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

you, poet, so much sympathy, comprehension and help’, Ivanov presents his correspondence
with Bowra as the dialogue of two poets belonging to a common humanist tradition; this
reinforces the message of his earlier poetic address to Bowra in Latin distichs and sets up a
creative framework for future exchanges and cooperation.
In his next letter of 3 November 1946 Bowra reported that he had now acquired copies
of Ivanov's two collections, Prozrachnost' (1904) and Cor Ardens (1911-12) from ‘a friend in
Moscow.’ 30 This kind individual may well have been Kornei Chukovskii. As noted in Chapter
1, Bowra had met him during his 1916 visit to Petrograd; many years later he was able to renew
contact with him through Isaiah Berlin, who was in Moscow working for the Foreign Office
from 8 September 1945 until his return to Oxford in April 1946. 31 On 25 October 1945 Bowra
sent Berlin some of his versions from Blok with a request to pass them on to Chukovskii with
his warmest regards. He also suggested to Berlin that All Souls might give Chukovskii ‘a job for
his declining years’ (‘he would add a lot to our gaiety’) and promised ‘to talk to that stuffed
Sumner about it.’ 32 During this period Bowra regularly sent Berlin extensive shopping-lists of
books to buy for him in Moscow; on 5 November, for example, he despatched ‘a statement of
needs’ for books, including ‘works by any member of the lost generation, Esenin, Mandelstam,
Annensky, Gumilev, Bal'mont, Bryusov, Gorodetsky, Sologub, Ivanov. This is what I really like
– this is my date, and I find it almost impossible to get. No expense to be spared.’ At the
end of the same letter he added: ‘I sent off two books for Borya and Kornei
, if you think it suitable to present them. It might make them feel less isolated. I
29 C.M. Bowra, From Virgil to Milton (London: Macmillan, 1945), 194. Ivanov's interest in the legend of King
Arthur may date back to the time he spent at Tintagel in Cornwall in the late 1890s.
30 Letter 4 in Chapter 5.
31 Berlin met Chukovskii soon after his arrival in Moscow and took a great liking to him. See Ignatieff, Isaiah
Berlin: A Life, 135, 170.
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