Remizov and Babel. The story of Remizov’s ultimate non-appearance in Commerce is made difficult to unravel, as is the case with everything involving this most talented and idiosyncratic writer, by his compulsive rewriting and renaming of his works and his obsessive manipulation of publishers, translators, and intermediaries29. D.S. Mirsky acted in all three of these capacities. The evidence concerning Remizov in the letters to Caetani adds a further dimension to what has already been documented as a difficult, indeed relationship-breaking, episode30. Mirsky had consistently championed Remizov in his published criticism since the early 1920s, and had made great efforts to get his work translated and published by English, American, French, and Russian houses, with significant success. In the first issue of Versty, Mirsky and Suvchinskii published the Russian text of Remizov’s work ‘Iz knigi “Nikolai-Chudotvorets”’ (literally ‘From the Book Nicholas the Wonder-Worker’), a set of legends about the Russian St Nicholas31. It was with reference to this piece that on 4 May 1928 Mirsky reported to Remizov: ‘Princess Bassiano asks me to make a start with the translation. So it’s in the bag’32. Mirsky’s letter 5 to the Princess of 19 May 1927 confirms that a start had indeed been made with the translation into French. On 24 May Mirsky wrote to Remizov from London: ‘[…] I am translating (have finished translating) Nikolai Chudotvorets into French – with the devil knows what result – but with the help of somebody French

For a sympathetic introduction to Remizov’s personality and working methods, see Julia Friedman, Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism: Alexei Remizov’s Synthetic Art, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2010, with Preface by Avril Pyman; Marilyn Schwinn Smith, ‘Aleksei Remizov’s English-language Translators: New Material’, in A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture, ed. Anthony Cross, Cambridge, Open Book Publishers, pp. 189-200, accessible at http://www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/160.

30 See ‘“…S Vami beda – ne perevesti” (note 24 above).

31 Aleksei Remizov, ‘Iz knigi “Nikolai-Chudotvorets”’, Versty, 1, Paris, 1926, pp. 37-51.

32 ‘“…S Vami beda – ne perevesti”(note 24 above), p. 395.

29

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let’s hope something will come of it’33. On 30 May (letter 6) he tells Caetani that he is sending her the MS (here he says there is more than one story) and spells out the difficulties associated with translating Remizov. Letter 12 (21 February 1928) adverts to these same difficulties, but this time specifying not Nikolai-Chudotvorets but ‘Stratilatov’ as the source text. On 2 May 1928 Mirsky writes to Remizov, without naming the work he is talking about, ‘Dear Aleksei Mikhailovich, I still can’t get a clear reply. I’ve written in the most categorical terms. Still no answer. When it comes, I’ll write’34.

This letter was filed by Remizov in a dossier he compiled in the 1940s containing documents relating to the long-drawn-out and unfortunate publication history of his Povest′ ob Ivane Semenoviche Stratilatove (The Tale of Ivan Semenovich Stratilatov), which goes back ultimately to 1909-1910. There is no trace of Mirsky’s letter ‘in the most categorical terms’ in the Commerce archive. Next, on 28 May 1928 Mirsky writes letter 15 to Caetani enclosing ‘the revised version’ and saying that further drastic revision will be needed.

The matter was probably discussed when Mirsky visited Caetani at La Baule that summer. Then, on 15 October 1928 he writes letter 16, saying ‘I have not heard anything from Groet[huysen] or Mlle Guillain and I do not know whether she has done anything about the Remizov translation’. Another five months went by. On 2 March 1929 Mirsky wrote letter 18 to Caetani, enquiring: ‘I wonder too what you think of the Remizov translation? When I saw Remizov last (in January) he said it had just been sent to you and that he thought it very good’. From letter 19 (6 June 1929) we learn that the translator concerned was ‘Mlle (I do not remember her name)’, ‘the best translator I know of in France, but she is a slow worker’. (This is probably Madeleine Etard, the same person whose name Mirsky could not remember when he wrote letter 12 in February the year before). It would seem that at this stage Caetani was prevaricating or forming a negative opinion of the project, for on 13 July 1929 Mirsky wrote to Remizov: ‘I shall answer your letter about Stratilatov in a few days (very soon), when everything becomes clear. I hope the matter will take a not entirely bad turn, but bear in mind that my possibilities are far from unlimited’35.

Mirsky had not been the only intermediary between Remizov and Caetani.

Also involved was his friend and fellow editor of Versty, Petr Petrovich Suvchinskii, who wrote the following letter to Remizov on 6 August 1929: 33 ‘Перевожу (перевел) Николая Чудотворца по-французски – вышло черт знает что – но с помощью какого-нибудь француза что-нибудь да выйдет’ (ibid., p. 391).

Ibid., p. 394.

Ibid., p. 399.

34 35

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

You have doubly disappointed me – with the news that of the original plan to give Commerce a series of your stories so little use has come in the end, and also in that – so it has seemed to me – this is something for which you hold me to blame.

Here are the stages this matter has gone through. I personally spoke warmly to Princess Bassiano about you, and she took an interest; I personally delivered the books to Groethuysen, and with his friend “the communist” [Alix Guillain] translated several stories, so as to give him some idea of them; several times I personally asked Princess Bassiano what had happened to the books I’d delivered, and each time she replied that they were ‘being worked on’, etc.

As far as I know, it was always a matter of publishing a series of stories. I’m speaking to you circumstantially on the basis of what was said by Groethuysen and Princess Bassiano herself.

What happened subsequently I do not know, since I have not been at Bassiano’s for a long time now. The truth is that I am to blame for nothing, and that I have wanted and still want to do only what is best!

On Monday I’ll find out everything from D.P. [Mirsky] and let you know then36.

After letter 19 (6 June 1929) there is no further mention of Remizov in Mirsky’s letters to Caetani. The matter would seem to have ended with a letter Mirsky wrote to Remizov on 1 September 1929, from Suvchinskii’s address in Clamart: I feel very much as if I’ve done you wrong but honest to God, it’s not my fault. Since the end of July I’ve written to the Bassianikha several times, and she simply does not reply. The best thing would be if Mlle Etard would make enquiries of Alix Guillain, who phps would get a reply. I entirely share your indignation at this business37.

Whether or not Mirsky did indeed write these letters to Caetani, there is no trace of them in the Commerce archive, and it is safe to assume that Mirsky had given up on Remizov’s chances for an appearance in the journal, had come to the end of his patience, and was dissembling. The question of exactly which Russian text or texts were translated and submitted remains open; it is certain from the exchanges summarized above that both Nicholas the Wonder-Worker and Stratilatov were in play.

In the same letter 12 (21 February 1928) that raises the question of Remizov, Isaak Babel also makes an appearance. Mirsky had many times recommended Babel’s work to his readers, and even translated him into English, before finally meeting the writer in Paris in March 1928, through Suvchinskii.

Yet again, there was to be no positive outcome; nothing by Babel appeared in Commerce, notwithstanding Mirsky’s very specific recommendation. As for Ibid., p. 400.

Ibid., p. 399, 400.

36 37

preface

17

the work of other living Russian writers, the letters reveal that while being on balance positive about them, Mirsky advised Caetani against Fadeev, Semenov, and Zaiaitsky (see letter 12). This may be an example of Mirsky’s literary judgement taking precedence over his political preferences. During his visit with Suvchinskii to Maksim Gorky in Sorrento in early 1928, a journey that was facilitated by Marguerite Caetani’s husband Roffredo (see letter 11, 16 December 1927), Mirsky appears to have made an undertaking to Gorky to promote Soviet writing, part of the circumspect but nevertheless seemingly inexorable moves he was making towards applying for a Soviet passport38.

He makes a positive recommendation in the case of Tikhonov’s Riskovannyi chelovek (letter 18, 2 March 1929)39, and also one of Nina Smirnova’s stories (letter 19, 6 June 1929). The Tikhonov piece is particularly remarkable, because Mirsky elsewhere lauded this work in the kind of positive terms that are rarely encountered in his critical writings: This is to such a degree a new type of narrative art, and it stands out to such an extent against the entire background of contemporary Russian literature, that it makes no sense to talk about it in brief at the end of an article primarily dedicated to Tikhonov the poet. Riskovannyi chelovek puts Tikhonov in a completely special place and perhaps opens a new page in the evolution of Russian literature40.

Notwithstanding this enthusiasm, again, there was no positive outcome in the case of Commerce. In all these cases, the fact that all the authors concerned were resident in the USSR and enjoying a positive reputation there as Soviet writers is indicative of the way Mirsky’s literary preferences went in step with the leftwards direction of his political preferences as the 1920s went on. Whether the rejection of them had something to do with Caetani’s political preferences or those of her editorial board, is impossible to say with any confidence41.

38 On this episode see Olga Kaznina and G.S. Smith, ‘D.S. Mirsky to Maksim Gor′ky: Sixteen Letters (1928-1934)’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, new series 26, 1993, pp. 87-103.

39 Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov (1896-1979), Riskovannyi chelovek (Leningrad, 1927), a collection of short stories.

40 ‘Это настолько новый тип повествовательного искусства, и он настолько

отделяется от всего фона современной русской литературы, что говорить о нем вкратце в конце статьи, посвященной преимущественно Тихонову поэту, не имеет смысла. “Рискованный человек” ставит Тихонова на совершенно особое место и открывает, может быть, новую страницу в эволюции русской литературы’. D.S.

Mirsky, ‘Nikolai Tikhonov’, Evraziia, 17, 16 March 1929, p. 8.

41 For an account of evolving French intellectual attitudes to Russian writing at this time, see Leonid Livak, ‘Introduction’, in Le Studio Franco-Russe 1929-1931. Textes réunis

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

A further indication of Mirsky’s changing stance flits by in letter 23, written in April 1931, two years after he had proclaimed himself a Communist (he probably joined the Party in June 1931)42. Here he recommends Edgell Rickword’s Scrutinies, a collection compiled from The Calendar of Modern Letters. Rickword was a left-leaning writer who went on to join the Party in 1934, but the essays he collected here, now regarded as a high point in British literary criticism of the 1930s43, avoid explicit Marxist political commitment, which is probably why Mirsky summarises them to Caetani as ‘not very interesting’. He makes some exceptions, chief among which is the contribution by his friend Alec Brown on T.S. Eliot; and Brown too was on his way to joining the Party, part and parcel of why Mirsky refers positively to his writing here with the coded phrase ‘really masculine’. But the political convictions that evolved during the period spanned by these letters are hardly mentioned explicitly in them at all. Again, we know nothing of what might have passed between the two principals in private on this topic; Caetani can hardly have been ignorant of Mirsky’s move leftwards.

The only reference to a writer who had recently left the USSR and whose attitudes were known to be anti-Soviet occurs in letter 13 (before 22 March 1928) and concerns Viacheslav Ivanov. Mirsky’s words here are almost pitying, portraying Ivanov as a spent force. Incidentally, this appears to be the only occasion when Mirsky declared in writing that he had been personally acquainted with Viacheslav Ivanov, though his presence at Ivanov’s famous Petersburg salon ‘The Tower’ before 1914 is known because of his relationship with the poet Mikhail Kuzmin. In the final appearance of a Russian writer, in one of the last letters (23, 5 April 1931) he speaks up for Tsvetaeva’s own translation into French of her long poem Molodets (The Swain)44.

It is not only Russian writers about whom Mirsky feels entitled to speak to Caetani. From his vantage point in Bloomsbury he felt himself well enough placed to talk about contemporary English writing as well.

Particularly striking is his declaration in letter 2: ‘I am also reading English novels – which I have never done. I am in love with Virginia Woolf’. This was written on 4 December 1926. He also tells Caetani here that he has

et présentés par Leonid Livak, sous la rédaction de Gervaise Tassis, Toronto, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto, 2005, pp. 7-44.

42 Smith, DSM, p. 181, 196.

43 Bernard Bergonzi, ‘The Calendar of Modern Letters’, Yearbook of English Studies, vol.

16, 1986, pp. 150-163; see also Introduction to Iswolsky below.

44 This translation was published many years later: Marina Cvetaeva, Le gars, préface de Efim Etkind, Paris, Des femmes, 1992.

preface

19

submitted an essay to T.S. Eliot’s Criterion45. Eliot was a cousin of Caetani, and in regular touch with him at the time about Commerce and more private matters. From these letters we learn exactly when the two men met, and what flowed from the meeting.

Mirsky also makes some specific recommendations about current English writing. Both Woolf and Eliot had had work published in Commerce, and there was no basis for Mirsky to suggest them. In letter 12 (21 February 1928), Mirsky recommends some lesser lights – Tomlinson, Powys, and Roy Campbell, of whom all but the first did eventually end up in Commerce.

Then in letter 14 (20 May 1928) Mirsky makes a pitch for Gerard Manley Hopkins; the subject returns in Letter 19 (6 June 1928), but in this case no publication in Commerce ensued. The positive reference to William Empson in letter 22 (3 March 1931) is of interest, since so few younger contemporary critics seemed to impress Mirsky. Earlier, I.A. Richards had been Mirsky’s first choice of critic to supply a survey of contemporary English literature for Versty, but the task had eventually fallen to E.M. Forster, whose essay remains largely unknown to English readers46.

More significant than what Mirsky has to say about the various individual Russian and English writers he mentions to Caetani is the general evidence the letters offer of his formidable confidence in dealing with the current European literary scene. He makes his assessments with complete assurance and without delay or prevarication, moving authoritatively between four languages. His extraordinary linguistic versatility is the personal basis on which he is entitled, as he claims to do in the first of these letters, to announce his effort to ‘counteract’ the nationalism of his Russian compatriots. Throughout these letters, though, the acuity of Mirsky’s literary judgement is on display; and writing privately, as opposed to writing for publication, he is able to give full vent to it. The ensuing vitality is the principal reason why these letters

45 For the context, see Olga Ushakova, ‘Russia and Russian Culture in The Criterion, 1922-1939’, in A People Passing Rude… (see note 29 above), pp. 232-240.

46 E.M. Forster, ‘Sovremennaia angliiskaia literatura’, Versty, 2, Paris, 1927, pp. 240-246.

A back-translation into English by G.S. Smith from Mirsky’s translation into Russian is deposited in the Forster archive at King’s College, Cambridge; the original has apparently been lost. DSM to Leonard Woolf, 3 March 1926: ‘Dear Mrs Woolf, we want to have articles on foreign literature in our Review, and want to start with England. The difficulty is that we can pay only French, i.e. practically nominal fees. I wrote to I.A. Richards asking him to do it, but he is going to China and has no time. He suggests E.M. Forster, whom I do not know as a critic at all. Can you give me some advice? What we want is a concise and historical view of the present state of English literature’. See A.B. Rogachesvskii, ‘Neizvestnye pis’ma D.P. Sviatopolka-Mirskogo serediny 1920-kh godov,’ Diaspora, 2, (pp. 349-367), p. 365, 366.

20

D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

retain such interest even so long after they were written, even though the world they represent has been lost to change in so many important, even fundamental, respects.

The letters to Marguerite Caetani are written in Mirsky’s fluent, expressive English; the occasional deviations from standard usage only highlight his extraordinary active command of the language47. As in his letters to Jane Harrison that end at almost the same point in time as these letters begin48, so in writing to Caetani Mirsky maintains the tone of polite and respectful formality to be expected in a man of his class and time addressing someone foreign of the opposite sex for whom there is little emotional attachment, and someone, moreover, to whom Mirsky feels a sense of obligation for financial support. They contrast strongly with the often rambunctious tone of the contemporary letters Mirsky was writing in Russian to his close friend and male contemporary Suvchinskii, where, as we have seen, Marguerite Caetani is occasionally referred to by the denigratory sobriquet ‘Bassianikha’ and discussed using a much less polite and formal tone.

Whatever may have been the nature of the personal relations involved, though, these letters testify to an extraordinarily serious and productive contribution to the history of European literature in the modern period.

The calculated international awareness of the modernist attitude, and its unapologetic habitation of its elite status, is in evidence throughout. It was only later that Mirsky turned against the cultural world he had inherited and shared with Marguerite Caetani. When he denounced it, in his notorious The Intelligentsia of Great Britain49, he restricted his contumely to the island country in which he had been employed and had lived somewhat under sufferance, rather than including the continental country to which he had resorted at every opportunity while he was in emigration, but to whose literary culture he had made a lesser contribution.

Gerald S. Smith A characteristic example of fluency combined with marginal inaccuracy occurs in the first letter, where Mirsky says that Versty ‘can hardly stand on its own legs’, where normal English would say ‘on its own [two] feet’; Mirsky’s phrase is a Russianism. In letter 12 he says ‘pretensions’, a Russianism, when he means ‘demands’. In letter 19 he writes ‘he forestalled Eliot’, when he means ‘anticipated’.

48 G.S. Smith, ‘Jane Ellen Harrison: Forty-Seven Letters to D.S. Mirsky, 1924-1926’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series 28 (1995), pp. 62-97.

49 D.S. Mirsky, The Intelligentsia of Great Britain, translated by Alec Brown, London, Gollancz; New York, Covici, Friede, 1935; the original is D. Mirskii, Intellidzhentsia, Moscow, Sovetskaia literatura, 1934.

47

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

1.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC 1.

10.11.26.

Dear Princess, I am writing to thank you for the kind present you sent me of St. J. Perse’s Éloges, which was a great pleasure to me1. I think that it is really great poetry (though not as great as Eliot’s, whose latest thing A Fragment from a Prologue, is exceedingly striking, and makes me wonder what ever the whole play will be like)2.

I received the other day a letter from Groethuysen3, who tells me that you may take a practical interest in our review, Versty4. That would indeed be a blessing to us, for in the present state of Russian civilization we can scarcely In the text of the letters, the author’s orthography and punctuation have been retained without emendation or comment.

Letter 1.

1 Mirsky refers to Saint-John Perse, Eloges, Paris, Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 1911, the first collection of poems by Perse (pseud. of Alexis Leger, 1887-1975).

2 ‘Fragment from a Prologue’ is the earliest published dramatic scene in verse by Eliot; it appeared in his review The New Criterion in October 1926, and eventually formed the first part of the play Sweeney Agonistes (1932).

3 The philosopher Bernard Groethuysen (1880-1946), who took a leading part in the affairs of Commerce; see Levie 1989, passim. Mirsky had met Groethuysen in Pontigny in 1924, and in 1927 translated one of his essays into Russian for Versty (see following note).

4 On Versty, see Willem G. Weststeijn, ‘The Russian émigré-journal Versty’, in Reviews, Zeitschriften, Revues, ed. Sophie Levie Amsterdam-Atlanta, Rodopi, 1994, pp. 169-197.

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

hope to be able to stand on our own legs, either to find the needed funds in Russian pockets, or to command a sufficiently paying audience5. On the other hand I am convinced that the work we are doing is really worth while and necessary not only to our Nation, but in a sense to mankind. For, honestly, we are the only Russian publication that is free from all-pervading political onesidedness, and who pay our attention to cultural and truly literary values.

Unfortunately I am not good at reading Groethuysen’s hand (I am afraid mine is not much better), and I could not quite decypher what he writes of the demands you would make on us. Of course, what ever we can do we will, and if you think that I myself may in any conceivable way be of use to Commerce I shall be happy to place myself at your service.

A close connection with Commerce would be also of less material use to Versty, as our one danger is a too exclusive nationalism, and blindness to the West, which I try to counteract. I hear Suvchinsky6 is going to see you.

I hope you will like him, though he has few apparent graces, except good brains and what I believe is a good taste in music.

Believe me Yours sincerely DS. Mirsky

2.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 4 December 1926.

17 Gower St WC1

Dear Princess, Thank you ever so much for your [illegible] letter & for your cheque. We are working rather under difficulties, & it does to a certain extent develop in

Mirsky secured the primary funding (£50) for the launch of Versty from his friend Jane Ellen Harrison; see G.S. Smith, ‘Jane Ellen Harrison: Forty-Seven Letters to D.S. Mirsky, 1924-1926’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series XXVIII, 1995, pp. 62-97. He also received money (£20) from John Maynard Keynes; see Andrei Rogachevskii, ‘Neizvestnye pis′ma D.P. Sviatopolk-Mirskogo serediny 1920-kh godov’, Diaspora, 2, 2001, pp. 349-367.

6 On P.P. Suvchinskii, see Preface above, note 4.

5

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

23

one the mentality of a highwayman. It would be nice if you did find people interested in Versty. I am myself making tentative demarches as to American institutions (Carnegie Fund sort of people)1. I have made a rough draft of the poem of Marina Tsvetaeva2. which turns out to be quite translatable, but it will want a lot of French révision. I hope to have my part of it ready in a few days. I will then hand it on to Groethuysen. I shall then proceed to try & translate Pasternak’s story3.

Thank you again so much to sending me Anabase4. I have the sensation of the greatness of St J Perse, but I have not yet got into touch with his kernel. It is strange that poets should be diplomatists. I should be glad indeed to meet him. It is a great pity I shall not be able to see you at Xmas.

I am writing an article which T.S. Eliot has promised to consider for the Criterion. It is an arrangement of Chekhov5. I am also reading English novels – which I have never done. I am in love with Virginia Woolf6.

Letter 2.

1 No documentary evidence of these ‘demarches’ has been published, but Mirsky certainly knew, through his friend Michael Florinsky, James Shotwell (1874-1965), who from 1924 to 1948 was Director of the Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; see G.S. Smith, ‘The Correspondence of D.S. Mirsky and Michael Florinsky, 1925-32’, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 72, no. 1, 1994, pp. 115-139, passim.

2 Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poema gory (Poem of the Mountain), written in Prague in 1923. On the history of this translation, see Preface above, p. 13.

3 ‘Detstvo Liuvers’ (‘The Childhood of Liuvers’); on the history of this translation, see Preface above, p. 12, 13.

4 On ‘Anabase’ and its translations, see ‘Zu Anabase – Briefwechsel zwischen Marguerite Caetani und Anton Kippenberg, Bernhard Groethuysen, Harry Graf Kessler zur Veröffentlichung der Anabase in Deutschland (1926-1930)’ in La Rivista “Commerce” e Marguerite Caetani, I. Briefwechsel mit Deutschsprachigen Autoren, herausgegeben von Klaus E. Bohnenkamp und Sophie Levie, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012, pp. 361-396; and Sophie Levie, ‘La traduzione di Anabase’, in her ‘Marguerite Caetani, Una Mecenate Americana in Europa’, in La Rivista “Commerce” e Marguerite Caetani, II. Giuseppe Ungaretti, Lettere a Marguerite Caetani, a cura di Sophie Levie e Massimiliano Tortora, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012, [pp. ix-xxxiii], pp. xxviii-xxxi. A translation of the poem into Russian by the young émigré poets Georgii Ivanov and Georgii Adamovich was published in Paris in 1926, and the question of securing a Russian translation for Commerce was therefore not in play. See V. Larbaud, ‘Préface pour une traduction russe d’Anabase’, Nouvelle Revue Française, XXVI, 148, 1 January 1926, pp. 64-67.

5 This became D.S. Mirsky, ‘Chekhov and the English’, The Monthly Criterion, 6, 1927, pp. 292-304, reprinted in Russian Literature and Modern English Fiction, ed. Donald Davie, Chicago-London, University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp. 203-213.

6 Mirsky first met Leonard and Virginia Woolf in Paris in the spring of 1924. On Mirsky and Bloomsbury, see Smith, DSM, pp. 98-100.

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

Yours very gratefully & sincerely DS. Mirsky.

It will be great if you learn Russian, but it is no easy job.

3.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St WC1 23.2.27.

Dear Princess, I am so sorry I cannot get ready Pasternak for the middle of March: I am working frantically at some work (several works) that must be ready by 1 April, and with which I have been very remiss1. But I will have it in any case ready for the Summer number. It is a rather long thing, about 15000 words (60 pages, at least of Commerce).

I intend to be in Paris by 23 March and to stay in France till 27 April.

But I want spend part of the time, 10 days or a fortnight, in the Périgord. I will certainly arrange my time so as not to miss you.

Yours sincerely DS. Mirsky.

Letter 3.

1 Writing to Suvchinskii on 17 January 1927, Mirsky says: ‘I’m busy revising the French translation of my History of Russian Literature…’ (‘Занят ревизией французского перевода моей Истории русской литературы…’); Suvchinskii letters, p. 69. However, no translation of the book into French was published during Mirsky’s lifetime. Cf Histoire de la littérature russe, tr. Véronique Lossky, Paris, Fayard, 1969.

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

25

4.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani University of London, Institute of Historical Research, Malet Street, W.C.1.

17 Gower St WC1 7.3.27.

Dear Princess, I have at last got hold of the addresses of Pasternak and Mandelstam.

It was very difficult. I enclose them herewith, in Russian and in Latin characters1.

Yours sincerely DS. Mirsky

5.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC1.

19.5.27

Dear Princess, I am working hard at Remizov1 and hope to be able to send it over to you in a few days. But you have not yet gauged all the vileness of my French. I do not [know] who will be able to make it Commercially presentable.

Letter 4.

1 Mirsky got hold of the addresses of Pasternak and Mandel′shtam through Suvchinskii via Il′ia Erenburg; see Suvchinskii letters, p. 72, 73, and annotation on p. 195, 196. Marina Tsvetaeva refused to divulge Pasternak’s address to him; see Preface above, p. 13.

Letter 5.

1 The work concerned is Aleksei Remizov, ‘Iz knigi “Nikolai-Chudotvorets”’; for the subsequent evolution of this project, see Preface above, pp. 14-16.

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

I sent you my new book the other day2. I see Valéry is coming here to lecture at our college3. I had Carmen with Larbaud’s preface sent me from the L[ondon] Mercury to review4.

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

6.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC1 30.5.27.

Dear Princess, I am sending you under separate cover of Remizov’s St Nicolas. It is very bad of course (the translation), but perhaps something may be made of it.

I hope you will like the stories. You will find on separate leaves notes and queries concerning the text where I was not sure how to translate. In most of these cases I give what I think the English equivalents. As to the style, it is necessary to preserve Remizov’s combination of a very colloquial background, with at times lyrical patches, and at others a large infusion of current journalese and revolutionary officialese. What I was least sure about was the use of the different past tenses – the parfait (il fit, ils vinrent) I think is not used in spoken French, but considering the mixed nature of Rem.’s style I think it may be sometimes maintained. I have also in many cases preserved

See letter 6, note 1 below.

King’s College, University of London, to which the School of Slavonic Studies was formally subordinated from its foundation in 1915 until it was accorded self-governing status as an institute within the University of London in 1932.

4 The work concerned is Prosper Mérimée, Carmen et quelques autres nouvelles, avec des dessins de Prosper Mérimée et une introduction de Valery Larbaud, Paris, Payot, 1927. Mirsky published a great many reviews, on a wide variety of topics, in The London Mercury, the leading literary periodical edited by Sir John Squire (1884-1958) from 1919 to 1934; no review of the item mentioned here, however, seems to have appeared. The prolific and multi-lingual Valery Larbaud (1881-1957) was one of the three editors of, and a constant contributor to, Commerce.

2 3

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

27

the elliptical construction of the Russian syntax – this of course will not do in French, – but someone must know better than I do how to replace it.

Did you get my American book I sent you?1 Mme Suvtchinsky2 is here and tells me you have been seeing a lot of her husband and of Stravinsky. Countess Benckendorff3 whom I went to see last weekend is a subscriber of Commerce.

She enjoyed Fargue’s Paradise4, but remained indifferent to Perse5.

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

7.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC1 8 June 27.

Dear Princess, Very many thanks for your letter and cheque. Unfortunately I am not Letter 6.

1 Mirsky probably has in mind Prince D.S. Mirsky, Contemporary Russian Literature, 1881-1925, published simultaneously in 1926 in New York by Alfred Knopf and in London

by George Routledge; the primary contracts for this book and its companion, A History of Russian Literature from the Earliest Times to the Death of Dostoevsky (1881) (1927), were apparently signed with Knopf, which is why he speaks of ‘my American book’. Mirsky’s Pushkin (1926) was published in New York by E.P. Dutton and in London also by Routledge; this rather than the History may possibly be the book he refers to here.

2 Vera Aleksandrovna Traill, née Guchkova, by her first marriage Suvchinskaia (190676); on her relationship with Mirsky, see Richard Davies and G.S. Smith, ‘D.S. Mirsky: Twenty-Two Letters (1926-34) to Salomeya Halpern; Seven Letters (1930) to Vera Suvchinskaya (Traill),’ Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series, XXX, 1997, pp. 89-120.

3 Countess Sofia Petrovna Benckendorff, née Shuvalova (1857-1928), the widow of the last pre-revolutionary Russian ambassador to the Court of St James; Mirsky was friendly with her son Konstantin Benkendorff (1880-1959). The Benkendorffs lived at Claydon in Suffolk. From Mirsky’s letter to Suvchinskii of 8 June 1926 we learn that the Countess also subscribed to Versty.

4 Léon-Paul Fargue, ‘Esquisses pour un paradis’, Commerce, VII, (printemps 1926), pp.

5-33; id., ‘Esquisses pour un paradis (Fin)’, Commerce, XIV, (hiver 1927), pp. 181-228.

5 Either or both of Saint-John Perse, ‘Amitié du prince’, Commerce, I, (été 1924), pp. 103119, or id., ‘Chanson: ‘J’honore les vivants’, Commerce, III, (hiver 1924), pp. 5-7.

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(and did not even intend to) come to Paris in June. I shall not be able to leave London before 30 June. I hope I shall still find you in town.

I am busy writing a history of Russia which is going to be sold for sixpence1. Besides, as always in June, I am up to the ears in geography, so I am rather out of touch with literary things2. Still I was disappointed to hear Valéry was not coming to London.

Are you going to print the Poem of the Hill?3 If you are will you send it the MS or the proofs to Marina Tsvetaeva, who is I think rather nervous that it may appear without her Russian. Her adress is Madame Efron, 2 Avenue Jeanne D’arc, Meudon.

I had a letter from Pasternak the other day4. It is full of an extraordinary personal charm which I hardly suspected. He also answers my question about how to send him money. He says that though he never expected to get anything from Commerce and thinks his poetry not worth any money – he would be glad if you did send something. Via any bank in Moscow. His name and adress are: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak Volkhonka 14, flat 9. Moscow USSR. He says he liked Mardie Isw’s translation5, was greatly flattered by the attention of Commerce.

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

Letter 7.

1 D.S. Mirsky, A History of Russia, London, Benn, 1927 (Benn’s Sixpenny Library).

2 This may be a reference to Mirsky’s work conducting examinations for the British Civil Service; or it may be reference to what became his Russia: A Social History.

3 Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poema gory (Poem of the Mountain), see letter 2, note 2.

4 Mirsky has in mind Pasternak’s letter of 10 May 1927.

5 See Preface to Iswolsky letters below.

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

29

8.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC1 12.6.27.

