PROFESSOR NIKITA E. POKROVSKY

In Eugene F. Timpe’s THOREAU ABROAD: TWELVE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS (Hamden CT: The Shoe String Press), one of the countries considered was Russia.

1971

READ A REVIEW OF THIS

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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

Timpe has collected in this small volume the critical reviews of Thoreau throughoutthe world. He points out in his Forward that the growth in Thoreau’s reputation is“one of the most startling phenomena in American literature” (3). During Thoreau’slifetime and the next twenty five years, according to Timpe, he was regarded as apoor clone of Emerson. Timpe traces the beginnings of widespread interest inThoreau’s work: which came during the last decade of the nineteenth century mainlythrough a resurgence in interest in natural history nature.

Up to this point there had been minimal interest in Thoreau’s work overseas, andthat primarily in England. In the 1890s, according to Timpe, editions,translations, critical articles, and biographies appeared in various Europeancountries, including England, Ireland, Holland, and Germany. Much of the interestwas sparked through the interest of Henry Stephens Salt, an Englishman who alsostimulated interest in Herman Melville. Besides this interest, the only interestin Thoreau was in his capacity as a nature writer and this was particularly inGermany where interest in Nature writing was keenest.

This interest was temporary, and another fifty years passed without much noticeeither in America or abroad. It was only after World War II that Thoreau gainedmuch popularity again, and particularly that he was noticed overseas. Translationsof Thoreau’s works were made in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland,Germany, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan,Japan, and India. When Timpe writes of Thoreau’s attraction overseas, he says itvaries from area to area. In Japan, for instance, Thoreau is seen as a nature writerand one who offers a contemplative alternative. “The Europeans think of him, as apolitical activist who fought against slavery in America and who offers a highlyworkable methodology for today’s battle against the forces of tyranny anddictatorship” (7). Understandably “RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT” is Thoreau’s favoritepiece in Europe, according to Timpe.

Timpe encourages us to notice scholarship on Thoreau abroad because Thoreau formany years was not adequately appreciated at home; his “Civil Disobedience” wasseen as significant elsewhere before it was in this country. He also points outthat other cultures may encourage us to see Thoreau in diverse ways. Timpe seesThoreau as “a man striking of a balance between personal provincialism andintellectual cosmopolitanism” (16), something which he did, not by travelling toforeign lands but by “allegiance to mankind as a whole.” Thoreau was notdisinterested in foreign travel as his fascination with trains and wharfs shows.Thoreau mentions more than “443 foreign locales in his writings” (17), and althoughhe sounds disdainful of travelling, he seems to have read accounts of travelsvoraciously. In one of his letters, Thoreau writes, “Your method of travellingespecially to live along the road citizens of the world, without haste or pettyplans — I have often proposed this to my dreams and I still do But the fact is, Icannot so decidedly postpone exploring the Farther Indies, which are to be reachedyou know by other routes and other methods of travel” (Correspondence, 156).

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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

Timpe considers more important than Thoreau as armchair traveler, Thoreau as oneinfluenced by foreign literature. Thoroughly grounded in the classics, he also tookseveral languages while at Harvard and continued to read books by geographers,anthropologists, and naturalists. According to Timpe, the more recent literatureof Europe had as strong an appeal to Thoreau as did the classical. Thoreau was alsoinfluenced by European philosophers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrichvon Schelling, Bettina Brentano, Jean Paul Richter, and Kant.

Maurice J. Gonnaud and Micheline Flak write an essay in this collection called“Thoreau in France.” They discuss the virtual ignorance of Thoreau in France withfew exceptions. They trace Thoreau’s influence in France, from an early responseby Therese Bentzon in 1887, through to the present day.

