Reviews 365 Frank Friedeberg Seeley. Turgenev. A Reading of his Fiction. Cambridge and New York ‘Cambridge University Press, 1991. 380 pp., $59.50 (cloth) “The study under review offers, after a brief biographical chapter, an extended overview of “Turgenev's works, from his earliest effors in verse to the Stlromorenija v proze, “Klara Milich,” and other late writings. Turgeney. A Reading of his Fiction thus addresses a need for a ‘comprehensive treatment of Turgenev's works that has not been met by biographies, such as ‘those by Leonard Schapiro and others, or of literary studies devoted to individual works (particularly A Sporisman's Sketches and Fathers and Sons), specific genres that Targeney cultivated (the novel or the short story), or groups of works selected on thematic or ideologi- cal principles (works dealing withthe Superfiuous Man, withthe gentry or the peasantry, with the theme of love, with the uncanny or supernatural, and so on). Whatever the merits of any such studies, they necessarily involve a preliminary filtering that may risk reducing our appre~ ation of Targenev’s stature as an artist, both in his day and in our own, More a traditional ‘man of letters than either of his great contemporaries, the Olympian Tolstoj an the journalis- tic Dostoewskij, Turgeney's subtle understatement tendo vel rather than expose his versa ty and creativity, Only an extensively conceived study such as Professor Seeley's enables vs 10 {20 beyond the rather diminished Turgencv we often construct for ourselves and our students ‘on the basis of a very restricted set of works and (o survey Turgenev's achievement on a broader scale. In approaching the full range of Turgenev's works, the author states that his main emphasis ‘will eon “the complexity and subtlety of Turgenev’scharacterization—of the psychology of his personages” (xi): expanding on this notion of subtlety of characterization, he adds thet “Turgenev “requires from his readers the kind of collaboration expected by the poet rather than bby most fiction-wrters. Thetis, his effects are achieved by touches so subtle that casual reading ‘will often discern only the simple conventionaity of which so many complain, In fact his work is steeped in antinomies and paradoxes, both psychological and philosophic” (4). Turgenev's prose thus forms an important link between Puskin and Cexov inthe tradition of poetic unde! statement in Russian fiction. This interest inthe psychology and motivation of Turgenev's ch ‘acters emerges particularly clearly in the discussion of such works as A Month in the Couniry, Rudin, A Nest of Genlefolk, and On she Eve. With Fathers and Sons, however, emphasis shifts to the dramatic structure of the novel (arguably more of a “drama” than A Monuh in the Coun- ‘ry, with ts focus on motivation rather than aetion) and tothe rhetoric ofthe debates between Bazarov and the other characters. A number of shorter and less-well known works are also ‘treated with insight into choracter, such as “A King Lear of the Steppe,” and “Spring Torrents,” 28 are even little-known works such as“ The Dog” (“Sobaka”). These and other works gain from the careful consideration ofthe characters’ social and cultural background, to which Targeney was extremely sensitive. Ignorance of this increasingly remote culturalsocial ambience ean render a story opaque and lead to facile application of reductive psychological categories, hardly appropriate in comprehending character as Turgenev conceived of it Although the author does not mention it explicitly, a second major theme of his inquiry is the literary context of Targenev's fiction and drama. By this I mean not so much the eontempo- rary literary:journalistic milieu that figures so prominently in many studies of nineteenth- ‘century Russian literature, but rather the broader literary matt in which Turgene’s artistic sensibility functioned. For Turgenev, Classical literature, Shakespeare, French and German Romantic literature, Puskin, and opera were all perhaps more alive and certainly more Valuable than the literary ephemera of the day, among which Turgenev may have been ‘modestly inclined to include his own work. Professor Seeley frequently pursues literary paral- lel, both explicit and implicit, always witha judicious sense of their usefulness in elucidating ‘the full significance of Turgenev’s work.366 Slavie and East European Journal If the book fas any shortcomings, they are the inevitable byproducts of its strengths. Its inclusiveness at times necessitates unsatisfyingly brief treatment of a given work. For this reader, the discussion of "First Love” did not do full justice to that story's delicate poetry and ‘psychological power, and the attempt to treat Sportsman's Sketches os a relatively uniform hole precludes detailed investigation of a number of the more interesting individual stories, such as “Bezhin Meadow" or “A Living Relic.” However, even in its lapses Turgeney. A Reading of his Fiction does what a true work of criticism should do, namely challenge us t0 confront the works anew. In this regard, Turgenev admirably fulfils its purpose. Andrew R. Durkin, Indiana University, Bloomington Louis Breger. Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst. New York: New York University Press, 1989. xiv, 295 pp., $45.00/$16.50, Louis Breger’s ook may be characterized 2s. psychoanalytic sty of Dostoevsky from anon- Freudian viewpoint, This wll ound like a contradiction in term tothe Slavist who thinks that psychoanalysis equals “ireidizm.” But psychoanalysis is not what it was in 1928, when Freud Published his clasic essay “Dostojewski und die Vatertotung.” Emphasis hs shifted away from ‘Ocdipal triangles, genitality and castration anxiety, heterosexual vs. homosexual issues, etc. “Today's orthodox enalysis pay more atention opre-Cedipal relations with the mother, orality, narcissistic personality disorders, problems of cistinguishing self from other, etc. Loversimplify, fof course, fu itis clear that Breger fits in with current psychosnalyie tends in the United States. Iffor Froud Destoevsky was best represented by the patricidal Karemazov brothers, for Breger the matriidal Raskolnikov, withhis enormous narcisstic rage, better ts the bill. What is interesting for Breger, moreover, is not Raskolnikov's Oedipus complex, but his “mother complex” (66). Raskoinikow (Dostoevsky) “splits” the archaic, pre-Oedipal image of his mother into good, idealized, figures (Lizaveta, Sonja) and bad, depriving, guilt-inducing fig- ures (the landlady, the pawnibroker woman). Healing of the split comes when the infallibly empathic Sonja accepts Reskolnikov’s rage without abandoning bir Breger’s major thesis, as his subtitle indicates, is that Dostoevsky was a kind of psychoana- lyst, or a forerunner of paychonnalyss. Tis iden seems quite reasonable at fist blush, No one soubts that Dostoevsky had great insight into the workings ofthe human mind, But by this riterion many other writers—Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Proust, even ant-Freuian Nabokow-— would alo be “psychoanalysts." Breger refers to Freud's statement on this topic: “the poets iscovered the unconscious hefore I did” (6) But he fails to mention Freud's own qualifcs- tion: “what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied” (Gee: etfey Berman, The Tatking Cire, NYU Press, 1985, p. 304). Dostoevsky may very well hhave “discovered” the unconscious before Freud did, but he did not pretend to have @ “scientific method” whereby he could analyze it, True, there are some passages in the autobio~ sraphical writings and even inthe literary works (especially Notes from Underground) where Dostoevsky appears to be doing what psychoanalysts mean by sli-analyss, In such passages Dostoevsky is Breger's “covanalyt” (183). For example, in a letter of 1846 to his brother Mixa, Dostoevsky admits that he is “unpardonably ambitious and exoistic (116) In another letter he refers to his own “wounded vanity” (99). These and other sich statements are real insights into the pervasive narcissistic pathology that Dostoevsky sured from. But they tend tobe sporadic and ad oc in nature. They were & par of Dostoevsky's everiastng self-therapy (including his fiction) but they were not part of a complex psychoanalytic theory or of & systematic application of some psychoanalytic theory to himselt and/or to his works. I they were, then Dostoevsky really would have been a psychoanalyst But he wae not. He was a consummate lierary artist instead. His great project was to write, not 0 analyze.