Johnson, Not Chiefly Boswell
PARSONS, ALICE BEAL
Books Johnson, Not Chiefly Boswell By ALICE BEAL PARSONS SAMUEL JOHNSON. By Joseph Wood Kruteh. Henry Holt and Company. New York. 699 paps*. $3.76. IT is a curioua characteristic of man's quest...
...Much more than in Moscow one was conscious, in talking to these Leningrad writers, of a real thirst for close future contacts with the West...
...He prefers, as he says in the preface, to let "the details speak for themselves...
...TllAT Mr...
...Religious thinkers continually reinterpret the scriptures of their faiths...
...The humsn sympathies thst so often outgenerslled his Toryism are revealed in the saying, "Life is a pill which none can bear to swallow without gilding...
...Leningrad's Agony — and Glory By VERA ALEXANDROVA LENINGRAD...
...And, employing the almost fanatical devotion to running down farts for which Mr...
...Yet, w,ith all that hunger, when the bread vans arrived there were never any looting...
...She looked an elderly woman—almost like an old gipsy hag...
...But after such an introduction he forgets "the men and women who worked there" and limits himself to condensing the explanations given him by Puzyrev, the director of the plant...
...It was doubtless foolish of Johnson and his friends to berate her for marrying Pioxzi, but it does not follow that the bitter opinions this shallow and vivacious lady came belatedly to entertain of the guest she eliminated from her househoM so soon after her first husband's desth, are to be taken as more than somewhat obvious justifications of her own act When Mr...
...It is revealing that the lines of Pushkin which he chooses to quote are these: "From here we shall threaten the Swede...
...Her face was grimy...
...Several essays ere compressed into the simple sentence, "Uncommon merits require uncommon opportunities for their exertion...
...This Eugene se.ms to be a distant echo of the old curse "Be Thou deserted, Petersburg...
...The Bronze Horseman is a monument which Catherine II erected to Peter the Great, who "rearid Russia ou its haunches" like a rider about to set forth .on a journey without end, extending the vast and powerful empire...
...Not a full swing hack of th* pendulum but a ¦light return of th* pendulum...
...Both the students and the amateurs of individuality pile up new interpretations of some already voluminously interpreted and recorded personality, of Peisistratus, Socrates, Ceesar, Nspoleon, Volta're, Rousseau, Samuel Johriscn...
...Leningrad holds a peculiar place in the war and "its story can scarcely be regarded as a cross-section of the war as a whole...
...This curse was connected with the very building of the city, accomplished in large part by forced labor of conscripted peasants torn from their homes, who died here on this originally uninhabitable swamp...
...Werth observes that though many novels and poems have appeared about Leningrad during the blockade, "little of permanent importance has yet been written...
...She had a long black scsrf over her head and her shoulders, though she could not have been cold there...
...But clearly it was realized that the Revolution, like all revolutiona, had gone too far in certain directions and had, together with the undesirable things, discarded some desirable things, at least things which in certain conditions crested by th* war had become desirable again...
...It is in this Leningrad that Werth is at home, admiring "the skyline of a great city" and the beautiful buildings with freshly repainted yellow stuccos, mixing his new impressions with old memories of his comfortable boyhod...
...Thrale* origins, life and works, so delightfully done that I wish he had indulged this bent more often...
...Certainly, In that kind of "a slight return," neither the population of Leningrad nor th* Russian people as a whole ar* Interested...
...The only real weakness in Mr...
...After showing the lady's talents and limitations he 1s less happy, I think, in giving so much space to her cruel judgments of Johnson, without following them more often by the contrary testimony liberally supplied by Boswell...
...But many details about the months of famine Werth took not from the humble man on the street but from high Leqlngrad officials, who In praising loudly the courageous attitude of Leningrad's popu...
...Th* mere fact that so much is already recorded and understood about each of Hose monolithic figures, makes th* acquisition of still more knowledge and understanding appear highly important, because if we should ever succeed in knowing all about any one man, or any one period of history, then, it seems, we would b* very close to understanding life itself...
...at the Putilov works one had the feeling that for the men and women who worked there, this war was also a consciously revolutionary war which was being fought to preserve at any price not only the Russian national heritage, but the heritage of the Revolution and all that Leningrad, 'the City of Lenin,' represented...
...It would probably be impossible for any man to express opinions on Johnson that did not meet with with various dissents...
...The idea of finding out in what this special greatneas consists becomes a kind of guide to Werth, For one acquainted with Russia and its literature this Idea does not appear a new one...
...already indeed, they are becoming obsolete for th s generation...
