15 April 2016
From Africa to Acmeism: Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (1886-1921)
By the mid-19th century, the works of Mark Twain, Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas had been widely translated and were inspiring boys throughout Europe with dreams of adventure and exotic voyages. Few of them however, grew up to live their dreams to such a degree as the young Nikolai Gumilev, or with such a lasting impact on literature.
Nikolai Gumilev, Lev Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. Photo from 1915 by L. Gorodetsky (from Wikimedia Commons)
Travel was in Gumilev’s blood from the first; his father was a ship’s doctor, and he was born on 15 April 1886 in the port of Kronstadt. He studied at the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, where one of his masters, the Symbolist poet Innokenty Annensky, first steered him towards poetry. Not surprisingly, his first efforts, published in his collection Ia v les bezhal iz gorodov (‘I ran from cities into the forest’, 1902), were inspired by the landscapes and creatures of far-off lands, including giraffes and crocodiles. His first travels, however, were to less distant countries, including France and Italy; he absorbed the influence of authors such as Flaubert and Rimbaud who shared his passion for Africa, and also of the Parnassian poets, and in Paris edited a short-lived literary journal, Sirius. In time he achieved his ambition of travelling to Africa, making regular journeys there and bringing back many African artefacts for the collections of the St. Petersburg museum of anthropology and ethnography, although some of his other exploits there, including lion-hunting, may seem questionable nowadays.
Gumilev’s interest in Théophile Gautier and the Parnassians, with their emphasis on disciplined form and craftsmanship, caused him to become disillusioned with what he regarded as the inchoate and woolly nature of Russian Symbolism, although he and his wife Anna Akhmatova had been enthralled by the Symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov and spent many evenings at the gatherings of writers and artists in his ‘turreted house’. Breaking away from Symbolism, Gumilev banded together with Akhmatova, Sergei Gorodetsky, Osip Mandelstam and others to found a new movement, a ‘guild of poets’ on the principles of the mediaeval guilds of craftsmen which had inspired artists in other countries including the German Lukasbund and the English Arts and Crafts movement. They stressed the importance of form and structure as well as inspiration, qualities embodied in Gumilev’s collections Zhemchuga (‘Pearls’; 1910) and Chuzhoe nebo (‘Alien Sky’; 1912). Unlike the Symbolists, who had little regard for the achievements of past civilizations, these Acmeists, in Mandelstam’s words, were filled with ‘nostalgia for world culture’ and especial reverence for the classical world’s legacy to Western civilization. In Gumilev’s case this reached even further back; as well as translating Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1919; YA.1996.a.22447) and old English ballads of Robin Hood (1919; 11622.de.14), he drew inspiration from the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.
Cover of Gilgamesh (St Petersburg, 1919) YA.2001.a.5099
Akhmatova and Gumilev had first met when he had published her poetry in Sirius while she was still at school. After a turbulent courtship in which the lovelorn Gumilev responded to her indifference with several attempts at suicide, they married in 1910. Predictably, their union, which produced a son, Lev, proved equally tempestuous, not helped by Gumilev’s departure for one of his African trips within months of the wedding and his decision, on the outbreak of war, to enlist in a cavalry regiment. He was twice decorated for his bravery when fighting in East Prussia and Macedonia, but the long separations took their toll, and on his return to Russia the couple divorced in 1918.
Gumilev could not accept the rejection of religion in the name of revolutionary fervour, and was given to crossing himself in public regardless of others’ reactions. His sense of ideological conflict was mirrored in the verse play Gondla which he wrote in 1916, where the hero, an Irish Christian in ninth-century Iceland, bears the stamp of his own character, as Gondla’s bride Lera reflects that of Akhmatova. Chosen to be king but cast aside by the pagan Icelandic chieftains, Gondla sacrifices himself to establish Christianity in Iceland; despite its spiritual message and the cramped premises in which it was performed, the play achieved considerable success even after subsequent events had brought the author into disgrace.
Back in Russia after serving in the Russian Expeditionary Corps in Paris, Gumilev entered a new phase of life with a second marriage and the founding of the All-Russia Union of Writers in 1920. His Acmeist intellectual and cultural values, however, proved difficult to reconcile with what he perceived as the crude philistinism of the Bolsheviks, and he made no attempt to conceal his views, as is clear from the collection Shater (‘The Tent’, 1921; Cup.410.d.90), which gathered together his finest poems on Africa and its landscapes and wildlife.
Cover of Shater (Revel, 1921). Cup.410.d.90
Gumilev’s open refusal to compromise his artistic or spiritual integrity was inevitably fatal. On 3 August 1921 he was accused of involvement in the so-called Tagantsev conspiracy or Petrograd military organization which, it was claimed, supported the restoration of the monarchy. Three weeks later the Cheka declared that ‘Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich, aged 33, former member of the gentry, philologist, poet … former officer … actively promoted the composition of a counter-revolutionary proclamation’, and had plotted an uprising in Petrograd. His friend, the author Maxim Gorky, dashed to Moscow to acquire a personal order from Lenin for Gumilev’s release, but it came too late. On 25 August Gumilev was shot, together with 60 other alleged conspirators.
Gumilev’s work was banned during the Soviet era, and it was not until 1992 that his name was formally cleared. The British Library is fortunate in possessing eight editions of his poems and translations, including his version of Gautier’s Emaux et camées (1914; X.909/30266) and his African poem Mik (1918; YA.1997.b.3597). Published during the stormiest periods of Russia’s history, they represent a unique testimony to his efforts to maintain his creative mission and uphold the values of civilization in the midst of turmoil – for which he ultimately paid with his life.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities & Social Sciences), Research Engagement
12 April 2016
Tolstoy and music
Nikolai Gusev, Tolstoy’s personal secretary, stated in his memoirs that “for Tolstoy music was not an amusement but an important business in life” as Tolstoy was “a good musician and composer”. The professor of music at the Moscow conservatory, Aleksandr Goldenveizer, a regular visitor to Tolstoy’s home for some 15 years, noted that Tolstoy, as well as many members of his family, was musical by nature and that in his youth, when he occupied himself for hours on the piano, he even thought of becoming a musician. During this period Tolstoy composed a waltz for piano. Goldenveizer recorded in his memoirs, how he and the composer Taneev wrote down the waltz when Tolstoy played it for them at Iasnaia Poliana in 1906.
