Ivy Litvinov: Identity and Writing

• In Event: Potpourri: Jewish Language, Literature, and Writing

Abstract

This project focuses on a very little known English-Jewish writer: Ivy Litvinov (1889-1977). Attracted by the leftist circles from London at the beginning of the twentieth century, she met Maxim Litvinov, a Russian revolutionary, also of Jewish origin, who was then in exile in Great Britain. In 1920 she left Britain and got married to Maxim in Moscow. Russian and from Russian into English. Her husband became People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1930-1939) and Ambassador to the USA (1941-1943). He died in 1951 having survived all the Stalinist purges.
Ivy had already published novels: Growing Pains (1913) and The Questing Beast (1914) while she was in England. In 1930 she also published a detective story. While in the Soviet Union she made a living as a translator and in the sixties she published several stories in The New Yorker.
Ivy Litvinov is one of the nomadic subjects that illustrate at best the condition of the contemporary writer. She started from a leftist position, she was a feminist and the protagonists of her novels published in England are the New Women from Europe after World War I. In this paper we focus on her short stories which we analyse with the tools of narratology. Litvinov looks at reality with a merciless eye that perceives all details and knows how to give them relevance. In the stories inspired by the Soviet realities there appears an element of merciless voyeurism in her writing. Litvinov is able to discern the signals of dictatorship in a reality that apparently is harmless and banal. Actually, Litvinov is able to perceive like few writers the banality of evil. This paper brings a new contribution to Jewish Studies as Litvinov is a neglected writer and she deserves much more attention that given till now.

Author

• Michaela Mudure, Babes-Bolyai University