Gleb Struve and M. Kantor on Sirin: Three Translations
by Paul D. Morris
page two of three

Strictly speaking, both a significant number of critics and a wide readership have only now taken notice of V. Sirin, when his Zashchita Luzhina (The Defense) has attracted general attention upon publication in Sovremennye zapiski. The disdainful silence with which the critics avoided Sirin, with a few exceptions (for example, M. Osorgin's reviews of Mashen'ka [Mary] and Korol', dama, valet [King, Queen, Knave]) was strange and, of course, totally undeserved. Mashen'ka had already drawn attention to itself, but only after Korol', dama, valet did it become clear that Sirin is the most polished, most important and original of the young Russian writers formed entirely outside of Russia. Whatever the Georgi Ivanovs may say, Sirin is émigré Russia's greatest gift to Russian literature.

It is likely that few of those presently enraptured by The Defense know that Sirin began his literary course as a poet, releasing in 1921 a collection of rather pale poems upon which Fet's noticeable stamp lay, and in which youthful reminiscences on Russian themes played a significant role. After that collection, the name of which escapes me just now (perhaps The Empyrean Path [Gornii put']), a second book of poems followed in 1923, The Cluster (Grozd'). This collection was much more mature, displaying evidence of considerable crafting of the verses and the stamp of unquestionable and uncommon poetic skill. In it, the poet half-revealed his poetic identity. There was, however, a certain touch of intellect, the absence of spontaneous, lyrical inspiration, and it allowed one to think that perhaps Sirin ought to attempt prose. And indeed, soon thereafter short stories began appearing in the papers, signed with the name Sirin. From the very beginning, the unusual clarity and precision of the language in these stories astounded, as did the harmony of their composition and, in general, the confident command of all of the resources available to a writer. Sirin's severity with himself, however, did not allow him to include the earliest of these stories in his recently released collection The Return of Chorb (Vozvrashchenie Chorba).

In 1926 Mary appeared, Sirin's first experiment with the novel form. At one time, I had occasion (in the pages of the former Vozrozhdenie) to note the tremendous merit and promise of that first novel by Sirin, the precise figurativeness of its language, and the originality of its architectonics. (The novel is constructed on two levels--one of reality and another of memory. Moreover, the heroine, after whom the novel is titled, appears only on second level, and at the moment when she is to appear in the flesh, the hero unexpectedly flees the incarnation of his memories.) His perspicacity in depicting the world, especially its details, his ability to represent these details in a manner strikingly fresh--not at all photographic--appeared already in Mary as one of the distinctive features of Sirin's talent.

There was an element of everyday life in Mary, and this element of everyday life worked successfully to Sirin's glory: a Russian boarding-house in Berlin and its inhabitants were wonderfully depicted. This gave one critic cause to speak of the birth in "emigration" of its first genuine writer of social life. Sirin's subsequent artistic development has shown how little this characterization applies to him. It is beyond doubt, however, that Sirin's potential, as I once observed, was already present in Mary.

This potential unfolded to its full extent in Sirin's next novel King, Queen, Knave (1928). Here there was hardly a trace of émigré life. Indeed, daily life became secondary, and whoever wrote that in King, Queen, Knave the author depicts contemporary German life or gives a grotesque of life missed the essence of the thing. The point was not at all everyday life, and everyday life was intentionally stylized (though not at all with satiric intent)--as the central idea of the novel required.

In this novel, one of Sirin's attributes manifests itself particularly clearly--his ability to give unexpected development to the most commonplace, seemingly insignificant episode, to unexpectedly intensify and enhance it, thus to cultivate from the seed of unnoticed, uninteresting subject matter a whimsical flower. With but three functioning characters (a husband, a wife and a lover) who develop their relationship in a classic triangle, the maximal sparsity of the external plot design emphasizes the refined and profound psychology of the internal theme--the slow incarnation and ripening of the idea in the subconscious and consciousness of the wife and lover to murder the husband. The emphasized external realism of description and the loving attentiveness to the smallest of life's details, which are depicted as if under a magnifying glass, harmonize fantastically with the symbolic illusiveness suffusing the entire novel. Behind his unusually full-blooded, material, earthy and three-dimensional world, Sirin half opens to us another spectral, single-planed one, and from the fissure to that second world peep at us the fantastical face of Franz's landlord (the conjuror Menetek-El-Pharisin) and the aged inventor of moving mannequins who visits Dreyer, two of the novel's almost incidental characters. But are not Dreyer, Franz and Martha ultimately from that world themselves? Sirin thrusts upon us neither symbols nor philosophical conclusions, but a feeling of the illusiveness and irreality of his created world persistently accompanies our reading of the novel. The realism of description and the materiality of the tiniest accessories only accentuates and strengthens that impression.

