Open Access“Now on Zoshchenko”: Adamovich, Teffi and “the anxiety of influence”
Author(s) -
Andrei Ustinov
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
literaturnyj fakt
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2542-2421
pISSN - 2541-8297
DOI - 10.22455/2541-8297-2020-16-307-321
Subject(s) - memoir , jealousy , newspaper , diaspora , literature , history , art , art history , sociology , psychology , media studies , gender studies , social psychology
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Mikhail Zoshchenko was one of themost popular Soviet writers. His literary works were published and actively discussedin the USSR, and by the Russian Diaspora abroad. Zoshchenko’s name started toappear in the writings of an émigré critic Georgy Adamovich at the very beginningof his literary career. This article reconstructs the evolution of Adamovich’s opinionsabout Zoshchenko’s literary talent. In particular, the author analyzes a forgotten reviewof Zoshchenko’s novel “M.P. Siniagin (Memoirs of Michel Siniagin)”, that appearedin the Paris newspaper “Poslednie Novosti” on March 12, 1931, and has been neverreprinted since. The Adamovich’s review prompted Teffi (Nadezhda Lokhvitskaia-Buchinskaia) to send him a private letter — published here for the first time — in which she formulated her understanding of Zoshchenko’s artistic manner (“He isn’t awriter. He is a humorist”), perhaps dictated by “jealousy” towards another satirist and“the anxiety of influence” in her own literary work.