Dear Princess, please pardon me beforehand for this letter which will displease and bother you very much. Seeing the impossibility of carrying on Versty on sound lines, I had made up my mind to discontinue it. But now under pressure from my friends I see that our commitments make it obligatory for us to bring out at least one more volume. As my obligations are personal I intend to meet them in person, and am for this end selling my house in Asnières1.

But this will take some time. For no one appears to be very keen on buying it. I would be infinitely grateful to you if you could help me in getting an advance for the publication of N 3 Versty. The sum wanted is about £80, out of which however about £30 may be available from my present income.

Of course the sales of N 3, which however will not amount to much would be the first security for the loan. The rest I take on my own responsibility.

I quite understand that this request is exceedingly troublesome and quite unjustified. But the great and undeserved kindness you have shown me emboldens me to make it.

I wrote you a few days ago, regretting that the rumours of my coming to Paris on the 12 June were untrue. I suppose this letter will find you on your return from Düsseldorf.

Yours sincerely and apologetically DS Mirsky.

Letter 8.

1 The house concerned was 214 rue de Bécon, Courbevoie (Seine), which is no longer standing. Mirsky’s mother lived in this house from the time she arrived in Paris from Athens, probably in 1922, until her death in 1926, together with her daughters Sofiia (Sonia) and Olga. As is evident from the headings of many of his letters, Mirsky frequently stayed at this address on his visits to Paris. Mirsky refers to it here unambiguously as ‘my’ house, which is unusual.

30

D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

9.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St WC1 28.6.27.

Dear Princess, I do not know how to thank you for your kind letter and for your cheque.

I really feel quite ashamed, and am only reassured by the kindness of your letter.

I hope to be in Paris on 5 July. As I am going with some friends to Avallon on the 12th I hope I shall be able to see you before then1. Would you tell me when? I have no appointments yet. But I should prefer some other day than Sunday at Versailles; it seems silly but I really am ahuri and dépaysé whenever I see a lot of people at once. I am afraid I do not know of any young man that would be suitable for your son2. I see so few English people. I met Eliot at last, and we talked of original sin and eternal damnation, not without remembering Groethuysen3.

Hoping to see you soon. Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

Letter 9.

1 The town of Avallon is in Burgundy, near Auxerre, reasonably close to Pontigny, and easily accessible by rail from Paris. This may have been simply a stop on the way to Pontigny, or one of Mirsky’s gastronomic excursions; which friends were included, though, is not possible to state without further evidence.

2 Caetani was looking for a tutor for her son Camillo (1915-1940). She also sought advice from T.S. Eliot on this matter: see The Letters of T.S. Eliot Volume 3: 1926-1927, ed. John Haffenden and Valerie Eliot, London, Faber & Faber, 2013, pp. 379-380 (Letter to Caetani of 18 January 1927).

3 Mirsky replied to Eliot on 16 December 1926: ‘I have been hoping to meet you for a long time & shall be exceedingly glad to have lunch with you as you suggest’. He would be getting back from the continent on about 12 January 1927 (ibid., p. 345). On 14 October 1927 Eliot enquires: ‘But is there, by the way, any other book of any kind on any subject that you would care to do fairly soon? I should so much like to have you contribute more or less regularly’ (ibid., p. 753).

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31

10.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani [Headed stationery] Abbaye de Pontigny 22.8.27.

Dear Princess, once again thank you so very much for the beautiful week I spent at La Baule. I enjoyed as seldom anything else. We arrived here1 yesterday, and have not yet begun to work with our tongues. The decade does not look like [it is] going to be a success, – there are rather few people, and not one Sévrienne2.

The weather does not look promising and Pontigny is a beastly place for drafts and things when it is cold. Groet is surrounded by a small herd of German metaphysicians and talks German all the time3. Mlle Guillain saw him off at the Gare de Lyon and he did not try to camouflage her4.

Please remember me very much to the Prince.

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

Letter 10.

1 The Abbaye de Pontigny, in Burgundy. See Introduction and annotation above.

2 Paul Desjardins, initiator of the Pontigny décades, was a Professor at the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles, located in Sèvres; apparently he would invite his pupils to Pontigny.

3 Ernst Robert Curtius is mentioned by Gide as ‘representing Germany’ at the Pontigny gatherings in 1927; see André Gide, Journals 1914-1927, translated by Justin O’Brien, vol. 2, reprint 2000, p. 309.

4 Alix Guillain (1876-1951) had lived with Bernard Groethuysen since 1912, but, because of her political views (she was a founder member of the Communist Party of France), refused to be known as Madame Groethuysen or be perceived as a wife. She was a prolific journalist and translator.

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

11.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani as from 214 rue de Bécon; Courbevoie (Seine) 16.12.27.

Dear Princess, I have my visa11 and am leaving today for Paris. I am infinitely grateful to the Prince for all the trouble he took about it. I hope to be on the Côte d’Azur on the 23 or 24 of this month and if I may will come to see you. I do not suppose I shall be more than a day or two.

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky.

12.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC1.

21.2.28.

Dear Princess, Your letter made me very much ashamed of myself. Still I am not quite as blamable as you must think. I did not know anything at all about the situaLetter 11.

1 Through the intermediacy of Prince Roffredo Caetani Mirsky had applied for a visa to travel to Italy with Suvchinskii (and possibly also Petr Arapov), in order to visit Maksim Gorky and discuss the relations between the Eurasianists and the Soviets. They were in Sorrento early in January 1928. On this visit see the richly annotated John Malmstad, ‘K istorii “Evraziistva”: M. Gor’kii i P.P. Suvchinskii’, Diaspora I, Novye materialy I, Paris-St Petersburg, Atheneum-Feniks, 2001, pp. 327-347. Suvchinskii once asserted that the visa had been secured through the good offices of Ungaretti; see Veronika Losskaia, Marina Tsvetaeva v zhizni: Neizdannye vospominaniia sovremennikov, Tenafly, N.J., Ermitazh, 1989, p. 196.

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33

tion when I was at Mentone, and not even when I wrote to you last1. So when Suvchinsky wrote to me, I agreed to his writing to you from sheer moral laziness.

I am much more a lazy pig than he. I sort of imagined, like an ostrich, that if it was not I who was importuning you, you were not being importuned at all. I am very sorry about it all, and very grateful to you for helping us out of the silly situation we have got into. At any rate I do hereby solemnly protest and promise that Versty is not [on] any account whatsoever going to be continued, in whatsoever form. I also hope that we will ultimately get some money back, and be able to pay our creditors. I am not thinking of you, for I am afraid you would not allow me to do that, but I would [be] much happier if I could. I must say that I am heartily glad never again to have anything to do with those wretched Versty.

Passing to more pleasant matters. Babel’s Pigeonneau was printed in No 1 Versty (there they are again!), but it is not one of his best2. You ought to get someone to translate Salt and A Letter for you, they are 3 and 4 pages respectively3. You must have a Frenchman. The language is everything.

The translator must be able to find equivalent French idiom. But they are also masterpieces of concentrated “essence of narrative”. In the case of Stratilatov4, the difficulty is the same. Brown5 is good enough, but it might be better. The trouble is I do not know a Frenchman sufficiently master of French (that is essential) and who would also know enough Russian. I have heard of certain pupils of Boyer6 who are said to [be] quite good as French writers. Fontenoy7, and another whose name I forget. Mlle Guillain8 may

Letter 12.

1 This evidently refers to letter 11.

2 ‘Istoriia moei golubiatni’ was reprinted in Versty, 1, Paris, 1926, pp. 58-67; Mirsky’s translation into English, ‘The Story of my Dovecote’, appeared in The Slavonic and East European Review, 10, 1926, pp. 1-11.

3 Mirsky published several reviews of Babel’s short stories; see Hughes, p. 365, n. 4.

4 The story by Remizov; see Preface above, p. 15.

5 Alec John Charles Brown (1900-1962) was a poet, novelist, and translator. He studied Russian at Cambridge University. See A.B. Rogatchevskii, ‘Neizvestnye pis′ma D.P. Sviatopolk-Mirskogo serediny 1920-kh godov’, in Diaspora. Novye materialy, vol. 2, Moscow, 2001, pp. 352-3; see also ‘“…S Vami – beda – ne perevesti”. Pis’ma D.P. Sviatopolk-Mirskogo k A.M. Remizovu, 1922-1929’, ed. Robert Hughes, in Diaspora V. Novye materialy, Paris-St Petersburg, Athenaeum-Feniks, 2003, pp. 335-402, passim; and annotation below.

6 Paul Boyer (1864-1949) became the first Professor of Russian at the École des Langues Orientales in Paris in 1891.

7 Jean Fontenoy (1899-1945) translated Remizov, Sur Champ d’Azur, Paris, Plon, 1927; he had translated Tolstoy, Hadji-Mourad for the Éditions de la Pléiade in 1925. He was an extremely colourful character; see Philippe Vilgier, Jean Fontenoy, Paris, Via Romana, 2012.

8 See letter 10, note 4.

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

very possibly remember. What do you think of trying Kessel?9 He knows Russian quite well. But is he sufficiently good for the pretensions he is likely to have?10 I am very curious to see Hardy by Valéry11, and also (though in another sense) Pushkin by Hélène Iswolsky12. I think Tomlinson13 may be good enough for Commerce. What do you think of T.F.Powys?14 and of Roy Campbell? Who has just brought out a book, which I have not read yet, but will15. I had lunch with Eliot about a fortnight ago. I liked him this time even more than at first sight. He is very attractive.

I have been reading a lot of recent Russian fiction. It is very interesting, but strangely immature – they really seem to be making a sort of fresh start.

Still there [are] some things by Zayaitsky16, Semenov17 and Fadeyev18 that are quite worth translating and reading – though not at all for Commerce19. But

Joseph Kessel; see Preface to Iswolsky below, p. 79.

Kessel was a prolific journalist and commercially successful novelist, and Mirsky has in mind the probability that he would demand a hefty fee.

11 Thomas Hardy, ‘Felling a Tree’ (texte anglais et traduction par Paul Valéry), Commerce, XIV, (hiver 1927), pp. 5-9.

12 This is Mednyi vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman); see letter 14 below.

13 Henry Tomlinson (1873-1958), the British novelist and short story writer; nothing by him was published in Commerce.

14 Theodore Francis Powys (1875-1953), the British novelist and short-story writer. His most successful work, the novel Mr Weston’s Good Wine, was published in 1927. His ‘John Pardy et les vagues (traduit de l’anglais par Charles Mauron), appeared in Commerce, XVI, (été 1928), pp. 99-118.

15 Roy Campbell (1901-57), the poet and satirist. See ‘Poèmes (Texte anglais et traduction par Georges Limbour)’, Commerce, XXI, (automne 1929), pp. 67-85.

16 Sergei Sergeevich Zaiaitskii (1893-1930) was a successful but never highly regarded poet, novelist, and translator. His best-known story, Baklazhany (Aubergines) was published in 1927. Nothing by him appeared in Commerce.

17 Sergei Aleksandrovich Semenov (1893-1942) was the author of a novel, Natal’ia Tarpova (1927-9), in which the discussion of sexual relations and the family aroused controversy in Soviet literary circles. Nothing by him appeared in Commerce.

18 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev (1901-56) became one of the most eminent firstgeneration Soviet writers; he was a Civil War veteran and a loyal servant of Stalin and the Party. He came to fame with the novel Razgrom (The Rout, 1926). One of the principal causes of Mirsky’s downfall as a Soviet critic was a negative review he published in 1933 of the first part of Fadeev’s novel Poslednii iz Udege (The Last of the Udege, never completed). He eventually became head of the Union of Writers and a member of the Central Committee of the Party. He committed suicide in the wake of de-Stalinisation.

19 Mirsky took an interest in current Soviet prose from the beginning of his London period, and published several review articles: see especially ‘Molodye russkie prozaiki’, Zveno, 109, 2 March 1925, p. 2, 3.

9

10

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

35

there are states of mind when one prefers this greenness and vitality to all the glories of Fargue. (But I am very happy to hear of your rapprochement with him).

I hope to be in Paris on 23 March for 3 or 4 days, for I am wanting to go to Austria20, and then again from about 12 to 25 April.

America has been silent about me for some time so it may be after all that I shall not go21.

I am dying to see Caffi22.

Please remember me to the Prince.

Yours very sincerely DS. Mirsky.

This was a trip to visit the Eurasian leaders P.N. Savitsky and Prince N.S. Trubetskoi, in order to consult about Eurasian affairs in the run-up to the launch of the newspaper Evraziia, and also for consultations concerning Mirsky’s book Russia: A Social History. See also letter 13 below.

21 Following the publication of his History of Russian Literature in America, Mirsky had planned a lecture tour there; he also seriously considered taking up an academic post. His principal contact was the economist and historian Michael Florinsky (1894-1981); see G.S. Smith, ‘The Correspondence of D.S. Mirsky and Michael Florinsky, 1926-1932’, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 72, no. 1, 1994, pp. 115-139. Mirsky sailed for America on 27 June 1928 and returned some time after 9 August.

22 Andrea Caffi (1887-1955) was born in St Petersburg, the son of an Italian administrator in the Imperial theatres. He became a socialist and engaged in revolutionary activity in 1904-5, was arrested, and set free in 1907 through the intervention of the Italian ambassador. He then studied in Berlin and Paris. He returned to Russia in 1919 as correspondent of Corriere della Sera, and took part in the Third International. He returned to Italy in 1923 and worked as a journalist, then as an anti-Fascist moved to Paris, where from 1926 to 1929 he was a member of the Caetani entourage.

20

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

13.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St WC 1 [ante 22.3.28] address from 22 to 26 [-3-28]: 214 rue de Bécon, Courbevoie (Seine) from 27 March to about 10 April: c/o Frau v. Paschkoff, Parsch 31, Salzburg, Austria1

Dear Princess, yes I am going to Vienna, and should love to see Kassner2. Would you send me his adress and I will write to him. I hope to be in Vienna about 2 April to about the 5th or 6th. Does he understand French or English? I can talk German all right, but I cannot write a letter in German. I have received Hélène Iswolsky’s Horseman, and I shall see her in Paris. Poor Vyacheslav Ivanov! I knew him in the days of his glory3, and have not the heart to go and see him in Rome. He is in a way the most remarkable man of his generation in Russia. I do not know whether he is writing anything now. The last poems

Letter 13.

1 Mirsky wrote from Salzburg to Suvchinskii on 9 April 1928, reporting that he had seen a good deal of the academic linguist Prince N.S. Trubetskoi, who taught at the University of Vienna; with Suvchinskii he had been one of the founders of the Eurasian movement.

On his relations with Mirsky, see Smith, DSM, pp. 199-202.

2 Rudolf Kassner (1873-1959), the Austrian writer, philosopher, and translator, contributor of numerous essays to Commerce (see also: La rivista “Commerce” e Marguerite Caetani.

Briefwechsel mit deutschsprachigen Autoren, herausgegeben von Klaus E. Bohnenkamp und Sophie Levie, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012, especially ‘Marguerite Caetani – Rudolf Kassner (1926-1958)’, pp. 175-336).

3 The poet and classicist Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), who emigrated from Russia in 1924 and subsequently lived in Rome. Writing to Suvchinskii on 16 May 1926, Mirsky asked him to find out Ivanov’s address, in order to ask for some poetry to be published in Versty (Suvchinskii letters, p. 55); he raises this possibility again on 21 August 1926 (ibid., p. 58).

Nothing came of whatever transpired. By ‘the days of his glory’, Mirsky means St Petersburg before World War I. Mirsky once wrote that ‘between 1906 and 1912 [Ivanov] was the recognised master of all the Petersburg poets’: see ‘Five Russian Letters. II. The Symbolists’, first published in The London Mercury in 1922, reprinted in Uncollected Writings on Russian Literature, [pp. 50-59], p. 54; see letter 14, note 1. Writing in Russian at about the same time, he declared that ‘In the years 1906-1912 Viacheslav Ivanov could say of himself, like Louis XIV, ‘Petersburg poetry – c’est moi’. ‘Вячеслав Иванов в 1906-1912 гг. мог сказать про себя, как Людовик XIV: «Петербургская поэзия это – я»’. (Ibid., p. 105).

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37

he published were written in 1922 and are very remarkable4. I believe he has turned Catholic5. Does Caffi say so? I am very impatient to meat Caffi.

I am giving a public lecture in Paris on my way to Salzburg. I am afraid it will be a tremendous scandal6.

Hoping to see you in another three weeks.

Yours sincerely DS. Mirsky.

14.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St WC1 20.5.28.

Dear Princess, no doubt you are right about the Horseman. Of course the translation is not all it should be, far from it. Also, it is my experience, that no translation can make the poetry of Pushkin accessible to a foreigner, a subject on

This statement must refer to the Berlin publication of Zimnie sonety (Winter Sonnets).

Elsewhere, Mirsky said: ‘Ivanov’s Sonnets show that even a modern poet can meet misery, distress, and the ruin of all around him with dignity and simplicity’ (Uncollected Writings on Russian Literature, 80, see letter 14, note 1). Ivanov was subsequently to come back to life as a poet; see Viacheslav Ivanov, Svet vechernii, with an Introduction by Sir Maurice Bowra and commentary by O. Deschartes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1962.

5 In 1925 Ivanov did indeed convert to Catholicism of the Eastern rite, as had Helen Iswolsky three years earlier. On her translation of his Correspondence from Two Corners, see the Preface to her letters below, pp. 82-84.

6 On 2 March 1928 Mirsky wrote to Suvchinskii suggesting he give a lecture on ‘the latest fiction, primarily proletarian’ under the auspices of the Eurasian organisation. This duly took place, at the Musée Guimet, Place d’Iéna, on 28 March (Michèle Beyssac, La Vie culturelle de l’Emigration russe en France. Chronique 1920-1930, Paris, 1971, p. 182).

This lecture was probably the basis for Mirsky’s article ‘Zametki o proletarskoi literature’, Evraziia, 1 December 1928, 5. Mirsky here writes scandal no doubt intending the word to be understood as the standard Russian скандал (stress on second syllable), rather than French scandale.

4

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D.S. MIRSKY AND THE RUSSIAN ASPECT OF COMMERCE

which I have more than once expatiated1. Still it seems that all poor Hélène’s labours have been in vain2. As for Gide’s plan of giving Le Coup de Pistolet, it is a good [story], provided the translation is good. If he did for it what he did for Schiffrin’s Dame de piques it would be splendid3. Still, again, I dont quite see what appeal Pushkin can have to foreigners. You will have noticed that half my preface is about this. Leskov is a very good idea, but the difficulty of translation is very great, greater than with Remizov. It must be done by a Frenchman who knows Russian and is as free in using French as Rabelais.

Are there any such?

Do you know the poetry of Gerard Hopkins, (S.J., died 1889, schoolfellow of Bridges). I always suspected him for a very remarkable poet, but his poetry is such difficult reading (so much that [it] is not good) that I had never really discovered him. There is now an interesting article about him in the Dublin Magazine (not D Review) by my friend Alec Brown with wonderful quotations4. You will [?] that Eliot must have read him.

I will very possibly come over for a few days to Paris about the [to?] 2 – 5 June. Shall I see you?

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

Letter 14.

1 ‘If the average reader is very inquisitive, he will read an English translation of Pushkin–and be disgusted by the bad English verse he has read’. D.S. Mirsky, ‘Pushkin’ (1923), reprinted in D.S. Mirsky, Uncollected Writings on Russian Literature, ed. G.S. Smith, Berkeley, 1989 [pp. 118-31], p. 118.

2 The reference is to Helen Iswolsky’s translation of Pushkin’s Mednyi vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman); see Preface to and letters by Iswolsky below, p. 77, 91, 92.

3 Mirsky has in mind here Alexandre Pushkin, La dame de pique. Traduction de J. Schiffrin, B. de Schloezer et A. Gide, avant propos de André Gide, illustrations de Vassili Choukhaeff, Paris, Éditions de la Pléiade, 1923 (See also below, Iswolsky, letter 1). Jacques Schiffrin (1892-1950), was born in Baku, educated in Switzerland, and emigrated to France in 1922.

He established Éditions de la Pléiade in 1923, and the associated Librairie, in alliance with the publisher Gallimard in 1933. In 1925 with his brother-in-law Joseph Pouterman (see letter 15 below) and Aleksandr Halpern he founded the Societé des Amis de la Pléiade. He was a close friend of André Gide and conducted a remarkable correspondence with him.

He emigrated to the USA in 1940.

4 Alec Brown, ‘Gerard Hopkins and his associative form’, The Dublin Magazine, vol. III, New Series, no. 2 (April - June, 1928), pp. 6-20, reprinted in Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Critical Heritage, ed. Gerald Roberts, Psychology Press, London and New York, 1987, pp. 149-151.

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39

P.S. Of course I can change my preface to suit the Pistolshot. I suppose there is no hurry about it5.

15.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St WC 1 28.5.28.

Dear Princess, here is the revised version1. I am not at all happy about – partly because of the French, partly because I am saying things that are not as clear to myself as they ought to be. If you decide to print it, I hope my French will be drastically revised. I am not coming to Paris as I wrote to you in the first days of June, but about the 10th (I believe I have also written to you that).

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

5 This became D.S. Mirsky, ‘Sur Pouchkine’, Commerce, XVI, (été 1928), pp. 83-97, placed after Alexandre Pouchkine, ‘Le Coup de feu (traduit du russe par André Gide et Jacques Schiffrin)’, ibid., pp. 53-81.

Letter 15.

1 Given the phrase ‘saying things that are not as clear to myself as they ought to be’, this must refer to the revision of Mirsky’s essay on Pushkin.

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16.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St WC 1 15.10.28.

Dear Princess, may I begin with business: I have been asked by a London publisher to write a preface for a limited edition of The Queen of Spades, and I wrote one; but when he read my French essay in Commerce he fancied it so much that he wanted me to give him that as a preface1. This I am not going to do, but I want to use several paragraphs from it to work them into the English preface.

I want your permission to do so, and whether you have any objections to it.

I was so sorry to miss you at Paris, where I am afraid I had too much of a good time. I am returning there for about a week early in November. Will you still be there? I am also very sorry to have missed Miss Chapin who was so kind to me in New York 2. I have not heard anything from Groet or Mlle Guillain and I do not know whether she has done anything about the Remizov translation. I should very much like to see [it], from sheer curiosity, because I do not believe I will be of much help in the matter – Remizov having himself supervised it, and so many French experts3.

Have you seen Mrs. Woolf’s new book Orlando?4 I have only just dipped into it, and it looks very “intreeguing” – quite a new departure for her.

Hoping to see you before long.

Very sincerely yours DS. Mirsky.

Letter 16.

1 The publisher J.E. (Iosif Efimovich) Pouterman (1885-1940) divided his time between London and Paris. From Mirsky he commissioned an introduction to a luxury edition of Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades, translated by himself and G. Bruerton, London, The Blackamore Press, 1928; Mirsky’s preface takes up pp. xi-xviii.

2 This refers probably to one of Marguerite Caetani’s half sisters, Katherine or Cornelia Chapin; see Introduction to this volume: ‘Marguerite Caetani, an American patron in Europe’, note 3.

3 See Preface above, pp. 14-16.

4 Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, London, The Hogarth Press, 1928.

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41

I feel so ashamed about having been so glum at La Baule – I was having a dreadful toothache all the time, and trying to pretend I had not.

17.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani [Headed stationery] Cayré’s Hotel, 4, Boulevard Raspail, Paris (7e) 4.1.29

Dear Princess, I was so glad to hear from you and am so sorry to be so late in answering you: your letter took a very long time reaching me. Thank you very much for the cheque which I do not feel I deserve1. I have been here over a fortnight, and was all the time hoping to be able to go South but my political duties have prevented me2. I saw Groet[huysen] only the other day because for some silly reason I was sure he was not in town; I met him quite by chance in the rue de Rivoli together with Du Bos3. The two looked very funny together – quite the laughing philosopher and the weeping – Democritus and Heraclitus.

I also saw Fargue (twice) who has grown a beard which makes him look very old-fashionedly artistic. I have been seeing rather queer people – had lunch today, for instance, with André Germain4 who is quite the finished

Letter 17.

1 This evidently was the fee for Mirsky’s Pushkin essay (see letter 16).

2 At this time, Mirsky was deeply involved in planning what would become the newspaper Evraziia (see Suvchinskii letters).

3 Charles Du Bos (1882-1939), one of the guiding spirits of the Pontigny decades. See Harrison letters, footnote 19; and on his relationship with Helen Iswolsky, see Preface below, pp. 82-84.

4 André Germain (1882-1971), the French journalist and critic of art and literature.

Mirsky mentions him in a letter to Suvchinskii of 20 November 1929 as possibly being of help in arranging a visa for the Russian émigré politician N.V. Ustrialov (Suvchinskii letters, p. 148).

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article of what he is. As for books I have almost stopped reading anything that is not obligatory (except, of course, geography).

What are your plans for the spring? I shall probably be in Paris most of April – though I am also planning a trip to Holland to see the tulip fields and the streets of Delft being washed with soap5.

What do you think of Eliot’s last book and all his Anglo-Catholicism?

Whatever it is worth it is exceedingly interesting and throws a very significant light on all his poetry (especially the essay of Bishop Andrewes himself)6.

I wish you happy new year (which is rather late) and please remember me to the Prince and all your family.

Yours very sincerely DS. Mirsky Please excuse the pen – it belongs to the hotel, not to me.

18.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC 1 2.3.29.

Dear Princess, I wonder whether you are already at Versailles and if not whether you will be there when I come to Paris next time – about 23 March to remain for about a month?

As far as can be ascertained, Mirsky did not make this trip to Holland.

T.S. Eliot was baptised into the Church of England in June 1927. On 20 November 1928 he published the collection of essays For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order, whose preface contains the famous statement ‘The general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion’. Mirsky means Eliot’s essay about Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), the first item in the book; it was first published in The Times Literary Supplement on 23 September 1926.

5 6

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43

I wonder too what you think of the Remizov translation? when I saw Remizov last (in January) he said it had just been sent to you and that he thought it very good1.

I have got a Russian story that I believe would do for Commerce, it is by a man called Tikhonov and its title, in French, would be L’Homme Risqué (if that is French)2. It is about 90 pages, and is about a man who loses his memory and goes recovering and losing it but never quite recovers it, and then finally loses it – it has no ending, and is rather bizarre, but admirably written and on the whole I think a real piece of Dichtung.

Have you seen the poems of Muselli with Derain’s drawings?3 They are one of the most marvellous things I ever saw (Derain, not Muselli).

I saw Eliot twice recently4, but in general I am dreadfully busy – writing my book which should have been ready long ago5, writing every week for our Russian paper6, doing my usual university [work] (not much of that, fortunately) and seeing nobody.

Hoping to see you in Paris Yours very sincerely DS. Mirsky

Letter 18.

1 Writing to Remizov on 27 January 1929, Mirsky mentions only a Russian text, Russkaia povest’ 17-go veka o besnovatoi Solomonii (‘…S Vami beda…’, p. 397, see letter 12, note 5).

2 Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov (1896-1979), Riskovannyi chelovek (Leningrad, 1927), a collection of short stories. See Preface above, p. 17.

3 Vincent Muselli (1879-1956), Les travaux et les jeux, Lithographies de André Derain, Paris, 1929; the book was published by Mirsky’s friend J.E. Pouterman.

4 One of these meetings occurred on 11 February 1929 at Eliot’s house and involved an unpleasant encounter with Lady Ottoline Morrell; see The Letters of T.S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, vol. 4, 1928-1929, London, Faber & Faber, 2013, p. 428.

5 Either D.S. Mirsky, Russia: A Social History, or id., Lenin.

6 The newspaper Evraziia, whose editorial board was dominated by the ‘left Eurasians’ Mirsky and Suvchinskii, was published weekly from 24 November 1928 to 7 September 1929; it came to an end because of irreconcilable disagreements between them and the ‘right’ Eurasians, led by P.N. Savitsky and Nikolai Trubetskoi, signalling the end of the movement which had begun in 1922.

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19.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St London WC 1 6 June 1929.

Dear Princess, I am sending you the book of stories I spoke of. The story I proposed (“L’homme Risqué”) is the last in the book. I am afraid it will not quite suit your intentions this time for it is not very much shorter than Remizov’s (ninety pages).

As for the other stories in the book some of them are very good, but I should say rather too slight for Commerce. ‘L’Homme Risqué’ is quite different. I am also sending you another book of stories by Nina Smirnova where there is a story which I believe would do, if it is not too brutal1. It is [a] much shorter one. I have marked it in the index. It is called Na Reke (On the River), and is about a deaf and a dumb girl who lived alone with a man in the backwoods of Siberia.

Mlle (I do not remember her name) who translated the Remizov is the best translator I know of in France, but I believe she is a slow worker.

Anyhow Souvtchinsky could get hold of her2.

About Gerard Hopkins, “great” is too big a word I should say, but he was a very remarkable master of verse. I think that in certain ways he forestalled Eliot.

I do not think I will come to Paris before the beginning of July. I am going to Boulogne to see my sister to-morrow3, but I am afraid I shall not be able to go as far as Paris.

Yours very sincerely DS. Mirsky.

Letter 19.

1 Nina Smirnova (1895?-1931), Zakon zemli. Rasskazy, Leningrad, 1927.

2 This would appear to be Madeleine Etard (1897-19??), who is mentioned in Mirsky’s letter of 1 September 1929 to Remizov; see Preface above, p. 16. She published a translation of Remizov’s ‘Bicou’, Revue européenne, vol. 8, no. 8, 1928, pp. 795-806. According to Remizov, she also translated his Stratilatov, but it remained unpublished; see Helene Sinany-MacLeod, ‘Lettres d’Aleksej Remizov à Vladimir Butčik’, Revue des études slaves, vol. 53, nos 52-3, 1981, [pp. 293312], p. 295. This may well have been the translation that was originally intended for Commerce.

3 Mirsky’s older sister, Sonia Pokhitonova, whom he visited regularly; she lived at Pont-deBriques, Pas de Calais, near Boulogne, after moving from Courbevoie and before moving to Grenoble.

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

45

20.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani London 17 Gower St WC 1 9. Nov. 29.

Dear Princess, the other day, to my horror, in looking through my papers I found the essay by Kassner you gave me to read in Paris1. I am enclosing it herewith. I am awfully ashamed of negligience and humbly beg you to forgive me. I reread it on this occasion, and though I think he has done better things, it will certainly be no disgrace to Commerce which is saying a good deal.

Have you ever read Young’s Night Thoughts? The other day I went to an exhibition in the B[ritish] M[useum] where there were some illustrations of Blake’s for that poem, the printed text surrounded by the water-colours.

The passages I read struck me as poetry of the very highest order (or all but), certainly quite remarkable. I afterwards took the whole book, but found it difficult to read in succession, – much of it is rather barren. Few people read it nowadays, I am afraid, but a good selection from it would, I think be an excellent idea2.

