The critic D. Yuriev that never was

Abstract

Yury Dombrovsky’s critical legacy is relatively small — at least, judging by the materials available or known to exist to date. This publication, then, appears all the more important: following almost 90 years of oblivion, it reprints his review of a seminal novel of the 1930s, Yury Tynyanov’s Pushkin. Dombrovsky’s review appeared under the pen name D. Yuriev. It is inexplicably missing from all of the writer’s collected works. While not offering truly eye-opening observations, the review is nonetheless of interest because it features Dombrovsky’s ideas about the Soviet historical novel and gives insights about his views of literature and reading list of the day. It seems that, at the time, Dombrovsky the critic was guided by a set of ideologically charged premises he must have believed to be the epitome of historical philosophy. It is also noteworthy that, along with the review, the same issue of the journal Literaturniy Kazakhstan contained Dombrovsky’s first historical novel Derzhavin. The publication of his novel and review heralded the first serious literary ambitions of the future author of The Keeper of Antiquities [Khranitel drevnostey] and The Faculty of Useless Knowledge [Fakultet nenuzhnykh veshchey].