Boris Pasternak and the “Shakespearean Forces” on the “Cultural Front” of the Cold War

Abstract

Boris Pasternak's relationship with British diplomats and scholars in connection with his translations of Shakespeare is examined along with the role these “Shakespearean forces” may have played in Pasternak's attempts to publish his novel Doctor Zhivago abroad.

Notes

English translation © Taylor & Francis, from the Russian text © Voprosy literatury. Leonid Katsis, “Boris Pasternak i ‘shekspirovskie sily’ na ‘kul'turnom fronte’ kholodnoi voiny: k predistorii ‘nobelevskogo’ skandala,” Voprosy literatury, 2014, no. 5, pp. 56–96. Translated by Liv Bliss. Translation reprinted from Russian Studies in Literature, vol. 51, no. 4. doi: 10.1080/10611975.2015.1089137.

^1. I. Tolstoi, Otmytyi roman Pasternaka: “Doktor Zhivago” mezhdu KGB i TsRU (Moscow: Vremia, 2009). For the most recent information and a selection of relevant CIA documents, see www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/during-cold-war-cia-used-doctor-zhivago-as-a-tool-to-undermine-soviet-union/2014/04/05/2ef3d9c6-b9ee-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html. [All URLs accessed June 2015—Trans.]

^2. L. Fleishman, “Vstrecha russkoi emigratsii s ‘Doktorom Zhivago’: Boris Pasternak i ‘kholodnaia voina,’” Stanford Slavic Studies, 2009, vol. 38.

^3. B. Kaganovich, “A.A. Smirnov i pasternakovskie perevody Shekspira,” Voprosy literatury, 2013, no. 2. [English translation, “A.A. Smirnov and Pasternak's Translations of Shakespeare,” in Russian Studies in Literature, vol. 50, no. 3 (Summer 2014), pp. 78–99—Trans.]

^4. The Russian transliteration of the surname Bowra is somewhat problematic. Pasternak and several researchers write it as “Boura” but the contemporary preference is “Baura.” In this article, which has no textological agenda, I will use “Baura” throughout.

^5. Many items written by Mikhail Morozov or Kornei Chukovskii, who criticized Pasternak's predecessors in Shakespeare translation, contain echoes of the dispute over literal and creative translation that was ongoing in the Soviet press in the 1930s and 1940s. Hardly any of those earlier critical texts are found in the enormous anthology B. Pasternak, Pro et contra that I shall repeatedly reference. So, for instance, Smirnov's name appears there only when mentioned in a letter from Pasternak to Ol'ga Freidenberg, whereas enough of Morozov and Chukovskii's writings is cited to understand the stances they took. That half-disguised polemic could serve as the subject of a separate study.

^6. B. Pasternak, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 11 vols., vol. 9: Pis'ma 1935–1953 (Moscow: Slovo, 2005), pp. 407–8. Going forward, Pasternak's letters will be cited in the text, with volume and page number.

^7. For further detail, see Elena Tolstaia, “‘Aleshka’ and ‘Annushka’: K istorii literaturnykh otnoshenii Anny Akhmatovoi i Alekseia Tolstogo” (www.utoronto.ca/tsq/31/tolstaya31.shtml) [page not accessible June 2015; the document was found at www.akhmatova.org/articles/articles.php?id = 157—Trans.]

^8.Deiateli russkogo iskusstva i M.B. Khrapchenko, predsedatel’ Vsesoiuznogo komiteta po delam iskusstv: Aprel’ 1939–ianvar’ 1948. Svod pisem, prep. for press V.V. Perkhin (Moscow: Nauka, 2007), pp. 185–86.

^9. V. Livanov, Mezhdu dvumia Zhivago. Vospominaniia i vpechatleniia: P'esy dlia dramaticheskogo teatra (St. Petersburg: Azbuka-klassika, 2010), p. 134. The compilation Boris Pasternak, Pro et contra contains no more than a brief excerpt from that book, and that relates only to Pasternak's wartime poetry.

^10.Deiateli russkogo iskusstva i M.B. Khrapchenko, pp. 185–87.

^11. This text is found in Elena Livanova's memoirs, in an anthology published to commemorate her husband that is cited by her son. See Livanov, Mezhdu dvumia Zhivago, pp. 232–34 (chapter: “Nevydumannyi Pasternak”).

