This is the third and last installment of the series on Doctor Zhivago‘s pirate editions in Mexico and South America. I have decided to leave the original quotes in Italian and Spanish.

Argentina. Tesone went to Buenos Aires to deal with “the pirates” and arrived on January 2, 1959.

In a letter to Feltrinelli, dated January 8 1959, Tesone informed Feltrinelli that he had managed to have the pirate edition prepared by E.D.R. in Buenos Aires sequestered. He wrote:

Caro Signor Feltrinelli,

Sono qui dal giorno due e la situazione è attualmente a questo punto:

Tre sono le edizioni pirate di cui si abbia sicura conoscenza. Vagamente si parla anche di altre, ma finché queste restano –come finora–totalmente alla macchia, da un lato, non è possibile colpirle e, d’altro lato, non arrecano alcun fastidio.

It is thus sure that despite his being in Buenos Aires, Tesone had not heard anything about the Uruguaian editions, let alone the Mexican one. They are never mentioned in any other documents preserved in the Feltrinelli archives. Of the three pirate Argentianian editions  Tesone had become aware of the first one was quickly dealt with:

Contro l’edizione D.E.R. (Distributori Editori Riuniti: gente infida in tutto il mondo quelli della E.D.A.! [Editori Distributori Associati was Feltrinelli’s distribution agency, P.M.]) si è chiesto, ottenuto ed eseguito un decreto di sequestro, ponendo sotto vincolo anche tutto il materiale di composizione. Attualmente pende la causa di convalida e di merito e mi sto battendo, come sempre e dovunque, per far accogliere la mia solita tesi che non incombe a noi l’onere di provare l’esistenza del famoso contratto con Pasternak. Sotto il profilo commerciale, questa edizione pirata non presenta peró più alcun problema per noi.

The owner of D.E.R, Damián Carlos Hernández, was one of the people that Noguer (and Feltrinelli) sued for copyright infringement (see appendix).

We will have to come back to Tesone’s legal claim, for it is the cornerstone of the legal wrangles and complexities in which Feltrinelli found himself when trying to assert his rights to Doctor Zhivago. After the first court judgment in Buenos Aires of May 5, 1959, the sequestering order was removed (see appendix). There is however no trace that this edition ever came to light. Tesone continued his letter thus:

Maggiori difficoltà si sono incontrate con la seconda edizione corsara: quella de El Forjador (forgiatore di nome anche se forcaiolo di fatto).

Si tratta di un disperato in istato di dissesto che giuoca tutte le carte su questa scadentissima edizione tirata su carta straccia con corpo tipografico piccolissimo e praticamente non leggibile. Anche qui si è chiesto ed ottenuto un decreto di sequestro, solo che non si riusciva ad eseguirlo per l’assoluta irreperibilità delle copie. Avevo progettato di far intervenire la nostra Ambasciata nei confronti del ministero argentino degli interni per sollecitare un’indagine della polizia. Senonché Giancola, l’addetto commerciale, è stato improvvisamente destinato all’Onu ed è immediatamente partito per l’Italia il giorno stesso che io sono arrivato. Babuscio Rizzo, l’ambasciatore è per contro rientrato dall’Italia solo ieri e mi ha intrattenuto questa mane in un lungo colloquio. Molta cordialità e convenevoli, ma anche la solita inerzia diplomatica: se possibile, evitare a tutti i costi un incidente con l’autorità locale e negare con diplomatica eleganza di introdurre la e.d. Nota Verbale al Governo Argentino. Ero preparato al tradizionale fin de non recevoir, e così ho preannunciato che, se necessario, avrei espresso a titolo assolutamente personale, quale privato cittadino di uno stato amico, meraviglia e stupore per l’illegalità trionfante in campo editoriale in un paese grande e civile (ma non troppo!) come l’Argentina. Tanto è bastato alla nostra inestimabile diplomazia per gettar la spugna, assumendo che in tal caso li avrei violentati a presentare quella nota verbale che intendevano rifiutarmi. Buono a sapersi, anche se ritengo che ormai la cosa sia superata avviandosi, anche qui, la battaglia alla scaramuccia finale. Ieri infatti El Forjador, col coraggio dei disperati, è salido a la calle, facendo la prima apparizione in qualche libreria. Ho subito disposto perché sui due più importanti quotidiani locali –La Prensa e la Nacion – apparisse in data di oggi e in tutte le edizioni la Notificacion allegata alla presente e, nel contempo, ho invitato l’avvocato Mendilaharzu, che è il legale efficiente e competente nominato dall’Editorial Noguer, a sollecitare dal Giudice dell’Ufficio di istruzione un ordine di sequestro penale diramato per telegrafo a tutte le stazioni di polizia. Questa sera ho saputo che il provvedimento è stato concesso e si trova già in stato di esecuzione presso le librerie.

The translator is not named but the translation was made from the Italian text. The edition has 384 pages. The publication date on the copyright page reads November 30, 1958.

Tesone’s notification in La Nacion de Buenos Aires is shown below.

We will see that contrary to Tesone’s predictions, the legal battle against El Forjador, and his owner Demetrio Castagnola, was to become a difficult one. The edition is the following one. There were at least two printings of it but both of them appeared after the Nobel Prize.

I will come back below to the legal action pursued jointly by Feltrinelli and Noguer against El Forjador.

Let us now move to the last pirate edition and Tesone’s description of it.

Resta da dire della terza edizione per 10.000 esemplari preparata da una certa casa Indice e di fatto finanziata da un tale Granda sotto l’alto e discreto patrocinio del direttore della Casa de la Moneda! Questa è l’unica edizione decente anche se economica. Ne ho fatto controllare il valore letterario da un docente dell’Università di Cordoba e mi è stato detto che è buono.

            Sinora con questa gente vige un gentlemen’s agreement per cui noi soprassediamo a chiedere il sequestro e loro ad iniziare la distribuzione in attesa di perfezionare un eventuale accordo. Siamo ancora lontani, ma spero di avere domani un colloquio decisivo e conclusivo con Granda: miro ad acquistare l’intera edizione ad un prezzo conveniente: costo più una modestissima aliquota di utile, per sovrastampare Edit. Noguer e G.G. Feltrinelli, estromettere i clandestini e distribuire noi fissando il prezzo che il mercato consente.

Below is the cover page of the Indice edition.

The translation was made by Juan Robledo; it has 469 pages. In one of the first pages it is indicated that the book was printed on December 26, 1958 by Juan Castanola e Hijo (Rio de Janeiro 735, Buenos Aires). It makes reference to the French edition and it is quite clear from the beginning that it was translated from French. It also claims copyright for “Ediciones Indices, Buones Aires, 1958”.

It appears that Tesone’s plan for this last edition bore fruit. In a letter from Pardo to Feltrinelli, dated February 10, 1959, José Pardo, listing the new Noguer editions for Spain and South America, added:

Hay, además, la edición comprada a Granda – 12.000 ejemplares, que se pondrá a la venta muy pronto.

It thus appeared that Noguer had in fact bought the Indice edition. But was it put on sale? If it did, it was not before mid-February 1959. My own copy has a signature with the date 24-V-59. The copy I have in my hands does not show any Feltrinelli or Noguer copyright and/or any printing alterations that had been mentioned by Tesone.

In conclusion, Noguer, Feltrinelli, and Tesone seem to have been unaware of the Mexican and the Uruguayan editions. Of the three Argentinian editions only the first and the third led to a serious legal confrontation. However, in the legal case against El Forjador and D.E.R., we find two more publishers “Quetzal Editora”, whose distributor is identified as Dionisio Carlos Sáenz, and the “Ediciones Graphos”.

Quetzal had published a booklet of 89 pages that contained a digest of Doctor Zhivago by Gabriel Jimenez Correa. According to the book’s colophone, it was printed on November 20, 1958, by Hartug Bros. in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. It was obviously distributed in Argentina and other Latin American countries. It claimed to be a digest carried out on the original Russian but looking at the translation, it is more likely that the original Italian had been the source of the digest. Here is how it looked.

I have found no information about how “Ediciones Graphos” was involved in the Doctor Zhivago case.

Whether Noguer and Feltrinelli could have been successful in fighting the ‘pirates’ was questioned by other less scrupulous South American publishers and this allows me to bring in Chile into the picture.

Chile. The following passage, taken from a letter written by the director of Noguer, José Pardo, to Feltrinelli on February 10, 1959, gives a clear idea of the atmosphere surrounding such matters:

Distinguido colega:

Me es muy grato acusar recibo de su atenta del 4 en la que me informa amablemente sobre la gestión que llevó a cabo cerca de Vd. Ed Sr. Aldunade de la casa Zig-Zag de Santiago de Chile.

El Se. Aldunade nos había visitado en el mes de Enero pidiendo una sub-licencia para publicar en Chile una edición “abreviada” (!!!) de EL DOCTOR JIVAGO. Tal edición –según explicó– no debía rebasar la 250 ó 300 páginas, para hacerla asequibile a un amplio sector de lectores (!!!).

Yo manifesté al Sr. Aldunate que no entraba en nuestros propósitos otorgar una sub-licencia para Chile, pero que aun cuando rectificasemos este criterio lo que haríamos nunca serîa otorgar una sub-licencia para una versión mutilada. Le dije que lo impedía no solo nuestro contrato con Vd. Sino nuestro respeto por el autor y su obra y nuestra ética professional.

En el curso de la conversación el Sr. Aldunate se mostró muy escéptico sobre nesutra posibilidades de defense ante posibles ediciones “piratas”. No me pareció muy discrete por su parta sacar a colación este tema, pues para nadie es un secreto que Zig-Zag ha sido y es una editorial pirate. Me limité a decirle que en Chile tenîamos tomadas las medidas precautorias del caso y que estábamos dispuestos a pegar fuerte.

Pardo concluded by saying that although at the beginning there had been problems with stocking the book in Chile, the problem had now been overcome. Zig-Zag had not been the only publisher in Chile interested in Doctor Zhivago. Some further information about Chile’s interest in Doctor Zhivago is found in the preface to the translation of the Autobiography (Autobiografia) published (without any agreement with Feltrinelli) by Editorial del Nuevo Extremo of Santiago del Chile with a print date of January 29, 1959. In the preface the publishers wrote:

En febrero 1958 escribimos nuestra primera carta pidiendo los derechos para traducer al castellano la novella de Boris Pastérnak: El Doctor Zivago.

            Esto sucedía más de medio ano antes de que el gran poeta y novelista ruso fuera agraciado con el Premio Nóbel de Literatura. Seguros que nuestras gestiones tendrían exito, y de que podríamos entregar a Chile uno de los más interesantes testimonies artísticos de la época, dimos comienzo a la traducción de la obra. Desgraciadamente, no legamos un acuerdo complete con el entonces poseedor de aquellos derechos. Y todo, salva la convicción de haber luchado larga y lealmente, quedó en nada.

            Varios meses después supimos que existían nuevas posibilidades de llevar a buen término nuestro empeno: teníamos al alcance de nuestras manos una edición de El Doctor Zivago em lengua rusa. Pero ya era tarde para iniciar su traducción. Había otras ediciones en castellano que estaban por llegar a Chile, por lo que la magnitude de la empresa –tanto en tiempo come en costo– se tornaba difícil de sobrellevar.

In any case, we have seen that Aldunade’s project of a digest was eventually carried out by Quetzal.

Back to Argentina: The battle for the copyright against El Forjador and the “explosive document”

The above description might be of interest as part of the history of the editions of Doctor Zhivago but the legal battle against El Forjador’s owner, Demetrio Castagnola, (and some of the other pirates, see appendix) led to such an entangled situation that it can be used as a case study for the complexities of defending Pasternak and the copyright at the same time. I will present Tesone’s legal claim, the legal strategy followed by the Noguer legal representative, Eduardo Mendilaharzu, and the panic that ensued in Milan as a consequence of it; finally, I will conclude with the legal defeat of Feltrinelli in the Buenos Aires court.

Tesone’s legal claim. Let me begin by recalling that there was a contract between Feltrinelli and Pasternak signed by the latter on June 30, 1956 (for a photographic reproduction see Mancosu 2013, pp. 206-207). While the KGB informed the Central Committee of the CPSU in August 1956 of the existence of such a contract, the details were not exactly known and Pasternak’s protection depended on it not being known that he was earning royalties from the West. While it was important to protect Pasternak before and after the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Italian in November 1957, Pasternak’s well-being became an even bigger concern after the award of the Nobel Prize in October 1958. Thus, axiom number 1, the contract could not be shown. Tesone’s thesis was that in any kind of legal battles, it was not incumbent on Feltrinelli to show the contract and that widespread knowledge that the Italian translation was the first publication worldwide of Doctor Zhivago, should have been sufficient to protect the copyright. In addition, the Italian legislation allowed for a notary to summarize an official document so that the summary could have the same legal value as the original. Antonio Tesone received from Feltrinelli a photocopy of the famous contract on March 1, 1957. Feltrinelli kept the original in a bank in Switzerland (see also appendix). We can see Tesone’s thesis implemented even later, namely from the letter to the Greek lawyer John D. Fotopoulos dated January 22, 1960 concerning the legal action against “Kathimerini” and “Ethnicos Kirix”, two newspapers in Greece that were publishing Doctor Zhivago without any agreement with Feltrinelli. Replying to the request for a copy of the contract, Tesone wrote:

Per ciò che si riferisce alla parte strettamente giuridica della Sua relazione, mi limito ad osservare:

1) che non occorre esibire il contratto di edizione tra Pasternak e Feltrinelli Editore per invocare in Grecia la protezione del diritto d’autore come disposta dalla Convenzione di Berna. È suddificente, mi sembra, invocare il fatto incontestabile che la prima pubblicazione è avvenuta in Italia (art. 4 al 3 C.d.B.) perchè l’opera sia considerate italiana e l’autore e i suoi aventi causa abbiano perciò solo diritto alla protezione convenzionale.

As a replacement for a photocopy of the contract, Tesone often provided –as in this case– a notarized document from which it resulted that there existed a regular publishing contract for the printing, publication and sale of Doctor Zhivago and that Pasternak had ceded to Feltrinelli the rights for the translations in foreign languages.

Having explained Tesone’s thesis, let’s go back now to January 1959, when Tesone optimistically reports to Feltrinelli, in his letter from Buenos Aires, that the battle was nearing its end. From later correspondence it appears that Tesone had been overly optimistic. Tesone had gone to Buenos Aires, surely intentionally, without a copy of the contract with Pasternak. The judge in charge of the legal case against El Forjador insisted on seeing a copy of the contract. On January 30, after his return to Italy, Tesone sent a photographic reproduction of the contract to Noguer’s lawyer Mendilaharzu with precise instructions as to its use. Here is how Tesone recounts the January events to José Pardo of Noguer on August 10, 1959:

Fin dai nostri primi colloqui milanesi, ho tassativamente escluso che Feltrinelli fosse disposto ad utilizzare il contratto sottoscritto dall’Autore per prevalere dei pirati nelle procedure da introdurre contro gli stessi in Argentina o altrove.

            Ella ricorderà, sono certo, che costituiva preoccupazione dominante dell’Editore Feltrinelli che venisse salvaguardata l’integrità morale e fisica dell’Autore, altrimenti posta in pericolo dalla produzione di carte che lo compromettono irremediabilmente nei confronti delle Autorità del suo paese.

Let us pause for a second to remark how such statements fly in the face of those account in the Pasternak literature that describe Feltrinelli as “bent on extracting maximum business advantage from the situation” out of the Pasternak case (see Barnes 1998, p.326, and also p.p. 332 and 365).

Tesone continues by saying:

Così ricorderanno i Sigg. Avalis e Mendilaharzu che sono partito per l’Argentina senza questo documento in valigia e che, solo a seguito della vivissima insistenza di un Giudice e alla tassativa condizione che il contratto venisse esibito non allegato agli atti, ho acconsentito a spedirne una copia successivamente al mio rientro in Italia.

            Esiste, infine, la mia lettera del 30 gennaio 1959 con la quale fissavo limiti rigorosi e non superabili per l’uso del contratto Feltrinelli-Pasternak e richiedevo che il destinatario Mendilaharzu, una volta dimostrata in via private la nostra buona fede al Magistrato, provvedesse all’immediata restituzione di questo esplosivo documento all’editore Feltrinelli.

Mendilaharzu was the lawyer that was representing Noguer (and thus also Feltrinelli) in the legal case against the pirates in Argentina. As the above should make clear, something went wrong with the use of the document. Indeed, during the first week of July, Tesone had been informed, in a letter dated June 29, of an unexpected move by Mandilaharzu who, of his own initiative, had requested a rogatory letter aimed at having the copy of the contract sent to Pasternak so that he could acknowledge his signature on the contract as genuine. The reaction of Tesone and Feltrinelli was immediate. Here is what Tesone writes to Pardo on July 7, 1959:

 

Spett.le S.A.                                                                Milano, 7 luglio 1959

Editorial Noguer

Paseo de Gracia 98

Barcellona

 

Caro Avv. Pardo,

Non sono riuscito a realizzare una prenotazione telefonica con lei che avevo riservato questa mane per le ore 18 di oggi.

            Le scrivo dunque quanto avrei volute dirle, anche da parte del Sig. Feltrinelli.

            Ho appena ricevuto una lettera del Dott. Mendilaharzu in data 29 giugno 1959, con la quale mi informa essere in corso di attuazione la rogatoria in Russia, accompagnata da una copia del contratto Feltrinelli-Pasternak, perchè quest’ultimo riconosca l’autenticità della propria firma apposta in calce a tale scrittura.

            Tanto il Sig. Feltrinelli che io siamo estremamente sorpresi per la gravità della cosa che dovrà essere impedita a tutti i costi, con un deciso intervento da parte dell’Editorial Noguer.

            Il Dott. Mendilaharzu ha purtroppo commesso una grave scorrettezza, abusando della fiducia che gli era stata concessa da parte nostra ed evadendo dai tassativi limiti che erano stati da me posti con la lettera del 30 gennaio scorso relativa all’uso autorizzato e agli usi vietati del noto contratto.

            Nè avrei mai ritenuto, dopo aver letto la lettera Argullòs in data 6 giugno scorso, che Avalis e Mendilaharzu avrebbero proseguito sulla pericolosa strada intrapresa, l’esito della quale non può che essere disastroso per tutti, come Ella stesso riconosce nell’ultima parte della Sua lettera in data 10 giugno.

            Se da un lato, è inevitabile che le autorità sovietiche faranno pressioni all’Autore per impedire la conferma della rogatoria, d’altro lato, è chiaro che Feltrinelli e Noguer – in caso di persecuzioni derivanti a Pasternak da questa sciagurata iniziativa– riceveranno su scala mondiale una propaganda negativa e infamante che annullerà d’un colpo tutti i vantaggi acquisiti dagli stessi quali titolari dell’esclusiva nelle zone di rispettiva influenza.

            E questo, senza parlare dei rapporti umani che sarebbero irrimediabilmente pregiuducati una volta che si potesse sostenere che per amore di lucro non avete esitato a giocarvi l’integrità fisica dell’Autore.

            Io so, avvocato Pardo, che Lei è un gentiluomo e conosce da molti anni il mio Cliente Feltrinelli; ma gli altri, i Vostri concorrenti, i giornalisti, i pirati e, in genere, l’opinione pubblica mondiale non potrebbe ritrarre da questo disgraziato affare –se non fosse tempestivamente arestato–che un giudizio profondamente negativo sul piano morale e commerciale.

            E’ dunque necessario che l’Editorial Noguer e il Sig. Argullòs per l’Iber Amer di Barcellona confermino per telefono e telegrafo le istruzioni che passo immediatamente a dare a Mendilaharzu ed Avalis con la lettera allegata in copia.

            Il Sig. Feltrinelli attende di avere sollecite assicurazioni che i responsabili della grave situazione di pericolo così inconscientemente create hanno finalmente rimediato al mal fatto.

            In difetto, dovremmo inevitabilmente reagire con tutta la decisione e l’urgenza che il caso richiede perseguendo anche sul terreno giudiziario le responsabilità di coloro che sono all’origine di questa incredibile vicenda.

            Confido di leggerla d’accordo con noi, e sopratutto, attendo con il Sig. Feltrinelli di sapere con certezza che la rogatoria non avrà mai luogo.

            La prego di accogliere I migliori saluti, anche da parte del Sig. Feltrinelli che dovrà rinviare di qualche tempo il suo previsto viaggio in Ispagna.

Suo dev.mo

Antonio Tesone

 

The letter also contained the howler for Mendilaharzu.

 

Egregio Signor                                                 Milano, 7 luglio 1959

Dr. Eduardo F. Mendilaharzu

Avenida de Mayo 749

Buenos Aires

 

Riscontro la sua del 29 giugno scorso.

            Il Sig. Feltrinelli ed io Le rivolgiamo formale ed espresso invito:

1. – ad astenersi dal sollecitare l’esperimento della rogatoria in Russia all’Autore Boris Pasternak;
2. – ad ottenere che la Magistratura non proceda neppure d’ufficio all’esperimento di tale rogatoria;
3. – a rinunciare, se necessario, a tutte le procedure in corso se il loro preseguimento è subordinato all’esecuzione di tale incombente probatorio;
4. – a ricordare che con la mia lettera 30 gennaio 1959 sono stati fissati limiti rigorosi e tassativi all’uso del contratto Feltrinelli-Pasternak;
5. – a non fare conseguentemente più alcun uso d’ora in avanti dell’unica copia fotografica da me trasmessa di detto contratto, che dovrà anzi essere rispedita per posta aerea all’Editore Feltrinelli.

