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| Russian-born French journalist, writer and translator (b. 4/16 April 1851 in [[Odessa]]; d. March 1914 in [[Nice]]), born '''''Mikhail Osipovich Ashkinazi''''' (Михаил Осипович Ашкинази).
| | <includeonly>Das Verwandelte Dornröschen</includeonly><noinclude> {{bibitem |id=1954/89 |Title=Das Verwandelte Dornröschen |In=Musica [Kassel] |Part=8. Jahrg. |Edition=September 1954 |Imprint=1954 |Extent=p. 408-409 |Format=Article |Language=German }} [[Category:Bibliography (1954)]] {{DEFAULTSORT:Bibliography (1954/089)}}</noinclude> |
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| Born into a Jewish family in [[Odessa]], after completing his secondary education there he studied at the Medical Faculty of [[Kiev]] University but did not finish his course due to ill health. In the mid-1870s he began carrying out revolutionary agitation among the workers of [[Odessa]]. After the arrest and execution of the leader of the [[Odessa]] revolutionary cell, Ivan Kovalsky, in early 1878, Ashkinazi emigrated from Russia, living at first in Italy and Switzerland before settling in [[Paris]].
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| Ashkinazi soon found his feet in the French capital and became a valued contributor to many Parisian newspapers and journals. For his journalistic work he adopted the pseudonym "Michel Delines", though he published some of his early works under his real name — for instance, the revolutionary novel '' Les victimes du tsar'' (''The Victims of the Tsar''; [[Paris]], 1881). No less a figure than [[Ivan Turgenev]] encouraged Ashkinazi in his work on this novel. In his reminiscences of [[Turgenev]], which appeared in [[Paris]] in 1884 as a book entitled '' Tourguéneff inconnu ''(''Unknown Turgenev'') and under his pseudonym, Ashkinazi would nevertheless emphasize how the late writer had always rejected the readiness to use violence shown by so many of the young Russian revolutionaries, who in this sense had gone much further than Bazarov, the 'nihilist' hero of ''Fathers and Children ''(1862) <ref name="note1"/>.
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| Inspired by his acquaintance with [[Turgenev]], Michel Delines, as he now invariably signed himself, would come to play an important role in the propagation of Russian literature in his adopted country. Thus, over the years he translated into French [[Lev Tolstoy]]'s ''Childhood ''and ''Adolescence'', as well as excerpts from ''War and Peace'', and also selections from Ivan Goncharov's ''The Ravine'', [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]]'s ''The Raw Youth'' and a number of short stories by Vsevolod Garshin. He published several articles about these and other Russian writers in French, Belgian and English newspapers.
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| ==Tchaikovsky and Delines==
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| From the late 1880s, Delines also sought to promote the cause of Russian music in France. In this respect, his personal acquaintance with Tchaikovsky seems to have been decisive. They first met in February 1888, shortly after Tchaikovsky arrived in [[Paris]], the penultimate stop of his first conducting tour of Western Europe. As we learn from the composer's diary, the meeting took place in the music-shop of Tchaikovsky's French publisher, [[Félix Mackar]] <ref name="note2"/>. It is very likely that already then, both [[Mackar]] and Delines tried to persuade Tchaikovsky to authorize a translation of the libretto of ''[[Yevgeny Onegin]]'' into French with a view to staging the opera in [[Paris]]. In any case, in March 1888, shortly after Tchaikovsky's departure for [[London]], Delines published an enthusiastic and perceptive article about ''[[Onegin]]'' in the journal ''Revue d'art dramatique'', in which, among other things, he compared Tchaikovsky's treatment of his literary source to [[Turgenev]]'s novels with their recurring echoes of [[Pushkin]]'s juxtaposition of Onegin and Tatyana. At the end of his article, Delines expressed the hope that his readers would soon be able to hear the opera in [[Paris]] <ref name="note3"/>. Already towards the end of May 1888, some excerpts from the opera in Delines's translation were indeed performed in the salons of two Russian aristocratic ladies living in [[Paris]], and [[Mackar]] was so moved by the music that he promised Tchaikovsky to do his best to get the opera staged at the Opéra-Comique <ref name="note4"/>.
