When the almanac Vozdushnye puti first made its appearance in 1960, it immediately became a subject of much discussion among persons interested in Russian literature. While it featured a number of valuable contributions by émigré writers and critics, its chief attraction was, undoubtedly, Anna Akhmatova’s Poema bez geroya, a major work never published in the U.S.S.R. The second issue, brought out in 1961, followed the same pattern, with its major feature sixty-seven poems by Osip Mandelshtam. Roman Grynberg, the almanac’s editor-publisher, succeeded in sustaining the commendable balance between unpublished works by major Soviet Russian writers and their émigré confreres in the two issues that followed, the third in 1963 and the fourth in 1965.

The most important items in the third volume are the three novellas by Isaac Babel (“Froim Grach,” “My First Fee,” “On the Field of Glory”) and a fragment of an unfinished novel. While not as good as the best tales of the Odessa cycle or of The Red Cavalry, the first two still show the master’s touch. The stories are already available in translation; it is good to have them in the original Russian. The poetry section includes some verse by Khodasevich, Mandelshtam and Akhmatova, as well as several poems dedicated to the poetess, notably by her first husband Gumilyov, by Khlebnikov and by Mandelshtam. Among the reminiscences one should single out Lydia Shaliapina’s recollections of her famous father, Yelena Izvolskaya’s very informative and sensitive portrait of the poetess Marina Tsvetaeva (whose biography, incidentally, remains to be written), an unpublished chapter from Mikhail Chekhov’s sketches of the early days of the Soviet theater and its clashes with the officialdom (reading it, the titles of two of Ostrovsky’s plays whimsically merged in this reader’s mind: Talents and Admirers, or Wolves and Sheep), and Andrei Sedykh’s correspondence with the humorist Teffi. Of the essays, the most interesting is Vladimir Markov’s contribution on the monostich, the one-line poem, profusely illustrated with delightful examples of the genre, and Leonid Rzhevsky’s on Babel’s style. The latter contains many penetrating and ingenious observations. It is to be regretted that Professor Rzhevsky chose not to discuss the subject of literary influences and parallels, a fascinating theme in the work of Babel, which blends the traditional Russian skaz, the glittering prose of Flaubert and Maupassant, and the unique texture of Yiddish. The latter element, by the way, accounts for some of the metaphors discussed by Professor Rzhevsky: unusually striking in Russian, they are commonplace in Yiddish. A parallel phenomenon may now be observed in the work of several American Jewish writers who, like Babel, grew up in one linguistic milieu but now create in another – Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, to mention but a few.

Except for some preliminary drafts of Pasternak’s “Poems About One’s Neighbor,” the fourth volume of Vozdushnye puti contains no fiction. The poetry section includes verse by Mandelshtam and Khodasevich, by the émigrés Vladimir Weidle, Yurii Yelagin [sic!], Igor Chinnov and Mikhail Rusalkin, and by the Soviet poets Yelena Tager and Yosif Brodsky. The memoirs include such important materials as Akhmatova’s recollections of Mandelshtam and the painter Modigliani and some autobiographical notes of Khodasevich. In the criticism section one finds Weidle’s elegant essay on the appreciation of poetry and Leon Stilman's observations on brides, bridegrooms and matchmakers, “a recurrent motif in Gogol.” Though dealing with the subject of fear of and flight from sex, Professor Stilman carefully avoids any psychological theorizing on the subject, restricting himself to a systematic exposition of the theme.

The main item in the issue is a stenographic report of the 1964 trial of the young Leningrad poet Yosif Brodsky. The trial, by now a cause célèbre, was a mockery of justice organized by the Soviet authorities in the worst traditions of the Stalin era. The poet was not, it should be emphasized, accused of any political or economic wrongdoing. His sole “crime” was his failure to hold on to a permanent job, an accusation to which thousands of poets, past and present, would have to plead guilty. In Brodsky’s trial it was poetry itself which was, in effect, being tried. The Soviet prosecutor stubbornly refused to recognize the writing of poetry as such – let alone of poetry not bearing the official Writers’ Union seal of good housekeeping – as socially useful labor, and the “parasite” Brodsky was banished to the Arkhangelsk province where he was assigned the meritorious duty of carting manure. In spite of some rumors to the contrary, reliable sources indicate that Brodsky has not yet been released. The transcript of Brodsky’s trial was printed some time ago in The New Leader. Mr. Grynberg is to be thanked for recording the original text of a major document in Russia’s cultural history.

Maurice Friedberg
Hunter College of the City University of New York