Уильям Блейк в дневниках, переписке и произведениях русских писателей: 1900-е–1950-е годы

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to provide a more accurate picture of the reception of William Blake in the Russian culture of the Modernist era. Contrary to popular belief, Blake in the 1900–1950s was quite a well-known poet and painter. Writers entered into a creative dialogue with him in poems and translations, mentioned him in articles and correspondence. The article provides references to Blake in correspondence, diaries and works by Lev Tolstoj, Konstantin Bal′mont, Samuil Maršak, Anna Achmatova and Nikolaj Gumilëv, Daniil Charms and other authors. The article is the first to publish the author’s transcript of a previously un-attributed translation of Blake: Nikolaj Gumilëv translated “The Mental Traveler.” When, after the revolution of 1917, most Russian writers were forced to emigrate, Blake was “taken out” with them: he inspired Boris Anrep and the Remizov spouses, mentioned in Nabokov’s Lolita and in the journals of Irina Odoevceva, in the Zveno magazine. Thus, the article refutes the view that William Blake, as a poet and artist, was virtually unknown in Russian culture until 1957. 1957, a year of Blake’s anniversary, was a year when Soviet culture accepted Blake as a “revolutionary” Romanticist.

KEYWORDS:

• William Blake
• reception
• Russian-English relations
• Nikolaj Gumilëv
• Daniil Charms
• Boris Anrep
• Aleksej Remizov
• Samuil Maršak

ORCID

Vera Serdechnaia http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8718-3556

Notes

1 “we are compelled by the theory of God’s already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existence of evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well. The great English poet William Blake concludes his poem ‘The Tiger’ with the question: Did he who made the lamb make thee?” (Shaw 1972, 901).

2 “I also cannot agree with what you call your theology. You enter into controversy with that which no thinking person of our time any believes or believe: with a God-creator. [ … ] the problem of God and evil is too important to be spoken of in jest” (Tolstoj 1956, 255).

3 Издательство Всемирная литература, организованное в 1919 году при участии Горького.

4 Автор дневника тут делает ошибку в цитировании известного стихотворения.

5 Такое написание фамилии Блейка встречалось вплоть до 1950-х годов.

6 За эти ссылки выражаю глубокую благодарность Олегу Коростелеву, исследователю и популяризатору наследия русского зарубежья.