In mancanza di Sua ottemperanza alle istruzioni non modificabili di cui sopra, sono dolente Dott. Mendilaharzu di doverle scrivere che saremo costretti a tenere responsabili dell’inammissibile situazione attuale per tutte le conseguenze di pregiudizio e danni derivanti a chiunque, tutti coloro che hanno contravvenuto al mandato da noi conferito in occasione della trasmissione del documento.

            La gravità della situazione di pericolo posta in essere per l’Autore con questa incomprensibile iniziativa giudiziaria non mi consente, purtroppo, di assumere una posizione diversa.

            Riceverà conformi istruzioni dall’Editorial Noguer cui ho provveduto a scrivere altra lettera in data odierna.

            Copia della presente viene da me inviata, per quanto di sua competenza, anche al Sign. Avalis dell’Iber Amer Argentina.

            Le porgo distinti saluti.

Antonio Tesone.

In sending to Feltrinelli copies of the above correspondence, Tesone dryly commented:

“Dopo queste missive ho l’impressione che Spagna e Argentina diventeranno, per me e per Lei, paesi proibiti o quasi. Vero è però che questa gente ha meritato la nostra reazione ed ho dovuto fare grande fatica per contenere in termini urbani la contestazione.”

             We do not have the letter Pardo wrote in reply to this letter of July 7, 1959 but we know that Pardo replied on July 17 asking for explanations as to the prohibition of any use the contract. The letter from Tesone to Pardo, dated August 10, 1959, was Tesone’s reply to such request.

There is no question that this was the gravest crisis Feltrinelli had to face concerning his own actions with respect to Pasternak’s safety. Feltrinelli’s and Tesone’s analysis of the situation is also fully persuasive. Sending a copy of the contract to the USSR would have meant giving it to the Soviet authorities who would have forced Pasternak to deny that the signature was his and would have also retaliated against him. In addition, they would have become prey of all the negative campaign that would have ensued, which could easily have characterized them as sacrificing Pasternak for some pesos. The tone of the letters leaves no doubt as to the anguish that Mendilaharzu ill-conceived initiative provoked in Milan. Mendilaharzu had probably asked for the rogatory letter because the first judgment had been negative for Noguer and Feltrinelli (see “Sentencia de primera instancia dated May 5, 1959” reported fully in the appendix), despite the fact that the photocopy of the contract had been produced but its veracity had been questioned by the defendants (the pirates).

There had been many previous situations in which Feltrinelli had been asked to show the contract (negotiations and legal action for the movie, the confrontation with The University of Michigan Press concerning the Russian edition, the Greek pirate editions, etc.). He and Tesone never went against what I called axiom 1: the contract was not to be shown. This one exception almost proved disastrous. I think it sheds much light of the human, moral, business, and legal complications that were the essence of the Zhivago affair.

All of this was the consequence of the legal case against El Forjador and some of the other Argentinian pirates. In 2012 the Constitutional Court in Buenos Aires put on line the two court judgments (May 5, 1959, “primera instancia” and September 1, 1959, “segunda instancia”) concerning the case between Noguer and El Forjador at the following link, which contained the text I fully report in the appendix (I am not sure the link is active anymore).

http://www.constitucionweb.com/2012/11/editorial-forjador-y-otros-sdefraudacion-de-derechos-de-autor-cncrim-corr-sala-iv-0109959-editorial-noguer-s-a-fallos-252262-1962.html

Noguer and Feltrinelli lost and the pirates won. But it had been a calculated retreat. Noguer and Feltrinelli scored a moral victory by asserting the primacy of the moral and physical preservation of Boris Pasternak.

 

Appendix.

SENTENCIA DE 1º INSTANCIA
— Buenos Aires, mayo 5 de 1959. —
Resultando: Se presenta Eduardo F. Mendilaharza en representación de “Editorial Noguer” (S. A.), de Barcelona (España), imputando el delito de defraudación de derechos de autor (arts. 71 y 72, incs. a] y c], ley 11.723), al propietario responsable de “Editorial Forjador”, Demetrio Castagnola; al de “D.E.H.” (Distribuidora Editores Reunidos, S. R. L.), Damián Carlos Hernández; al de “Ediciones Graphos”, al de “Quetzal”, cuyo distribuidor doloso sería Dionisio Carlos Sáenz, y al de toda otra edición en castellano de “El Doctor Zhivago”, de Boris Leonidovic Pasternak, que no lleve la marca editorial de su representada o no esté autorizada por ella, en virtud de Lener, “Editorial Noguer” (S. A.) la exclusividad de traducción al español de dicha obra.
Tal derecho de exclusividad deriva del contrato de concesión celebrado entre los representantes de aquélla y “Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Editore, Sociedad en Comandita”, en Milán (Italia), en nov. 14/958, por el cual la última declara y confirma que es titular de los “copyrights” de dicha obra en virtud del contrato celebrado con el autor y en virtud, asimismo, de la Convención Internación de los derechos del autor de Ginebra, puesto que le primera edición ha sido publicada en noviembre de 1957 en Milán (Italia), es decir, en un país adherido a la citada Convención. El contrato mencionado, en certificación y testimonio extendido por el escribano Enrique Gabarro y Samso, de Barcelona (España), de la escritura extendida por el de Milán (Italia), Dr. Gianfranco Franchini, con la debida legalización diplomática, corre agregado de fs. 22 a 25 en los autos caratulados Editorial Noguer” (S. A.) v. “Editorial Forjador” y otros, s/daños e intereses, del juzgado nacional de 1ª instancia en lo civil a cargo del Dr. Alberto R. Gartland, que corre por cuerda.
Tendiente a acreditar la titularidad del derecho de edición y traducción por parte de “Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore”, el denunciante presenta fotocopia del contrato privado que se habría celebrado entre éste y el autor, fechado en Moscú en jun. 30/956, y cuya cláusula 4ª autoriza a aquél para ceder al extranjero los derechos de traducción parcial o integral de la obra, debiendo repartir por mitades con el autor las ganancias resultantes. Expresa el denunciante que “el original, por el valor y la importancia que tiene, está depositado en un Banco de Suiza”, y que no puede proporcionar otros elementos probatorios de que la cesión de Pasternak a Feltrinelli se ha realizado realmente, fuera de los que allí enumera, dadas las circunstancias especiales del autor que son de pública notoriedad, aclarando “que la práctica editorial es la de celebrar contratos de este tipo en forma privada”.
Con la finalidad de probar que la primera publicación de la obra “El Doctor Zhivago” realizada en el mundo fue la edición de Feltrinelli de nov. 15/957, presenta el denunciante copias fotográficas del reverso de la portada de dicha edición y de las ediciones alemana, inglesa, francesa y española, que reconocen a aquella como la primera. De fs. 125 a 129 corren agregadas reproducciones fotográficas de una solicitada publicada por la “Editorial S. A. Mouton y Cía.”, de la ciudad de la Haya, por la cual se destaca que la edición en ruso hecha por dicha editorial no fue autorizada por el editor Italiano, expresando al respecto el denunciante Mendilaharzu, “de lo quo surge el reconocimiento expreso de los derechos de Feltrinelli Editore hasta para publicar en ruso”, y agrega que “tiene entendido que sería materialmente imposible la prueba negativa en todos los países del mundo tendiente, a acreditar que no ha sido publicada la obra citada y que no preexiste una otra autorización a la de Feltrinelli. Que todos los elementos de juicio citados constituyen la presunción “juris tantum” de la primera publicación, que lo es la de Feltrinelli, en los términos de la Convención de Ginebra”. Luego de sugerir la solicitud de informes de editores argentinos acerca de cómo, en el consenso de éstos, de la de Feltrinelli la primera edición en el mundo, expresa que “considera que no podría realizar otra prueba que la referida, tendiente a acreditar que la primera publicación es la de Feltrinelli”.
A fs. 16 y 66, presta declaración testimonial Ofelia Secchia y refiere que, a solicitud del imputado Castagnola, facilitó a éste su domicilio y teléfono “para utilizarlos a raíz de un aviso que colocaría en los diarios, ofreciendo la venta de un libro”.
A f. 68, depone Mercedes Sobrino, que adquiriera en comercio de plaza un ejemplar de “El Doctor Zhivago”, en la “Editorial Forjador”.
A f. 67 y f. 09, respectivamente, Santiago Sentís Melendo y Rogelio Tomás Avalis manifiestan haber visto vender en la vía pública las ediciones impugnadas.
A fs. 132/vta., concluye el denunciante expresando: “Que en Italia, como en los restantes países de Europa, las leyes sobre derechos de autor no imponen formalidades a los efectos del amparo del derecho; que algunas, como Italia, tienen instituido un Registro voluntario de obras editadas en el país a los efectos de mejor pre constituir la prueba de un derecho, razón por la cual Feltrinelli realizó tal inscripción, como lo prueba el certificado glosado a f. 34, al cual sólo falta la legalización por parte de nuestro Min. de Relaciones Exteriores de la firma del cónsul argentino”.
En la demanda promovida por “Editorial Noguer” (S. A.) contra “Editorial Forjador y otros, sobre daños e intereses, ante el juzgado nacional de 1ª instancia en lo civil a cargo del Dr. Alberto R. H. Gartland, secretaría del Dr. Julio S. Gerez, donde la actora consiguió se librara manda, miento de secuestro de la edición Impugnada bajo caución, al presentarse en autos Demetrio Castagnola, en su carácter de único propietario de la “Editorial Forjador, que tiene en trámite la edición de la obra debatida (f. 29 del juicio que corre por cuerda), manifiesta que Feltrinelli publicó la obra en Italia contra prohibición que le hizo conocer Pasternak y que la primera publicación de aquella se efectuó en una revista literaria soviética en forma incompleta, citando al respecto un artículo de Juan Rodolfo Wilcock publicado en “La Prensa” de nov. 9/958, en que se expresa que “la Convención Universal de Ginebra, ratificada por la República Argentina, no es aplicable a este caso por ser Pasternak ruso, la obra «El Doctor Zhivago» rusa, desde que la Unión Rusa de los Soviets no ratificó la referida Convención Universal… si la primera publicación de la obra se hubiera efectuado en Italia, y se tratara de una edición autorizada por el autor, la obra podría tener la protección de la Convención de Ginebra. Como esto no ocurrió en el caso de «El Doctor Zhivago» como ya se ha dicho, el editor Feltrinelli y después la «Editorial Noguer» quieren valerse de la Convención de Ginebra para privar a otros editores del derecho que ellos están usufructuando, desde que de ningún documento resulta que abonen derechos de autor a Pasternak o que tengan concluido con éste algún pacto” en relación con los referidos derechos… Tampoco debemos olvidar que la U.R.S.S. no protege las obras de autores extranjeros, publicadas fuera de Rusia, salvo los casos en que la Unión Soviética tiene concluido un acuerdo con país en que se publicó la obra. Todas las obras argentinas pueden traducirse y publicarse en Rusia, sin abonar derecho alguno a su autor, siendo lógico que nosotros tengamos idéntico derecho con respecto a las obras rusas. Lo mismo ocurre con Italia y por ello la edición de Feltrinelli no es ilícita, a pesar de no tenerse autorización de Pasternak, desde que las obras de éste, y especialmente «El Doctor Zhivago», son propiedad pública en Italia y también en España…”.
A f. 21 de los autos “Editorial Noguer (S. A.) v. “D.E.R.” (S. R. L.), s/daños e intereses, promovidos por igual razón que el anterior y donde se lograra secuestrar bajo caución los plomos destinados a imprimir la edición impugnada, manifiesta Damián Carlos Hernández, en representación de la demandada, de la que es integrante, que la actora, para probar la exclusividad del derecho de traducción y publicación en castellano de la obra, debe acreditar: “a) que el autor era titular de su obra en todos los países del mundo; b) que aquél cedió válidamente a la Editorial Feltrinelli el derecho exclusivo de traducción a todos los idiomas de «El Doctor Zhivago»; c) que en esa cesión se cumplieron los requisitos exigidos por la ley italiana de protección del derecho de autor”.
En cuanto al punto a), dice que Pasternak no tiene sobre su obra el derecho exclusivo de traducción en virtud de no ser incluido tal derecho expresamente entre los que le pertenecen como autor en el art. 7 de la “Ley básica de derechos de autor” para La U.R.S.S. y además por no considerar violatorio de tal derecho a la traducción de la obra el art. 9 de la ley citada. Manifiesta que “este particularísimo régimen legal —que se funda en los beneficios de la difusión popular de las obras intelectuales dentro y fuera, de las fronteras soviéticas—, se confirma con otra disposición de la “Ley complementaria” de oct. 8/928 (texto oficial ruso publicado en “Sobranie Uzakonenil de las Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas”, Nº 132, de 1929, texto 861), cuyo art. 16 dispone que “el derecho de hacer traducciones y, de igual modo, las actuales traducciones al idioma ruso, de obras literarias publicadas en idiomas extranjeros dentro de los límites de la U.R.S.S., o fuera de sus limites, podrá ser declarado monopolio de la República por una Resolución del Consejo de Ministros de la U.R.S.S. Quiere ello decir que la regla general es también aquí la libertad de traducir.. .”.
El suscrito ha tenido a la vista el texto de la “Ley básica de «copyright» de la U.R.S.S.” en la publicación efectuada por la UNESCO bajo el título “Copyright laws and treaties of the world” en 1956, que se encuentra en el Reg. Nac. de la Propiedad Intelectual, actualizada por comunicaciones cursadas por la entidad internacional, haciendo saber modificaciones de las diversas leyes. El art. 7 establece que “el autor debe tener el derecho exclusivo de publicar su obra, bajo su nombre real, seudónimo, o sin indicar su nombre (anónimo), y a reproducir o dar curso a su obra por cualquier conducto legal dentro del período de tiempo fijado por la ley y a trasmitir los beneficios de ese derecho en cualquier forma legal”: el art. 9 preceptúa: “las siguientes no son infracciones a los derechos de autor: a) traducción de la obra de otra persona a un idioma distinto…”; el art. 16 dice: “El derecho de autor podrá ser enajenado en su totalidad o en parte por un contrato de edición, testamento o cualquier otra forma legal”; y el art. 20 establece, por último, que “el derecho de autor sobre cualquier obra puede ser compulsoriamente comprado por el Gobierno de la Unión Soviética o por el Gobierno de la República Constituyente en cuyo territorio fuera publicado primeramente como manuscrito, sketch o en cualquier otra forma de presentación”.
En cuanto a lo expresado en el punto c), manifiesta que, en el supuesto de haberse realizado realmente la cesión, no domiciliándose Pasternak en Italia, no le es aplicable la “ley italiana de derechos de autor” de 1941, que establece ese requisito para brindar su protección.
El suscrito tuvo también a la vista la ley italiana 633, para la protección del derecho de autor y otros derechos conexos con el ejercicio de los mismos, de abr. 22/941, actualmente en vigencia de acuerdo con la publicación de la UNESCO ya citada, en cuyo art. 185 se dice: “De acuerdo con las previsiones del art. 189 de esta ley, se aplicará a todas las obras de autores italianos en cualquier parte donde hayan sido publicadas por primera vez. También se aplicarán a las obras de un autor extranjero domiciliado en Italia, cuando sean publicadas por primera vez en Italia. Aparte de las condiciones de protección indicadas en el parágrafo precedente, esta ley podrá además ser aplicada a la obras de autores extranjeros, cuando se cumplan los requisitos indicados en los artículos siguientes”, estableciendo el art. 186 que “las convenciones internacionales para las protecciones de las obras intelectuales regirán el campo de aplicación de esta ley a las obras de los autores extranjeros”. El segundo parágrafo de este artículo y el 187 fueron suspendidos por el decreto Nº 82, de pag. 23/946 del Gobierno Italiano, sobre supresión de algunas prescripciones concernientes a la esfera de aplicación de la ley 633, y
Considerando:
Que la Convención Universal sobre derecho de autor aprobada en ser. 6/952 por una Conferencia Intergubernamental reunida en Ginebra bajo los auspicios de la UNESCO con la intervención de nuestro país, fue ratificada por decreto-ley Nº 12.088/57 , publicado en el “Bol. Of.” de octubre 15. Tal ratificación tiene vigencia por la validez otorgada a los actos del gobierno “de facto” por ley posterior del gobierno constitucional.
El art. 3 de la citada Convención establece que todo estado contratante considerará satisfechas las formalidades exigidas según su legislación interna, como condición para la protección de los derechos de los autores “para toda obra protegida de acuerdo con los términos de la presente Convención, publicada por primera vez fuera del territorio de dicho Estado por un autor que no sea nacional del mismo, si, desde la primera publicación de dicha obra, todos sus ejemplares, publicados con autorización del autor o de cualquier otro titular de sus derechos, llevan el símbolo, acompañado del nombre del titular del derecho de autor y de la indicación del año de la primero publicación”. Vale decir que la oposición de ese signo constituye sólo una presunción “prima facie” de reserva de derechos, que permitirá eximir al editor de las formalidades nacionales, mas para que su edición sea protegida deberá acreditar que sus ejemplares fueron “publicados con autorización del autor o de cualquier otro titular de sus derechos”.
La medida de esa protección la establece el art. 2, cuando dice: “Las obras publicadas de loe unción a les de cualquier Estado contratante, así como las obras publicadas por primera vez en oí territorio de tal Estado, gozarán en cada uno de los otros Estados contratantes de la protección que cada uno de estos Estados conceda a las obras de sus nacionales publicadas por primera vez en su propio territorio”. Equipara, pues, este artículo, al extranjero con el nacional en cuanto a protección de su derecho y dado que al editor nacional de una obra publicada por primera vez en nuestro propio territorio se le exigirá —para acreditar la titularidad del derecho de propiedad intelectual— probar debidamente la cesión por parte del autor, o que se encuentra en el caso del art. 4, inc. c, ley 11.723 (“los que con permiso del autor la traducen…), es obvio que igual exigencia cabe hacer al editor extranjero.
En tal sentido, considera, el suscrito que no es suficiente para acreditar la cesión de derechos de traducción por parte de Boris I. Pasternak a Feltrinelli la fotocopia de un contrato privado que se habría celebrado entre las partes y que corre a fs. 92/3. Tampoco lo sería el original de dicha fotocopia, que no haría fe suficiente por tratarse de un instrumento privado cuya autenticidad puedo ser puesta en duda. Ello a despecho de que sea común suscribir en forma privado contratos editoriales o de la imposibilidad de que el cedente ratifique ahora el acto —de haberse este realizado realmente— por la situación política en que se encuentra. Tal situación es, precisamente, la que da caracteres especiales a este caso y dificulta la prueba acerca de la verdad de lo acontecido.
No estando suficientemente acreditada la cesión no corresponde entrar a considerar si el cedente, en caso de haberla realizado, lo habría hecho con derecho de acuerdo con la ley rusa ya trascrita: si las limitaciones que ésta contiene afectan la cesión; y si influye para la solución del caso la circunstancia de que la Convención de Ginebra de 1952 no haya sido ratificada por la U.R.S.S. Tampoco es menester entrar a considerar si está suficientemente probado que la edición de “Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milano” de 1957, fue la primera publicación mundial de la obra.
La forma de tutela penal de los derechos intelectuales queda concretada en la ley 11.723 por medio de los arts. 71, 72 y siguientes. La primera norma reprime con la pena establecida en el art. 172 al que “de cualquier manera y en cualquier forma defraude los derechos de propiedad intelectual que reconoce esta ley”. La Cam. Crim. Cap. ha establecido, en fallo publicado en “La Ley”, t. 2, p. 454 , que es condición imprescindible anterior y previa para la aplicación de esa norma, que exista una defraudación en el sentido jurídico de este vocablo, surgiendo ello del texto expreso de la ley y de lo manifestado en oportunidad de su sanción por el miembro informante del proyecto en la Cámara de Diputados de la Nación.
El art. 72, aplicable en este caso, estatuye que “se considerarán casos especiales de defraudación y sufrirán la pena por él establecida, además del secuestro de la edición ilícita; a) El que edite, venda o reproduzca por cualquier medio o instrumento, una obra inédita o publicada sin autorización de su autor o derechohabientes…”. La punibilidad surge de la circunstancia de qué el titular del derecho sobre la obra editada, vendida o reproducida no baya autorizado la edición, la venta o la reproducción.
La misma cámara ha establecido, en fallo publicado en “La Ley”, t. 17, p. 724, que el requisito de que la conducta reputada dolosa reúna los elementos del delito de defraudación es aplicable sólo al art. 71, no al 72, pues los enumerados en éste, a pesar de ser considerados “casos especiales de defraudación”, son susceptibles de ser reprimidos con la pena que establece el art. 71, sin que se requiera otra cosa que la presencia de los elementos integrantes de cada uno de ellos (conf. Gómez. “Leyes penales comentadas”, t. 4, p. 287).
La Convención Universal sobre derecho de autor, aprobada en Ginebra en 1952, es un acuerdo internacional de derecho privado y no puede modificar en modo alguno los elementos del delito de defraudación de derechos intelectuales estatuidos con anterioridad a su sanción por la ley 11.723 pues ésta, como toda la materia penal, es de regulación exclusiva del derecho público interno o local, de acuerdo con principios unánimemente establecido en derecho internacional y cuya violación lesionaría la soberanía del Estado afectado. Siendo ello así, la ratificación de la citada Convención no modifica el régimen de tutela penal del derecho de autor estatuido en la ley 11.723 no obstando para arribar a tal conclusión el carácter de Ley Suprema de que la Convención está investida por el art. 31, Const. Nac., dado que tal carácter le es conferido en la materia que regula, es decir, la tutela en el aspecto del derecho privado de la propiedad privada.”
El delito enunciado en el art. 72, inc. a, ley 11.723, está comprendido entro los que ocasionan lesión patrimonial —sin olvidar por ello la protección del derecho moral del autor sobre su obra—; en consecuencia, es menester que exista, para que se perfeccione, perjuicio identificado.
Encontrándose indeterminada la titularidad del patrimonio afectado por lo que queda expuesto y discutido, por otra parte, el derecho a publicar la obra, en los juicios que corren por cuerda; siendo independientes los procesos civil y criminal; y no afectándose sus resoluciones —art. 77, ley cit. , corresponde arribar a esta causa a una resolución de carácter provisorio.
Es menester dejar claramente establecido que el pronunciamiento a que el suscrito llega en esta causa, en modo alguno significa amparar a editores irresponsables de nuestro medio o hacer ilusoria la protección internacional otorgada a los editores extranjeros por la Convención de Ginebra. Si de autos surgiere con evidencia y suficientemente acreditado que el derecho representado del denunciante deriva de quien realizara la primera publicación de la obra, con autorización fehaciente del autor, no vacilaría en otorgarle toda la protección que la ley argentina otorga al nacional en idéntica situación.
Por ello, conforme a lo precedentemente dictaminado por el agente fiscal y de acuerdo con lo dispuesto en el art. 435, C. Pr. Cr., resuelvo sobreseer provisionalmente en esta causa; déjense sin efectos las órdenes de secuestro decretadas; líbrese en tal sentido oficio a la Policía Federal y exhorto al juez en lo criminal en turno de Mar del Plata. — Jorge Alberto Aguirre (Sec.: Oscar Jorge García Rúa).