^12. This topic is covered in greater and more multifaceted detail in L. Fleishman, Boris Pasternak i Nobelevskaia premiia (Moscow: Azbukovnik, 2013). The most precise formulation is found on page 8. Also compare this situation with the Akhmatovan viewpoint: I. Kopylov, T. Pozdniakov, N. Popova, I eto bylo tak: Anna Akhmatova i Isaiia Berlin (St. Petersburg: Muzei Anny Akhmatovoi v Fontannom Dome/Draiv LLC, 2009). See especially the second edition (2013).

^13. “Spetsoobshchenie Upravleniia kontrrazvedki NKGB SSSR ‘Ob antisovetskikh proiavleniiakh i otritsatel'nykh nastroeniiakh sredi pisatelei i zhurnalistov,’” in B. Pasternak, Pro et contra: B.L. Pasternak v sovetskoi, emigrantskoi, rossiiskoi literaturnoi kritike. Antologiia, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: IBIF, 2012), pp. 294–95.

^14. E.B. Pasternak and E.V. Pasternak, “Ocherk issledovanii o B. Pasternake” (http//edu.novgorod.ru/fulltext/167/past301002.rtf?) [page not found June 2016. A text of the same name is available in Nekalendarnyi XX vek: Materialy Vserossiiskogo seminara. 19–21 maia 2000 g. (Velikii Novgorod, 2001), pp. 146–217—Trans.]

^15. Pamela Davidson, “C.M. Bowra's ‘Overestimation’ of Pasternak and the Genesis of Doctor Zhivago,” in The Life of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, ed. Lazar Fleishman, Stanford Slavic Studies, vol. 37 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009) [http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/18791/1/18791.pdf].

^16. Pamela Davidson, “Pasternak's Letters to C.M. Bowra,” in The Life of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, p. 75.

^17. Ibid., p. 74.

^18. For a splendid essay on Holdcroft, see ibid., pp. 76–78.

^19. Ibid., pp. 71–72. [Original in Russian; emphasis is Katsis's—Trans.]

^20. Ibid.

^21. It is unlikely that any such letter from Schimanski would have been entrusted to the regular mail. The furor over Schimanski's 1943 article [presumably “The Duty of the Younger Writer,” Life and Letters Today, vol. 36, no. 66 (February 1943), which contrasted Pasternak favorably to writers such as Sholokhov and will be mentioned later in the text—Trans.] was still continuing in 1947, the year when Aleksei Surkov's article, “On B. Pasternak's Poetry” [O poezii B. Pasternaka] was published in Kul'tura i zhizn’ on March 21. That article, in Pasternak's opinion (as preserved in the memoirs of Daniil Danin) was actually a response—hidden from the uninitiated but clear to the poet—to Schimanski's article. Aleksandr Fadeev [the fiercely loyalist general secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers—Trans.] was using excerpts from Surkov's article in his speeches. See B. Pasternak, Pro et contra, vol. 1, pp. 10899–90.

^22. Davidson, “C.M. Bowra's ‘Overestimation’ of Pasternak,” p. 48. [Emphasis is Katsis's—Trans.]

^23. Fleishman, Boris Pasternak i Nobelevskaia premiia, p. 714.

^24. Vera Mil'china et al., “Gasparovskie chteniia” (Moscow: RGGU, April 18–20, 2013) (www.nlobooks.ru/node/4215/).

^25. Grigori Utgof, “K probleme ‘Nabokov i Pasternak’” (www.utoronto.ca/tsq/34/tsq34_utgof.pdf) [page not accessible June 2015—Trans.]

^26. Mil'china et al., “Gasparovskie chteniia.”

^27. Kaganovich, “A.A. Smirnov i pasternakovskie perevody Shekspira.”

^28. P.R. Zaborov, “B. Pasternak–A. Smirnovu 1 iiulia 1947 g. (K. perevodcheskoi deiatel'nosti Borisa Pasternaka),” Russkaia literatura, 1999, no. 4, p. 142. The note referenced here is on the same page. [Emphasis is Katsis's—Trans.]

^29. See http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/18792/1/18792.pdf.

