1. The view of twentieth-century Russian literature as fundamentally unified was originally articulated in Gleb Struve's pioneering book Russkaia Hteratura v izgnanii (New York, 1956) and later reiterated at a 1978 Geneva conference titled “One or Two Russian Literatures?“

2. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1991), 4.Google Scholar

3. Some critics have expressed a remarkably inclusive view of transnationalism, extending it not only to the Enlightenment-era “Republic of Letters” but even much further back in time. Stephen Clingman even submits that almost any writer can be labeled transnational, although some respond more directly to the promptings of the transnational agenda. Clingman, Stephen, The Grammar of Identity: Transnational Fiction and the Nature of the Boundary (Oxford, 2009), 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture (New York, 1994), 226.Google Scholar

5. Papastergiadis, Nikos, The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), 182, 11.Google Scholar

6. Anderson, 139,145.

7. A notable exception is Eva Hausbacher's recent monograph dedicated to the transnational literary production of several contemporary Russian-born authors living in the west. Hausbacher, Eva, Poetik der Migration: Transnationale Schreibweisen in der zeitgenössischen russischen Literatur (Tübingen, 2009).Google Scholar Only one of these authors, Wladimir Kaminer, writes in an adopted tongue (German), whereas the other three (Marina Palei, Mariia Rybakova, and Julia Kissina) use their native Russian, which does not preclude them, according to Hausbacher, from qualifying as transnational writers. See Wanner, Adrian, Out of Russia: Fictions of a New Translingual Diaspora (Evanston, 2011), 11.Google Scholar

8. Miletic, Tijana, European Literary Immigration into the French Language: Readings of Gary, Kristof, Kundera and Semprun (New York, 2008), 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Papastergiadis, 131.

10. See Seyhan, Azade, Writing outside the Nation (Princeton, 2001), 155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Ibid., 156.

12. Katerina Clark proposes this definition in the context of the 1930s transnational artistic community that emerged in Stalinist Moscow. Clark, Katerina, Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941 (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), 141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Clingman, 8.

14. Trousdale, Rachel, Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination: Novels of Exile and Alternative Worlds (New York, 2010), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Seyhan, 106; Papastergiadis, 10-11.

16. Trousdale, Rachel, “Nabokov and the Transnational Canon,” The Nabokovian 66 (Spring 2011): 7-14.Google Scholar

17. Annick Morard identifies “deracination” as the chief aspect of the generational identity of the “sons” of the first wave of emigration in her book De 1'émigré au déraciné: La “jeune génération” des écrivains russes entre identité et esthétique (Paris, 1920-1940) (Lausanne, 2010). The “unnoticed generation” formula was coined by Vladimir Varshavskii in his Nezamechennoe pokolenie (New York, 1956).

18. Mannheim, Karl, “The Problem of Generations,” in Kecskemeti, Paul, ed., Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1952), 276–322.Google Scholar

19. The exploration of Russian Montparnasse writing in the context of western cultural and literary phenomena was initiated in Leonid Livak, How It Was Done in Paris: Russian Émigré Literature and French Modernism (Madison, 2003); Jaccard, J.-Ph., Morard, A., and Tassis, G., eds., Russkie pisateli v Parizhe: Vzgliad na frantsuzskuiu literaturu, 1920-1940 (Moscow, 2007);Google Scholar Isaev, S. A., Siurrealizm i avangard: Materialy rossiisko-frantsuzskogo kollokviuma (Moscow, 1999);Google Scholar Semenova, Svetlana, “Ekzistentsial'noe soznanie v proze russkogo zarubezh'ia (Gaito Gazdanov i Boris Poplavskii),” Voprosy literatury (May-June 2000): 67-106;Google Scholar Chagin, Aleksei, ed., Gaito Gazdanov v kontekste russkoi i zapadnoevropeiskikh literatur (Moscow, 2008);Google Scholar Syrovatko, L. V., ed., Gazdanov i mirovaia kul'tura: Sb. Nauchnykh statei (Kaliningrad, 2000);Google Scholar Tokarev, Dmitrii, “Mezhdu Indiei i Gegelem“: Tvorchestvo Borisa Poplavskogo v komparativnoi perspektive (Moscow, 2011);Google Scholar Morard, De I'Émigré au déraciné

