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Questions of Art, Fact, and Genre in Mikhail Prishvin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ray J. Parrott Jr.
Ray J. Parrott Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of Russian at the University of Iowa, Iowa City
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It is customary in Soviet criticism of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (1873–1954) to speak of the unique blend of fact and fantasy, of science and art in his work. In fact, this view is not restricted to Soviet discussions of the writer’s art. It is a reasonable view, if cautiously considered as no more than a convenient generality. Something of the same generalizing nature operates in discussions of the literary forms which Prishvin most often employed in his narrative art: the ocherk, the rasskaz, and, less frequently, the povestf. Scholars and critics speak of the writer’s inimitable mastery of these forms, but rarely in definitive terms. Briefly summarized, Prishvin’s preferred forms are the halfsketch and half-tale, or the novelette-sketch; his pieces represent an amalgam of fact and fiction. They are, above all, lyrical and poetic, but they are also “scientific.” They are the one and the other, but their specificity seems almost too elusive to capture and define.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 465 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1977

References

1. Motiashov, I. P., Mikhail Prishvin (Moscow, 1965), p. 4.Google Scholar

2. Davydov, K, “M. M. Prishvin,” Novyi zhurnal, no. 68 (1962), pp. 146–54.Google Scholar

3. Kovaleva, V. A., ed., Russkii sovetskii rasskaz : Ocherki istorii zhanra (Leningrad, 1970), p. 206 Google Scholar; see also pp. 206-14, 416-17, 422, 594. A similar looseness of terminology pervades A. Khailov's recent study of the rasskaz, “Grani rasskaza, ” in Zhanrovo-stilevye iskaniia sovremennoi sovetskoi prozy (Moscow, 1971), pp. 200-231. Khailov for all practical purposes makes no distinction between the liricheskii rasskaz and liricheskii ocherk, suggesting, especially in Prishvin's case, that the forms frequently represent a hybrid blend (ibid., p. 205).

4. See especially Khailov, A, “Put’ k ‘drugu-chitateliu,” Russkaia literatura, 1958, no. 4, pp. 163–74Google Scholar; Tarasenkov, A. K., “O Prishvine,” Stat'i o literature, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1958), pp. 148–57 Google Scholar; and Prishvin, M, “Moi ocherk,” Moi ocherk (Moscow, 1933), p. 9–15.Google Scholar

5. Borovoi, L, “Tainaia sovremennost1 iazyka,” Iazyk pisatelia (Moscow, 1966), p. 177.Google Scholar

6. See the introductory essay by V. D. Prishvina, in M. Prishvin, Nezabudki (Moscow, 1969), p. 3. On another occasion Prishvin's widow reiterated this fundamental premise of the writer's art : “It is common knowledge that he got into art through science. The school of scientific thought doubtlessly exerted an enormous influence on his creative work. To the end of his days he continually sought to combine both methods of knowing the world : the scientific and the artistic. For Prishvin they are both one and mutually indispensable” (see Prishvina, V, “Ot nauki k iskusstvu,” Puti v ncsnaemoe : Pisateli rasskasyvaiut o nauke, vol. 2 [Moscow, 1962], pp. 369–70Google Scholar).

7. Pudozhgorskii, V. K., Pcvets rodnoi semli (Vologda, 1960), p. 39.Google Scholar

8. Borovoi, “Tainaia sovremennost’ iazyka, ” p. 131.

9. Khmel'nitskaia, T. Iu., Tvorchcstvo Mikhaila Prishvina (Leningrad, 1959), pp. 268–69 Google Scholar. Prishvin's widow echoes Khmel'nitskaia's remarks, although with an explanatory note : “In the heat of a polemic Prishvin sometimes designated all the genres of his works as ocherki, beginning with the poetic miniature and ending with the individual chapters of a novel” (see “Ot nauki k iskusstvu, ” p. 382).

10. Pudozhgorskii, Pevets rodnoi semli, pp. 3-4.

11. Khmel'nitskaia, Tvorchestvo Mikhaila Prishvina, pp. 209-10.

12. See Tarasenkov, A. K., “O Prishvine,” Stat'i o literature, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1958), p. 152 Google Scholar; and Motiashov, Mikhail Prishvin, p. 237.

