To the Editor:

As the author of Russian Classics in Soviet Jackets (Columbia University Press, 1962), I was understandably interested in Jacques Barzun’s “Russian Politics in the Russian Classics” [May]. Interested and, frankly, puzzled why a retired and very distinguished historian from my alma mater would stray so far from his specialty. I shall not dispute Mr. Barzun’s opinions, however questionable these may be, or such scholarly lapses as the statement that Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is but the “Western” title of the work (the Russian title is the same!), or the assertion that it was Pushkin who coined the term Superfluous Man rather than Turgenev. What must be challenged, however, are Mr. Barzun’s, well, unconventional readings of the literary texts—in the strictest sense of the term.

Thus, Mr. Barzun writes, “When he [Eugene Onegin] discovers his own love for her [Tatyana], she turns him down and marries someone else.” Wrong. Eugene first declares his love for the lady when she is already married. Though she still loves him, she turns down the offer of an adulterous affair.

In Mr. Barzun’s synopsis of Gogol’s Inspector General the penniless adventurer Khlestakov, is allowed “to make love to the mayor’s wife and daughter both.” Wrong again. He does not make love to either woman.

In Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s play The Storm, according to Mr. Barzun, the tyrannical merchant “Dikoy’s wife Katerina, a woman of intelligence and sensibility, has an affair with a young man.” Not true. Dikoy had no wife.

With one opinion, however, I will take issue. A grown woman’s totally loveless and perverse seduction of a young boy (in Fedor Sologub’s Petty Demon) and her systematic encouragement of his transvestite and bisexual tendencies is, to Mr. Barzun, “tender, touching love.” A matter of taste, I suppose.

Maurice Friedberg
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois

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Jacques Barzun writes:

I am much obliged to Maurice Friedberg for reading my article so closely and catching—not quite so many errors as he imagines. To begin with the Pushkin title: Eugene is not Yevgeny, and Onegin as commonly spoken in English renders hardly one sound of the original. It is as if Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister were “known in the West” (my phrase) as William Master.

Next, the Superfluous Man. See Harkins, Dictionary of Russian Literature, under that heading, p. 373: “The term superfluous was first used in this sense by Pushkin to describe his hero Eugene Onegin and was popularized by Turgenev. . . .”

Third, I am told that in The Inspector General Khlestakov does not make love to the mother and daughter. Turn to Act III, where among similar speeches he says to Anna: “To stand beside you is already happiness.” He bewails the hardships of travel and winds up: “. . . if it weren’t for this occasion (looking at Anna and striking a pose) which has rewarded me for everything.” His gallantry is effective. In the next scene Anna “is in love” and says: “He looked at me all the time.” And Maria chimes in: “. . . he was looking at me.” Later, she tells the hero’s servant, “Kiss your master for me.”

Mr. Friedberg is right at last when he points out that in the Ostrovsky play Dikoy has no wife: mea culpa; I confused Dikoy with Tikhon. I am grateful for this release of the interesting Katerina from the embraces of the unspeakable Dikoy.

But with this item the impressive list of errata comes down to a single erratum, one of no consequence to the thesis linking my dozen-and-a-half masterpieces.

I am also thankful that although in speaking of the love story in Sologub I did not specify the young boy as the touching figure, Mr. Friedberg grants me the right to my own taste.