_____

SENTENCIA DE 2º INSTANCIA.
Buenos Aires, setiembre 1 de 1959.—
Considerando:
Como lo pone de manifiesto el a quo en la resolución de f. 142, a la que se remite el pronunciamiento recurrido, no se ha acreditado en autos que la edición Feltrinelli de la obra “El Doctor Zhivago”, de Boris Leonidovic Pasternak, se haya publicado con autorización de su autor o de cualquier otro titular de sus derechos como lo exige el art. 3 de la Convención de Ginebra para que la obra sea protegida.
El mencionado artículo solamente exime al editor del cumplimiento de algunas formalidades pero no de acreditar que la edición puesta en circulación es legítima, sea ésta o no la primera, pues también siendo la primera puede ser clandestina y no merece protección alguna.
Por ello y por no haber acreditado el recurrente que sea la persona particularmente ofendida por el delito que denuncia, se confirma la resolución apelada en cuanto fue materia de apelación, con costas.
— ERNESTO N. BLACK — ARTURO M. JOFRE — JOSE F. ARGIBAY MOLINA.

 

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank Carlo Feltrinelli was his generous and continued support and for having given me permission to quote from the Feltrinelli archives in Milan.

Bibliography

Unpublished sources:

Fondo Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan: Fascicoli Gaisenhayner, Pardo, Tesone.

Archivio Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Carte Pasternak: fascicolo Collins.

Published sources:

Araújo, M., 1958, Para Comprendeer ‘O doutor Jivago’” COPAC, Rio de Janeiro.

Barnes, C., 1998, Boris Pasternak, A literary bibliography, vol. 2. 1928-1960, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Feltrinelli, C., 1999, Senior Service, Feltrinelli Editore, Milano. Translated into English, with a few cuts, as: Senior Service, Granta Books, London, 2001. The American edition, published in 2001 by Harcourt, cuts several additional important parts of the book.

Garcia, Ivan, and San Vicente, Ricard, 2011, Sobre El doctor Jivago i les seves versions, [in Catalan], TRILCAT, 45 pp.

Grandi, A., 2000, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. La dinastia, il rivoluzionario, Baldini&Castoldi, Milano.

Iannello, G., 2009, ‘Zivago tradito’: storia delle traduzioni manomesse del romanzo di Pasternak in Italia, in Parysiewicz Lanzafame, A., ed., Pietro Zveteremich. L’uomo, lo slavista, l’intellettuale. Atti del convegno di studi, Centro di Studi Umanistici, Messina, 2009, pp. 109-116.

Mancosu, P., 2013, Inside the Zhivago Storm. The editorial adventures of Pasternak’s masterpiece, Feltrinelli, Milan.

Mancosu, P., 2015, Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates. Itineraries in the publishing history of Doctor Zhivago, Hoover Press, Stanford.

Pasternak, 1957, Il Dottor Zivago. Romanzo, Feltrinelli, Milan,

Pasternak, 1958a, El Doctor Yivago, translated by Vladimir Koslov and Jorge Diez Cardoso, Ediciones Capricornio, Mexico.

Pasternak, 1958b, El Doctor Jivago, (Galeria Literaria), translated by Fernando Gutiérrez, Noguer, Barcelona-Mexico.

Pasternak, 1958c, El Doctor Yivago, translated by Juan Robledo, Ediciones Indice, Buenos Aires.

Pasternak, 1958d, El Doctor Yivago, El Forjador, Buenos Aires.

Pasternak, 1958e, El Doctor Zhivago, translated by Vicente Oliva, Minerva, Montevideo.

Pasternak, 1958f, El Doctor Zhivago, Editora Quetzal.

Pasternak, 1958g, O doutor Jivago, translated by Oscar Mendes and Milton Amado, Editora ITATIAIA, Belo Horizonte, first edition.

Pasternak, B., 1958h, Doktor Zhivago. Roman, Feltrinelli (-Mouton), [The Hague].

Pasternak, B., 1958i, Le Docteur Jivago, Flammarion, Paris.

Pasternak, B., 1958k, Doctor Zhivago, English translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari, Collins Press, London.

Pasternak, B., 1958l, Doctor Zhivago, with revisions to the English translation, Pantheon, New York.

Pasternak, 1959a, Doctor Yivago, Ediciones Ciceron, Montevideo.

Pasternak, 1959b, O doutor Jivago, translated by Oscar Mendes and Milton Amado, Editora ITATIAIA, Belo Horizonte, second edition.

Pasternak, 1959c, Autobiografia, translated by Olga Ricart de Weeren, Editorial del Nuevo Extremo, Santiago del Chile, Chile.

Pasternak, B., 1959d, Doktor Zhivago. Roman, Société d’Edition et d’Impression Mondial, Paris.

Pasternak, 1960, O doutor Jivago, translated by Augusto Abelaria with preface by Aquilino Ribeiro, Livraria Bertrand, Lisbon.

Pasternak, 1964, Doktor Zhivago. Roman, Zemlia i Fabrika, Moscow [but in reality, Flegon Press, London].

Pasternak, B., 1994, Lettres à mes amies françaises. 1956-1960, Introduction et Notes de Jacqueline de Proyart, Gallimard

Zendejas, F, 1958, La pasón de Pasternak (premio nobel 1958). Con fragmentos del libro « El Doctor Yivago »/El misterio del caso Pasternak, México: Libro Mex Eds., pp. 147.

 

The Spanish edition

Feltrinelli began selling the translation rights to the Zhivago in Spring 1957. The first to obtain translation rights was Collins, followed in the fall by Gallimard. On November 25 1957, Feltrinelli had expressed himself pessimistically about the possibility of publishing the novel in Spain. He wrote to his agent Gaisenheyner:

“Zu Spanien haben wir dass Buch nicht verkauft werden es auch auf grunder der dort wirkenden politischen Lage nich noch verkaufen.”[sic] (Fondo Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, dossier Gaisenheyner))

But in 1958, Feltrinelli sold the translation rights for the Spanish language to the Editorial Noguer of Barcelona (with an important branch in Mexico). Noguer signed the contract with Feltrinelli on November 14, 1958

Feltrinelli also gave Noguer the rights and distribution over Mexico, Central America, and all of South America, except Brazil. Indeed, Noguer immediately published two editions in Mexico (15,000 copies in 1958) in November (the copyright page says October for the first edition but that’s misleading). On November 26 , in La Vanguardia Española (p. 19), Noguer justified the late launching of the book in Spain (i.e. with the third edition) on account of the heavy demand in Latin America. The person who was key to the publication of the Zhivago at Noguer was José Pardo, who informed Feltrinelli about the success of the book on February 10, 1959. The book had been published just after the Nobel Prize award. In two months, that is until the close of 1958, it had sold 63,000 copies (including the 15,000 published in Mexico). In 1958 there were eight editions (printings). By February 10, two more printings had been published with one more in the making (the eleventh). The translation was the work of Fernando Gutierrez. This translation, carried out from the Italian edition, was thus the only licensed one and as such it was the only one that could be sold from Mexico to Argentina.

So much for the authorized Spanish edition. But soon after the Nobel Prize six different pirate editions were being prepared and five of them actually appeared, in addition to a digest of the novel. It is now quite difficult to list them in chronological order as we have scant information, for obvious reasons, as to when exactly the editions were prepared and when they exactly came out. Of the six pirate editions, one came out in Mexico, two in Uruguay and two in Argentina. A third pirate edition in Argentina was stopped successfully by Feltrinelli’s lawyer Tesone. In this post I will deal with Mexico and Uruguay.

Mexico. The pirate edition that came out in Mexico was published by “Ediciones Capricornio”and was titled “El Doctor Yivago”.

This edition is now quite difficult to find. It has 537 pages and was translated by Vladimir Koslov y Jorge Diez Cardoso. This translation was carried out on the English translation published by Collins (which is different from the Pantheon translation, itself a revised translation of the Collins one). It is easy to confirm this by looking at the list of main characters of the novel (taken straight out of the Collins edition), the table of content (which translates the title of Chapter 11 as “La hermandad del bosque” (Forest brotherhood) as opposed to “la milicia” or “el ejercito” as in the Italian and French versions), and the very first page of the translation. That the translation is the Collins one and not the revised Pantheon one is shown by the fact that the very first line of translation gives the hymn as “Memoria Eterna”: the British translation has “Eternal Memory” whereas the American one changed it to “Rest Eternal”. The French uses “chant funèbre” and although the Italian translation has “Memoria Eterna” it misses a whole sentence later in the page that is contained in this translation (and the British text). In any case the syntactic analysis of the first page of translation shows unequivocally that the Collins translations was the source.

A brief mention should also be made of a book that contained fragments of Doctor Zhivago (also spelled ‘Doctor Yivago’), also without Feltrinelli’s permission, namely Zendejas’ La Pasión de Pasternak (1958).

The book contains, in addition to two essays on Pasternak by Francisco Zendejas and Victor Alba, respectively, two prose fragments (which had already appeared in the literary supplement Mexico en la Cultura of November 9, 1958) and eight poems of the Zhivago cycle translated from English. The book contains some beautiful drawings by Vlady, i.e. Victor Serge’s son, who had settled in Mexico with his father in 1941 (On Vlady see Jean-Guy Rens, Vlady. De la Revolución al renacimiento, Sigli XXI Editores, México, 2005). It was published on November 22, 1958.

Uruguay. Moving now to Uruguay, we have two editions. The first by Editorial Minerva was translated by Vicente Oliva. It has 542 pages.

It came out in at least two editions (the second one of which was printed on December 10, 1958) but both of them after the Nobel Prize.

The other edition was printed by Ediciones Ciceron and came out in 1959 (589 pp.). The translation was by Juan Manuel Alfieri.

Both editions were made from the Italian translation, as it is soon revealed by the omission of a line of prayer in both translations (this omission is found in Zveteremich’s translation and it was an obvious oversight since the original Russian typescript has it and it is in fact found in both the French and the English translations). Incidentally, the Italian translation made by Pietro Zveteremich (see Mancosu, 2013, pp.29-34) was modified in the course of the years (see Iannello 2009).

Despite being pirate editions they both claim copyright in the first pages of the book. In the next post I will discuss the pirate editions published in Argentina. Unlike those discussed so far, the Argentinian situation was to create some interesting troubles for Feltrinelli and Pasternak.

 

 

 

Feltrinelli, Pasternak, and the contract on Doctor Zhivago.

In my book “Inside the Zhivago Storm. The editorial adventures of Pasternak’s masterpiece” (Feltrinelli, Milan, 2013) and in Mancosu (2015), I have devoted a great deal of attention to the history of the Russian pirate editions in the West (Pasternak 1958h, Pasternak 1959d, Pasternak 1964). The interest of the topic is twofold, for it tells an interesting story about the role of the CIA in the publication of the Russian text and on Feltrinelli’s peculiar position.

Concerning the first aspect, let me recall that the first edition of the Russian text (Pasternak 1958h) came out in an edition financed by the CIA that was printed in The Hague (by the publisher Mouton) and distributed at the World Fair in Brussels in September 1958. In Mancosu 2013 (see chapter 2), I was able to show that this very edition is also the source of another pirate edition in the making, namely that prepared in the summer 1958 by the University of Michigan Press. The evidence for this claim comes from many sources but the smoking gun is provided by the existence of the galley proofs prepared by the University of Michigan Press that are now to be found in the Edmund Wilson archive at Yale University.

The other source of interest in the early pirated editions of the Russian Zhivago concerns the role of Feltrinelli, the publisher who had signed a contract with Pasternak for publication of the Zhivago in Italian and other translations, and who claimed the rights for the Russian edition in the West. Indeed, as Mancosu 2013 shows, whereas Feltrinelli’s publication of the Italian text –the first worldwide publication of Zhivago– in November 1957, put him at the center of attention as an anti-censorship hero, his early hesitation concerning the publication of the Russian Zhivago was used, by several forces unsympathetic to his leftist leanings, to attack him as trying to censor the Zhivago. The accusations came, among other sources, from various anti-Bolshevic organizations, such as the NTS (National Alliance of Russian Solidarists), and from The University of Michigan Press. While the publication of the Mouton edition was completely unexpected, Feltrinelli was able to block the projected Michigan edition by reaching an agreement with Michigan so that the edition would appear under his license.

Feltrinelli’s dealings with Mouton and The University of Michigan Press show a recurrent theme in Feltrinelli’s approach to defending his copyright for the Zhivago, namely threaten legal action but then reach a compromise before a court trial was necessary. The reasons for Feltrinelli’s behavior are to be found in the peculiar situation concerning the signed agreement between Pasternak and Feltrinelli. Pasternak had signed a contract with Feltrinelli on January 30, 1956 (for a photographic reproduction of the signed contract see Mancosu 2013, pp. 206-207). The contract concerned exclusively the translation into Italian and other foreign languages. When the contract was signed, it was expected that the Russian text would have appeared in the USSR and thus no special mention was made of the Russian text. When in 1957 it became clear that the Zhivago would not appear in Russian, Feltrinelli was left in a peculiar position. The contract did not explicitly give him rights for the Russian text, yet the contemporary legislation on copyright in the West protected his rights to the text in whatever form (thus, also in the original Russian, or any other adaptation for motion pictures, radio, television, theater etc.). Thus, he could block anyone else outside the USSR (provided the country involved recognized the Bern and Geneva legislation on copyright) from publishing the Russian text. This is what he did from November 1957 to March 1958, until he decided that he would make a Russian edition himself. But he paid dearly for his first period of hesitation, for the CIA began its publication project already in early spring 1958 and his hesitation, coupled with his leftist leanings, were exploited to associate him with the Soviet as if he were aiding the Soviets to censor the Zhivago (at least in the Russian language). The other complication with Pasternak’s contract was more important. Pasternak was a Soviet citizen and since the late 1920s it had been unconceivable for a Soviet author to publish abroad without first publishing in the USSR (which meant receiving approval for publication by the political/literary forces controlling the literary activity in the USSR). Signing a contract with a foreign publisher was an act of defiance. Even worse, receiving foreign royalties would have been damning for someone like Pasternak who had been attacked since the 1930s as bourgeois, idealistic, and cosmopolitan. For this reason, the contract with Pasternak could not be shown and this affected Feltrinelli’s approach to the defense of his copyright in the Western world. As I mentioned, he was able to reach a compromise with Mouton and the University of Michigan Press without having to show his contract and without entering protracted legal confrontation. But this was before the Nobel Prize award in October 1958.

After the Nobel Prize, the interest on Pasternak became massive. The first negotiations for a motion picture of the Zhivago, in October/November 1958, were abandoned by Feltrinelli exactly because he would have had to display the contract (and provide further contractual evidence concerning his rights to motion pictures, which were not included in the contract; see Mancosu 2013, pp. 294-298).

The pirates of the Russian text were driven by ideological motivation and the editions in question were not done for profit. Once Pasternak got the Nobel Prize, financial gains motivated different publishers around the world to come out with editions that were not licensed by Feltrinelli. Thus, Feltrinelli had to defend his copyright (and Pasternak’s interests) through legal action in many different parts of the world. At his side was the lawyer Antonio Tesone, who was in charge of the complex legal negotiations involved in protecting the copyright. The Feltrinelli archives in Milan contain many documents witnessing the legal battles that Tesone had to wage against the Russian pirate editions and against pirate editions in, among others countries, Greece, Turkey, and South America.

In this and the next two posts, I would like to tell the story of the editions in Portuguese and Spanish, especially the pirate ones made in Mexico and South America, for the story offers a telling insight into the delicate balance between the battle for the copyright and Feltrinelli’s principle that the contract with Pasternak was not to be shown, in order to protect the latter from retaliation in his own country. In addition, this will allow me to present in detail the different Portuguese and Spanish editions of the Zhivago that appeared in Mexico and South America between late 1958 and 1959. These editions have never been studied in detail and some of them are now very difficult to find. These posts extend the treatment of the pirate editions in South America given in Mancosu (2015). The bibliography, credits, and acknowledgements will be given at the end of the third post

The Portuguese editions

In November 1957, Feltrinelli offered to the German agent Ernst Geisenheyner the task of selling the rights for the Lusophone area (Geisenheyner was already in charge of selling the German translation rights and also dealt with Dutch). Despite competing interest from two Portuguese publishers, Editoria Ulissia in Lisbon (request made on February 3, 1958) and Editora Livros do Brazil (request made on July 23, 1958), the rights were sold to Livraria Itatiaia in Belo Horizonte (for Brazil) and to Livraria Bertrand in Lisbon (for Portugal).

On March 4, 1958, Geisenheyner wrote to Feltrinelli:

Bezüglich des portugiesischen Sprachraumes verhandle ich mit einem großen Verlag in Lissabon und einen Verlag in Brasilien. Ich hoffe, daß es bei diesem beiden Verlagen in absehbarer Zeit ebenfalls zu Abschlüssen kommt. Allerdings glaube ich, daß wir hier keine allzu hohen Vorschüsse herausholen können, da es sich um ein relative kleines und was den Buchverkauf betrifft nicht sehr ergiebiges Sprachgebiet handelt. (Fondo Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan, dossier “Geysenheyner”)

Itatiaia, ­ a publishing house founded in 1953 by the brothers Pedro Paulo and Edison Moreira, published a first edition in 1958, after the Nobel Prize, and a second one in early 1959 (and several other after that). Since the negotiations with Itatiaia were still pending on September 16, 1958 (letter from Geisenheyner to Feltrinelli), and a signed contract from Itatiaia arrived only on October 2, 1958, it is quite possible that the translation into Portuguese had already begun by the time the contract was signed. Indeed, it is interesting that the first edition does not have in the copyright page any reference to Feltrinelli whereas the second edition does. Perhaps the agreement with Feltrinelli arrived too late for mention of the copyright in the first edition of the book. That an edition had been in the making before the agreement with Feltrinelli is also confirmed by two more details. First, Geisenheyner informed Feltrinelli that the negotiations with Itatiaia had been complicated and involved three agents. Second, it is virtually impossible that a translation could have been done in less than two months. It is however the case that the translation was done very fast. The reason is that the book was translated from the French version that appeared only in July 1958. The translation was the work of Oscar Mendez and Milton Amado. The poems were translated by Heitor Martins.

How the interest of Itatiaia for the book originated is described in a touching report of the excitement surrounding the sale of Doctor Zhivago in Brazil. (click here)

Here is the relevant passage, which shows how wrong Geisenheyner had been in saying to Feltrinelli that Brazil was after all a relatively small market.