In The Return of Chorb, the collection that appeared this spring, Sirin has assembled poems of recent years and selected stories, about which I have already written in Rossiia i slaviantsvo. Several of the latter represent perhaps the best of what Sirin has written. Amongst these is, above all, the first story, which gives its name to the entire collection, "The Return of Chorb." The commonplace theme of sorrow at the loss of a loved one receives in this story an original, completely individual treatment. The bold and confident approach to the subject, the economy and deliberation of all the means employed by the author, and the unexpected conclusion all make this story a small masterpiece. The same uncommonly free and bold approach to subject matter and the ability to make an absorbing story literally "from nothing" distinguish other stories in this collection as well. What is astonishing is the startling variety of Sirin's gift. In this book there are no two stories written in the same manner, nor is there any repetition of subject matter. Sirin never finds himself under the sway of his themes; capriciously and fancifully twisting and turning his subjects, he wilfully and unconstrainedly plays with them. Despite all the "realism" of Sirin's descriptions, he ought not to be ascribed to the school of realism. He never photographs life as it is. In every movement of his subject combinations and in every flourish of his verbal designs the creating, directing, formulating will of the author is felt. This is not exaggeration and artificiality, it is precisely art. It is perhaps no coincidence that Sirin chose a chess-player as the hero of his latest novel, while its theme is a mania for chess. His novel and stories are reminiscent of chess matches in form; there is in them the appropriateness of chess moves and fancifulness of chess combinations. Combinational delight undoubtedly forms a not insignificant component part of Sirin's oeuvre.

Sirin has been accused of imitating Proust, the German expressionists and Bunin. Characteristically, how very dissimilar the models indicated are! Regarding the German expressionists, as far as I know, Sirin is simply not familiar with them. In general, however, if one so wished, it would be possible to extend the list by adding Hoffmann, Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and even--horribile dictu for the author--Andrei Bely (but I would never include here Leonid Andreev, a writer with whom Sirin was paired in a recent review by M. Tsetlin). But in this regard to speak of imitation or borrowing is simply pointless. Sirin does not imitate anyone. He has learnt from many writers (and there is nothing wrong with that) and from many he was able to take much that is good, but what he took he has transformed and reworked according to his sharply pronounced and highly distinctive individuality as a writer. The stories in which there are Hoffmannesque elements ("A Nursery Tale" ["Skazka"], "The Potato Elf" ["Kartofel'nye Elf"]) also contain traits not to be found in Hoffmann. A Tolstoyan love for detailed description combines at times with a Pushkinian clarity of style. A Chekhovian theme, a Chekhovian approach and Chekhovian humour in the story "An Affair of Honor" ("Podlets") in no way alters the fact that this story is of a kind Chekhov never would have written. Although individual parts of The Defense may give occasion for linking Sirin with Bunin, here too to speak here of imitation is absolutely absurd; the general conception of the novel has in it nothing in common with Bunin. In exactly the same way, if a passion for trifles and a "creative memory" (which is highly developed with Sirin) link Sirin and Proust, then this is nothing more than an affinity of souls, and is something confined neither to Sirin nor to Proust.

If King, Queen, Knave and The Return of Chorb already give Sirin the right to an entirely distinct and prominent place in Russian literature, then his latest piece, The Defense, the final installment of which was recently printed in Sovremennye zapiski, definitively confirms this right. There can be no argument that The Defense is an outstanding work. Sirin once again bears witness to both his love for unusual, unexpected and difficult subjects and to his mastery in capturing such subjects. In The Defense, there is perhaps not the compositional integrity and proportion, the simplicity of development leading to an inevitable conclusion which is characteristic of King, Queen, Knave and which, to a much larger degree than any outward exoticism, gives that novel its un-Russian character. The Defense is much more complicated and intricate in composition, in keeping with the greater complexity of its psychological theme. In a certain sense, incidentally, Sirin achieves in The Defense an even greater simplicity of means. Instead of the three characters of King, Queen, Knave, here there is but one character--Luzhin himself--around whom, as around an axis, all of the only incidental characters, including Luzhin's wife, revolve. In keeping with the advanced complexity of the theme of The Defense, we see here both the incredible diversity and intricate elaboration of the incidental figures. The chess-like quality of construction, which may also be observed in King, Queen, Knave, but which there is rather unconscious, is here intentionally implemented by the author as a reflection of his thematic design. The novel develops like a complex combinational match with recurring moves, and from a certain moment life appears to Luzhin as just such a chess combination. This results in a complex three-tiered layering of the chess theme, which is given to Sirin's novel like a key (in King, Queen, Knave the mannequins were perhaps such a key).

In The Defense, as in King, Queen, Knave, life is in the background. In so far as he enters into the novel, Sirin reveals himself with a wonderful description: an estate outside St. Petersburg, a renowned St. Petersburg school, in which the young Luzhin studies, the life of a St. Petersburg family of intellectuals and the life of Russian exiles in Berlin described brilliantly with a light touch of satire (in general, Sirin loves jokes, even puns, and sometimes this love for puns spoils his works by introducing dissonance).