In an article called “Thoreau and Van Eeden,” Seymour Flaxman writes aboutThoreau’s influence and reception in the Netherlands. His reputation, according toFlaxman, is primarily due to Frederik van Eeden (1860-1932) who was part of a groupof young Dutchmen who attempted an overthrow of the Dutch literary establishment.Van Eeden was a social reformer as well as a literary type, and Thoreau was one ofhis inspirations. He wrote in his diary, “I am reading Thoreau. A strong Thoreauatmosphere prevails. We are talking about colonies that we will establish, and Iam searching constantly for suitable places for a hut or little house” (61). VanEeden lived in his little hut and worked on a novel, but this was part of his dreamof a social experiment. Eventually the experiment failed, but only after expandingto twenty farms, the foremost of which was named “Walden.” It was primarily throughVan Eeden and his experiment that the Netherlands became familiar with Thoreau(72).

Timpe himself (a comparative literature professor) writes the essay “Thoreau’sCritical Reception in Germany.” Thoreau’s reception in Germany, according to Timpe,was “substantial, occasionally even vigorous” (75). Interest in Thoreau seemed tobe confined to two separate periods. The first started around 1890 and ended around1910. During this period nearly a dozen articles of a scholarly nature appeared inGermany. During the period between the two wars, Thoreau was neglected in Germany,but in the period after World War II, increased interest in his writings becameevident. This became clear in four new translations within five years of the endof the war, followed by a number of dissertations.

Dominik Jost writes an essay called “Henry D. Thoreau in Switzerland.” Jost beginsby writing about the attitude of the Swiss to America and Americans during Thoreau’slifetime. He points out that 40,000 emigrated to the America during this period,out of a population of two and a half million. There were many letters, diariesand travel books which came back to the homeland, as well as “about thirty Americannewspapers and magazines were known in Switzerland at the time, and theiroccasional treatment of transcendentalism — seen as a combination of democraticfreedom and romantic subjectivism — had a sympathetic audience among Swiss readers.In the 1850s American novels started flooding into Switzerland” (85). There wereother attitudes as well: articles and books about the crime rate in the new America,etc. But generally speaking, according to Jost, American literature was greetedwith interest in Switzerland during this period.

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Nikita Pokrovsky reports that, after having some success as an undergraduate student in the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University by way of research on Thomas Jefferson, he had been desiring to continue his study the traditions of American social thought when he came across a dog-eared library copy of the 1962 translation into Russian of WALDEN, with its margins already filled with irritated and fiercely critical student notes and “resolutions.” These jottings would have been due to the fact that this assigned-reading text had been for years being belatedly perused by students who had exams to take the next day, who had been discovering that Thoreau’s prose was not at all easy to digest at one sitting. Nikita regrets that he did not substitute a fresh copy for this marked-up one, so as to have preserved such student jottings for posterity:

I Discover ThoreauI am frequently asked why I, being a Russian, have become sointerested in Thoreau’s ideas and have devoted so much time tothem. I think this question is not so important, as I do notevaluate highly my personal contribution to “Thoreauviana.” Butfrom a strictly sociological point of view, perhaps, it will beinteresting to discuss the topic here.After having some success as an undergraduate student in thePhilosophy Department of Moscow State University in the early70’s with my research on Thomas Jefferson, and wanting tocontinue studying the traditions of American social thought, Icame across a dog-eared Russian translation, published in 1962,of Thoreau’s WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS. The copy belonged to the

“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

Thoreau was greeted primarily as a nature writer. His most available work,according to Jost, was and is, WALDEN.

At the time of this essay, only three Thoreau editions “have appeared inSwitzerland, all in German: Herbst (Autumn), From the Diary of Henry D. Thoreau,ed by H.G.O. Blake, and WALDEN.

There are, Jost points out, a very limited number of secondary works to be found,and this “testifies to the limitation of his influence” (89).