A história da Livraria Itatiaia liga-se à rua da Bahia graças a uma outra história: a do romance Doutor Jivago, do russo Boris Pasternak. O livro, que começou a ser escrito entre 1910 e 1920 [[this is incorrect]], foi concluído apenas em 1956, dois anos após os irmãos Moreira [[Pedro Paulo Moreira, publisher of Doctor Zhivago in Brazil; Edison Moreira, Brazilian poet, brother and business partner of Pedro Paulo]]… Com a sua publicação impedida pelo governo soviético, Doutor Jivago cruzou sorrateiramente as fronteiras da Cortina de Ferro para ser publicado na Itália, em 1957. Um ano depois, Oscar Mendes, um dos intelectuais que então compunham o time de tradutores da Itatiaia, teve acesso à edição francesa do Jivago, cedida a ele por Marie-Louise Bataille, uma das agentes literárias francesas que è época abasteciam Edison e Pedro Paulo. O tradutor leu e disse aos Moreira: “Achei muito interessante! Se quiserem publicar, traduzo com gosto!”

Milton Amado e Heitor Martins juntaram-se a Oscar Mendes e a tarefa tradutória começou. Foi quando Pasternak recebeu o prêmio Nobel da Academia Sueca. O evento por si só já alavanca as vendas de qualquer livro, mas, neste caso, o episódio ganha dimensão ainda maior com a recusa de Pasternak em receber a láurea a saída da União Soviética poderia implicar a perda de sua cidadania, o que o escritor preferiu evitar, declinando do convite para ir à Suécia. Pedro Paulo logo entendeu a importância da publicação de uma edição em português. Com o rebuliço em torno do Jivago, a Itatiaia recebeu 50 mil pedidos adiantados. Pedro Paulo, que então estabelecera uma tiragem de 75 mil, achou por bem dobrá-la: “Era uma loucura! À medida que as traduções iam ficando prontas, colocava-as num avião que aluguei e corria para São Paulo, onde as impressões eram feitas”, conta o editor. Na noite de lançamento, ele chegou em cima da hora, trazendo, no avião, cerca de 20 mil volumes: a última leva.

Leny Moreira, mulher de Pedro Paulo, lembra que a noite de lançamento foi “um negócio de doido”: “Era tanta gente na porta da livraria, que precisamos chamar a polícia. Fizeram um cordão de isolamento, organizando a fila enorme que entrava livraria adentro”. Cada exemplar do romance de Pasternak custava 250 cruzeiros. Pedro Paulo estima a venda de inacreditáveis 10 mil exemplares em uma só noite. Além da venda dos livros, a Itatiaia contou com a publicação do romance em formato folhetinesco nos jornais Última Hora e Estado de São Paulo. Nas idas à capital paulista para imprimir o livro, Pedro Paulo conheceu Samuel Wainer, que encantou-se com o livro; e o editor ainda encontrava tempo para dançar com Danuza Leão, mulher do jornalista, vestida provocantemente de vermelho, “espalhando brasa” pelos salões paulistanos.
Com os ganhos que o Doutor Jivago trouxe, a mudança para um espaço maior, na rua da Bahia, não tardou. No fim de 1958, Pedro Paulo celebrou o feliz transcorrer do ano, dedicando um volume do romance russo a Leny. No frontispício, lê-se: “Para Leny, mais uma vitória nossa. Bhte, Natal de 1958″.

In a letter from Tesone to Feltrinelli, dated December 31, 1958, there is talk of a pirate edition in Brazil published by COPAC. Tesone complained that they could not start legal action because they could not locate the publisher. It is quite likely that the book in question was actually a commentary on the Zhivago affair written by Murillo Araújo and published by the editorial COPAC of Rio de Janeiro. The book was titled “Para Comprendeer ‘O doutor Jivago’” with at the bottom of the page “Boris Pasternak. Premio Nobel de Literatura-1958. COPAC”. However, the difference in size of the characters on the title page gave the following visual impression: “O doutor Jivago, Boris Pasternak, COPAC”.

 

This could have fooled many readers into thinking that the book contained large parts of Doctor Zhivago while in effect it only contained translations of a few of the Zhivago poems and a long commentary on the Zhivago affair. This book, which was published at the end of 1958, also mentions the forthcoming translation by Itatiaia (p. 89) and makes no mention of a competing translation by COPAC. It thus seems that Tesone and Feltrinelli had been misinformed as to the exact nature of the COPAC book (although the poems could still not be published without Feltrinelli’s permission).

A second point of interest concerning the Portuguese editions is that they were not done on the Russian original but rather from the French. It had been Geisenheyner who had persuaded Feltrinelli, in a letter dated October 2, 1958, to ask permission from Collins and Gallimard so that the Portuguese translation could be done from the English or the French.

He alleged that this was as a consequence of a lack of qualified translators from Russian into Portuguese, which seems hardly believable. It is more probable that the Brazilian publisher had already started the translation from the French and this was a way to speed up the publication process. Feltrinelli did in fact ask Collins for permission on October 4 and received it in a letter dated October 8. The Itatiaia translation was carried out from the French.

The Livraria Bertrand edition published in Lisbon does not have a date but it came out in 1960.

The translator of the work was Augusto Abelaria and the poems were translated by David Mourao Ferreira. The book contained a preface by Aquilino Ribeiro.

Overall, the Lusophone area did not give too many problems when it came to pirate editions (there was a pirate edition of the Autobiography in Portugal in 1959 but Tesone and Feltrinelli did not pursue it). The situation was dramatically different with translations into Spanish. I will recount the history of the editions in Spanish in the next two posts.

 

At the end of October 1956, Pasternak received a letter from a stranger. The writer was Susana Soca (1906-1959), a Uruguayan poetess. She told Pasternak that she had tried to phone him from Moscow but that she had failed to reach him.

Between 1947 and 1948 Soca edited Les Cahiers de la Licorne in Paris and then from 1953 to 1959 the Entregas de la Licorne in Montevideo. Soca is a fascinating personality and it is not surprising that several biographical studies (by Loustaunau, Litvan, and others) and two book length biographies of Soca have been published (Alvarez 2001, 2007, and Amengual 2012). Both biographies devote much attention to the connection Soca-Pasternak.

I have recently found new documents that add to our knowledge of Soca’s connection to Pasternak and his family and I would like to present these new documents in this post.

My attention to Soca is also instrumental in clarifying the relationship between Pasternak, Hélène Peltier, and the French publishing world. This is a topic that has consequences for claims made about Soca’s involvement, or lack thereof, with Doctor Zhivago but

I will not discuss that part of the story in this post. The letter from Susana Soca to Pasternak has been partially translated into Spanish (Amengual 2012, p. 353, with photograph of the original letter in the appendix; however, the name of Robin was not correctly identified) but has not been published in its original French or in English translation. From the letterhead it can be inferred that the letter was written at the National Hotel in Moscow (The letterhead also displays the Intourist logo). The letter is dated Sunday 21 [October 1956].

Sunday, the 21^st

Pasternak.

I am leaving this instant for Vienna after calling you without success at the number that the young Spanish language specialist at the Russian writers association – it is my native tongue, (I am from Uruguay, in South America) – gave me. She incidentally told me that you would not be here until tonight.

I am quite struck at the thought of having nearly met you. You were the only person I wished to see in Moscow, where I came too fast as I am now going back to Montevideo. I write as well and your poetry is so important to me, at a time when poetry counts for so little in the world that it can and must be of importance to those who live by its side only when it is admirable.

Robin [Armand Robin], your translator had told me a lot about you. And what I would like to ask from you is 2 or 3 poems, untranslated if possible, for the journal I am editing. I am not familiar enough with Russian to dare doing it myself, without a poet of your language. Could you let me know what needs to be done? I was not able to find your poems.

Susana Soca

The young lady at the writers’ association has my address and I am sending her the journal for you. (Courtesy of Elena Vladimirovna Pasternak and Petr Pasternak, Moscow; original in French)

Although the letter was written on October 21, Soca probably entrusted it to someone else

(given that she was leaving the morning after) and the letter was sent after a few days, for the envelope is stamped October 25 on the recto side and October 26 on the verso side. Upon receiving this letter, Pasternak did not even know the name of the journal that Soca edited but by November 23 (when he wrote to his sister Lydia, see below) he was familiar with it, most probably because Soca had sent him the promised copy and it had reached him. As we shall see, Pasternak was quite flattered by Soca’s letter.

The first mention of Soca to his sister Lydia is contained in a letter by Pasternak written on November 23, 1956:

Although I will write about this to professor Berlin in English for practice, but you should know about my request as well. When I am asked for anything for magazines beyond the border, I think the most important thing is that same introduction [Autobiography, aka Autobiographical sketch] which you’ve read. Berlin took it of his own good will, I believe he had the desire to translate the essay and place it somewhere. I repeated many times that that was possible and desirable. But perhaps, B. and his friends don’t have time, or have lost the desire, or they have come across another obstacle. That is another issue. In any case, the request is the following: In Moscow, a publisher of an art magazine, the “Unicorn” from South America, sought to meet me, but due to the brevity of her stay (she left quickly), was unable to achieve this. Her letter is so fervent and brash, that I would like to send her this essay for the magazine. She does not know Russian. If the English or French translation of this essay (the autobiographical essay) is ready or is reaching its completion, I will ask B.[erlin] or GM [Katkov] to send a copy of the translation to her address: Señora Susana Soca, 824 San José, Montevideo, Uruguay. At the worst, also send her the original manuscript, if it is not being translated – it is more likely to arrive from you. (Pasternak 2004, p. 790; original in Russian)

(Incidentally, the sentence ‘Она не знает по русски’, ‘she does not know Russian’, was dropped by mistake from the transcription of the letter in the Russian editions of Pasternak’s family letters. I checked the original which is in the Pasternak Family Papers at Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford.)

By then, Pasternak had received a copy of Entregas de la Licorne, the literary journal edited by Susana Soca.

The day after he wrote to Berlin instructing him to send Soca the original of the autobiographical essay:

Now would you not give away half a kingdom, should a foreign lady write you. Vous étiez la seule personne que je désirais voir à Moscou … Votre poésie est pour moi tellement importante à un moment où la poésie ne peut et ne doit compter dans le monde que quand elle est admirable … etc, etc ….

Take the manuscript of my autobiographical preface (it lies at Oxford useless to you) and send it to:

Senora Susana Soca

824 San José Montevideo Uruguay

Do it, I pray you. (Pasternak to Berlin November 24, 1956; The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust)

While it is hard to know when exactly Pasternak replied to Soca, I conjecture that he had already done so by November 4 and without any doubt before November 14. Indeed, in a letter to his sisters written on November 4, Pasternak said:

There have been delegations here from the West, and some of them suggested that the autobiographical sketch should be suitable for a journal such as Encounter, or some French equivalent. Why hasn’t that happened? Has the material been rejected as insufficiently interesting? If the autobiographical sketch, or selected extracts from it, were to be published in the West, that would greatly assist the projects I’ve just described, which I’ve been intentionally holding up until the editors have seen the autobiography. G.M. [Katkov] and his friend mustn’t be surprised if they get requests for copies of it from unexpected parts of the world such as Bulgaria or Uruguay or Argentina. (Pasternak 2010, p. 385)

The mention of Uruguay is surely not accidental. Katkov’s friend is obviously Isaiah Berlin. Already on November 15, Soca wrote a telegram to Pasternak from Paris saying “Reçu textes Ecrirai de Montevideo Merci pour tout Susana Soca”. It is obvious that Pasternak had replied to her and in all likelihood had sent the two poems that she ended up publishing (“Without title” and “In the hospital”) in the August 1957 issue of Entregas de la Licorne. Indeed, as it transpires from the correspondence between Lydia Pasternak and Susana Soca (see below), Pasternak seems to have sent to Soca several poems, perhaps as many as ten. I exclude he had sent at this stage the first part of the Autobiography which was also published in the same issue of Entregas de la Licorne. If he had done so there would have been no need to ask Lydia and Berlin, as late as November 23, to send the Autobiography to Soca. The issue was certainly discussed in Oxford where the debate about whether to publish anything by Boris (including the Autobiography) at the moment was occupying Maurice Bowra, George Katkov, Lydia and Josephine Pasternak, and Isaiah Berlin. Berlin was adamant that it was better to wait. A passage from Lydia’s diary from December 7, 1956, informs us that Berlin was also against publication in Uruguay:

Berlin called – talked for a long time, he’s even against printing in Uruguay. (Lydia Pasternak’s diary, December 7, 1956; Pasternak Family Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford)

Since the only address Soca had given Pasternak was a Montevideo address, it appears that Pasternak sent the letter to Montevideo. That Pasternak’s letter was sent to Montevideo is also confirmed by a footnote added to the third and last installment (the first had appeared in August 1957, issues 9-10, pp. 19-30  and the second in 1958, issue 11, pp. 75-80) of Pasternak’s excerpts from the Autobiography, which were published in Entregas de La Licorne, 12, 1959 (Boris Pasternak: Memorias. Los años del novecientos, pp. 9-16).

Regrettably, Pasternak’s first (and perhaps only) letter to Soca can no longer be located. However, Susana Soca gave a rather lengthy excerpt of the letter in a piece she published in August 1957 in Entregas de la Licorne.

The relevant passage is the following:

But this is nothing at all. They are no more than trifles. I have the feeling that, just in front of our eyes, a completely new era is being born and that it will develop every day without our noticing it. It is new for the tasks it will have to face as well as for the requirements of the heart and of human dignity; it develops silently and without doubt it will never be officially inaugurated. Some unrelated poems and of a specific character are an insufficient measure for meditation on such vast, such complex and novel things. Only prose and philosophy legitimate an attempt in this direction. It is for this reason that the best I have accomplished in my life, up to this point, is the novel Doctor Zhivago… I blush when I realize that, on account of a rather sad set of events, I have gained a truly excessive reputation, based on my early writings, while my most recent work, whose significance is altogether different, are ignored (especially in the area of the novel). (Excerpt from a letter from Pasternak to Sosa, first published in Spanish in Entregas de la Licorne 1957, p. 9; and then in original French in Marcha, 1959, p. 20)

In a footnote Soca explicitly says that the above passage is from Pasternak’s reply to her first letter. It is quite obvious that Pasternak’s letter contained more and in my forthcoming book (see acknowledgements) I reconstruct the other parts of the letter which, as I have mentioned, regarded Peltier’s role in negotiations between the French publishers and Pasternak. I will not pursue this here.

Part of the correspondence between Lydia Pasternak Slater and Susana Soca is preserved in the Pasternak Family Papers at Hoover Institution Library and Archives. The early part of the correspondence between Lydia Pasternak and Susana Soca (and her secretary and Russian teacher Nadia Verbina) and further correspondence between Verbina and Pasternak was not available to Álvarez Márquez and Amengual when they wrote their biographies of Soca. For this reason, I will add here some new information and provide translations of the relevant documents.

The first contact between Lydia Pasternak and Susana Soca seems to have been established by Lydia who, not knowing which languages Soca mastered and having been told by Boris that Soca did not know Russian (see letter from Boris to Lydia cited above), wrote in French in late December 1956.

She told Soca that she and her sister Josephine differed from her brother’s opinion about the advisability of publishing something in translation that had not yet been published in Russian. She also tried to put Soca in contact with her long time friend, Anatol (Tolya) Saderman, who had previously lived in Montevideo and was now a renowned photographer in Buenos Aires. Lydia’s idea was that Saderman could perhaps assist with the translation of her brother’s texts into Spanish. Here is the draft of Lydia Pasternak’ s letter to Susana Soca sent soon after Christmas 1956 and before the new year:

Dear Madam,

Merry Christmas (too late!) and happy new year!

Please forgive me for my horrible French – I use it only because I know that you don’t understand Russian and I don’t know if you know English. My brother has asked me to send you his article ?; I will do so in a few days when I hope to receive the copies but they are in Russian. Would it be possible for you to have them translated or would you prefer that I arrange for them to be translated first? I have a very good Russian friend, a bit of an amateur poet, who has lived for many years in Montevideo (perhaps you know him? his name is Anatole Saderman, a photographer-artist) and for this reason he could probably translate the article without problem (if he has time!) I will send him a copy and ask him if he wants to do it. Perhaps you would be able to communicate with him directly? His address now is A. Saderman Lavalle Buenos Aires, Argentina

My brother is of a different opinion but my sister and I we are very worried not to have published it before it has appeared in Russia prefer that this article is not published abroad before it is published in Russia, this could be dangerous.

All the very best

I wish you, dear madam, a happy new year, joyful and peaceful. Lydia Pasternak Slater (Pasternak Family Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford, Box 100, folder “Soca”; original in French)

A reply written in Russian by Susana Soca’s secretary, Nadia Verbina, on January 14, 1957 reads:

Montevideo 14. I-1957.

Dearest Madame Slater!

I am responding upon Miss Soca’s request. Miss Soca asks to tell you that she perfectly understands, reads, and speaks Russian, but writes with difficulty, therefore I am the one responding. She also perfectly knows English, German, and French, so that in the future you could write to her in whichever of these 4 or 5 languages. Right now Miss Soca with my help is translating your brother’s poems and will try to print them in the next issue of her magazine. When you send your brother’s other books, Miss Soca will immediately try to translate and print all that will be possible.

Greetings, Nadezhda Verbina.

The letter clarifies some uncertainty in the literature as to whether Verbina’s connection to Lydia Pasternak Slater predates the contact between Pasternak and Soca. It is obvious from the above exchange that Verbina had no contact with Lydia before this exchange. As it transpires from Lydia’s diary, the first half of the Autobiography was sent by Lydia to Soca on February 27, 1957:

“looked through Borya’s photocopy, sorted the first part, ending with Tolstoy’s death, gathered all the business papers, went […] to the bank […] put Borya’s [[documents]] in the big purchased envelope […] went finally (intended since the morning) to the post office, sent Soca half of Borya’s manuscript (regist, airmail), and also a pink slip so as to know.” (Pasternak Family Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford).

Replies by Soca (in French) and Verbina (in Russian) followed on 24 and 25 April 1957 announcing that the translator for the Autobiography had been found (the translator’s name is not mentioned but his name was Gregorio Hintz). Here is the letter by Soca:

Dear Madam,

I received with joy your brother’s admirable essay [récit, as in Autobiographical Essay]. We are trying to have it translated here at the moment and Mme Verbina and I are working on the translation. A part of the poems is here. But I was counting on Armand Robin, translator of your brother’s poems into French, for a more elegant job. Robin has a lot of talent but he is very pessimistic and rather bizarre. He claims, against all evidence, that I have not left with him the six poems that he had chosen in Paris. I am rather intrigued by this attitude. I attribute it to a political reason. At this moment he his an anarchist and furiously anti-soviet. I wonder whether this is not better for your brother in a certain sense. But we must recover the poems. I beg you to write personally to Mr. Robin. As I do not have the address I give you the address of an Uruguayan writer who his the middle man in my relation to Robin, a young poet in the style of the poet Jules Supervielle and who admires your brother very much. I hope to meet you during my next trip and I look forward to your opinion on the matter of Robin’s attitude once you have received his response.

With very best wishes, Susana Soca

P.S. The address is Mr Ricardo Paseyro. Pour Mr Armand Robin 12 rue Massenet XVI Paris (Pasternak Family Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford, box 100, folder 5; original in French).

Ricardo Paseyro is often mentioned in Alvarez 2001, 2007 and Amengual 2012. He was a poet and a diplomat and had married the daughter of Jules Supervielle (see Paseyro 2007 for his memoirs). It is regrettable that we don’t have Lydia’s letter which accompanied the sending of the Autobiography, for it would have clarified the issue concerning Robin and the poems (incidentally, there is also no extant correspondence between Lydia Pasternak and Robin or Paseyro among Lydia’s papers and correspondence). Nadia Verbina also added a letter:

Montevideo 24. IV 1957

Dearest Miss Slater. I am adding a few lines to Madame Soca’s letter. All this time we attempted to find a translator (who knows Russian and Spanish perfectly), but we still haven’t been able to come across anyone appropriate. We are translating, when possible, (excerpts) from the your brother’s autobiography. Madame Soca is hoping to publish at least excerpts in her magazine.

Regarding the poems, we still haven’t received anything from Paris. When you will be writing to Armand Robin, (he has the 5 best poems), also write to Mr. Paseyro (he really loves your brother’s poems), and we hope that he will be able to find out everything that interests us from Mr. Robin.

My most sincere and heartfelt greetings, N. Verbina [[signature]] (Pasternak Family Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford, box 100, folder 5; original in Russian).

Verbina also wrote a follow up letter on the following day:

 Montevideo 25. IV 57

Dearest Madame Slater!

Yesterday we sent your letter and also found a translator. Madame Soca asks me to tell you that she is sincerely happy and hopes to soon print your brother’s novel.

Greetings, N. Verbina [[signature]] (Pasternak Family Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford, box 100, folder 5; original in Russian).

By “novel” here Verbina meant the Autobiographical Essay, as it is clear from the previous letter.

We know from her diary that Lydia replied on May 24, 1957 but this letter is not extant (Soca’s Nachlaß vanished after her untimely death in January 1959).

Let me conclude with a few more documents. On August 7, 1957, Pasternak mentions Soca to Lydia again:

“Are you familiar with Soca personally, that is, have you seen her? She was here at some point, wanted to meet me, but didn’t have time, and wrote to me while leaving. She really interests me.” (Pasternak 2004b, p. 794)

On the same day Boris also wrote to Soca:

Dear friend,

I still preserve a vivid remembrance of you, of your admirable considerations, and of the cramped characters in your letter, despite the fact that we did not manage to meet personally. How are you? Since the middle of March I have been ill, I have been terribly ill for four months and I did not think I would be able to be again the person I once was. But, thank God, since not long I am miraculously the same person I was.

