In the Shadow of the Holocaust and Other Essays by Constantin V. Ponomareff (review)

478 letters in canada 1999 Constantin V. Ponomareff. In the Shadow of the Holocaust and Other Essays Rodopi 1998. 128. US $27.50 Constantin V. Ponomareff's collection of essays is a curiously titled set of disparate pieces, covering subjects as diverse as Malcolm Lowry, Albert Camus, modern Israel, and the role of women in Russian literature. The Holocaust is, in fact, not a major concern throughout, and though there is no essay that shares the book's provocative title, a couple of short pieces do consider the impact of the war on contemporary life and literature. In one of these, however, Ponomareff takes a rather idiosyncratic stab at àcomprehensive definition of the Holocaust.' For him, the word which usually refers to the extermination in Nazi concentration camps of 6 million European Jews is misleading because it does not take into account the total Holocaust figures of World War II, i.e., the civilian loss of life in all concentration camps established by totalitarian regimes, be they German, Russian or Japanese; all the civilian deaths due to the war effort; and of course all the military dead. By the time these deaths have been counted, according to Ponomareff, thètotal of 53 million war dead is a minimum figure.' This approach is mystifying, since its view of history allows such texts as Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward to be discussed as`Holocaust literature.' Ponomareff examines certain familiar questions with relation to the Holocaust. These include the `validity of the aesthetic vantage point in an age of barbarity,' and the impact of the Holocaust on postwar Israeli culture. But his method, which is somewhat general, based on a wideranging field of reference but very little detailed discussion, may leave the reader nonplussed. At times it seems that Ponomareff wants to convey a single sweeping theme B for instance, `modern man's flight from the self' B and that his surrounding argument amounts to a number of general variations on this theme. There is also a tendency for a patently weird idea to irrupt in the midst of the general; while discussing the failings of the past century he suggests that `what we need today, more than ever, is ... a new myth, a new cultural Epiphany that would last us for the next two thousand years.' The true focus of the bulk of Ponomareff's book is Russian literature. It is here that his interests and critical passions are clearest. Yet a nonspecialist may find it difficult to enter his discussions of Vladimir Mayakovsky or the role of Romanticism in Russian letters. There is a somewhat closed, or at least opaque, quality to these essays on Russian writers, which might have been avoided by a more open-ended style, a willingness to initiate the casual reader into the political and social context of Russian humanities 479 writing. The events leading up to Mayakovsky's suicide are too lightly sketched; the nature of mysticism or the role of religious iconography in Russian life needs to be made clear before we can fully appreciate how such concerns inform the work of Pushkin or Lermontov. Alongside the essays on Holocaust-related themes, and those on Russian literature, are a number of short pieces on widely diverse themes: guilt in Under the Volcano; Camus's existentialism; T.E. Lawrence's identity problems. These are, in some way, the best things in Ponomareff's collection, but they are too short truly to do their subjects justice. They include glimmers of satisfying argument, and in the unpredictability of their style one expects to run up against surprising work made of familiar texts. But the overall intention of each doesn't quite come clear. (NORMAN RAVVIN) Nurjehan Aziz, editor. Floating the Boarders: New Contexts in Canadian Criticism TSAR. viii, 280. $24.95 This timely compilation of ten critical essays and twenty-four book reviews reflects and broaches the diversity that constitutes Canadian writing today. The critical essays that make up the first part of the volume approach multicultural writing in two distinct fashions: through racial and cultural categories and through individual authors. The last of the essays deals with the limitations of conventional...