410'
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4 4, 9'
4
A
Zinaid a Hippius: Clarifying the mystery
(Continued from Page 7)
it. Merezhkovsky and his wife
found a sympathetic participant
in D.V. Filosofov, a journalist
and aesthete. They began to cele-
brate their private Divine Serv-
ices in the Merezhkovskys' apart-
ment and to carefully publicize
their new "Cause." But from the
-start a fatal dissension began to
weaken the framework of the
church. Hippius was disturbed by
her husband's and Filosofov's
disproportionate interest in sex-
ual matters. Filosofov remained
suspicious of his fellow worship-
ers and was eventually to leave
the private trinity altogether in
1909.
In the meantime to consoli-
date the new church Hippius and
her husband embarked on two
publicizing ventures. The first
involved the founding of the Re-
ligious - Philosophical Meetings
in which socially minded clergy
and religiously minded radicals
met to discuss questions of mu-
tual interest. The meetings lasted
from 1901 to 1903 and were well
attended. But because of the
overly cautious attitude of the
triad none of the meetings' par-
ticipants were ever admitted into
the inner sanctum of the church.
The second venture was the cre-
ation of a new monthly journal,
The New Road, which was to
publish the works of symbolists
and carry articles discussing the
religious questions raised at the
Religious - Philosophical Meet-
ings. Alexander Blok made his
first appearance in this journal,
as did Vladimir Pestovsky and
Sergeev-Tsensky.
The revolution of 1905 found the
Merezhkovskys increasingly in-
volved in social and political
questions. The outcome of the
revolution frightened and disap-
pointed them. They had hoped
that the uprising would prove to
be the first link in a chain of
events which would bind heaven
to earth and bring about the
New Kingdom. If the revolution
accomplished nothing else, it
drew Hippius to the windows of
her salon where the back yard of
social injustice was suddenly vis-
ible. Her reaction was immedi-
ate: no longer could a defense of
the autocracy be sanctioned in
the scheme of the New Kingdom.
She withdrew from the window.
picked up a box of chocolates,
and wrote on the cover: Auto-
cracy is from the Antichrist. She
did not want her husband to for-
get it.
The advent of the First World
War found Hippius adamantly
pacifist, a position she maintain-
ed, though with reservaticns,
throughout her life. "Under no
circumstances shall I say yes to
war . . . ," she said in 1938.
"Politicians who start wars are
often dangerously insane. It is
quite natural that there are only
one or two politicians of that
kind, but of course it does not
mean that others must not
wholeheartedly resist becoming
their puppets." She reacted with
equal obduracy when the Bolshe-
viks took power in 1917. Full of
religious abhorence, she con-
demned the coup as a retrogres-
oI
0 ;:i;{~iix ?:i :2{?q$i~t~;": S:C::r:. . .i.....N/
0
ReuadUeDiy lsiid _
Antagonism, of course, was
quite mutual. The Bolsheviks
could no more tolerate the
Merezhkovskys than they could
tolerate the Bolsheviks. In 1920,
after publishing several defiantly
anti-Bolshevik tracts, the couple
left St. Petersburg for Poland,
where they were eagerly wei-
comed by the Polish nobility orn
account of their literary reputa-
tion. After a few unfortunate and
inconsequential attempts to rouse
the Poles into an effective strug-
gle against the Reds, the Merezh-
kovskys came to Paris, where
they were to remain for the rest
of their lives. Their hopes for
Russia and for the success of
their "cause," for the estab-
lishment of the Third Kingdom,
died with the defeat of the White
forces, and they were left to
lead the isolated lives of emigres.
cursing the Bolsheviks and their
state in France.
Hippius continued to be pro-
ductive even in exile. Although
she devoted an increasing share
of energy to the publication of
anti-Bolshevik tracts, she con-
tinued to mature as a poet. It
was not until the death of her
husband in 1941 that her creative
energy finally began to escape
her. Yet even at her death in 1945
she was in the process of ,om--
pleting The Last Circle, a )hilo-
sophical poem in imitation of
Dante.
