Professor Nadezhda Anatol'evna Natov

Victor Terras, Brown University

Nadezhda Anatol'evna Natov's academic career is marked by unflagging zeal, extraordinary versatility, and significant achievement on several planes. Her remarkable scholarship has been complemented by a great deal of publicistic activity and a prodigious amount of work as an organizer and leader in the profession. A popular and successful teacher, she has taught a rare variety of courses. A multilingual lecturer and writer, she has enjoyed international recognition for many years. Her name is inseparably linked with the International Dostoevsky Society, whose spiritus rector she has been since its inception and whose fortunes she has helped to guide with inexhaustible energy, firmness, tact, and imagination, often at great personal sacrifice of time and health.

Nadezhda Anatol'evna was born in Tashkent and studied at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute of Modern Languages, majoring in French. She obtained her degree of Candidate of Philology, equivalent to an American Ph.D., at the amazingly early age of 23 and was well on her way in a career as a professor of French. The "French connection" has been a major interest of hers even as a Dostoevsky scholar. The War displaced Nadezhda Anatol'evna to Germany, where she soon embarked upon a new career, shifting her teaching activities to Russian, which she first taught at the U. S. Army Language Training School in Oberammergau, Bavaria. She also branched out into a career as a news editor and script writer for Radio Liberty and Voice of America.

Once in the United States, Nadezhda Anatol'evna threw her full energy into literary scholarship, making Dostoevsky her central interest. Her Michigan dissertation, "Camus and Dostoevsky: A Comparative Study" (1969), which led to some separate articles, such as "Albert Camus devant la critique sovietique," La Revue des Lettres Modernes, 479-83:147-66, and "Albert Camus' Attitude toward Dostoevsky," in Dostoïevski européen (1981), pp. 439-64, gave evidence of her interest in comparative studies which is amply borne out by subsequent publications.

A professor of Russian literature at the George Washington University in Washington, D. C., since 1967, Nadezhda Anatol'evna has produced a long list of articles and monographic studies on Dostoevsky, showing a great variety of approaches to several different topics. A biographic approach produced the monograph Dostoevsky in Bad Ems (Frankfurt on Main, 1971) and a number of scholarly and popular articles, such as "Ф.М. Достоевский и его дети," Русское возрождение, 13(1981): 43-59, and "История двух портретов Ф.М. Достоевского," ibid., 14 (1981):59-70.

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Another set of studies by Nadezhda Anatol'evna deals with dramatized versions of Dostoevsky's works, a subject of particular interest to Nadezhda Anatol'evna. It features articles such as "Dostoevsky in the Theater: Stage Adaptations of The Brothers Karamazov," CASS 8:434-53, and "Драматизация произведений Достоевского,"Новый журнал, 104(1971), "L'Interprétation scénique des Possédés," in Dostoïevski (Ed. Verdier, 1983), and oral presentations, such as "Dostoevsky's Novel The Idiot on the Stage" (Washington, D. C., 1977).

Nadezhda Anatol'evna's comparatist studies have led to a number of valuable insights. Along the line of Franco-Russian connections, one finds, besides her work on Camus and Dostoevsky, "Dostoevsky's Response to Diderot," in Dostoevskij: Vorträge auf der 3. internationalen Tagung des "Slavenkomitees" in München (Cologne and Vienna, 1983). Of particular interest are her observations on the philosophical subtext in The Possessed. Meticulous research has led her to a precise identification of references to the Left-Hegelian tradition, and Ludwig Feuerbach in particular, in that novel. Nadezhda Anatol'evna's articles "Роль философского подтекста в романе БЕСЫ," Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars in the U.S.A., 14(1981): 69-100, and "Philosophical Subtext in the Novel The Possessed," in Actualité de Dostoïevski (1982), pp. 20-33, are contributions of fundamental importance.

As a counterpoint to these comparatist studies, as it were, Nadezhda Anatol'evna has also furthered our understanding of Dostoevsky's roots in Russian literature. Some articles on Pushkin and Dostoevsky give evidence of this: "Пушкинские темы у Достоевского," Новый журнал, 120 (1975):119-33, and "Pushkin and Dostoevsky: Some Thematic Affinities," Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars in the U.S.A., 8(1975). Neither has Nadezhda Anatol'evna neglected the analytic structural approach to Dostoevsky. Several of her papers show her an astute observer of the interplay of idea and device: "Литературные приемы Достоевского, как выражение его идей," Transactions, 5(1971), "Проблема свободного выбора у Достоевского," Новый журнал, 135:55-86.

In addition to her scholarly writings on Dostoevsky, Nadezhda Anatol'evna has produced a large number of essays, articles, reviews, and notes addressed to the general public, in Новое русское слово, Новый журнал, Русская мысль, Русская жизнь, etc. She has acted as a herald and messenger, keeping the line of communications open between the world of Dostoevsky scholarship and the educated public.

Nor has Dostoevsky been the only Russian writer to whom Nadezhda Anatol'evna has devoted more than passing attention. Her papers on Turgenev show her as well informed on that writer as on Dostoevsky: "О  мистических повестях Тургенева," Transactions, 16(1983); "L'Image de l'Allemagne dans les oeuvres de Tourguéniev," Cahiers Ivan Tourguéniev, No. 7(1983). Next to Dostoevsky, Mikhail Bulgakov has been the object of Nadezhda Anatol'evna's most intense scholarly interest. Several preparatory papers led to her monographic study, Mikhail Bulgakov (Boston, 1985), which displays the familiar virtues of Nadezhda Anatol'evna's scholarship: an attention to detail coupled with a respect for ideas,

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an ability to find isomorphic elements of "life experience" and literary creation," and a solid familiarity with the historical and cultural background.

Finally, Nadezhda Anatol'evna has not been a stranger to contemporary literature. Her many papers and addresses on contemporary writers, such as Solzhenitsyn and Shukshin, and on general problems of the literary scene in the Soviet Union as well as in the West invariably show her an attentive and astute observer and insightful interpreter of the modern literary world.

While so extraordinarily prolific as a writer and lecturer Nadezhda Anatol'evna has been performing what to a person of less than her prodigious energy would have been a difficult full time job in the service of the international community of Dostoevsky scholars. Nadezhda Anatol'evna singlehandedly initiated the North American Dostoevsky Society and was a founding member of the International Dostoevsky Society in 1971. Both of these organizations will soon look back on twenty years of fruitful activity. The annual meetings of the North American Dostoevsky Society, held since 1970, the symposia of the International Dostoevsky Society held every three years since 1971 and the organ of the International Dostoevsky Society, Dostoevsky Studies, started as Bulletin of the International Dostoevsky Society in 1972, all owe their existence and continued success very largely to Nadezhda Anatol'evna's energy, enthusiasm, and resourcefulness. To every Dostoevsky scholar all over the world Nadezhda Anatol'evna is our хозяйка.