Aleksandr Goldenveizer and Sergei Taneyev in 1906. Photograph by Sophia Tolstaya, reproduced in Z.G. Paliukh & A.V. Prokhorova. Lev Tolstoi i muzyka : chronika, notografiia, bibliografiia. Moscow, 1977) X.989/75936
Tolstoy’s ‘Waltz in F’, his only known musical composition, was recorded several times, for example by Christopher Barnes and Imogen Cooper (both available in the British Library’s sound collections). Tolstoy remained a dilettante in music all his life, but was sensitive to it to a considerable extent.
Tolstoy’s autograph MS of his 'Waltz in F’, reproduced in Lev Tolstoi i muzyka.
Tolstoy was always deeply interested in the question of what music was and what the philosophical grounds of its inner existence were: What is music? What does it do? Why was it made? Why do sounds of different pitch and degrees of strength, separate or simultaneously sounding together, following one after another in time and combining in a kind of rhythmical construction, have such a powerful, infectious influence on man? Why does this sound combination appear on one occasion as a senseless assortment of sounds, and on another as the symphonies of Beethoven? No satisfactory answer can be given to these questions.
Tolstoy’s ideas on music were related to his ideas on nature (i.e. concrete objects portrayed): how in literature and the fine arts some kind of nature is always reproduced (whether taken from actual life or from the artist’s fantasies), and how in instrumental, chamber and symphonic music of (opera and programme music are excluded) there is the very absence of nature. His conclusion is that the contents of a musical work are clearly and forcefully conveyed by the musical work itself and do not need any kind of literal translations. In 1850s, Tolstoy defined music as “a means to arouse through sound familiar feelings or to convey them” later noted in his diary that “music is a stenograph of feelings”. Goldenveizer even recalled from his conversations how Tolstoy developed an analogy between music and dreams where there is a discrepancy between responses and their causes. This leads to the conclusion that “music does not cause states such as love, joy, sadness but summons them up in us”.
Tolstoy at the piano.
Tolstoy liked music with definitely expressed rhythm, melodically distinct, lively or full of passionate excitement. His favourite composer was Chopin. Listening to Chopin, Tolstoy experienced (in his own words) the feeling of “complete artistic satisfaction”. Tolstoy also liked Mozart, Haydn and Weber, particularly Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which was remarkable as he did not like opera as a genre in general and considered it a false kind of art. He seldom went to the opera and having seen Wagner’s Siegfried once, gave a destructive account of it in Chto takoe iskusstvo? (‘What is Art?’, 1897). Instrumental music made a stronger impression on Tolstoy than singing; he is quoted as saying about singing: “This union of the two arts has never had an effect on me. You always only listen to the music, but don’t pay attention to the words”. This is why the singing of Fyodor Shaliapin did not make a big impression on Tolstoy.
An early edition of Leo Tolstoy, Chto takoe iskusstvo? (Moscow, 1898) 1578/5199.
Tolstoy also showed an ambivalent attitude towards the music of Beethoven. When Tolstoy heard Beethoven he admired and was captivated by him, but when he spoke or wrote about Beethoven he often responded negatively considering that Beethoven began the decline of musical art. There are amazing descriptions of Beethoven’s sonatas in Tolstoy’s works, for example in The Kreutzer Sonata (1890) or Semeinoe schast’e (‘Family happiness’, 1859), where the mournful majestic sounds of the sonata‘Quasi una fantasia’ make the heroine confess “Beethoven lifts me to a radiant height”.
It is likely that Tolstoy’s wavering in his evaluation of Beethoven is down to the fact that Beethoven and Tolstoy were very similar in temperament: Tolstoy instinctively opposed all kinds of authority - Beethoven thrilled Tolstoy with his powerful individuality and this made him angry as he did not like to submit.
Russian folk-song and dance, from a collection of illustrated postcards, ca. 1900. A.868.z.
Tolstoy’s attitude towards folk music was always positive. He also liked gypsy singing, which can be found in works like Dva gusara (‘Two Hussars’, 1857). Tolstoy’s attitude to certain composers and types of music seemed to be influenced by the performances he witnessed or by the performers who visited him. Among musicians who visited Tolstoy and played for him were Anton Rubinshtein, Taneev, Skriabin, Rakhmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov, who had been extremely negative about the ideas contained in Tolstoy’s What is Art?, but held back from expressing this at the time.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections, and Peter Hellyer, former curator Russian Collections
Further reading:
Lev Tolstoi i muzyka: vospominaniia , (Moscow, 1953). 7901.a.16.
Tolstoï et la musique, publié sous la direction de Michel Aucouturier. (Paris, 2009). Ac.8808.d/8[tome120]
I. N. Gnezdilova, Literatura i muzyka : A. Ostrovskiĭ, F. Dostoevskiĭ, I. Turgenev, L. Tolstoĭ, A. Chekhov. (Tiumenʹ, 2006.) YF.2008.a.19917
21 March 2016
Painting Russia’s past: Vasilii Surikov (1848-1916)
It is startling to reflect that a painter’s reputation may stand or fall on the reception of a limited number of works, and this is particularly true in the case of the Russian artist Vasilii Ivanovich Surikov. Although he created a wide variety of cartoons, still lifes and portraits, the crowning achievement of his career was a series of seven large-scale historical paintings, each of which took several years to complete.
