'I am not a "scribbler", nor a "causeur"'

Andrei Bely (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, 1880-1934)
'I am not a "scribbler", nor a "causeur"'
Autograph letter signed ('B. Bugaev') to Boris Viktorovich Tomashevsky, Moscow, 2 September [?19 November] 1933.

In Russian. Three pages, 142 x 110mm, in purple ink, on a bifolium.

'I am not a "scribbler", nor a "causeur"': Bely deprecates his abilities as a letter-writer. The literary critic and Pushkin scholar Tomashevsky has sent Bely a number of his works, and Bely reacts with pleasure: 'Your brochure pleases me most of all: it vividly and interestingly presents the tasks of studying the perception of poets by Pushkin through the prism of time'. He goes on to express his warm personal feelings for Tomashevsky: 'Sometimes Claudia and I have a desire to meet with you in person; and it is so strong that we dream of unexpectedly appearing at your place this winter, taking advantage of your lovely invitation'. The letter concludes with a striking declaration of Bely's identity: 'I am not a "scribbler", nor a "causeur" (in letters); I am bunglingly slow-witted, or, to the point of idiocy, an utterer of generalities. I would however like to strengthen our personal communication with a face-to-face meeting'.

Published by A.V. Lavrov in Andrey Bely: Investigations and Studies, where a corrected date of 19 November is given. 'Claudia' is Bely's second wife, Klavdia Nikolaevna Vasilieva (nee Alekseeva; 1886-1970). Boris Tomashevsky (1890-1957) was a literary critic, theorist and leading Pushkin scholar, based at Pushkin House from 1921 onwards. Although Tomashevsky's own criticism had been inspired from the outset by the statistical poetics set out by Bely in his seminal 1910 work, Symbolism, the personal friendship between the two men had only been established in summer 1933 during a shared holiday at Koktebel in the Crimea. Bely's holiday was cut short by ill-health (culminating in his death on 8 January 1934), but their subsequent correspondence is an important source for the last months of Bely's life.

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