What do Larbaud3 and Limbour4 think of it? Groet of course will not like it; he will say it is rhetoric, but, entre nous, I have not the slightest faith in him as a critic of poetry. I hope this will find you in Versailles, though I fear it will not.

Letter 20.

1 Mirsky in all probability refers to the MS of Rudolf Kassner, ‘L’individu et l’homme collectif’, traduit de l’allemand par Jacques Decour, Commerce, XXVIII, (été 1931), pp. 197-229; this is the only contribution by Kassner published after the date of this letter.

2 Nothing came of this proposal from the point of view of Commerce. These drawings form part of a major donation to the British Museum by Mrs Frances Emerson in 1929. A complete set of the illustrations is accessible at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?people=125921&peoA=125921-3-9 (accessed 25 September 2014).

3 See letter 5 above.

4 Georges Limbour (1900-1970), an active member of the Surrealist movement until he fell out with Breton and was expelled in 1929. His ‘Le Cheval de Venise’ was published in Commerce, XVIII, (hiver 1928), pp. 113-149; his translations of Roy Campbell’s poetry appeared in the same issue. He and Mirsky collaborated on the translation of Mandel′shtam; see below.

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Yours very sincerely DS Mirsky.

I am going today to Cambridge to see Lopokova dance in Calderón’s La Vida es Sueño!5

21.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani as from c/o Mlle Mirsky1 La Renaissance 11 rue Royale Paris 20.7.30.

Dear Princess, thank you very much for your letter. I have sent the proofs to Limbour, and as I had thought there is very little that could be improved by me. In one place he proposes to insert a Russian character “ы” (in the beginning).

I do not know whether that is technically possible2.

I am staying at a little place in Normandy near Evreux, called Couches.

It is rather a dull hole, but the woods round about are all right and with plenty of fresh air. I shall be returning to Paris for a few days about the 25th

The Russian ballerina and actress Lydia Lopokova (1892-1981), who in 1925 married John Maynard Keynes. Mirsky describes this visit to Cambridge in his letter to Suvchinskii of 11 November 1929 (Suvchinskii letters, p. 142).

5

Letter 21.

1 Mirsky’s younger sister Olga (1899-1968), who was unmarried, lived at this address after the family house in Courbevoie was sold in 1928.

2 Mirsky refers to the proofs of Mandel′shtam’s Egipetskaia marka, published as ‘Le Timbre Egyptien’, trad. Georges Limbour et D.S. Mirsky’, Commerce, XXIV, (été 1930), pp. 119-168; reprinted as O. Mandelstam, Le Timbre égyptien, traduit par Georges Limbour et D.S. Mirsky, préface de Ralph Dutli, postface de Clarence Brown, Paris, Le Bruit du temps éditions, 2009. It is not clear where exactly the capital ery (ы) was meant to be inserted.

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

47

and then to London for another few days, and then probably to Grenoble3 and Savoie4.

I had a letter yesterday from Eliot, asking my opinion about a Russian book offered to Faber’s5.

I hope you like St. Lunaire6, and that all are well.

Yours sincerely DS Mirsky

22.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani Postcard addressed to Mme Principessa di Bassiano, Villa Caetani, Vicolo Tre Madonne, Roma, Italy.

[London] 3.2.31

Dear Princess, I am sending you a book which will be sure to interest you (if you do not know it already) The Seven Kinds of Ambiguity by W. Empson, the young Cambridge poet1. It is a very fine piece of criticism, though perhaps a little too long. I believe I sent you one of his poems last year2.

When will you come back to Versailles?

Yours very sincerely DS Mirsky 3 Mirsky’s elder sister Sofia Pokhitonova lived at 18 Chemin des Buttes, Grenoble, in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

4 Mirsky stayed in the village of St Pierre de Rumilly, Haute-Savoie, in April 1930, visiting Sergei Efron, the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva; whether or not he made a return journey there later in the year is unclear. See Richard Davies and G.S. Smith, ‘D.S. Mirsky: Twenty-Two Letters (1926-34) to Salomeya Halpern; Seven Letters (1930) to Vera Suvchinskaya (Traill), Oxford Slavonic Papers, n.s. xxx, 1997, [pp. 89-120], p. 118.

5 T.S. Eliot’s correspondence for 1930 remains to be published.

6 Saint-Lunaire is a coastal resort in Brittany, next to Dinard.

Letter 22.

1 Mirsky refers to the pioneering essay in critical theory by William Empson (1906-84).

2 This poem may have been enclosed with a letter that has been lost; there is no trace of it in the Commerce archive in the Archivio Caetani in Rome.

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23.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani La Renaissance 11 rue Royale Paris 8e 5.4.31.

Dear Princess, I was so glad to hear from you. And I am looking forward very much to seeing you here before long. I shall almost certainly remain here till the early twenties of the month, but my further plans are very vague. For the present I am thinking of going to Belgium for a few days1. I have seen little of Groet yet, because he was in Caen most of the time rabbiting for Leibniz letters2, but I am going to see him to-day again.

I have been wondering whether you would be interested to have a look at a metrical translation into French Marina Tsvetaeva has made of a long poem of hers?3 I cannot judge of its merits but French people whose opinion I value have spoken of it very highly. The poem itself is one of her best, and of her best period. The word you could not make out in my letter is Scrutinies. It is a collection of critiques of the younger maîtres of English literature (Eliot, Joyce, V. Woolf, Lawrence, W. Lewis etc.) by still younger men4. Apart from

Letter 23.

1 This is the earliest documented mention of this plan. The purpose of going to Belgium was to meet Rajani Palme Dutt (1896-1974), a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who worked for the Comintern in Antwerp and Brussels between 1929 and 1936. He was the editor of Labour Monthly; Mirsky’s first article for the journal, ‘Bourgeois History and Historical Materialism’, appeared in vol. 13, no. 7, July 1931, pp. 453-459. He visited Dutt in September 1931; see Smith, DSM, p. 202; Suvchinskii letters, p. 152.

2 In 1904 the young Groethuysen was commissioned by the Berlin Academy of Sciences to search for unpublished texts by Leibnitz, and came to Paris, where he first met Gide and Paulhan. He subsequently made annual visits, until World War I, when he was interned as a German citizen. See Klaus Grosse Kracht, Zwischen Berlin und Paris: Bernhard Groethuysen (1880-1946), Eine Intellektuale Biographie, Tübingen, M. Niemeyer, 2002, pp.

147 et seq. He published Trois Lettres de Leibnitz in 1924, and subsequently continued researching the subject.

3 See p. 84 below.

4 Scrutinies, vol. II, edited by Edgell Rickword (London: Wishart, 1931), was compiled from essays published in Rickword’s The Calendar of Modern Letters (1925-7). It

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1926-1932)

49

Brown’s article on Eliot and 2 or 3 others it is not very interesting. I have also just been reading Brown’s new novel, Green Lane, which I find very good.

He is one of the very few really masculine English writers of today.

Well, I hope I shall see you soon.

Very sincerely yours DS Mirsky

24.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani La Renaissance 11 Royale (or: Hotel Récamier Place St. Sulpice, 6e phone: Danton 04-89) 4.8.31.

Dear Princess, how are you getting on and how is the weather treating you? My plans have changed since I saw you, because I am now intending to go to Russia in the second half of August or early in September. I have been informed that I have the permission, but I have not yet got the actual papers, and it is not quite certain that I will have them in time1. Groet arrived yesterday. They are going to Bormes in a few days, because Chauvet2 has sent Alix [Guillain]

contains inter alia: A[lec] Brown, ‘The lyric impulse in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot’; J[ack] Lindsay, ‘James Joyce’; P[eter] Quennell, ‘The Later Period of D.H. Lawrence’; W[illiam] Empson, ‘Virginia Woolf’; E[dgell] Rickword, ‘Wyndham Lewis’. On its significance in the history of English literary criticism, see Bernard Bergonzi, ‘The Calendar of Modern Letters’, Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 16, 1986, pp. 150-163, and notes to Iswolsky, letter 3 below.

Letter 24.

1 Mirsky’s decision to go to Russia was a matter of considerable complexity and ambiguity; see Smith, DSM, pp. 209-212. He became a Soviet citizen in July 1931, and initially intended to visit Russia that summer, returning to his teaching post in London in the autumn.

However, to re-enter Great Britain on a Soviet passport was problematical; this soon led Mirsky to realise that if he went to Russia, it would have to be on a permanent basis.

2 Dr. Chauvet was the Caetani family doctor.

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to the South. Do you happen to know anything of Limbour? He has taken the greater part of my draft translation and disappeared without leaving an adress, so that I do not know where to send him the rest of the MS3.

My immediate plans are rather doubtful. I may remain here till my departure for Russia, but I may be going to the Mediterranean for a fortnight or so.

When will you be passing through Paris?

Yours ever DS. Mirsky

25.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani Hotel Récamier place St. Sulpice Paris 6e (after 12 Jan: 17 Gower St, London WC 1) 1.1.32

Dear Princess, I wish you a happy new year. I forgot to take Limbour’s Polish adress. I wonder whether you could let me have it. I have not yet received the typed copy of the Pasternak translation1. Could you tell them when they will be sending it to me and to send me also Limbour’s Ms. as I have marked it in several places and it will be necessary for me to have it.

What whether are you having in Rome? I envy you for being there. I dislike Paris more and more especially since England went off the/to gold standard2.

3 In view of the mention of Pasternak in letter 25 below, the MS concerned would appear to be the translation of Detstvo Liuvers.

Letter 25.

1 See preceding letters.

2 The United Kingdom left the gold standard on 19 September 1931; this would have made prices in Paris more expensive for someone like Mirsky whose income was in sterling.

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Will you be coming to London? You ought to come before the French exhibition is over3.

Very sincerely yours DS Mirsky

26.

D.S. Mirsky to Marguerite Caetani 17 Gower St WC 1 London 6.2.32.

Dear Princess, I am sending you the typescript of Pasternak. I am awfully sorry for the delay – I was horribly busy all this time. And some of the passages I had left untranslated caused me a good deal of trouble. I have translated them now into intelligible (if not decent) French. I wonder whether you will have time to send it on to Limbour? For there are about a dozen passages where I have changed and added rather substantially.

I am not sending you my article on Eliot in Echange1 as I believe you get that magazine. But if you don’t I should like to send you a copy. An English friend of mine who read it said she was struck by how much better my French was than my English. A doubtful compliment!

I have [hope] you are all well, and that you are having a nice time in Rome, and that I shall see you in London before long.

Very sincerely yours DS Mirsky

‘French Art 1200-1900’ at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, London, January-March 1932. Curated by René [Louis] Huyghe (1906-97), appointed chief curator of paintings and drawings at the Louvre in 1930.

3

Letter 26.

1 ‘T.S. Eliot et la Fin de la Poésie Bourgeoise’, Echanges, 5, 1931, pp. 44-58.

FOUR REVIEWS by D.S. MIRSKY (1925)

These reviews were published in the Russian émigré press, and offer a public and more developed representation of Mirsky’s assessments of four of the principal writers and some of the works that are mentioned in his letters to Marguerite Caetani at about the same time. They constitute some of the very earliest discussions of the works concerned to have been published in Russian.

They have not previously been translated into English.

Boris Pasternak, Stories, Moscow-Leningrad, Krug, 1925 ‘B.L. Pasternak, R asskazy ’, Sovremennye zapiski, xxv, p. 544, 545 Like Mandel′shtam, Pasternak is best known as a poet, and as such he occupies one of the most prominent places, at least in the estimation of professional poetry circles. Especially remarkable in his poetry is its lofty lyric intensity, and along with this a persistent and captivating novelty; there is innovation also in his perception of the world, which is seen in a new way, and in the freedom of his poetic vocabulary from habitual associations. In his Stories there is neither this taut passionate quality, nor verbal innovation.

All the interest is concentrated in the new way of perceiving and interpreting reality. Liberation from customary associations, which explain the infinite complexity of the world easily and in a practical way, is the principal task of Pasternak the writer of prose. This purpose is cognate with those of the great painters of modern times, beginning with Manet. This purpose is also partly cognate with that of Proust, of whom Pasternak’s prose is reminiscent in many ways. However, it is not possible to speak of any direct dependence on Proust (who is unknown in Russia); it is simply a certain similarity of intention.

Pasternak’s book is made up of four short stories: Il Tratto di Apelle, written in 1915 and with its Hoffman-ising manneredness recalling for us La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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Pasternak’s origins in the school of ‘The Centrifuge’1; A Letter from Tula and The Childhood of Ljuvers are dated 1918; the fourth story, Aerial Ways, carries the date 1924. The Childhood of Ljuvers is the ‘psychological’ history of a young girl. But the ‘psychology’ of this story is by no means ‘psychological’. It does not concern itself with feelings or thoughts, but exclusively with perceptions, reactions to them, and the gradual formation from them of a finished picture of the world. It is curious to compare the sober, dry, polished Childhood of Ljuvers with the way Andrei Bely and Proust set out similar themes. Pasternak’s clarity, ‘detachment’, somewhat scientific coldness and calm attentiveness are the absolute polar opposite of Bely’s procedures.

But the lack of similarity to Proust is also striking; instead of the endless unwinding of the infinities of memory, almost conterminous with life itself, there are separate, particular moments, very clear, precise, and compressed, like the conventional signs on a map that interpret the relief of a locality in an exhaustive way. It is a long time since anybody in Russia has written in this way. And all this intellectuality is directed towards dissecting the most inexpressible and irrational processes, which by way of strange paths and evaluations are then forever forgotten, create in the child’s consciousness an individual world, and then ‘relate’ it to the world as it is generally acknowledged, the world of adults.

Aerial Ways was written six years after The Childhood of Ljuvers. Here there is none of this precise dryness. An intense and novel figurative quality, akin to that of Pasternak’s poetry, makes this story heavier and stickier.

But this is not Zamiatin’s formalistic figurativeness, which comes from an intense desire to make something new, and is purely intellectual, stemming from a desire to see in a new way. Aerial Ways, therefore (which as a whole is a fairly confused and uneven story) does not give one the impression of being unnecessary, and one can read it over and over again, continually finding new absorbing things in the methods of both description and the choice of components of the world. This story, as distinct from the other three, deals with the present, but unlike stories by other ‘fellow travellers’ treats it with cold and distanced objectivity. In order to give an impression of it, I will cite a short extract, where the action takes place in a Red headquarters or Red commandant’s office in the south of Russia: The soldier said in reply to the lady that Polivanov was still ‘not come-backen’.

Three kinds of boredom could be heard in his voice. There was the boredom of

‘The Centrifuge’ was a Moscow-based group of Futurist poets that existed from January 1914 until late 1917; besides Pasternak, they included Semen Bobrov and Nikolai Aseev.

1

FOUR REVIEWS by D.S. MIRSKY (1925)

55

a creature accustomed to watery mud and now finding itself in dry dust. There was the boredom of a man who had got so used to life in defence and requisition detachments for he to be the one who gave orders, and now it was a young lady like this who was replying, breaking off and bashful, and bored because the pattern of proper conversation was here reversed and destroyed. It was, finally, that put-on tendency to boredom that lends the appearance of complete ordinariness to something completely unprecedented. And, knowing full well how unheard-of the pattern of recent times must seem to this young lady, he played the fool, as if he couldn’t guess what her feelings must be, and as if he had never ever breathed the air of anything but dictatorship.

This is very good. As with Mandel′shtam, this is prose based on thought, and not stylistic exercises trying to scare up thought. If there is less creative imagination in both Mandel′shtam and Pasternak than in the best of the ornamental everyday-life writers2, they offer schooling that is much less doubtful and more therapeutic. And the question arises of whether all our prose writers since Andrei Bely have been going down a false road, whether a new intellectualism is replacing formalism, and whether this ought to be welcomed on all sides.

Prince D.Sviatopolk-Mirskii

O. Mandel′shtam, The noise of time, Leningrad, Vremia Publishers, 1925 ‘O. Mandel′shtam, Shum vremeni’, Sovremennye zapiski, xxv, 1925, pp. 341-343 Mandel′shtam occupies a firm and generally acknowledged place as one of the most eminent poets of our time. His lofty verbal artistry combines in a singular manner with his “lofty tongue-tie” to lend his poetry a singular and exclusive charm. Not all Mandel′shtam’s readers, though, have noticed the other qualities that shine through his poetry, namely acute intelligence and percipient historical intuition. These qualities are obscured by the tongue-tie, and this same tongue-tie lends an odd confusion to his remarkable but very little known prose. His articles are scattered about the periodical press, mainly that part of it concerned with aesthetics, whose readers have been and continue to be exceedingly little interested in intelligence and history. Even if they did read it, the readers of Apollo could not have appreciated Mandel′shtam’s article on Chaadaev, published as far back as 1915, Mirsky has in mind here the stylistic descendants of Andrei Bely, such as Pil’niak, and also perhaps Remizov.

2

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which already gave the full measure of his cultural-historical insight. Just as in some of his poems, so in these articles Mandel′shtam is concerned with cultural-historical values that with him are free of any philosophical symbolism, but which are instead concrete, individual, efficacious, and at the same time related to the broad fabric of the historical process. Mandel′shtam is particularly interested in the vagaries of nineteenth-century Russian history.

He is extending the line of historiosophical thought laid down by Herzen, Chaadaev, and Grigor′ev, but with a greater density of historicism, and with greater ‘disinterestedness’. His thought is also linked with Blok, the author of Retribution3, especially in view of the concreteness of his historical outlook, which amounts to genius, but his complete freedom from Symbolism places a sharply defined boundary between him and Blok.

Mandel′shtam’s articles remain uncollected to this day, but his new book, The Noise of Time, completes them and represents a new and even more valuable achievement. It is no exaggeration to state that The Noise of Time is one of the three or four most significant books of recent times, and with its combination of seriousness of content with artistic intensity it could very well take first place. This high evaluation, though, relates only to the first two thirds of the book, which are concerned with the author’s childhood and student years (the 1890s and the 1900s); the final third, unconnected to the remainder, is occupied by his impressions of the Crimea during the Civil War, and although they contain many vivid and powerful pages, they cannot claim any significance on a par with the first part. As for the first seventy pages of the book, they are ‘weightier than a multitude of volumes’4.

These chapters are neither autobiography nor memoir, even though they concern the author’s environment. Rather (if this did not have such a whiff of the secondary school) one could call them ‘cultural-historical scenes from the period of the decay of autocracy’. This feeling of the period’s decomposition, provincialism, lack of originality, mediocrity, is the principal leitmotif of the book – a feeling in respect of which Mandel′shtam is especially close to Blok – and it is with a half-quotation from the latter that he begins the book: ‘I well remember Russia’s obscure years, the ’nineties, their sluggard crawl, their endless calm, their profound provincialism – a quiet backwater, the ter-

3 The autobiographical and historiosophical long poem (1910-11, unfinished) by Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921).

4 A standard Russian phrase, from the poem ‘On a Book of Tiutchev’s Poems’ by Afanasii Fet (1820-92): ‘This small-sized booklet/is weightier than a multitude of volumes’.

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minal refuge of a dying age’5. Once having begun, one wishes to go on and write out the entire book, which is an uninterrupted quotation, densely saturated with thought and content, astonishingly vivid in its dense particularity.

The author grows up in a petty urban middle-class Jewish family, which has liberated itself from ‘Judaic chaos’, but still not left it behind, with a mother who is a Russianised and airy-fairy member of the 1880s intelligentsia, and a father who has been uprooted from his Jewish soil but has not become party to the Russian, and is filled with the spirit of ‘an enlightened ghetto somewhere in Hamburg’ of the eighteenth century. During his childhood there is ‘infantile imperialism’, being entertained by the May parades, horror at ‘the Judaic chaos’ familiar from his grandfather’s family, and a striving towards Russia and Europe, which is embodied in ‘St Petersburg, that stately mirage’.

The funeral of Alexander III goes by, then the ‘progresses’ of Nicholas II, then the institution of riots on Kazan Square (and I do mean ‘institution’), Pavlovsk6, the Dreyfus affair, the concerts by Hofmann and Kubelik7 in the hall of the Assembly of Nobles in 1904 (‘Here it was not musical curiosity, but something threatening and even dangerous that rose up from a great depth, as it were a thirst for action, an obscure prehistoric disquiet – the year 1905 had not yet struck – and then spilled forth as strange, almost Khlystian ritual rejoicing8 by the old faithfuls of Mikhailovsky Square’)9; the Tenishev School10; the young revolutionaries going into the revolution like Nikolai Rostov joining the Hussars; the Sinani family11; Sergei Ivanovich the ‘literalman’, teacher of Revolution12. It is difficult to give an idea of these chapters,

Mandel′shtam is paraphrasing a famous lyric by Blok that begins: ‘Those who were born in obscure years/do not remember their path./We, the children of Russia’s fearful years/are incapable of forgetting anything’.

6 A town about 30 km south of Petersburg, site of a magnificent imperial palace and its park, with a railway station and adjacent entertainment area. Mandel′shtam’s family lived there from 1892 to 1897.

7 Gofman (1876-1957) was a Polish pianist; Kubelik (1880-1940) a Czech violinist; their concerts were extremely popular.

8 The Khlysts were an underground religious sect who practised trance-like dancing (radenie).

9 The square in central Petersburg next to the prestigious Mikhailovsky Theatre.

10 A famous Petersburg private secondary school, attended besides Mandel′shtam by Vladimir Nabokov.

11 The family of Mandel′shtam’s school friend Boris Sinani (1889-1910), headed by the famous psychiatrist B.N. Sinani (1850-1922?); they supported the Social Revolutionary Party.

12 ‘For me, Sergei Ivanych embodied the year 1905. There were many of them, tutors of revolution. One of my friends, an arrogant man, used to say, not without foundation, ‘There are book-people and there are newspaper-people’. Poor Sergei Ivanych would not have fitted 5

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content-saturated as they are to an astonishing degree, where every step of the way one’s breath is taken away by the boldness, the profundity, and the faithfulness of the historical intuition.

Mandel′shtam’s style too is remarkable. As Pushkin demanded, his prose lives by thought alone. And what our ‘stupid, God forgive me’ novelists cannot attain, Mandel′shtam attains simply through the energy of his thought.

His extremely figurative, sometimes even unexpected manner of expression – not entirely free from tongue-tie, but almost – is free from calculation, deliberate refinement, and redundancy. Only in the Crimean chapters, which are clearly poorer in thought, is there wilful and unnecessary ornamentation. I will close with a short quotation ‘by way of example’, one that is not by any means exceptional in its density, concerning the Baltic region after the pacification of 1905: ‘That year in Segevold13 on the Courland river Aa it was bright autumn with cobwebs on the barley fields. They had just burned out the barons, and a savage silence following pacification rose up from the scorched brick service buildings. Sometimes, not often, a two-wheel cart would clatter past along the firm German road with a steward and his bodyguard, and the uncouth Latvian would doff his cap. Within its brickred, cave-riddled layered banks like a German Undine flowed the romantic stream, and the towns were mired up to their ears in greenery. The inhabitants retain a dim memory of Konevskoi14, who had drowned in this stream not long before’.

Prince D.Sviatopolk-Mirskii

I. Babel′, Stories, Moscow-Leningrad, State Publishing House, 1925.

(10,000 copies). Price 70 kopeks ‘I.E. Babel′, Rasskazy’, Sovremennye zapiski, xxvi, 1925, pp. 485-488 Of all the ‘Soviet best-sellers’ who have become known since 1922, Babel′, it would seem, is the most well-known, and perhaps the only one who is genuinely and without exaggeration popular; in particular, he is perhaps the only one who is read by all Russia ‘for pleasure’, and not only in order to

such a division at all, for him a third category would have had to be created, of cribsheetpeople’. (From The Noise of Time).

13 The town of Sigulda, in Latvia; Mandel′shtam uses its German name.

14 The early Symbolist poet and critic Ivan Ivanovich Konevskoi (1877-1901), translator of Swinburne, Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, and others. He did indeed drown in the Aa (now the Gauia) while bathing in the summer of 1901.

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keep track of what is being written ‘on the other shore’. One has to say that this attitude is entirely justified; Babel′ really is the only fully-formed master among the ‘fellow-travellers’15, the only one who writes for the reader and simultaneously ‘for himself’. Other masters, such as Pasternak, think least of all about the reader, but instead only about the creative tasks at hand. Other popular writers, such as Seifullina16, think least of all about their creative duty and write only so as to give the com-public what it wants.

One of the reasons why in late 1923 Babel′ suddenly appeared in the full armament of his mastery, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, is that he had long been working in the shadows and in silence. After his first debut, back in 1916, in Gorky’s Chronicle [Letopis′], he published nothing for seven years, meanwhile working with might and main, as Viktor Shklovsky relates in the 1923 Lef17. Since then several stories have been published in various Soviet journals.

Babel′’s admirers waited a long time for his best ‘stories’ to come out as a separate book. There were rumours that the Soviet censorship was standing in its way. I do not know whether this explains the comparatively late appearance of this book, but I fully understand the suspicious attitude towards Babel′’s ideology on the part of the Soviet authorities. Whatever may be the case, the book has been published, and by the State Publishing House; evidently the ‘liberals’ such as Voronsky18 have had the upper hand over the hard-liners from MAPP and VAPP19.

As far as the Soviet rulers are concerned, Babel′’s ‘ideology’, of course, really is suspicious. It is an ideology sooner of the Makhno kind20, in the best case of the ‘Budenny’ kind 21, and it ‘does not’, of course, ‘correspond to 15 A term used in early Soviet criticism for a writer who was not a Party member, but whose sympathies lay with the Soviet regime.

16 Lidiya Seifullina (1889-1954), a popular Soviet prose writer, whom Mirsky several times denigrated in print as pandering to vulgar taste (see inter alia Iswolsky, letter 3 below).

17 Lef, the journal of the Moscow-based ‘Left Front of the Arts’ group, 1922-8; the first stories from Babel’s Red Cavalry were published here in 1923, endorsed by the eminent theorist and critic Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984).

18 Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky (1884-1937), one of the most prominent literary critics and functionaries of the 1920s, was a Party member but opposed to emerging Stalinism.

19 Respectively, the Moscow Association of Proletarian Writers, and the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, left-wing predecessors of the Union of Soviet Writers.

20 Nestor Makhno (1888-1934), the revolutionary anarchist, who led an army in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. 21 Semen Budenny (1883-1973), the outstanding Soviet cavalry commander of the Civil War.

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the views of the highest reaches of government’. I have in mind, of course, his artistic ideology, i.e. what results from the impact of his stories on the reader’s psyche. In private life and at work, he is perhaps a model Party man, but in his stories he is the most legitimate successor to the young Gorky, and his Red fighting men and Odessa raiders are the direct descendants of Chelkash, Shakro and Mal′va22, except in a new situation, both in life and in literature. It is in this dependence on the young Gorky that Babel′’s main literary distinctiveness lies; all the other prose writers of today in one way or another have gone through Symbolist or post-Symbolist influences, and only Babel′ continues the pre-Symbolist tradition. But the thirty years separating Chelkash from Red Cavalry could not count for nothing, and it is interesting to determine how this difference in time is reflected in the difference in devices and approaches.

The main difference between Babel′ and the young Gorky is greater compression. In Babel′ there are no passages that are empty from the artistic point of view; every phrase, every word plays its part in the overall artistic effect. This is something Gorky never achieved, nor indeed tried for. The other difference between Babel′ and Gorky is characteristic of our time as a whole: it is much more ‘formal’ and much less psychological. In Gorky (as in all Russian literature of the realist epoch) it is extra-aesthetic, extraliterary interests that dominate. Both for Gorky and his readers the living Shakro was more interesting than Shakro represented; the psychology of the human ‘model’ is more interesting than the aesthetic result. The ‘ideology’ of Chelkash had an autonomous existence outside the story Chelkash, and Gorky’s entire ideology had a ‘social’ content independent of the artistic forms it assumed. Art was not sufficient unto itself. With Babel′ it’s the other way round. The impression his stories make is exclusively literary, aesthetic. For him ideology is a constructive device. His heroes do not give rise to an interest in live raiders and Red Cavalrymen, they are artistically self-enclosed, independent of the demands of life, they are complete ‘art objects’. Only people who have read very little can take Babel′’s ideology seriously, or see in it a politically significant phenomenon. His art is absolutely ‘disinterested’. Is this an advantage or a shortcoming? It is neither, a ‘property’ and no more. Many of the greatest literary creations also have a ‘property’, the stories of Pushkin, for example. But more often this property is rare, and it can be dangerous. The actual process of creation has to be very intensive for literature of this kind not to degenerate into ‘elegant trifles’

22

Heroes of stories by Gorky.

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such as Mérimée’s stories or Gautier’s poetry. There can be no doubt that this formalism is characteristic of our time. But Babel′ does not emphasise his formalism, and his public success is explicable mainly in terms of his choosing themes that are interesting in themselves – the adventures of noble ‘knights of the Moldavanka’23 and the exploits of the Revolution’s fighting men as they ‘cut down the base Polish gentry’.

Babel′’s literary physiognomy is very complex. Its most obvious merit is the astonishing mastery of verbal imitation. In this respect he has long since left Zoshchenko standing. He speaks to the same degree of perfection both the Russian-Jewish slang of Odessa and the language of the Kuban Cossack who has been thoroughly propagandized. What is most surprising (especially for those who know this language) is the way Babel′ can achieve the maximum effect without for a moment forgetting his sense of proportion, never exaggerating, and never making up a word or two on his own behalf, the way Leskov used to.

Babel′’s other manifest merit is the art of the pointed and usually tragic anecdote. Here he is at his most original. The stories that have this pointedness are the most successful ones. Such are The King, The Letter, and especially Salt. The stories that lack this are significantly weaker, and several of them (especially The Sin of Jesus) evoke simple incomprehension with their motiveless piling up of vileness. With all his contemporaries Babel′ shares a certain proclivity for ‘filth’.

The ‘tone’ of the stories is also complex. In its makeup is a certain enchantment with ‘the heroes’ and contempt for ‘myself’, a bespectacled thinking man who because of his weak nerves is incapable of shooting a comrade who is in agony; and an overall subtle irony, which is never absent; and, on the other hand, an exceedingly odd ‘poeticality’ which could almost have been taken from Verbitskaia 24 or the modernists of 1900; and (and this is the most unexpected and perhaps the most valuable thing in Babel′) a kind of genuine epic quality. This genuine poetry sometimes appears in a fairly unexpected way in the letters of the Kuban ‘fighting men’, as for example in this astonishing passage from Salt: The train struck its third bell and moved off. And the glorious night spread out like a tent. In this tent there were stars like oil lamps. And the fighting The Moldavanka is a district of Odessa, and the principal setting for Babel′’s early stories.