20. “Bergson's compatibility with Russian thought… owes much to … the tradition of Orthodox ontologism in Russia, whereby the theory of knowledge is considered valuable only when serving as part of our total activity of ‘being’ in the world. Thus the intertwining in Russian culture of metaphysics, aesthetics, religion and science into an organic Whole (expressed most clearly perhaps in Solov'ev's conception of ‘all-unity’), which crystallizes into the Russian concern with the primary link between art and life, art serving both as a way of knowing and transforming reality (a concern once again found in Solov'ev, who stresses the theurgic role of art).” Fink, Hilary L., Bergson and Russian Modernism, 1900-1930 (Evanston, 1999), 112.Google Scholar

21. Michael Glynn, for example, suggests that Nabokov was particularly attracted to Bergson's exposure of “man's apparent tendency to misperceive… reality.” In his study, Glynn traces Nabokov's explorations of such misconceptions’ “rich implications,” which were repeatedly thematized in his works, back to Bergson's initial influence. Glynn, Michael, Vladimir Nabokov: Bergsonian and Russian Formalist Influences in His Novels (New York, 2007), 57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Chisla, no. 10 (1934): 204-9.

23. Interview by Iu. Troll. Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European Culture (BAR). Ms Coll. Vasily Yanovsky. Box 17: Arranged Manuscripts. Yanovsky, Vassily Semenovich.

24. Gazdanov gave a reading at an evening organized by the literary group Kochev'e dedicated to Céline on 7 December 1933. Georgii Adamovich, Vladimir Varshavskii, Vladimir Veidle, Mark Slonim, Iurii Fel'zen, and others took part in the subsequent discussion. The novel was actively reviewed in the émigré press: for example, L. Kelberin, Chisla, no. 9 (1933): 223-24; Yu. Terapiano, Chisla, no. 10 (1934): 210-11; G. Adamovich, Poslednie novosti, 27 April 1933, 3, and 14 December 1933, 3. Two Russian translations appeared promptly in 1934 by Elsa Triolet and Sergei Romov.

25. Livak, 142. Characteristically, Yanovsky retrospectively deemphasizes any direct influence from Céline, explaining the parallels by their common “humanitarian” outlook: “Later [Nikolai] Berdiaev sort of accused me of imitating Céline… But we were both … physicians of the Paris school, and I saw a lot of what he saw, and we could have similar reactions to poverty, pain, and privation. I don't think that I was under Céline's influence …” BAR: Ms Coll. Yanovsky Box 17.

26. Written in the late 1920s, “Zhizn’ i smert’ studenta Kurlova” was first published in Za svobodu!, n.d. (ca. 1928), under the pen name “Tseianovskii.“

27. Livak, 138.

28. Yanovsky chose the title “Preobrazhenie” (Transfiguration) for the excerpt from Liubov’ vtoraia that was published in Sovremennye zapiski 53 (1930).

29. See reviews by Voloshin, Gleb, Sovremennye zapiski 59 (1935): 476-77;Google Scholar Schakhovskoy, Zinaida, “L'amour second (en russe),” Le Thyrse, 1 October 1935;Google Scholar Vladislav Khodasevich, Vozrozhdenie 22 (August 1935); Alfred Bern, Mech 29 (September 1935).

30. Yanovsky, Vasily, Liubov’ vtoraia: Parizhskaia povest’ (Paris, 1935), 105.Google Scholar

31. Notre-Dame, as represented in French Romantic literature (Victor Hugo, Thèophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, etc.) served as a powerful symbol of Christianity and even an icon of Christian chastity, in contrast with the heathen spirit of other Parisian buildings designed in styles inspired by Greek antiquity (Gautier's “Notre Dame” [1931]). While echoing this rich tradition, Yanovsky's narrative can also be traced to Osip Mandel'shtam's “Notre Dame” (1913), in which the poet celebrates the cathedral as an inclusive and ubiquitous monument that fuses and reconciles all religions, cultures, and styles: “Primordial labyrinth, inscrutable forest, / rational abyss of the gothic soul, / Egyptian power, Christian modesty …” Osip Mandel'shtam, Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam, trans. Burton Raffel and Alia Burago (Albany, 1973), 53.

