Diary, 1901-1969 by Kornei Chukovsky , Victor Erlich , Michael Henry Heim (review)
2008; Maney Publishing; Volume: 86; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/see.2008.0011
ISSN2222-4327
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Language, and Rhetoric Studies
Resumoreviews 525 Chukovsky, Kornei. Diary, igoi-ig6g. Edited and introduced byVictor Erlich. Translated byMichael Henry Heim. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2005. xviii + 630 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Biographical references. Index. ?25.00. Kornei Chukovskii (Nikolai Korneichukov; his father has recently been named as Emmanuil Solomonovich Levenson) was born in 1882 and kept a diary formost of his adult life.His very well produced and very well edited fifteen-volume collected works are now approaching completion. Volume eleven is especially interestingforUK readers as itcontains thirty-threeof the eighty-nine articles about Britain that he wrote here in the early twentieth century and published in the Odesskie novosti. A collection ofmemoirs about him by over fortyof his acquaintances and admirers came out in Moscow in 1977; D. A. Berman's 472-page biobibliographical guide to Chukovskii's lifeand works appeared there in 1999. He knew, or at leastmet, almost all the famous and many of the less illustriousRussian writers of his time.His diaries are therefore essential reading for all who are seriously interested in twentieth-century Russian literature. The translation under review contains about three quarters of the diary entries that survived. Not surprisingly, there is littlehere for 1937 and noth ing from 1938.The firstSoviet writers' congress, in 1934, isbarely mentioned. Chukovskii, best known as a children's writer, has no comments to make on Pavlik Morozov and his cult. There is also the problem of self-censorship, because the danger that the 'organs' would discover, confiscate and peruse the diaries was present from 1918 onwards. This may account, for instance, for the total absence from thisvolume of any mention of his close boyhood friend in Odessa, the very gifted Zionist Vladimir (Zeev) Zhabotinskii, without whose help and encouragement Chukovskii's literary career would hardly have got off to such a good and early start. However, Chukovskii always seems to have loved literature far more than politics. In June 1917, for instance, when he was reading Stendhal, news of a Bolshevik demonstration in Petrograd 'sounded less interesting tome than the fabricated sufferingsof Julien Sorel dating from 1830' (p. 31). Over fifty years laterChukovskii was stillkeeping his dis tance from the 'dissident movement', ifnot from great individual critics of the Soviet regime like Solzhenitsyn: 'Now that [.. .] the very word "intellectual" has become a term of abuse, it is important to remain in the ranks of the intelligentsia and not abandon them ? for jail. We need our intelligentsia to carry on our day-to-day intellectual existence. Would it have served any purpose for Chekhov or Constance Garnett to serve time?' (p. 538). Zhabotinskii would hardly have agreed. Chukovskii's sceptical (and no doubt realistic) attitude towards the bulk of theRussian and Soviet population comes through clearly in 1925: 'The most amazing thing about itall is that it'snot the readers who want freedom of the press; it's only a bunch of writers nobody cares about. The readers even find itmore convenient not to know the truth. And not only more convenient but also more to their advantage' (p. 158). In 1959 he writes: A lothas been said about the younger generation. Well, I say itwill be uncivilized, soulless, and ignorant' (p. 439). How differenthis private personawas fromhis public image, surrounded by adoring and, on the surface, incorruptible children! 526 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 In this generous selection from his diaries, Chukovskii not only makes numerous perceptive remarks about others, but also quotes equally percep tive remarks of some of his interlocutors. There is litde space here to quote examples, so I can only suggest that the reader checks out Chukovskii's comments on, at least, Marinetti (p. 23), Kropotkin (pp. 32-35), Gor'kii (PP- 57, 69, 228-30), Lenin (p. 58), Blok (p. 96), Henry James (p. 101), Zoshchenko (pp. 198-204), Faulkner (p. 415), and on the contrast between Gor'kii and Chekhov: 'Gorky had a weak character and was easily influ enced; Chekhov had an unusually strong character, an ironwill. Perhaps that iswhy Gorky glorified the strong, thewillful, the all-powerful and Chekhov ? theweak-willed and defenseless' (p. 562). No less interestingare some of the comments by others, such asMerezhkovskii on Andreev...
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