Agostino Lombardo writes his contribution to this collection: “Thoreau in Italy.”The first Italian translation of Thoreau’s Selected Works was done in 1958, and ofWALDEN in 1920: it is little wonder that he is considered by many to be one of theAmerican authors most neglected in Italy. Other major American writers weretranslated or discussed fairly early, for instance Franklin in 1774, WashingtonIrving in 1824, Fenimore Cooper in 1827, and Poe and Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorneand Twain. James was translated late, but became relatively well known, andEmerson, “who is first cited in 1847 and first translated in 1865, ranks amongthose writers most frequently translated and discussed; he penetrates to the veryheart of Italian culture” (96). Part of the cause of Thoreau’s relative obscurityis based on the fact that he was early classified as an naturalist and scientist.

It was through Matthiessen’s book AMERICAN RENAISSANCE that Thoreau became betterknown to Italian readers, and actually came to be known as a writer.

Other essays in this helpful book are about Thoreau’s reception in Bohemia, Russia,Israel, India, Japan, and Australia. {Mary Ellen Ashcroft, 1989}

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library at Moscow University and was ragged because it had beenread so much — WALDEN being one of the classics designated forcompulsory reading for the history of Western literature coursein the Philology Department.In the margins of the copy were innumerable notes and“resolutions” made by students. The majority were messages ofan irritated nature, in fierce criticism of Thoreau. That wasnot surprising, for the night before the exam studentsfrequently tried to cram into their heads the entire wealth of19th-century Western literature. And because Thoreau, with allhis complications and paradoxes, was essentially forced intotheir hands on the way to the exams, he probably seemed almosta curse to them.Now I feel sorry that I did not exchange that copy of“misunderstanding” with a clean one. What a marvelous exhibitit would be for the museum or even for my private bookcollection!Be that as it may, WALDEN not only fascinated me — it took overmy soul. I read it and re-read it, trying to separate the“necessary” from the “unnecessary” paragraphs in the book, butI finally realized they were all necessary. Since then Thoreauhas become a permanent companion in my life.Although my first paper on Thoreau was titled “The Social andPolitical Philosophy of Thoreau,” today I am not sure if Thoreauhad such a philosophy. Nonetheless, the paper expresses what Ithought at that time. It seemed to me then that I should makeThoreau the subject of my graduation paper. But fate willedotherwise.The leaders of the department decided that Thoreau was “not apromising figure” — not really a philosopher, an advocate of“doubtful” civil disobedience, a non-collectivist who “ran away”from society, and so on. So they told me instead to apply myefforts to John Dewey, whose pragmatism fully met therequirements of my department for being a “realphilosophy."I started my work on Dewey with mixed feelings and soon foundthat Dewey was not a philosopher whose style of thinking I liked.In those years I was unable to understand all the subtleties ofthis thinker; he seemed simple and prosaic compared to Jeffersonand the Transcendentalists.The subject of my research became a problem again after I enteredmy graduate program at Moscow State University. Although theplayers were the same, the principal actor was different. Forby that time I had attained my own vision of things inphilosophy, and it became more difficult to impose upon mesomething that I did not approve.I had decided to resume my project on Thoreau, but again Iclashed with the department. The academic council insteadassigned me the topic “The Ethics of John Dewey.” I liked Deweya bit more than I had two years before, but I did not like himenough to “trade” him for Thoreau. Today I am thankful to thedepartment for its opposition to my project on Thoreau, for thatopposition forced me to read and re-read Dewey’s writings. Asfor Thoreau, I read him constantly and in ever-widening circles,which included both his original works and commentaries on thoseworks.