During this time and earlier, in Winter, our literary situation changed. It is hopeless to think that my novel will appear (“Doctor Zhivago”) nor will my book of poems for which I had already written the preface.

For this reason I would prefer if no one concerned himself about what they do with me here and one should not postpone my publications abroad on account of a worry concerning me which is erroneous and undesirable. (…) Have you read in “Esprit” [March 1957] the lovely essay by Aucouturier and the poems he wonderfully translated in a surprisingly rhymed version? If I have the right to judge the perfection of this translation from my Russian point of view, I would say that it is the acme of poetical richness and sonority.

If you would like to make me happy please write me a few lines. As soon as I have confirmation that you received my letter, I will send you a few new texts.

Your unconditional admirer,

Boris Pasternak

The letter is translated into Spanish in Álvarez Márquez (2007, pp. 134-135) without indication of source. My translation into English is from the Spanish text published there. Álvarez Márquez could unfortunately no longer find a copy of the original letter. Petr and Elena Vladimirovna Pasternak have informed me that the original of this letter is kept at RGALI in Moscow. It was part of the Ivinskaya papers and it appears not to have been sent to Soca. Thus, it seems that there was altogether only one letter that Pasternak sent to Soca. Indeed, this also seems confirmed by the last document I would like to present, namely Verbina’s letter to Pasternak dated October 6, 1957:

Montevideo 6 10-1957.

Most esteemed Boris Leonidovich!

On September 25 [of this year], during the lecture read by Madame Susana Soca at the Soviet-Uruguay Institute, the Uruguayan public was acquainted with your biography, your quest, [and] poetry. The poems were translated by Susana Soca into Spanish. You can imagine the difficulty that the translation of poetry presents, but Susana Soca overcame this difficulty successfully. [[We]] Truly worked hard and with love.

Being in Moscow with Susana Soca, I was hoping to meet you, but fate decided otherwise. I am very, very sorry [[it didn’t work out]], but I do not lose hope in filling that blank during our next trip.

Susana Soca sent you via air mail the issue of “La Licorne” in which her lecture, poems translated by her, and your biography are printed. As soon as the second issue is released with the continuation, we will immediately send it to you.

<handwritten> The most heartfelt and sincere greetings and best wishes,

Nadezhda Verbina (S. Soca’s secretary) (Pasternak Papers, Moscow, Private archive owned by Elena Leonidovna Pasternak; original in Russian)

The lack of any acknowledgement of a letter written by Pasternak in August suggests that Pasternak never sent the second letter to Soca (or if he sent it, it had not arrived). Importantly, given that the topic of Soca’s knowledge of Russian has been discussed in the secondary literature,  we also obtain  confirmation that the poems were translated into Spanish by Soca (obviously with Verbina’s help; for the translated poems click here). The lecture in question must have been “Encuentro y desencuentro” published as the first item in Entregas de la Licorne 9-10, 1957 (pp. 7-14). The continuation of the translation of the excerpt from the Autobiography was published in the 1958 and 1959 issues of Entregas de la Licorne. Verbina also mentions that she was with Soca in Moscow in October 1956 and that she regrets that they had been unable to meet. Nadia Verbina will come back on this issue also in a letter to Pasternak written in 1960.  In that letter she said  that although Pasternak does not know her, she was Susana Soca’s secretary and that they were together in Moscow when Susana Soca tried to get in touch with Pasternak “without managing to see him” (The 1960 letter is reproduced photographically in Amengual 2012).

There does not seem to have been much correspondence in 1958 involving Soca and the Pasternaks but on November 5, 1958, – that is immediately after the Nobel Prize Scandal in the USSR – Soca sent a telegram from Montevideo to Lydia Pasternak Slater:

Thinking anxiously about your brother and you stop wish to see you at end November stop will write = Susana Soca (Pasternak Family Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford, box 100, folder 5; original in Russian).

Soca died in an airplane accident in Rio de Janeiro on January 8, 1959.

She had just visited Lydia for the first time. Lydia wrote to Boris: “Susana also died, in an aircrash, on her return from her first visit with us. I simply cannot get over it and fear that you too will be struck terribly by these news. (Don’t mention it if you will reply to me, since J.<osephine> doesn’t yet know anything about her death.)” (Postcard from Lydia to Boris, dated January 25, 1959; original in Russian, courtesy of Elena Vladimirovna Pasternak and Petr Pasternak).

After Soca’s death, there was further correspondence between Lydia Pasternak, Nadia Verbina, and Boris Pasternak but since it has been already cited in Alvarez 2001, 2007 and Amengual 2012 I will stop here.

Acknowledgements: I am very grateful to Juan Álvarez Márquez for many interesting email and Skype conversations on Susana Soca and for having sent me useful documents and pictures in his possession. I am also very grateful to Elena Vladimirovna Pasternak and Petr Pasternak (Moscow) for permission to quote the 1959 postcard from Lydia Pasternak Slater to Boris, the Pasternak Trust (Oxford) for permission to use Lydia’s letter to Soca and excerpts from Lydia’s diaries (for which they hold the copyright), to Elena Leonidovna Pasternak (Moscow) for permission to use Verbina’s letter to Pasternak from October 1957, to the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust for permission to quote the letter from Pasternak to Berlin, and to the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford  for permission to use Lydia’s diaries and the correspondence between Susana Soca, Nadia Verbina, and Lydia Pasternak Slater. Finally, last but not least, many thanks to Hoover Institution archivist Lora Soroka, to Hoover Institution deputy archivist Linda Bernard, and to the associate director of Hoover Institution Eric Wakin. The documents in original language will be published in a forthcoming book of mine to be published by Hoover Press in 2016. Parts of this post are excerpted from the forthcoming book.

Bibliography

See the useful page on Susana Soca in “Autores del Uruguay” (click here)

Álvarez Márquez, J., Susana Soca, esa desconocida, Linardi y Risso, Montevideo, 2001.

Álvarez Márquez, J., Más allá del ruego: vida de Susana Soca, Linardi y Risso, Montevideo, 2007.

Amengual, C., Rara Avis. Vida y obra de Susana Soca, Taurus, Montevideo, 2012

Entregas de la Licorne, volumes 9-10, Montevideo, 1957 [this issue contains Soca’s lecture on Pasternak, Soca’s translation of two poems by Pasternak, and the first part of the excerpts from Pasternak’s Autobiography]

Entregas de la Licorne, volume 11, Montevideo, 1958 [this issue contains the translations of the second part of the excerpts from Pasternak’s Autobiography]

Entregas de la Licorne, volume 12, Montevideo, 1959 [this issue contains the translations of the third and last part of the excerpts from Pasternak’s Autobiography]

Entregas de la Licorne, volume 16, Montevideo, 1961 [this issue contains many articles with remembrances of Susana Soca]

Paseyro, R., Toutes les circonstances sont aggravantes, Rocher, Monaco, 2007

Pasternak, B., Pis’ma k roditeliam i sestram 1907-1960, Moscow, 2004

Pasternak, B., Boris Pasternak. Family Correspondence 1921-1960, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 2010

The past two months have been very active on the Zhivago front.

The Italian translation of Inside the Zhivago Storm came out on August 27 with a new introduction for the Italian reader.

Lengthy positive reviews have already appeared in “La Lettura” (August 23, 2015), a cultural insert of Il Corriere della Sera, and in Il Giornale (August 15, 2015). A radio interview with Paolo Mancosu and Serena Vitale led by Felice Cimatti for Fahrenheit (RAI 3) took place on September 21 and can be heard here.

In addition, Hoover Press, Stanford, published at the beginning of September the catalog of a book exhibit on Doctor Zhivago‘s first editions titled Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates. Itineraries in the publishing history of Doctor Zhivago. The catalog details the publication history of all the Russian editions in the West, the editions in languages beyond the Iron Curtain, and the South American editions. The book exhibit will be part of what might well turn out to be the most important conference on Pasternak in the 21st century (for the Hoover Institution announcement click here).

The conference, organized by Professor Lazar Fleishman, will take place at Stanford from September 28 to October 2.

The title of the conference is “Poetry and Politics in the Twentieth Century: Boris Pasternak, His Family, and His Novel Doctor Zhivago”.  For a detailed description click here.

[Added 9/30/2015] My key-note address at the Pasternak conference was delivered on September 28, 2015, at Hoover Institution. The title of the talk was “Censorship and Freedom in the Cold War: Pasternak, Feltrinelli and the publication of Doctor Zhivago”. You can read about the event and see some pictures by clicking here.

[Added 12/20/2015]

The Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris organized on November 6 a presentation of the Italian translation of the book (Zivago nella Tempesta) with Carlo Feltrinelli, Paolo Mancosu, and Marina Valensise (direttrice dell’Istituto).

At the beginning of December 2014 I finally found the time to go to Sylvanès in Southern France (one hour from Albi) to work through the Hélène Peltier archive. Hélène Peltier (1924-2012), married Zamoyska, was a French Slavic scholar who taught at Toulouse. She became part of the team of French translators of Doctor Zhivago (with Michel Aucouturier, Jacqueline de Proyart, and Louis Martinez). Peltier had visited Pasternak in the fall of 1956 and on that occasion had been given a copy of Doctor Zhivago (see Lettres à mes amies françaises, Gallimard, 1994 (henceforth Lettres 1994), pp. 20-21). I will return on a different occasion to the early history of Doctor Zhivago in France. In this post my main aim is to clarify the nature of a mysterious strip of paper preserved in the Feltrinelli archives in Milan.

In Sylvanès, I was a guest of André Gouzes, a dear friend of Hélène and her husband, the Polish sculptor August Zamoyski (1893-1970) (click here for a 1976 interview featuring August and Hélène). André was also instrumental in creating the Musée Zamoyski. Before dying Hélène entrusted André with her Nachlaß. I can’t even begin to describe the enormous impression André Gouzes, a most generous host, left on me.

An internationally renowned composer of sacred music, he was also the main force behind the reconstruction of one of the most beautiful Cistercian monasteries of Southern France, namely the Abbaye de Sylvanès. The story of that incredible project and of the visionary spirit and practical skills that André brought to it is recounted in the moving book co-authored by André Gouzes and René Pujol, Sylvanès. Histoire d’une passion (Desclée de Brouwer, 2010), which I highly recommend.

Let me begin with a short summary of Hélène Peltier’s career up to the late 1950s. Hélène was born in Riga on March 22, 1924. She finished the first part of her high school degree (Baccalauréat; Greek and Latin) in June 1940 in Lannion. She then spent the year 1940-1941 in Stockholm where she studied mathematics. In 1942, in Toulon, she took the second part of her Baccalauréat in Philosophy. In 1942-43 she was in “Classe de Prémière Supérieure” at the Lycée Camille Sée in Paris. From 1943 to 1946 she studied Russian at the School of Oriental Languages in Paris obtaining her degree in 1946. She was then a student at the University of Moscow from 1946 to 1950. She has left detailed narrations of this period of her life which are of great interest, especially on account of the fact that at the time almost no Westerners were allowed to study in Soviet Universities. During this period she attended several courses in literature and philology but also took the required courses on Marxism-Leninism. Back in France in 1950, she obtained her “licence en russe” at the Sorbonne and was “chargée de mission” for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris. In 1953 she obtained her degree of advanced studies (D.E.A.) writing a thesis on K. Fedin. In 1953-1954 she was an assistant to the cultural attaché to the French Embassy in Moscow. In 1954 she obtained her “agregation” in Russian and taught at the Lycée Classique de Jeunes Filles in Toulouse from 1954 to 1957. In 1957 she became “assistante de russe” at the University of Toulouse where she stayed for the remaining part of her professional life.

Peltier met Pasternak in September 1956. The reason for her visit to Moscow was occasioned by a request by M. Coblot, editor of the review “Cahiers Pédagogiques”, who proposed to Peltier to write an article on the teaching of French in the USSR. She obtained a scholarship from the “Relations Culturelles” office and she went to Moscow for six weeks arriving in late August 1956 and departing in mid-October 1956. She lived on the Lenin Hills, the location of the new buildings of Moscow University. The French Embassy in Moscow informed the Soviet authorities of Peltier’s research subject and Peltier reports that she was given efficient and quick help by the Soviets. After going back to France she wrote a 29 page report detailing the state of teaching of French in the USSR and making a few recommendations for the improvement of the relations between France and the USSR in this area. During her stay in Moscow in fall 1956, Peltier met Pasternak three times.

In Lettres 1994, one can read the letters from Pasternak to Peltier written while she was in Moscow and Pasternak and Pasternak 1997 also includes the letters from Peltier to Pasternak. During this period, Pasternak put her in charge of seeking publishers for Doctor Zhivago in France and also gave her a copy of the typescript of Doctor Zhivago. Back in France, Peltier was in contact with several publishers, including Rocher, Fasquelle and Gallimard. I will discuss in a future post this early interest concerning Doctor Zhivago in France. Here I will simply say that Gallimard’s interest in Doctor Zhivago had emerged even before Peltier’s return from the Soviet Union. Indeed, Pasternak had already spoken about his new novel with Aucouturier and Martinez (see previous post on “The writer and the valet”) in spring 1956. Confirmation that Doctor Zhivago was of great interest to Gallimard very early on comes from a letter by Manya Harari to Max Hayward (both future translators of Doctor Zhivago into English) written on September 10, 1956. Harari wrote:

I spent the week end in Paris and made my usual call on Gallimard. They are doing a series of Russian books which, I now find, are being edited by Aragon. Among them are “The Thaw” and “Russian Forest” – that was all I could find out, as all the responsible people were away (Friday afternoon in September), and I only saw a girl assistant. But, this is the point, she knew all about P[asternak]’s novel, as she had heard it widely discussed. Not the Ms – she said she didn’t know where that was – but the fact that P. was keen on getting it done abroad and a rumour that an Italian publisher (name unknown) claims to represent P. in negotiating with other publishers.

The publisher was Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Before Peltier left Moscow, Pasternak asked her to convey a message to his publisher. In Carlo Feltrinelli’s book Senior Service (1999) we read:  

“If ever you receive a letter in any language other than French, you absolutely must not do what is requested of you – the only valid letters shall be those written in French.” How Pasternak’s message arrived, written on a cigarette paper, I don’t know” (p. 101 of the American translation, Harcourt, 2001; p. 120 of the original 1999 Italian edition).

The strip of paper is actually torn from an ordinary sheet of paper. In addition to the message in French (…S’il reçoit jamais une lettre dans une autre langue que le français, il ne doit en aucune façon executer ce qui lui serait demandé – les seules lettres valables seront écrites en français.) there is a handwritten part that says “De la part de Pasternak 1/2 Helène Peltier Toulouse 6, Allé des Demoiselles”. (Feltrinelli archives, Milan)

A full clarification of when and how this message reached Feltrinelli requires the joint use of a few archives. I would like to thank Professor Antonello Venturi (Pisa) for having helped me locate some of the materials below and for having granted permission to cite the materials from the Franco Venturi archives. All the correspondence cited below is in French except for the last citation which is originally in Italian. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

In the Fondo Franco Venturi in Turin there is a long letter from Peltier to Franco Venturi (1914-1994), a prominent Italian historian, dated October 26, 1956, which gives Venturi an overview of her experiences in the Soviet Union in the fall 1956 (Peltier had left Moscow in mid-October 1956). The parts that is relevant for Pasternak is the following:

The most extraordinary encounter was the one with Pasternak. Through some friends I was acquainted with his most recent poems which had been circulating in secret for some years. But no matter how beautiful they are, they are not as striking as their author. I have seen him three times and once at his place I saw Akhmatova! I cannot convey what these visits were like. I am still bolt over by them. In this connection I would like to ask for your advise. Boris Pasternak has entrusted a copy of his novel to an Italian journalist who handed it to an Italian publisher. In Moscow everyone knows this and Boris Leonidovich does not make efforts to deny the fact. He has explained to me in great detail how this took place. The publisher’s name is Feltrinelli. He lives in Milan in Via Fatebene fratelli [sic] 15. Do you know him? I have been charged [by Pasternak] to deliver him a message but since my name is unknown to Feltrinelli I am afraid that he will not take it seriously. I only have to let him know that if he ever receives a letter from B.L. in any language other than French, he absolutely must not do what is requested of him. The only valid letters shall be those written in French. If you know this Mr. Feltrinelli, I would like to ask you to inform him discreetly; but if you think that I can write to him directly, I will do so. (Peltier to Venturi, October 26, 1956; Archivio privato Franco Venturi, Torino)

Venturi replied to Peltier on November 11, 1956:

It took a bit longer than planned to reply because I wanted to give you some news about the two problems you have asked me about. Concerning the first (Pasternak), I must say that I have hesitated somewhat. Here is the reason: I have known Feltrinelli quite well some years ago. He is an immensely rich man who spends enormous sums for developing a splendid library on the history of socialism. He also funds a history journal “Movimento operaio” (Workers’ movement) which has been coming our for a few years. At the beginning I was on the editorial board. But I handed in my resignation because Feltrinelli was running it more and more along the lines of Stalinism or of an official and orthodox communism. A year ago, Feltrinelli started a big publishing house which does good things but all according to the line. It is true that things have changed a little bit in these past few weeks when I was told that also Feltrinelli was sensitive to the protests against the Russian army for what it is doing in Hungary and that he had reacted normally with respect to this decisive problem. I have immediately asked a trustworthy friend, and one completely suitable for the delivery of the message, to tell Feltrinelli what you wrote to me. So, he now knows. (Venturi a Peltier, 15.11.56; Peltier archive, Sylvanès; original in French)

As Peltier had not heard from Venturi in a while, she decided to write directly to Feltrinelli. In the Peltier Archive there is a draft of the letter she sent dated 17 November 1956. Regrettably the original letter is not found in the Feltrinelli archives. Since the letter contains many erasures, I will summarize its contents. Peltier informed Feltrinelli that she had asked Venturi and his wife to deliver the message from Pasternak and the reasons for why she had asked Venturi to do so. She told Feltrinelli that Pasternak had informed her about the contract he had signed with him and then conveyed to him that he should not trust any communication that was not in French. Here is the original text as it occurs in the draft

“Ne pouvant vs prevenir écrir directement il m’a chargée de vs écrire faire savoir prevenir que si vs recevez par hasard une lettre de lui qui ne soit pas rédigée dans en français de n’en tenir aucune compte. [[…]] Tout ceci pour des raisons [sans doute] que je ne voudrais vous expliquer par lettre.” (Peltier archive, Sylvanès)

She then went on to ask some questions about Feltrinelli’s publishing plans and in particular whether he intended to publish the Russian text. Finally, she added that Pasternak had put her in charge of the destiny of his work in France. In a separate post I will explore the complex tangle of issues that emerged between Peltier, Feltrinelli, Gallimard, and later de Proyart, on account of Pasternak’s attempt to free the French edition of the novel from Feltrinelli’s control. Here I will only remark that the last part of Peltier’s letter would certainly have worried Feltrinelli, for it might have challenged his contractual rights to all the foreign translations. He replied to Peltier on November 20, 1956:

M.lle HELENE PELTIER 6, rue des Demoiselles, TOULOUSE

Dear Miss, I have just received one day after the other your note and your letter of 17 November. I thank you for them. I understand the situation. The book is already being translated and several foreign publishers have already shown their interest. When a final decision will be taken, I will propose your name for the French translation. For the moment, it is out of the question to talk about this with anyone except those persons who are already in the know. This would otherwise block the path to an amiable solution to the problems, a solution which I still hope to be able to achieve. With warmest regards, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Please do excuse my bad French but in this case it is only appropriate that I should write in this language. (Peltier archive, Sylvanès; original in French)

It is quite possible that Peltier’s final letter (as opposed to the draft) was more explicit about some of the issues involved and this would explain why Feltrinelli speaks about an “amiable solution to the problems”. What remains to ascertain is who was Venturi’s friend. The final piece in the link has been available since 1999. The person who brought the message to Feltrinelli was Leo Valiani (1909-1999). In a letter from Valiani to Venturi, dated November 23, 1956, Valiani wrote to Venturi:

I have given to Feltrinelli –who was extremely happy about it– the message from Peltier and I would be grateful if you could convey my name to her immediately. I imagine that Feltrinelli will thank her while mentioning that it was through me that he received the message. (in L. Valiani – F. Venturi, Lettere 1943-1979, a cura di Edoardo Tortarolo, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1999, p. 218; original in Italian)

It is unclear why Valiani wanted to be mentioned to Peltier but neither Venturi nor Feltrinelli mentioned his name to Peltier. Let me conclude this post by mentioning that Peltier was to remain the main contact point for Pasternak in France until Jacqueline de Proyart’s visit to Peredelkino in early 1957. During this period Peltier took seriously Pasternak’s request to start looking for a publisher in France and was in touch with Rocher, Fasquelle, and Gallimard. They all showed great interest but the story of the publication in France was sealed when de Proyart came back from Moscow in February 1957 and Gallimard became the publisher of choice for the French translation.