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| Unfortunately, this plan came to nothing and Tchaikovsky himself did not live to see the first performance of ''[[Yevgeny Onegin]] ''in France. However, this was certainly not due to lack of perseverance on the part of Delines, who soon became one of Tchaikovsky's closest friends in [[Paris]] <ref name="note5"/>. It is not clear when exactly Delines completed his translation of the ''[[Onegin]]'' libretto, but during Tchaikovsky's visits to [[Paris]] in the last years of his life he repeatedly urged the composer to take a more active role in 'pushing' his opera there. Thus, on 1/13 June 1892, the pianist [[Aleksandr Ziloti]], who was also good friends with Delines, wrote to [[Modest Tchaikovsky]] from Veulettes in Normandy where he was spending the summer: "In [[Paris]] I saw a lot of P[etr] I[l'ich]; he was very out of sorts. Delines forced him to call on [[Colonne]]; Delines still has this dream that [[Colonne]] will stage an opera by Tchaikovsky! What a crackpot!"<ref name="note6"/> After reading some positive reviews of the first British performance of ''[[Yevgeny Onegin]]'' at the Olympic Theatre in [[London]] on 17 October 1892 {{NS}} (with [[Eugène Oudin]] in the title role and the young Henry Wood conducting), [[Ziloti]], however, began to change his mind about the feasibility of Delines's "dream", as he confessed to [[Modest]] in a letter from [[Paris]] on 23 October/4 November 1892: "Delines is still fighting to get ''[[Onegin]]'' staged here; he is so terribly persistent that I am even beginning to hope that this may come off. May God grant it!"<ref name="note7"/> And on 21 April/3 May 1893, [[Ziloti]] wrote to Tchaikovsky himself from the French capital: "The ''[[Onegin]]'' translation is making progress, and [[Mackar]] and that blockhead of his, Noël, have decided to publish it. I think that's the only good idea which Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky [two minor characters in [[Gogol]]'s comedy ''The Government Inspector'' (1835)] have ever had. Delines is still doing all he can for ''[[Onegin]]''."<ref name="note8"/>
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| Four months after Tchaikovsky's death, Scene 2 from Act I of ''[[Yevgeny Onegin]]'' in Delines's translation was performed, on 8 March 1894 {{NS}}, at a soirée at the Théâtre d'Application organized by Russian artists and musicians living in [[Paris]]. The part of Tatyana was sung by Olga Bremzen (d. 1933) and that of the Nurse by Olga Korf (both students of [[Désirée Artôt-Padilla]]); they were accompanied on the piano by [[Ziloti]]. At this soirée, Spring's Monologue from [[Aleksandr Ostrovsky]]'s ''The Snow Maiden'' with Tchaikovsky's [[Hamlet (incidental music)|incidental music]] was also performed (in a translation this time not by Delines himself but by his wife) <ref name="note9"/>. [[Ziloti]], though delighted by the quality of the two young singers and of Delines's translation, nevertheless remained pessimistic about the possibility of ever seeing a complete staged performance of the opera in [[Paris]]. The main reason for this, in [[Ziloti]]'s view, was that Tchaikovsky's nephew, [[Vladimir Davydov|Vladimir ("Bob") Davydov]], the composer's principal heir, had made the mistake of assigning the performance rights to ''[[Onegin]]'' in France to [[Mackar]], as he lamented in his letter to [[Modest]] from [[Paris]] on 24 February/8 March 1894: "[T]he task of representing [Tchaikovsky's] artistic interests should have been entrusted to me or, say, to Delines. [[Mackar]] doesn't want to publish ''[[Onegin]]'' in translation, even though the translation is in fact ready, and the theatre directors here are so unimaginative that they won't even look at an opera with a translated libretto! I find all this very sad" <ref name="note10"/>. Still, despite [[Ziloti]]'s misgivings, later that year the firm of Mackar & Noël did finally bring out the full score and vocal-piano reduction of ''[[Onegin]]'' with the libretto in Delines's translation <ref name="note11"/>. It served as the basis for the first complete performance of the opera in France which took place the following year, in [[Nice]] on 7 March 1895 {{NS}}.