24 Anastasiia Alekseevna Verbitskaia (1861-1928), author of ‘women’s fiction’ phenomenally popular in pre-revolutionary Russia, and since the 1990s increasingly acclaimed as a major author, especially for the novel The Keys to Happiness (1909-13).

23

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men recalled the Kuban night and the green Kuban star. And their choral song took flight like a bird. And the wheels clacked and clacked…

Salt is thick and full-bodied, like verse. You could learn it by heart. How many of the prose writers of our time can you even read more than once?

The variety of Babel′’s harmony is its principal attraction. So many nuances go to make it up, and every nuance is so important in the overall chord that it is impossible to retell a Babel′’ short story: everything in it is important. Perhaps only Salt achieves this highest intensity. But The Letter (the most cruel of the stories) and The King (from the Odessa series) almost achieve it. All three of these stories were published back in 1923. As far as I know, Babel′ has written nothing equal to them since. He is very dependent on a well-chosen subject and therefore may easily ‘write himself out’. But Babel′ is not a ‘novice of much promise’; he has already given us things of such calibre that we have to number him among the authentic masters.

Prince D.Sviatopolk-Mirskii

Poems, 1905-1925, by T.S. Eliot. London, Faber & Gwyer, 1925 D.S.M, ‘T.S. Eliot’, Versty, 2, 1927, pp. 263-265 The publication of a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot is a major event not only for English literature. He is without doubt incomparably the most important contemporary English poet, and may well be the greatest poet of post-war Europe. His influence on the fraternity of poets is already enormous, but his poetry has not yet been ‘noticed’ by the majority of critics.

Eliot is better known to them as a critic and theorist of the arts and as the editor of that splendid periodical, The New Criterion. For all its significance, this aspect of his activity bears no comparison to his achievements as a poet.

As such he is not at all prolific; the present collection, which includes all the poetry of his since 1909 ‘which he wishes to preserve’ (as it says on the cover), consists of twenty-five shorter poems written up to 1920 (including four in French that are not very successful), the long poem The Waste Land (1922), and a single shorter poem written since then, The Hollow Men (1925).

Since the book came out, ‘Fragment from a Prologue’ has appeared in The New Criterion – a verse drama that has given rise to intense interest25.

See Mirsky, letter 1 above.

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Most critics accuse Eliot of obscurity and incomprehensibility, and it has to be acknowledged that this accusation completely corresponds to reality.

The obscurity of his poetry arises in the first instance from the extreme complexity and novelty of the experience it expresses; secondly, from the extreme density of expression, which scorns every sort of ‘bridge’ and compels the reader to become an ‘author’s apprentice’; and thirdly, from the very essence of his poetic method. That wisest of critics, I.A. Richards, the best interpreter of Eliot, has called this method ‘the music of ideas’26. Eliot is a Symbolist, and his symbols are arranged according to specific internal laws, which are sooner associative than logical. But this association is not ‘by likeness’ and not ‘by contiguity’ but ‘by meaning’. These symbols are constantly repeated in various combinations, alternating like musical themes. They are taken from the most diverse spheres (philosophy, anthropology, London street life). A large part is played by quotations from poets, philosophers, and religious writers, whom the poet needs for his enormous emotional and associative matter, and which are as it were contractions of the lengthy strides of his poetic thought. These quotations and allusions in particular intimidate the reader who is unprepared. Eliot’s ‘difficulty’, though, is particularly great only in The Waste Land. Several of the early poems (especially the astonishing satirical series that includes ‘Sweeney Erect’ and ‘The Hippopotamus’) and the last item, The Hollow Men, are much more simple and straightforward; and although it is impossible to call them ‘comprehensible’ in the same sense as ‘On the Use of Glass’27 and ‘L’Art Poétique’, their ‘infectiousness’ is indubitable and direct. Everywhere, in every direction, Eliot is an incomparable master of words and rhythm in terms of his verbal power, just as in terms of the significance of his content as well he is numbered among the greatest, and it does not seem odd when Lytton Strachey mentions his name alongside that of Shakespeare.

Notwithstanding his ‘incomprehensibility’, Eliot is more a poet of the general than the particular. He is a social, historiosophical poet, a poet of Europe and mankind. He may turn out to be the most central and responsible of all those who give expression to contemporary Europe. His theme is the tragedy of European culture, made ‘waste’ and ‘hollow’ after the catastrophe of a great war, a tragedy of impending death and impotence – and ‘If it were desired to label in three words the most characteristic feature of Mr. Eliot’s technique, this might be done by calling his poetry a ‘music of ideas’’; I.A. Richards, ‘The Poetry of T.S. Eliot’, The Living Age, 10 April 1926, [pp. 112-115], p. 114.

27 Mirsky refers to ‘Pis′mo o pol′ze stekla’ (1752), the treatise in verse by the great Russian poet and scientist Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765).

26

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a tragedy of values in a middle-class world that has lost its meaning. In this profound ‘living through’ the European and the human in the personal, Eliot is a poet of authentically prophetic quality, which underlines once again the prophetic nature of the part that is most valuable in contemporary poetry. ‘The Hollow Men’, which closes the book, where all his themes come together to form a single knot, a chord that is at once simple and full (but one that is profoundly discordant), may be seen as one of the peaks of contemporary European poetry, the most astonishing creation of English poetry for several generations past.

D.S. Mirskii

HELEN ISWOLSKY: COMMERCE AND BEYOND

Preface

The author of the letters to Marguerite Caetani published below eventually set down two book-length accounts of her life – in English, the third language in which she made her mark as a writer1. Consequently, much more first-person non-fictional information is available about her than about most other literary Russians of her generation. These eloquent autobiographies, confidently charting the attainment of a faith-based world view and a personal life conducted in accordance with that view, have apparently discouraged approaches using a more detached standpoint.

Elena Aleksandrovna Izvol′skaia, to use the original form of her name, came from a family situated within the uppermost echelons of the professional service class of the Russian Empire when they were at the summit of their wealth and status. Since she was a woman, she would not have been expected to train for a professional career, let alone earn her own living; instead, she would have inherited a duty to make a suitable marriage and raise a family. In her case this was not to be. She had just become an adult when political developments in her own country swept away the social structures she had grown up among and would have inherited. She was destined to spend the remaining two thirds of her life in emigration, supporting herself, serving rather than being served.

Elena was born on her maternal grandmother’s estate in Bavaria on 12 July 1896. Her education was in the hands of a cosmopolitan series of private tutors, as was normal for a person of her background; the process culminated with her being presented at Court as a debutante in 1914, a member of the last ever such cohort. Her father was the internationally prominent diplomat and statesman Aleksandr Petrovich Izvol′skii (1856-1919), who served in Rome, in Copenhagen, and eventually in Japan. In 1906 he was appointed 1 Helen Iswolsky, Light before Dusk: A Russian Catholic in France, 1923-1941, New YorkToronto, Longmans, Green & Co, 1942; Helene [sic] Iswolsky, No Time to Grieve…: An Autobiographical Journey, Philadelphia, The Winchell Company, 1985.

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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Foreign Minister, and occupied this office until 1910, a period of particular international tension; this was the only continuous period when the family lived in Russia. He then moved to the key post of Ambassador to France, and he was the last person to act in this capacity before the revolutions of 1917. His wife, Elena’s mother, was Margarita Karlovna, née Countess Toll (18??-1942), a Danish aristocrat like two contemporary empresses, the sisters Maria Fedorovna of Russia and Alexandra of Great Britain; her father was the head of the Russian Legation in Copenhagen. She moved in Court circles in St Petersburg. Her command of Russian was rudimentary; she normally communicated with her daughter in French.

One small passage may exemplify the vividly observed retrospective portrayal Elena Izvol′skaia offers of the kind of material world she grew up in, and what happened to it: Cartier, of course, had a display of tempting jewelry which made our Fabergé settings look hopelessly passé. Only court circles patronized him. Who would have guessed that some thirty years later, the least of Fabergé’s trinkets would have become collectors’ items? Father never cared for them, but still had a few left after the Revolution. We could sell them at a good price when our finances ran low. Such are life’s little ironies2.

Hélène Iswolsky, as the ambassador’s daughter soon became known to the non-Russian reading public, spent the years 1914-41 in France. During World War I she worked as a nurse at the Russian Hospital near Paris, which was organised and run by her mother. She started studying law at the University of Paris, then in 1918 she took an external baccalauréat at the Sorbonne. Immediately afterwards she set out on a dedicated writing career that lasted intensively and uninterruptedly for over fifty years3. Before World

No Time to Grieve…, pp. 89-90. Iswolsky hints in No Time to Grieve… that her father was deeply in debt when he died, and that her mother’s inherited income went largely on supporting other refugee relatives. Neither of the autobiographies reveals any specific information concerning Iswolsky’s earnings from writing. Whatever may have been the case, even if residence in central Paris was beyond the reach of Elena and her mother after 1919, there always seems to have been enough money for a live-in cook and country retreats in the summer.

3 There appears to be no complete integrated bibliography of Iswolsky’s publications; the deficiency is especially marked with regard to her writings in Russian. For the writings in French, see the meticulously detailed Leonid Livak, Russian Emigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Interwar France. A Bibliographical Essay, Montreal-Kingston-LondonIthaca, McGill-Queens University Press, 2010, pp. 160-165, which even includes reviews of Iswolsky’s works in the French press. For the writings in English after 1941, see ‘A Selected Bibliography of the Writings of Helen Iswolsky’, compiled and edited by Thomas E. Bird, 2

preface

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War II, she published more in French than in Russian, producing a stream of books, essays and reviews. During this period her main significance was as an intermediary between the Russian and French cultural spheres, providing accounts of one in the language of the other4. French preceded Russian; Iswolsky’s access to the Parisian literary and artistic elite was facilitated by the contacts she made through her father’s professional activities.

The name of the most important of them, Prince Argutinskii-Dolgorukii, is planted here in the first letter, and the connection would hardly have gone unnoticed by Marguerite Caetani. In her second autobiography, Iswolsky identifies her father’s friend Joseph Reinach as a key facilitator5. In neither of her autobiographies, though, does she mention Raymond Recouly, whose name also occurs in the first of the letters to Caetani, though he too was manifestly a vital and enduring contact.

One of Iswolsky’s initial contributions to the Russian émigré periodical press, perhaps indeed her debut in this sphere, was an account of Marguerite Caetani’s Commerce, almost certainly the earliest response to the journal to have been published in Russian6. This review, dealing with the first four issues, is appended below, in the original Russian and in translation, in part to provide an example of Iswolsky’s published writing from about the same time as the three letters to Marguerite Caetani. It has to be admitted that at this early stage, Iswolsky’s manner is somewhat jejune. What she has to say is

in The Third Hour: In Memory of Helen Iswolsky, New York, The Third Hour Foundation, 1975, pp. 133-142. Maria Pia Pagani, ‘Elena Aleksandrovna Izvol′skaja’, in Russi in Italia, accessible at http://www.russinitalia.it/dettaglio.php?id=802 (accessed 22 September 2014), provides some otherwise obscure information. An effort has been made in the notes below to prioritise publications concerned with Russian literature. An asterisk preceding the reference indicates that the item is absent from the listings just mentioned.

4 A pioneering contextualised general discussion of Iswolsky’s literary life and work was the brief passage by Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour, ‘Hélène Iswolsky (Elena Aleksandrovna Izvol′skaia)’, in her Alien Tongues. Bilingual Russian Writers of the “First” Emigration, Ithaca and London, Cornell UP, 1989, pp. 152-153. Very valuable on Iswolsky’s relations with French thinkers is Catherine Baird, ‘The “Third Way”: Russia’s Religious Philosophers in the West, 1917-1996’, Ph.D. Thesis, McGill University, 1997, on Iswolsky see especially pp.

319-322, 351-366, 391-396, 476-481, 486. In Leonid Livak, How It Was Done in Paris: Russian Émigré Literature and French Modernism, Madison, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003, Iswolsky unavoidably makes a marginal appearance. In his subsequent work Livak has provided an exceptionally well documented account of Iswolsky’s contribution to Franco-Russian cultural relations. See his Russian Emigrés…, per index.

5 No Time to Grieve…, pp. 122-123.

6 *Elena Izvol′skaia, ‘Commerce’, Zveno, 123, 8 June 1925, p. 2, 3. See Helen Iswolsky, ‘On Commerce’, below, pp. 101-103.

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by no means without interest, though. For example, as her concluding point of reference she singles out for extended quotation a passage from Valéry’s ‘Lettre de Madame Emilie Teste’ which would be guaranteed to raise the hackles of anyone at all sensitive to gender issues, but she then leaves the text to speak for itself rather than stating her own attitude to it. The reader in search of an understanding of Helen Iswolsky as a person craves even the most modest indication of where she might have stood on this issue, especially in view of the commitment to dutiful and devout female service to which her subsequent life and writings bear witness. In the case of ‘Teste’, though, the service is to a man; in the case of Iswolsky, it was to a cause7.

Iswolsky’s first contribution to Commerce itself was a set of translations into French, of two poems by Pasternak and one by Mandel′shtam, which appeared in the sixth issue of Commerce8. This was a pioneering publication; the leading expert on Pasternak’s life and work believes it to have marked Pasternak’s debut as a poet in languages other than Russian9. The same may well be true in the case of Mandel′shtam. Boris Pasternak had left Russia for Germany after the revolution, and then gone back in 1923.

His reputation had been established with the publication, simultaneously in Berlin and Petrograd, of Sestra moia zhizn′ (My Sister Life) in 1922, the same year and places of publication, and with the same effect, as Mandel′shtam’s collection Tristia. The first of the poems translated by Iswolsky comes from Sestra, as is acknowledged at the foot of the translation (‘Poème extrait du recueil intitulé «Ma Sœur la Vie»’). The source of the other texts is more remarkable: Pasternak’s ‘Otplyt′e’ and Mandel′shtam’s ‘1 ianvaria 1924’ first appeared in the same issue of a periodical published in Petrograd in 1924, under the aegis of Maksim Gorky and an editorial board of younger writers committed, as was that of Commerce in a very much less fraught environment, to literary rather than political values10. This was certainly the source

7 D.S. Mirsky also draws attention to what he calls this ‘astonishing’ work in his article on Commerce; see Introduction to Mirsky letters above. He makes no further elaboration of the reasons for his opinion.

8 Boris Pasternak, ‘Nuit accamblante’, ‘Départ’, Ossipe Mandelstam, ‘1-er janvier 1924’, Commerce VI, Hiver 1925, pp. 187-192, 193-199 resp. The Russian originals are ‘Душная ночь’ and ‘Отплытье’, and ‘1 января 1924’ respectively.

9 Lazar’ Fleishman, ‘Iz Pasternakovskoi perepiski’, Slavica Hierosolymitana, vols. 5-6, 1981, [pp. 535-541], pp. 539-540.

10 Russkii sovremennik, 2, Leningrad-Moscow, 1924, p. 7, 8 (Pasternak, ‘Отплытье’), pp. 97-100 (Mandel′shtam). The title page states: ‘Published with the closest participation of M. Gorky, Evg. Zamiatin, A.N. Tikhonov, K. Chukovsky, Abr. Efros’. Work by writers

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of Iswolsky’s texts for the two poems concerned; there was no other source for them available at the time.

These texts belong to the most innovatory Russian poetry of the day, and with their densely metaphorical, allusive language they would present a formidable challenge to any translator at any time, let alone the relative novice that Iswolsky was when she tackled them11. In her first autobiography, written less than twenty years after the events concerned but treating them only as an interlude, even a diversion, in her ‘journey’, Iswolsky gives only the briefest account of her contribution to Commerce; the key sentence is ‘I contributed a number of translations of Russian modern poets, and had the rare opportunity of meeting most of France’s famous writers at the Bassiano home’12.

In Iswolsky’s second autobiography the account of her relations with Commerce and its ambience is much more extensive and detailed13. At one stage in the early 1920s Iswolsky roomed in Paris with a Belgian woman called Marguerite Quersaint. She was a friend of Rainer Maria Rilke, and during one of his visits, speaking Russian, Iswolsky discussed Russian poetry with him. During his time in Russia, Rilke had known Leonid Pasternak, the eminent painter, father of Boris, ‘whose work had just appeared. At that time I was, myself, interested in this poetry and discussed it with our guest’.

Substantial supporting evidence for Iswolsky’s statement about her interest in current Russian poetry is to be found in her earliest essays in the French periodical press, but Pasternak is absent from them14. In her second autobiography Iswolsky continues, again without mentioning any specific dates: resident outside Russia (Vladimir Veidle, Vladislav Khodasevich) is included alongside work by those resident inside.

11 She had written some poetry in her youth, during her first serious love affair, with a man she only identifies as ‘Dimitri’. He has many points in common with D.S. Mirsky, but, Iswolsky tells us, he was killed at the catastrophic battle of Tannenberg (No Time to Grieve…, pp. 56-59). ‘He remains for me the first man I loved, and lost, and the symbol of a society that planned for a great future, and was doomed’. Mirsky was present at Tannenberg, and was one of the few Russian officers who survived.

12 Light before Dusk, p. 43. The writers Iswolsky mentions meeting in this context are, in the order in which they appear: Claudel, Valéry, ‘the surrealist poets’, Larbaud, Fargue, the Baruzzi brothers, Mirsky, Paulhan, Colette, MacLeish, Rilke; the musicians and artists are Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ravel, Poulenc, Auric, Milhaud, Derain, de Segonzac, Picasso, Dufy (p. 44).

13 No Time to Grieve…, pp. 165-170.

14 Cf *Helene Iswolsky, ‘Bolshevist Poet-Mystics’, The Living Age, June 11, 1921, pp.

638-644, accessible at http://www.unz.org/Pub/LivingAge-1921jun11-00638 (accessed 22 September 2014), translated from ‘La littérature mystique au pays du bolchevisme’, La Revue

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During those years I had kept up my interest in Soviet literature, which I followed as closely as possible. We received but little material from the U.S.S.R., but some of it was exciting. There were these poems of Boris Pasternak, hailed by expert Russian literary critics. Another poet whose work was of great classic beauty was Ossip Mandelstam. […] I tried my hand at translating some of these poems into French.

If I succeeded, I consider this as something as a tour de force which I could never repeat again. It required all the enthusiasm and also the boldness of youth15.

This account exhibits suspicious anachronism, not helped by the floating ‘During those years’. The expression ‘Soviet literature’ was not commonly used until much later. Chronology becomes even more suspect when Iswolsky continues: ‘In the fall of 1926, my contribution in this field was requested by the editors of a new literary review which bore the rather ambiguous name of Commerce’. As we have seen, Iswolsky’s translations from Pasternak and Mandel′shtam in fact appeared in the Winter, 1925 issue of the review. Her account continues with vignettes of the editors of Commerce, and then she gives a concise description of Marguerite Caetani’s background and entourage, among whom, she says, there was little interest in current Russian literature.

One man, however, was fully aware of what was happening on the Soviet literary front. He was Professor Dimitrii Sviatopolk-Mirsky of the University of London, who had been my former partner at the debutante balls in Petersburg. […] He often came to Paris and was Marguerite Bassiano’s adviser for Russian literature.

Mirsky saw my translations of a poem by Boris Pasternak and of another by Ossip

de France, vol. 1, no. 3, April 15 1921, pp. 637-650. The English version of this essay contains impressive translations from Blok, Esenin, Bely, and Kliuev, some of them metrical and rhymed, by whom is unstated. It reflects the situation of Russian poetry immediately before the impact made by the publications by Pasternak, Mandel′shtam, and Tsvetaeva in 1922.

In 1920 or 1921 Iswolsky also translated some poems by Esenin into French and states that ‘they were later published in an anthology […] edited by Yvan Goll’ (No Time to Grieve…, pp. 140-141). This is Sergei Essénine, ‘Russie et Inonie (fragment)’, *Les Cinq Continents.

Anthologie mondiale de poésie contemporaine, par Ivan Goll, Paris, La Renaissance du Livre, 1922, pp. 202-205; it is followed by Iswolsky’s translation of A[ndrei] Bjély, ‘Le Christ est ressuscité (fragment)’, pp. 207-213. See also Helene Isvolsky, ‘La Crise bolcheviste et la poésie russe’, Revue de France, vol. 2, no. 6, 15 March 1924, pp. 417-424 (which contains translations from Blok, Voloshin, Akhmatova, Gumilev, Viacheslav Ivanov, Sologub, and Kuzmin) and ibid., vol. 3, no. 9, 1 May 1924, pp. 419-428 (Mayakovsky, Esenin, Tsvetaeva, Mandel′shtam).

15 Iswolsky, No Time to Grieve…, p. 165. Elsewhere, Iswolsky states that she was able to keep up with current publications from Russia by visiting the bookshop founded by Jacob Povolotsky, who had worked as a male nurse in the Russian hospital during World War I (ibid., p. 141).

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Mandelstam. He approved them, though he was a severe, and often inexorable, critic. Princess Bassiano was looking for Russian material, and Mirsky recommended me. My translation was accepted and published in one of her 1925 issues. The Princess paid for my contribution generously. Best of all, she invited me to be a regular guest at the Sunday luncheons in the Bassiano residence at Versailles’16.

Here, the date is correct, raising the question of what Iswolsky has in mind with her earlier reference to the year 1926. It goes without saying that we have no record of what might have passed in conversation between the two women at Caetani’s Sunday gatherings; the three letters that survive probably represent at best a fragment of what information and opinion was exchanged. According to the passage just cited, then, Iswolsky translated the poems and showed them to Mirsky, and the initiative for submitting them to Commerce was his.

About the quality of these translations, the few opinions that have been recorded are varied. Iswolsky says that Pasternak found out about her work in the following way: ‘Shortly before his death in Switzerland in March 1926, Rilke wrote to his friend, the painter Leonid Pasternak, father of Boris Pasternak, who lived in Munich at that time: «The very fine Paris revue Commerce, edited by the great poet Paul Valéry, has published very impressive poems by Boris in a French translation by Helene Isvolsky, whom I have also seen in Paris»’17. It is likely, then, that when Pasternak expressed his opinion of the translations, he was prompted by Rilke. How he got hold of Commerce with his work is a mystery. Sending a copy of the issue of Russkii sovremennik with one of the originals to Marina Tsvetaeva in Prague, he made a private note about Iswolsky’s translation – positive, but with a particular reservation. ‘If you know Izvol′skaia, convey my gratitude to her. In places it’s very good, in general everything’s fine. But «Разбегаясь со стенаньем» seems to have been made very complicated in translation: lancée sur la voie de gémissement’18. The line Pasternak comments on here is the second in the second stanza of ‘Otplyt′e’. Iswolsky’s translation of the first two stanzas is given below vis-à-vis the original Russian:

Ibid., p. 166.

Ibid., p. 167. No source is given for this letter by Rilke.

18 Undated inscription on a copy of Russkii sovremennik dispatched to Tsvetaeva in late 1925 or early 1926. ‘Если знаешь Извольскую, передай ей мою благодарность. Местами 16 17

очень хорошо, вообще все прекрасно. Но «Разбегаясь со стенаньем» кажется очень усложнено в передаче: lancée sur la voie de gemissement’ (недатированная надпись на журнале «Русский современник», отправленном Цветаевой вместе с одним из писем в конце 1925 – начале 1926 г.).

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ОТПЛЫТЬЕ

DÉPART

Слышен лепет соли каплющей,

Murmure du sel qui s’égoutte,

Гул колес едва показан.

Тихо взявши гавань за плечи, Мы отходим за пакгаузы.

Плеск, и плеск, и плеск без отзыва… Разбегаясь со стенаньем,

Вспыхивает бледнорозовая Моря ширь берестяная19.

Bruit de roues à peine marqué, Tournant doucement le dos au port Nous dépassons les entrepôts.

Jaillissement, jaillissement, jaillissement sans échos.

Lancée sur la voie de gémissement La mer pâle et rose flamboie Comme l’écorce des bouleaux.

The difficulties of translation here are formidable. To begin with verse form, the perpetual bugbear of translators of Russian syllabo-tonic poetry.

This poem, very unusually for a short lyric, is polymetric; it changes metre half way through, from binary to ternary. The first four stanzas are composed in trochaic tetrameter in quatrains with alternating rhyme. This is the most common stanza pattern in all of Russian lyric poetry irrespective of line type, but Pasternak gives it a tweak that makes it extraordinary. Instead of the alternating feminine and masculine endings (AbAb) that were already hackneyed in Pushkin’s time, he uses alternating dactylic and feminine endings (A′BA′B). Longer clausulae bring with them diminished phonetic exactitude, and these particular rhymes are so flagrantly inexact that even a couple of years earlier they would not have been considered admissible in professionally composed poetry. They depend on consonants: káPLiushCHei/zá PLeCHi; bez ótZyVa/blednoróZoVaia. And there is persistent enrichment to the left of the rhyme vowel: PoKázan/PaKgáuzy; STeNán′em/bereSTiaNáia.

How a translator into French, where strict-form verse was already becoming non-viable, and rhyme being used less and less in serious poetry, could set about conveying the impact of these features, is well nigh unimaginable.

19 Translating as literally as possible: ‘Setting Sail. Audible lisp of salt, dripping,/Roar of wheels barely indicated./Having quietly gripped the harbour by the shoulders,/We’re moving out beyond the warehouses.//Splash, and splash, and splash with no response…/Groaning as it does its run-up, it’s bursting into flame, the pale pink/Broad birchbark expanse of the sea’.//).

Incidentally, nearly half a century later Iswolsky wrote to the New York Review of Books on the subject of contracted nominal forms of the type that occurs in the title of Pasternak’s poem: ‘… Mr. Michael J. Valenti [Letter, May 20] seems unaware that certain Russian words ending in nie have a shorter form ‘e, preserving the meaning, though sometimes, but not

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Iswolsky makes no attempt to find an equivalent for the form of the original: she uses flaccid unrhymed free verse, and nothing remains of the rich sound texture of Pasternak’s Russian. The use of the polysyllabic abstract noun jaillissement for the Russian monosyllabic and onomatopoeic plesk, particularly with the retention of the triple repetition, is indisputably misjudged. In semantic terms, there is wholesale simplification. The Pasternak-signature metaphor of the ship ‘taking the harbour by the shoulders’ is filtered out. The vitally expansive concept shir′ in line 8 is dropped.

In the light of all this, Pasternak’s finding one line ‘too complicated’ seems if anything rather arbitrary. As we shall see in due course, however, Pasternak also wrote to Tsvetaeva more positively about this translation, and Tsvetaeva did indeed convey Pasternak’s gratitude to Iswolsky.

The poem by Mandel′shtam that Iswolsky translated for Commerce is both considerably longer and considerably more complex, with its obsessively repeated and recontextualized images, than either of the two by Pasternak. Formally, it is less experimental; it uses iambic lines of inconsistently varying length, in eight-line stanzas consisting of two quatrains with conventional alternating rhyme AbAb, almost all exact. To take the passage in the poem that aroused the indignation of the more belligerent Soviet critics of the time: А переулочки коптили керосинкой,

Et les ruelles, enfumées de pétrole

Глотали снег, малину, лед,

Avalent neige, framboise et glace,

Все шелушится им советской сонатинкой,

Pour elles tout évoque la sonatine soviétique

Двадцатый вспоминая год.

Et rappelle l’année dix-neuf cent vingt.

Ужели я предам позорному злословью–

Livrerai-je à la médisance effrontée

necessarily, having a different meaning. The long form Voskresenie and the short ending Voskresen’e both mean Resurrection, but the latter, of a more common usage, also means Sunday, for in the Russian-Orthodox tradition, which Mr. Valenti probably does not know, every Sunday is a commemoration of the Resurrection. As to the choice of the one or the other of the two forms, it is optional. Thus, for instance, Pushkin in his poem Ya pomnyu tchudnoye mgnovenye chose the short form which suited his syllabic verse, where a number of similar short forms occur, but you will also find in dictionaries the same words with long endings; these changes also happen in other Russian endings: Marya and Mar’a both, of course, mean Mary; the short ending is merely a more popular form’. (NYRB, 2 September 1971).

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Вновь пахнет яблоком мороз–

(De nouveau la gelée sent la pomme)

Присягу чудную четвертому сословью

Les serments magnifiques au quatrième état,

И клятвы крупные до слез?20

Et les promesses grosses jusqu’aux larmes?

Again, the translation ignores the metre and rhyme of the original, and tends towards the literal. The first four lines of this stanza present serious difficulty in terms of plain meaning. In terms of their allusiveness, later commentators have deployed considerable ingenuity in tracking down possible references to the immediate historical context, but there is no real consensus21. Nobody, for instance, has been able to explain satisfactorily what exactly is meant by the peculiar diminutive sonatinka in line 3. In terms of particular points of translation, the onomatopoeic shelushitsia is not conveyed, probably because of the obscurity a literal translation would produce; the force of predam is not really captured by ‘Livrerai-je’. Most tellingly, and perhaps giving away her remoteness from current Russian reality, Iswolsky loses the primus stove of the first line; this object has sometimes been held to epitomise the years of reeking, reduced domestic life in the immediately post-revolutionary years. The main problem in translating Mandel′shtam, though, resides not in the way individual words and phrases are rendered, but in securing the inter-relationships between the repetitions and near-repetitions in the Russian text, and in this respect the translation undoubtedly works well enough, if only because the nouns are translated on the whole literally, without any attempt being made to gloss them.

Following the translations from Pasternak and Mandel′shtam, Iswolsky made only one further appearance in Commerce, in issue VII (Printemps 1926), with her translation of part of Pushkin’s story Arap Petra Velikogo (The Negro of Peter the Great). This project involved some serious editorial intervention, as the first of the three letters below attests. Iswolsky then ran

20 ‘And the sidestreets smoked like a paraffin stove,/They swallowed snow, raspberries, ice,/Everything keeps being peeled away for them [?] like a Soviet sonatina,/As it recalls the year ’20./And will I really betray to shameful calumny–/Once more the frost smells of apples–/My wondrous oath to the fourth estate/and vows so huge they make me weep?’

21 See especially Sergei Stratanovsky, ‘Chto takoe “shchuchii sud”? O stikhotvorenii Mandel′shtama “1 ianvaria 1924g.”’, Zvezda, 12 (2008), pp. 181-199, which includes references to the relevant preceding literature, and particularly to studies by Omry Ronen and E.G. Etkind.

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into difficulties with another attempt at translating Pushkin, the target text this time being his long poem Mednyi vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman), and no publication ensued. Despite the manifest cordiality of Iswolsky’s letters to Marguerite Caetani, the working relationship between the two women lasted only a couple of years; the third and last letter to Caetani was written in the autumn of 1928.

As the second and third letters show, Iswolsky tried to interest Caetani in the work of a few contemporary Russian authors as possible material for Commerce, but there were no positive outcomes. In view of the reservations Iswolsky herself expresses about the works she mentions, this is hardly surprising. As an example of these authors, the case of Rozanov is especially notable.