32. Yanovsky, , Liubov’ vtoraia, 109-10.Google Scholar

33. This reticence to identify as a Jew sometimes reached truly extreme proportions. Yanovsky, who reputedly lost two sisters in the Shoah and escaped a likely death by boarding a transatlantic boat in 1942, did not openly address the Holocaust in his writing. There is, however, a suggestive scene in his novel Amerikanskii opyt (1982) describing what appears to be a brutal massacre of the residents of a shtetl. Nonetheless, Yanovsky not only omits any specific references to Jews, he never even uses the word/ew, instead referring to the victims of the German firing squad simply as “men with black beards.” There is, however, no evidence that Yanovsky ever formally converted to Christianity. Both of his wives were Jewish, and his older sister Bronia, who also immigrated to New York, maintained a certain level of religious observance all her life. Yanovsky's only daughter, Maria, born in August 1940, was baptized on 20 May 1941 at the Orthodox church in Marseille (Eglise Orthodoxe de la Resurrection du Christ). In the context of the Nazi occupation of France and the intensification of racial and antisemitic legislation in the “free“ and occupied zones alike, this may be seen as an attempt to avoid persecution. (Conversions of apatrides of Jewish background were quite common around this time; Irene Nemirovsky's case is a salient example.) Later, in America, Yanovsky espoused a liberal version of Christianity that apparently corresponded to his self-assessment as a man of world culture. He was buried at the Novo-Diveevo Russian Orthodox cemetery in New York State.

34. Izwolsky, Elena, “V.S. Yanovsky: Some Thoughts and Reminiscences,” TriQuarterly 28 (Fall 1973): 28, 490-92, 492.Google Scholar

35. Izwolsky, 492. Fedorov argues for the need for humanity to devote all creative energy to the task of resurrecting dead ancestors, taking control over nature (including human nature) and the cosmos, and thereby restoring the world to its intended perfection, “seeing God face to face,” and realizing eternal and universal happiness. Published by Fedorov's disciples in 1906 in Vernyi (now Almaty, in Kazakhstan), the first edition was a two-volume miscellany, 1,200 pages long, and comprised of short essays, both finished and unfinished.

36. “To Our Readers,” Third Hour, no. 5 (1951): 1.

37. Poplavskii, Boris, “O misticheskoi atmosfere molodoi literatury v emigratsii,“ Chisla, no. 2-3 (1930): 311.Google Scholar

38. “In the dark cellars of the medical school… running water gurgles. Corpses are kept there under spigots; dead bodies float in deep tanks.” Yanovsky, Vasily, Portativnoe bessmertie (Moscow, 2012), 477.Google Scholar Cf. Marie-Claire Bancquart, Paris des Surréalistes (Paris, 1972), 57.

39. V. R. “Sredi knig i zhurnalov: Vasily Yanovsky.—'Portativnoe bessmertie,'” Vozrozhdenie 63 (1957): 125-27.

40. More recently, critics have tended to read the novel as an anti-utopia. Linnik, Iu. V., “Filosofskie iskaniia v proze Vasiliia Ianovskogo,” New Review 194 (1994): 207.Google Scholar

41. Both books describe a pseudo-scientific discovery that potentially gives the inventor and his close associates superhuman powers, and both portray an ideological collision between two opposing groups who compete for world domination. However, in Yanovsky's work the rays’ purpose is to prompt people to “merge in communal joy [slit'sia v sobornoi radosti],” whereas in Tolstoi the rays become a weapon of mass destruction.

42. Varshavskii, 260.

43. Yanovsky, Vasily, “The Time of Nikolai Fedorov,” Third Hour (New York, 1976): 86.Google Scholar Yanovsky published a brief article, “Obshchee delo,” interpreting Fedorov's ideas, in Novyi grad, no. 13 (1938): 172-74. His longer essay on Fedorov in English was featured in the Third Hour, no. 3 (1946-47) and reprinted in the final, memorial issue of the journal, cited here.