Sources:

Pasternak, El. e Pasternak, Ev., 1997, Perepiska Borisa Pasternaka s Elen Pel’t’e-Zamoiskoi, “Znamia”, 1, pp. 107-143. [“The correspondence between Boris Pasternak and Hélène Peltier”.]

Rapport sur l’enseignement du français en U.R.S.S. (compte-rendu du voyage effectué en URSS en automne 1956 par Mademoiselle H. PELTIER, professeur agrégé de russe), late 1956 or 1957, unpublished, Peltier archive, Sylvanès.

In April 2014 the CIA posted on line 99 documents related to the CIA role in the saga of Doctor Zhivago (click here for the documents). All of the CIA documents cited below can be accessed through the given link. Here is the description given on the site:

CIA Publishes Doctor Zhivago in Russian and Exposes Life in USSR under Communism

The CIA has declassified 99 documents describing the CIA’s role publishing Boris Leonidovich Pasternak’s epic novel, Doctor Zhivago, for the first time in Russian in 1958 after it had been banned from being published in the Soviet Union. The Zhivago project was one of many CIA-supported covert publishing programs that involved distributing banned books, periodicals, pamphlets, and other materials to intellectuals in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This collection provides a glimpse into a thoughtful plan to accomplish fast turn-around results without doing harm to foreign partners or Pasternak. Following the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Russian in 1958, Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the popularity of the book skyrocketed, and the plight of Pasternak in the Soviet Union received global media attention. Moscow had hoped to avoid these precipitous outcomes by initially refusing to publish the novel two years earlier. There is no indication in this collection that having Pasternak win the Nobel Prize was part of the Agency’s original plan; however, it contributed to appeals to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and it was a blow to those who insisted that the Soviets in 1958 enjoyed internal freedom. Of note, the documents in this collection show how effective “soft power” can influence events and drive foreign policy.

The documents fall into three major categories: 1) receipt at headquarters of the typescript of Zhivago and plans for its exploitation; 2) dealings with Felix Morrow (although the name is redacted he is easily recognizable) related to the ‘pirate’ Russian edition of Doctor Zhivago printed by Mouton in Holland in September 1958; 3) further exploitation of Zhivago within the book distribution program and production of a new pocket book edition of Doctor Zhivago produced at CIA headquarters (published around July 1959). Of course, this is only rough and ready, for these documents contain a great deal more than that.

The documents bring welcome further confirmation and, in some but not in all cases, more precise details to the reconstruction of the events offered in publications that had appeared before their release and most extensively in my book. Whereas all the details about the Mouton edition were confirmed by the new documents, I have to report one correction to my book that concerns the section (pp. 189-190) on the pocket book edition that appeared in 1959. In my book, I had conjectured that this edition was prepared in Germany by the anti-communist group NTS and printed by their printing press Posev. While the details about NTS cited in that section of my book remain correct, for they are statements from NTS representatives reported by newspapers at the time, it is now clear that the declarations were only intended to mislead public opinion as to the real source of the pocket book edition.

While a short summary of these new CIA documents has appeared in the book by Finn and Couvée, The Zhivago Affair (Pantheon 2014), their extensive use still awaits proper scholarly attention. Indeed, the fact that the documents are redacted leaves many unresolved problems.

In addition, we have to guard against the journalistic inaccuracies that continue to beleaguer the literature on Doctor Zhivago. Upon release of the CIA documents, a French journalist for Le Monde (Le Docteur Jivago au cœur de la guerre froide, June 20, 2014) declared that the documents showed that the typescript of the Zhivago used by the CIA was the one used in the translation of the French version of the novel: “La France est peut-être partie prenante dans l'” affaire Jivago “. L’un des documents rendus -publics par la CIA précise que sa copie du livre de Pasternak provient de l’exemplaire ayant servi à la version française. “. And Michael Scammell in an article in the New York Review of Books (click here for review) stated that the CIA documents showed that British intelligence sent the CIA a “photographic replica of Feltrinelli’s original manuscript”. The CIA documents say nothing about Feltrinelli’s typescript.

Both claims are examples of a kind of shoddiness that has affected the literature on Zhivago (Malta stories etc.) for a long time. One can only hope that it will soon become a thing of the past . To repeat, there is no trace in the CIA documents of any evidence supporting either one of the two claims. The French journalist confused mention of the Autobiography in the CIA documents with Doctor Zhivago, not a small difference. As for Scammell, his statement is all the more surprising as his article was presented as, in part, a review of my book and he mentioned having done independent research on the CIA documents. (For my reply to his review and Scammell’s reply to my reply click here)

Had he read the book carefully, he would have noticed my alerting the reader, on pp. 121-122, that the problem of which typescript of Doctor Zhivago was sent to the CIA is an important problem awaiting solution. Indeed, despite his confident claim, it can easily be shown that the Feltrinelli typescript was not the one used by the CIA. I will provide the evidence in a future post, for the contents of this post relate to something different.

In this post, I would like to show how the new CIA documents and those coming from other archives complement each other. It is important to stress two things. First of all, many of the CIA documents can properly be interpreted, on account of their being redacted, only against the background of information provided by the non CIA archival documents. This is absolutely evident for all that concerns the Mouton edition, Morrow, and the role of the University of Michigan Press. Secondly, the CIA sources are sometimes wide of the mark and one cannot accept everything they state at face value; accordingly, they have to be evaluated against more reliable information coming from non CIA sources. Conversely, the non CIA documents also benefit from being read against the background of what the CIA was up to.

By way of a case study, I would like to focus on what some of the CIA documents report about Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. But since Feltrinelli is mentioned in most of these documents, I have to narrow my focus.

I will be after the issue of how it became possible for Feltrinelli to receive a visa to enter the United States of America in early 1959. His communist past and uncertainties about his allegiance in 1958 militated against inviting him. Indeed, in spring 1958 he had been denied a visa to enter the Unites States. However, the State Department had his own interest in wanting to invite Feltrinelli to come to the States, namely they were interested in acquiring all the translation rights for a huge variety of languages in order to use Doctor Zhivago in their book distribution program and their psychological warfare against the Soviet Union. This was not a secondary aim of the CIA. On the contrary it figures from the very beginning as one of the main goals. For instance in the document dated December 12, 1957 we read: “Dr. Zhivago should be published in a maximum number of foreign editions, for maximum free world discussion and acclaim and consideration for such honor as the Nobel prize.” Feltrinelli’s invitation to the Unites States, as we shall see, fits into the plan. However, the CIA documents are not so perspicuous and it is only using the resources of the Feltrinelli archive and some other documents from the National Archives that a fuller picture emerge.

The connection to the State Department emerged through Kyrill Schabert, president of Pantheon, the American publisher of Doctor Zhivago. There is an interesting document preserved at the National Archives in College Park (not part of the documents put on line in May 2014) that explains the interest of granting Feltrinelli a visa to visit the USA. The memo is sent from Louis A. Fanget of ICS [Information Center Services] to H. T. Carter of IGC [Office of General Counsel] (both ICS and IGC were organizations of USIA; for the structure of USIA click here).

The date is October 31, 1958. Subject: “Doctor Zhivago”:

In planning for exploitation of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, ICS decided to try to acquire permission on rights for translation into the principal Asiatic languages such as Hindi, Galli, Urdu, Arabic and other similar languages. This is customary procedure on books that have special significance for our program. We were informed by the American Publisher of the book, Pantheon Books, that the rights we sought were held by the Firm of Feltrinelli, in Milan. Mr. Kyrill Schabert, President of Pantheon Books, indicated that he was well acquainted with Mr. Feltrinelli and would attempt to get the rights for us. Thus we asked Mr. Schabert to do this in a letter of October 14, 1958.

During the last two weeks a number of posts have asked for language rights for the book and consequently we called Mr. Schabert to learn of progress, if any, we had made with Mr. Feltrinelli. Mr. Schabert indicated that he had not heard, but at our request phoned Mr. Feltrinelli for the information.

Mr. Schabert stated that Mr. Feltrinelli agreed in principle to let us have the rights to the languages we sought. Mr. Schabert indicated that Mr. Feltrinelli surmised that he was seeking the rights in our behalf. Mr. Feltrinelli told Mr. Schabert that he wished to come to the States to discuss the foreign language publication aspect of the book with us. Mr. Schabert indicated that Mr. Feltrinelli was seeking permission to enter the country and was not in any way attempting to obtain a grant of funds to do so, or to obtain a trip on a quasi official basis.

We understand that Mr. Feltrinelli attempted to come to this country in June of this year to attend the Convention of the American Book Sellers at Atlantic City, but that he was unable to obtain a visa. We do not have any definite knowledge that he was denied a visa on political grounds though it is generally understood at that time that Mr. Feltrinelli was one of the leading publishers in Italy of communist books. He is an extremely wealthy person, we understand, and consequently would not need financial assistance.

If it would speed up the processes for our acquiring the rights we seek by having Mr. Feltrinelli come here, we think it would be desirable, provided of course that no serious problems would be presented by such a visit. It would be understood, also, that he would come at his own expense and would not have any official status whatever. Obviously it will be important to us to get out as many foreign language editions of the book as possble to capitalize on the propaganda gains we are making at Soviet expense on Doctor Zhivago. (Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago) H.T.C. [Harry Tyson Carter] 1958, 1958-1958. National archives Identifier: 6789835; HMS Entry Number: P 277).

The letters between Feltrinelli, Schabert and Kurt Wolff mentioning the matter are still preserved at the Feltrinelli archives in Milan. On April 9, 1958, Feltrinelli wrote to Wolff:

“I would very much like to come to the States for the international book exhibition in Atlantic City, but I fear that I may have difficulties in getting a visa. Do you know anybody who might advice me and eventually push my enquiry through in Washington?” [Feltrinelli archives]

Wolff replied to Feltrinelli on April 16:

“My colleague Kyrill Schabert (you may recall meeting him at the Publishers’ meeting in Florence in 1956) is trying to do something about this matter in Washington. I will keep you informed about the outcome.” [Feltrinelli archives]

Feltrinelli was not given a visa and his visit to the USA had to be canceled. However, a new opportunity arose in October 1958 when, just a few days before the award of teh Nobel Prize to Pasternak, the United States Information Agency (USIA) made contact with Kyrill Schabert concerning the problem of acquiring translation rights for a variety of Asian and other languages.

October 17, 1958

Dear Mr. Feltrinelli,

As you will see by the enclosed copy of a letter, the United States Information Agency is anxious to make the text of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO available,in full length or condensed version, in the languages they list.

These are all languages of countries where a translation of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO would be most unlikely, except through the USIA subsidy program. Because they will have to make their formal contracts with an American publisher, would you be willing to cede us the translation rights for the languages specified in their letter so that we in turn can grant them permission?

I would suggest that any monies paid to us by the Government under this arrangement be credited to Pasternak’s royalty account without any deduction.

I hope that you can give this your favorable consideration. Please let me know your decision as soon as possible.

Sincerely yours,

Kyrill Schabert. [Feltrinelli archives]

The document from the Agency was unsigned and dated October 14, 1959.

Dear Mr. Schabert:

This letter will confirm our telephone conversation of October 9, 1958, at which time I discussed with you the translation rights for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternak.

            I shall appreciate your requesting from Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan, Italy, exclusive translation and publication, volume and serialization rights for full length and condenced versions in the languages below.

Arabic, Assamose, Bengali, Bicol, Burmese, Cambodian, Cebriano, Farsi, Chinese, Greek, Gijarati, Hillgaynon, Hindi, Ilocano, Indonesian, Kachin, Kannada, Korean, Laotian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalan, Marathi, Oryin, Punjahi, Serbo Croatian, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Slovenian, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese.

I realize that this book has appeared in a number of languages, and Feltrinelli might be negotiating directly for others. It may therefore be necessary for him to withold some of the above languages. Since arrangements for publication are made by our representatives abroad in collaboration with local publishers, the final determinations as to the languages and format in which DOCTOR ZHIVAGO will appear will be made by them.

            For the languages which you are able to obtain and release to the Agency, the following rates, which have been established as acceptable fees for non-commercial languages by American and British firms, will be paid on the basis of total copies published per language:

Book rights                             Full length versions                            Condensed versions

Up to 5,000 copies                  $50                                                      $25

5,001 to 10,000 copies            100                                                      50

10,001 to 15,000 copies          150                                                      75

More than 15,000 copies        200                                                      100

[Feltrinelli archives]

On October 31, 1958, Wolff had been very explicit that the request came from the State Department:

“The State Department’s request for exotic languages like Bengali, Sinhalese, etc. I understood that you agreed in principle to the request Mr. Schabert wrote you about and that a letter concerning this matter is on its way, stating you feel some details should be discussed verbally. We, therefore, will now take the necessary steps to make this verbal discussion possible over here. My friend Schabert tells me that he has already, over the last month, pointed out to the State Department official in question how desirable it would be to have you present here in person.” [Feltrinelli archives]

A carbon copy of the letter from Feltrinelli to Schabert to this effect, dated October 28, 1958, in on file in the Feltrinelli archives in Milan:

“Dear Mr. Schabert,

            I have received your letter of October the 17th concerning the U.S.A. request for the translation right of Dr. Zhivago. I do not think there is any objection in principle to the grant of the desired license (apart from the exclusion of some countries with which we are alraedy handling the granting of such license).

            Non the less there are quite a number of points in such an agreement which should be discussed and cleared.

            As I am looking forward to visiting the States in genuary or february with Prof. Del Bo on a contact tour with American universities (Harvard, Wisconsin etc.), I think this could be an excellent occasion to discuss and settle this matter.

My best regards,

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli” [Feltrinelli archives]

In other words, Feltrinelli saw the opportunity to use the interest on the part of the United States Information Agency to obtain the visa he had been denied in the Spring of 1958. At this stage, he

was still planning to visit the U.S. with Giuseppe del Bo, a long time collaborator in the Biblioteca Feltrinelli, for a tour of American Universities. The plan will radically change, as Feltrinelli will visit the U.S. in the 1959 with Inge Schöntal, whom he will marry in Mexico just before reaching the U.S.

On November 5, 1958, Schabert wrote to Feltrinelli:

“Dear Mr. Feltrinelli: I was glad to hear from you that, in principle, you are agreeable to let us have the rights for the languages mentioned in my letter to you. As Mr. Wolff may have told you, I have impressed upon my friend in Washington the importance of your coming here and I have been assured that this matter is having their top attention. In fact, I expect to have good news in a few days. Should this come through, I hope you will see your way free to arrive here before the months indicated in your letter. In any event, I should tell you to undertake no steps for the time being in connection with a visitor’s visa until you hear from me.

Withe kindest regards, sincerely yours, Kyrill Schabert.” [Feltrinelli archives]

Let us now see how the above documents complement those found in the CIA newly posted documents.

The first document relating to the matter is a memo that mentions in the subject “the U.S. publisher of Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago” (namely Pantheon Press and his president Kyrill Schabert). I will indicate by [xxx] redacted parts of the document. We are interested in the third and fourth points of the document.

3. In May 1958×1958, [xxx] suggested to [xxx]x[xxx] spelling?) of [xxx] to let Feltinelli [sic] come to the U.S. in connection with a book convention. Feltinelli holds the copy right to Dr. Zhivajo. [xxx] felt that Feltinelli’s presence could have been exploited for the benefit of the U.S. Government. [xxx], however, advised [xxx] that there was “too much red-tape involved” and thus the project failed.
4. [xxx] is of the opinion that even now it would be most [unreadable] for the U.S. to let Feltinelli come here.

A memorandum for the record, dated November 18, 1958, brought up worries about Feltrinelli’s decision concerning how to cede rights. The points below refer to a telephone conversation with [xxx]:

2. While [xxx] was originally set up in the broad context of [xxx] publications in general, the Dr. Zhivago book has become an important feature. [xxx]

            [xxx] saw Feltrinelli in Milan some time in late October. The purpose of seeing him was to inquire about obtaining rights for the book [xxx]. Feltrinelli took the position that he would not give right to a publisher’s agent, but he informed [xxx] that if he should receive requests from specific [xxx] publishers, he would probably go along.

3. Feltrinelli, [xxx], may decide to give rights in one of two ways, and it is at this point that there arises a possibility of duplication. He may, for example, decide to grant exclusive rights to the first publisher in a given language who might write to him, or he may on the other hand grant rights wholesale to all comers. He remarked to [xxx] that as of the date of [xxx] visit he had already received five requests for rights [xxx]. We have no other information as to how Feltrinelli may or may not have responded to these requests.

A personal letter to the CIA director, Allen W. Dulles, provides further information. It is dated December 15, 1958:

Dear Allen:

This is the letter I spoke to you about on Saturday. The writer of the letter, [xxx],

[xxx]

It does seem to me that if Feltrinelli had indeed broken away from his Communist associations, a useful service might be performed in bringing him to this country.

Certainly no development in Russia in recent months has been half so damaging to the Soviet position in world opinion as was Feltrinelli’s action in publishing the Pasternak book. It was good to talk to you.

            With warm regards, [xxx]

The enclosure in question, written around December 8, 1958, read as follows:

Dear [xxx],

I wonder where this will reach you – [xxx]

[xxx]

            I have a rather urgent and very important question to put up to you: a good friend of mine, the publisher of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli whose name you have seen in the papers on account of all the publicity given to Pasternak when he got the Nobel Prize, has rather weighty affairs to see to in the US. Unfortunately, on account of his former communist affiliations he finds it impossible to obtain a visa through the ordinary channels. Now, Feltrinelli broke off his ties after the Hungarian revolution, and, as you know, it has been tried to make him a tool [[a comment on the side says: Allen, I am not sure I grasp this particular point]] of certain cold war activities, using Pasternak’s book, which, again, has been against his will and intention.

            You could ask [xxx] about the family (a great name in Italian industry).

            Do you see any ways and means how Feltrinelli could be assisted – via [xxx] or any other of your official connections? [xxx]

[xxx]

I wish to add, unnecessarily I am sure, to keep this matter as confidential as possible.

[xxx]

Sincerely,

[xxx]

On December 22, Allen Dalles replied:

Dear [xxx]

I appreciate your recent telephone call and your letter of 15 December with its enclosure, of which I have taken a copy. We know a great deal about the subject matter of this letter and I will see whether something can be done.

Sincerely,

[xxx]

On December 29, we find the following letter to Allen Dulles

Dear Allen:

Than you so much for your note on behalf of our Italian “friend”. I have since been informed that the gentleman has not even made a request for a visa. How strange these people are.

With warm regards,

[xxx]

Of course, Feltrinelli had been told by Schabert not to apply for a visa.

A further memorandum dated January 2, 1959 with subject “Giangiacomo Feltrinelli; Application for Visa to the U.S.” read:

[xxx]

2. Mr. Feltrinelli wants to visit the U.S. ostensibly in connection with the plans of the University of Michigan Press to publish a Russian-language edition of Dr. Zhivago, possibly also for talks with Pantheon Books, publishers of the American edition ­­–- though the latter would seem less important, since Pantheon, to the best of our knowledge, has properly contracted with Mr. Feltrinelli about copyright. [xxx]

[xxx]

3. The bona fides of Mr. Feltrinelli’s departure from the Italian CP is subject to doubt: even if he left the party in good faith, it is conceivable that he might have been brought under the control of either the Italian CP or the Soviet IS at some later date, especially after the publication of Dr. Zhivago and the award of the Nobel Prize to Boris Pasternak made Mr. Feltrinelli such a tempting target. Even if this were not the case, it would seem rather likely that there is some Communist informant, if not a controlled agent, among his office staff or among his close friends.

But despite the reservations expressed in the last memo, the visa was granted. The report on Feltrinelli’s interview written by the American general consul in Milan, Charles Rogers, has been published in Carlo Feltrinelli’s biography of his father, Senior Service (1999, pp. 170-171) and will not be reported here.

I will conclude by recalling that Feltrinelli visited the U.S. but the plan to co-opt him for foreign rights for Doctor Zhivago came to nothing. I refer to Senior Service also for details of Feltrinelli’s trip to the United States.

The last CIA document we have in this connection is dated April 2, 1959, while Feltrinelli was still in the United States:

Memorandum for the record

Subject: Conference with [xxx]

1. On 1 April I visited [xxx]

[xxx]

in his office to discuss Publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli of Milan, Dr. Zhivago and other matters in the book field. We talked briefly on the same matters today, also in his office.