...Kruteh addresses his book to the general reading public, not to Johnson specialists, and he knows that in spite of the large proportions of the literature about Johnson, most modern readers know him chiefly as the aubject of what has been habitually called the greatest biography in any language...
...Kruteh gives him full credit, he composed the 242 pages of his work that relate Johnson's life prior to the Boswell meeting, from eyewitness accounts of the surviving friends anil acquaintances of Johnson, from num-.-rous letters written by Johnson before-the age of 54, and from innumerable anecdotes and recorded sayings...
...Socialist* reinterprit Marx...
...Kruteh should also expose the often absurd Boswell characteristics rather more often than his subject required is owing, I think, to a deaire to restore a correct perspective as to the relative Importance of Boswell and Johnson It is one of the most valuable gfpects of his book that he undertakes to refute the absurd notion that Johnson was Boswell's creation, great chiefly because Boswell employed his genius in writing about him...
...1944...
...Mr...
...Only in the fall of 1943, and (for the second time) in February, 1944, did Werth realize his plan...
...189 pages...
...yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths," and the vigor of his literary appraisals in the brief comment, "Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge to a forest...
...Although Leningrad has "a large share in Russia's glory," it has also "a human greatness peculiarly ita own...
...This particularly strikes the reader in the chapter dealing with the Kirov Works (formerly the Putilov Plant) to the workers of which the book itself is dedicated...
...To foil our arrogant neighbor...
...Countless writers and poets have speculated on the cause of an almost mystic role always played by St...
...Thrale tried to force him to agree that Kdward Young's description of night was better than Shakespeare's or Dryden's, he answered, "Young froths and foams and bubbles, sometimes very vigorously...
...So Werth introduces the chapter on the Putilov Works...
...His first-born, Moscow War Diary, was among the earliest reports written about wartime Ruasia...
...These will be the basis for the future literature Leningrad will produce...
...Since he suffered from the particularly agonizing diseases of dropsy and asthma, this appeared to show high fortitude...
...T ENINGRAD is the second book of Alexander Werth dealing with Soviet Russia i at war...
...There he sensed how deeply "Leningrad still felt its closeness to Europe, how very much alive the 'Western' traditions of the city still were...
...Kruteh quotes Mrs...
...Werth refers to this, but seems to have caught only one of its facets...
...Kruteh has unintentionally created a false impression of the scope of Hon well's work in the minds of those of his readers who have not read Boswell or who do not take the trouble to look up the references in an appendix...
...In many places in Russia today lite war is, first and foremost, a nstional war...
...Why should they...
...There was something tragic in those eyes—animal terror...
...Kruteh neglects to add the testimony of an attendant on his last days who wrote, "The Doctor, from the time that he was certain his death waa near, appeared to be perfectly resigned, waa seldom or never fretful or out of temper...
...Alfred A. Knopf...
...Confucius formulated his dunking as a commentary upon and interpretation of sncient Chinese songs...
...Thrale to the effect that Johnson was habitually rude and inconsiderate, I think he would have done well to quote Boswell's answer that Johnson was habitually courteous, ' and only rude when driven to it by outrageous provocation or by physirsl suffering...
...Frankly," remarked th* direct...
...Reading the modern slogans on the walls of an officer's club, which are merely copied from a Tsariat textbook on "officer's etiquette," Werth remarks: "Back to the Tsarist ArmyT No...
...The announcement had been taken calmly, "though to many it was like a death sentence...
...But Werth does not seem to realize it...
...IT is a curioua characteristic of man's quest for understanding- of himself and hia world, that from earliest recorded times he had accepted certain events snd certain personalities as epitomes of his knowledge...
...Only once, while walking through the foundry, is Werth's attention struck by a woman-worker...
...Krutch's brilliant and delightful work Is the fsct that he feels, quite unnecessarily, on the defensive on this point I Ho not agree with those critics who think he has done less than justice to Boswell...
...Two aspects of this most European of Russian cities were always discussed...
...Only then did he look into other eyes and remark that in many eyes there was a kind "of inner intensity and concentration—as if they all had some bad memories they could not quite shake off...
...When Mrs...
...Krutch's talent for r.-itty biographical narration is seen at its best in his account of Mrs...
...Thi* opinion, most violently stated by Csrlyle, h*s been very generally accepted, and is quoted in th* Kveryman edition of Boswell, probably more read today than any other...
...But Mr...
...As the author writes in his preface, Leningrad was originally intended to be merely a chapter in a much larger book on the war in Russia, but the liberation of the city in January 1944 after 29 months of a terrific blockade and the heroic behavior of Leningrad population seemed to him worth separate examination...
