Natalie Prays-Harding
Leys School Cambridge, UK
D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky’s emotional patriotism  in his émigré literary works in british media in the middle of 1920-s
The article is devoted to the topic of emotional patriotism in D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky’s literary critics works published in British periodicals during his emigration in England. The author pays special attention to his articles in the weekly Sunday London newspaper The Observer, in which shows the world significance of not only the great Russian writers, but also great pride in Russia and its history.
Keywords: D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, British press, discourse, emotional patriotism

Наталия Прайс-Хардинг
Лиз колледж. Кембридж, Великобритания
Эмоциональный патриотизм Д. П. Святополка-Мирского в его эмигрантских литературно-критических трудах в британской прессе середины 1920-х
Статья посвящена рассмотрению темы эмоционального патриотизма в литературно-критических трудах Д.П. Святополк-Мирского в британских периодических изданиях периода его эмиграции в Англии. Особое внимание автор уделяет его статьям в еженедельной воскресной лондонской газете «Обозреватель», в которых Мирский не только показал всемирную значимость великих русских писателей, но и проявил гордость за Россию и ее историю. 
Ключевые слова: Д.П. Святополк-Мирский, британская пресса, дискурс, эмоциональный патриотизм.

Some researchers consider literary heritage of Prince D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky to have been completely covered. However, it appears that some of his works might still be left unknown to them. Mirsky’s impact in promoting Russian literature to the English readers and his role as a literary critic in the English Press of that time is immense. The context analysis of his reviews’ discourses in a London Sunday weekly newspaper The Observer which recently came into light, shows that Mirsky’s encyclopaedic knowledge, the emotional and patriotic essence of his articles, couldn’t leave Englishs reader indifferent to the Russian literature. He also influenced the opinion of the people who he worked with. J.C. Squier wrote about Mirsky in the review of his book ‘Russian Literature 1881-1925’: “<...> Prince D.S. Mirsky (who, since the World and the Civil War, has been settled in England) is a critic of altogether  another order, and one who combines rare qualities seldon found together. <…> he possesses an estonishing erudition in all the great ancient and modern literatures. He unites the industry of the complier with the imagination of the poet, the fine sense of shades of meaning, association, and sound of the aesthetic critic with the analitic power and grasp of ideas <…>. He has an inthusiastic interest in his country’s contemporary literature <…>” (The Observer, July, 11, 1926, p.6.) The Observer was a first-class newspaper at that time. A prominent British missionary Daniel Oliver wrote a letter of gratitude to its editor G.L. Garvin from South Africa in 1927: “Thank you for the wonderful job <...>, the ‘Observer’ is the newspaper that I open the first of all my newspapers every week and do not close it, till I read it all, without missing a single word.”   Mirsky began his collaboration in the newspaper in March 1926 and finished it shortly before his departure for the Soviet Russia. Among Mirsky’s pieces in the Observer were: ‘Semiramis’, ‘Gogol the Great’, ‘Tolstoy’, ‘Rasputin’ and several others. Even the names themselves of Mirsky's media texts in the ‘Observer’ reflect not only that they were multi-genre, it also becomes apparent that Mirsky's media discourse in this newspaper is not limited to just literary subjects. Especially clear is patriotism in his discourse which had always been present in his work, but even more of emotional character. Analysing Mirsky’s article ‘Semiramis’ in the Observer (a review about the book about Catherine the Great by American biographer K. Antony) we find him using patriotically sustained historical discourse. He tries to explain the essence of the historical epoch, during which the Russian Empress Catherine II ruled, to the English reader and a reader can tell that he is proud of his country. Analysing K. Anthony's book from this point of view, Mirsky emphasises the importance of the topic and indicates that the author lacks not only the historical knowledge about the epoch of Catherine the Great, but also the most important concept in this case - the concept of ‘Russian’: “<…> another defect is her inadequate knowledge of Russian and of Russian ‘atmosphere’. She invariably looses the point every time she tries to add colour by imaginative details, or by the introduction of Russian idioms. <…>”. [The ‘Observer’ 1926 May] Mirsky is using emotional-evaluation stylistics in his essay, and also enhances the attractiveness effect of what he’s writing about, by resorting to the expressive stylistics at the very culminating moment of his essay. Moreover, the Prince manages to maintain the reader's interest by writing his essay in such a way that the latter practically does not have a chance not to finish reading it before the final end.  