From the diary of a writer-publisher: 6

6 December
Our post office is inside the local supermarket, and next to the queue is a stand with all the British newspapers. In an Orwellian spirit of studying what people across the whole political spectrum are thinking, I occasionally buy the Morning Star, but it is as thin as Pravda and at £1.00 must represent the worst value for any daily — unless, of course, you value it by weight of ideology. However, as I stood there today I was astonished to see that it was twice as thick as usual, so I pulled one out to discover why and found that (see above) it was a special edition and FREE!

The front page story is ‘A Britain that Works for All: Labour Lists Worst Firms as It Promises to Protect Workers’. Top of Labour’s ‘list of the worst violators of workers’ rights’ is Amazon. In the past year, we are told, ‘ambulances were called to one of its warehouses once every two days to deal with electric shocks, bleeding, chest pains, major trauma and pregnancy and maternity issues resulting from “appalling” health and safety standards and extreme workloads’. At an Amazon warehouse in Scotland, ‘workers slept in tents in freezing weather as they could not afford to travel’.

I think Orwell would want to probe behind the phrase ‘one of its warehouses once every two days’ and the curious quotation marks around ‘appalling’. Personally, I am very surprised that I have not read about these cases in the other daily newspapers I buy. They are serious accusations and as someone now publishing with Amazon I take them seriously. I certainly find them credible, because my instinct tells me that the terrific deal and quality that Amazon gives Sam&Sam are possible only by, as the euphemism has it, cutting corners. Amazon is surely rivalling Gazprom as the biggest business in the world and therein, I fear, lie the seeds of its collapse. Gutenberg, Caxton and others invented the printing press, but they did not set out to print, market and sell all the books in the world.

15 December

John Dewey

I have received an email from John Dewey’s son Chris to tell me that his father died last night; ‘peacefully, with family beside him’. Chris adds that John was ‘smiling until the very end’. I can utterly believe that, because I have never known anyone for whom the smile, ironical comment and chuckle were so integral to his incredible fortitude. John’s illness put him through a very long, debilitating decline. I met him only once, last March, and admit I was shocked as he inched his way down the hall on a Zimmer frame to greet me. But the next two hours, as he half-reclined on a sofa and we all partook of Dorset scones and cream, were a riot of reminiscence, laughter, gossip and quotation.

My tribute to John’s achievements has preceded his death. I have nothing to add to that, but I can summarise it thus: as a Russianist, as someone contributing to English culture’s ever-deepening understanding of Russia’s culture, John was the real thing. It was not a job, it was his life. He made a conscious decision to stay out of Academe. Whilst impacting on the lives of thousands as a teacher in secondary schools and Lecturer in German and Russian at Bournemouth and Poole College of Further Education, he sourced his research and his translations from his own time and funds. Which British biography of a Russian writer can stand comparison with Mirror of the Soul, his life of Tyutchev? He approached everything with complete integrity. As his wife has told me, John spent ‘evening after evening’ searching for ‘the right words’ in his verse translations.

I owe John an enormous personal debt. I first contacted him four years ago to ask his advice about self-publishing in the IT age — advice that he richly gave and which helped lay the foundation for my own excursion with George Calderon: Edwardian Genius. This developed into a vibrant e-correspondence about reading Russian at Cambridge in the 1960s, the problems of writing biography, the poetry of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Esenin, Brodsky… I cannot express how much I shall miss our dialogue. In addition, John became a great fan and supporter of Calderonia, penning amusing Comments, contributing his own guest post, and writing a terrific unsolicited review of my book on Amazon.

Last year, John sent me a finished typescript, ‘Four Funerals and a Tyutchev Poem’. It begins by examining the biographical context of Tyutchev’s poem ‘I grob opushchen uzh v mogilu’ (And now the coffin has been lowered’), its music and and philosophical import, but touches on subjects as varied as Protestantism, the circumstances of Tyutchev’s own funeral, birds, Schindler’s List, and The Wizard of Oz. In the penultimate paragraph, John describes an experience similar to Tyutchev’s: after attending a very austere Lutheran funeral in Germany and emerging from the ‘bare cemetery chapel’ into an ‘epiphany’ of ‘warm spring sunshine, blue sky and birdsong’, John found himself recalling lines from Tyutchev’s poem and felt that ‘Tyutchev’s vision of the absolute as manifested in nature offered me, an agnostic, far greater comfort than the words and liturgy of the Christian ceremony’. In the final paragraph, John describes how delighted he was when his wife suggested that Tyutchev’s poem be read at his own funeral. Indeed:

I am grateful to her both for that and for sending me back to the poem itself, thereby helping to spark off the new thoughts on it outlined above. I very much hope Tyutchev’s little masterpiece will provide as much pleasure and illumination to others as it has to me over the years.

Here, in John Dewey’s translation, is Tyutchev’s untitled poem of 1833:

And now the coffin has been lowered…
And all around in packed array
Crowd mourners: jostling, loath to breathe in¹
The stifling odour of decay…

And by the open grave the pastor —
A man of learning and repute —
Begins his funeral oration
In words well-chosen and astute…

He speaks of man, ordained to perish,
The Fall, Christ’s blood that washes sin…
Each listens to these words of wisdom
And weighs them for himself within…

And all the while the sky so boundless
Shines with a pure undying light…
And all around us birdsong endless
Sounds from the blue unfathomed height…

John Dewey’s article ‘Four Funerals and a Tyutchev Poem’ is published in the New Year 2020 issue of ‘East-West Review’, the Journal of the Great Britain-Russian Society.

¹ I shall discuss this line in a future post – P.M.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.