Photo of Vasilii Surikov by F. Bruckmann from V.A. Nikolskii, V.I. Surikov (St Petersburg, 1923); YA.1991.a.2860
From the beginning he was something of an outsider, born not in Moscow or St. Petersburg but far away in Siberia, in Krasnoyarsk, into a family descended from the Don Cossacks who had followed Yermak in the 16th century on his conquest of Siberia, a theme which would later inspire one of Surikov’s paintings (1895). Throughout his life he retained great pride in his Cossack heritage and its traditional values of independence, directness, love of liberty and zeal in defending their territory from enemy encroachment – qualities which he regarded as his ‘family heirlooms’ and repeatedly evoked in his work.
In 1869 he set off for St. Petersburg to study for two years with Pavel Chistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Although he complied with the requirements of the syllabus, painting conventional nude studies, Biblical themes and other traditional subjects, these never obliterated the mental pictures of Siberia which he carried wherever he went. His studies, however, stimulated his interest in antiquity, and he was inspired by the history of ancient Egypt, Rome and the early Christian era to tackle scenes such as Belshazzar’s feast and the court of Cleopatra (both 1874). In that same year, though, he painted his first surviving work on a theme from Russian history, The Princely Court, in response to an assignment set by the Academy’s professors on ‘the clash of Christianity and paganism in the time of Prince Vladimir’.
Looking at any of his most famous canvases, the viewer might be led to compare Surikov’s work with that of Delacroix or Rembrandt in their shared capacity to people the scene with a vast number of figures, all individually characterized but forming part of a cohesive whole. Surikov, it is true, travelled widely, visiting Italy, Germany, Paris and Vienna in 1883 and Switzerland in 1897, but the influences which he absorbed there were drawn into the service of a greater national purpose.
In 1877 Surikov had settled in Moscow, where he had been commissioned to create a series of paintings for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. On completing these the following year, he set to work on what would become one of his most famous paintings, The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy. This work, depicting the last moments of members of a corps of guardsmen established by Ivan the Terrible, following their failed rebellion against Peter the Great in 1698, was exhibited in 1881 at the ninth exhibition of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers), a group of artists set up in 1870 by Ivan Kramskoi with the aim of holding travelling exhibitions. Surikov was accepted as a member that same year, joining Il’ya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Isaak Levitan and Valentin Serov. All these artists rejected the artificial conventions of academic painting in favour of a fresh and vigorous view of nature and unsparing realism in their handling of subjects reflecting the social turmoil and inequality of Russia in the 19th century.
Utro streletskoi kazni (The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy). Image from Wikimedia Commons)
Historical painting had several advantages. On the surface, it gave the artist an opportunity to portray heroic exploits from the glorious past, and also to recreate in minute detail the costumes and artefacts of bygone ages which were increasingly attracting attention with the development of the Pan-Slav movement and the founding of the Historical Museum in Moscow and similar institutions. At the same time, though, in an age of rigid censorship it allowed him to comment implicitly on the poverty, injustice, corruption and repression which were all too characteristic of his own times.
Surikov – the father of two daughters – was also inspired by Ivan Zabelin’s book on women in mediaeval Russia to portray strong and heroic female figures, as in the uncompleted Princess Olga Meeting Igor’s Corpse (1915), where the heroine is shown vowing revenge on the Drevlians for her husband’s death. Even more famous is The Boyarynya Morozova (1887), in which the central figure is shown being dragged in chains to torture for her refusal to abandon the practices of the Old Believers, mocked by the crowd as she defiantly raises her hand to make the sign of the cross with two rather than three fingers.
Boiarynia Morozova by Surikov (From Wikimedia Commons)
Surikov’s work won him numerous awards and commissions, including one for illustrations to editions of Pushkin’s writings (1898), and others for Nikolai Kutepov’s essay on the history of imperial hunting in Russia. His importance was recognized during his lifetime by several studies, including one by Viktor Nikolskii, first published in 1913 (YA.2003.a.45820).
‘Bolshoi morskoi maskarad v 1722 godu na ulitsakh g. Moskvy’ from N.I. Kutepov’s colletion of hunting scenes, Velikokniazheskaia i tsarskaia okhota na Rusi, vol. 3: Imperatorskaia okhota na Rusi, konets XVII i XVIII vek (St Petersburg, 1896-1911). L.R.30.c.6
Though Surikov’s paintings depict the past, they never lapse into stilted rhetoric or decoration for its own sake, despite their exact and authentic rendering of jewels, richly textured fabrics or weapons. He was so intent on capturing his figures’ experiences faithfully that in Switzerland in 1897, while making studies for Suvorov Crossing the Alps (1899), he actually experimented with sliding down a snowy slope near Interlaken to record the resulting motion and sensations. For him, as for his fellow peredvizhniki, the fate and feelings of the common soldiers or the mass of the crowds in his works were as important as those of the generals or heroes, and in a century where, sadly, certain of the abuses which they subtly attacked are still all too prevalent, Surikov’s art remains as vivid and timeless as ever.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities and Social Sciences) Research Engagement
28 February 2016
Prometheus in Petersburg: Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949)
The spell which the South cast over many poets from Northern Europe – Goethe, Byron, Shelley and Ibsen, to name but a few – is well known. Less familiar but equally potent was the enchantment which it held for the Russian Symbolist poet, playwright and philosopher Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was born in Moscow 150 years ago on 28 February 1866.
Portrait of Viacheslav Ivanov in later life, from the frontispiece of his poetry collection Chelovek (Paris, 1939) 011586.f.114.
After studying history and philosophy in Moscow, Ivanov travelled to Berlin in 1886 to pursue his studies of Roman law and economics under Theodor Mommsen, but at the same time discovered the writings of Nietzsche and the German Romantics, especially the mystical poetry of Novalis and Hölderlin’s highly personal evocation of ancient Greece. His passion for archaeology took him to Rome in 1892 to complete a doctorate in that subject, and it was here that he met the poet and translator Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, who became his wife in 1899. Together they travelled to Athens, Geneva, Egypt and Palestine, as well as Italy, where Ivanov devoted himself to a new interest – the art of the Renaissance – as well as drawing inspiration from the landscape for his first sonnets.
