Canadian Slavonic Papers

Les Femmes dans l'oeuvre de Léon Tolstoï: Romans et nouvelles by Marie SémonReview by: Bohdan PlaskaczCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 28, No. 2 (June 1986), pp. 216-217Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40868595 .

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216 I Revue Canadienne des Slavistes Juin 1986

des Dramen I. S. Turgenevs, appeared in 1983) which sees Turgenev's oeuvre as a unique, parallel reflection of Russian literary development from Romanticism to Realism to (pre-)Symbolism. KoschmaFs aim is to examine both the evolution of literary phenomena from primary to secondary and back to primary significance in successive literary phases and the "symbolic signs used as leitmotifs" (p. 213), which were always present in Turgenev and came to dominate his late period.

These symbolic signs are all seen as manifestations of the "fantastic." The examination of the evolution of their use leads to important observations on the evolution of Turgenev's literary technique- away from plot towards a sequence of scenes, of which the poems-in-prose are the reductio in extrema (p. 1 80)- and on the changing significance of monologue and dialogue (esp. pp. 41-47). The fantastic element itself is identified with an ominous, supernatural world linked to death (often personified) and dominated by a malevolent force (occasionally personified as the devil). The central core of the book is a valuable catalogue of motifs and semantic fields associated with Turgenev's metaworld (no distinction is made, however, between original elements and those with parallels in mythology).

Yet the method itself lacks a certain rigour. Established on the basis of "mono- logic intertextualism" (explained on the last page [p. 188] as the extent of self- quotation), it at times resembles an exercise in free association. In addition, any distinction between the sign and its function is largely ignored. If Koschmal suc- ceeds in convincing us that the system of signs freely crosses the boundary between the so-called "realistic" and "fantastic" works, he does not help us understand the significance, if any, of the "equivalency" that then emerges, for example, between Irina Ratmirova (Dym) and both Marianna and Sipiagina (Nov*) on the basis of separate intertextual links (pp. 56-57). Furthermore, by showing the diversity of symbols and then reducing them to a single idea, preponderant in Turgenev during his last twenty years, of the supernatural as an evil identifiable with inevitable death (arguably not as far-fetched an idea as at first it sounds), Koschmal would seem to make it imperative to study precisely the variations in this "overcoding." Such frustrations should, however, not obscure the merits of this book, best seen in the section devoted to some of the poems-in-prose. The book includes a bibliography of cited literature, an index of cited Turgenev works, and a résumé in somewhat "phantastic" English.

Nicholas G. 2ekulin, University of Calgary

Marie Sémon. Les Femmes dans l'oeuvre de Lion Tolstoï: Romans et nouvelles. Paris: Institut d'études slaves, 1984. 502 pp. n.p.

Despite the publisher's assertions to the contrary, Sémon's volume is a spiritual biography of Tolstoi, as reflected in his attitudes towards and his treatment of the female characters in his fiction. She traces the writer's evolution from the glorifi- cation of woman in his early work to the savage misogyny and misogamy that

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Vol. xxvill, No. 2 Book Reviews | 217

dominate his writings after 1878. The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the sublimation of love, the redeeming powers of marriage, and the role of women as guardians of tradition. It also includes a curious classification of Tolstoi's heroines based on their spiritual life: Natasha of War and Peace epitomizes the just ones, whose salient characteristic is a conscious and traditional Christianity of the Muscovite type. Sémon remarks that Tolstoi never chose the monastic condi- tion for his righteous heroines. The pharisees (Stahl in Anna Karenina) and the "sterile flowers" (Sonia in War and Peace) occupy the other categories in this classification. Sémon points to the exaltation of absolute maternity as determining Tolstoi's attitude towards his heroines during this period.

Part II is devoted to Tolstoi's techniques in painting his feminine portraits. It contains the highlight of this study: a penetrating analysis of Anna Karenina, the genesis of the character of Anna, the prototypes (Dumas fils), the role of fatal- ism, the attraction-repulsion syndrome in the attitude towards sex so typical of Tolstoi, and the problems of a split personality. Chapter IX, dealing with the verbal behaviour of Tolstoi's heroines, would gain in persuasiveness if the analysis were based on the Russian original, not on a French translation. The few complementary pages on the use of French as a multiple purpose literary device in the portrayal of female characters seem superfluous in view of the extensive literature on this topic.

In Part III Sémon studies the inner conflicts of Tolstoi the artist, basing her conclusion mostly on The Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil, and Father Sergius. Chap- ter XV, dealing with the three basic types of women as perceived by Tolstoi and embodied in his female characters, is the most revealing, since it exposes the psy- chological roots of Tolstoi's misogyny: fascination with and fear of woman's body which, behind beauty, hides the decay and ugliness of death. In this chapter Sémon also examines Tolstoi's rapport to Maupassant and his admiration for Chekhov's Dushechka.

Sémon relies heavily on psychoanalysis, frequently quotes W. Lederer's La peur des femmes, and shows that Tolstoi's antifeminist views were close to those of the Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger. Her style is verbose and the argument rather repetitious: she needs many pages to get her point across, but readers will be grateful for the fresh insights gained into Tolstoi's work. The book's stated purpose is to throw new light on a classical writer somewhat neglected by the French public. Sémon reminds us that Tolstoi is congenial to our time by his spirit of dissidence, his condemnation of human justice (especially capital punishment), violence, and war, as well as because of certain aspects of his rationalist religion. If the general French reader may be discouraged by the sheer length of Sémon's study, the Slavic specialist will welcome this new addition to the literature on Tolstoi.

Bohdan Plaskacz, University of Ottawa

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