Drunks Aren't Always Drunk

Maxim Gorky's 1901 play, The Lower Depths, was an international success. Jean Renoir's 1936 film of the same name is one expression of the play's enduring power to inspire Leftist sentiment. Although Renoir's version of The Lower Depths transports scenes of misery from the banks of the Volga to the banks of a French river, and, according to the IMBD, turns an ensemble production into a star vehicle for its leading man, it's easy to see why socialists and socialist sympathizers were energized by the play's storyline, or at least its rich cast of characters.

In the film, a "comme-il-faut" aristocrat gambles his money away, but retains his serene dignity--demonstrating a stoic capacity to accept the results of that ultimate game of chance, life--even as he joins the ranks of the ruined denizens of a flophouse. Simultaneously, a professional thief encounters the baron in the very act of attempting to steal from the recently bankrupt gambler, and that encounter leads to mutual understanding and respect when the baron, bereft of butler and home, winds up living at the flophouse. Lower Depths is appealing for two reasons. First, the play gives sympathetic voice to a wide variety of men and women from the previously neglected social underclass, including beaten and overworked women, thieves, gamblers, workers, and drunks. Second, it offers an avenue for personal as well as social redemption, but without becoming Manichean or unrealistic, and without utterly dehumanizing all representatives of the upper classes.

While Natasha, the heroine of the play, is victimized by a cruel and tyrannical adoptive father who exploits his lodgers lodgers, and the police and government inspector are clearly propping up an unjust social structure, Gorky's characters are complex: the landlord's cruel wife has redeeming values, and the social outcasts who are, ostensibly, the play's protagonists, have obvious and varied flaws and sins.

So how do the poor and disenfranchised achieve redemption? The answer isn't simple. Papel, the professional thief, is redeemed by the love of an innocent Natasha, by his violent defense of Natasha's honor and safety, and ultimately by physical escape from the city with Natasha by his side and the biblically significant forty coins in his pocket. The flophouse residents find it by participating in their first act of resistance against the social order, i.e., their participation in Papel's murderous attack on the landlord, and their willingness to publicly claim ownership of the avenging murder when the gendarmes arrives on the scene. The baron finds it by realizing real solidarity with people from lower social orders. Life is a game of chance after all, and it's only a strange twist of fate that leads some people to live lives of wealth and privilege, and others to live in squalid poverty and moral turpitude.

More darkly, the alcoholic actor achieves a more tragic form of redemption through suicide. Considering Hamlet's dilemma, this actor has set out at least to explore the "undiscovered country." But, as one character sadly observes in reference to the death of another flophouse resident: "Death is kind to the poor."

Redemption is also offered to the viewer or audience member. According to Gorky, liberation starts with sympathy for those who live in the "lower depths." "How," one character asks, "can we pity the dead when we don't even pity the living?" How indeed. One senses a profound humanizing tendency in Gorky's artistic vision. People are neither good nor evil; they are both, depending on the circumstances in which they find themselves. For even drunks "aren't always drunks," and even thieves "aren't always in prison."

A Dignified Hustle

How much talent did modern Russia have? Even after the best and brightest of the country was decimated by the First World War, the Civil War, the Great Hunger, and the Purges, talent survived, even if much of it was forced to sneak abroad. Take, for instance, the case of Nina Berberova, the brilliant author, translator, and writer of biographies of Aleksander Blok, reviewed previously by Soviet Roulette, and Baroness Budberg, a.k.a., Moura.

Berberova, a genius in her own write (though Nabokov reminds us that the word genius, in Russian anyhow, is solely reserved for Pushkin, Tolstoy, and perhaps one or two other supremely gifted literary artists), was a friend of many Russian luminaries, including Maxim Gorky and Khodasevich. She was also a friend if not social equal of an older and more sophisticated Moura, Baroness of Budburg, a translator, cultural consultant for British films, and so much more.

