The Case of Tertz-Sinyavski

...It is interesting to note that Sinyayski found that Pasternak was in many ways a kindred spirit to the late Robert Frost, on whom he wrote a perceptive essay in Novy Mir for January, 1964...

...He shows us how Pasternak sought profound, though unobtrusive, poetic sermons in humble everyday activity, the humdrum and the commonplace, in nature and in all other things taken for granted by man in the heat of his "historical" pursuits...

...Both essays illuminate Pasternak's difficult poetry for the reader with unequalled scholarship and critical sensitivity...

...Sinyayski has outraged the "influential yes-men" who still control p/ Russia's literary establishment, not only by his subtle advocacy of Pasternakian values, but also by occasionally taking issue with them...

...In this respect he differs from some other of the younger "new wave" Soviet writers (e.g., Tendryakov, Nagibin and Kazakov) , who have been able to get their works published and officially accepted, only in preferring to their more straightforward realism what he himself describes as a "phantasmagoric" style owing more to Gogol and Dostoevsky than to Tolstoy and Chekhov...

...In this, as in his extraordinary inventiveness as an observer of the fantastic, the absurd and the incongruous in human conduct, he is reminiscent of Karl Capek, who also tried to make the burden of historical catastrophe somewhat easier to bear by encouraging us to take the longer view which only humor or faith can bring...

...Tertz's contemplation of human folly in its specifically Soviet setting has led him not to a Swiftian contempt for mankind as a whole but rather to a faith in the ultimate triumph of sanity and good will...

...Tertz is firmly rooted in the realities of his own country, and draws on his experience of the specific features of Soviet life for the stuff out of which he fashions his extraordinary fantasies and allegories...

...He is also coauthor of a study of Picasso—the first attempt at a sympathetic presentation of the principles of modern art to the Soviet public—and of a major study of early Soviet poetry...

...If Sinyayski is Abram Tertz, then the Soviet police have arrested not only one of Russia's leading literary critics, but also one of her most gifted prose writers...

...In the recent edition, perhaps in some measure due to Sinyayski's efforts, much of this damage has been repaired, so that, for example, the opening stanzas of Pasternak's famous poem about Blok, discreetly replaced by asterisks in the 1961 edition, have now been made available in full to Russian readers...

...This volume is a great step forward (even though it does not include such a key poem as Hamlet from the Zhivago cycle) over the very parsimonious selection which appeared in 1961...

...In his review of Shevtsov's novel Sinyayski implied that the "liberals" are in fact dealing with sick minds impervious to reason...

...translated by Manya Harari) Sinyayski's interpretation of Pasternak, as expounded first in his 1962 article and at greater length in his introduction to the 1965 edition, is probably the most sophisticated to have appeared so far in any language...

...Their only possible mode of protest was silence, and their symbol was Boris Pasternak...

...He suggested that instead of polemizing with them, it would be better to exercise charity toward these people: "perhaps, rather than attack Ivan Shevtsov, it would be better to pity him, to sympathize with him...

...Andrei Sinyayski and Yuli Daniel both belong to the generation of Soviet intellectuals who went through the war and came back to do their university studies in the immediate postwar years, when the life of the country was dominated by an atmosphere of total terror...

...In recent years this generation has come into its own, and played a leading role in articulating the humanistic values which have often found open expression in the pages of such journals as Novy Mir, where Sinyayski has published some of his penetrating articles and book reviews and Daniel his translations of poets writing in other Slav languages (e.g...

...For many Russians his name is now linked with that of Pasternak, since it is he who wrote the long and scholarly introduction to an important edition of Pasternak's poetry which was recently published in Moscow—evidently after many delays and battles over what could or could not be included...

...In reply to questions Surkov said: "I am convinced that the investigation will be swift and that legality will be observed" (Figaro, November 24th) . It is obviously difficult to judge a legality which shuns the light of day, but even if Surkov's optimistic view of it is justified, the detention and investigation (which has scarcely been "swift") of Sinyayski and Daniel are a disquieting reminder that the police, as well as the censors, are still formidable obstacles to the free development of Soviet literature...

...The "liberals" have hitherto played the game by advancing rational arguments...