But the significance of the novel is not in images of life, but rather in the depiction of the internal tragedy of the chess Wunderkind Luzhin, who turns into a world-class chess celebrity, loses his faculties at the height of a tournament during the deciding match with his main opponent, Turati, then slowly returns to an understanding of the surrounding world, which he perceives like a child. Doctors forbid Luzhin even to approach a chess board, Luzhin's sole interest in life until the moment when, not long before the fateful tournament, a young Russian woman accidentally met by him at a resort-hotel entered his life, became his fiancée and then his wife: the peculiar relationship between the simple, good, healthy young woman and the "simple-minded" Luzhin is delicately described by Sirin. With the help of his bride who, in defiance of her parents, marries the half-crazed freak, Luzhin, who has regressed into childhood, at last attempts to enter into everyday life. At first he neither thinks of nor even remembers chess. But gradually chess again burrows into his life. Inadvertently overheard words give birth in him to memories of the past. That transient memory already returns more firmly when Luzhin, by chance, finds a travel chess board in the pocket of an old jacket. The gift for chess returns to him, his former passion takes possession of him and it costs him little effort to reconstruct on the small pocket board his interrupted match with Turati--the culminating point in his chess career and the beginning of his madness. Then, in her endeavors to amuse and divert Luzhin, his wife brings him émigré Russian newspapers which they read aloud to each other by turns. Chess sections--matches and problems--turn up in these papers, and Luzhin's debilitating passion receives new impetus; he hides the papers he has read and then, in private, mentally re-plays the matches and solves the problems. At the same time, life appears more and more to him like a chess match being played against him; he feels the implacable return of fateful moves, he must find a defense against a terrible opponent. Just when it seems to him that he has found such a defense, that he has made an unforeseen move which will save him, the move turns out to be fateful for him; he meets Valentinov, his old impresario who suggests casting him in a film which is to depict a chess tournament with the participation of Turati and other celebrities. Luzhin literally physically saves himself by running from Valentinov and comes to a decision about the necessity of "dropping out of the game." Locking himself in the bathroom away from his wife just as she is expecting guests, he commits suicide by throwing himself from a fifth floor window. The concluding suicide scene--filled with difficult, troubling details--is written with tremendous power. In general, if on the whole The Defense perhaps lacks the architectonic proportion of Sirin's previous novels (with the proviso, incidentally, that I read The Defense "in pieces," as it was printed and give here only a running impression--it will be necessary to speak of the novel as a whole again, when it appears in a separate edition), if there are prolixities, superfluities, and digressions from the central theme in it, then Sirin attains great power in individual places, especially in the wonderful description of the match with Turati before Luzhin goes insane, and in the entire concluding portion, when Luzhin is possessed by a mania for the pursuit of chess. It has not been possible to read such powerful pages for some time.

Not long ago, in a shrewd and interesting article, B. K. Zaitsev wrote that Sirin is a writer in which there is no God and perhaps no devil either. I would not wish to contend this so categorically. Sirin is a writer of extreme integrity in the sense that he does not reveal himself to us, and if he does reveal himself, then it is never complete but by degrees, according to the needs of his artistic task. We do not know what he is still "hiding up his sleeve"--to use an English expression; he is an extremely multi-faceted writer, very "versatile," to use a foreign word. Sirin's "non-Russianness" has been repeatedly pointed out. In its general form, this accusation seems inaccurate to me, although there are in Sirin "non-Russian" traits, or rather traits uncharacteristic of Russian literature taken as a whole. Absent from Sirin in particular is the "love of humanity" so characteristic of Russian literature (in N.A. Berdiaev's--contested--opinion, of the great Russian writers, Gogol lacked this trait). Almost all of Sirin's characters are "negative." He nourishes an artistic predilection for the depiction of freaks--moral and physical--although in his depictions it would be pointless to search for love and pity for these freaks, as in Dostoevsky. Sirin, according to his approach, is always artistic, impassive and pitiless. Perhaps this is a manifestation of the very "integrity" of which I spoke above. In The Defense, however, Sirin, perhaps against his own will, seemingly departs from that circle of "non-love for humanity:" in the fate of the mentally and spiritually defenceless freak, and the morally "prematurely-born"* Luzhin, there is something genuinely and pathetically human.

From Rossiia i slavianstvo (17 May 1930), 3.

* Struve uses here the term "nedonosok," a reference to Evgenii Baratynskii's poem "Nedonosok" [The Prematurely Born] (1835), in which the poet's soul is depicted as a strange spirit unable to find a home in either empyrean or earthly realms and forever caught between them. (Editor's note, with thanks to Alexander Dolinin for pointing out the reference in a different context.)