Viacheslav Ivanov’s first work, Kormchiia Zviezdy (St Petersburg, 1903) 011586.h.101.
On their return to St. Petersburg in 1905, the Ivanovs’ home near the Tauride Palace became a vibrant literary salon and the cradle of the Symbolist movement. Every Wednesday, visitors including Aleksandr Blok, Nikolai Berdyaev and Vsevolod Meyerhold thronged to their soirées in such numbers that internal walls had to be demolished to accommodate them all. In a feverish cosmopolitan milieu, they discussed everything from ancient Greek to contemporary Scandinavian and French poetry, theatre and philosophy.
Facsimile of Ivanov’s handwriting from K. Balʹmont [et al.], Avtografy (Moscow?, 1920) RF.2005.b.173
As time passed, a second phase of Symbolism evolved, exchanging the influence of the French Decadents for that of Nietzsche and Wagner. Like them, Ivanov explored the message of the classical world for modern civilization, with special reference to the Dionysian mysteries and their role in the development of tragedy. Like Hölderlin, he was preoccupied by the gulf between the spiritual values of antiquity and the materialism and barrenness of contemporary society, and like Nietzsche with the contrast between the ecstatic cult of Dionysus and the joyless rigidity of institutionalized religion. He would follow Hölderlin in writing his own dramatic version of the legend of Prometheus, Prometei, in which he followed the principles of Aeschylean tragedy.
Viacheslav Ivanov, Prometei (Petersburg, 1919) X.909/88128.
The British Library copy, with its limp, unassuming cover, gives little idea of the importance of this work. It was printed under conditions of extreme austerity in the midst of the Russian Civil War (1917-22), testifying to Ivanov’s importance as a cultural figure who offered the hope that drama, the most powerful of the arts, could take the place of the Orthodox Church in guiding post-revolutionary Russia and offering a new kind of religious belief. Meyerhold in particular seized on Ivanov’s vision of a theatre in which (as in Wagner’s Bayreuth) there would be no separation between stage and auditorium, allowing actors and public to mingle and improvise freely, sharing masks, costumes and a sense of participating in a sacred rite where Dionysus/Christ would provide an example of ‘the total unity of suffering’.
The death of his wife in 1907 marked a turning-point in Ivanov’s creative as well as his personal life. His poetry became increasingly mystical, and he gradually abandoned it altogether in favour of a series of articles on Symbolism and translations of Aeschylus, Alcaeus, Sappho and Petrarch into Russian. Following the death of his second wife Vera (Lydia’s daughter by a previous marriage) in 1920, he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Baku, and, when the Soviet government finally allowed him to leave Azerbaijan in 1924, he settled in Rome as professor of Old Church Slavonic at the Collegium Russicum. His eclectic approach to religion culminated in his reception into the Russian Catholic Church in 1926, claiming that by doing so he became ‘truly Orthodox’ and embodied the principle of the unity of the Eastern and Western churches before the Great Schism.
Frontispiece by Konstantin Somov for Ivanov’s Cor Ardens (Moscow, 1911) 11586.dd.14.
The British Library’s collections span the full range of Ivanov’s work, from a first edition of his earliest collection of poems, Kormchiia Zviezdy (‘Lodestars’)and the sumptuously-illustrated Cor ardens (‘The burning heart’ ) to a collection of facsimile autograph items by Ivanov himself and other leading writers of his time including Konstantin Bal’mont and Sergei Esenin. They bear witness to the creative vitality of a man whose ability to move effortlessly between cultural and religious traditions and the sensuous and the scholarly resulted in a vivid and inspiring view of their power to redeem and transform.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialis (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement
25 January 2016
Art and Politics: the work of Igor Cherchenko
The British Library has just acquired the recently-published debut catalogue by the Vitebsk-born Israeli artist Igor Cherchenko, Zhivopis’, grafika = Paintings, graphics (2015; British Library LF.31.a.5194). I am grateful for an opportunity to introduce the book to the readers of the European Studies blog.
Cherchenko is an autodidact. Even though his pictures were regularly chosen for school exhibitions, he received poor marks in his art classes, because he’d always draw for all his classmates and never had time to draw for himself. This time arrived when he fell ill during his army service in Israel, and realised that art was a unique opportunity for him to “talk to the world seriously” (as he put it in a conversation with me, when I first met him in Tel Aviv in May 2013). In the Soviet Union, Cherchenko didn’t want to draw and paint to order. Instead, he went to a factory to work as an apprentice lathe operator. Now, in his new country of residence, the Tiroche Auction House in Herzliya sells his pictures for US $500-1,000 apiece.
Igor Cherchenko (photograph by Andrei Rogatchevski)
Perhaps the most striking thing about Cherchenko’s book is that it has a special section on his political activism, with photographic illustrations. One does not find such sections in art catalogues very often. Since 2001, Cherchenko has been a member of the Israeli branch of the National Bolshevik Party of Russia (NBP), formed in 1993, banned in 2007 for extremism and subsequently reconstituted as the Other Russia party. It “started as an art project, became an anti-oligarch revolutionary party mixing Trotskyism and Fascism, and then transformed again to become a Kremlin ally” (Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (London, 2015) YC.2016.a.5635; pp. 207-208).
By Cherchenko’s own admission, he was attracted to the NBP by its fusion of “the hard left and the ultra-right” (Marc Bennetts, Kicking the Kremlin: Russia’s new dissidents and the battle to topple Putin (London, 2014); YC.2014.a.13537. p. 35). For him and his fellow Israeli party members, a union of left- and right-wing radicalism seemed a chance to find new directions in life, away from the routine. Moreover, Cherchenko believes that the desirable societal and spiritual changes could only be achieved via Russia, because Israel is a small and dependent state, and has to manoeuvre to survive. The artist took part in many NBP-related protest actions against the Putin/Medvedev regime and in spring 2013 was even temporarily banned from entering Russia.