...The novel, which appeared somewhat belatedly around the time of Khrushchev's fall in November 1963, was intended to whip up popular feeling against Soviet artists who had deviated from "Socialist Realism...

...He pointed out then that the selection was biased and unrepresentative and that individual poems had been censored: "a number of memorable verses are missing, others have been changed, in some poems the ending is missing...

...His long essay On Socialist Realism,* his novels and short stories, such as The Trial Begins, The Icicle and The Make peace Experiment, constitute the work of a writer who, though he has not perhaps yet reached his maturity, will stand comparison in respect of literary skill, accomplishment and originality with any other Soviet or Western writer...

...This statement must be accepted as authoritative, though it has not yet been confirmed by any official Soviet source...

...He feels that this is appropriate to the bizarre "realities" of our times...

...So far—the situation may well have been clarified by the time this appears in print—there has been no mention of the arrest of Sinyayski and Daniel in the Soviet press, nor has there been any official indication of the nature of the charges to be brought against them...

...On November 11 Jerzy Giedroyc, the editor of the Polish emigre magazine Kultura, retracted an earlier denial and stated that the two arrested writers were indeed none other than Tertz and Arzhak, whose manuscripts have been published at regular intervals in Kultura since 1959...

...At first sight Sinyayski's review of this particularly grotesque neo-Stalinist fantasy appeared to be just another blow in the running fight that has now been going on for several years between the "liberals" and "conservatives" (or whatever one chooses to call them) in the Soviet press...

...The fact of their arrest was, however, admitted by Alexei Surkov, the secretary general of the Union of Soviet Writers, at a press conference in Paris on November 22nd...

...for Tertz is by common consent the most distinguished and interesting of the Soviet writers who in recent years have published their manuscripts abroad under pseudonyms...

...The first of these stanzas is: Only the influential yes-men know Whom critics are to propagate With praise, or criticize And liquidate...

...anti-American...

...This factional struggle has been legitimized by the "cultural" powers-that-be and, apart from the brief interlude at the end of 1962 and the beginning of 1963 when Khruschev temporarily upset the balance between the two sides, the polemic has gone on as monotonously as a ping-pong match...

...In his latest published work, a review in Novy Mir for March this year of a collection of poetry by E. Dolmatovski, Sinyayski examines more in sorrow than in anger, the work of this representative of the conservative camp, and takes it as the starting point for a witty and enlightening disquisition on the nature of poetic mediocrity in general...

...Sinyayski first made his mark as a critic by reviewing the latter volume for Novy Mir in March 1962...

...the leading young Ukrainian poet Ivan Drach and the Czech, Frantisek Hrubin) . After taking his Doctor's degree at Moscow University some time in the late forties—his dissertation was on Maxim Gorki's long unfinished novel Klim Samgin—Sinyayski has combined a career of research and teaching at the Gorki Institute of World Literature in Moscow with the writing of literary essays and book reviews which are remarkable for the originality of his literary insights, the incisiveness of his style and the calm courage with which he speaks his mind...

...To accuse him of being "anti-Soviet" is as irrelevant and superficial as it would be to say that Dosteovsky was anti-Russian or Faulkner • First American publication in DISSENT, then issued as a book by Pantheon...

...He does not reject this life and reality with all its tragic complexity, but seeks to assimilate and interpret it in the light of his highly original artistic vision, thereby following the great Russian tradition of translating everyday life, even at its most sordid, commonplace, and tedious, into artistic terms...

...For example, he reviewed in the December 1964, issue of Novy Mir, an almost unbelievably scurrilous novel (The Blight by Ivan Shevtsov) lampooning Soviet artists in the spirit of Khruschev's notorious outburst during his visit to an art exhibition in Moscow in 1962...

...Last October Western correspondents reported from Moscow that two Soviet writers, Andrei Sinyayski and Yuli Daniel, had been arrested and that they would be charged under article 70 of the Soviet Criminal Code with "dissemination of anti-Soviet propaganda...

...Most of the reports suggested, more specifically, that the two men had been arrested for publishing their manuscripts abroad under the pseudonyms "Abram Tertz" and "Nikolai Arzhak...

...The creative forces among the intelligentsia could do nothing but lie low, cowed and submissive to the eyes of the outside observer, but often struggling invisibly and heroically to maintain their integrity in unimaginable conditions...