Issue:

№10 2021

УДК / UDK: 821.111
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2021-10-153-162

Author: Nikon I. Kovalev
About the author:

Nikon I. Kovalev, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2155-3264

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract:

The paper is dedicated to the dialogue between Ezra Pound and Sergey Tretyakov on the pages of a Dutch magazine Front edited by a Dutch writer Sonja Prins, and other periodicals. This particular episode of Pound’s contacts with left-wing writers hasn’t been duly researched so far. In spite of the dangerous political atmosphere in the 1930s, authors with different ideological views could freely exchange their ideas in the periodicals. The Front published a wide range of anti-bourgeois authors — their views varied from communist to fascist. The Federation of Organizations of Soviet writers (FOSP) was mentioned as a co-founder of Front, although later its name was withdrawn because of the magazine’s publishing policy, which allowed right-wing writers. Tretyakov’s essay “Writer-kolkhoznik” was published in the first issue of the Front; the next issue contained Pound’s response to this essay. In spite of his pro-fascist views, Pound seemed interested in Tretyakov’s work on the kolkhoz. Later both writers continued to argue outside the magazine — Tretyakov mentioned Pound in his Berlin lecture The Writer and the Socialist Village, Pound referred to Tretyakov, this time purely ironically, in Italian press. In the end the dialogue failed, both writers tended to speak about their own main topics — Tretyakov continued to reflect on the writer in the kolkhoz, and Pound was interested in the classical Russian literature and in the attitude to the classical Russian literary heritage in the new socialist Russia.

Keywords: Federation of Organizations of Soviet Writers (FOSP), left-wing intellectuals, Ezra Pound, Soviet-American literary contacts, Sergey Tretyakov, Front magazine.
For citation:

Kovalev, Nikon. “Sergey Tretyakov and Ezra Pound: a Dialogue about Collectivization of Literature between the Right and the Left.” Literature of the Americas, no. 10 (2021): 153–162.
https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2021-10-153-162

References:

Formal’nyi metod 2016 — Formal'nyi metod: antologiia russkogo modernizma [The Formal Method: An Anthology of Russian Modernism]. Edited by Sergey A. Ushakin. Vol. 2. Materials. Moscow; Ekaterinburg: Kabinetnyi uchenyi Publ., 2016. (In Russ.)

Hatlen 2000 — Hatlen, Burton. “Ezra Pound, New Masses, and the Cultural Politics of Race circa 1930.” Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 29, no. 1/2 (2000): 157–184.

Khofman 2018 — Khofman, Tat'iana. “Sergei Mikhailovich Tret'iakov. Zhizn' i tvorchestvo” [“Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov: Life and Works”]. In Khochu rebenka! P'esy. Stsenarii. Diskussii [I want a baby! Plays. The Script. Discussions], by Sergei Tret'iakov, 275–314. St. Petersburg: Aleteiia Publ., 2018. (In Russ.)

Kleberg 2008 — Kleberg, Lars. “Om FRONT. En internationell avantgardetidskrifts korta historia (1930–1931).” Biblis 44 (Winter 2008/09): 121–131. (In Swedish)

Lanskii 1969 — Lanskii, Leonid R. “Periodicheskie izdaniia MBRL i MORPa” [“The Periodicals of MBRL and MORP”]. In Literaturnoe nasledstvo [Literary Heritage]. Vol. 81: Iz istorii Mezhdunarodnogo ob"edineniia revoliutsionnykh pisatelei (MORP) [From the History of International Organzation of Revolutionary Writers (MORP)], 544–604. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1969. (In Russ.)

Macleod 1977 — Macleod, Norman. “The New Los Angeles is Being Erected in Honor of Yevgeny Yevtushenko and His Bratsk Station.” In The Distance: New and Selected Poems (1928–1977), 112. Pembroke: [s.n.], 1977.

Pound 1991 — Pound, Ezra. Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose Contributions to Periodicals. Edited by Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz, and James Longenbach. Vol. V, 1928–1932. New York: Garland, 1991.

Pound 1931 — Pound, Ezra. “Open Letter to Sergey Tretyakov, kolkhoznik.” Front, no. 2 (1931): 124–126.

Tret'iakov 1929 — Tret'iakov, Sergei. “O tom zhe (Pisatel' na kolkhoze)” [“On the Same Topic: Writer in the Kolkhoz”]. In Literatura fakta. Pervyi sbornik materialov rabotnikov LEFa [Literature of Fact: First Issue of Materials by LEF’s Collaborators], 195–199. Moscow: Federatsiia Publ., 1929. (In Russ.)

Tret'iakov 2006 — Tret'iakov, Sergei. “The Writer and the Socialist Village.” October 118 (Fall 2006): 63–70.

Tretyakov 1930 — Tretyakov, Sergey. “Report.” Front, no. 1 (1930): 45–52.

Wagstaff 2018 — Wagstaff, Steel. “The ʻObjectivistsʼ: A Website Dedicated to the ʻObjectivistʼ Poets.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018. ProQuest (10815581).