Vyacheslav Ivanov and C.M. Bowra: a ... - UCL Discovery

important role in the development of their friendship than all the publications they
exchanged.
Although Bowra was in many ways a typical Oxford figure and is often cast as
such, it is important to remember that he far exceeded the usual boundaries of the
conventional academic role. He has been characterised as a ‘deeply romantic’ ‘poet
manqué’, as an ‘open rebel’ and as a ‘a major liberating influence’. 27 As John Finley, a
friend and fellow classicist from Harvard, put it in his tribute: ‘Though he became a fine
flower of the English education and admired its niceties, he was not in imagination
essentially formed, much less confined, by these.’ 28
We can see, therefore, that at the time of his first encounter with Ivanov, Bowra
was already an extremely distinguished figure: an accomplished classical scholar and
literary critic, with an impressive range of publications (twelve books by the age of
forty-seven in 1945), an established authority on classical and modern poetry,
recognized through his appointment to the Oxford Chair of Poetry in 1946, and a
prominent and influential figure in academic life at Oxford University. In all these three
areas of accomplishment he had a great deal to offer Ivanov. In terms of academic and
literary interests, the two men had much in common. They had both been trained as
classical scholars and shared a passion for ancient Greece, which they expressed in their
scholarly work and translations of ancient Greek poetry. In some areas their work
overlapped very closely; it is remarkable, for example, that their first publications in this
field were translations of Pindar's odes (Ivanov's version of Pindar's first Pythian ode
appeared in 1899, Bowra's Pythian Odes were published in 1928). We know from
Bowra's letter to Ivanov of 19 September 1948, written on the eve of his departure for
27
Connolly, ‘Hedonist and Stoic’, Lloyd-Jones, ‘British Academy Memoir’, Berlin, ‘Memorial Address in
St Mary’s’, 45-6, 35, 18, respectively.
28
John H. Finley Jr, ‘Maurice in America: I’, in Lloyd-Jones (ed.), Maurice Bowra: A Celebration, 113.
38