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| Delines also set about translating the libretto of ''[[The Queen of Spades]] ''into French. Some numbers from the opera were in fact already published by [[Mackar]] in 1894 <ref name="note12"/>. [[Ziloti]] urged his friend to complete the translation as soon as possible because he believed that in the case of staging Tchaikovsky's operas outside Russia, it was advisable to start with ''[[The Queen of Spades]]'' rather than with ''[[Onegin]]'' or ''[[Iolanta]]''<ref name="note13"/>. The complete French edition of ''[[The Queen of Spades]]'' with Delines's translation, however, did not appear until some years later, namely in 1911.
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| Tchaikovsky was not the only Russian composer, though, with whom Delines struck up a lasting friendship. When [[Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov]] came to the French capital with his wife [[Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova|Nadezhda]] in the summer of 1889 to conduct the two "Russian concerts" organized there by [[Mitrofan Belyayev]] as part of that year's World Exposition which was again being hosted by [[Paris]], they both spent a lot of time with Delines. In his ''Chronicle of My Musical Life'', [[Rimsky-Korsakov]] wrote as follows about his stay in [[Paris]] on that occasion:
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| {{quote|Of the musical acquaintances made in [[Paris]] I shall also mention [[Delibes]], Madame Holmès, Bourgault-Ducoudray, Pugno, and Messager. We also made the acquaintance of Michel Delines, subsequently translator of ''[[Onegin|Onyegin]]'' and of my ''Sadko''. With the exception of Delines, all these acquaintanceships proved most superficial. [[Delibes]] gave one the impression of a merely amiable gentleman, [[Massenet]] of a crafty fox; the composer Madame Holmès was a very ''décolletée'' person; Pugno proved an excellent pianist and reader of music; Bourgault-Ducoudray a serious musician and bright man; Messager was rather colourless. [[Saint-Saëns]] was not in [[Paris]]. Delines was a kind man, danced attendance upon us, aided us in many things. All the other transient acquaintances: editors, critics, etc. seemed to me fairly empty babblers <ref name="note14"/>.}}
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| Delines would in fact translate not just ''Sadko'' but also ''The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronya''. He remained in contact with [[Rimsky-Korsakov]] right until the composer's death in 1908. Delines was also responsible for the first French versions of the libretti of [[Musorgsky]]'s 'national musical drama' ''Boris Godunov'', [[Dargomyzhsky]]'s ''Rusalka'' and [[Sergey Taneyev]]'s unjustly neglected opera ''Oresteia''. All these efforts testify to his genuine selfless striving to secure a new public for Russian music in France.
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| ==Correspondence with Tchaikovsky==
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| One letter from Tchaikovsky to Michel Delines has survived, dating from 1892, and has been translated into English on this website:
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| * '''[[Letter 4837]]''' – 29 December 1892/10 January 1893, from [[Brussels]]
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| One letter from Michel Delines to the composer, dating from 1888, has survived in the archive of the Tchaikovsky House-Museum at [[Klin]] <ref name="note15"/>.
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| ==Bibliography==
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| * {{bib|1896/1}} (1896).
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| * Kleman, M. {{und|И. С. Тургенев в воспоминанях революционеров-семидесятников}} [I. S. Turgenev in the Reminiscences of Revolutionaries from the 1870s] (Moscow ; Leningrad, 1930), p. 191–202.
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| * Lifar, S. {{und|Римский-Корсаков в Париже}} [Rimsky-Korsakov in Paris], ''Возрождение'' [Paris], No. 48 (December 1955).
