Along with the history of music, I am writing (in short bursts) a novella. This is the fifth one I’ve written, following “The Gifts of Need,” “A History of Beauty” (this one is about a woman who suffers from her beauty, from the unwanted attentions of men, and marries a blind man), “Life Is Too Long” (about two sisters who begin an independent life when they are already nearly old women, after the death of their despotic parents), and one about a girl who is in love with an old man who is a photographer. I seem to be suffering from “graphomania.” It’s rather absurd to write for the desk drawer, without any readership, appreciation, or even criticism. But, patience, patience …
You write that Genrikh is studying English. I have a wonderful book for him. Have you heard of the Basic English system of Professor Ogden? He has reduced all the rich diversity of language to 850 words, and only sixteen verbs. If you master this bare minimum of words and know how to use them, you can read the literature that this same Ogden publishes: Swift, Dickens, etc.
A Russian publisher has already released the book Step by Step by Ivy Litvinov (wife of the people’s commissar); it costs two rubles and forty kopecks. I acquired it even before Stalingrad—look on the lower shelf of the bookcase, where the dictionaries are. The Basic system is a wonderful idea. Such a system for other languages will no doubt follow. Learning a language according to this system (simplified language, of course) requires only eighty-eight hours.
I wish you a very happy January 23 birthday (again)—if you wish to live according to the calendar of Pope Gregory (of Rome), and survive on pounds rather than kilograms. I kiss you. J.
FEBRUARY 19, 1936
I spent the whole of yesterday in a haze, as though I had been smoking opium. All morning, I read a book by a German biologist, Secrets of Nature, and then prepared the midday meal for myself. (It takes all of fifteen minutes to put on the soup, and another hour of stirring it now and then.) After my meal, I went to the library to read newspapers, and the whole evening I read The Good Earth, a novel by the American writer Pearl Buck, with a foreword by Tretyakov. A marvelous book about life in China. You must borrow it from the library—it appears in the journal International Literature. Buck is a missionary in China, no longer young, who all of a sudden decided to write this wonderful novel. And immediately acquired an international reputation. When I read the book, I perceive her as a reader, as a literary technician, as a writer, as a rival. I read her lines, and observe how the lines are made. How the plot drifts around huge obstacles and backs up on itself, and how the subject is resolved at the end. That’s probably the most challenging part—the resolution of the subject. I read somewhere that French playwrights write a play beginning with the fifth act, with the dénouement, and if it is powerful enough, it is adopted as the groundwork upon which the first four acts are built. You must read Pearl Buck. It is an exemplary novel, in my view: real training for the beginning writer. No doubt, the general structure of narrative, as well as of music, in the highest sense, can be captured in some general formula … But even Shklovsky doesn’t write about this!
MARCH 8, 1936
Nothing came of my involvement in radio; they changed their minds. Today, though, I was offered the possibility of teaching music to an eight-year-old boy, and we met for the first time. This happened after my first pupil played a sonatina on the radio, to great acclaim; and I hope pupils will be beating a path to my door now. That is, I hope all eight children from the good families of the city of Biysk will be standing in line for lessons from the maestro!
Today I spoke with the bank manager about a raise. He promised to do what he could, so things are developing in a satisfactory way. For this reason, I even had a radio installed in my room. And that is where my big-spender ways will end. I have furnished myself with electricity, a radio subscription, laid in a supply of firewood, had my shoes repaired, as well as all my clothing.
JUNE 19, 1936
I’m sitting at the table, reading about forestry. The radio broadcast Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and the sounds of bitter grief are still ringing in my ears. Everything is getting mixed up together: your letter of yesterday, and Gorky’s death, which was announced over the radio, the rain beating against the windowpane, and the passionate refrain of the symphony …
JULY 1, 1936
About your essay. I read your literary portrait of Tretyakov five times over. The article made me very happy. It’s beautifully rendered, and the quality far outstrips the average for the journal. The language is good—in a word, brava! This is your first article of the kind, and the next ones are sure to be even more powerful.
I can take delight in an article that expresses ideas I don’t agree with—neither with their conclusions, nor their assessments, not even with the structure of the piece. Nevertheless, I praise it without reservation. If I am permitted to express myself on this subject and offer criticism, tactfully, without any dogmatic sermonizing, I would say the following.
A literary essay should not give an appraisal at all. The critic is not an evaluator. He is a commentator, an opponent, a proponent, or a sociologist of the ideas that move the writer. Above all, one should not overpraise. And you give way to this in your essay when you write: “His mind is perfectly poised … a rich and resonant voice … an unusual writer”—twice—“full of significance … exceptional mastery (!) … wonderful essays … a writer of all genres…”
Is this all true? In a cup of tea there are five pieces of sugar. If he is indeed a writer of all genres, I would respond that, though he is great in his genre, his genre is too insignificant. Tretyakov is a useful writer, but, if one must sum him up, I would say: he is a typical second-rate writer, a mediocre talent.
His main shortcoming (and that of many other writers) is that he has no ideas of his own. You cannot name a single idea or thought that would immediately bring Tretyakov to mind. He is diluted in the epoch, produced by it; he studies it but doesn’t enrich it. He takes and doesn’t give back. He doesn’t have enough extremism and self-limitation for this.
“Mastery lies in limitation” (Goethe).
Tretyakov is an essayist skimming the surface of many ideas, but none of them is memorable, none stands out above any others.
Enough about him—now about you. You write that there were roads and crossroads, victories and defeats, but he found what was most important—“and the road was found”—essays on German writers. What is unique about them? It’s a literary device of significant details and trivia. Is that all? That’s very little. And “the victory and the road” are not convincing. The engine of enormous (is it really enormous?) power turns the coffee grinder—this is the epigraph it deserves, the only epigraph that would ring true.