His name was evidently raised by Caetani herself, in the communication to which Iswolsky is replying in her letter 3 below. Rozanov was certainly ‘in the air’ at the time. Caetani would certainly have been aware of the translations that were appearing in England, promoted primarily by S.S. Koteliansky.

Having previously approached Leonard and Virginia Woolf with a proposal to translate and publish Rozanov, in 1925 ‘Kot’ turned to T.S. Eliot with a view to the publication of The Apocalypse of Our Time in The Criterion. When turning it down, writing to Koteliansky on 23 July 1926, Eliot was formally polite: ‘I am returning herewith the Rosanov which does not seem to me quite suitable for The New Criterion…’22. Eliot’s informal opinion was harsh; writing to Ezra Pound on 31 December 1926, he states: ‘Have seen the Rosanov stuff in The Calendar and have seen more that Koteliansky showed me a year ago. I thought it was rubbish. All about suffering christs and that sort of thing’23.

The periodical publication to which Eliot refers is Edgell Rickword’s The Calendar of Modern Letters. In his discussion of its interest in non-English writing, Bernard Bergonzi observes: One of the odder reflections of these Russian interests was a certain preoccupation with the Dostoevskyan mystagogue Vasilii Rosanov, presumably under Koteliansky’s influence. The Calendar published his translations of extracts from Rosanov’s collection of aphorisms, Solitaria, and a long critical and biographical study of Rosanov. In 1927 [D.H.] Lawrence reviewed Solitaria in the Calendar; if Rosanov’s name is known today it is probably because of Lawrence’s review, later collected in Phoenix24.

The Letters of T.S. Eliot, vol. 3: 1926-27, ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, London, Faber & Faber, 2013, p. 215.

23 Ibid., p. 353.

24 Bernard Bergonzi, ‘The Calendar of Modern Letters’, Yearbook of English Studies, vol.

16, 1986, [pp. 150-163], p. 152. He refers to D.H. Lawrence, ‘On Dostoievsky and Rozanov’; 22

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Koteliansky soon produced a book based on these publications25. At about the same time, D.S. Mirsky had been championing Rozanov in various books and essays in English; and in 1927, the Russian text of The Apocalypse was republished as an appendix to the second issue of Mirsky’s annual Versty. With regard to Marguerite Caetani and Commerce, Mirsky’s positive opinion evidently vanquished Iswolsky’s negative opinion: two years after Iswolsky voted against, excerpts from The Apocalypse duly appeared 26.

There is no trace of this work in Mirsky’s letters to Caetani; once again we must assume that face-to-face discussion was all that was needed.

This signal reverse, coupled with the rejection of her Bronze Horseman, may perhaps have soured Iswolsky’s attitude towards Commerce. However, there were many other factors driving her in other directions. As we have seen, D.S. Mirsky emerged unambiguously as the principal Russian consultant for Caetani’s journal; and Iswolsky was launched on what became a busy and sustained journalistic and philanthropic career whose principal medium was French. For herself, Iswolsky states with laconic exaggeration: ‘For a while, Commerce brought out a few more of my contributions, but then the Bassiano’s [sic] went back to Italy and the magazine was discontinued’27.

see Russian Literature and Modern English Fiction. A Collection of Critical Essays, edited and with an Introduction by Donald Davie, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp. 99-103. One of the most percipient reviews of Mirsky’s History was published in The Calendar: Alec Brown, ‘Contemporary Russian Literature, 1881-1925, by D.S. Mirsky,’ The Calendar of Modern Literature, vol. 3, April 1926-January 1927, pp. 258-264.

25 Vasilii Rozanov, Solitaria. With an Abridged Account of the Author’s Life, by E. Gollerbach. Other Bibliographical Material and Matter from “The Apocalypse of Our Times”.

Translated by S.S. Koteliansky, London, Wishart, 1927. Mirsky’s review of this book is characteristic: ‘It is high time that the English reader should be introduced to one of the greatest Russian writers of the late 19th century. The book, which is well translated, has however failed as yet to convert the English to a belief in the greatness of Rozanov. Rather violent articles have even appeared in the weekly press decrying him as the worst of the «puny progeny of Dostoyevsky». English criticism seems to be still too obsessed by Dostoyevskianism to realise that nothing is less Dostoyevskian that the style, manner, or ideas of Rosanov. It is all the more gratifying to note that the Russian writer has been understood in a much more adequate way by so eminent an English writer as Mr. D.H. Lawrence (review of Solitaria in The Calendar, July, 1927)’. D.S.M., composite review, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 7, no. 20, 1929, pp. 457-458.

26 V. Rozanov, ‘L’Apocalypse de notre temps: fragments (traduits du russe par V. Pozner et B. de Schloezer)’, Commerce XX, Été 1929, pp. 151-213. Iswolsky later wrote a qualified but nevertheless very positive assessment of Rozanov’s significance; see Helen Iswolsky, ‘The Twilight Years of Russian Culture’, The Review of Politics, vol. 5, no. 3, July 1943, pp.

356-376, esp. pp. 361-364.

27 No Time to Grieve…, p. 170.

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At about the same time as her first translations for Commerce, Iswolsky published several reviews in Russian of contemporary French fiction. Two of them appeared in Versty. The first is a perfunctory account of two novels by Marcel Jouhandeau28. The second states a view of the current scene that foreshadows Iswolsky’s move away from literature and into what she saw as more serious matters: ‘In our time, when literature is too often based on form, on stylistic tricks, or on purely intellectual devices, Julien Green’s novels may be greeted as an exceptionally valuable and significant phenomenon’29. She also reviewed a novel by Jean Giraudoux for the leading Paris newspaper of the Russian emigration30. But as time went on she wrote increasingly for French periodicals on social and religious issues, eventually becoming a contributor to Emmanuel Mounier’s Esprit31.

Iswolsky’s first original book-length works were written in co-authorship.

With the prolific journalist and novelist Joseph Kessel she published Les Rois Aveugles in 1925, which was translated into English and published in London in 1926 as Blinded Kings; it was something of a succès de scandale because of the material it contains about the role played by Rasputin in the run-up to 191732. Then came two novels co-written with Anna Aleksandrovna Kashina-Evreinova, the wife of the famous theatre director: La jeunesse rouge d’Inna (1928), and Je veux concevoir (1930). Iswolsky went *Elena Izvol′skaia, “Les Pincegrain” – “Monsieur Godeau Intime”. Par Marcel Jouhandeau. Ed. de la Nouvelle Revue Française. 1924-1926’, Versty, 2, Paris, 1927, pp.

265-267.

29 *id., ‘“Mont-Cinère”. Adrienne Mesurat, par Gulien [sic] Green (Plon editeur)’, Versty, 3, Paris, 1928, pp. 160-163. ‘В наши дни, когда литература слишком часто строится на 28

форме, на стилистических фокусах, чисто интеллектуальных приемах, романы Жюльяна Грина могут быть встречены, как исключительно ценное и значительное явление’. Iswolsky was later to work with Green at the Voice of America in New York; see

No Time to Grieve…, pp. 246-247.

30 *id., ‘Sud i pravosudie: “Bella” Zhana Zhirodu’, Poslednie novosti, 1800, 25 February 1926, p. 3. As time went on she would write mainly on non-literary subjects concerning France for the Russian press; see, for example, *‘Frantsuzskaia molodezh′ i problemy sovremennosti’, Novyi grad, 12, 1937, pp. 122-131, discussing the significance of the thought of younger French writers and their groupings; they include L’Ordre Nouveau, Esprit, and Bergery’s Front Sociale and their journal La Flêche, concentrating particularly on their ideas concerning contemporary Russia and Stalinism, and advocating Personalism. Online see http://www.odinblago.ru/noviy_grad/12/8 (accessed 27 May 2013).

31 For a detailed listing of these publications, see Livak (note 3 above).

32 Kessel (1898-1979) was born to a Lithuanian father and Russian mother, and spent time in Russia as a child, moving with his family to France in 1908. His works include several items on Russian subjects. He is mentioned by Mirsky as a potential translator from Russian in his letter to Marguerite Caetani of 21 February 1928.

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on to write, as sole author, several substantial works of non-fiction: La vie de Bakounine (Paris, 1930), L’Homme 1936 en Russie soviétique (Paris, 1936), and Femmes soviétiques (Paris, 1937). All of them were translated into various European languages. Among other book-length publications, she also brought out in French a collection of documents relating to her father’s activities as a diplomat33.

In addition to all this, Iswolsky was intensely active during these years as a literary translator; besides the works discussed below in the context of the three letters to Caetani, she translated Goncharov’s Oblomov into French34.

There was a co-translated anthology which was subsequently reprinted several times35. Also into French she translated Aleksandr Blok’s officiallysponsored account of the last days of the old regime in Russia36.

Notwithstanding all this toil at the writing desk, the central concern in Iswolsky’s life seems soon to have become religion. In 1923, after a debilitating illness that seems from her account to have been as much psychological as physical, she moved away from the Russian Orthodoxy of her upbringing (though her mother was a Protestant) and became a Catholic of the Byzantine rite. As a result she began moving in French neo-Catholic intellectual circles. Later, she began attending Berdiaev’s renowned meetings37.

The oecumenical orientation of this famous gathering provided a keynote that was to continue with increasing intensity to the end of Iswolsky’s life and bring her into contact with most of the significant contemporary European thinkers of this persuasion, chief among them being Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier.

Aleksandr Petrovich Iswolsky, Au Service de la Russie. I: Correspondence diplomatique, 1906-1911. Recueillie par Hélène Iswolsky, Paris, Les Editeurs internationales, 2 vols., 1937, 1939.

34 For further details see Livak (note 3 above).

35 *De Pouchkine a Tolstoï. Contes et Nouvelles. Traductions de Hélène Iswolsky, Henri Mongault et Boris de Schloezer, Argenteuil-Paris, éditions de la Pléiade J. Schiffrin, 1930.

36 Les derniers jours du régime impérial. Rédigé d’aprés des documents inédits par A. Block.

Traduit par Hélène Iswolsky, Paris, 1931.

37 On Iswolsky’s relations with Berdiaev, see ‘The House in Clamart’, Chapter VII of Light before Dusk, pp. 88-103. Iswolsky says here: ‘I often worked with him and translated into French a number of his essays and articles and his book on the Russian thinker, Constantine Leontieff’ (p. 101). The book concerned is: Nicolas Berdiaeff, Constantin Léontieff. Un penseur religieux russe du dix-neuvième siècle, Traduit par H. Iswolsky, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1925; republished by Berg International, 1993. On the cultural context, see Catherine Baird (note 4 above), and Matthew Lee Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900-1940, Plymouth, Lexington Books, 2012.

33

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As the foregoing suggests, Iswolsky’s concern with current Russian literature had become secondary by the late 1920s38. There was one major exception: her friendship with Marina Tsvetaeva, which began when the poet moved to Paris from Prague in December 1925, and continued until she went back to Russia in 1939. Iswolsky eventually published three separate accounts of their relationship. In Russian there are two essays: ‘Ten′ na stenakh’ (‘A Shadow on the Walls’39, and ‘Poet obrechennosti’ (‘The Doomed Poet’)40. Finally, there was a substantial passage in the second autobiography41. These are among the most insightful accounts of Tsvetaeva’s personality and behaviour by any of the numerous people who encountered her in life and recorded their impressions. Iswolsky maintains a profound respect for the poet’s extraordinary literary talent and artistic stature, which in the last analysis is held to excuse all her exasperating traits. Here is a supremely gifted and dedicated woman who has chosen to live a life of domestic servitude and whose loyalties have led to horrendous ostracism on the part of people with power and influence.

Of particular interest in the present context, adding as they do further detail to the references presented above, are the passages where Iswolsky touches on Commerce. Here she describes the Eurasianist-sponsored gathering in late 1925 at which she first met Tsvetaeva: At the party, as I remember, Marina directed at me the gaze of her greenish, lacklustre, shortsighted, and astonishingly percipient eyes. The first thing she talked to me about was Pasternak. This was just at the time I had translated Pasternak’s ‘Dushnaia noch′’. My translation was published in the literary journal Commerce, edited by Paul Valéry. Somehow Pasternak had been able to become acquainted with my work, and as Marina conveyed to me, had been content with it. Tsvetaeva herself loved this poem very much, one of his ‘most ineffable ones’ as she writes.

Thus, Marina and I got to know each other under the aegis of Pasternak42.

38 In Light before Dusk, Iswolsky mentions translating Zinaida Gippius’ poems dedicated to St Theresa of Lisieux, and publishing them in *Etudes Carmélitaines (p. 155). This would have been at some time in the late 1930s.

39 Elena Izvol′skaia, ‘Ten′ na stenakh (o M. Tsvetaevoi)’, Opyty, 3, 1954, pp. 152-159, reprinted in Marina Tsvetaeva v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov. Gody emigratsii, pp. 219-226.

40 Id., ‘Poet obrechennosti: iz vospominanii o M. Tsvetaevoi’, Vozdushnye puti, 3, 1962, pp. 150-160.

41 No Time to Grieve…, pp. 196-203. These three items are collected in Marina Tsvetaeva v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov. Gody emigratsii, ed. L. Mnukhin and L. Turchinskii, Moscow, Agraf, 2002, pp. 219-241, with the passage from No Time to Grieve translated into Russian.

42 ‘На вечеринке, помнится, Марина направила на меня взгляд своих зеленоватых,

мутных, близоруких, и удивительно прозорливых глаз. И заговорила со мной

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Iswolsky was writing here nearly half a century after the events she describes, and all due caution is therefore called for in considering what she says. Some details are remarkable, all the same. She only mentions one of the poems by Pasternak, and not the one that was more innovatory at the time.

And she says unambiguously that Tsvetaeva wrote her opinion of the poem, but gives no source for this information.

Before Iswolsky said this about Tsvetaeva, though, Tsvetaeva had said something about Iswolsky. The essay concerned was written in April and May of 1931, but was by all accounts rejected for publication at the time because of the scathing denunciation it contains of Georgii Ivanov as a memoirist. ‘The History of a Dedication’ (‘Istoriia odnogo posviashcheniia’) only appeared long after the author’s death43. Its own dedication is ‘To my dear friend E.A.I., a belated wedding gift. M.Ts.’44 In the frame story, Tsvetaeva helps this friend, who is said to be leaving for a long journey overseas to get married45, to sort out her voluminous archive. Most of it is consigned to the flames. The items that go into the stove include some literary manuscripts that had been submitted to ‘E.A.I.’ with a request that she get them published; perhaps they also included the letters Iswolsky had received from Caetani. What Tsvetaeva says about the love life of ‘E.A.I’ is deliberately unspecific.

Further on in the essay, Tsvetaeva explains that her friend did in fact go abroad, but soon returned because the venture had turned out to be unsuccessful. The only specific information about what transpired has been published as a result of the collaboration Iswolsky was engaged on in the late 1920s with her friend Charles Du Bos in translating into French о Пастернаке. В то время я как раз перевела на французский язык стихотворение Пастернака «Душная ночь». Перевод мой был напечатан в литературном журнале «Коммерс» под редакцией Поль Валери. Каким-то образом, Пастернак имел возможность познакомиться с моей работой и, по сообщению Марины Цветаевой, остался доволен. Цветаева сама очень любила это стихотворение, одно из «несказаннейших», как пишет она. Итак, под знаком Пастернака, мы с Мариной познакомились’. ‘Ten′ na stenakh’, p. 153; Marina Tsvetaeva v vospominaniiakh sovremen-

nikov, p. 221.

43 ‘The History of a Dedication’: Marina Tsvetaeva’s Reminiscences of Osip Mandelstam’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, vol. XI, 1964, pp. 112-136. For a highly competent translation, unfortunately without notes or commentary, see Marina Tsvetaeva, ‘The History of a Dedication’, translated by Stephen Lottridge and Stephen Tapscot, The Georgia Review, vol. 36, no. 4, Winter 1982, pp. 855-890.

44 ‘Дорогому другу Е.А.И. – запоздалый свадебный подарок. М.Ц.’

45 In his introductory note to the original publication, which draws on his close and sustained personal knowledge of Tsvetaeva, Mark Slonim says that ‘Miss I. was about to leave Europe to join her fiancé in Japan…’ (p. 112).

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the celebrated Correspondence from Two Corners by Viacheslav Ivanov and Mikhail Gershenzon46. The matter is referred to in a letter by Du Bos to Ivanov, written on 8 July 1931: Peut-être aurez-vous appris le mariage de notre amie et collaboratrice Hélène Iswolsky: elle a épousé un baron de Sternberg-Ungern [sic] qui est professeur à l’Université de Nagasaki47: sa lettre témoignait d’un profond bonheur, mais elle a dû partir précipitamment pour le Japon sans que nous ayons pu nous revoir. Lui est protestant, mais elle a été encouragée et soutenue dans son projet par de saintes amies carmélites qui ne doutent pas de tout le bien que sa ferveur catholique pourra faire là-bas48.

In a subsequent letter, dated 23 December 1931, Du Bos reported that he had heard from Madame Ungern-Sternberg, and that Ivanov could put aside his anxiety about her happiness. She had been married in the cathedral of Notre-Dame de la Découverte in Nagasaki; and she had come across evidence of the survival of Catholicism from Francis Xavier’s mission, ‘sans le secours d’aucun prêtre blanc et étant dans l’obligation de cacher leur religion aux yeux du monde païen qui les environnait’49. However, in a let-

V. Ivanov, M.O. Gerschenson, Correspondance d’un coin à l’autre, Paris, Corrêa, 1931, précédée d’une Introduction de G. Marcel et suivie d’une letter de V. Ivanov à Ch. Du Bos. For Iswolsky’s own discussion of this project, see No Time to Grieve, pp. 177-178.

For bibliographical history see Pamela Davidson, Viacheslav Ivanov: A Reference Guide, New York, G.K. Hall, 1996, per index; and for the historical context of the translation, see Robert Bird, ‘Istoriko-literaturnyi kommentarii’, in Perepiska iz dvukh uglov. Podgotovka teksta, primechaniia, istoriko-literaturnyi kommentarii i issledovanie Roberta Bërda, Moscow, Vodolei Publishers, 2006, pp. 90-171.

47 This is not the flamboyant Civil War soldier Baron Ungern-Sternberg, who was killed in 1921, but Rolf Rudol′fovich Ungern-Shternberg (1880-1943), who served with the Russian diplomatic corps in Constantinople, and in 1913 was appointed 2nd Secretary to Aleksandr Izvol′skii at the Paris embassy. In 1917 he became 1st Secretary in Portugal, and was one of only two Russian heads of mission who co-operated with the Bolsheviks. After 1918 he lived first in Lisbon, then in Germany, and moved to Japan in 1926, becoming a Professor of French and Russian in commercial colleges in Tokyo and Nagasaki.

48 Julia Zarankin, Michael Wachtel, ‘The Correspondence of Viacheslav Ivanov and Charles du Bos’, Archivio italo-russo [also cited as Русско-итальянский архив], vol. 3, Salerno, 2001, [pp. 497-540], p. 518. (The Introduction and Notes to this publication discuss matters very pertinent to Iswolsky’s Catholicism in the context of contemporary European thought; a supplement, pp. 538-540, presents a revealing letter of 26 January 1931 from Iswolsky to Ivanov). Replying to du Bos on 12 July, Ivanov mentioned his unease: ‘Une bonne nouvelle est aussi celle de la félicité de M lle Hélène Iswolsky, actuellement Mme de Sternberg-Ungern, bien que je doive avouer qu’un vague sentiment de douleur, de compassion, de crainte même me serre le cœur chaque fois que j’apprends le mariage de certaines jeunes personnes très pures et hantées par un nostalgie spirituelle’ (p. 520).

49 Ibid., p. 525.

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ter of 31 October 1932 Iswolsky wrote again to Du Bos, saying that she had returned to Europe, that her marriage had been far from happy, and that Monseigneur Hayasaka had granted her permission to separate from her husband and leave Japan. Her mother, she said, had been a great consolation during this trial. She should now be known as Madame Hélène Iswolsky50.

Neither of Iswolsky’s autobiographies breathes a word about her marriage and adventure in Japan51; this silence contrasts with her relative frankness about her youthful love affairs in No Time to Grieve. Back in Paris, she resumed her friendship with Tsvetaeva. As she recalls in her final memoir, Iswolsky vainly attempted to help out the destitute poet by arranging a reading of her own translation into French, ‘Le Gars’, of her long poem ‘Molodets’, at Natalie Barney’s salon; the reception was ‘cool’52. Iswolsky probably never knew anything about the most enduring outcome of her introduction: Tsvetaeva’s quite extraordinary examination of lesbianism and creativity, ‘Lettre à l’Amazone’, written in 1932 and revised in 193453.

In 1941 Hélène Iswolsky left France for the USA, mobilising her connections in the worlds of diplomacy and international aid54. The centre of gravity of Russian émigré intellectual life shifted from Paris to New York at about this time, and Iswolsky was a founding contributor to the new publications that reflected this shift. She made her debut in the very first issue Ibid., p. 527.

Discussing Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno of May 1931, Iswolsky says: ‘I was away at the time, but when I returned to France in 1932 I was surprised at the intense activity […] the encyclical had stimulated in the social field’. Light before Dusk, p. 121. The three letters from Mark Slonim in the Iswolsky papers at Scranton University are evidently replies to letters by her asking Slonim to refer to her only by initials in connection with Tsvetaeva’s essay. However, she published three articles drawing on her trip: *Hélène Iswolsky, ‘Everyday Japan’, The Living Age, September 1932, pp. 36-40 (under the general title ‘Will Japan Crash?’), translated from ‘Au Seuil du Japon’, Le Correspondant, cccxxviii, no. 1, 10 July 1932, pp. 82-99; see http://www.unz.org/Pub/LivingAge-1932sep-00036 (accessed 22 September 2014). The Livak bibliography (see above, note 3), p. 162 also lists ‘Mandchourie, Changhaï’, Revue de France, vol. 11, no. 8, 15 April 1932, pp. 735-747, and ‘Un grand college féminin au Japon’, Intransigeant, 19398, 5 December 1932, pp. 82-99.

52 No Time to Grieve…, pp. 199-200. On Mirsky’s involvement with ‘Le Gars’ see above, p. 18, 48.

53 First published as Marina Zvétaeva, Mon frère féminin: lettre à l’amazone, Paris, Mercure de France, 1979. See Diana Lewis Burgin, ‘Mother Nature versus the Amazons.

Marina Tsvetaeva and Female Same-Sex Love’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 6, no. 1, July 1995, pp. 62-88.

54 Iswolsky’s brother Grigorii (Grisha, 1892-1951), who was a close friend of D.S. Mirsky, moved to the USA in 1921 and became a US citizen; the story of his failure to follow in his father’s footsteps and subsequent wayward life is told in No Time to Grieve.

50 51

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of the principal American academic journal of Russian studies, The Russian Review, with a well-informed survey of Soviet literature55. Of even greater interest in the present context is her contribution to the next issue of this journal, with its conclusion setting out the author’s personalist philosophy: Dehumanization, disintegration, depersonalization, are the signs of our age, when the human being is submerged by collective emotions or suppressed by a narrow and selfish individualism. Nor do we see in Russia herself a re-establishment of personal human values. If the young Russian writers abroad have not discovered the deeper sources, neither have the Soviet writers found them, though they, no doubt, stand nearer to them than the lonely vagrants symbolized by Poplavsky.

Today, we do not behold in Russian literature the author worthy of continuing the great Russian humanist tradition56.

The essay as a whole is accurate, authoritative, and highly informative. It contains some touching passages about Tsvetaeva and Khodasevich, and what must be one of the earliest acclamations in English of Nabokov’s Russian novels and short stories: Nabokov’s apparent frivolity is that of an acrobat or tightrope dancer, dressed up in a gay attire, but who is in dead earnest, because he is accomplishing a difficult and perilous feat. He may indeed become a great writer. He is already one of the outstanding Russian novelists of our day57.

The downbeat conclusion of this piece was considerably modified in a survey of post-war émigré literature, which seems to speak to Iswolsky’s personal position after her transition from France to America: If, before the war, young Russian émigré writers had lost that humanist strain which so deeply marked Russian culture before their time, they have finally discovered it and been inspired by it. It may now have a different name, it has been put through the ordeal of scepticism, revolution, war, and infinite suffering, both physical and spiritual. Yet we can still recognize it, and we behold a new Russian intelligentsia abroad, turning more and more to national cultural sources, and at the same time participating in universal culture58.

Helen Iswolsky, ‘Latest Trends in Soviet Literature’, The Russian Review, vol. 1, no.

1, November, 1941, pp. 74-80.

56 Helen Iswolsky, ‘Twenty-Five Years of Russian Émigré Literature’, The Russian Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 1942, [pp. 61-73], p. 73. The poet Boris Poplavsky (1903-35) is often held to epitomise the doomed dilemma of the ‘lost generation’ of Russian writers in emigration.

57 Ibid., (note 27), p. 72.

58 Helen Iswolsky, ‘Russian Émigré Literature in World War II’, The Russian Review, vol. 6, no. 1, Autumn, 1946, [pp. 69-76], p. 76. Soon afterwards, in another essay Iswolsky presented her view of the Russian philosopher Soloviev as the pioneering theoretician of 55

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Iswolsky’s most sustained contributions to the American periodical press consisted in a series of articles and reviews on contemporary Russian subjects for the lay Catholic journal Commonweal, beginning in July 1941 and continuing until 1960. In one of them, she returns to the subject of Pasternak 59. Soon after her arrival in the USA Iswolsky turned to her own memoirs. The earliest example of such writing appeared in Russian, in the second issue of what was to become the most enduring Russian journal of the post-war emigration, concerning the last days before the fall of France60.

Soon after this, as we have seen, Iswolsky published her first autobiography.

No Time to Grieve, Iswolsky’s second and more substantial autobiographical work, with its touching account of her relationship with Tsvetaeva, was published only posthumously61.

In 1946, when she was based in New York, Iswolsky helped to set up an oecumenical association called ‘The Third Hour Foundation’, with a journal that first appeared the same year, in three languages. One important participant was V.S. Yanovsky, whom Iswolsky had known in Paris as a fellow attendee of the Berdiaev seminar, and who was now a practicing doctor in New York62. Another was W.H. Auden. The final, tenth issue of The Third Hour appeared in 1975 after Iswolsky’s death and was dedicated to her63. She also contributed regularly to Catholic Worker, and articles to

this ‘universal culture’; see Helene Iswolsky, ‘Vladimir Soloviev and the Western World’, The Russian Review, vol. 7, no. 1, Autumn 1947, pp. 16-23.

59 Helene Iswolsky, ‘The Voice of Boris Pasternak’, Commonweal, 14 November 1958, pp.

168-169. With her friend Anne Fremantle, Iswolsky published a translation of one of Pasternak’s most renowned later poems: ‘To be Famous’, Third Hour, vol. VII, no. 3, 1957, p. 3.

60 Elena Izvol′skaia, ‘Posle razgroma: Iz vospominanii o Frantsii’, Novyi zhurnal, no. 2, 1941, pp. 360-367. See also ‘U Khrista na elke’, Opyty, 6, 1956, pp. 72-76.

61 At least two extracts were pre-published: Helene Iswolsky, ‘The Russian Revolution Seen from Paris’, The Russian Review, vol. 26, no. 2, April 1967, pp. 153-163; id., ‘The Fateful Years: 1906-1911’, The Russian Review, vol. 28, no. 2, April 1969, pp. 191-206.

62 See Helene Iswolsky, ‘V.S. Yanovsky: Some Thoughts and Reminiscences’, in Russian Literature and Culture in the West: 1922-1972, ed. Simon Karlinsky and Alfred Appel, Jr, 2 vols., Evanston, Illinois, 1973 (TriQuarterly, 27-28), vol. 2, pp. 490-492 (Listed in Bird’s bibliography under ‘Unpublished Writings’).

63 See ‘Helen Iswolsky (1896-1975), at http://stmichaelruscath.org/spiritual/iswolsky/ (accessed on 22 September 2014), especially the ‘testimonial’ by V.S. Yanovsky. The site includes two articles by Iswolsky from The Third Hour, ‘Soloviev and the Eirenic Movement’, and ‘From Commitment to Oblation’. For an account of Iswolsky’s life from the point of view of the Russian Orthodox Church, see Evgenii Gerf, ‘Elena Aleksandrovna Izvol′skaia’, Istina i zhizn′, 9, 1993, online at http://rgcc.narod.ru/izvol.htm (accessed on 22 September 2014).

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the Catholic Encyclopedia. Her books included American Saints and Martyrs (New York, 1959), and Christ in Russia (Milwaukee, 1960).

From 1949 to 1956 Iswolsky occupied the post of lecturer and instructor in Russian studies at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution. She continued to contribute to the émigré Russian press. In particular, extracts from her memoirs appeared in the major post-war literary almanacs published in America, as we have seen with one of the essays on Tsvetaeva. She was a contributor to the venerable New York newspaper Novoe russkoe slovo. Her work as a translator continued; she contributed several new versions of difficult texts to the standard and widely admired anthology A Treasury of Russian Spirituality, edited by G.P. Fedotov (1948). She was the earliest translator of any of the books of Mikhail Bakhtin into English, with Rabelais and His World (first published in 1968); it is here that her words have probably been read and cited more often in recent years than in any of her original writings.

After she left Fordham University, Iswolsky was for a while Professor and Chairman of the Russian Department at Seton Hill, a Catholic college in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The last two years of her life were spent as a nun in the Benedictine monastery of Our Lady of the Resurrection in Cold Spring, New York State. She died there on 24 December 1975.

The early article reviewing Commerce demonstrates both the merits and the limitations of Iswolsky’s abilities as a literary critic. She writes clearly and competently, but without any evidence of strong literary insight, relying on paraphrase and summary rather than analysis and aesthetic evaluation. In one of his letters to his friend P.P. Suvchinskii, D.S. Mirsky mercilessly characterised Iswolsky as ‘not stupid, but tragically ungifted’64, and this review exhibits the characteristics he would have had in mind. The deferential tone of Iswolsky’s letters to Caetani seems to exceed what would be appropriate in addressing a patron; it seems to betray a lack of self-confidence. If one takes a wider view of Iswolsky’s abilities and achievements, though, Mirsky’s phrase seems unfair and premature, and her essay on Commerce unrepresentative. As her subsequent writings in three languages continually demonstrate, she was highly effective when assessing and writing non-fiction, and in terms of memoir writing she was well above average, giving evidence of a genuine gift for expressing sympathetic understanding, even when dealing with people who did not share the religious and philosophical standpoint she eventually came to espouse. The early propensity for summary developed into high proficiency in the difficult 64 ‘Е.Изв. – не глупа, но трагически бездарна’, see G.S. Smith, The Letters of D.S. Mirsky to P.P. Suvchinskii, 1922-1931, Birmingham, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 1995 (Birmingham Slavonic Monographs 26), p. 49.