Berberova's admiration for Moura was predicated on the woman's strength, beauty, self-confidence, discretion, intelligence, bravery, and brand sense of adventure. While so many other high-born ladies crumbled under the volcanic pressures of revolution or exile, Moura did not. After discovering that the husband who had given her an aristocratic title had been murdered by peasants, Moura struggled to survive. Neither hunger nor violent social dislocation could put an end to the strange career of this intrepid woman.

Wondering the streets of a lonely, impoverished, and now-alient St. Peterburg, Moura's pre-war ties to Great Britain eventually brought her into contact with the ever-diminishing British mission in Moscow. This in turn led her into a very real love affair with that spectacularly adventurous and eloquent British diplomat and agent, Bruce Lockhart, who plotted to overthrow the Soviet government while it was still in its infancy. If Moura had done nothing more than help her lover, Lockhart, to escape from his Cheka prison, her life would merit some attention. But Moura's fascinating tale didn't stop there.

When Lockhart was let out of Russia, Moura continued to survive in war-torn Russia, eventually finding solace in the intellectually vibrant circle of Maxim Gorky. Gorky, as will be remembered, launched some of the most ambitious publishing enterprises in the history of communism. Once an ardent supporter of Lenin, Gorky opposed the Bolshevik crackdown on liberal as well as leftist political competitors. Eventually, Gorky oversaw the translation and publication of world literature in Russia on a stunning scale, even in the midst of abject poverty. When Gorky eventually withdrew from Russia in protest, Moura found her way to him in exile. But all the while, she maintained innumerable contacts with family, friends, intellectual peers, and perhaps secret agents.

But Moura's life of danger had not yet ended. In its next iteration, the consummate survivor allowed Gorky to return to Russia without her, and eventually became the life partner of one of Gorky's admirers, H.G. Wells. Berberova is naturally in awe of this woman who earned the love of no less than three first-tier interwar actors, Lockhart, Gorky, and Wells. But her admiration stems less from her knowledge of the devotion each of these man held out to Moura, and more from this aristocrat's irrepressible capacity for survival and self-invention. Moura attracted brilliant men, but this attraction was generated by their recognition of the fact that this woman did not come to them with even a shred of dependency. Moura would survive with or without any of them, though she never spoke about her independence in a melodramatic or spiteful way.

Moura's life will perhaps always be shrouded in some mystery. She made up stories all the time, maintained discrete lives, and may also have had ties to the Soviet Union's espionage services. (Berberova even speculates that Moura may have gone back to the Soviet Union to be at Gorky's deathbed). Certainly, she always believed the best years of communism lay in the future.

Tour de Horizon de Troyat

I've been packing up Russian history and literature books for three days. It's time to put my small Henri Troyat collection away. Troyat was part of the Russian diaspora that was displaced by the Russian Revolution. I think he was a teenager when his family settled in France, one of the centers of counter-revolutionary and general White Russia intellectual activity. Troyat was a prolific writer to say the least, and penned many successful novels (including one work of historical fiction, Red and White, which I have yet to review in this blog) as well as dozens of biographies of Russian historical and literary figures. It's no exaggeration to say that one of the best ways to fall in love with Russian cultural history is to read a Troyat biography, which are like potato chips insofar as you can't stop at just one. Troyat's biographies, as I've said before, are all almost uniformally good. They all read well and possess a literary quality in their own right. They all move quickly to decisive, adult junctures in the subject's right.

Troyat seems to have had divided loyalties, as I also do. (In graduate school in Montreal, I somehow divided my time almost equally between very traditional political biographies of the Stale Male and Pale men of British history such as Castlereagh, Palmerston, Gladstone, Churchill, and Lloyd George; and more recent works about queer, Beatnik authors such as Burroughs and Kerouac--never quite finding any connection between my subjects despite one failed doctoral dissertation that vainly attempted to find a link between literary and political modernism).

