Dichtung und Briefwechsel aus dem deutschprachigen Nachlass.

Terras, Victor

Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) occupies a very special niche in the brief episode of flowering that, for a moment, placed Russia in the forefront of European culture. He took the position that human civilization is a continuum, that its principles were conceived in prehistoric times, and that mankind's memory is the vehicle of an ever-renewed surge toward an ultimate telos. Accordingly, Ivanov saw vital links between primal myths, Attic tragedy, Shakespeare, and Dostoevsky. The present selection from Ivanov's German correspondence and poetry shows him in the company of those German intellectuals, Jews or gentiles, who believed in the organic unity of European culture and European literature.

Ivanov's conception, as expressed so poignantly in his polemic with M. O. Gershenzon in their "Correspondence from Two Comers," struck a chord with E. R. Curtius, the great Romance philologist who, like Ivanov, was defending the traditions of European humanism against "cultural de-construction" (Kulturabbau) and "cultural indifference." Their correspondence is a moving document of mutual solidarity and admiration. The correspondence with the venerable Jewish philosopher Martin Buber shows similar feelings. Also, Buber discovered that Ivanov had anticipated his own conception of primal myth (Urmythos).

Ivanov's voluminous correspondence with Herbert Steiner, editor of the Zurich journal Corona, a leading voice of European humanism in the 1930s, is revealing of the doings of the journal in the intellectual climate of the age, as well as of Ivanov's stature as a European humanist, by no means an "emigre." It also gives one a good insight into Ivanov's private life. The correspondence with the journalist Bernt von Heiseler, the philosopher Hans Vaihinger, and the writer Erich Muller-Gangloff is more episodic yet also of interest.

Ivanov's German versions of some of his Russian poems, in particular of Chelovek, and of a part of his romance Povest' o Svetomire tsareviche, show him in full command of German verse and prose. Nachdichtungen or recreations rather than translations, they may well serve as a commentary to the Russian texts.

Michael Wachtel's general introduction, introductory articles to each section of the text, ample notes, and indices give evidence of the huge amount of research that has gone into the volume under review. This work of his is a valuable contribution to scholarship in its own right, creating a vivid picture of an island of European humanism surrounded by the stormy seas of barbaric reaction.

Victor Terras Brown University