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art of précis. And her ability as a translator is considerable throughout; she could translate difficult texts into and out of three languages interchangeably.

Iswolsky’s life trajectory makes a striking and instructive contrast with that of D.S. Mirsky. The two came from very similar backgrounds and, as we have seen, had known each other during their youth in St Petersburg high society. Both of them manifestly inherited the ethos of dedicated service that their fathers embodied, as outstandingly successful representatives of their social class. Contrary to received ideas about people with this background, they both possessed an unremitting work ethic that was coupled to somewhat earnest seriousness and contempt for frivolity. Both of them lost their considerable inheritances and privileges in 1917. The main difference between them, of course, was one of gender. As a man, Mirsky was able to take a path through elite schools into university and then service as an army officer that was not open to Iswolsky. Tellingly, when he was a staff officer on active service, she was a volunteer nurse.

Abroad, he slipped easily into an academic post when he needed one, primarily through his father’s connections; for her this opening came much later and was earned by her dedication to writing, however eased it might have been by the social connections she inherited. Neither Mirsky nor Iswolsky seemed to possess an inclination towards family life and the consolidation or accumulation of wealth and property as a worthy and adequate fulfilment of their birthright. In emigration, they made common cause for a while, and maintained the cordial relationship they had enjoyed since childhood. Both of them attempted to construct a way forward out of what they saw as the sterile bankruptcy of the values that had resulted from World War I and revolution in Russia. But their intellectual solutions, and with them their life choices, went in what would conventionally be considered opposite directions. Both these solutions, however, pretend to a universalist, providential, and millenarian teleology; both were paths to certainty. He became a dialectical materialist, committed himself to Marxism-Leninism in its Stalinist apotheosis, went back to Russia, and paid with his life. She espoused Catholicism, dedicated herself more and more to social work in the cause of oecumenical Christianity, moved to the United States, and survived long enough to make several trips back to post-Stalin Russia as a visitor. Both these Russians made exceptional use of the cosmopolitan advantages they inherited, chiefly in the ways they deployed their linguistic competence. Above all, though, they both remained committed to an idea of Russia and her special mission, though the ways they conceptualised this mission were incompatibly different.

Gerald S. Smith

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1925-1927)

1.

Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani Lundi 30 mars [1925] Pau, Bvrd des Pyrenees1

Chère Princesse, Je ne vous ai pas accuse plus tôt reception de votre lettre, car j’ai voulu attendre que vous soyez réinstallée à la villa Romaine. Et laissez moi tout d’abord vous remercier de cette lettre et du chèque, bien audessus de mes humbles mérites!!! Je suis aussi très touchée de votre façon à la fois si franche, si simple et si bienveillante d’interpreter l’incident qui a eu lieu à propos du “Maure”2. Je n’ai pas pu très bien déchiffrer le nom de mon accuIn the text of the letters, the author’s orthography and punctuation have been retained without emendation or comment.

1 Iswolsky’s father prudently took a lease on a seaside villa in Biarritz in February 1917, and moved his family there when he was sacked by Kerensky after the February revolution. Soon after her father’s death, Iswolsky’s health deteriorated, and she was sent to a medical facility in Pau (Helene Iswolsky, No Time to Grieve…: An Autobiographical Journey, Philadelphia, The Winchell Company, 1985, p. 145), near a farm owned by one of her uncles.

Soon after, her mother rented an apartment there. Subsequently Elena would commute to Paris, staying in rented accommodation. Mother and daughter moved back to Meudon, the Paris suburb, on a permanent basis at some time in the late 1920s.

2 A translation into French of Pushkin’s story Arap Petra Velikogo as ‘Le Maure de Pierre le Grand’ was published in Commerce, VII, (printemps 1926), pp. 155-200. The version Iswolsky had originally submitted was evidently considered unsatisfactory by the

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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sateur, ce qui en fait un inquiétant inconnu. Mais est-ce mon accusateur ou celui de Poushkine?… Je me souviens que Raymond Recouly3 a employé le même terme “coco” en parlant de ce poète. Poushkine choque un peu par son étonnante santé, et nous n’y pouvons rien. Quelle langue, quel style, choisir pour le traduire. Je commence à croire que ce sont les traducteurs qui fournissent une matière inodore et incolore, absolument amorphe, une espèce de masque de plâtre, moulée sur un cadavre, qui seuls contenteront lecteurs et critiques4. Je relis votre lettre, – est-ce Valery, qui est mon juge?

Si vous saviez, combien votre comprehension, votre attitude si loyale, me reconfortent. En transmettant le langage de Poushkine, je ne me ferai certes pas comprendre par bien des gens. Mais vous avez compris mes signaux (de détresse) – et celà suffit.

En tout cas je ne conçois pas comment on peut moderniser un vieux texte? C’est comme si on disait qu’il faut moderniser Racine. A moins que celà ne soit fait par Cocteau, car alors c’est vraiment spirituel!! et vraiment tout à fait faux. En parlant de Paulhan5, vous écrivez, “je l’ai fait avec le resultat que voici”. Mais je ne sais de quel resultat il s’agit, car vous ne me dites pas l’opinion de Paulhan, et vous devinez que je brule de la connaître.

Je vous serais si reconnaissante de me la communiquer, car, en effet, celà est pour moi du plus haut, du plus brulant interêt. Mais assez parler de moi. editors and, at the request of Marguerite Caetani, it was revised by Paulhan. For the publication, though, Iswolsky is still listed as translator. The long passage in letter 1 in which she sets out her ideas about translating Pushkin should be read against this background.

3 Raymond Recouly (1876-1950) was a prolific journalist, at one time the foreign editor of Le Figaro. He was one of the editors of the bi-monthly La Revue de France (1921-1939), in which Iswolsky got her start as a journalist writing in French, and to which she continued to contribute into the early 1930s. Before the 1917 revolution Recouly was one of the Paris informants for the Russian secret police, the Okhrana; his codename was Крысолов (‘Ratcatcher’). In this capacity his operational contact was Krasilnikov, a political adviser at the Russian embassy at the time when Iswolsky’s father was ambassador. See Victor Serge, Russian Informants Abroad: M. Raymond Recouly, in his ‘What Everyone Should Know about Repression’, at http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge (accessed 6 October 2014).

4 For a valuable historical contextualisation of these views, with reference to the translation of Pushkin’s poetry into English, see Philip Ross Bullock, ‘Untranslated and Untranslatable? Pushkin’s Poetry in English, 1892-1931’, in Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (eds), Translating Russia, 1890-1935 (Translation and Literature, vol. 20, Part 3, Autumn 2011), pp. 348-372.

5 Jean Paulhan (1884-1968), writer, literary critic, and publisher, connected with Commerce throughout its existence; for Paulhan and Commerce see Ève Rabaté, La Revue Commerce. L’esprit “classique moderne” (1924-1932), Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2012, p. 249, 250, passim. Significantly, perhaps, Paulhan is not mentioned in Iswolsky’s No Time to Grieve.

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Je vais à présent répondre à vos questions: le livre de Mirsky est excellent, très bien accueilli par la critique russe, qui le juge un ouvrage utile, tout en relevant, naturellement, quelques minuscules erreurs dans la traduction des poèmes6. Il est une chose évidente avec Mirsky, – il a un goût exquis en tout ce qu’il fait. “La Dame de Pique” vient d’etre traduite et publiée par les Editions de la Pléiades avec de très bonnes illustrations d’un des bons peintres russes, (je ne me souviens plus qui, peut-être Shouchaieff)7. “La Fille du Capitaine” a été traduite il y a déjà quelque temps. “Le Cavalier de Bronze” n’est pas traduit, je viens de l’apprendre, car je croyai par erreur qu’il etait déjà connu en France8. C’est un poème que nous autres russes adorons peutetre à l’égal d’Onéguine, mais d’un amour different, plus inquiet, et plus secret. Alexandre Benoit a illustré ce livre d’une façon délicieuse. Si je ne me trompe, le Prince Argoutinsky9 en a un exemplaire. Mais ici encore, et

The context would suggest that Iswolsky is referring here to D.S. Mirsky, Pushkin, London: George Routledge, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926, but this book had not been published by the date of the letter. Mirsky’s Modern Russian Literature, Oxford University Press, 1925, contains translations only of isolated words and phrases. His Contemporary Russian Literature, 1881-1925, London, George Routledge, New York, Alfred Knopf, also appeared only in 1926. There were four or five reviews in the émigré press of Mirsky’s Russian-language anthology of 1924, but the book contained no translations. Reviews of his other books only appeared in the émigré press starting in 1926: G.L. [G.L. Lozinskii], ‘Pushkin By Prince D.S. Mirsky. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd; New-York, E.P. Dutton & Co. 1926’, Zveno, vol. 28, no. 161, 28 February 1926, p. 14; V. Dikson, ‘Contemporary Russian Literature by Prince D.S. Mirsky. Alfred A. Knopf. New York 1926’, Blagonamerennyi, no. 2, Paris, 1926, pp. 167-169.

7 The eminent artist Vasilii Ivanovich Shukhaev (1887-1973) lived in France from 1921 until 1935, and during this time carried out several illustration assignments for Pléiade editions of Russian works: Pushkin, Pikovaia dama and Boris Godunov; Turgenev, First Love; Gogol, Tales of St Petersburg; Leskov, The Enchanted Wanderer; Chekhov, A Boring Story; Lermontov, A Hero of Our Times. Pikovaia dama was published in 1923 in an edition of 340 copies; see Pouchkine A., La dame de pique / Traduction de J. Schiffrin, B. de Schloezer et A. Gide, avant propos de André Gide, illustrations de Vassili Choukhaeff, Paris, Éditions de la Pléiade, 1923. See also Mirsky letter 14, note 3 above.

8 Of the three texts by Pushkin which Marguerite Caetani evidently mentioned to Iswolsky – Pikovaia dama (‘La Dame de Pique’), Kapitanskaia dochka (‘La Fille du Capitaine’), and Mednyi vsadnik (‘Le Cavalier de Bronze’) – only the last had not in fact been translated into French by the time in question. From Mirsky’s letters 12 and 14 above it is clear that Iswolsky proposed to translate Mednyi vsadnik, but that the result was not satisfactory.

9 Prince Vladimir Nikolaevich Argutinskii-Dolgorukii (1874-1941), diplomat, art collector, and patron. Speaking about her youth in Paris when her father was Ambassador, Iswolsky says of Argutinsky, who was on his staff: ‘… my lifelong friend. […] [A] distinguished art connoisseur and one of the sponsors of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes which was 6

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c’est toujours la même chose, je ne sais pas du tout quelle impression cette œuvre produira sur le lecteur, (et surtout sur le lecteur intellectuel) français.

Je commence à me dire, que pour aimer Poushkine, il faut être sage comme un serpent, et simple comme une colombe. Est-ce grande prétention?

Le conte de Fédine est intitulé Anna Timoféevna, il represente 92 pages d’environ 250 mots chacune10. Il y en a d’autres plus courts, mais que je n’aime pas tout à fait autant. Maintenant il serait peut-être possible, d’en prendre des extraits. C’est la très simple histoire d’une femme qui est d’abord mariée a un sacristain dans une petite ville de province, homme terrible, toujours ivre, et livré aux pires instincts. Lorsqu’il meurt enfin, elle rencontre un flirt de jeunesse, qui represente pour elle tous les sentiments romanesques, et qui l’épouse. Avec le second mari, c’est la même vie de chien, la même laideur, les mêmes humiliations. Elle a une fille muette et idiote, qui vit dans un asile, et qu’elle adore à l’égal d’un etre beau, intelligent, sensible. En un mot, la vie l’a crucifiée, et ne lui a jamais permis de relever la tête, pas pour un seul instant.

C’est très simple et très beau, et très bien raconté.

Mais pour Commerce, je me demande, si cela ne fait pas un peu trop “tranche de vie”, et si la prose de Pasternak, et l’extrême pointe qu’il pousse dans la merveilleuse exploration, ne serait pas plus approprié11.

Je ne sais pas si “friends” exprime exactement l’état de mes relations avec Mrs Chanler12. Nos discussions sont épiques, nos points de vue opposés, nos making its triumphant tours throughout Europe. He was not only a personal friend of Diaghilev but also of his entire company and its stars as well as of the composers, choreographers and painters who worked with him. The Prince was also known as a man of absolute taste and artistic intuition who gave Diaghilev unerring advice for his productions. This little man with large brown eyes which shone behind his round glasses, had a soft, dreamy voice which lent him a mysterious charm’ (No Time to Grieve…, p. 70). ‘[H]e was the man who did more for my artistic and intellectual development than anyone else’ (p. 98). In speaking of the people she encountered at Caetani’s Sunday gatherings, Iswolsky mentions ‘Igor Stravinsky, whom I had already met at my friend Argutinsky’s’ (p. 168).

10 In the event nothing appeared in Commerce by Konstantin Fedin (1892-1977), who was to become a major Soviet writer. ‘Anna Timofeevna’, of which Izvol′skaia gives an accurate summary here, was included in Fedin’s first collection of stories, Pustyr′ (Waste Land, 1923).

11 On Pasternak’s prose and Commerce, in particular the story ‘Detstvo Liuvers’, see Introduction to Mirsky, notes 22 and 23.

12 ‘Mrs. Porter Chandler (Bebo), a devout Catholic. She was a highly educated woman, related to the writer Marion Crawford, and had often lived in Rome and Paris. She spoke French fluently and brought to our work a truly dynamic spirit’; No Time to Grieve…, p. 250, referring to meetings in America after World War II. This is apparently Gabrielle Chandler (or Chanler, 1897-1958), who was married to Porter Ralph Chanler (1899-1979), and seems to be the same person as a woman called May Margaret Chanler; for information on the Chanler (Chandler) clan, see the Margaret Terry Chanler papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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rencontres orageuses. Je crois que du moins je ne l’ennuie pas, en lui fournissant toujours matière à combattre. Mais je l’aime beaucoup, et je l’admire son attitude envers la vie, qui est précisément une absence d’attitude, et une sobrieté absolue, le refus de porter un masque, même le plus attrayant. Aussi a-t-elle souvent le dernier mot dans la discussion, et je suis très heureuse de la connaître grace à vous.

Je pense rentrer à Paris au mois de mai, et j’ai encore pas mal à travailler ici, avant de repartir.

Ce qui me manque le plus c’est les bonnes heures passées à la villa Romaine, et je pense si affectueusement à vous. Je vous remercie encore du plus profond de mon cœur, et je suis infiniment heureuse que vous soyez contente de mon pauvre Maure. J’espère que vous me donnerez de vos nouvelles de temps en temps, et que vous me direz l’avis de Paulhan.

Et croyez, chère Princesse, à tout mon inalterable et si profond et affectueux dévouement.

Hélène Iswolsky

2.

Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani Villa les Cigales Boulouris s/Mer Par Saint Raphael Var [ante May 1926]

Dear Marguerite, if I may really call you so. I hope you will forgive the fact of my not having written to you before going away from Paris, and of having been silent for such a long time. I have been very much absorbed by my book1, and doing my best to work hard, but it is very difficult as unfortunately too many people are discovering the Rivièra.

Je viens de recevoir un mot du Prince Sviatopolk Mirsky me demandant de collaborer à une Revue russe qu’il vient de fonder; il me prie de lui faire Letter 2.

1 On the books Iswolsky was working on at this time, see Preface above, p. 79, 80.

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un aperçu des livres français interessants qui paraissent2. Lorsque je serai à Paris, je voudrais beaucoup vous le faire connaître. C’est un homme très curieux, et un excellent critique3.

J’espère que vous allez bien ainsi que les enfants, et que l’Opera du Prince lui donne satisfaction4.

J’espère terminer Pasternak 5 pour les premiers jours d’octobre, et rentrerai à cette date à Paris. Y serez vous? Je l’espère tant, et me rejouis déjà de vous revoir. Une amie à moi, Madame Jurgens6 me prie de l’abonner à Commerce. Pourriez vous avoir la bonté de lui envoyer le prospectus et une feuille d’abonnement depuis le No de printemps 1926?

Son adresse est Madame Jurgens 46 Bvd Malesherbes Paris Je suis en train de lire le nouveau roman de Gorky, très beau et très complet7. Mais pour le reste, je n’ai pas le temps de beaucoup lire, en ce moment, car lorsque j’écris, je tache de ne rien faire d’autre. À mesure que j’avance dans mon livre, j’ai le sentiment d’une difficulté surhumaine et inhumaine!

J’espère tant avoir quelques mots de vous, et vous envoie tout mon constant et si affectueux souvenir.

Mardie Iswolsky.

2 The review referred to is Versty. Mirsky speaks of the desirability of including surveys of foreign literature in the first number of Versty when writing to Suvchinskii on 25 February 1926, and among other possible authors mentions Iswolsky (G.S. Smith, The Letters of D.S. Mirsky to P.P. Suvchinskii, 1922-1931, Birmingham, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 1995 (Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 26) = Suvchinskii letters, p. 49). Two such reviews were eventually published, neither of them in the first issue; see Introduction to Iswolsky above.

3 This could perhaps refer to a meeting in person; Mirsky and Caetani may already have known each other through correspondence.

4 Iswolsky refers to Roffredo Caetani’s opera Hypatia, which was first performed at the Deutsches Nationaltheater, Weimar, on 23 May 1926.

5 Iswolsky could be speaking here either about reading or translating one or other prose work by Pasternak. The relation between this project and Mirsky’s proposed translation of ‘Detstvo Liuvers’ is enigmatic; see Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, letter 1, note 11.

6 No further information has come to light about this Madame Jurgens, a subscriber to Commerce. The fact that the subscription is to start from Spring 1926 suggests, but not conclusively, that this letter was written in late 1925 or early 1926.

7 Gorky’s Delo Artamonovykh was published in Berlin in 1925. Iswolsky reviewed it: ‘Une nouvelle œuvre de Gorky. – L’Entreprise Artamonoff ’, Revue de France, vol. VI, no. 21, 1 November 1926, pp. 180-184. D.S. Mirsky discussed it in very positive terms as part of a composite review, Versty, 2, Paris, 1927, pp. 255-262.

LETTERS TO MARGUERITE CAETANI (1925-1927)

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3.

Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani Les Cigales, Boulouris s/Mer par St Raphael Var 18 Sept [1927]

Chère Marguerite, Je suis confuse de vous repondre si tard, mais je mène depuis quelque temps une vie insensée. Nous sommes sans cesse en mouvement, et très nombreux dans la maison. En plus je dois travailler regulierement chaque jour, and there seems to be too much of everything. Tout ce que je sais c’est que je suis morte de fatigue à la suite de ces soi-disant vacances. Je ne connais pas Salies1, mais j’ai demandé à ma mère de s’informer pour vous.

Quelle joie de vous avoir dans le voisinage – celà me console de Pau!! J’y rentre sans doute vers le 15 Octobre.

Merci mille fois d’avoir eu la patience de lire l’Apocalypse2. I know its no good au point de vue littéraire, et que celà ne peut avoir qu’un intérêt idéologique, assez restreint d’ailleurs. Je crois que l’idée de penser à l’Allemagne est excellente. Merci tellement de l’avoir trouvée. Perhaps, if it did not bore him to tears, Kassner3 would be kind enough to glance through it, just to give the thing a last chance!! Mais faites exactement ce que vous pensez est bon. Moi, je ne voudrais surtout pas vous ennuyer encore avec le manuscrit.

Letter 3.

1 Salies-de-Béarn is about half-way between Pau and Biarritz, within easy reach of the Iswolsky residence in Pau. 2 In which language Marguerite Caetani read the manuscript to which Iswolsky refers is not clear; perhaps Iswolsky had offered a sample translation into French, based on Koteliansky’s English. On the context, see Introduction to Iswolsky above.

3 On Kassner, see Mirsky’s letter 13 with note 2 above. The rather vague reference to Germany suggests that for Marguerite Caetani The Apocalypse was a text that might have greater appeal philosophically in a German-speaking environment. Whether Iswolsky mentions the name of Kassner because she thinks it is as a philosopher Rozanov would be interesting, or because he was German, is hard to say. Kassner had translated Dostoevsky’s ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’ and other Russian texts close to the heart of Rozanov.

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Mirsky déteste Virineia, et Seifullina en general4. Moi, je crois que c’est de la litterature moyenne, interessante surtout par le fait qu’elle nourrit en ce moment le public russe, et qu’après tout il vaut mieux le nourrir avec ça qu’avec du trash. C’est à dire que la “mauvaise” littérature russe se trouve quand même à un degré respectable et très acceptable. Etant donné qu’on faisait une collection de jeunes russes on ne pouvait pas l’exclure5.

J’espère que vous me donnerez de vos nouvelles et me direz vos projets.

Seriez vous à Paris en octobre. J’y serai de passage.

With so much love, Hélène P.S. I was so happy to hear that Pasternak approved of my translation6.

4 Virineia is a novel by Lidiia Seifullina (1889-1954), which enjoyed a period of popularity and then was completely forgotten. Mirsky delivered several condescending opinions of her writing, of which the following is the most revealing (about Mirsky as much as Seifullina): ‘The time-honoured Russian tradition of semi-journalistic and unpretentious fiction has been revived, and its adepts, like Panteleimon Romanov, early became best-sellers, sharing the goodwill of the Philistine with writers like Lydia Seyfullina, the Soviet Miss Dell (very inferior to the English Miss Dell in ability to tell a tale, but much her superior in the art of making her characters live; but the level of values is always the same, however different the ideal heroine of the Soviet typist may be from that of the English shopgirl)’.

D.S. Mirsky, ‘The Present State of Russian Letters’, The London Mercury, xvi, no. 93, 1927, pp. 275-286, quoted from reprint in D.S. Mirsky, Uncollected Writings on Russian Literature, Edited, with an Introduction and Bibliography, by G.S. Smith, Berkeley, Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1989, [pp. 246-257], p. 254.

5 Iswolsky acted on this opinion; see Lydia Seifoulina, Virineya, traduit du russe par Hélène Iswolsky, Paris, Gallimard, 2nd ed. 1927; *id., Virineya; [suivi de] la Vieille; [suivi de] Enfance dorée, trad. du russe par Hélène Iswolsky, Paris, Gallimard, Editions de la “Nouvelle Revue Française”, 6 ed., 1930. As her subsequent sentence implies, both books came out in a series entitled ‘Les Jeunes Russes’, which eventually included 19 titles published between 1927 and 1938. All the authors concerned were resident in the USSR; they include Erenburg (Rapace, 1930), Kataev (Rastratchiki, 1928), Pilniak (L’ Année nue, 1930), Sholokhov (Les Défricheurs, 1933), Zoshchenko (La Vie Joyeuse, 1931), and Zamiatin (Nous Autres, 1929).

6 For evidence concerning contacts with Pasternak, see Mirsky, letters 4 and 7 above, and Preface to Mirsky. Caetani would not have heard of Pasternak’s approval from Tsvetaeva, who was the first to know his opinion and transmit it to Iswolsky (see Introduction to Iswolsky above). She could possibly have heard from Mirsky. Most likely, though, Pasternak wrote to Caetani to acknowledge the receipt of a fee after Mirsky intervened in 1927 (see Mirsky, letter 7, above) and made a positive reference to the translation. Perhaps a letter or letters from him to her have been lost.

on Commerce

A new literary magazine began appearing in Paris in the summer of 1924, edited by Paul Valéry, Valery Larbaud and Léon-Paul Fargue. The very title, Commerce (in the sense of ‘intellectual interchange’) indicates its aims.

André Breton has written ironically that poets have three times fewer readers than philosophers, while philosophers have two hundred times fewer readers than do novelists. Commerce is a periodical that publishes the work of poets and thinkers, and is intended for the cultured minority; it comes out four times a year in 1,600 copies ‘on alpha paper’, numbered from 1 to 1,600.

In form and content, the journal is somewhat reminiscent of Russian and Central European periodical publications. On its pages we find a whole series of articles on general literary-philosophical topics relating to the tasks of contemporary culture.

Valéry Larbaud, that brilliant writer and expert in foreign literature, a man imbued with the traditions of English fiction, describes in a lengthy letter a journey he made to Italy, his visit to the famous writer Mario Puccini, and his trip to Recanati, the home town of Leopardi1. Larbaud’s elegant, flowing style transports the reader far away, like the slow currents of a deep, wide river. No less beautiful are the extracts from his translation of Ulysses, in so far as it is possible to convey in French the complex prose of James Joyce2.

Valery Larbaud, ‘Lettre d’Italie’, Commerce, III, (hiver 1924), pp. 233-285.

James Joyce, ‘Ulysse: Fragments (traduits de l’anglais par Auguste Morel et Valery Larbaud, avec note par Valery Larbaud), Commerce, I, (été 1924), pp. 121-158.

1 2

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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Besides Larbaud, Commerce has carried poetry by the American T.S. Eliot3, the Austrian Rainer Maria Rilke (composed originally in French)4, by L.-P. Fargue5, and by St-J. Perse6, and also articles by Perse7 and Paulhan8.

André Breton’s article ‘On the Insignificance of Reality’9 and Louis Aragon’s ‘A Wave of Dreams’10, are very curious; these two talented writers expound here the theory of surrealism – the superconscious as a source of inspiration, the creative nature of dreams, the necessity of renewing language and the way people think, the struggle against stale literary forms, and so on.

The French language is currently in a state of acute crisis. To renew and enrich the language is the aspiration of a whole series of thinkers and writers. One might even explain the seemingly rather naïve diversion of mots croisés in terms of this same attraction to studying new words, new technical terms and concepts.

Groupings in current French literature, and especially the left wing of the surrealists, are striving at all costs to expand the boundaries of literature, to find a means of expressing not only rational but also superconscious phenomena, to create in literature something like a ‘fourth dimension’. Aragon writes of a certain ‘intellectual substance distinct from rational thinking, which blends into hallucinations and dreams’, and points to the exceptional interest of this area, which has been pioneered by such poets as Rimbaud but so far has not been systematically studied.

Breton, a representative of what one might call ‘militant surrealism’, proposes the artistic representation of objects and images that appear in dreams and which do not yield to any rational explanation or analysis, but which enrich the imagination of poets and writers. Whether surrealism will last longer than the Dadaism that preceded it is unknown, but one still must admit that this peculiar group, basing itself in the study of the ‘technique’ of dreams and daydreams, has yielded a whole series of interesting experiments and enriched young literature with new images that are striking and alive.

3 T.S. Eliot, ‘The Hollow Men (extrait: texte anglais et adaptation de Saint-John Perse)’, Commerce, III, (hiver 1924), pp. 9-11.

4 Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘La Dormeuse’, Commerce, II, (automne 1924), pp. 165-169.

5 Léon-Paul Fargue, ‘Nuées’, Commerce, III, (hiver 1924), pp. 225-231; Poème: ‘Gare de la douleur’, Commerce, IV, (printemps 1925), pp. 102-109.

6 Saint-John Perse, ‘Chanson: ‘J’honore les vivants’,’ Commerce, III, (hiver 1924), pp. 5-7.

7 Saint-John Perse, ‘Amitié du prince’, Commerce, I, (été 1924), pp. 103-119.

8 Jean Paulhan, ‘Luce, l’enfant négligée’, Commerce, II, (automne 1924), pp. 159-164.

9 André Breton, ‘Introduction au discours sur le peu de Réalité’, Commerce, III, (hiver 1924), pp. 27-57.

10 Louis Aragon, ‘Une Vague de rêves’, Commerce, II, (automne 1924), pp. 89-122.

on Commerce

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This aim of renewing language and form is also pursued by Léon-Paul Fargue in two articles, ‘Epaisseurs’11 and ‘Suite Familière’12. In them we encounter a complete programme for contemporary literature. Fargue’s style, notwithstanding its ‘revolutionariness’, is typically French – vital, witty, and to the point: ‘Cut off lyricism’s hair, even give its wings a little trim. A loud-sounding phrase is the cry of a society lady. One word, just one small word, but in the right place, I beg of Thee’.

‘Columns are essential. The time will come when the building will stand and you can quietly remove the columns, but the ghost of them must always be sensed’.

‘Too many words. Only give space to the leaders. Grant liberty only to the chosen word – replete, bold, and well-armed’.

‘Do not mix wine with water. For me art is pure crystal, a kernel of aniline, which can colour a glass, a tumbler, a goblet, a barrel. Essentially, the glass no longer interests me’.

‘They offer us Louis XIV’s old slippers, but we prefer to go barefoot’.

‘I call bourgeois all those who have said no to themselves, to love, and to struggle, in the name of holy peace and quiet. They douse the lamp and for illumination use a neighbouring streetlamp. They come close to language and ideas only when they’re sure they’re dead and won’t bite. They do not insult a lion’.

In the autumn issue of Commerce we may read a letter by Paul Valéry, using the pseudonym ‘Emily Teste’13. This is the confession of the naïve and humble wife of a great man. ‘I am not only a witness to his life’, writes this ‘Emily Teste’, as if addressing the editors, ‘I am also a separate part, a separate organ of his life, which however has no outstanding importance… He never tells me I’m stupid, and this touches me profoundly… You need to observe him at the times when he’s lost in his thoughts – then, his face changes, loses its definition – just a bit further, and he’d be invisible. But I tell you, Sir, when he comes back out of this abyss, it’s as if he opens up new countries inside me… he embraces me like a mountain side of life and reality, he discovers himself within me, he comes awake within me – what happiness!’

Taken as a whole, Commerce offers beautifully chosen, unfailingly interesting material. The translations of foreign authors are distinguished by their integrity and their artistry of execution. Thanks to the exceptional Léon-Paul Fargue, ‘Épaisseurs’, Commerce, I, (été 1924), pp. 27-59.

Léon-Paul Fargue, ‘Suite Familière’, Commerce, II, (automne 1924), pp. 31-55.

13 Paul Valéry, ‘Lettre de Madame Emilie Teste’, Commerce, II, (automne 1924), pp. 5-30.

11 12

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composition of the editorial board, the reader can get to know the most fascinating experiments by contemporary European groupings, and the most striking examples of the latest artistic literature.