In this spirit, Troyat loved politics as well literature. He wrote biographies of the tsars, including Ivan, Peter, Catherine, Alexander I, and many of the minor female tsarinas. But he also wrote brilliant and sensitive portraits of Russia's greatest authors, including Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Gorky--all good, although the Tolstoy book overshadows the others. Orlando Figes, for example, said it remained a sentimental favorite of his.

As I pack up my Troyat books, including many of the books mentioned above, I'm thankful that I still have a few left to read. I've got his portrait of daily life in Moscow at the turn of the century, one of his many French biographies (Flaubert, friend of Turgenev--apparently Troyat's attention couldn't even remained fixed on Russia), and his novel, Red and White. But there are other Troyat books out there, many others. Some are rare, out-of-print, and expensive: just try to find his biographies of Gogol and Dostoevsky for instance. Others are apparently untranslated. It's enough to make you learn French.

Remains of the Day

As my last day approaches, the pace of packing picks up. The eclectic nature of my Russian history and literature collection seems somewhat oppressive. Part of my obsession with Russia was spontaneous (Who can shake Gogol and Dostoyevsky even if they wanted to?) but part of it is intentional: Wanting to achieve some sort of depth in addition to breadth in my readings, I decided to stick tightly to Russia, and the Revolution in particular, rather than continuing to read everything in sight.

Alas, my readings are limited to Russia now, but people seem to publish hundred times faster than I can read, and I ought to limit the scope of my readings more each day. Instead, I read everything about Russian politics, history, literature, and culture, and seem to be headed toward more books on theatre, film, ethnography, philsophy, and science, etc. As I pack up Osip Mandelstam's Stone, I can't say that I know enough about Mandelstam or Russian poetry to have gotten very much from the work. Did Nina Berberova's novellas make any more of an impact? Into the plastic crate with them all.

I suppose my knowledge of Russian literature and poetry is particularly superficial. I'm on more solid ground when it comes to politics. But it seems strange to encounter so many references to key Russian authors without giving them a stab. Into the crate goes a book of Chekhov plays (Is there anything yet in theatre to compare with Uncle Vanya or the Cherry Orchard?), a poetry collection by Marina Tsvetaeva (Love the poem titles--From Insomnia, Sahara, Some Ancestor of Mine, We Shall Not Escape Hell, Bent with Worry, An Attempt at Jealousy, Strong Doesn't Mate with Strong, etc.), a biography entitled, The Death of A Poet: The Last Days of Marina Tsvetaeva (pure tragedy: who decides to return to Russia with a husband who fought for the White Army?), Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (which sparked the early obsession with both Russian history and crime literature in general), and Gork's University Days, which at least, gave me some insight into the Soviet Union's favorite author.

Shall I continue? This post might become a children's book called "Into the Crate..." So into the crate goes Doctor Zhivago (as crazy, chaotic, and romantic as the Russian Revolution and Civil War--but not necessarily better than the movie) and dozens of other equally brilliant books. And into the crate goes Nobel Prize winner Bunin's angry diatribe against the communists Cursed Days. Then goes Leo Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, wherein the famous author reveals a certain humility and sense of humor, notwithstanding all of the aristocratic privilege. And his The Death of Ivan Llyich (showing the same humility and honesty about mortality as he had about youth so many decades previously). And I can't forget his novella, The Cossacks, wherein a young Tolstoy shows that he can write an old-fashioned, romantic adventure tale (Sure to have generated scores of post-colonial literary dissertations). Next Chekhov's The Duel and Other Stories (so cool, so understated, so enigmatic) and Ivan Turganev's Fathers and Children (compelled me to read more about the anarchist Bakhunin who was the model for the generation in revolt; and made me wonder whether my translation was fairly depicting Turganev's famous fluid style).

Who knew I had read so much literature these past four years? I'm only sorry I didn't post as much about literature as I have about political and social history.