...This one detail, showing the deep human .dignity of the Leningrad working population, might lie sufficient to suggest the source of the peculiar "human greatness" of l/eningrad...
...Kruteh has lucked his way with exceptional skill and understanding, and has produced a book that delights the reader on every page...
...Successive generations of scholars and thinkers reevaluate and reinterpret these epitomes, bringing to bear on them the latest discover in and opinions of their own times...
...Here shall be laid the foundations of a city...
...Petersburg (now Leningrad) in Russia's culture...
...Nature has chosen this spot for us...
...The great works based on the dramatic experiences will be written later...
...This face made a deep impression on Werth...
...So many workers died in those months that the administration decided to have its own graveyard right near the plant...
...Although he fell into the ponderous obese style today contemptuously called Johnsonese sufficiently often to give color to this abuse of his name, his work is more often distinguished by the adroitness and brilliance with which it compresses much thought into few words, and for its athletic hewing to the aubject at issue...
...AH Johnaon's writings," so the dour Scotch autocrat observed of the gruff English autocrat, "laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand on a quite inferior level (to the Boswell...
...In the depths of his heart, Werth loves only the majestic aspect of the city...
...From Puzyrev Werth learns that 89 per cent of the labor in the plant now is female while "hardly any women worked here before the war...
...By Alexander Werth...
...Werth spent some exciting hours at a reception organized by the Leningrad Writer's Union...
...In addition to being an incomparable phrasemaker, Johnson's powerful mind illuminated every subject it touched, no matter how violently a particular reader may disagree with his various opinions...
...On that first trip in July, 1941, Werth was already planning to visit Leningrad, his native city, where he had lived until his seventeenth year, but then he could not obtain the necessary authorization by Soviet officials...
...Less than in his Moscow War Diary docs Werth draw political conclusions...
...On the whole, Mr...
...In stating also that Johnson's last painwracked months were not graceful, being utterly lacking in resignation, Mr...
...and for some future gen-eration may l>e valuable chiefly as Prolegomena and expository Scholia to this Johnsoniad of Boswell...
...Here our axe still hacks our window into Europe...
...This opinion, glibly repeated by generations who know Johnson only through Roswell, Mr...
...In fact the greater part of Krutch's own account of Johnson prior to the age of 54_, comes from the Boswell mine, though it is interestingly supplemented by newly discovered material...
...For' although Boswell may not have known Johnson until the I>-ctor was 53 (Boswell himself makea it 54), his biography begins with Johnson's birth...
...In December 1941, the director told him, a meeting was called to announce a reduction of the breadration for workers from S50 grammes to 260 and for employees and dependents to 125 grammes...
...And from that grimy face shone two dark eyes...
...So when a discriminating and widely read literary scholar of the 20th century reassays the bulky figure of Johnson, he is far from having any apologies to make, even if the recent publication of the Malahide papers, the Thrsliana, the Que -ny letters, and the continual discovery of other new letters, new farts and new comments bearing on Johnson, had not made such s work almost imperative...
...But in making a esse for the appearance of another biography, particularly in pointing out that Boswell didn't ev*n meet the Great Man until Johnson waa (8, that he was far from availing himself of all possible opportuntles to be with Johnson, thst he pursued his own life with even more enthusissm than he pursued Johnson's, that he recorded the conversations of Rousseau and Voltaire with as great felicity as the conversations of Johnson, and that during the twenty years of hia friendship with Johneon, he was actually within reach of him only a total of two years and aome montha, Mr...
...1 find it hard to this day to underst* ...w people resisted the temptation of attacking bread vans or looting bakeries...
...The only opponent to the mighty rider in Pushkin's poem is a poor and crazy official one, Eugene...
...The most beautiful incarnation of these two aspects is the famous poem of Pushkin The Bronze Horieman...
...Kruteh has admirably refuted by an appreciative and discerning study of Johnson's chief works—the Dictionary, which first stabilized the English language, so unstable only a hundred years before that men who wished long life for their works used Latin, the brilliant 17,000 word preface to a new edition of Shakespeare, which Brat brought that poet, long the favorite of the masses, into respectable critical appreciation, and the vigorous and interesting Lives of (A* Poets...
...lation are more interested in presenting in a favorable light their own activities...
...During the darkest months of hunger many people kept diaries, "a lot of diaries, with many astonishing details...
...but we must not compare the noise made by your tea kettle here with the roaring of the ocean...
Vol. 28 • January 1945 • No. 1