Yet he denies that his art is an NBP art. “I am a painter of aphorisms and short stories”, he says. Space precludes me from retelling them all. Let us for now concentrate on one of Cherchenko’s central themes, that of memento mori.
Guess Who (©Igor Cherchenko; reproduced by kind permission of the artist)
Before joining the NBP, Cherchenko was part of an art project called Organisatsiia po bor’be so smert’iu (OPBSS) (‘The Foundation against Death’ (FAD). It seems paradoxical that this movement merged with the NBP, whose favourite slogan (borrowed from Franco’s Falange) is ‘Yes to Death!’ It has to be said, however, that sometimes NBP slogans indicate a direction, opposite to where the party intends to go. On this occasion, its members apparently welcome death for the sake of achieving immortality.
Many NBP members regularly apply a kind of death test to themselves, as they tend to live dangerously (dozens have been jailed and a few have died for their political beliefs). The NBP even refers to itself sometimes as a “party of the dead”, adding the deceased NBP activists to the editorial board of the party newspaper Limonka (‘The Hand Grenade’, 1993-2010; LOU.FMISC2690(1)).
Pursued by the Kremlin for its so-called ‘direct actions’, such as peaceful occupations of government offices while protesting against various government policies, the NBP regularly needs new recruits to reinforce its ranks, depleted by arrests and imprisonments. That is why, irrespective of its neo-Nazi roots, it has always welcomed Jews – as well as Gypsies, Muslims and just about anyone prepared to suffer in the name of the party agenda, based on social concern-cum-nationalism.
The contradiction between the NBP’s neo-Nazi leanings, on the one hand, and its acceptance of Jewish members, on the other, can be observed in Cherchenko’s picture ‘The Flying Nazi’ which fuses several visual motifs (such as Jews flying over a shtetl) characteristic of another Vitebsk-born artist, Marc Chagall, with a highly ambivalent image of an airborne trigger-happy stormtrooper bringing death and destruction to the world of East European Jewry.
The Flying Nazi (©Igor Cherchenko; reproduced by kind permission of the artist). Compare, for instance, Chagall’s ‘Over Vitebsk’ (1915-20)
In Cherchenko’s world, death may sometimes be hidden from view but it is rarely too far away, as his ‘Apotheosis of Spring’ demonstrates.
The Apotheosis of Spring (©Igor Cherchenko; reproduced by kind permission of the artist)
The picture was inspired by Vasily Vereshchagin’s ‘The Apotheosis of War’ (1871), with human skulls replaced by watermelons. Only the red fragments of watermelon flesh hint at a violent tension behind the deceptively joyous title.
If these memorable images by Cherchenko are sufficient to arouse the reader’s interest, there’s more where they came from. Whatever people may think of Cherchenko’s politics, his art seems worth writing about.
Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT – the Arctic University of Norway)
19 January 2016
Tolstoy’s Anglophone Admirers: British, Irish and American visitors to Yasnaia Poliana
“The Englishman or American who wishes to know what the man [Tolstoy] was like in the environment - how he saw himself and was seen by those who shared it, cannot do better than read the long and detailed biography of the great Russian which was prepared by Paul Birukoff from material furnished by Tolstoy himself and often written by him.” (New York Times 25 February 1912).
Portrait of Tolstoy, 1880s. British Library Add. MS 52772 f.120
Of course, some Englishmen and Americans were prepared to travel a long way to be able to see Tolstoy and speak to him. This should not be surprising at all, if we remember that from the mid-1890s Tolstoy’s articles were frequently published in major British newspapers. The majority of his essays, both in Russian and English, first appeared in England as a result of the publishing activities of Tolstoy’s friend and supporter Vladimir Chertkov.
One of Tolstoy’s English visitors was Sir Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1862-1940), Secretary and Librarian of the London Library. He translated Tolstoy and had the reputation of being a liberal Russophile. Wright visited Tolstoy four or five times from 1890. On 13 September 1908 Tolstoy’s wife Sofia Andreevna noted in her diary that he was among the guests on one of those busy days of Tolstoy’s 80th jubilee. Wright presented Tolstoy with a letter signed by more than 700 English admirers. Apart from books on the London Library, catalogues, and translations from Russian, Wright wrote an essay ‘Books for Russian prisoners of war in Germany’ (T. W. Koch, Books in camp, trench, and hospital) and an introduction to C. E. Vulliamy’s selection of Russian state papers and other documents relating to the years 1915-1918, published in English as The Red Archives (London, 1929; 09455.ff.55.).
The American author Ernest Howard Crosby (1856–1907) was also very much influenced by Tolstoy and visited him in Yasnaia Poliana in 1894. He became the most devoted among Tolstoy’s nearly 70 American correspondents and did much to to promote Tolstoy’s ideas in America. In 1903, Crosby published a book Tolstoy and his Message (012203.e.7/1.) and a year later Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster.
E.H. Crosby, Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster (London , 1904). B.6.b.31
Crosby recommended to Tolstoy certain friends who also wanted to see the great man. One of them was Robert Hunter (1884-1942), an American sociologist, public figure and and socialist, who left a detailed account of a visit to Tolstoy on 12 July 1903 (Add. MS 52772 ff. 95-108). Hunter wrote what Tolstoy said about the dilemma that was preoccupying him at that time. Tolstoy felt that he should have disposed of his property and renounced all wealth and luxuries, but could not do so because of his wife and family. In the last decades of his life Tolstoy was painfully aware of the fact that his teaching was not in keeping with his family’s lifestyle. The thought that his inability to give away his material goods compromised his principles and beliefs brought him a lot of suffering and finally became the cause of his flight from home in 1910.
Robert Hunter (image from Wikimedia Commons)
Hunter’s description of his visit to Yasnaia Poliana is kept among the papers of Sydney Carlyle Cockrell (1867-1962), later Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He visited Tolstoy in the company of “two American friends” (one of them was Hunter) and also left notes on this visit (Add. MS 5277, ff. 80-87v.). As an art historian, he was particularly interested in Tolstoy’s essay ‘What is art?’ (‘Chto takoe iskusstvo?’) and wanted to know Tolstoy’s opinion on William Morris and the John Ruskin who, in Cockrell’s view, had already said many of the things that Tolstoy stated in his essay. Cockrell’s file also contains photographic postcards of Tolstoy (Add. MS 5277, ff. 109-121).
