A biographical note
I was born in Middlesex (now part of Greater London) in 1934. From 1944 to 1950 I was a pupil at Greenford County Grammar School, where what I enjoyed most were the English lessons and languages (French, German, Latin, ‘O-level’ Greek). Following half a year in Germany, I won a scholarship to Newnham College, University of Cambridge, went up in 1953, and in 1956 gained a first-class B.A. in German and Russian. I spent a year as a student of philosophy at the University of München, and returned to Cambridge to start research in Russian literature; instead married and moved to Australia, where my two children were born; for a while I lectured part-time on Russian literature at the University of Melbourne. Returning to Britain after five years away, I worked briefly in the Foreign Office.
In 1966 I was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Literature at the then very recently founded University of Essex. ‘Literature’ was an inspiring department to work in, largely thanks to its founder and first chairman, the poet Donald Davie. To take up the appointment, I moved to Colchester and have been here ever since.
I remained at Essex University for thirty-one years, teaching mainly Russian Literature, though also other courses, such as: Introduction to Literature, Practical Criticism (which for many years was centrally important to the Department), ‘The Enlightenment’ (centrally important, likewise, in our School of Comparative Studies), and courses in German Poetry and Philosophy, Russian Literature in translation (one course was entitled ‘Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’), and parts of two M.A. courses. In 1986 I was awarded a Ph.D based on published works, and in 1992 was appointed ‘Professor’ and elected Head of Department. After my retirement in 1996 I received the title ‘Professor Emeritus’.
During those thirty-one years and afterwards, I made numerous journeys abroad, to carry out research in foreign libraries and to attend various conferences – going, for example, to Moscow, Leningrad, Voronezh, Perm, Elabuga; Prague; Berlin, Göttingen, Hameln, Marburg; Cerisy-la-Salle (France); Sosnowiec (Poland); Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From July to September 1986 I lectured at several American universities and was a ‘Visiting Scholar’ for one semester in 1989-90 at the Russian Research Center at Harvard.
Except for one book on a German topic – namely the monograph Lou Andreas-Salomé, Her Life and Writings (1984) – my research has been concerned with Russian writers. The book Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago (1989) is indeed also a monograph, and Poems from Chevengur (2004) is a somewhat idiosyncratic work (a ‘transposition’ into English verse of passages from Andrei Platonov’s novel Chevengur), but all my other books (except for the edited ones) offer translations from Russian with introduction, commentary, notes and appendices. These are: Pasternak on Art and Creativity (1985); Art in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on Poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva (1992); The Ratcatcher, a Lyrical Satire by Marina Tsvetaeva, (1999); The Marsh of Gold: Pasternak’s Writings on Inspiration and Creation (2008); Marina Tsvetaeva, Phaedra (a drama in verse) with ‘New Year’s Letter’ and Other Long Poems (2012).
After retiring I have gone on researching and translating, especially works by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and Andrei Platonov, concentrating chiefly on Tsvetaeva from about 2010. I acted as Judge for the Academia Rossica translation prize (London) in 2005, also for the Compass translation award (New York) in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Career summary
Greenford County Grammar School. 1944-51.
Major Scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. 1953.
B.A. Cantab. (Modern and Mediaeval Languages Tripos). 1956 – M.A. 1960 – Ph.D. 1986.
Essex University, Department of Literature:
Lecturer 1966, Senior Lecturer 1975, Reader 1983, Professor 1992, Head of Dept. 1992-5.
Retired 1996, Research Professor 1997, Professor Emeritus 2008.
Thanks to my Teachers
At my ordinary grammar school there were some extraordinarily good teachers: Miss Mennie, who got me excitedly reading Storm, Stifter and Keller at fourteen; Mr Grieve, who taught me to enjoy Racine and Molière, and (for he also taught German) Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers; Mr Owen, brilliant at getting us to love composing Latin prose; and Mr Rosen, who taught English and encouraged me to write. At Cambridge my best teachers were Nikolai Andreev (his laughter at my aspiring Russian essays); Peter Stern (German literature supervisions); Hjördis Roubiczek (regular readings with her of Rilke and Hölderlin); and Harold Knight (his lectures on German philosophy). My lifelong gratitude to them all.