Temira Pachmuss' book 4s as
much a work of devotion as it is
of intellectual inquiry. As the
first complete study (in any lan-
guage) of the life and works of
Zinaida Hippius, it serves to in-
troduce one of the most import-
ant figures in Russian symbol-
ism, and as an introduction it is
enormously beneficial. But as arn
introduction it also fails in mnany
respects. Above all I find the ene-
mies on "intellectual profile" a
bit disconcerting. Pachmuss ad-
mits to the numerous contradic-
tions and lack of systematization
in Hippius' thought; she is care-
ful in documenting the dominant
and dominating influences in her
philosophy of religion and his-
tory, so much so that one begins
to suspect that Dostoevsky, Ber-
daev and Nietzsche are more
important to Hippius' philosophy
than Hippius herself. It she will
continue to be remembered, it
will be either as a delightfully
decadent mystic-the erroneous
view--or as a Srst rate religious
poet. 'But certainly not as a sig-
nificant philosopher. Hence Pach-
muss' overbearing concentration
on Hippius philosophical stances
(and there are many) seems
slightly out of place.
Pachmuss devotes two rather
extensive chapter to Hippius
poetic method, but those who are
unacquainted with Russian will
find her conclusions puzzling.
The poems she quotes are given
both in Russian and in English
translation, but the translations
are merely literal and convey
none of the highly musical effects
that delight Pachmuss. The fact
is that Hippius does not translate
well in any case, but one would
expect some minimal attempt at
compensation for the benefit of
those who do not know Russian.
The Cyrillic script of the Rus-
sian quotations will prevent most
readers from following the sound
patterns which Pachmuss investi-
gates.
It is difficult to deteremine whe-
ther the book was meant for spe-
cialists of Russian literature or
for the merely curious. The gen-
eral disorganization (the chapter
"Beginnings," for example, cov-
ers poems and events late in
Hippius' life)and the concentra-
tion on philosophical and bio-
graphical material seem oriented
to the non-specialist, whereas
the chapters devoted to the ex-
plication of poetry and to Hip-
pius' criticism of authors mostiy
unknown to the general reader,
are more likely to be of interest
to the specialist. In the end the
book is likely to please and dis-
please both groups.
- Little Big Man -
Penn does it again
sion in human evolution, a
cal impediment to the
lishment of a Theocracy
tice, peace and love.
histori-
estab-
of jus-
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Social Radicalism-
111
(Continued from Page 16)
sanitized by middle-class ma-
trons.
Social Radicalism and the Arts
obliquely raises questions about
all the arts, not only committed
works of art. Neither social rad-
icalism nor the arts nor the
two together have "succeeded"
in Western Europe or the Unit-
ed States. Of course the func-
tion of art is not a matter of
success, but a nagging doubt
suggests that art has failed,
failed as a criticism of life that
has been felt and taken to be
art. One might argue that the
function of social radicalism is
best served when it does fail.
At least as criticism, Marxism
and other radical thought can
carry us outside our culture to
provide an analysis that teach-
es us all. In the marrow of their
bones politicians of the West feel
the challenges of social radi-
calism of all kinds. But of the
arts, no. One must wonder what
Heath thinks of Paton, or why
Nixon thinks so much of "Pat-
ton," or whether either of them
knows anything about Picas-
so.
By NEAL GABLER
Should the day ever arrive when the
American mind isn't wholly calcified by
martial spirit, our posterity will ask us
for an accounting. They'll ask how we
could defoliate an entire country, level its
villages, lop the ears off its enemies and
napalm its children. Perhaps most of all,
they'll ask how we could make a hero of
a man convicted of twenty-two murders,
how we could cry out for clemency with
'The Battle Hymn of Lietutenant Calley'
blaring from our radios. If we manage to
survive it all, we will be asked to answer.
How will we explain our national madness?
The closest we may come to an answer
(not an excuse) may lie in the films of
Arthur Penn. Penn is very much an artist
of America; his art is wrought of the very
stuff of which this country is made-its
folkways, its values and, consequently, its
violence. He understands our nation's reck-
less muscle, the 'pitiless giant' complex
that haunts us and threatens our virility,
and in his work he has managed to snag
those devastating little truths that rip
right through our not-so-mighty defenses.
But to say that Penn is of this country
is to say quite a bit more than that he
resinates our peculiarities, as important a
function as that may be. His is a visceral
cinema, screaming with the fury of tears,
gasps, even laughs, and all liberally splat-
tered with rich, red blood. In The Chase,
a film I don't particularly like but one
which a goofy friend of mine considers an
all-time great, Penn examined a Southern
community gone bezerk, and though he
denies it, he managed to make a com-
mentary on the Kennedy assassination. In
Mickey One he directed his camera toward
the psychic destruction that came from
the McCarthy era, and in Alice's Restau-
rant he focused on the winter of our dis-
content following the conventions and
election in 1968. In Bonnie and Clyde he
rolled all the themes-alienation, impo-
tency, folk-heroism, brutality-into one,
and as Rap Brown said, it came out as
American as cherry pie.