The first Irishman to visit Tolstoy was the journalist and politician Michael Davitt (1846-1906). He came to interview Tolstoy in June 1904, but also appealed for his support of Ireland against England. Davitt visited Tolstoy again in February 1905, this time accompanied by another journalist and translator, Stephen MacKenna (1872-1934), who interviewed Tolstoy about ‘Bloody Sunday’. MacKenna’s account of this visit was published in The Irish Statesman of 1 October 1927. In his book Iasnopolianskie zapiski: 1904-1910 gody (ZF.9.a.5897) Tolstoy’s doctor Dushan Makovitskii noted that Tolstoy had called the Irishmen “lovely (slavnyi), vigorous and merry people”. In the entry of 19 November (2 Dec) 1907 Makovitskii wrote: “At 5.30 p.m. Mr Leslie arrived, a 22-year-old aristocrat and Irish nationalist. Wants to see a ‘simple life’. LN spoke to him in his study about important issues (ser’eznye voprosy)”.
Sir John Randolph Leslie (1885-1971), who wrote under the pseudonym of Shane Leslie, left accounts of his meeting with Tolstoy in his notes of conversations with him and in a letter to his mother Leonie dated 4 December 1907 (both in the National Library of Ireland). It was also later reflected in his fictional and autobiographical books The Cantab, and Long Shadows.
Shane Leslie. The Cantab (London, 1926). X14/7513
In both books Leslie gives fictionalised versions of his conversation with Tolstoy and sometimes he is slightly ironic. His protagonist “became a confirmed vegetarian and promised to learn to plough”. In real life, the meeting had little influence on either of them: Leslie converted to Catholicism in 1908, never abandoned either nationalism or ‘worldly riches’, and embraced pacifism only after his brother’s death in the First World War.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections
References/further reading:
The diaries of Sofia Tolstaya, translated by Cathy Porter. (London, 1985) 85/24964
Leo Tolstoy: his life and work: autobiographical memoirs, letters, and biographical material, compiled by Paul Birukoff and revised by Leo Tolstoi. (London, 1906) 010795.ee.70.
L.N. Tolstoĭ i SShA : perepiska , sostavlenie, podgotovka tekstov, kommentarii, N. Velikanova, R. Vittaker.( Moscow, 2004) 2005.a.18966
04 January 2016
Definitely Not Lenin and Trotsky: Donald C. Thompson’s Photographs of 1917
The images of Lenin and Trotsky have become iconic, and it seems impossible to think of the Russian revolutions of 1917 without calling to mind what their fellow revolutionary Anatoly Lunacharsky described as ‘the colossal dome of [Lenin’s] forehead’. Yet, when they were first introduced to the English speaking world by photographer Donald C. Thompson at the end of 1917, their appearance was strikingly different…
Photograph of “Lenine and Trotzky” in Donald C. Thompson, Donald Thompson in Russia (New York, 1918) 10292.bbb.15.
Thompson was an American freelance photographer, arriving in Russia in January 1917 on behalf of the Leslie’s Weekly magazine shortly before the first revolution in February. He remained until the end of July, capturing many interesting images of the Russians in war and revolution, many of which can be viewed on the Alexander Palace website.
Another of Thompson’s photographs, here reprinted in Catherine Radziwill’s The Firebrand of Bolshevism (Boston, 1919) 9454.bb.36.
Despite looking little like Lenin and Trotsky, these two mysterious figures crop up a number of times throughout his work, ending up in large-circulation journals like the Illustrated London News and books like Catherine Radziwill’s The Firebrand of Bolshevism (Boston, 1919; 9454.bb.36.), most often alongside the argument that the two revolutionary leaders were either working for Germany or were even secretly Germans themselves. They are among the earliest representations of the Bolshevik leaders in broad circulation.
Photographer Donald C. Thompson, from Donald Thompson in Russia
In December 1917, the same month that his photographs began to be printed in the English-speaking press, Thompson released his film The German Curse in Russia in New York, purporting to show Lenin and Trotsky’s ‘vile German intrigue working in the unthinking masses’ (See the blog post by Ron van Dopperen at ‘First World War on Film’). Unfortunately, it is one of the ‘lost’ films of the First World War.
An unsympathetic caricature of Trotsky - still more accurate than Thompson’s photographs. Миръ и свобода въ Совдепіи [A cartoon against Trotsky and the Red Army.] (1920?) 1856.g.2.(46.).
So why were these images circulated as ‘Lenine and Trotzky’? Thompson claims to have taken them on 15 July 1917 (just before the beginning of the July Days) at the mansion of the famous dancer Mathilde Kschessinska, then in the possession of the Russian Social Democrats. As he wrote:
I went out to Lenine’s place and tried to see him and make a picture of him. I saw him after a wait of two hours and asked him to pose for a picture. When Boris told him I was from America, he told Boris to tell me he would have nothing to do with me and that we had better leave Petrograd. I told Boris to tell him that I was not going to leave Petrograd and that I would stay as long as I wished.
I have made photographs of Lenine and a man named Trotzky who has come from New York. Trotzky I find a very mysterious man. He does not commit himself. (Thompson in Russia, p. 284.)
Lenin as we know him… British Cartoon of Lenin from Communist Cartoons (By “Espoir” and others) (London, 1922) 1878.f.26
Was Thompson deceived by his translator Boris into thinking he had met the Bolshevik leader? Were Lenin and Trotsky using body doubles, ‘political decoys’ as fellow Bolshevik Joseph Stalin would later allegedly do? Or, we might be tempted to ask whether there were any financial incentives in spuriously claiming to have photos of Lenin and Trotsky for immediate use by newspapers after the October revolution.