2. Feltrinelli.
3. [xxx]

received from me a sterilized list of countries and languages in which Pasternak’s novel had been published (taken from Memorandum for the Record, 23 March 1959, subject, “Editions of Dr. Zhivago”[this is one of the documents posted on line, PM]). I asked if there was some way to prod Feltrinelli himself on the subject of publishing editions in English [xxx]

1. [xxx] remarked the lack of [xxx]

publishers on the list, and said he knew of [xxx]

now in New York studying the American publishing business. All had written to Feltrinelli months ago asking for publication rights in their respective languages but had received no answer. Their names, and the languages for which they sought rights, follow:

[xxx]

1. I thereupon asked if someone could induce Feltrinelli to deal directly with [xxx] publishers on the rights question. [xxx] mentioned that he had been invited to a reception for Feltrinelli by Pantheon Books, Ind., Pasternak’s American publishers, later in the afternoon of 1 April but was unable to go. Using this as an excuse for getting in touch with Kyrill Schabert, President of Pantheon, [xxx] telephoned to Schabert in New York. Gist of their conversation was: [xxx] asked Schabert to urge Feltrinelli to answer his mail, particularly from [xxx] publishers, because a lack of interest by Feltrinelli in [xxx] requests for rights would only encourage the theft of rights by irresponsible publishers there. Schabert promised to do what he could and would report back. When I checked with [xxx] today he said he had not heard back from Schabert, but added he would phone again. He also said he would ask Schabert if he considered a direct visit to Feltrinelli by the [xxx] in New York would produce results. [xxx] hinted doubts about this approach, principally because Feltrinelli has told Schabert that his office had been handling requests for publishing rights, long before he left Italy. Even if he met [xxx] personally, Feltrinelli probably would not be able to remember the correspondence, and might not even be interested in pursuing the subject. Feltrinelli, [xxx] said he had been told, had an attitude of superiority of business details, especially as it concerned Dr. Zhivago, being more interested in “idealism”. Upon my urging, however, [xxx] agreed to do everything possible along this line.
2. [xxx] confirmed that British Commonwealth rights in the English language, [xxx] have been conferred upon William Collins. Thus, anyone who wishes to publish Dr. Zhivago in English [xxx] must deal with Collins, whereas deals for other languages [xxx] may be made directly with Feltrinelli’s office in Milan.
3. In the 1 April phone conversation Schabert reported he could not tell whether Feltrinelli was personally grateful to Schabert for having helped smooth the way for the American visa, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. From [xxx] account, Schabert and other in contact with Feltrinelli in New York have found it difficult to get specific with him.

And with this, I conclude this post about Feltrinelli’s visa, a representative case study of how the CIA sources and the non CIA sources must be used in tandem.

The September 25 issue of The London Review of Books (volume 36, No 18) has a long and interesting article by Frances Stonor Saunders – author of a book on the cultural policies of the CIA during the Cold War, mentioned in my previous post – on Isaiah Berlin’s role in the Zhivago saga.

Henry Hardy, editor of many of Berlin’s books and essays and of a large selection of his correspondence, has criticized the article for a number of inaccuracies and for not indicating the sources of many citations. In her reply Stonor Saunders counters some of the charges and accuses Hardy of being confused about scholarly standards. For the original article and the exchange (volume 36, No 21, 6 November 2014) click here. The exchange raises a number of important issues and for a while I intended to contribute a letter to the LRB myself. But the letter grew in length and I realized there was no chance it could be published without drastic cuts. As a result, I did not submit it to the Editors, and I post it here instead.

=====

Dear Editors,

I read with interest Frances Stonor Saunders’ article (25 September, LRB) and the subsequent exchange with Henry Hardy (6 November, LRB) . This exchange raises factual issues that are related to topics treated in my book (which was mentioned in both the original article and in the following discussion) and that can, at least in part, be addressed with the help of the documents at our disposal. Hence, I would like to contribute the following.

Given the dialectic of the debate between Stonor Saunders and Hardy, it is almost inevitable that my comments are focused on Stonor Saunders’ claims. Hardy reproaches Stonor Saunders for inaccuracy but I should like to emphasize, to begin with, two major theses that emerge from her contributions. The first is a generalized criticism of those who have discussed Berlin’s role in the Zhivago story: “In all of these thousands of pages devoted to the Zhivago affair, Berlin’s testimony is reprised without question.” The second emerges more clearly from her reply to Hardy, where, with respect to all the events surrounding the Zhivago affair, she refers to the “impossibility of drawing any safe conclusions as to what exactly happened”.

Stonor Saunders pictures Berlin as meddlesome and secretive, and motivated by the sheer desire “to be at the centre of an intrigue.” I will not pass judgment on Berlin’s motivations, but I do welcome a fresh look at the historical record. However, I should like to point out that the credibility of a renewed look at the evidence depends on the strength of the evidence provided. If the alleged ‘evidence’ rests on a misinterpretation of the documents, this will take the wind out of the sails of the revisionist reading. And this is what happens with one of the central considerations offered by Stonor Saunders for her claim about Berlin’s role in the affair. I am referring to the (alleged) evidence she cites from a reply by Martin Malia, dated 26 November 1956, to a now lost letter by Berlin. The lost letter to Berlin was itself a reply to a letter from Malia, dated April 1956, in which Malia informed Berlin that Pasternak was considering sending out a copy of Doctor Zhivago with some unnamed French students (they were Martinez, Aucouturier and Allain: see Tolstoy 2009 and Malia and Engerman 2005).

According to Stonor Saunders: “Berlin’s reply is not in the file, but a later letter from Malia contains its echo: Berlin wanted more exact details, in particular to know how he might make contact with the French students.” However, when one reads the letter from Malia it becomes obvious that what Berlin is inquiring about is not the French students (and their contacts in the French Embassy) but rather how to make contact with Soviet students. Malia writes: “Also my way of making contact with students would not have been of any help to you since it was largely through several normaliens at the University of Moscow, who had left by the time you wrote. The other contacts were all chance contacts for which there is no formula” (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Berlin 149, fols 166-7). This reply would make no sense if Berlin had enquired about the French students. It is obvious that Berlin was interested in making contact with Soviet students, rather than with the French students, and that is quite a legitimate wish given that he was planning to obtain first-hand reports from his visit on life in the USSR.

A different issue concerns the dating of the preparation of documents by Ivan Serov, head of the KGB, and by Shepilov. Hardy points out that the documents are dated August 24 and August 31, respectively, and thus after Pasternak’s conversation with Berlin, which took place on August 18. In her rejoinder, Stonor Saunders shifts the attention from the date of the documents to when they were prepared. She claims that the documents were weeks in preparation and she confidently asserts that the KGB informer “was most likely” a colleague of Sergio d’Angelo’s at Radio Moscow (his name was Vladlen Vladimirsky). In my book I said that it would be “ill advised” to venture conjectures as to who the informer was (and I explain why). For instance, Sergio d’Angelo’s conjecture is that it was the two Italian PCI officials, Robotti and Secchia, who informed the KGB. In short, we do not have precise knowledge of exactly when or by whom the KGB was informed. However, if the matter was thought by Serov to be so serious as to inform the Central Committee of the CPSU, it is hard to believe that he sat for weeks on this information. As for Shepilov’s memo (dated August 31, 1956), this was obviously written after the KGB memo, and a one-page memo does not take weeks to write (the accompanying enclosure by Polikarpov obviously derives from the review that had just been completed by the editorial board of Novy mir, and thus its being enclosed with Shepilov’s memo is neither here nor there as evidence for when the KGB was informed). I know very well the books And the Clamour of the Chase behind Me: Boris Pasternak and the Authorities, Documents of 1956–1972 (2001) and Ivan Tolstoy’s book Pasternak’s Laundered Novel: “Doctor Zhivago” between the KGB and the CIA (2009), to which Stonor Saunders directs Hardy. Regrettably, neither of the two books has anything decisive to say about the issue under discussion. Tolstoy’s allegation that it was Vladimirsky (whom he calls Vladimirov) who informed the KGB is not corroborated by any evidence. Moreover, had Vladimirsky been the informer, it would be surprising if it had taken the KGB from May 20 (the day of the visit of d’Angelo and Vladimirsky to Pasternak)  to August 24 (i.e. more than 3 months!) to report on it officially to the Central Committee of the CPSU. Perhaps the KGB was not a model of efficiency, but it was certainly more efficient than that. Thus, if one cannot categorically exclude that the KGB was ‘”noting” events before the conversation between Pasternak and Berlin, we also have no positive evidence that warrants Stonor Saunders’ assertion that this was in fact the case.

The case of the Ripellino quote is similar. Stonor Saunders unqualifiedly cites as Pasternak’s own words the following phrase: “to suffer as all true Russian poets have always suffered” (indeed, citing it out of context). Hardy objects that one cannot take these words, found in a letter from Ripellino to Calvino, as necessarily Pasternak’s own. Stonor Saunders retorts that Hardy is applying double standards: why is it fine to attribute to Pasternak a phrase when Berlin cites it and not when Ripellino cites it? (“If we can’t assume they were his own words, as reported by Ripellino, then how can we assume they were his own words when reported by anyone else – Isaiah Berlin, say?”) It seems to me that there is a difference in this case. In his “Meetings with Russian Writers in 1945 and 1946” and related articles Berlin is admittedly reporting conversations with Pasternak and thus, unless there are good grounds to question the faithfulness of what Berlin is reporting, we can safely attribute the reported words, or something like them, to Pasternak. But the context of the Ripellino letter is much more treacherous. First of all, the version of the letter we all worked with is the one I translated from Mangoni’s book Pensare i Libri (Einaudi 1999). Mangoni does not give the full passage and thus the citation in her book (and accordingly in my translation) is truncated after the words “to suffer as all true Russian poets have always suffered”.

Under the circumstances I would consider it imprudent to go on and attribute those words to Pasternak. For instance, how could we exclude the possibility that Ripellino might have gone on to say: “These words by Tyutchev capture Pasternak’s mood”?

As a consequence of the exchange between Hardy and Stonor Saunders I thought that having the full passage might help. Through a kind colleague in Italy, Chiara Benetollo, I was able to obtain the full context:

“E ora ai problemi editoriali. La storia del romanzo di Pasternak non è, come sai, di oggi. Pasternak cedette il testo a un certo D’Angelo prima degli avvenimenti ungheresi. Pareva allora che dovesse uscire anche in Russia. È ormai molto tempo che Feltrinelli giuoca con questo manoscritto. I polacchi lo avevano avuto direttamente da Pasternak, ma, nonostante la loro posizione polemica verso i Russi, avevano preferito non pubblicarlo, per non danneggiare l’autore. Ora le cose stanno così: la famiglia di P teme gravi conseguenze e preferirebbe che non uscisse, il poeta vacilla tra le preoccupazioni del dopo e il piacere di “soffrire come tutti i veri poeti russi hanno sempre sofferto”. I giovani che cercano nuove strade e lottano contro il conformismo temono ora per Pasternak e per la loro stessa battaglia. Si dirà: avete scelto a vostra insegna Pasternak, e Pasternak fa uscire in Occidente, proprio in coincidenza del 40° di ottobre, un romanzo “calunniatore”. Del resto, che cosa possiamo fare? L’editore s’è intestardito di farlo, dopo tutti i consigli, gli interventi, i telegrammi sovietici. Pasternak s’è pentito di non aver dato a me il ms, ma nello stesso tempo pensa che potrebbe derivargliene un’aureola di vittima. Insomma, per riassumere, è nella posizione di chi vuole e non vuole, incerto fra la gloria letteraria e le conseguenze politiche. Noi dovremmo, mi sembra, in questa occasione, rilanciare un po’ fragorosamente (non per me, intendimi, ma per la casa) il mio libro, insistendo magari sul fatto che il meglio di lui è pur sempre nella poesia”. (Cited in Benetollo 2014, pp. 79-80; original at Archivio di Stato, Torino, Fondo Einaudi, Incartamento Ripellino)

Unfortunately, the passage following “to suffer as all true Russian poets have always suffered” sheds no further light on the origin of the citation. What’s the outcome of all of this? It could be that the passage refers to something Pasternak said to Ripellino in Peredelkino (Ripellino had visited him in September 1957) but it could also be a citation from someone else. To repeat, the difference between this letter by Ripellino and the ordinary reports (such as those of Berlin) is that the ordinary reports are explicit about being a rendition of a conversation that took place. Here Ripellino does not say that. Thus, Stonor Saunders would be right in claiming that we cannot exclude the possibility that this is a quote from Pasternak, but she does not have sufficient grounds to make a firm attribution.

In her rejoinder, Stonor Saunders now grants that it was not a requirement for the Nobel Prize that the novel be available in the original Russian. I am glad she accepts this conclusion, which is the result of serious historical work in the Swedish archives by, among others, Fleishman, Jangfeldt and Tolstoy. I my book I point out that none of the actors involved in the Zhivago story ever claimed that one should speed up publication of the Russian text on account of some such requirement by the Nobel Prize Committee. The recently declassified CIA documents, as pointed out by Hardy, confirm this conclusion. Both my book and the book by Finn and Couvée explicitly report on the current state of historical scholarship on this issue. I thus wonder why (given that her article is, in some way, a review of these two new books), Stonor Saunders rehearses the old story about the (alleged) requirement by the Nobel Prize Committee without warning the readers that the most up-to-date historical research has debunked it. Just saying, as she does in her reply to Hardy, that up to Pasternak’s Nobel Prize the issue had never come up (“there was no exception to the formula”) is irrelevant to establishing whether people’s actions at the time were motivated by that assumption.

There is much of interest in Stonor Saunders’ original article and in the debate with Henry Hardy. Indeed, much more could be said about the issues they discuss, but I don’t want to tax the reader’s patience and I shall now conclude. It is true that much remains obscure in the Zhivago story but I think it wrong to jump, as Stonor Saunder does, to a conclusion about “the impossibility of drawing any safe conclusions as to what exactly happened”. What is required is careful scholarship and the rigorous elimination of old and new myths, even in matters of small detail. Here is an example. In her review Stonor Saunders says: “One is that the ‘first’ smuggled typescript – 433 closely typed pages held together by twine and wrapped in newspaper – was in the hands of Feltrinelli in Italy.” 433 pages? Where does that come from? Well, it comes from the new book by Finn and Couvée: “The manuscript was 433 closely typed pages divided into five parts.” And where does that come from? In their book Finn and Couvée thank Carlo Feltrinelli for having shown them the original typescript in Milan. Although I can’t be sure, here is a plausible hypothesis as to what happened. Finn and Couvée quickly looked at the last page and saw it was numbered 433. But that is only the last page of the fourth and fifth book (the fourth book starts at page 1). To that one must add 65 pages for part III, 109 pages for part II, and 177 for part I, all independently numbered. Total: 784 pages plus some unnumbered pages. This is only a small example of how false information starts going around. Of course, I do not object to the justified use Stonor Saunders made of this, as it turns out mistaken, piece of information. Rather, the general point is that a lowering of the standards of rigor immediately reverberates across the body of scholarship. And yet, this does not make me pessimistic about getting closer to “what exactly happened” and the reason why I oppose Stonor Saunders’ conclusion is that with proper care and scholarly work we can make progress in our understanding of the facts. The archival work of the last twenty years is the best proof of this.

 

Sources:

Benetollo, C., Un’ipotesi di letteratura. La casa editrice Einaudi e la letteratura russa sovietica dal dopoguerra agli anni Settanta, Tesi di laurea, Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Filologia Letteratura e Linguistica, 2014.

Malia, M. E., and Engerman, D., Martin Edward Malia. Historian of Russian and European Intellectual History. An interview conducted by David Engerman in 2003. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 241 pages. 2005. Available on line here.

Zhivago in Poland (Part III)

We have seen in a previous post that the attempt to publish Zhivago in Poland in 1957 was successfully blocked by the Soviet authorities. One will have to wait until 1983 for a publication of the book inside Poland. But the 1983 publication is the outcome of a Polish edition that came out in Paris in 1959. Let us see in more detail how all these publications came about.

We have some details about how the 1959 edition came about through a letter written by Sergio d’Angelo to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli dated November 3, 1958:

 “I take advantage of the opportunity to convey a question that has been raised with a certain urgency. Mr. Gustav Herling, Polish by birth and writer, the husband of a daughter of Benedetto Croce, came to see me today to enquire whether you would be willing to grant to the publisher “Kultura”, located in Paris, the rights for the publication in the Polish language of Doctor Zhivago.

            The publishing house “Kultura”, according to what Mr Herling told me, was founded in 1948 by a group of leftist (mostly Socialist) Polish émigrés and survives without external support. The publishing house maintains very intense contacts with Polish culture. They publish a journal (with the same name) that circulates rather freely in Poland where it is the target of constant mention and criticism on the part of the official press.

            Having learned that the idea of publishing Doctor Zhivago in Poland has been decidedly abandoned as a consequence of the attitude taken by the Soviet authorities on the Pasternak case, the publishing house “Kultura” deems it appropriate to take charge of the project by publishing two or three thousand copies of the novel that would be distributed to Poles leaving abroad and to those that live in Poland but have occasion to travel to Paris.

            According to Mr. Herling, it would be easy to send to Poland one thousand copies, where the Pasternak case has made, as is well known, an enormous impression. (He also told me that poems and pictures of Pasternak have invaded the display windows of the Warsaw bookstores on the day following the announcement of the Prize)

            Of course I told Mr. Herling that I could only convey his proposal and considerations to you. And since I have been asked to ask you for a reply I brought up the issue now as I don’t know when you will be back in Milan.

            In case you will favorably receive Mr. Herling’s request, he would also ask you for the most favorable financial conditions, for the publisher “Kultura” seeks no financial gain from this project since they plan to distribute the majority of copies free of charge.

            Should you want to get in touch with Mr. Herling, let me inform you that he lives in Naples, via Crispi 69.” (Original letter in Italian in Archivio Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan)

Gustaw Herling (1919-2000) had already gained international visibility as the author of A world Apart: The Journal of a Gulag Survivor (1951) which had been published with a preface by Bertrand Russell. He was married to Lidia Croce.

Feltrinelli gave the permission and the Polish Zhivago was published in 1959 in Paris under the aegis of the Instytut Literacki (volume 44 of the publisher “Kultura”) and printed by Édition et Librairie “Libella” in 2500 copies. The translator was Paweł Hostowiec (aka Jerzy Stempowski).

The edition carries the Feltrinelli copyright and the accompanying editorial remark says: “We thank all those who helped publish ‘Doctor Zhivago’ in Polish, in particular Mr. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the Milan-based publisher who transferred to us without charge the copyright for the Polish edition, the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris that paid for the translation, Mr. Charles E. Merrill, Jr. of Boston (USA) for financial assistance, and all those who bought the subscription, in total 2500 copies, of the book” (original in Polish).

As it became clear much later, the Congress for Cultural Freedom was funded by the CIA (see Stonor Saunders 2000) and thus there is something amusing in this joint partnership of Feltrinelli with a CIA funded organization.

As it is clear from the conversation that Herling had with d’Angelo, part of the plan was to bring Zhivago back to Poland using visits to Paris of residents in Poland. How successfully was the attempt? An answer to this question requires a much broader analysis of two factors. The first concerns the changing levels of censorship and customs controls between 1959 and the early 1980s and, secondly, one must consider the importing of Zhivago into Poland as only one instance of a gigantic program that went under the name of “book distribution program”. The latter program, run by George Minden, was one of the most successful CIA run operations of the Cold War. Fortunately, we now have a wonderful treatment of the matter in the book by Alfred Reisch “Hot Books in the Cold War. The CIA-funded secret western book distribution program behind the iron curtain” (Reisch 2013). Using the reports written by George Minden between 1956 (year of the inception of the program) till 1973 (the reports from 1973 until 1991, the year of the dismantlement of the program, have not been located), Reisch provides a detailed analysis of the kind of books that were sent to Eastern Europe with a country by country analysis (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).

Reisch says: “In the secret and also not so secret ideological and cultural warfare between East and West during the cold War, it is estimated that during a period of 35 years, some 10 million books were mailed and smuggled across the Iron Curtain, despite the futile attempts of the communist postal censors and customs inspectors to stem the flow” (Reisch 2013, p. 305)

In many cases the books were not blocked by the censors but did not arrive to the addressee because they were simply pilfered at the post office and resold at high prices in the black market.

In addition to the mail program, there was also the person to person distribution program, which exploited the presence of visitors from Eastern Europe to Western Europe for conferences or other events to hand out free copies of books that were then brought back to their countries. Sailors, sportsmen, students, clergymen, (and in one case even a zoo director, see Reisch, p. 236), and all other kinds of visitors were given free copies to bring back home. In 1958 “a visiting horse-jumping team [visiting Italy from Poland] with their own rail-trucks with horses took over 70 books and hid most of them in the hay” (Reisch, p. 240). The Seventh World Youth festival held in Vienna from July 26 till August 4, 1959, provided a wonderful opportunity for the person to person distribution program (it is estimated that in 10 days the total number of copies distributed to Polish delegates exceeded 5000 copies, see Reisch, pp. 241-242). The event was a communist-organized propaganda event that was exploited by the book distribution program to its advantage.

Immensely valuable are also the letters, extracts of which are given in Reisch’s book, that many of the recipients of the free books sent often providing important information about the censorship operating within their country (both in the mail distribution centers and at the boarder) and their reaction to the books they received.

Doctor Zhivago figures as one of the most requested books in Poland and other Eastern European Countries (“Dr. Zhivago was one of the most coveted books among East European readers” (Reisch 2013, p. 35)). Even a leading member of the Sejam (Polish parliament) asked distributors abroad for a copy of Doctor Zhivago! (see Reisch, p. 97, note 14). While copies in French and English had to be smuggled to the remaining Eastern European Countries, as of 1959 in Poland one could send the version in Polish produced in Paris.

Poles were at times stopped at customs and their copies of Zhivago were confiscated by the customs officers. There is for instance a letter from Jan Nowak to Jerzy Giedroyc dated 17 July 1961 in which Nowak informs Giedroyc (long standing chief editor of “Kultura”) that Polish visitors returning from Paris to Poland were stopped at customs and that copies of the journal Kultura and Doctor Zhivago have been confiscated. Then Nowak added that someone else who came back to Poland a few days earlier said that it was becoming more and more difficult to bring a copy inside the country. (see Platt 2001, p. 253) The letter bears witness to how the publication abroad was being smuggled into Poland and to the different levels of censorship that affected Poland in the period between the 1950s and the 1980s. I refer to Reisch’s book for more details.

