“Now on Zoshchenko”: Adamovich, Teffi and “the anxiety of influence”

Abstract

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Mikhail Zoshchenko was one of the most popular Soviet writers. His literary works were published and actively discussed in the USSR, and by the Russian Diaspora abroad. Zoshchenko’s name started to appear in the writings of an émigré critic Georgy Adamovich at the very beginning of his literary career. This article reconstructs the evolution of Adamovich’s opinions about Zoshchenko’s literary talent. In particular, the author analyzes a forgotten review of Zoshchenko’s novel “M.P. Siniagin (Memoirs of Michel Siniagin)”, that appeared in the Paris newspaper “Poslednie Novosti” on March 12, 1931, and has been never reprinted since. The Adamovich’s review prompted Teffi (Nadezhda LokhvitskaiaBuchinskaia) to send him a private letter — published here for the first time — in which she formulated her understanding of Zoshchenko’s artistic manner (“He isn’t a writer. He is a humorist”), perhaps dictated by “jealousy” towards another satirist and “the anxiety of influence” in her own literary work.

Keywords

• georgii adamovich
• mikhail zoshchenko
• vladislav khodasevich
• teffi
• soviet literature
• russian émigré literary criticism
• writers’ correspondence