44. Yanovsky, Portativnoe bessmertie, 495. Ellipses in the original

45. Yanovsky, Vassily, “Puti iskusstva,” Mosty, no. 4 (1960). In the most direct way, Bergson's work on memory informs the plot of Yanovsky's Cheliust’ emigranta, New Review 49–50 (1957).Google Scholar

46. “The Time of Nikolai Fedorov,” 90.

47. Trousdale, Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination, 192.

48. Clingman, 21.

49. At about the same time that Yanovsky was working on Amerikanskii opyt, the aesthetics of navigation found striking artistic expression in Le Corbusier's famous Housing Unit (Unité d'habitation, the best known of which, Cité radieuse, was built in Marseille between 1946 and 1952). An architect with a global vision who spent much of his life travelling around the world, Le Corbusier conceived of this impressive block of flats as an ocean liner. Designing the roof as a deck, with ventilation stacks resembling chimneys, a swim ming pool, a running track, and spaces for enjoying the Mediterranean view, he found an eloquent architectural language to express the idea of life as an endless voyage.

50. For example, “No v Central Park'e sneg eshche lezhal“; “prikliucheniiaposlednego week-end'a“; “Vetot vecherpovzdorili iz-za party u Dzho.” Emphases added.

51. “Place the patient in a recumbent position, straighten the limbs If the eyes did not remain closed, pull out the lower eyelid so as to make a pocket, place a few shreds of cotton or a small piece of thin paper in this pocket and bring the upper lid down over it Cross the hands over the chest and tie them together.” Yanovsky, V., “Amerikanskii opyt,“ New Review 18 (1948): 129.Google Scholar

52. In his novel Le Testament frangais (1960), contemporary Russian-born francophone author Andreï Makine contemplates a similar dearth in Russian (especially compared to French) of appropriate vocabulary related to physical love, which leads to either prudish silencing of sex-related issues or to the use of obscenities.

53. Stepun, Fedor, review of Cheliust’ emigranta, by Yanovsky, V. S., New Review 54 (1958): 296.Google Scholar

54. Beaujour, Elizabeth Klosty, Alien Tongues: Bilingual Russian Writers of the “First“ Emigration (Ithaca, 1989), 149.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 153.

56. Yanovsky, V. S., No Man's Time, trans. Isabella Levitin and Roger Nyle Parris (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

57. Yanovsky never achieved near-native fluency, and although later he wrote books in English, his wife remained his permanent and indispensable editor.

58. For a concise survey of the novel's critical reception see: B. Hal May, “Yanovsky, V(assily) S(emenovich) 1906- (Basile S. Yanovsky),” in Contemporary Authors: A Bio- Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields, ed. Frances C. Locher, vols. 97-100 (Detroit, Mich., 1981), 577-79.

59. Trousdale, Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination, 194.

60. “Fedorov never uses the pronoun T in his works except to denigrate the concept of individualism. And the ‘we’ he uses is not the lofty, editorial ‘we’ but the ‘we’ of the nameless collective, the mass of the unnoticed, the victims of nature and history.“ Young, George M. Jr., Nikolai F. Fedorov: An Introduction (Belmont, Mass., 1979), 85.Google Scholar

61. No Man's Time, 57-60.

62. BAR: Ms Coll. Yanovsky. Box 17. Emphasis in the original.

63. Stepun, 296.

64. W. H. Auden, “Foreword,” No Man's Time, 7.

65. No Man's Time, 120.

66. “The Time of Nikolai Fedorov,” 89.

67. This differs from Nabokov's strategy of self-translation, which resulted in the creation of “non-identical doubles,” since the writer deliberately modified his texts to cater to either Russian or American audiences.

68. No Man's Time, 215.

69. His later works include Of Light and Sounding Brass (1972), The Dark Fields of Venus: From a Doctor's Logbook (1973), and The Great Transfer (1974).

70. Wanner, Out of Russia, 18.

71. Ibid., 15,190,192.

72. Ibid., 188.