Master intrigi [P010]

Concise description of the paratext-directives' relation:

In a slightly ironic vein, Evgeniya Fedorovna Knipovich (1898 – 1988), a former aspiring poet in the Symbolist sphere, the last companion of Aleksandr Blok, and a literary woman who from the second half of the 1920s undertook a personal ideological ‘reformation’, embracing the new political and cultural course of Soviet Russia (she worked as a literary critic and editor), reviews Choderlos de Laclos’ book, published in 1933. Knipovich chooses a title for her review that is intended to do justice to the French writer’s literary qualities: Master intrigi [A master of intrigue]; after which, she resorts to the well-established technique of ideological validation of her own words, by quoting, in an almost incipital position, from a Marx and Engels passage on the philosophy of pleasure: “The philosophy of pleasure, according to Marx, emerged in the new times with the disappearance of feudalism and the transformation of the feudal rural nobility into a pleasure-seeking and dissolute courtly class typical of absolutism” . However, the quotation appears even more relevant if we examine the literary and critical context in which it is quoted. The excerpt quoted by Knipovich, in fact, comes from the German Ideology, a collection of works by Marx and Engels that had been studied and published for the first time ever in Moscow, and had been in print for less than a year, first in the German original (1932), then in Russian (1933). The publication of this fundamental work was edited by scholars from the renowned research centre Institut Marksa – Engel’sa – Lenina in Moscow. Having framed the “libertine novel par excellence” (L. Versini) within the Marxist-Leninist conception, Knipovich continues her assessment by talking about a book that ‘unmasks’ the vices of aristocratic society, in which the only positive character (albeit, according to her, faint-hearted and boring) is the bourgeois President de Tourvel. Knipovich here uses classic formulas, already inflated in the early 1930s, and traceable to the usual ideological and historical-literary orthodoxy: for him, a book, if ideologically controversial, as the libertine Opasnye svyazi naturally was, had to be at least unfailingly “razoblachitel’niy” (the adjective is used three times in the short text); in the words of the critics: “A great master of disguise and intrigue, an Orleanist working as a ‘democrat’, an ageing counterrevolutionary in the service of the revolution, Choderlos de Laclos wanted to disguise his book as a novel of denunciation. And yet, for us, it is a revealing and exposing book. Contrary to the author’s secret intentions, his book has provided us with a great deal of material for criticism. Knipovich thus already anticipates, even in the very use of the term vopreki (despite), the Lukacsian theory of ‘voprekism‘ (the theory by which it appeared possible to publish/disseminate a particular author and artist (even harshly criticising him) with the ultimate aim of openly proposing him to the Soviet public, a theory formally inaugurated in the journal “Literaturniy kritik” by the famous article, focusing particularly on Balzac. Having thus accomplished the usual formal captatio benevolentiae at the beginning of his article, Knipovich then notes the vividness and realism with which the demonic, terrible characters of the Viscount de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil are given, emphasising the psychological depth and three-dimensionality of the characters and events and at the same time the militant and political relevance of the book: “The psychological analysis of his novel, unprecedented in the literature of the time, is so profound that the real class nature of these predators and the real social relations that generated them become clear to us. Moreover, it is not difficult for us to guess what the sisters of the Marquise de Merteuil and the brothers of the Vicomte de Valmont, with their diabolical intelligence, shamelessness, energy, cunning, willpower and deception, were for in the countries of the counterrevolution 70 years later (the book was published in 1782). Laclos’ characters are disgusting rather than mocking. They are not small reptiles that are crushed along the road, but large reptiles that can only be annihilated by a bullet.”In particular the last sentence, with its reference to the small, harmless reptiles (irrelevant enemies) in contrast to the big monsters/reptiles, which can only be defeated with bullets (the selfish, demonic aristocrats of the ancien régime) almost seems to be a reference to the giant, counter-revolutionary snakes of Bulgakov’s The Fatal Eggs, published only a few years earlier. Later in the article, the language and style of the French writer in particular are praised, again often with reference to the principle of realism and tipichnost’: “The book is very strong compositionally and stylistically, the characters are unusually individual and complete in their typicality, the language of each letter (Dangerous Liaisons is an epistolary novel) is so particular, so inherent to the person in question and defines him or her so vividly that it would do credit even to a first-class playwright. the alternation of different, individual discourses creates a special, unique, complex and fascinating style.” (p. 46). There is no lack of appreciation for the translation and the introductory article (however, let us remember at the same time that Knipovich was still in those years part of the inner circle of Lev Kamenev, who in ’32-’33 was director of Academia, the publishing house that had published Laclos’s book), passing only a slight snide remark against the “impressionistic style” and spotty style of Abram Efros’s preface, which, even if it reported “curious data and news, truthful considerations” these were “too impressionistic and suffer from the absence of precise definitions and generalisations”.

Alessandra Carbone