‘Not recognised by the Allied governments… ’: Thompson’s photograph illustrating a G.K. Chesterton column, ‘Our Notebook’, Illustrated London News, 15 December 1917. P.P.7611.
So, we may know who the figures in these photographs are not, but figuring out who they are is a more difficult question. Despite their distinctive style of dress, facial characteristics and their seemingly high level of importance, the true identity of these supposed revolutionaries has eluded me, so if anybody has any information or can speculate as to who they could be it would be interesting to hear your comments.
Mike Carey, CDA Student
References/further reading:
Anatoly Lunacharsky, Revolutionary Silhouettes (London, 1967). X.700/2555.
David Mould, ‘Donald Thompson: Photographer at War’, Kansas History 5, 3 (September, 1982), 154-67.
10 December 2015
The Russian Refugee Crisis of the 1920s
‘Never in the history of Europe has a political cataclysm torn such huge numbers of people from their mother country and from their homes’.
These words, written by Russian émigré journalist and politician Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams in December 1921 (British Library Add MS 54466, ff. 93-96), refer to the revolution and civil war that tore Russia apart from 1917 until the early 1920s. The war led to the displacement of over one million people, including countless children. The majority of the refugees sympathised with the Whites, the group of forces who fought the Bolsheviks on a number of fronts across the country, and were from Russia’s educated classes. Due to their political affiliation and the effects of war and famine, people chose, or were forced, to flee their homes as the Whites suffered heavier defeats. Those who could left Russia for Europe or the Far East. Tens of thousands initially fled to Constantinople before settling in the newly independent Baltic countries or cities such as London, Belgrade, Paris, and Berlin.
Russian refugees during the Civil War, 1919. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The British Library’s Tyrkova-Williams Collection contains a number of English, French and Russian-language documents concerning the international response to the refugee crisis and the activities of Russian émigré organisations, such as the London-based Russian Refugees Relief Association (RRRA). The RRRA was established in late 1920, immediately after the White Army General Wrangel’s forces were evacuated from the Crimea and ‘200,000 refugees were added to the hundreds of thousands of the Russian émigrés whom civil war had driven out of Russia [sic]’ (Add MS 54466, ff. 74-78).
Chaired by Tyrkova-Williams, the organisation counted both Russian and British figures among its members. Alongside printing and distributing appeals for clothing and money (see for example Add MS 54466, f. 88), the RRRA organised fundraising events, such as a June 1922 dance held at Chesham House, the former Russian Embassy in London. Patronesses of the dance included several members of the British aristocracy, such as Lady Maud Hoare, wife of British Conservative politician Sir Samuel Hoare, highlighting the RRRA’s standing in British society.
Poster advertising the charity dance in aid of the Russian Refugee Relief Association in June 1922. Cup.410.f.1187
While the RRRA’s primary aim was to aid those fleeing the war, its political agenda must not be forgotten. A number of the organisation’s key members, including its chair Tyrkova-Williams, were actively involved in supporting the White movement’s propaganda activities against the Bolsheviks. Appeals to the British public to assist Russia’s refugees therefore had a second purpose: to direct public opinion firmly away from the Bolsheviks by drawing attention to the suffering experienced by Russians living under their rule.
In 1921, formal international efforts to aid the Russian refugees began when the International Committee of the Red Cross appealed to the League of Nations to assist them. The British Library’s manuscript collection includes reports by the Russian Red Cross (RRC) relating to the issue of wider international assistance. One document summarises a 1921 report made by Dr Ladyzhenski, the RRC delegate in Geneva, on the ‘most urgent needs of the Russian refugees’, particularly those in Constantinople (Add MS 54466, f. 91). Discussing issues such as the provision of food, legal status and the fair distribution of the refugees across Europe, the report provides an insight into international attitudes towards the refugee crisis and the challenges facing organisations attempting to assist them.
These documents are particularly poignant in the context of the current refugee crisis in Europe and the increased charity appeals for aid in the run up to Christmas and the onset of winter. Nearly one hundred years later we still see the same devastating consequences of civil war. Yet we also witness the same compassionate responses from ordinary citizens and charity organisations trying to help those in need.
Katie McElvanney
References
H. W. Williams Papers, Add MS 54436-54476
Tyrkova-Williams Collection, Cup.410.f.1185 - Cup.410.g.702
Katie McElvanney is a collaborative PhD student at the British Library and Queen Mary University of London. She is currently cataloguing the BL’s H. W. Williams Papers (part of the Tyrkova-Williams Collection).
03 November 2015
Nikolai Misheev, an art critic of ‘The Chimes’
The name of the Russian literature and art critic and playwright Professor Nikolai Isidorovich Misheev (1878-1947) is well known in the academic circles of art historians and specialists in the Russian émigré press. Misheev was born in Kyiv and graduated first from the Seminary and then from the Faculty of History and Philology of Warsaw University. In St Petersburg he taught at women’s colleges, including the famous Smolnyi finishing school for young noblewomen.
Misheev left Soviet Russia in 1925 and for the first four years lived in Riga, but settled in Paris in 1929. Not attempting to give a full survey of his works, I would just mention Misheev’s books held at the British Library: Noveishaia russkaia literatura (‘Essays on Modern Russian Literature’), the play Na rassvete (‘At dawn’) and Bylina (‘Russian Folk Tale’). In 1935, his essay on Russian folk-tales was translated into English under the title A Heroic Legend by Gleb Struve, (a Russian literary historian and later author of the most influential book of its time on Russian émigré literature, Russkaia literatura v izgnanii ), and the founder of the School of Slavonic Studies, Bernard Pares.
Photographs of an exhibition of Russian émigré periodicals in Prague, from Perezvony, N18, 1926.
