The Rise of the Russian Novel: Studies in the Russian Novel from Eugene Onegin to War andPeace by R. FreebornReview by: John BayleyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 52, No. 127 (Apr., 1974), pp. 274-275Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4206872 .

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Reviews Freeborn, R. The Rise of the Russian Novel: Studies in the Russian Novelfrom

Eugene Onegin to War and Peace. Cambridge University Press, Cam- bridge, I973. 289 Pp. Index. ?5 40. Paperback ?2 40.

THIS seems to me by far the most helpful and instructive study of the great period of the Russian novel that has yet appeared in English. Pro- fessor Freeborn adopts the principle of selective chapters, singling out Eugene Onegin, A Hero of Our Time, Dead Souls; then Herzen, Pisemsky and Turgenev as exponents of the 'What is To Be Done?' novel of the mid- century; and finally Crime and Punishment (a singularly illuminating exposi- tion and discussion) and War and Peace. An admirable introduction and end-piece put the chapters in perspective and enclose their detailed scholarship in a framework of general commentary.

But the emphasis is rightly on the former. Nabokov is always telling us that an ounce of scholarly detail is worth a ton of critical generalisation, and Professor Freeborn has contrived to balance the claims of the two over a wide area while seeing to it that his expert knowledge is not eclipsed in the interests of popularisation. To take one example from the first chapter: Ivanov-Razumnik's thesis of the special and accurate chronology of Eugene Onegin is referred to and expounded, and its fertilis- ing importance implied: the importance of such a delicately unobtrusive but exact chronological sense, for the whole sweep of the Russian novel to come, is suggested. Tolstoy may trip up occasionally, in tiny matters of sequence, but the fact that he does so shows how basically important is a sense of such things in the apparently casual, broad, living and free organ- ism of the Russian novel, which-as Tolstoy himself pointed out-never came quite to resemble anything previously categorised as a 'novel' in the West.

The analysis of tone in A Hero of Our Time is particularly good-it is the unique combination of the melodramatic with the completely common- place and factual which gives that work its peculiar resonance, and what- ever Lermontov may have learnt from Pushkin here he achieves his own unmistakable sort of individuality, a much subtler thing than any of the German or English versions of 'romantic irony'. 'Resonance' is indeed the word, as Professor Freeborn demonstrates apropos the kiss which the un- dina bestows on the hero in Taman'. 'The noisiness of this impossible, mushy, moistly fiery kiss is the odd feature of it. That he then crushes her in a passionate embrace and she slips like a snake and darts like an arrow can simply be regarded as the cliche's of melodrama, and the narrator's impli- cit detachment is such as to give the scene a vicarious air of verisimilitude. But the resonance of the kiss is, for all its incongruity, the single most authentic item in this passage, perhaps in the whole of his relationship with his undina and therefore with any of the characters in Taman'. It is the ex- plosive moment when his own heroic presumptions as narrator are put to the test. His instantaneous reaction is to presume that it is an invitation to love, whereas it is in fact an invitation to death. The kiss is a deliberate irony: its very noisiness interrupts the dreamlike detachment of his nar-

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REVIEWS 275

rator's attitude and precipitates him at once into the melodrama, trans- forming him from witness to participant, from presumed seducer into in- tended victim, from his role as casual observer of a little human drama into its casualty' (pp. 59-60). That is an extraordinarily sensitive and per- ceptive analysis not only of the specific flavour of Taman' but of the peculiar dynamic of Lermontov's style, and its use of alternating factual style and heroic cliche.

A conspicuously interesting theme enlarged on by Professor Freeborn is the gradual 'dramatising' of the Russian novel, by the techniques of such exponents as Goncharov and Dostoyevsky. Even the device of an exchange of private letters in Poor Folk 'is given something in common with public histrionics through the unmistakable way in which the letters appear to have been written to be read aloud and frequently resemble set speeches' (p. I i9). Such authors, like Dickens, gave public readings of their own work and-in the case of Dostoyevsky-were well aware of the dramatic possibilities inherent in the skandal scene and in the sudden public ex- posure of the 'the most demeaning private truth'. This development of dramatic technique in fiction can be seen, too, in what Professor Freeborn feels to be the nub of the Dostoyevskian subject matter: the dream or secret-the dream suggesting a secret and requiring an explanation- which is pursued or dangled before us like the denouement of a play. Thus for example 'the psychological and moral development of Raskolnikov depends upon a gradual revelation of motive which is as surprising to the author as it is to Raskolnikov. He becomes astonished at being what he is, and the drama of this revelation of selfhood is the source of the novel's dramatic impact' (p. 187). The ultimate device of the drama, the Shake- spearean disappearance of the author, is achieved by Dostoyevsky not by effacing himself or abdicating his role of commentator, but by such con- trivances as that which Professor Freeborn well describes as 'the way in which the reader is sometimes presumed to know as much about the characters as their creator' (p. 187).

In his discussion of War and Peace Professor Freeborn gives considerable weight to the unresolved obsession that Tolstoy had about Napoleon, wrestling with him like the two bears in a cage of Gor'ky's reminiscence. 'By an irony which was obviously not entirely to Tolstoy's taste it is clear that if Napoleon had not existed War and Peace would not have been writ- ten' (p. 259) . In this final chapter, a masterly survey of some of the general implications in his title, he returns to the question of Tolstoy's historicity, linking it with the sense of fate and law in Dostoyevsky, and both with the counterparts of such basic matters in Homer and in Shakespeare. As can be seen, the strength of this admirable study is in its scope and breadth, the sweep of its commitment, and the way in which it combines these things with some extremely detailed and original personal criticism. Oxford JOHN BAYLEY

Lavrin, Janko. A Panorama of Russian Literature. University of London Press Ltd., London, I973. 325 pp. Bibliography. Index.

PROFESSOR LAVRIN must surely be one of the most prolific popularisers

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