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| * {{und|О Вагнере и русскои музыке}} [On Wagner and Russian Music], ''Советская музыка'' [Moscow], вып. 9 (1965), p. 218–219 <ref name="note16"/>
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| ==Notes and References==
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| <references>
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| <ref name="note1">For more details on the literary activities of Mikhail Ashkinazi, alias Michel Delines, and his acquaintance with [[Turgenev]], see the chapter "Тургенев и террористы" (Turgenev and the Terrorists) in: M. K. Kleman (ed.), {{und|И. С. Тургенев в воспоминаниях революционеров-семидесятников}} (I. S. Turgenev in the Reminiscences of Revolutionaries from the 1870s) ([[Moscow]] / [[Leningrad]], 1930), p. 191–202.</ref>
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| <ref name="note2">"At [[Mackar]]'s. The ''littérateur'', Delines." Diary entry for 13/25 February 1888. Quoted from {{bib|1945/34|The Diaries of Tchaikovsky}} (1945), p. 235.</ref>
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| <ref name="note3">Michel Delines, {{bib|1888/73|Les compositeurs russes: Pierre Tchaïkovsky}} (1888). The article can be viewed online at [http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k282407r Gallica], the digital repository of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Reference to article provided by Lucinde Braun.</ref>
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| <ref name="note4">See [[Mackar]]'s letter to Tchaikovsky of 25 May 1888 {{NS}}, published (in Russian translation only) in {{bib|1970/6|Чайковский и зарубежные музыканты}} (1970), p. 159. Reference provided by Lucinde Braun.</ref>
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| <ref name="note5">See {{bib|1997/96|Жизнь Петра Ильича Чайковского]] ; том 3}} (1997), p. 385. Referring to his joint stay with his brother in [[Paris]] in the spring of 1891, [[Modest]] describes Delines as "a Russian Parisian" and points out that, alongside [[Sophie Menter]], [[Vasily Sapelnikov]] and [[Yuly Konyus]], Delines belonged to the close-knit circle of friends there with whom the composer would spend most of his free time. Reference provided by Lucinde Braun.</ref>
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| <ref name="note6">Letter from [[Aleksandr Ziloti]] to [[Modest Tchaikovsky]], 1/13 June 1892. Published in {{bib|1962/53|Александр Ильич Зилоти, 1863–1945. Воспоминания и письма}} (1963), p. 177.</ref>
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| <ref name="note7">Letter from [[Aleksandr Ziloti]] to [[Modest Tchaikovsky]], 23 October/4 November 1892. Published in {{bib|1962/53|Александр Ильич Зилоти, 1863–1945. Воспоминания и письма}} (1963), p. 178.</ref>
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| <ref name="note8">Letter from [[Aleksandr Ziloti]] to Tchaikovsky, 21 April/3 May 1893. Published in {{bib|1962/53|Александр Ильич Зилоти, 1863–1945. Воспоминания и письма}}, p. 145.</ref>
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| <ref name="note9">See the information provided in {{bib|1962/53|Александр Ильич Зилоти, 1863–1945. Воспоминания и письма}} (1963), p. 198.</ref>
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| <ref name="note10">Letter from [[Aleksandr Ziloti]] to Tchaikovsky, 24 February/8 March 1894. Published in {{bib|1962/53|Александр Ильич Зилоти, 1863–1945. Воспоминания и письма}} (1963), p. 179.</ref>
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| <ref name="note11">Lucinde Braun has made a detailed description of this rare edition after studying a copy held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in [[Paris]].</ref>
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| <ref name="note12">As established by Lucinde Braun.</ref>
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| <ref name="note13">See [[Aleksandr Ziloti]]'s letter to [[Modest Tchaikovsky]] from [[Antwerp]] on 9/21 April 1895 in {{bib|1962/53|Александр Ильич Зилоти, 1863–1945. Воспоминания и письма}} (1963), p. 181.</ref>
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| <ref name="note14">Quoted here from: Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, ''My Musical Life'', transl. by Carl Van Vechten, 3rd ed. (New York, 1945), p. 303–304.</ref>
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| <ref name="note15">As established by Lucinde Braun who would like to express her gratitude to Polina Vaidman, senior curator at the Tchaikovsky House-Museum in [[Klin]], for the opportunity to work in the archives there.</ref>
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| <ref name="note16">Bibliographical reference taken from: ''Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Zugänge zu Leben und Werk. Monographien – Schriften – Tagebücher – Verzeichnisse'', compiled and translated by Ernst Kuhn ([[Berlin]], 2000), p. 365.</ref>
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| </references> | |
| [[Category:People|Delines, Michel]]
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| [[Category:Correspondents|Delines, Michel]]
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| [[Category:Translators|Delines, Michel]]
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| [[Category:Writers|Delines, Michel]]
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