Although his poetry enjoyed considerable contemporary popularity, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin belonged to the generation of poets characterized by Ivan Rozanov as “interesting precisely for its attempts and strivings: we find almost no attainments here.” Despite the curious fact that Karamzin's verse has been reprinted in the present century more frequently than his prose, its interest for the modern reader is of an essentially historical nature. Professor Iurii M. Lotman, editor of the recent authoritative and complete collection of Karamzin's poetry, has stressed in his excellent introduction that “it is impossible to understand Karamzin the prose writer and ignore Karamzin the poet,” but his ultimate conclusion that “his poetic gift, perhaps, manifested itself with even greater force in his prose” reestablishes the primacy of the prose. Karamzin in his poetry was a stikhotvorets rather than a poet—a conscious craftsman who introduced new themes, brought a fresh approach to traditional subjects and genres, and experimented with language, form, and meter.

Writing about recent Soviet literature is a hazardous occupation. A Western chronicler of the post-Stalin literary ferment is as likely to overestimate an ephemeral trend as he is to miss a significant cue. He must be equally wary of premature euphoria and premature impatience. Last but not least, he has to do his best to maintain a viable balance between literary and political considerations.

The latter question was raised sharply by Mr. Andrew Field, a keen if somewhat petulant student of modern Russian literature. Mr. Field deplored the tendency prevalent in the West to discuss recent Soviet imaginative writing sub specie of its alleged ideological heterodoxy rather than of its literary texture.

Iurii Olesha's Short Novel Envy (Zavist', 1927) has been greatly admired and even has some claim to be considered the “great Soviet novel.“Yet comparatively little has been written about Envy since the first flood of reviews and articles, many uncritical, appeared in the Soviet press between 1927 and 1933.

Envy is a complex novel, sometimes described as expressionistic, written in a variety of styles and with many planes of meaning. Elements of realist, romanticist, and symbolist styles are present. Dreams, fantasies, and lies are introduced, often as reality. It is a work in which the author's ideological intentions are far from clear or unambiguous, a work deeply hedged with irony. And it is a work that can yield much to discerning analysis.