So it wasn't unexpected that sooner or
later Penn would turn his gaze to the sav-
age slaughter of the Indians, and he has
chosen Thomas Berger's novel Little Big
Man as the vehicle, with a screenplay by
Calder Willingham (who collaborated on
Paths of Glory and The Graduate). The
novel, a freewheeling, nineteenth century
Catch-22, chronicles the incredible life of
Jack Crabb, the only white survivor of
the Battle of Little Big Horn, commonly
known as Custer's Last Sand. As Jack tells
it, after his parents were killed by the
Pawnee, he was raised by a Cheyenne
chief, Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George).
Dubbed "Little Big Man" for his feats of
bravery, Jack heeded the call of white
culture, continuing to shuttle between the
homestead and the teepee until he came
face to face with General George Custer.
Custer and his fellow frontiersmen are
bound not to be venerated in any modern
piece about the plains, and on its surface
Little Big Man is very much concerned
with the quantum of physical force in the
Old West. What makes Penn's film so
damn good, however, is his realization that
the violence is a manifestation not of
white genes but of a certain kind of cul-
ture. Beneath the blood lurks the attitude
that the world, and everything in it, is
inorganic. It's a view that lent itself to
the frontier and was actually one of its
strengths: F o r e s t s, mountains, Indians
were all obstacles to be respectively chop-
ped down, crossed and killed. And as in
so many Penn protagonists, the whites are
trapped by the mentality that made their
conquests possible. Thus Jack's introduc-
tion to Wild Bill Hickok-"How many men
have you killed?"-leads inexorably to
Custer's Last Stand.
Not surprisingly, then, Jack's matricu-
lation in white society is a series of lessons
in the deadness of things, including peo-
ple, and the resultant lack of morality in a
soulless world. On his very first day in the
Cheyenne camp he is abandoned by his
sister. Later, when as an adolescent he
leaves the reservation, he is adopted by
g
a
b
1
e
r
0
n
f
i
1
m
the Reverend and Mrs. Pendrake (Faye
Dunaway). From this couple he learns the
fire and brimstone of sin while playing
with a lass in the hay, and also hypocrisy,
when he finds that Mrs. Pendrake doesn't
always practice what she- preaches. Leav-
ing salvation behind, Jack teams up with
snake-oil salesman Allardyce Merryweath-
er, who teaches the novice dishonesty,
since in Merryweather's view people are
rubes made to be exploited. After five years
on the medicine wagon he finds his long
lost sister, who continues his education
with a schooling in the art of gunfighting.
Looking as sinister as Lash LaRue in his
spurs, holster and black outfit, Jack stomps
into a saloon where he finds none other
than Wild Bill Hickok. Wild Bill is a bit
jumpy, and when a patron draws on him,
Bill reacts by blasting him right "through
the lungs and heart." And so Jack is in-
troduced to murder. It doesn't take him
long to sell his gunfighting outfit, take
himself a plump Swedish wife and set up
i
infidelity are counterpointed with Jack's
Indian wife's demand that he service her
three sisters, all of whom are husbandless
and, childless; and like any 'moral' white,
Jack's first response is negative though he
later warms to the idea.
Not that this is the first time Penn has
squared off against marriage. In The
Chase the sheer quantity of marital un-
happiness is staggering, and in Bonnie and
Clyde Clyde asks for his moll's hand, cur-
iously enough, only after they have made
love. He continued the theme in Alice's
Restaurant, pointing out the difficulty of
living on the conjugal line as it fights to
become a triangle or quadrangle.
But over all the orgasmic palpitations is
hoisted the tent of morality, the white
substitute for the Cheyenne's true spirit.
Predictably, even the spirit is concretized
by the system of belief called 'religion.'
The result is that Rev. Pendrake's growl-
ing, Bible in hand, "The boy's deprivation
is more spiritual than physical," has an
irony running deeper than snickers. Ours
is a society in which Pendrake's distinction
is meaningless, in which God is peddled
like Merryweather's medicines. The tragedy
is that, as in Alice's Restaurant, when de-
based spiritualization collapses values, the
whites have nothing with which to replace
the mythology.