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After two years of study in the graduate program, I understoodthat I could not write anything sensible about Dewey’s ethics.Meanwhile, the department intermittently expressed itsimpatience, referring me to the official decision and to theresources that the state had already spent on my education. Inthose stagnant Brezhnev years, graduate students were constantlyreminded how much the state spent to educate them. Although noone really knew what the state spent at that time, the reminderssounded threatening.But I was older than most of my peers, and the departmentalreminders had no effect on me. So I stubbornly returned toThoreau. In the end the department gave in and agreed to let mestudy Thoreau, perhaps because it believed that expelling anobstinate graduate student would result in more problems thanwould its own patience and compromise. In any case, by the timethe department’s leadership reached this position, I had justsix months to finish my work.A series of personal troubles, which now seem absolutelytrivial, soon occupied my thoughts and feelings, pushing Thoreauand Dewey and even the concerns about my department into thebackground. But a realization that I had very little time leftto complete my studies forced me to begin reading WALDEN again.I found myself reading the book from a difficult angle of vision,one in which I discovered Thoreau to be a man of astonishingcomplexities and, what is more, an advisor, giving healthy andsubtle recommendations on what to do when things are bad. I foundin WALDEN the advice I needed at that time, and from then on mywork went on swimmingly.Since then I have steadfastly maintained my interest in Thoreau,and my interest naturally led me to begin corresponding whichsome American Thoreauvians. In 1978, I was able to visit theUnited States for the first time; and I was particularlyfortunate to be able to visit Concord, Walden Pond, and theThoreau Lyceum, as well as to be able to meet Walter Harding andother leaders of the Thoreau Society. From then on I frequentlyvisited America for research and teaching, and everything reallysignificant in my life since that visit in 1978 has beenconnected to Thoreau or those who keep his memory alive.

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July: Three Russians, Nikita Pokrovsky, Mikhail T. Gusev, and Piotr M. Saveliev, led The Thoreau Society in a non-violence walk from the plaque marking the site where Henry was put in jail for refusing to fund slavery and the war upon Mexico (Massachusetts has long since torn down this Middlesex County prison that used to stand in the center of Concord, replacing it with several much more commodious facilities just down the road), out to Walden Pond, the site of Thoreau’s experiment in freedom.

One of these Russians, Piotr, had just come from leading a non-violence walk in the heart of Russia, a walk “in search of the green stick” which began in Yasnaya Polyana at the grave of Lev Nikolævich Tolstòy, the great Russian apostle of nonviolence.

I would like to support these three in their effort. I would like to provide them with a literary and theoretical underpinning for their fine use of the corpus of our Henry. We need this because there is a real question whether Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. were as nonviolent as Tolstòy. Gandhi explained forthrightly that for him nonviolence was a mere tactic, not a way of life. He said that Russians did not understand the tactic of non-violence, that had it been the Russians in India rather than the British in India, his people would have been forced to resort to violence. The Reverend King likewise.

One may usefully contrast Gandhi with Saul Alinsky on means and ends. Here is Gandhi:

And here is Alinsky:

1991

Where there is no desire for fruit, there is notemptation for untruth or himsa. Take an instance ofuntruth or violence, and it will be found that at itsback is the desire to attain the cherished end.

The man of action views the issues of means and endsin pragmatic and strategic terms.... He asks of endsonly whether they are achievable and worth the cost;of means, only whether they will work.

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August: After leading a nonviolence march to the pond, Professor Nikita Pokrovsky returned to the USSR in time to

take part in the massive public defense of the Parliament and the Presidential office of Boris Yeltsin during the attempted Communist counterrevolution this August, expressing through his own life the words of Thoreau “What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life”:

Worcester Telegram & Gazette

THOREAU SCHOLAR PUT LIFE ON LINEDEMOCRATIC IDEAL DICTATES COUP

August 22, 1991Section: NEWSPage: A1By Jane Adams; Staff Reporter

Four or five times, Dr. Nikita E. Pokrovsky waited for thecircling tanks to turn their huge treads on him and his comradesas they stood shoulder to shoulder, a human barricade betweenthe army and the Russian Parliament. For the Thoreau scholar,it was a time to put his life on the line. The Moscow StateUniversity philosophy and sociology professor scribbled hisaddress and telephone number on pieces of paper and handed themto people he had met only hours earlier. He took similar scrapsof paper from those around him. Those manning the barricadeswore no dog tags and loved ones would have to be contacted, ifsomeone was hurt or killed. His gas mask was always within reachduring the hours he held vigil in front of Russian Parliament.