While living in Riga, Misheev actively contributed to one of the Russian émigré magazines, Perezvony (‘The Chimes’), published between 1925 and 1929 (British Library PP.1931.pml). The magazine was meant to continue the pre-revolutionary tradition of illustrated weekly or monthly editions for the whole family. The first issue came out on 8 November 1925 and until February 1926 it appeared weekly. From Number 14 it became a bi-monthly publication; in 1927 it became a monthly and in 1928-29 the frequency diminished to two issues per year. Among its contributors were Boris Zaitsev (also editor of the literature section), Ivan Bunin, Konstantin Balmont, and Marina Tsvetaeva.
The editorial board paid a lot of attention to the artistic appearance of the magazine. The cover, with a tree growing in a foreign soil covered with bells that create the familiar chimes of Russian churches in the background, was designed by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and the influence of the “World of Art” movement on the entire concept of the periodical is obvious.
Cover of the first issue of Perezvony (1925)
Misheev took responsibility for the art section of the magazine and contributed to every issue (sometimes more than one item, in which case he use his pseudonyms, e.g. ‘Pritisskii’). A great number of issues were topical and presented essays on important Russian and world artists. Misheev wrote about the Academicians Sergey Vinogradov (1869-1938), Nikolai Bogdanov-Bel’skii (1868-1945), Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942), Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Vilhelms Purvītis (1872– 1945) and many more.
S.Vinogradov. To the Reverend
Nikolai Bogdanov-Bel’skii. A Defender of the Motherland.
M.Nesterov. Two sisters
M. Dobuzhinsky. Dr Aibolit and Barmaley
V. Purvītis. In the country.
Misheev contributed essays on Russian architecture, folklore and culture. As K. Pritisskii he wrote an article entitled ‘Russkaia literatura, kak ‘nakaz’ russkogo naroda’ (‘Russian Literature as a mandate from the Russian people’) (No. 19, 1926, pp. 605-609). His accessible and popular style combined with profound knowledge of the history of art and Russian culture make Misheev’s essays an enjoyable read.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections
References:
Nikolai Misheev, Noveishaia russkaia literatura (St Petersburg, 1905) 1865.c.3.(83.); (Moscow, 1914) RB.23.b.6297
Nikolai Misheev, Na rassvete (St Petersburg, 1920) 11758.dd.27.
Nikolai Misheev, Bylina (Vladimirova, 1938) YA.1996.b.7845 ; English translation by Gleb Struve and Bernard Pares: A Heroic Legend: how the holy mountains let out of their deep caves the mighty heroes of Russia. (London, 1935) 20019.ee.33.
Gleb Struve, Russkaia literatura v izgnanii (New York, 1956) 11872.g.8.
Perezvony (Riga, 1925-1929) PP.1931.pml; several issues are available online via Sait-arkhiv emigrantkoi pressy (The Website-archive of Russian émigré press).
22 October 2015
Some birthday thoughts on friendship, love and ‘luxury’ editions
Today we celebrate 145 years since the birth of the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Ivan Bunin. On 22 October 1945 he was celebrating his 75th birthday in post-war Paris. He was in desperate need of money, as nothing could be published in occupied France and the occasional fees he earned in America were difficult to receive. His loyal friend the writer Mark Aldanov, who at the beginning of the war had fled Europe and settled in New York, tried to help. In 1942, Aldanov became one of the founders of Novyi Zhurnal=The New Review which remains the oldest and most influential Russian émigré literary journal. He invited Bunin to contribute his latest short stories to the journal. They were later published together as a book under the title Temnye allei (Dark Avenues) – a book about love. When Aldanov started receiving Bunin’s stories for publication in America, he felt a little uncomfortable, as quite a few of them were rather more erotic and explicit than was permissible in the puritan post-war US, even in foreign languages.
In his letter of 28 August 1945 to Bunin’s wife Vera Nikolaevna, Aldanov wrote:
Today I received two wonderful short stories by Ivan Alekseevich: ‘The Oaklings’ and ‘The Riverside Inn’. This is very fortunate, as in the 11th book [of The New Review] we were planning to publish ‘Madrid’ and ‘The Second Pot of Coffee’, but this would have been a bit inconvenient. Yesterday, we had a quick meeting to discuss how to collect a bit of money for Ivan Alekseevich on occasion of his anniversary. […] But you probably understand that ‘Madrid’ and ‘The Second Pot of Coffee’ would be met with displeasure in some ‘puritan’ New York circles. We do not care, but this might affect our collection: rich ladies are angry – their virginal prudery is offended by Ivan Alekseevich. That is why it is better to publish in the 11th book these recently received stories and the other two – after the celebration.
To collect more money for Bunin’s jubilee Aldanov and other prominent figures in the Russian American circles decided to present a token of gratitude to those who wanted to contribute to Bunin’s collection: each contributor would receive a ‘luxury’ edition of one of Bunin’s stories. ‘Riechnoi traktir’ (‘The Riverside Inn’) was chosen to be published as a separate edition. The book was designed by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky free of charge.
Cover of Ivan Bunin, Riechnoi traktir (New York, 1945) British Library X.902/3839
In his letter, Aldanov informed Bunin that they would like to reproduce of one the typewritten pages with Bunin’s handwritten annotations and ideally his portrait.
The facsimile of a typewritten page
On 23 November 1945 Aldanov thanked Bunin for the photograph: “I’m grateful for everything, and especially for the photograph and the inscription (a very nice one which cheered me up a lot). As soon as the printer has finished with it, I will frame it and put it in the most honourable place”. Bunin liked some of his photos, but hated looking old, so the portrait that appeared in the book (below) dates from 1899, when he was 29.
The book was published in a limited edition of 1000 numbered copies. The British Library’s copy is no. 412, and was purchased in June 1980.
Aldanov and Bunin’s other friends managed to raise ca 1,000 dollars on the occasion of his 75th jubilee.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections, European Studies
References/further reading
Aldanov’s letters to the Bunins; University of Edinburgh Special Collections, Gen 565 (4) 262/17 I. Bunin.
Temnye allei. (Paris, 1946) 12591.p.51. English translation by Hugh Aplin, Dark avenues. (Richmond, 2008). H.2009/2984
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