Long Live Mayakovsky

Mayakovsky committed suicide on 14 April 1930 at age 36. His death prefigured the end of creative freedom in Soviet Russia, and the beginning of a deadly new phase in Stalinist repressions against the peasantry. Mayakovsky was a force of nature, a poetic whirlwind that somehow encapsulated the frenzied, optimistic essence of the Soviet Revolution. When he wrote, he still believed that a new, unspoiled Soviet readership was in the process of emerging from centuries of tsarist oppression.

Mayakovsky was a poet, artist, activist, playwright, proto-punk performance artist, political criminal, revolutionary, and sex symbol. Poems don't always translate all that well, but Mayakovsky's poems are given legs by Michael Almereyda's new book, Writings by and about Mayakovsky. Almereyda has placed a few of Mayakovsky's greatest poems---filled with what became known as the "Mayakovsky I"--next to short commentaries by his friends and peers, including Vicktor Shklovsky and Boris Pasternak and Maxim Gorky. The poems are witty, disjointed, socialist, self-aggrandizing, fun, mocking, and always creative.

In one short sketch, a peer remembers how Mayakovsky delivered his prose, with masculine power and drama--his every word a challenge or comic insult to his audience. Mayakovsky's poetry was original and thoroughly modern, and the author remembers how Mayakovsky outwitted everybody in the audience who dared to challenge his claim to represent Russia's artistic future (he was, after all, a Futurist). Almereyda's book also highlights Mayakovsky's artistic powers (he created brilliant advertising campaigns for early Soviet goods) and imposing physical presence: the photos reveal a tall, handsome, swaggering, ever-changing, sensual personality.

The poetry is good, but Mayakovsky the man was pure fun and excitement. This Mayakovsky, brash lover of women, socialism, mechanical things, and modernity, is what the Soviet Revolution was all about, at first. Mayakovsky is dead! Alas, so too is the next generation of brilliant poet performance artist-revolutionaries, like Beatnik Alan Ginsburg.

Lenin: Superhero of the Left

In the 1960s Russia published in English translation a beautiful compendium of Lenin written portraits by famous contemporaries and a few later admirers. Lenin in Profile: World Writers and Artists on Lenin is a work of propaganda and hagiography and yet helps modern readers to get a better sense of the man’s place in global history than almost any other book. Balanced criticism of historical figures is extremely valuable.

However, unbalanced praise can be illuminating too. We know of course that Stalin and Trotsky battled mightily over Lenin’s legacy. But the rest of the world took note of Lenin too. This book contains dozens and dozens of fond reminiscences of Lenin from every corner of the Earth, with names like Gorky, Tolstoy (the socialist author), Reed, and Neruda. However one-sided, the book highlights many of Lenin’s personal strengths, and these include intelligence, persistence, single-mindedness, internationalism, charisma, etc.

A professor of mine once said that in the old days one either grew up with heroes on the right or heroes on the left. In America, a hero on the left was hard to find, but F.D.R. or perhaps Eugene Debs are stand-ins. In Europe, and certainly in the developing world, you knew who was on your side if you thought the status quo was somehow worse than what was likely to replace it in the event of a political cataclysm. You knew that Lenin had opposed World War I, nationalism, anti-Semitism, inequality, exploitation, etc.

The fact that Lenin died early helped to keep his reputation in tact with those on the Left. Stalin could be blamed for everything. Many scholars have helped to erode this book’s positive portrayal of Lenin. I’m thinking of Lesley Chamberlain’s brilliant book about the role Lenin personally played in exiling his leading opponents in the Russian intelligentsia. Lenin was certainly no democrat, and the title of authoritarian seems to rest easily on his head in light of his many decisions. Stalin’s rise can even be attributed to Lenin, who chose him as a lieutenant even if he criticized him in the final year of his life.

But wonders if it’s fair to lay the results of history at the foot of somebody who couldn't have foreseen how a lack of democracy would eventually lead to unprecedented brutality and suffering. Hell, we don’t even blame lovable Harry S. Truman for a decision he actually made to obliterate two Japanese cities with nuclear bombs.