13. Prishvin, “Moi ocherk, ” pp. 9-15. N. Zamoshkin refines this general statement in his essay “Tvorchestvo Mikhaila Prishvina : K voprosu o genezise poputnichestva” : “One of the favorite forms of his creative work is the half-sketch, half-tale. The sketch genre is closely linked with the journey as a means of gathering material. In the artist-traveler the sketch imperceptibly changes into a tale, and it is no accident that the author himself divided them solely by the thin line of linguistic refinement. Their structure is original : instead of a plotline there is a plot-center (siushetnaia satsepka) on which the sketches proper are threaded, a series of sketched incidents” (see Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, 1925, no. 8, p. 130).

14. A., Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962), p. 651.Google Scholar

15. The term mikrogeografiia can be found in Khailov, “Put’ k ‘drugu-chitateliu, '” p. 165. See also the introductory essay by Kiselev, P. in M. M. Prishvin : Isbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1951), p. 20.Google Scholar

16. T. K. Trifonova, Russkaia Sovetskaia literatura tridtsatykh godov (Moscow, 1963), see especially p. 77. A more direct assertion of the “scientific fidelity” of his narratives can be seen in the statement that : “I draw materials not from books but directly from nature myself. Second, I strive to obtain these materials systematically, as in science” (see Prishvina, “Ot nauki k iskusstvu, ” p. 370).

17. Deming, Brown, “The Očerk : Suggestions Toward a Redefinition,” American Contributions to the Sixth International Congress of Slavists, vol. 2, ed. Harkins, W. E. (The Hague, 1968), p. 1–13.Google Scholar

18. Pudozhgorskii, Pcvets rodnoi semli, p. 40.

19. Cited in A. Ninov, “Zhanr obiazyvaet, ” Neva, 1965, no. 4, p. 164. Prishvin appears to “surrender” his authorial self more completely to his material than would Tvardovskii : “First of all, one must learn not to think, rather not to seek anything from oneself in the new, to completely forget and surrender oneself to it” (see Prishvina, “Ot nauki k iskusstvu, ’ p. 383).

20. Ninov, “Zhanr obiazyvaet, ” p. 163.

21. Ibid., p. 165.

22. Trifonova, Russkaia Sovctskaia literatura, p. 77.

23. See especially the Kratkaia literaturnaia entsiklopcdiia, vol. 5 (Moscow, 1968), pp. 516-19; Timofeev, L. I., Osnovy teorii literatury (Moscow, 1966), pp. 368–73 Google Scholar; Ninov, “Zhanr obiazyvaet”; and Brown, “The Očerk : Suggestions Toward a Redefinition.” Nearly all the sources cited by Brown were surveyed during a graduate seminar at the University of Michigan, 1967.

24. Prishvin, M. M., Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 1956), 5 : 445–46Google Scholar. The terms are purely Prishvin's; however, they essentially correspond to the definition of the genre presented in the Kratkaia literaturnaia entsiklopcdiia, vol. 5, p. 518 : “[The ocherk] developed in two forms : the documentary [or ‘publicistic’] and the artistic.” See also Khmel'nitskaia, Tvorchestvo Mikhaila Prishvina, p. 78.

25. See the Gorky-Prishvin correspondence in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70 : Gor'kii i sovetskie pisateli : Neisdannaia perepiska (Moscow, 1963), pp. 319-62.

26. Brown, “The Očerk : Suggestions Toward a Redefinition, ” p. 10.

27. See, for example, Trifonova, Russkaia Sovetskaia literatura, pp. 95-97.

28. Ibid., p. 82.

29. Prishvina, in Nezabudki, p. 8.

30. Ibid., p. S.

31. Trefilova, G. P., “M. M. Prishvin,” Istoriia russkoi sovetskoi literatury v 4-kh tomakh (Moscow, 1968), 3 : 221.Google Scholar

32. Tarasenkov, “O Prishvine, ” p. 152.

33. Prishvina, in Nesahudki, p. 4.

34. Khmel'nitskaia, Tvorchestvo Mikhaila Prishvina, pp. 264-65.

35. Ibid., p. 239.

36. Prishvina, in Nezabudki, p. 7.

37 I. P. Motiashov, “Zerkalo cheloveka : Priroda v tvorchestve M. Prishvina, ” Uchenye zapiski (Shuiskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii institut), part 2 (1960), pp. 344-45.

38. Ivanov-Razumnik, R., “Velikii Pan,” Tvorchestvo i kritika, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1911), pp. 42–70.Google Scholar

39. Prishvina, “Ot nauki k iskusstvu, ” pp. 377-80, 383.

40. Ibid., p. 388; see also p. 389 for a figurative explanation of this synecdochic manner and understanding of reality.