Jack, belonging to both cultures, avoids
this corruption yet he is like Billy the Kid,
Mickey One, Rubber Reeves, Bonnie and
Clyde, Alice and Ray, in that he cannot
comfortably settle in either. He is an actor,
essentially passive and living without hope
of ever dominating his life. It is a difficult
role for an actor because Jack undergoes
so many changes in such a short time, but
then Dustin Hoffman is a very capable
performer. In a year of tributes to George
C. Scott's Patton, Hoffman is an actor
without bluster and affectation. Instead
he declares guerrilla warfare on a part,
piecing the character together slowly and
unobtrusively,'until suddenly it's all1there.
Hoffman's Jack is obviously afflicted by
a severe case of ambivalence. Taking an
Indian wife and raising two Indian sons,
he comes close to total commitment to
the Human Beings. But when Custer in-
vades the reservation and murders his
family, ironically Jack's spirit gives way
to white revenge. Of course, he is never
able to execute his oath; he is too steeped
in Indian culture for that. In fact in the
entire film Jack never murders anyone
intentionally, and in the great Human
Being tradition he avenges his family's
death by humiliating Custer.
Custer's defeat is not optimism on Penn's
part, and his view of the Indian version
of Consciousness III (as his view of Youth
Culture in Alice's Restaurant) differs sig-
nificantly from the Reich prognosis for
America's future. The Human Beings'
sticks are no match for the calvary's
rifles. The Indians are spiritually strong;
but to survive in America they will need
more than spirit. Old Lodge Skins recog-
nizes this. "There is an endless supply of
white men, but there is a limited supply
of Human Beings. We won today. We
won't win tomorrow."
That Jack does survive seems to me to
be the film's thematic crux. Everywhere he
is surrounded by death-the spiritual death
of the whites and the physical death of
the Indians. Only he, half-Indian and
half-white, can cope with society and only
he can combine the Cheyenne's sensibility
with that of the white. But his survival
is very much a pyrrhic victory. Saved by
his schizophrenia (about to commit sui-
cide he says, "Goodbye, Jack. Goodbye,
Little Big Man"), he is simultaneously
condemned by it. As a survivor he must
suffer in a society not worth living in,
and his poignant silence at the film's end
reflects not only his memories of the
destruction of three generations of Chey-
enne, but also his own dilemma at having
outlived them. Now, a hundred years later,
he awaits death in, of all places, a vet-
eran's hospital,
This ambivalence is a structural as well
as thematic component of the film. Hav-
ing learned to lie from the whites while
(Continued on Page 16)
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a general store . . . until his partner makes
him a victim of thievery. After bouts with
drunkeness and a stint as a hermit, Jack's
odyssey through the white devil's ten com-
mandments ends with Custer's assault on
Little Big Horn. It is the ultimate insanity
of overblown ego, a monument constructed
out of all the other vices of the West.
Ostensibly at least, the only positive con-
tribution made by white culture is an ele-
phant-head spigot at the soda shop. But
the affects of Jack's education are coun-
teracted in him by the intense spirituality
of the Cheyenne, who call themselves rea-
sonably enough the Human Beings. Where
the whites see in life only the means to
their ends, the Human Beings see in the
means only life. Everything lives. So when
Old Lodge Skins is given a hat by Jack, he
queries, "Is this the hat I used to own
except grown softer and fatter?" And
when the chief explains his blindness, he
does so in terms of sense and spirit: "My
eyes still see but my heart no longer re-
ceives it." Even in battle most of the war-
riors carry sticks to humilitate their ene-;
mies, rather than bows and arrows to kill
them; the warrior fights the muscle and
spirit of man.
Penn further underscores the contrast
in these cultures by looking at their basic
institutions. Jack's sister, his only real
family, pulls him to her breast only to
teach him selfishness and destruction. Old
Lodge Skins and the other Cheyennes; on
the other hand, teach Jack love and re-
spect by showing him the soul of things.
In marriage as well, white society comes
out second- best, even though the Human
Beings are monogomous. The. death of
Wild Bill and his last words on marital
"Little
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movie'
versed.
Page Twenty-Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Sunday, April 11, 197:1
Sunday, April, 11, 1971
Sunday, April 11,1971 THE MICHIGAN DAILY
THE MICHIGAN DAILY