Arkady Gornfeld: Difference between revisions
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Concluding that Mandelstam purposely had stolen his work, Gornfeld attacked the poet in a letter to the Red Evening Gazette. He likened the alleged plagiarism to a theft of a fur coat.<ref>Donald Leowen, The Most Dangerous Art, p. 95</ref> |
Concluding that Mandelstam purposely had stolen his work, Gornfeld attacked the poet in a letter to the Red Evening Gazette. He likened the alleged plagiarism to a theft of a fur coat.<ref>Donald Leowen, The Most Dangerous Art, p. 95</ref> |
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The ensuing furor inspired Mandelstam’s book [[The Fourth Prose]], in which he flung anti-Semitic remarks at Gornfeld:<blockquote>This paralytic [[Georges-Charles_de_Heeckeren_d’Anthès|d’Anthés]], this uncle Monia from the Basseinaia Street . . . Uncle Gornfel'd, why did you decide to complain in the Birzhevka, that is, The Red Evening Gazette, in the Soviet year of 1929? You would have done better to weep in the clean Jewish literary waistcoat of Mr. Propper. You would have done better to relate your misfortune to the banker with sciatic nerve, kugel, and the tallith. |
The ensuing furor inspired Mandelstam’s book [[The Fourth Prose]], in which he flung anti-Semitic remarks at Gornfeld:<blockquote>This paralytic [[Georges-Charles_de_Heeckeren_d’Anthès|d’Anthés]], this uncle Monia from the Basseinaia Street . . . Uncle Gornfel'd, why did you decide to complain in the Birzhevka, that is, The Red Evening Gazette, in the Soviet year of 1929? You would have done better to weep in the clean Jewish literary waistcoat of Mr. Propper. You would have done better to relate your misfortune to the banker with sciatic nerve, kugel, and the tallith.<ref>Gregory Freidin, A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation, p. 275</ref></blockquote> |
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A bitter blow to Mandelstam’s business and reputation, the “Eulenspiegel Affair” led Mandelstam to restyle himself an outlaw poet, rejected and persecuted by a corrupt literary establishment. <ref>Emma Gerstein, Moscow Memoirs, 2004, Appendix I</ref><ref>Clare Cavanaugh, Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Tradition of Creation, p. 201-4</ref> |
A bitter blow to Mandelstam’s business and reputation, the “Eulenspiegel Affair” led Mandelstam to restyle himself an outlaw poet, rejected and persecuted by a corrupt literary establishment. <ref>Emma Gerstein, Moscow Memoirs, 2004, Appendix I</ref><ref>Clare Cavanaugh, Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Tradition of Creation, p. 201-4</ref> |
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Revision as of 21:08, 28 March 2010
Arkady Gornfeld | |
|---|---|
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| Occupation | translator, literary critic, essayist |
| Literary movement | “Reasonable Maverick" |
Arkady Georgievich Gornfeld (1867 - 1941) was a prominent[1] Russian essayist, literary critic and translator, best known for a feud with dissident poet Osip Mandelstam.
Life and Work
Arkady G. Gornfeld was born in 1941 in Sevastopol, the son of a notary. After his childhood in Ukraine, he went on to study philology, literature and psychology at Kharkov University and Berlin University. He then embarked on a career writing for various publications, including Russian Wealth.
His books dealt with foreign and Russian literature, as well as music. In his assessment of Jewish-Russian literature, he argued that the shtetl writings so far had failed to reach the greatness of Tolstoy.[2]
Wrath of Lenin
In 1922, Lenin personally listed Gornfeld among a list of thinkers harmful to the Revolution, writing to his successor:[3]
Comrade Stalin!
On the matter of deporting the Mensheviks, Popular Socialists, Kadets and the like from Russia, I would like to ask several questions in view of the fact that this operation, initiated before my leave, has not been completed to this day.
[...] Peshekhonov, Miakotin, Gorenfeld? [...] I think all of them should be deported. They are more harmful than any SR [moderate socialist], because more cunning. [...]
But unlike 120 other intellectuals deported in the summer of 1922 under Lenin’s orders, Gornfeld remained in the Soviet Union.
Osip Mandelstam Feud
In 1928, the dissident poet Osip Mandelstam set about revising a translated edition of Till Eulenspiegel, a retelling of German fables by Charles De Coster.[4]. The original translation had been done by Gorenfeld. But the publisher, Land And Factory, failed to let Gornfeld know that a new version of his work was underway. Then, because of a publishing mistake, Gornfeld’s name was left off the title page. Instead, Mandelstam’s name was on Gornfeld’s work.[5]
Concluding that Mandelstam purposely had stolen his work, Gornfeld attacked the poet in a letter to the Red Evening Gazette. He likened the alleged plagiarism to a theft of a fur coat.[6]
The ensuing furor inspired Mandelstam’s book The Fourth Prose, in which he flung anti-Semitic remarks at Gornfeld:
This paralytic d’Anthés, this uncle Monia from the Basseinaia Street . . . Uncle Gornfel'd, why did you decide to complain in the Birzhevka, that is, The Red Evening Gazette, in the Soviet year of 1929? You would have done better to weep in the clean Jewish literary waistcoat of Mr. Propper. You would have done better to relate your misfortune to the banker with sciatic nerve, kugel, and the tallith.[7]
A bitter blow to Mandelstam’s business and reputation, the “Eulenspiegel Affair” led Mandelstam to restyle himself an outlaw poet, rejected and persecuted by a corrupt literary establishment. [8][9]
Bibliography
«Forgotten writer "(Kushchevskaya, 1895);
"Criticism and lyricism" (1897);
"I. I. Dityatin "(1896, 2);
"Paul-Louis Courier (1895);
"The torments of the Word" ( "Collection of Russian Wealth", 1899);
"Memory of Herzen" (1900);
"Theory and practice of the study of literature" (1901);
"Russian women Nekrasov in a new light" (1904);
"Experimental Art" (1904);
"The Future of Art" (1908);
"S. Aksakov “
"Literature and heroism, etc.
"Books and People" (1908),
"In the West" (1910),
"On the interpretation of artistic works" (1912),
"On the Russian writers, v. 1 (1912)
References
- ^ Zsuzsa Hetényi, In a maelstrom: the history of Russian-Jewish prose (1860-1940), 149
- ^ Zsuzsa Hetényi, In a maelstrom: the history of Russian-Jewish prose (1860-1940), p. 149
- ^ Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin, p. 169
- ^ Clare Cavanagh, Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creature of Tradition, p. 201
- ^ Gregory Freidin, A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation, p. 275s
- ^ Donald Leowen, The Most Dangerous Art, p. 95
- ^ Gregory Freidin, A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation, p. 275
- ^ Emma Gerstein, Moscow Memoirs, 2004, Appendix I
- ^ Clare Cavanaugh, Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Tradition of Creation, p. 201-4