With a great skill he adds exactly what is missing in K. Anthony’s book - a very important detail about the significance of Catherine's personality in Russia of her time and shows how great was the role she’d played in the history of Russia. He also is “performing” a little lesson in Russian history for the readers of the ‘Observer’ not only about Catherine the Great herself, but also about Russian famous historical people who surrounded her at the time. Showing that, he’s expressing the opinion of the greater part of the Russian people (combining it into a weighty 'Russian man') and says: “For the Russian of today Catherine herself is only a detail in what, to give it a name, we call the “Age of Catherine”, a representative and symbolic figure rather than and individual career. The “Age of Catherine” is associated with the names of its great men – Potiemkin, Suvorov and Derzhavin – more than with any definate image of the Empress herself. <…>. ” [‘The Observer’] Apparently, by virtue of his patriotism, in the final part of his essay- review, we see the domination of patriotic emotional-valued stylistics, which is also inherent in most of his texts. Exalted in style and, practically, with ecstasy (most probably, expressing his own feelings) Mirsky explains to the English reader that ‘the era of Catherine II’ “was a great age, and even to this day we are sensitive to the charm of the Semiramis of the North, and find it impossible not to sympathise with the attachment that her comtemporaries in the Army and in the nobility had for her. The woman who was the love of Potiemkin, served by Suvorov, and sung by Derzhavin, cannot become indifferent to the Russian heart.” [“The Observer”] In May 1930, another Mirsky's article under the title ‘Gogol the Great’ appeared in ‘The Observer’. It was a review of the translation of Gogol's book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” by Constance Garnet. Mirsky begins his review not with an assessment of the translation of Gogol’s book, but with the evaluation of Gogol's works by English critics. Again quite emotionally, he leads to resentment that English critics are not given to understand how great Gogol is. He also draws a parallel between his work and works by L. Tolstoy, V. Dostoyevsky and A. Chekhov (the latter, to Mirsky’s opinion, too much loved by English). Moreover, Mirsky emphasizes that Gogol is “a much greater than the likewise ‘universal’ Chekhov.” [The Observer, May 1926]. Throughout his career as a literary critic and historian, Mirsky constantly expressed his admiration for Gogol's work. He devoted a whole series of lectures to his literature under the title "Gogol the Great" which he’d read at the University of London and elsewhere. And everywhere he pointed to the greatness of Gogol's work, and that is one of the main theme of his article "Gogol the Great" in London’s ‘Observer’. There is a very perculiar idea, Mirsky expresses in the newspaper which he had always mentioned whether in his lectures or books, that the only way to understand Pushkin’s poems or read Gogol (as he compared his prose with poetry) for a foreigner lies only through learning Russian language. Same of these thoughts appear in his review of ‘Gogol the Great’: “<…> peculiar value of Gogol is of a kind that seems to me difficult to access to foreigners. Two things essential for the understanding of Gogol are lost to those who are not Russian and read him in a translation – language and background. <…>”. [The Observer]. Mirsky also considers that Russian culture is the part of the world culture and should be studied by the Westerners as they do with other European cultures and that statement is also very patriotic and comes with emotional stylistics of course. That cosideration of his can be traced in the second part of his review: “<…> the non-Russian reader misses it not because it cannot be translated, but simply because to understand it he must have assimilated, more or less, all the spiritual experience of Russia of which Gogol’s life and work acquire a particular symbolic meaning which they cannot have for the foreigner <…>”. [‘The Observer’ May 30th,1926]. Even more, he compares Gogol’s writing with such famous English writer W.Shakespear’s! 
What is said above about Mirsky’s literary criticism, his talented patriotical devotion to Russian culture and literature, his emotional envolvement in what he was writing, attracted English readers and made them think highly about the subject. He should be respected and the memory about him should be nearchered. Most respectful international writers and journalists proved his high class work during more that 10 years abroad. Mirsky’s creative productivity, magnificent literary abilities and the role that he played as a literary critic in England were described in the his memoirs about him: “Literary criticism is a very favourite subject in Russia, and he set us a standard of it far above anything I have met in our subject in England. He had a wonderful store of live and varied knowledge, mobilized with perfect ease, a marvelous memory and an English style of his own which held me captive even crossing a London street. <…>” (Sir B. Pares A Wondering Student, SyracuseUniversity Press, 1948, 448 p., p.290)/