Elena Izvol′skaya

on Commerce

Летом 1924 года в Париже начал выходить новый литературный журнал под редакцией Поля Валери, Валери Ларбо и Леон-Поль Фарга. Само название «Commerce» (в смысле умственного общения), указывает на задачи журнала. Андрэ Бретон иронически пишет, что поэты имеют втрое меньше читателей, чем философы, а философы в двести раз меньше читателей, чем авторы романов. «Commerce» – журнал, печатающий произведения поэтов и мыслителей, предназначенный для культурного меньшинства, выходит 4 раза в год в 1.600 экземплярах «на бумаге альфа», нумерованных от 1 до 1600. По форме и содержанию, журнал несколько напоминает русские и центрально–европейские периодические издания. Мы находим в нем целый ряд статей на общие литературно-философские темы, относящиеся к заданиям современной культуры. Блестящий писатель Валери Ларбо, знаток иностранной литературы, пропитанный традициями английской беллетристики, описывает в длинном письме свое путешествие в Италию, посещение знаменитого писателя Марио Пучини, поездку в родной городок Леопарди – Реканати. Изящный, плавный слог Валери Ларбо уносит читателя вдаль, как тихие струи глубокой, широкой реки. Прекрасны также отрывки его перевода «Улиса», насколько возможно передать на французском языке сложную прозу Джэмса Джойса. Рядом с произведениями Ларбо, «Commerce» печатает стихи американского поэта Т.С.Элиота, австрийца Райнер Мариа Рильке (написанные им на французском языке), Л.П.Фарга, Ст.Ж.Перса, статьи Перса и Полана. Очень любопытны статьи Андрэ Бретона: «О малом значении действительности» и Луи Арагона «Волна сновидений», в которых эти два талантливых писателей излагают теорию сюрреализма: сверхсознание, как источник вдохновения, творческий характер сновидений, необходимость обновить язык, и образ мышления; борьба против застывших форм литературы, и т.д.

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

102

HELEN ISWOLSKY: COMMERCE AND BEYOND

Французский язык ныне переживает острый кризис. Обновление, обогащение языка – таково стремление целого ряда мыслителей и писателей. И можно было бы объяснить кажущееся несколько наивным увлечение Mots Croisés – все тем же тяготением к изучению новых слов, новых технических терминов и понятий. Современные французские школы, и особенно левый фланг сюрреалистов, стремятся расширить во что бы то не стало рамки литературы, найти способ выражения не только для разумных, но и для сверхсознательных явлений, создать в литературе нечто вроде «четвертого измерения». Арагон пишет о каком-то «умственном веществе, отличающемся от разумного мышления, и сливающемся с галлюцинациями и сновидениями», и указывает на исключительный интерес этой области, затронутой такими поэтами, как Rimbaud – но еще никем систематически не изученной. Бретон, представитель, так сказать, «боевого сюрреализма», предлагает искусственное воспроизведение предметов и образов, появляющихся в сновидениях, и не поддающихся никакому разумному объяснению или анализу, но обогащающих фантазию поэтов и писателей. Неизвестно, продержится ли сюрреализм дольше, чем предшествовавший ему дадаизм, но нельзя не признать, однако, что эта своеобразная школа, основанная на изучении «техники» снов и сновидений на яву, дала целый ряд интересных опытов и обогатила молодую литературу новыми яркими и живыми образами. Эту цель обновления языка и формы преследует также Леон Поль Фарг в двух статьях «Epaisseurs» и «Suite Familière». Мы находим в них целую программу современной литературы. Стиль Фарга, несмотря на «революционность», типично французский – живой, остроумный и меткий: «Отрежь волосы лиризму, подрежь ему даже немного крылья. Громкая фраза – крик светской женщины. Одно слово, одно маленькое слово, на своем месте, умоляю Тебя». «Колонны необходимы. Приходит минута, когда постройка держится, и ты можешь тихонько отодвинуть колонны – но призрак их должен постоянно ощущаться». «Слишком много слов. Дай место одним вожакам. Выпусти на волю лишь избранное слово, сытое, смелое, хорошо вооруженное». «Не смешивай вина с водой. Для меня искусство – чистый кристалл, зернышко анилина, которое может окрасить рюмку, стакан, бокал, бочку. По существу, рюмка меня уже больше не интересует». «Нам предлагают старые туфли Людовика XIV – мы предпочитаем ходить босыми».

on Commerce

103

«Я называю буржуа всех тех, которые отказались от себя, от любви, от борьбы, во имя святого спокойствия. Они тушат лампу и освещаются соседним фонарем. Они подходят к языку, к идее, лишь убедившись, что они мертвы, что не укусят. Они не обидят льва». В осеннем номере «Commerce» мы читаем письмо Поля Валери под псевдонимом Эмили Тэст. Это исповедь наивной и смиренной жены великого человека: «Я не только свидетельница его жизни, – пишет мнимая Эмили Тэст, будто бы обращаясь в редакцию, – я также отдельная часть, отдельный орган его жизни, не преставляющий, однако, исключительной важности… Он никогда не говорит мне, что я глупа, и это меня глубоко трогает… Его нужно видеть в минуты, когда он погружен в свои мысли: – тогда его лицо меняется, теряет свои очертания, – еще немного, и он сделался бы невидимым. Но – милостивый государь, – когда он возвращается из этой пучины, – он как будто открывает во мне новые земли… он обхватывает меня, как скалу жизни и действительности, он находит себя во мне, он пробуждается во мне, – какое счастье!» В своей совокупности, Commerce дает прекрасно подобранный, всегда интересный материал. Переводы иностранных писателей отличаются добросовестностью и художественностью выполнения. Благодаря исключительному составу редакции, читатель знакомится с самыми любопытными опытами современных европейских школ, с самыми яркими образцами новейшей изящной литературы. Елена Извольская Zveno, 123, 8 June 1925, pp. 2-3. The original uses the Old Orthography, which has been modernised for the present publication.

Index of Commerce (1924-1932)

1924 Cahier I – été 1924 – 158 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, Lettre LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Épaisseurs VALERY LARBAUD, Ce vice impuni, la lecture St J. PERSE, Amitié du prince JAMES JOYCE, Ulysse – fragments, traduction de MM. Valery Larbaud et Auguste Morel Cahier II – automne 1924 – 188 pp.

EMILIE TESTE, Lettre LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Suite familière VALERY LARBAUD, Lettre à deux amis LOUIS ARAGON, Une Vague de rêve MICHEL IEHL, Willerholz: Féerie dramatique en 3 tableaux (Premier tableau) JEAN PAULHAN, Luce, l’enfant négligée RAINER MARIA RILKE, Poèmes ROBERT HERRICK, Poèmes, traduction d’Auguste Morel, préface de Valery Larbaud Cahier III – hiver 1924 – 258 pp.

SAINT-J. PERSE, Chanson T.-S. ELIOT, Poème, adaptation de S.-J. Perse MAX JACOB, Poèmes ANDRÉ BRETON, Introduction au discours sur le peu de réalité ROGER VITRAC, Insomnie J.-B. TAVERNIER (1605 -1689), Épître au Roi, d’un commerçant français suivie de fragments de ses relations de voyage

BÜCHNER, Léonce et Léna LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Nuées VALERY LARBAUD, Lettre d’Italie

1925 Cahier IV – printemps 1925 – 186 pp.

PAUL CLAUDEL, Le Vieillard sur le mont Omi FRANCIS JAMMES, Trois extraits de ‘Ma France poétique’ GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI, Appunti per una poesia MARCEL JOUHANDEAU, Ermeline et les quatre vieillards JOHN-ANTOINE NAU, Au Mouillage PAUL VALÉRY, Préface pour une nouvelle traduction de la soirée avec M. Teste LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Poème SIR THOMAS WYAT, Poèmes, traduction d’Annie Hervieu et Auguste Morel valery larbaud, Sir Thomas Wyatt MAÎTRE ECKHART, Fragments mystiques, traduits et précédés d’un portrait par Bernard Groethuysen GIACOMO LEOPARDI, Poèmes, traduction de Benjamin Crémieux Cahier V – automne 1925 – 231 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, A B C LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Tumulte JEAN PAULHAN, L’Experiénce du proverbe XXX, Ra-Chrysalide

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

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XXX, Nukarpiartekak RUDOLF KASSNER, Le Lépreux FRANCIS PONGE, Poèmes ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, Poèmes JEAN PRÉVOST, L’Homme à la montre ANDRÉ BEUCLER, Entreprises de féeries HŒLDERLIN, Poèmes, suivis d’une documentation sur la folie de Hœlderlin réunie par B. Groethuysen MAURICE SCÈVE, Fragments de Microcosme, suivis de Notes sur Maurice Scève par Valery Larbaud Cahier VI – hiver 1925 – 208 pp.

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Banalité EDMOND TESTE, Extraits de son Log Book VALERY LARBAUD, Le Vain travail de voir divers pays ANDRÉ SUARÈS, Saint-Juin de la Primavère CHARLES MAURON, Poèmes HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL, Voies et rencontres LOUIS MASSIGNON, Trois mystiques musulmans JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET, Mort et résurrection BORIS PASTERNAK, Poèmes OSSIPE MANDELSTAM, 1er Janvier 1924 HENRI HOPPENOT, Traversée de la ville

1926 Cahier VII – printemps – 200 pp.

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Esquisses pour un paradis VALERY LARBAUD, Écrit dans une cabine du sud-express JULES SUPERVIELLE, Poème ANTONIN ARTAUD, Fragments d’un journal d’enfer…

ROGER VITRAC, Le Goût du sang EDITH SITWELL, Poème VINCENZO CARDARELLI, Prologues ROGER FRY, Moustiques

POUCHKINE, Le Maure de Pierre le Grand Cahier VIII – été 1926 – 204 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, Au Sujet des Lettres persanes VALERY LARBAUD, Rues et visages de Paris MAX JACOB, Poèmes RENÉ GUILLERÉ, Dans les Espagnes arbitraires MARCEL JOUHANDEAU, Léda EMILIO CECCHI, Aquarium-Kaléidoscope LE PÈRE FRANÇOIS (E. Binet), Deux extraits de l’Essai des merveilles de nature et des plus nobles artifices JACQUES RIVIÈRE, 22-25 Août 1914 Cahier IX – automne 1926 – 194 pp.

PAUL CLAUDEL, Le Poëte et le shamisen ANDRÉ GIDE, Dindiki MAX ELSKAMP, Poèmes HENRY MICHAUX, Villes mouvantes P. DRIEU LA ROCHELLE, Le Jeune Européen RUDOLF KASSNER, Des Éléments de la grandeur humaine ANTOINE HÉROËT, Complainte d’une dame surprise nouvellement d’amour Quelques notes sur Antoine Héroët par M. Valery Larbaud Cahier X – hiver 1926 – 200 pp.

NIETZSCHE, Le Drame musical grec, traduit par Jean Paulhan ANDRÉ SUARÈS, Variables VIRGINIA WOOLF, Le Temps passe, traduit par C. Mauron PAUL VALÉRY, Oraison funèbre d’une fable BRUNO BARILLI, Trois essais, traduits par Mme Maria Nebbia et M. Valery Larbaud JULES SUPERVIELLE, Oloron- SainteMarie LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Second récit du naufrageur P. DE LANUX, Voix dans le vieux Louvre

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XXX, Brulement d’un hérétique, traduit par Eugène Marsan

1927 Cahier XI – printemps 1927 – 197 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, Essai sur Stendhal (à propos de Lucien Leuwen) LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Trouvé dans des papiers de famille VALERY LARBAUD, Sur le rebut BERNARD GROETHUYSEN, Essai sur la pensée de Saint Augustin HENRI HERTZ, Préparatifs de création PIERRE JEAN JOUVE, Quatre fleurs RENÉ GUILLERÉ, Sainte Russie Cahier XII – été 1927 – 233 pp.

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, La Drogue GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI, Notes pour une poésie ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, Poèmes, traduits de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud CHARLES MAURON, Poèmes FRANZ HELLENS, Indications peu salutaires ANDRÉ MALRAUX, Le Voyage aux îles fortunées HENRI MICHAUX, L’Époque des illuminés RICCARDO BACcHELLI, Trois divinités sur les Apennins, traduit de l’italien par Valery Larbaud SÖREN KIERKEGAARD, Fragments d’un journal, traduits du danois par Jean Gateau et précédés d’une introduction de Rudolf Kassner MICHEL PSELLOS, Deux épisodes du règne de Constantin IX, traduit du grec par Émile Renauld Cahier XIII – automne 1927 – 193 pp.

NIETZSCHE, Socrate et la tragédie, traduit de l’allemand par Jean Paulhan PAUL VALÉRY, Sur Bossuet

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, L’Exil VALERY LARBAUD, Le Miroir du café Marchesi ANDRÉ BRETON, Nadja GEORGES NEVEUX, Quelle ombre soulève votre main BENJAMIN PÉRET, La Brebis galante LIAM O’ FLAHERTY, Barbara la Rouge, traduit de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud Cahier XIV – hiver 1927 – 228 pp.

THOMAS HARDY, Abatage d’un arbre, traduit de l’anglais par Paul Valéry EDGAR POE, Quelques fragments des Marginalia, traduits et annotés par Paul Valéry RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, L’Évasion MARCEL JOUHANDEAU, Le Marié de village LEOPARDI, Pensées, traduites de l’italien et précédées d’une note de Giuseppe Ungaretti LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Esquisses pour un paradis (Fin)

1928 Cahier XV – printemps 1928 – 209 pp.

T.-S. ELIOT, Perch’io non spero …, traduit de l’anglais par Jean de Menasce ANDRÉ SUARÈS, Valeurs PAUL VALÉRY, Préface au livre d’un chinois CHENG-TCHENG, Ma mère RICARDO GÜIRALDES, Poèmes solitaires, traduits de l’espagnol par Valery Larbaud VALERY LARBAUD, Deux artistes lyriques JULES SUPERVIELLE, La Pampa aux yeux clos LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Bruits de café Cahier XVI – été 1928 – 210 pp.

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Souvenirs d’un fantôme, fragments VALERY LARBAUD, Actualité JEAN PAULHAN, Sur un défaut de la

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pensée critique POUCHKINE, Le coup de feu, traduit du russe par A. Gide et J. Schiffrin D.-S. MIRSKY, Sur Pouchkine T.-F. POWYS, John Pardy et les vagues, traduit de l’anglais par Charles Mauron JEAN GIONO, Colline Cahier XVII – automne 1928 – 174 pp. ***, Lettre du prestre Jehan à l’empereur de Rome, texte établi par Louis Chevasson, précédé d’une introduction d’André Malraux VALERY LARBAUD, Une Nonnain FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA, Le Martyre de Sainte Eulalie, traduit de l’espagnol par Jules Supervielle LIAM O’FLAHERTY, L’Aviron, traduit de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud RUDOLF KASSNER, La Chimère, traduit de l’allemand par B. Groethuysen et J. Paulhan MARCEL JOUHANDEAU, La Bosco Cahier XVIII – hiver 1928 – 256 pp.

ANDRÉ GIDE, Montaigne LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Vieille France ROY CAMPBELL, Poèmes, traduits de l’anglais par G. Limbour VALERY LARBAUD, Note sur Nathaniel Hawthorne NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, Idées et germes de nouvelles, traduit de l’anglais par M. Valery Larbaud GEORGES LIMBOUR, Le Cheval de Venise PAUL VALÉRY, Léonard et les philosophes MARQUIS DE NOINTEL, Dépêches d’un ambassadeur de France au XVIIème siècle (documents inédits)

1929 Cahier XIX – printemps 1929 – 230 pp.

PAUL CLAUDEL, Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher JEAN PAULHAN, Les Gardiens

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Signaux ANDRÉ SUARÈS, Voyage du condottière BRUNO BARILLI, Vieille Parme, traduit de l’italien par Valery Larbaud Cahier XX – été 1929 – 213 pp.

HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL, Émancipation du lyrisme français, traduit de l’allemand PAUL VALÉRY, Littérature ALFONSO REYES, Les Herbes du Tarahumara, traduit de l’espagnol par Valery Larbaud G. RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, Première épître aux directeurs JÉRÔME CARDAN, Fragments, adaptés du latin, présentés par B. Groethuysen V. ROZANOV, L’Apocalypse de notre temps, fragments Cahier XXI – automne 1929 – 223 pp.

PAUL CLAUDEL, Le Livre de Christophe Colomb T.-S. ELIOT, Som de L’Escalina, traduit de l’anglais par Jean de Menasce VALERY LARBAUD, Le Patron des traducteurs SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Chapitre V de ‘Hydriotaphia’, précédé d’Opinions de S.T. Coleridge sur sir Thomas Browne, traduit de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Mimes Cahier XXII – hiver 1929 – 245 pp.

MORVEN LE GAËLIQUE, Poèmes MICHEL YELL, Le Déserteur HENRI MICHAUX, Le Fils du macrocéphale ANDRÉ SUARÈS, Fiorenza PAUL VALÉRY, Petite préface aux poésies de T’au Yuan Ming T’AU YUAN MING, Oraison funèbre sur sa mort, traduit du chinois par Liang Tsong Taï RUDOLF KASSNER, Le Christ et l’âme du monde, traduit de l’allemand par Jean Paulhan

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1930

FRANZ KAFKA, Récits, traduits de l’allemand par Alexandre Vialatte

Cahier XXIII – printemps 1930 – 260 pp.

VALERY LARBAUD, Trois belles mendiantes HENRI BOSCO, Dans les petits pays de provence G. RIBEMONT DESSAIGNES, Au-delà du pouvoir MARCEL JOUHANDEAU, Le Cadavre enlevé RICHARD ALDINGTON, Le Cœur mangé, traduit de l’anglais par André Beucler et Henry Church JEAN PAULHAN, Sur une poésie obscure Cahier XXIV – été 1930 – 194 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, Moralités RENÉ DAUMAL, Poèmes VALERY LARBAUD, Du sel ou du sable OSSIPE MANDELSTAM, Le Timbre égyptien, traduit du russe par D.S. Mirsky et Georges Limbour ÉCOLE BOUDDHISTE ZEN, ‘Les dix étapes dans l’art de garder la vache’, adaptation française de Paul Petit Cahier XXV – automne 1930 – 220 pp.

ANDRÉ GIDE, Œdipe LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, Une Violette noire BENJAMIN FONDANE, Ulysse LOUIS BRAUQUIER, Panama JEAN FOLLAIN, Poèmes HENRI MICHAUX, Un certain plume GEORGES MEREDITH, Amour moderne, traduit de l’anglais par Gilbert de Voisins Cahier XXVI – hiver 1930 – 211 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, Allocution MARCEL JOUHANDEAU, Tite-le-Long LÉON-PAUL FARGUE, D’un porteplume à un aimant GEORGES SCHEHADÉ, Poèmes G. RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, Deuxième épître aux serins et même aux rossignols

1931 Cahier XXVII – printemps 1931 – 186 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, Amphion ANDRÉ DELONS, Poèmes JOÉ BOUSQUET, L’Ombre d’une ombre XXX, Un Miracle de Notre-Dame, adaptation de Jean Schlumberger GEORG BÜCHNER, Woyzeck, traduit de l’allemand Cahier XXVIII – été 1931 – 229 pp.

PAUL CLAUDEL, Les cinq premières plaies d’Égypte JACQUES PRÉVERT, Tentative de description d’un dîner de têtes à Paris-France G. RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, Faust ROBERT DESNOS, Siramour RUDOLF KASSNER, L’Individu et l’homme collectif, traduit de l’allemand par Jacques Decour

1932 Cahier XXIX – hiver 1932 – 197 pp.

PAUL VALÉRY, Réponse VALERY LARBAUD, Le Vaisseau de Thésée T.-S. ELIOT, Difficultés d’un homme d’état, traduit de l’anglais par Georges Limbour GEORGES GARAMPON, Réveil du début de l’été HENRI MICHAUX, Nous autres GEORGES RODITI, L’Abdication du matin WILLIAM FAULKNER, Une Rose pour Emily, traduit de l’anglais par Maurice-Edgar Coindreau ***, Sinica: Récits de missionnaires jésuites, présentés et précédés d’une introduction par Bernard Groethuysen

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Author

French Titles

Number

Pages

ANONYME (Moyen Age)

Un Miracle de Notre-Dame, comment elle garda une femme d’être brûlée. Adaptation par Jean Schlumberger d’un texte anonyme du moyen-âge

XXVII

75-139

ARAGON, Louis (1897-1982)

Une Vague de rêves

II

89-122

ARTAUD, Antonin (1896-1948)

Fragments d’un journal d’Enfer

VII

63-79

BEUCLER, André (1898 -1985)

Visite à une entreprise de féeries

V

139-168

BOSCO, Henri (1888-1976)

Dans les petits pays de Provence

XXIII

31-47

BOUSQUET, Joé (1897-1950)

L’Ombre d’une ombre

XXVII

59-73

BRAUQUIER, Louis (1900-1976)

Panama

XXV

113-122

BRETON, André (1896-1966)

Introduction au discours sur le peu de Réalité Nadja (première partie)

III XIII

27-57 77-120

CARDAN, Jérôme (1501-1576)

Fragments [Cardan peint par lui-même: Extraits du livre De Vita Propria (Ed. de 1654) et du livre De Rerum Varietate (Ed. de 1558) adaptés du latin par Bernard Groethuysen. Extraits de livre de Cardan intitulé De Subtilitate Rerum, traduit du latin en français par Richard Leblanc, et publié en 1578. Avec note sur Cardan par B. Groethuysen.]

XX

107-150

CLAUDEL, Paul (1868- 1955)

Le Vieillard sur le mont Omi Le Poète et le Shamisen Seconde conversation dans le Loir-et-Cher Le Livre de Christophe Colomb Les cinq premières plaies d’Egypte

IV IX XIX XXI XXVIII

(inséré) 5-40 5-81 5-98 5-39

DAUMAL, René (1908-1944)

Poèmes

XXIV

67-98

DELONS, André (1909-1940)

Poèmes

XXVII

51-58

111

index of Commerce (1924-1932)

DESNOS, Robert (1900-1945)

Siramour

XXVIII

165-196

DRIEU LA ROCHELLE, Pierre (1893-1945)

Le Jeune Européen

IX

85-104

ELSKAMP, Max (1862-1931)

Poèmes

IX

61-70

FARGUE, LéonPaul (1876-1947)

Épaisseurs Suite familière Nuées Poème: ‘Gare de la douleur’ Tumulte Banalité Esquisses pour un paradis Esquisses pour un paradis (Fin) Caquets de la table tournante: Second récit de naufrageur Trouvé dans des papiers de famille en 1909 La Drogue L’Exil Bruits de café Souvenirs d’un fantôme Vieille France Signaux Mimes Une Violette noire D’un porte-plume à un aimant

I II III IV V VI VII XIV X

27-59 31-55 225-231 103-109 15-22 5-12 5-33 181-228 165-175

XI XII XIII XV XVI XVIII XIX XXI XXV XXVI

71-131 5-20 51-57 183-209 5-19 49-66 97-103 217-223 85-90 125-130

FOLLAIN, Jean (1903-1971)

Poèmes

XXV

123-141

FONDANE, Benjamin (1898-1944)

Ulysse: Fragments (poèmes)

XXV

91-111

Père René François (E. BINET, 1631)

Deux extraits de l’Essai des merveilles de nature et des plus nobles artifices

VIII

149-166

GARAMPON, Georges (1899- ?)

Réveil du début de l’été

XXIX

89-98

GIDE, André (1869-1951)

Dindiki, ou le Pérodictique potto Montaigne Œdipe, pièce en trois actes

IX XVIII XXV

41-59 5-48 5-83

GIONO, Jean (1895-1970)

Colline

XVI

119-210

112

index of Commerce (1924-1932)

GROETHUYSEN, Notice sur J.B. Tavernier Maître Eckhart Bernard Essai sur la pensée de Saint Augustin (1880-1946) Jérôme Cardan: Fragments, adaptées du latin et présentées Note sur Büchner Sinica: Récits de missionaires Jésuites pré­ sentés et précédés d’une introduction

III IV XI XX

73-142 147-173 147-160 107-150

XXVII XXIX

141-144 139-198

GUILLERÉ, René (1878-1931)

Dans les Espagnes arbitraires Sainte Russie

VIII XI

73-79 187-197

HELLENS, FRANZ (1881-1972)

Indications peu salutaires

XII

75-92

HÉROËT, Antoine (1492-1568)

Complainte d’une dame surprise nouvellement d’amour

IX

171-183

HERTZ, Henri (1875-1966)

Préparatifs de création

XI

161-180

HOPPENOT, Henri (1891-1977)

Traversée de la ville

VI

201-208

IEHL, Michel (? - ?)

–voir Yell

Willerholz, féerie dramatique en trois tableaux (Premier tableau)

II

123-157

JACOB, Max (1876-1944) –voir MORVEN LE GAELIQUE

Poèmes Poèmes

III VIII

13-23 61-71

JAMMES, Francis (1868-1938)

Trois extraits de Ma France poétique

IV

7-14

JOUHANDEAU, Marcel (1888-1979)

Ermeline et les quatre vieillards Léda Le Marié de village La Bosco Le Cadavre enlevé Tite-le-Long

IV VIII XIV XVII XXIII XXVI

31-74 81-124 79-138 137-174 93-161 17-124

JOUVE, PierreJean (1887-1976)

Quatre fleurs

XI

181-186

LARBAUD, Valery (1881-1957)

Ce vice impuni, la lecture Lettre à deux amis Préface aux poèmes de Robert Herrick

I II II

61-102 57-88 173-180

113

index of Commerce (1924-1932)

Lettre d’Italie Sir Thomas Wyatt Notes sur Maurice Scève Le Vain travail de voir divers pays Écrit dans une cabine du Sud-Express Rues et Visages de Paris Quelques notes sur Antoine Héroët Sur le rebut Le Miroir du café Marchesi Deux artistes lyriques Actualité Une Nonnain Note sur Nathaniel Hawthorne Le Patron des traducteurs Trois belles mendiantes Du sel ou du sable Le Vaisseau de Thésée

III IV V VI VII VIII IX XI XIII XV XVI XVII XVIII XXI XXIII XXIV XXIX

233-285 127-145 225-231 27-79 35-57 29-60 184-194 133-146 59-76 109-136 21-28 25-70 87-98 105-184 5-30 99-118 15-78

MORVEN LE GAELIQUE (Max Jacob)

Poèmes

XXII

5-43

LIMBOUR, Georges (1900-1970)

Le Cheval de Venise

XVIII

113-149

MALRAUX, André Le Voyage aux Iles Fortunées (1901-1976) Introduction à la lettre du Prestre Jehan à l’empereur de Rome

XII XVII

93-131 7-24

MAURON, Charles (1899-1966)

Poèmes Poèmes

VI XII

123-137 53-74

MICHAUX, Henri (1899-1984)

Villes mouvantes L’Époque des Illuminés Le Fils du macrocéphale (Portrait) Un Certain plume Nous autres

IX XII XXII XXV XXIX

71-84 133-141 109-123 143-161 99-102

NAU, John-Antoine Au mouillage (1860-1918)

IV

75-92

NEVEUX, Georges Quelle ombre soulève votre main (1900-1983)

XIII

121-127

MARQUIS DE NOINTEL (1635-1685)

XVIII

207-256

Dépêches d’un ambassadeur de France au XVIIème siècle (documents inédits)

114

index of Commerce (1924-1932)

Luce, l’enfant négligée L’Expérience du proverbe Sur un défaut de la pensée critique (suivi d’une note sur Taine et Rousseau) Les Gardiens Sur une poésie obscure

II V XVI

159-164 23-77 29-52

XIX XXIII

83-96 191-260

PERET, Benjamin (1899-1959)

La Brebis galante (fragments)

XIII

129-170

PONGE, Francis (1899-1988)

Poèmes

V

123-126

PRESTRE JEHAN

Lettre du prestre Jehan à l’empereur de Rome, texte établi par Louis Chevasson, précédé d’une introduction d’André Malraux

XVII

5-24

PAULHAN, Jean (1884-1969)

PRÉVERT, Jacques Tentative de description d’un dîner de têtes à XXVIII (1900-1977) Paris-France

41-61

PRÉVOST, Jean (1901-1944)

L’Homme à la montre

V

133-138

RIBEMONTDESSAIGNES, Georges (1882-1974)

L’Evasion Première épître aux directeurs Au-delà du pouvoir Deuxième épître aux serins et même aux rossignols Faust

XIV XX XXIII XXVI XXVIII

43-78 79-105 49-92 145-181 63-164

RIVIÈRE, Jacques (1886-1925)

22-25 août 1914

VIII

167-204

RODITI, Georges (1906-1999)

L’abdication du matin

XXIX

103-107

SAINT-JOHN PERSE (1887-1975)

Amitié du prince Chanson: ‘J’honore les vivants’

I III

103-119 5-7

SCÈVE, Maurice (1500-1560)

Fragments de Microcosme

V

209-231

SCHEHADÉ, Georges (1910-1989

Poèmes

XXVI

131-143

SUARÈS, André (1868-1948)

Saint-Juin de la Primevère Variables Valeurs Voyage du condottiere Fiorenza

VI X XV XIX XXII

81-122 47-87 13-58 105-200 125-196

115

index of Commerce (1924-1932)

SUPERVIELLE, Jules (1884-1960)

Whisper Oloron-Sainte-Marie La Pampa aux yeux clos

VII X XV

TAVERNIER, J.-B. (1605-1689)

Épître au Roi d’un commerçant français suivi III de Fragments de ses relations de voyage

VALÉRY, Paul (1871-1945)

Lettre Lettre de Madame Emilie Teste Préface pour une nouvelle traduction de La Soirée avec M. Teste ABC Edmond Teste: Log Book (extraits) Au sujet des Lettres persanes Oraison funèbre d’une fable Essai sur Stendhal (à propos de Lucien Leuwen) Sur Bossuet Notes sur les Marginalia de Poe Préface au livre d’un Chinois Léonard et les philosophes Littérature Petite préface aux poésies de T’au Yuan Ming Moralités Allocution (cinquantenaire des concerts Lamoureux Amphion, mélodrame (musique d’Arthur Honegger) Réponse

I II IV

5-26 5-30 93-102

V VI VIII X XI

5-14 13-25 5-27 135-142 5-69

XIII XIV XV XVIII XX XXII XXIV XXVI

45-50 11-41 59-77 151-205 13-65 197-209 5-66 5-16

XXVII

5-50

XXIX

5-14

VITRAC, Roger (1899-1952)

Insomnie Le Goût du sang

III VII

59-68 81-111

YELL, Michel –voir IEHL

Le Déserteur

XXII

45-107

Author

English Titles

Number

Pages

ALDINGTON, Richard (1892-1962)

Le Cœur mangé (traduit de l’anglais par André Beucler et Henry Church)

XXIII

163-189

BROWNE, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)

Chapitre V de Hydriotaphia, précédé d’OpiXXI nions de S.T. Coleridge sur Sir Thomas Browne (traduits de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud)

185-215

CAMPBELL, Roy (1901-1957)

Poèmes (Textes anglais et traduction par Georges Limbour)

67-85

XVIII

59-61 157-164 137-181 69-142 ?

