Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin by Richard Fortune (review)

Book Reviews249 Erasmus had some trying personal problems to deal with as well. His friend, Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples, had challenged Erasmus in print over a theological point, and Erasmus was annoyed enough to counterattack in a short work titled Apologia ad Jacobum Fabrum Stapulensem. Erasmus insisted that it was "clearly an argument and not a quarrel" (597), but he kept referring to his grievances throughout the period covered by Volume 5. He was particularly anguished that a friend had given comfort and encouragement to his enemies, "those brutes who match us one against the other with the cunning of a true tyrant, being too tongue-tied to enter the arena themselves" (766). At the same time he was still defending himself against dull-witted critics of the Moria, some of whom had been spurred on by the altered text ofa pirated French version (739). In addition, his efforts to finish the revised text ofthe New Testamenthad taken their toli on his health: "I myselfhavegrown old at my task, and while I rescue the text from age and decay, I have incurred a double ration of them for myself (757). Even so, there were substantial compensations. The Pope had enjoyed the Moria even if many clerics did not. Erasmus' conscience was untroubled by adverse criticism, and he was pleased at the prospect of translations so that it could be "understood even by these men who cannot understand their psalter" (641). Beyond everything else, Erasmus had the joy of knowing that he was befriended and acclaimed by the great men of the age. His friendship with More continued to grow steadily along with their correspondence. Philip of Burgundy assured him that his works would be regarded as "the adornment of our age" (728). The Louvain scholar, Adriaan Cornelissen van Baerland, saluted him as the "sole glory of our age" (647). Both Henry VIII and Wolsey were urging him to return to England "making offers that were by no means to be despised" (649). In the buoyant spirit of this litotes, one can say the same, and much more, about the value of this excellent addition to sixteenth-century studies. JOHN X. EVANS Arizona State University RICHARD FORTUNE. Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982. 147 p. This addition to the Twayne's World Author Series is the first full-length study of Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin in English. Little is available about him or his writings although he was a well known and even notorious figure in his own time (1817-1903). Except for a few early poems and translations, his entire literary output consists of his dramatic trilogy — Krechinsky's Wedding, TheCase, and 7%e DeaiA o/Tare/fciw — a curious trio of plays witha troubled history of its own: The Case and The Death ofTarelkin took 20 and 31 years respectively to gain the censor's stamp of approval. The trilogy was translated and published in a single volume in 1969 by Harold Segel; Segel's introduction is one of the very few articles in English about this sometime dramatist and his plays. Richard Fortune, author of the present study, states in his preface that his main purpose is to undertake a detailed analysis ofeach play ofthe trilogy and of the trilogy as a whole. A professor of Foreign Languages at Kutztown State 250Rocky Mountain Review College in Pennsylvania, Fortune has previously translated a number of Russian plays (Sumarokov and Knyazhnin) and is at home in his discussion of Sukhovo-Kobylin's works in the context of the Russian dramatic tradition. Because of his intriguing if not entirely likeable character, the first two chapters about Sukhovo-Kobylin himself are, in many ways, the most interesting parts of the study. The son of a distinguished Muscovite family, Sukhovo-Kobylin was thoroughly aristocratic in his outlook but busied himself throughout his life with a series of commercial enterprises. A very competent student and a serious dilettante, he was interested in philosophy, engineering, opera, theatre, and literature. He travelled often in Europe (he died in Beaulieu on the French Riviera) and married twice, both times to foreign women, and both times tragically: each of his wives fell fatally ill within a year...