^30. Quoted from “Vladimir Nabokov o ‘Doktore Zhivago.’ Iz perepiski G.P. Struve,” in B. Pasternak, Pro et contra, vol. 2, p. 553. Here letters are quoted that explain Nabokov's position in terms of sheer envy of the success of Pasternak's novel, which came at the same time as the triumph that was Lolita. The notes, however, provide information showing that Nabokov's stance relative to Pasternak remained unchanged from the 1920s to the end of the 1950s (ibid., pp. 883–84).

^31. Kaganovich, “A.A. Smirnov,” p. 23 [p. 80 in the English translation—Trans.].

^32. Davidson, “C.M. Bowra's ‘Overestimation’ of Pasternak,” p. 42.

^33. S. Kul'ius and A. Shishkin, “Pis'mo Viach. Ivanov k S.A. Konovalovu,” in Memento vivere. Sbornik pamiati L.N. Ivanova (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2009), pp. 266–70 [http://tinyurl.com/px4kanc]. [The quotation is on p. 268; emphasis is Katsis's—Trans.]

^34. Ibid. [pp. 269–70—Trans.]

^35. A. Shishkin, “‘Slovo-plot’: variant i redaktsii sonata Viach. Ivanova ‘Iazyk,’” Sankirtos Studies in Russian and East European Literature, Society and Culture: In Honor of Tomas Venclova (Russkaia kul'tura v Evrope / Russian Culture in Europe, Book 3), ed. Robert Bird, Lazar Fleishman, Fedor B. Poljakov (Frankfurt on Main: Kubon Sagner Verlag, 2008)[p. 40] [http://tinyurl.com/p8rr57r]. I draw the reader's attention to the fact that the article's heading gives the poem's title in the new orthography, which contradicts both the original title of Ivanov's sonnet and its linguistic ideology.

^36. For further detail, see Fleishman's book Boris Pasternak i Nobelevskaia premiia. Unfortunately, many important details of that confrontation became known only very recently and Isaiah Berlin's correspondence is all but overlooked here.

^37. Fleishman, Boris Pasternak i Nobelevskaia premiia, p. 709.

^38. Lazar Fleishman, “Boris Pasternak i gruppa ‘Transformation,’” in Fleishman, Ot Pushkina k Pasternaku: Izbrannye raboty po poetike i istorii russkoi literatury (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006), p. 723.

^39. Frensis Stonor Sonders [Frances Stonor Saunders], TsRU i mir iskusstv: kul'turnyi front kholodnoi voiny (Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 2013), p. 32. [Originally published in the UK as Who Paid the Piper? CIA and the Cultural Cold War and in the United States as indicated in the text above. Quoted here from the latter, p. 199—Trans.]

^40. Ibid. [p. 28].

^41. Ibid., p. 201 [p. 200].

^42. Ibid., p. 32 [p. 28].

^43. Ibid., p. 35 [pp. 30–31].

^44. Ibid., p. 144 [possibly p. 107].

^45. Kaganovich, “A.A. Smirnov,” p. 37 [p. 90 in the English translation—Trans.].

^46. Pamela Davidson writes in detail about this in her previously quoted passage on Holdcroft [“Pasternak's Letters to C.M. Bowra,” pp. 76–78].

^47. I. Tolstoi, “Doktor Zhivago”: Novye fakty i nakhodki v Nobelevskom arkhive (Prague: Human Rights Publishers, 2010), pp. 61–62.

^48. Livanov, Mezhdu dvumia Zhivago, p. 147.

^49. Although they are mentioned in the notes, which gave the Britanskii soiuznik issue number but not, unfortunately, the dates. See B. Pasternak, Pro et contra, vol. 1, p. 1101.

^50. A. Gromyko, Pamiatnoe. Kniga vtoraia (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), pp. 387–89.

^51. Fleishman, “Vstrecha russkoi emigratsii s ‘Doktorom Zhivago.’”

^52. Tolstoi, Otmytyi roman Pasternaka.

^53. Fleishman, Boris Pasternak i Nobelevskaia premiia.

^54. Davidson, “C.M. Bowra's ‘Overestimation’ of Pasternak”; Davidson, “Pasternak's Letters to C.M. Bowra.”

^55.Isaiah Berlin: Flourishing. Letters 1928–1946, ed. Henry Hardy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Isaiah Berlin: Enlightening. Letters 1946–1960, ed. Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes (London: Random House, 2012). The publication of Berlin's letters continues.

^56. Fleishman, Boris Pasternak i Nobelevskaia premiia, p. 8.