Here is a reaction of a recipient from Warsaw who had successfully received by mail Doctor Zhivago:

“Your priceless publications [Doctor Zhivago and Song of Bernardette] will serve not only me but a large group of friends as well […] and will be treated as sensation! Your gift means so much to me, because I know now about your existence, about your willingness to help a lonely Polish scholar, about your understanding of our needs and desires […].” (Quoted in Reisch 2013, pp. 251-252; the original monthly report by Minden is dated May 9, 1959)

In a different letter to Nowak dated 17 February 1966 (Platt 2001, p. 281) Giedroyc says that he recently received the stenographic record of the meeting of the Moscow Writers’ Association which expelled Pasternak. He proposed preparing a radio broadcast about this. The translation of these transcripts into Polish was the main novelty of the second edition of the Polish Zhivago that was published in Paris in 1967. The title page gave the title Doktor Ziwago and added: “and a stenographic record of the general meeting of the Moscow writers from 31.X.1958 related to the case of B. Pasternak”. My 1967 copy however, despite the title page, does not contain the announced stenographic record. The colophon of my copy indicates that I have a second printing “Réimprimé en Belgique”. It is possible that the first printing done in Paris on April 28, 1967 (Imprimerie Richard) might have contained the stenographic record. If the first printing done in Paris in 1967 contains this stenographic record it should be found exactly on pages 501-542, which, to repeat, are not in the second printing. [[Added February 21, 2016: I was able to find the first printing of the 1967 edition, which does indeed have the stenographic record on pp. 501-542]]

Regardless, the stenographic record was included in the Polish edition that came out in 1983 in the midst of the new political atmosphere in Poland. The edition came out under two different formats. Both formats contain a four page introduction (Introduction to the national edition) by Andrzej Drawicz and the transcription of the stenographic record appears on pp. 501-542.

Apart from these differences and the covers, the translation and the page setting of this 1983 edition are like the one for the edition published by Kultura in 1967 although the format is smaller in size.

Sources:

Platt, D., ed., Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, Jerzy Giedroyc, Listy 1952-1998, Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Ossolineum, Wrokław, 2001

Reisch, A., Hot Books in the Cold War. The CIA-funded secret western book distribution program behind the iron curtain, The Central European University Press, Budapest, 2013

Stonor Saunders, F., The Cultural Cold War. The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, The New Press, New York, 2000

[Added on February 13, 2016]: Of great interest in connection to the topic of this post is also an article that was recently brought to my attention by Dr. Jan Dierick, whose helpfulness is gratefully acknowledged. The reference is: Zdzislaw Kudelski “Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Jerzy Giedroyc, Listy o Pasternaku, podał do druku i oprac. Z. Kudelski, „Zeszyty Literackie”, 2011, nr 116, pp. 159-173”. The Russian translation (“Nowaja Polsza” 2011, nr 9 (133), pp. 8-18.) of this publication is available on the Novaya Pol’sha-website (click here). The article contains passages on Pasternak and Doctor Zhivago excerpted from the correspondence exchanged between Giedroyc and Herling-Grudziński between 1957 and 1959. Among the topics discussed are the Polish translation of Doctor Zhivago, Fedecki and Ripellino’s negative evaluation of Doctor Zhivago, and the contacts with the Feltrinelli publishing house through d’Angelo.

Ziemowit Fedecki (1923-2009) played an important role in the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Opinie (1957). In the previous post, I quoted some passages from an interview with Fedecki by Anna Żebrowska, which appeared in 2003 in the issue 46 of Przeglad (for the original Polish text see http://www.przeglad-tygodnik.pl/pl/artykul/cieniu-doktora-zywago). This post contains the translation into English of the interview. I am grateful to Rafal Urbaniak for his translation.

In the shadow of “Doctor Zhivago”

Friends of the red heir.

 Gałczyński and Pasternak asked me for my remarks about their work. I had to vow that I would tell what I really think. 

 Ziemowit Fedecki

Żebrowska: They call you “the red heir”.

Fedecki: As the Polish saying goes, only a cow doesn’t change her views. I will be such a cow, because I confess I have socialist convictions. I am a son of a pre-war work inspector. In Białystok, which was then  an industrial region focusing on textile production, my father closed two factories, which produced uniforms for Japanese army. To make them cheaper, they were made from second hand material – they tore rags. To make them even cheaper, they employed children for the nights. Their lungs lasted three to four months. Then even the strongest one would die. Unemployed families would give up their kids to die in order to avoid starvation for four months. When someone has seen the unbelievable poverty and atrocities of capitalism those days…

Żebrowska: So I have an explanation of “red”. And “heir”?

Fedecki: I was only a kid, when I inherited an estate called Great Lebioda from my grandfather Józef Michniewicz. It was located at the crossing of the roads leading to Lida, Grodno and Szczuczyn. Around 450 ha was occupied by a forest which couldn’t be cut. In 1920 Prażmowski-Belina camped there with the Soviet cavalry and big heads from the HQ decided that the forest was of strategic importance and was to remain intact till the next war. I didn’t grow up to be a “real” heir, I was a few years too young. After the Russian invasion in 1939, the old building was left unattended and unrenovated, so it fell apart after a dozen years or so. It’s a real shame, it was a very beautiful historic building, renovated and shown in many architecture textbooks.  We burned wood in XVIIIth century Dutch stoves, which survived the conflagration of war. And in “my” forest we woud steal wood for my bosom friend’s house, Wałodzi Malec. It was thanks to him that I got to know the exceptional charm of Belarussian folk songs, which charmed Mickiewicz and Czeczot.

Żebrowska: Why atheism in a boy from a good family, gentry?

Fedecki: Maybe you need a gift to believe, and I don’t have it. My grandmother was raised in a convent, but my parents were leftists and “Poprostu”  [“directly” or “straight”] was published in our apartment – the first one, from Wilno. For their activity in POW [Polish Military Organization] and other merits for Polish independence, my parents received Crosses of Valor; on account of the leftist “Poprostu” my father was suspended from work. During the [German] occupation my mom waged her private war against the Gestapo, stealing children from the Wilno’s ghetto who were meant to be put to death with injections. In my bed slept a Jew with a shot in his chest and a woman already drenched in lime during the Jew massacre in Ponary.

Żebrowska: How did you get out of Wilno?

Fedecki: In 1944 Putrament and Jędrychowski flew in, and they needed people for the PKWN [Polish Committee of National Liberation]. Jędrychowski offered me a job in their radio. Meanwhile my friends from AK [Home Army] were in great danger. Wilno was taken by joint AK and Russian military effort, after which the Russians raided the Poles, sending them to a forced labor camp in Kaluga. I went to Putrament and asked if he couldn’t get at least a few AK members to Lublin. “Bring them the day after tomorrow to the airport”. With Janek Mietkowski (later, the president of Radio Three and a minister) we buried his weapon in a flowerbed, gathered the others, and went to the airport. Putrament told the Russian security detail “Eto moia grupa” [This is my group, in Russian], he put us on a Dakota and we landed in Lublin. I was even curious whether our friends wouldn’t run straight to the forest, but it wasn’t proper to ask. It turned out they were sick of both war and forest. Forests were terrible, it is enough to watch Różewicz’s “Into the ground”. They went to university, got civil jobs. Only few of them ended up in the army.

Żebrowska: My father also did that – from the NSZ [National Armed Forces] he escaped from the NKVD to the army. You, however, ended up in diplomacy.

Fedecki: Already before the war ended I left for Moscow as a press attaché of the Polish embassy. I was there, watching from the gradinata in front of Kremlin the famous victory parade, when Russian solders would throw German flags in front of the Mausoleum. To prove myself that everything passes I kept my pass for the funeral of the all-mighty ideologist Andrei Zhdanov.

Żebrowska: Who were your friends in Moscow?

Fedecki: Mostly friends from the university, because without telling anyone I enrolled to study biology. I will never meet such amazing people. They came back from the front lines often without legs, without hands, they knew everything about Stalinism, we understood each other in half words. I left the university when they kicked out those professors who disparaged Lysenko’s theories. One of my friends was Alexander Werth, a correspondent for the “Manchester Guardian”, with whom we illegally went to the Republic of Chechnya, which was liquidated after the war. Kilometers of emptiness – empty houses, no living soul. Our guide was a journalist of “Socialist Ossetia”, who knew everyone there. On the face of it, there was no trace of Chechens, but the commandant of the old stronghold complained: “Pigs, those Chechens! They come back secretly to their settlements, especially the elderly. One knows all the paths, covers himself with leafs if he needs to, we can’t trace him. Then he reaches his village and hangs himself, right in plain sight. Later, an inspection issues complaints from the Party, forgets about us in promotions, because we weren’t good guards. How can we watch them, pigs, sons of…!”

Żebrowska: Boris Pasternak’s son, Evgenii till today tells the Poles about how you financed their family.

Fedecki: I was honored to.

Żebrowska: Was in the years of the fights with the cosmopolitans?

Fedecki: Yes, I even joked one day: “Boris Leonidovich, I thought I was done helping Jews after the occupation, but I see there’s plenty of work to be done”… Pasternak had a large family to maintain. It’s difficult to make ends meet making money on poetry, anywhere in the world. Pasternak made some money preparing translations. He even translated from Polish, even though he didn’t know the language, and didn’t understand much from Słowacki’s or Leśmian’s poetics. Jokingly he apologized that he was doing this ” for milk for the children.” When after the war the anti-semite mess began, they stopped printing his work, Shakespeare’s plays in his translation were taken off stage.

At that time, Stefan Żółkiewski, the editor of Kuźnica, came to Moscow, a charming man. I told him that Pasternak had no money to live. “We’ll figure out something – said Żółkiewski – I’ll prepare bills for the articles that didn’t go through the censorship.” When I went to Moscow, I took the money. I gave it to him, waited till the 1st of the month and again brought an envelope [with money], saying that another royalty had arrived. This continued for a few good months. I was making quite a lot, so I was giving him half of my salary. That’s probably why he gave me later the manuscript of Doctor Zhivago. When translations returned to the [theater] stages, Pasternak said “I don’t need royalties anymore.” Perhaps he had some idea as to where the money came from, given his dedication on a volume “To Dear Ziemowit as a proof of friendship and to remember the times, when he was the good soul for me and my family.”

Żebrowska: A few people harboured a grudge against you, because you didn’t publish the whole of Doctor Zhivago.

Fedecki: For God’s sake, it was mid-50s, there were no private publishers or secondary circulation.  In the journal Opinie [Opinions] we could only publish part of the story, which we did one year before the Nobel prize and it was the first publication in the world. The translator, Ms Maria Mongirdowa, fell ill and died. I passed it on to Seweryn Pollak, who signed a contract with PIW [Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy].

In the West no one cared about the piece until Pasternak got the Nobel prize. And in Poland we couldn’t publish a book considered to be anti-Soviet, whose author was expelled from the [Soviet] writers’ association. When they later called Pollak from PIW, they were even afraid to mention the title of the piece: “Mr Seweryn, we have a contract with you for this piece, you know which one. Please do not refund us the advance, and in general, we won’t talk about it.” Perhaps, Herling-Grudziński [Gustaw Herling-Grudziński], who wrote that Doctor Zhivago did not appear because of Fedecki’s pettiness, has not heard of censorship in the PRL [Polish People’s Republic], but a few people still remember it.

Żebrowska: I browsed through the first issue of the quarterly Opinie. Apart from Pasternak, there were quite a few authors at that time prohibited in the USSR: Babel, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva. How come this could appear in 1957?

Fedecki: Diplomatic manouvers. We applied for funding at TPPR [Polish-Soviet Friendship Society], which later ran into troubles because of that. What’s worse, we started cooperating with Władysław Siła-Nowicki, who just got out of a UB [Polish Secret Police] prison — he reviewed books for us. But Opinie was the only periodic of TPPR that disappeared from news stalls in two days.

Żebrowska: I can imagine the reaction in USSR.

Fedecki: Literaturnaia Gazeta published a piece “Whose opinions are these?” (Western revisionists’, they discovered). The eulogist of “a real man”, Boris Polevoi, petitioned for a “social” trial of the editorial board. They wrote about me that I’m a perfidious exhumator of pseudoliterature [Actually, this takes place in a second article published in July 24, 1958, in Sovetskaia Kul’tura, titled Trojan horse, where one finds Polevoi’s attack against Fedecki]. For a long period I was not sent to Moscow, they stopped inviting me for movies at the Russian embassy. Opinie appeared only twice, but in the second issue the censorship’s interference was so strong that with Pollak we refused to sign it.

Żebrowska: Kira Gałczyńska wrote that it was you who discovered Mazury and Pranie.

Fedecki: I lived there in the summer, at a friendly forester, Mr Popowski. From Moscow I brought only 100 dollars of savings, the rest of the money I spent for books in second-hand bookshops. For 100 dollars I purchased a SHL (it’s a great motorcycle), and with Janek Mietkowski we went to Mazury. They reminded us of Wileńszczyzna [Wilno’s surroundings], we discovered places very much like our places back in Wileńszczyzna. But for a long time now I haven’t gone to Mazury, where nowadays teams from Zakopane build highlanders’ huts for ladies from the society. I have a small house in Tuchola.

Żebrowska: Jan Gałczyński ended up in the forester’s lodge in Pranie?

Fedecki: Only by accident. I had an appointment with a lady-friend in a café. She didn’t come, it turned out that at that time she was getting married for the second or third time. I waited for her for half an hour, the evening seemed empty, so I dropped by Gałczyński’s place.

He wasn’t there, and Mrs Natalia [Gałczyński’s wife] complained that she’d like to take Konstanty [Gałczyński’s first name] as far away from holiday pals, she was worried about his heart after the heart attack. I proposed to organize a summer in Mazury for them, where the nearest pub is 13km across the forest. I telegraphed Popowski, he responded quickly – he agreed. Gałczyński came with Ms Natalia, Kira and Jerzy Zagórski’s grandson. We drove them with Popowski on old German motor boats through the, at the time, completely virgin Mazury, from Ruciane to Pranie. Gałczyński had his revelation, it was so beautiful. You can also see how much he wrote in Mazury. And the ways we had fun in Pranie: during dinner he was the governor, I was the special task official, and we changed roles on the following day. We wrote together an anthem for USSR  according to Saltykov-Shchedrin, but alas, I only remember the last line: “Remember, citizens, don’t think!” [in Russian]. As a talented man, Gałczyński was not even a bit jealous about other poets. He was happy when someone wrote something good.

Żebrowska: What does friendship with a great poet look like, do you have to praise him?

Fedecki: Both Gałczyński, and Pasternak, when we were in closer relationships, asked for honest remarks about their work. I had to vow that I would tell what I really thought. Gałczyński gave me his “Wit Stwosz” to read. I adore Gałczyński, but I think “Wit Stwosz” is rather average. As a result result, he didn’t talk to me for over a month. I was one of the first readers of Doctor Zhivago and it bored me to death, I used to make coffee to stay awake. I told Pasternak that this is revolution seen through a window vent of his cabin in Peredelkino. As a 23 year old pup I would never dare to review it like this, but since he made me vow? Pasternak listened, went upstairs and didn’t come downstairs for dinner. I packed my things (I was staying at his place in Peredelkino for holidays) and I started my goodbyes. He ran down the stairs: “Please stay, if you leave, then I will be really offended!”

Żebrowska: Everyone loves criticism in superlatives.

Fedecki: In this respect Iwaszkiewicz was an extraordinary person. Twice I didn’t print his poems from “Twórczość” [Creativity], where he was editor-in-chief and my boss, not to mention that he was the president of the Writers’ association. After Gagarin died, he wrote the poem “To Gagarin’s daughters.” I told him, that it’s a greater loss when a drunk motorcycle driver hits and kills Ms Kowalska standing at a bus stop. Her daughters don’t even get any compensation. For Gagarin it was an occupational risk. He only asked “Really, is it so bad? Throw it out, then.”

Żebrowska: How do you look at “Doctor Zhivago” these days?

Fedecki:The same. If a writer wants to focus on revolution, he needs to get to know it up close, like Babel. Pasternak spent his most stormy years keeping a warm job. He knew all European languages, and since all the NSZ [National Armed Forces] officials ran after the revolution, he translated diplomatic correspondence. And that’s very good, because he received barley, pork fat, his family didn’t starve.  For a novel, however, he didn’t have enough material. Apart from that, he accepted the pointless theory, that one has to write like Lev Tolstoi. “Isn’t it enough that you write like Pasternak?” I asked. Doctor Zhivago did not become a point of reference in the history of literature. Babel’s Red Cavalry is something different, or Zoshchenko’s stories – without them, our picture of Russia would be incomplete.

Żebrowska: Actually, how did you meet Pasternak?

Fedecki: We went to Peredelkino with Jerzy Pomianowski and  Zivov, a translator from Polish.  Zivov was his friend, Pomianowski was publishing an anthology of Russian poetry and had some business [in going], and I just really wanted to meet him.

Already at the beginning Pasternak said: “Stalin, this bandit…” We heard a snap – Zivov fainted. Pomianowski, who graduated from a medical school, told us to put him on a couch. Later it turned out that  Zivov fainted every time Pasternak talked about Stalin in the presence of unfamiliar people. He was afraid that the foreigners, unaware of anything would tell in Moscow what the poet was saying about the leader and that the powers that be would use him as a witness. He didn’t want to hurt Pasternak, so he fainted not to hear anything.

Żebrowska: Were the poems in which Pasternak glorified the USSR written sincerely?

Fedecki: Half-half, I think. In the USSR  their system of values was out of balance, at the border of split personality. In the poem “Visokaya bolezn” Pasternak gave a real picture of Russia bathed in blood, and three pages further he was writing a pean to honour Lenin… I love early Pasternak, but his volume “Vtoroe Rozhdenie” [Second Birth] – how he felt like newly born after the revolution – is a failure. Or take a look at this statement: ” The soul is leaving the West, She has nothing to do there “. It is funny when Rilke’s friend and constant correspondent calls the West soulless!

Żebrowska: Apart from Pasternak you promoted in Poland also the work of the Oberiuts [Absurdists], Okudzhava, and Trifonov. Did any of these publications cause a storm like Doctor Zhivago?

Fedecki: There was a hell of an argument after Okudzhava’s  “You will live”. The ZLP [Association of Polish Writers] received a series of denunciations, Iwaszkiewicz every few days would say, “Come, dear Ziemek, we have a new denunciation thingy for you”. In USSR the story appeared in the provincial “Tarusskie Stranicy”, and most of the circulation was destroyed, Okudzhava was blamed for pacifism and other sins.  And we published it boldly, in a separate issue. Thanks to the Polish edition Bulat [Okudzhava] became known internationally. I convinced a German translator to prepare a translation, he didn’t know Russian very well, I helped him. In German Okudzhava was read and translated into Swedish, French. Trifonov went to France and also through Poland.

Żebrowska: Russian fates…

Fedecki: I’ll tell you a different story from our battle with cosmopolitism. Molotov’s wife was arrested, Mikhoels was murdered, the Jewish Theater was disbanded, the leader of the Jewish Anti-Fascist movement Solomon Lozovsky was executed… And then Literaturnaia Gazeta publishes a regime critic saying that idealism is the weapon of world capitalism, and Pasternak is an idealist. You can guess the rest of the reasoning. In the evening, without any appointment, Pasternak’s friends met at his place. I went there too. Pasternak was dressed elegantly, English style. Wine was served in green glasses, no one mentioned the article. At midnight we heard knocking on the door, which might have meant arrest, everyone froze. Pasternak straightened his jacket and opened the door.  The author of the article opened the door and kneeled, weeping “Forgive me Boria!” Pasternak did not accept the apologies, he only said with disdain, “Better have some wine,” everyone returned to the previous conversation. The critic mooched around for a bit and left silently.

Żebrowska: Real Dostoevsky material.

Fedecki: The critic was an ultrasonofabitch and at the same time he adored tied words. He had a priceless collection of XXth century Russian poetry, our common friend secretly copied some unavailable poems from it for me. He collected books with authors’ signatures, he loved Pasternak, but whenever the powers that be wished so, he could publicly accuse anyone of anything. During the critic’s funeral, when the casket entered the furnace, one of the attendees said: “It smells of fried dastard”.

Żebrowska: Are you happy about reality nowadays?

Fedecki: Not so much, I was raised in the spirit of tolerance, which I think died in Poland. In our village for holidays, the guests usually were: my uncle, colonel doctor Krzywiec, fanatically anti-Soviet and well noted in Rome, strongly communistic Henryk Dembiński and atheistic youth from “Poprostu”, priests Śledziewski (specialist in Wilno’s baroque) and Marcinkowski (Polish studies), music teacher Załkind, Jew, and Jasienica’s cousins – Gienia and Zosia Tatarkówna. The meeting was patronized by my grandmother, who grew up in a convent. Such different people sat at the same table and I remember no issue, no disrespect. Back then people thought that if a person is decent, that’s enough.