116

index of Commerce (1924-1932)

COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Opinions sur Sir Thomas Browne (traduit de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud)

XXI

189-195

ELIOT, T.S. (1888-1965)

The Hollow Men (extrait: texte anglais et adaptation de Saint-John Perse) Perch’io non spero (texte anglais et traduction par Jean de Menasce) Som de l’escalina (texte anglais et traduction par Jean de Menasce) Difficultés d’un homme d’état (texte anglais et traduction par Georges Limbour)

III

9-11

XV

5-11

XXI

99-103

XXIX

79-87

FAULKNER, William (1897-1962)

Une Rose pour Emily (traduit de l’anglais par Maurice-Edgar Coindreau)

XXIX

109-137

Fry, Roger (1866-1934)

Moustiques (traduit de l’anglais par Charles Mauron)

VII

145-154

HARDY, Thomas (1840-1928)

Felling a tree (texte anglais et traduction par Paul Valéry)

XIV

5-9

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Idées et germes de nouvelles (traduit de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud)

XVIII

99-111

HERRICK, Robert (1591-1674)

Poèmes (traduits de l’anglais par Annie Hervieu et Auguste Morel, préface de Valery Larbaud)

II

171-188

JOYCE, James (1882-1941)

Ulysse: Fragments (traduits de l’anglais par Auguste Morel et Valery Larbaud, avec note par Valery Larbaud)

I

121-158

MACLEISH, Archibald (1892-1984)

Poèmes (textes anglais et traduction par Valery Larbaud) Poèmes (textes anglais et traduction par Valery Larbaud)

V

127-131

XII

43-51

MEREDITH, Georges (1828-1900)

Amour moderne (traduit de l’anglais par Gilbert de Voisins, avec note du traducteur)

XXV

163-220

O’FLAHERTY, Liam (1897-1984)

Barbara la rouge (traduit de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud) L’Aviron (traduit de l’anglais par Valery Larbaud)

XIII

171-193

XVII

79-93

POE, Edgar Allan (1808-1849)

Quelques fragments des Marginalia (traduits de l’anglais et annotés par Paul Valéry)

XIV

11-41

117

index of Commerce (1924-1932)

POWYS, T.F. (1875-1953)

John Pardy et les vagues (traduit de l’anglais par Charles Mauron)

XVI

99-118

SITWELL, Edith (1887-1964)

Une entrevue avec Mars (extrait de la Mort de Vénus, texte anglais et traduction par Valery Larbaud)

VII

113-123

WOOLF, Virginia (1882-1941)

Le Temps passe (traduit de l’anglais par Charles Mauron)

X

89-133

WYATT, Sir Thomas (1503-1542)

Poèmes (traduits de l’anglais par Annie Hervieu et Auguste Morel)

IV

111-126

Author

German Titles

Number

Pages

BÜCHNER, Georg Léonce et Léna (traduit de l’allemand par (1813-1837) Denise Levé et Louis Aragon) Woyzeck (traduit de l’allemand par Jeanne Bucher, Bernard Groethuysen et Jean Paulhan)

III

143-223

XXVII

141-186

MAÎTRE ECKHART (1260-1327)

IV

147-173

Fragments mystiques (traduits et précédés d’un portrait par Bernard Groethuysen)

GROETHUYSEN, [siehe unter Büchner, Eckhart und Hölderlin] Bernard HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo von (1874-1929)

Voies et rencontres (traduit de l’allemand par VI l’auteur; revu par Alexis Leger) XX Emancipation du lyrisme français (traduit de l’allemand par l’auteur; revu par Alexis Leger)

139-150

HÖLDERLIN, Friedrich (1770-1843)

Poèmes (traduits de l’allemand et suivis d’une documentation sur la folie de Hölderlin réunie par B. Groethuysen)

V

169-207

KAFKA, Franz (1883-1924)

Deux récits: Premier chagrin, Un Champion du jeûne (traduits de l’allemand par Alexandre Vialatte)

XXVI

183-211

KASSNER, Rudolf (1873-1959)

V Le Lépreux (traduit de l’allemand par Jean Paulhan) IX Des éléments de la grandeur humaine (traduit de l’allemand par la Princesse Alexandre de la Tour et Taxis) Introduction à Sören Kierkegaard (traduit de XII l’allemand par Alix Guillain)

5-11

93-122 105-170 153-164

118

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La Chimère (traduit de l’allemand par B. Groethuysen et J. Paulhan) Le Christ et l’âme du monde (traduit de l’allemand par J. Paulhan) L’Individu et l’homme collectif (traduit de l’allemand par Jacques Decour)

XVII

95-136

XXII

215-245

XXVIII

197-229

Le Drame musical grec (texte allemand et traduction par Jean Paulhan, avec note par Max Oehler) Socrate et la tragédie (texte allemand et traduction par Jean Paulhan avec note par Max Oehler)

X

5-46

XIII

5-44

RILKE, Rainer Maria (1875-1926)

La Dormeuse

II

165-169

Author

Italian Titles

Number

Pages

ANONYME (Trecento Italiano)

Brûlement d’un hérétique (extrait de Histoire de Frère Michel Minorita, traduit par Eugène Marsan)

X

187-200

BACCHELLI, Riccardo (1891-1985)

Trois divinités sur les Apennins (traduit de l’italien par Valery Larbaud)

XII

143-151

BARILLI, Bruno (1880-1952)

Trois essais (traduits de l’italien par Maria Nebbia et Valery Larbaud) Vieille Parme (traduit de l’italien par Valery Larbaud)

X

143-156

XIX

201-230

CARDARELLI, Vincenzo (1887-1959)

Prologues (traduit de l’italien par Joseph Baruzzi)

VII

127-143

CECCHI, Emilio (1884-1966)

Aquarium (traduit de l’italien par Benjamin Crémieux) Kaléidoscope (traduit de l’italien par Valery Larbaud)

VIII

125-133

VIII

135-147

LEOPARDI, Giacomo (1798-1837)

Poèmes (traduits par Benjamin Crémieux) Pensées (traduites de l’italien et précédées d’une note de Giuseppe Ungaretti)

IV XIV

175-185 139-180

UNGARETTI, Giuseppe (1888-1970)

Appunti per una poesia Appunti per una poesia (2) (texte italien et traduction par l’auteur) Note sur Leopardi

IV XII

15-29 21-41

XIV

141-146

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich (1844-1900)

119

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Author

Russian Titles

Number

Pages

MANDELSTAM, Osip (1891-1938)

Ier Janvier 1924 (traduit du russe par Hélène Iswolsky) Le Timbre égyptien (traduit du russe par D.S. Mirsky et Georges Limbour)

VI

193-199

XXIV

119-168

MIRSKY, D.S. (1890-1939)

Sur Pouchkine

XVI

83-97

PASTERNAK, Boris (1890-1960)

Poèmes (traduits du russe par Hélène Iswolsky)

VI

187-192

POUCHKINE, Aleksandr (1799-1837)

Le Maure de Pierre le Grand (traduit du russe par Hélène Iswolsky) Le Coup de feu (traduit du russe par André Gide et Jacques Schiffrin)

VII

155-200

XVI

53-81

ROZANOV, V. (1856-1919)

L’Apocalypse de notre temps: fragments(traduits du russe par V. Pozner et B. de Schloezer)

XX

151-213

Name Index*

Adamovich Georgii, 23n Adler Kathleen, xivn Agnelli Marella, xin Akhmatova Anna, 72n Alexander III, 57 Alexandra Queen, 68 Andrewes Lancelot (Bishop), 42 e n Anet Claude see Schepfer Jean Anrep Helen, xv Appel Alfred Jr., 86n Aragon Louis, xxii, 9, 10n, 98 e n, 101 Argutinskii-Dolgorukii Prince Vladimir Nikolaevich, 69, 91 e n, 92n Aseev Nikolai, 54n Auden W.H., 86 Auric Georges, 71n Babel Isaak, 14, 16, 33 e n, 58-62 Baird Catherine, 69n, 80n Bakhtin Mikhail, 87 Balzac Honoré, xiiin Barney Natalie Clifford, xivn, xvi, xvii e n, 84 Barolini Helen, xn, xiin Baruzzi, brothers, 71n Bassani Giorgio, ix Bataille George, ix Beach Sylvia, xivn, xix, xxiiin

Beasley Rebecca, 90n Beaujour Elizabeth Klosty, 69n Bely Andrei, 54, 55 e n, 72n Benckendorff Konstantin, 27n Benckendorff Sofia Petrovna, 27 e n Benoit Alexandre, 91 Benstock Shari, xivn Berdiaev Nikolai, 80 e n, 86 Bergery Gaston, 79n Bergonzi Bernard, 18n, 49n, 77 e n Berman Art, xxvin Beyssac Michèle, 37n Bibesco Emmanuel, xii Bibesco Marthe, xix Biddle Francis, xn Bird Robert, 83n, 86n Bird Thomas E., 68n Blake William, 45 Blanchot Maurice, ix Blok Aleksandr, 56 e n, 57n, 72n, 80 Bobrov Semen, 54n Bohnenkamp Klaus E., 23n, 36n Boldini Giovanni, xiii, xiiin Bonnard Pierre, xi, xii Bowra Maurice, 37n Boyer Paul, 33 e n Brechmacher Janna, xxn, xxiin Breton André, 45n, 97, 98 e n, 101, 102

* In view of the ubiquity of their appearance and the unavoidable variations in attested spellings, the names of Marguerite Caetani, Helen Iswolsky, and D.S. Mirsky have been omitted from the Index.

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

122

Name Index

Brown Alec, 18, 20n, 33n, 38 e n, 49 e n, 78n Brown Clarence, 46n Bruerton G., 40n Büchner Georg, xxii Budberg Moura, 12, 13 Budenny Semen, 59 e n Bullock Philip Ross, 90n Caetani Camillo, xin, xiiin, xv, 30n Caetani Lelia, xiii e n, xv Caetani Michelangelo, xiiin Caetani Onorato, xiiin Caetani Roffredo, xiii-xv, xix, 17, 32n, 42, 94 e n Caffi Andrea, 35 e n, 37 Caldéron de la Barca Pedro, 46 Campbell Roy, xxin, 19, 34 e n, 45n Caracciolo Marella, xin Cardan Jerôme, xxii Cartier Louis-François, 68 Casati Stampa di Soncino Luisa, xiii e n Cecchi Emilio, xxii Chaadaev Pyotr, 56 Chandler Gabrielle, 92 e n Chanler Margaret Terry, 92n Chanler May Margaret, 92n Chanler Porter Ralph, 92n Chapin Cornelia van Auken, xn, 40n Chapin Cornelia Garrison van Auken, x

Chapin Katherine Garrison, xn, 40n Chapin Lindley Hoffman, ix Chapin Lindley Hoffman Paul, xn Chapin Samuel, xn Chaplin Charlie, xiv Chateaubriand René-François, xiiin Chaubet François, 8n Chauvet Dr., 49 e n Chekhov Anton, 23 Chukovsky K., 70n Claudel Paul, ix, 9, 10n, 71n Cocteau Jean, xxv e n, 90 Colette Sidonie-Gabrielle, 71n

Crawford Marion, 92n Cross Anthony, 14n Curtius Ernst Robert, 31n D’Annunzio Gabriele, xii e n, xiii e n Davidson Pamela, 83n Davie Donald, 23n, 78n Davies Richard, 27n, 47n Davis Ronald, xxiv e n Decour Jacques, 45n Dell Miss, 96n Democritus, 41 Dennett Laurie, xn Derain André, xvi, xxi, 43, 71n Deschartes O., 37n Desjardins Paul, 31n Diaghilev Sergei, 91n, 92n Diesbach Ghislain, xixn Dikson V., 91n ‘Dimitri’, 71n Dostoyevsky Fyodor, 78n, 95n Dreyfus Alfred, 57 Du Bos Charles, 41 e n, 82-84 Dufy Raoul, 71n Dutli Ralph, 46n Dutt Rajani Palme, 48n Dutton E.P., 27n Edmond de Polignac Princesse, xix Efimov M.V., 3n Efron Sergei, 5, 47n Efros Abraham, 70n Eliot T.S., xivn, xvi, xviin, xxi e n, xxii e n, xxv, 3, 10 e n, 18-21, 23, 30 e n, 34, 38, 42-44, 47-49, 51, 62-64, 77, 98 e n, 101 Eliot Valerie, xviin, 30n, 43n, 77n Ellmann Richard, xxin Emerson Frances, 45n Empson William, 19, 47 e n Erenburg Ilya, 25n, 96n Esenin Sergey, 72n Etard Madeleine, 16, 44 e n Etkind Efim (E.G.), 18n, 76n

Name Index

Fabergé Peter Carl, 68 Fadeev Alexander, 17, 34 e n Fargue Léon-Paul, xvi-xix, xxin, xxiiixxvi, 9, 27 e n, 35, 41, 71n, 97-99, 101, 102 Fedin Konstantin, 92 e n Fedorovna Maria, 68 Fedotov G.P., 87 Fet Afanasii, 56n Fitch Noel Riley, xivn Flanner Janet, xixn Fleishman Lazar, 11n, 70n Florinsky Michael, 23n, 35n Fontenoy Jean, 33 e n Ford Hugh, xixn Forster E.M., 19 e n Fremantle Anne, 86n Friedman Julia, 14n Fry Roger, xv Gallimard Gaston, xvi Gautier Théophile, 61 Gerf Evgenii, 86n Germain André, 41 e n Gershenzon Mikhail, 83 e n Gibert Frederic E., ixn Gibert Lelia Maria, ix Gide André, xvi, xxi, xxiin, 6n, 31n, 38 e n, 39n, 48n Gippius Zinaida, 81n Giraud-Badin Louis, xxiv Giraudoux Jean, 79 Goll Ivan, 72n Golubeff Natascha de (Tata), xii e n Goncharov Ivan, 80 Gorky Maksim, 13 e n, 17, 32n, 59, 60, 70 e n, 94 e n Green Julien, 79 e n Grigoryev Alexander, 56 Groethuysen Bernard, xvi, xxii e n, xxiii e n, 6n, 8 e n, 15, 16, 21-23, 30, 31 e n, 41, 45, 48 e n, 49 Groom Gloria, ixn, xn, xiin Grosse Kracht Klaus, 48n

123

Guillain Alix, 6n, 15, 16, 31 e n, 33, 40, 49 Guïraldes Ricardo, xxin, xxii Gumilev Nikolai, 72n Haffenden John, 30n, 43n, 77n Hahn Reynaldo, xxi Halpern Aleksandr, 38n Halpern Salomeya, 47n Hamilton Ian, xviin Hardy Thomas, xxin, xxii, 34 e n Harrison Jane, 20 e n, 22n, 41n Haughton Hugh, xviin Hayasaka Monseigneur, 84 Heraclitus, 41 Herzen Alexander, 56 Hessel Jos, xvi Hilse Christoph, xxn, xxiin Hirshner Erica E., xivn Hoffman E.T.A., 53 Hofmann Josef, 57 e n Hofmannsthal Hugo von, xxii Hölderlin Friedrich, xxiii e n Hopkins Gerard Manley, 19, 38, 44 Howard Harriet Ellis, xiiin Howard Hubert, xiiin Hughes Robert, 12 e n, 33n Humbertclaude Eric, 4n Huyghe René Louis, 51n Iswolsky Aleksandr, 67, 80n, 83n, 84n, 89n, 90n, Iswolsky Grigorii, 84n Ivanov Georgii, 23n, 82 Ivanov Viacheslav (Vyacheslav), 18, 36 e n, 37n, 72n, 83 e n Ivanovich (Ivanych) Sergei, 57 e n Johnston Robert H., xivn Jouhandeau Marcel, 79 e n Joyce James, xxi, 10 e n, 48, 97 e n, 101 Jurgens Madame, 94 e n Kahan Sylvia, xixn Karlinsky Simon, 86n

124

Name Index

Karlovna Margarita (née Countess Toll), 68 Kashina-Evreinova Anna Aleksandrovna, 79 Kassner Rudolf, xxii, 36 e n, 45 e n, 95, 95n Kataev Valentin, 96n Kaznina O.A., 3n, 4n, 17n Kemball Robin, 13n Kerensky Alexander, 89n Kessel Joseph, 34 e n, 79 e n Kessler Count Harry, xii e n, xix, xxn, xxiin, 23n Keynes John Maynard, 7n, 22n, 46n Khodasevich Vladislav, 71n, 85 Kippenberg Anton, 23n Kliuev Nikolai, 72n Knight Margaret, xiiin Knopf Alfred, 27n Konevskoi Ivan Ivanovich, 58 e n Korostelev O.A., 3n Koteliansky S.S., 77, 78, 95n Kozovoï Vadim, 4n, 25n Krasilnikov, 90n Krivosheeva E., 4n Kubelik Jan, 57 e n Kuzmin Mikhail, 18, 72n Landriano Princesse, xiii Larbaud Valery, xvi-xxvi, 9, 10 e n, 23n, 26 e n, 45, 71n, 97 e n, 98, 101 Lawrence D.H., 48, 77 e n, 78n Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm, 48 e n Leontieff Constantine, 80n Leopardi Giacomo, xxiii, 97, 101 Leskov Nikolai, 38, 61 Levé Editeur, xxiv Levidou Katerina, 4n Levie Sophie, xvin, xviiin, xxn, xxivxxvi, 4 e n, 6n, 21n, 23n, 36n Lewis Pericles, xxvin Lewis Wyndham, 48 Limbour Georges, 14, 34n, 45 e n, 46 e n, 50, 51

Liszt Franz, xiii e n Livak Leonid, xivn, 5n, 17n, 68n, 69n, 79n, 80n, 84n Lomonosov Mikhail, 63n Longfellow Henry Wadsworth, xiiin Lopokova Lydia, 46 e n Lossky Véronique (Veronika Losskaia), 24n, 32n Lottridge Stephen, 82n Louis XIV, 36n, 99, 102 Lozinskii G.L., 91n MacLeish Archibald, ix, xxin, 71n Maeterlinck Maurice, 58n Maillol Aristide, xii e n, xxi Makhno Nestor, 59 e n Malleret Ève, 13n Malmstad John, 32n Mandel′shtam Osip, ix, 10 e n, 13, 25 e n, 45, 46n, 53, 55-58, 70 e n, 72 e n, 73, 75, 76 e n Manet Édouard, 53 Mann Thomas, xxv Marcel Gabriel, 83n Marchand Jean, xvi Maritain Jacques, 80 Masson André, xvi Mauron Charles, 34n Mayakovsky Vladimir, 72n Meister Eckhart, xxiii Mérimée Prosper, 26n, 61 Messager André, xivn Mesurat Adrienne, 79n Milhaud Darius, 71n Miller Matthew Lee, 80n Mirsky Olga, 29n, 46 e n Mirsky Sofiia (Sonia), 29n, 44n, 47n Mnukhin L., 81n Mommsen Theodor, xiiin Monnier Adrienne, xxiii, xxiv Morel Auguste, xxi, 97n Morrell Lady Ottoline, 43n Mounier Emmanuel, 79, 80 Murat Laure, xxiiin, xxivn

Name Index

Muselli Vincent, 43 e n Mussorgskii Modest, xiv Nabokov Vladimir, 57n, 85 Nietzsche Friedrich, xxin Op de Coul Paul, xiiin Pagani Maria Pia, 69n Paschkoff Frau von, 36 Pasternak Boris, ix, 3, 10-13, 23-25, 28 e n, 50 e n, 51, 53-55, 59, 70-76, 81, 82 e n, 86 e n, 92 e n, 94 e n, 96 e n Pasternak Leonid, 71, 73 Paulhan Jacqueline, xxiin Paulhan Jean, xvii, xviii, xxii e n, xxv, 48n, 71n, 90 e n, 93, 98 Picasso Pablo, xiv, xxv, 71n Pietromarchi Giuppi, xin Pilnyak Boris, 55n, 96n Pius XI, 84n Poe Edgar Allan, xxiiin Poplavsky Boris, 85 e n Poulenc Francis, 71n Pound Ezra, xvi, xviin, 77 Pouterman Joseph, 38n, 40n, 43n Povolotsky Jacob, 72n Powys Theodore Francis, 19, 34 e n Pozner Vladimir, 12 e n, 78n Prokofiev Sergey, 71n Proust Marcel, xxvi, 53, 54 Psellos Michael, 10 e n Puccini Mario, 97, 101 Pushkin Aleksandr, ix, 34, 37-41, 58, 60, 74-77, 89-92 Pyman Avril, 14n Quersaint Marguerite, 71 Rabaté Ève, xviin, xviiin, xxivn, 90n Rabelais François, 38 Racine Jean, 90 Rasputin Grigori, 79 Ravel Maurice, 71n

125

Rebay Luciano, xxiin Recouly Raymond, 69, 90 e n Reinach Joseph, 69 Reinthal Angela, xxn, xxiin Remizov Aleksei, 5, 8, 12n, 14-16, 25 e n, 26, 33n, 38, 40, 43 e n, 44 e n, 55 Reszke Jean de, xi e n, xiii, xivn Reszke Mme Jean de, xiii Reuss Prince, xix, xxn Reyes Alfonso, xxin, xxii Richards I.A., 19 e n, 63 e n Rickword Edgell, 18, 48n, 77 Riederer Günter, xxiin Rilke Rainer Maria, xxii e n, 71 e n, 73 e n, 98 e n, 101 Rimbaud Arthur, 98, 102 Rivière Jacques, xxi Roberts Gerald, 38n Roga(t)chevskii Andrei, 7n, 19n, 22n, 33n Romanov Panteleimon, 96n Ronen Omry, 76n Rostov Nikolai, 57 Routledge George, 27n Rozanov Vasily, 77, 78 e n, 95n Rzewuska Kaliksta, xiiin Saint Nicholas, 14 Saint Theresa of Lisieux, 81n Saint-John Perse (pseud. Alexis Leger), xvi-xviii, xxi, xxii, 9, 10 e n, 21 e n, 23, 27 e n, 98 e n, 101 Satie Erik, xxi Savitsky P., 35n, 43n Scève Maurice, xxiiin Scheijen Sjeng, xivn Schepfer Clarisse, xiin Schepfer Jean, xiin Schepfers, xii Schiffrin Jacques, 38 e n, 39n Schloezer Boris de, 78n Schuster Jörg, xxiin Schweitzer Viktoria, xivn Schwinn Smith Marilyn, 14n

126

Name Index

Scott Walter, xiiin Segonzac André Dunoyer de, xvi, xviii, 71n Seifullina Lidiya, 59 e n, 96 e n Semenov Sergey, 17, 34 e n Serge Victor, 90n Shakespeare William, 63 Shestov Lev, 5, 8 Shklovsky Viktor, 59 e n Sholokhov Mikhail, 96n Shotwell James, 23n Shukhaev Vasilii Ivanovich, 91 e n Sinani, family, 57 Sinani Boris (B.N.), 57n Sinany-MacLeod Helene, 44n Singer Winaretta, xix Sitwell Edith, xxii Slonim Mark, 82n, 84n Smirnova Nina, 17, 44 e n Smith G.S., 3n, 4n, 8n, 12n, 13n, 17-20, 22n, 23n, 27n, 35n, 38n, 47n, 87n, 88, 94n, 96n Sologub Fyodor, 72n Soloviev Vladimir, 86n Squire John, 26n Stalin Joseph, 6, 34n Stein Gertrude, xivn, xix Stendhal (pseud. Henri Beyle), xiiin Strachey Lytton, 63 Stratanovsky Sergei, 76n Stravinsky Igor, xiv, xv, 71n, 92n Sutton Dennis, xvin Suvchinskaya Vera see Traill Vera Aleksandrovna Suvchinskii/y Petr, xvn, 4 e n, 5, 7-9, 13-17, 20, 22 e n, 24n, 25n, 27n, 32n, 33, 36n, 37n, 41n, 43n, 44, 46n, 87, 94n Swinburne Alfred Algernon, 58n Taine Hyppolite, xiiin Tapscot Stephen, 82n Taruskin Richard, 4n Tavernier J.B., xxii

Thomas Dylan, ix Tikhonov Nikolai, 17 e n, 43 e n, 70n Tolstoy Leo, 33n Tomlinson Henry, 19, 34 e n Tortora Massimiliano, 23n Traill Vera Aleksandrovna (Vera Suv(t) chinsky), 5, 27 e n, 47n Trubetskoi N.S., 35n, 36n, 43n Tsvetaeva Marina, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12n, 13 e n, 18 e n, 23 e n, 25n, 28 e n, 47n, 48, 72n, 73 e n, 75, 81, 82 e n, 84-87, 96n Turchinskii L., 81n Ungaretti Giuseppe, ix, xxii e n, 32n Ungern-Shternberg Rolf Rudol′fovich, 83 e n Ungern-Sternberg Roman von, 83n Ushakova Olga, 19n Ustrialov N.V., 41n Valenti Michael J., 74n Valéry Paul, ix, xvi-xxvi, 9, 26, 28, 34 e n, 70, 71n, 73, 81, 82n, 90, 97, 99 e n, 101, 103 Vegliante Jean-Charles, xxiin Veidle Vladimir, 71n Verbitskaia Anastasiia, 61 e n Verhaeren Émile, 58n Vildrac Charles, 9, 10n Vilgier Philippe, 33n Vishnevetskii Igor, 4n Voloshin Maximilian, 72n Voronsky Aleksandr Konstantinovich, 59 e n Vuillard Édouard, xi e n, xii e n, xvi Wachtel Michael, 83n Waley Arthur, xvi Walsh Keri, xivn Walsh Stephen, xivn Weinberg H. Barbara, xivn Weiss Nadin, xxiin Weststeijn Willem G., 6n, 21n

Name Index

Wilbraham Ada Bootle, xiiin Woolf Leonard, 7n, 19n, 23n, 77 Woolf Virginia, ix, xvi, xxv e n, 18, 19 e n, 23 e n, 40 e n, 48, 77 Wyatt, (Sir) Thomas, xxiii Xavier Francis, 83

Yanovsky V.S., 86 e n Young Edward, 45 Zaiaitsky Sergey, 17, 34 e n Zamiatin Yevgeny, 54, 70n, 96n Zarankin Julia, 83n Zoshchenko Mikhail, 61, 96n

127

Pubblicazioni della Fondazione Camillo Caetani

Studi e documenti d’archivio Collana diretta da luigi fiorani 1. s. levie, Commerce, 1924-1932. Une revue internationale moderniste, Roma 1989 2. Ninfa. Una città, un giardino. Atti del Colloquio della Fondazione Camillo Cae­ta­ni, Roma-Sermoneta-Ninfa, 7-9 ottobre 1988, a cura di l. fiorani, Roma 1990 3. m. vendittelli, “Domini” e “universitas castri” a Sermoneta nei secoli XII e XIV, Roma 1993 4. j. hunter, Girolamo Siciolante pittore da Sermoneta (1521-1575), Roma 1996 5. Boniface VIII en procès. Articles d’accusation et dépositions des témoins (13031311). Èdition critique, introductions et notes par j. coste, Roma 1995 6. l. caetani, Altri studi di storia orientale. Pagine inedite, a cura di f. tessitore, Roma 1997 7. s. toussaint, De l’enfer à la coupole. Dante, Brunelleschi et Ficin. À propos del “co­dici Caetani di Dante”. Préambule d’e. garin, Roma 1997 8. s. pollastri, Les “Gaetani” di Fondi. Recueil d’actes (1174-1623), Roma 1998 9. Sermoneta e i Caetani, Dinamiche politiche, sociali e culturali di un territorio tra medioevo ed età moderna. Atti del convegno della Fondazione Camillo Caetani, Roma-Sermoneta, 16-19 giugno 1993, a cura di l. fiorani, Roma 1999 10. La rivista Botteghe Oscure e Marguerite Caetani. La corrispondenza con gli autori italiani, 1948-1960, a cura di s. valli, Roma 1999 11. p. ghione, v. sagaria rossi, L’Archivio Leone Caetani all’Accademia dei Lincei, Roma 2004 12. Alcuni ricordi di Michelangelo Caetani duca di Sermoneta raccolti dalla sua vedova e pubblicati pel suo centenario, a cura di g. monsagrati, Roma 2005 13. La rivista Botteghe Oscure e Marguerite Caetani. La corrispondenza con gli autori francesi, 1948-1960. Direzione di j. risset. I. Sezione francese a cura di l. santone e p. tamassia, Roma 2006 14. Laboratorio Campanella. Biografia, contesti, iniziative in corso. Atti del convegno della Fondazione Camillo Caetani, Roma, 19-20 ottobre 2006, a cura di g. ernst e c. fiorani, Roma 2007 15. La narrativa di Guglielmo Petroni. Atti della giornata di studi della Fondazione Camillo Caetani, Roma, 27 ottobre 2006, a cura di m. tortora, Roma 2007

La rivista «Commerce» e Marguerite Caetani, Direzione di Sophie Levie. III. Letters from D.S. Mirsky and Helen Iswolsky to Marguerite Caetani, edited by Sophie Levie and Gerald S. Smith, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015 ISBN (stampa) 978-88-6372-761-6 (e-book) 978-88-6372-762-3 – www.storiaeletteratura.it

Quaderni della Fondazione Camillo Caetani Collana diretta da luigi fiorani 1. r. morghen, Bonifacio VIII e il Giubileo del 1300 nella storiografia moderna, con una introduzione di l. sandri e una premessa di l. caetani, Roma 1975 2. a. stickler, Il Giubileo di Bonifacio VIII. Aspetti giuridico-pastorali, Roma 1977 3. p. o. kristeller, Marsilio Ficino letterato e le glosse a lui attribuite nel codice Cae­­ta­ni di Dante, Roma 1981 4. j. hunter, t. pugliatti, l. fiorani, Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta (15211575). Storia e critica, Roma 1983 5. s. levie, La rivista Commerce e il ruolo di Marguerite Caetani nella letteratura europea, 1924-1932, Roma 1985 6. a. gardi, Il cardinale Enrico Caetani e la legazione di Bologna (1586-1587), Roma 1985 7. l. hadermann misguich, Images de Ninfa. Peintures médiévales dans une ville ruinée du Latium, Roma 1986 8. r. zapperi, Un buffone e un nano fra due cardinali. Aspetti della comicità a Roma nel­l’ultimo Cinquecento, con una nota di l. megli, Roma 1995

Fuori collana Il salotto delle caricature. Acquerelli di Filippo Caetani 1830-1860, a cura di g. gorgone e c. cannelli, Roma 1999 “Il costume è di rigore”. 8 febbraio 1875: un ballo a Palazzo Caetani. Fotografie romane di un appuntamento mondano, a cura di g. gorgone e c. cannelli, Roma 2002 Inventarium Honorati Caietani. L’inventario dei beni di Onorato II Gaetani d’A­ra­ go­na, a cura di s. pollastri, Roma 2006 Palazzo Caetani. Storia, arte e cultura a cura di l. fiorani, Roma 2007

Finito di stampare nel maggio 2015 dalla Grafica Editrice Romana srl