READY TO DIE“We were prepared for the worst,” he said yesterday afternoon(11 p.m. Moscow time) in a telephone interview from his Moscowhome. “We were ready to die. “We waited for the troops to attackus and while it was a terrible feeling, we were all waiting. Wewere all strong,” he said. The attempted coup reportedly over,he returned home yesterday. His family was waiting, restless andexhausted from the hours they wondered whether he was dead or

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alive. “They didn’t go to bed while I was at the Parliament.They couldn’t sleep knowing I was there,” he said. It beganTuesday morning for Pokrovsky, who returned to the Soviet Unionlate last month after spending two weeks in Worcester andConcord as part of the Thoreau Society celebration. He isconsidered a Thoreau scholar and has written two books on theNew Englander who believed in the importance of civildisobedience for the sake of justice.

YELTSIN LED RESISTANCEOn Tuesday morning, he was listening to an underground radiostation and heard that Russian President Boris Yeltsin wasleading the resistance against the attempted coup. Yeltsin’sheadquarters was the Russian Parliament. “I rushed to theRussian Parliament because I wanted to protect it,” he said. Andfor 24 hours he stayed, demonstrating his commitment todemocracy and the building that had come to represent it. “Icould not really stay at home. It was like torture to stay away.I am not a political activist. I’m a college professor. But Ihad to go to show my support and commitment,” he said. His 24-hour vigil was bittersweet. Constantly threatened by thepresence of tanks and armed soldiers, he and his comradeswatched their political hero, Yeltsin, emerge from the buildingto a cheering crowd of about 500,000. “I saw Yeltsin for thefirst time in my life. It was so wonderful to see him and yetso threatening at the same time. “The general mood was very,very lofty. Russian people are not used to discussing such loftyissues as democracy and protecting their parliament. It was justso uplifting. “Yes, we were afraid. But we were protectingsomething we believed in very strongly,” he said. “It was myfirst attempt at civil disobedience,” he said, “I was therebecause I wanted to be part of the uniting force that wouldrestore democracy.”

SAW NO DEATHSHe did not witness any deaths, but had heard that some of theprotesters had been killed. One of the passing tanks was coveredwith shards of glass and debris, obviously from a confrontation,he said. The protesters carried no weapons, and when the coupwas reported over, the withdrawing tanks were showered withflowers. Now the country must rebuild, he said. Moscow streetswere ravaged by the tanks and military machinery that snakedalong in huge convoys during the attempted coup, he said. “Thestreet surface has been destroyed by tanks. Now, it’s just amess. The center of Moscow is filled with huge barricades. Ihave never seen such barricades,” he said. Pokrovsky predictedthat Yeltsin will become the most highly regarded politician inthe Soviet Union, and that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachevwill be held accountable for the attempted coup. “All the peoplethat executed this coup were his (Gorbachev’s) nominees. Theywere his confidantes. I don’t think we should see Gorbachev asa poor victim of all of this,” he said. Politicians will talkabout and analyze the attempted coup for months to come,wondering why it got as far as it did and why it failed when itdid. But Pokrovsky has no second thoughts, no regrets. “I wanted

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to protect my family and democracy, a goal which is hidden inthe soul of all people,” he said.

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Nikita, we’re

proud of you.

Henry David

Thoreau is

proud of you.

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: October 11, 2013

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request wehave pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out ofthe shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). Whatthese chronological lists are: they are research reportscompiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data moduleswhich we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.To respond to such a request for information, we merely push abutton.

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Commonly, the first output of the program has obviousdeficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modulesstored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, andthen we need to punch that button again and do a recompile ofthe chronology — but there is nothing here that remotelyresembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know andlove. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,and as the programming improves, and as funding becomesavailable (to date no funding whatever has been needed in thecreation of this facility, the entire operation being run outof pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweakingand recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation ofa generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward andupward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place your requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.Arrgh.

Updated as of: October 11, 2013

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