The Romantic Other : Adam Mickiewicz in Russia 1824-1829 Maria Magdalena Dzieduszycka Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Science COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2012 Maria Magdalena Dzieduszycka All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT The Romantic Other: Adam Mickiewicz in Russia 1824-1829 Maria Magdalena Dzieduszycka This dissertation examines the role of Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz as the Romantic Other in the formation of Russia’s Romantic identity during his Russian sojourn between 1824 and 1829. Analysis of Mickiewicz’s image as the poetic Other, with respect to his Russian contemporaries, reveals the process that led to the establishment of their individual and national identities during the transition from Classicism to Romanticism in the second half of the 1820s. Examination of materials gathered from a variety of sources – poetry dedicated to, and inspired by, Mickiewicz, reviews of his work, correspondence and memoirs – demonstrates how contemporary Russians perceived Mickiewicz: a Polish poet, all at once a representative of Western literature and culture, a Lithuanian bard, a Slavic Byron, and a poet who was also close to Russia’s cultural and poetic tradition. Special consideration is also given to Mickiewicz as the Other in Pushkin’s poetic paradigm “bard vs. prophet”, through which the Russian poet expressed and interpreted his own poetic identity in the context of Western and Russian literature. Such a multi- dimensional image of Mickiewicz reflects the Russians’ struggle to establish their own Romantic identity in response to Western literary and cultural models, as well as one that would reflect Russia’s own history and tradition. By examining Mickiewicz’s so far unexplored position as the Romantic Other, this dissertation provides a new perspective on the significant role that the Polish poet and his work played in the critical period of Russia’s transition towards its own Romantic literature. Table of Contents Acknowledgment ii Dedication iv Introduction 1 I. Mickiewicz and the Polish Battle between the Classicists and the Romantics. 13 II. The Transition from Classicism to Romanticism in Russian Literature. 66 III. From the Naïve vs. Sentimental to the Romantic Dialogue: Mickiewicz as 110 Pushkin’s Poetic Other. IV. Between the Classical and the Romantic. 146 Part 1. Mickiewicz’s Evolution from Rebellious Classicist to Romantic 146 National Poet. Part 2. The Classical vs. Romantic Other: Perceptions of Mickiewicz in Russia. 175 V. A Lithuanian Bard and a European Poet: Mickiewicz’s Polishness as 210 the Mirror of Russian Identity. VI. Afterward. Mickiewicz in the Zinaida Volkonsky Salon. 257 Bibliography 271 i Acknowledgments Writing this dissertation has been a long journey, which I could never have completed without the support of several people, to whom I would like to express my deepest appreciation. I owe a depth of gratitude to my dissertation sponsor Professor Boris Gasparov, for his unwavering support and interest in my thesis, for so generously sharing his knowledge and stimulating ideas that continued to inspire me on my journey, and for his patient intellectual guidance over the years. I am particularly thankful to Dr. Anna Frajlich for directing my scholarly interest towards “Mickiewicz in Russia” and for always being available with her valuable suggestions and comments throughout the long process of research and writing. I would also like to thank Dr. Frajlich and her husband Wladyslaw Zajac for their friendship, as well as support and encouragement. I am also especially grateful to Professor Cathy Thimer-Nepomnyashchy, for her generous support and interest in my dissertation, for her insightful comments and probing questions that greatly helped to clarify my ideas, as well as for her editorial input. I thank Maura Pollard for her invaluable help with editing my dissertation, for her friendship and support. I would also like to thank Jacek Grocholski for his assistance in ii editing the final draft of the manuscript. I owe special thanks to my friend Elizabeth Kossakowska whose daily support and encouragement allowed me to complete this project. Finally, I would like to thank my family, my mother, my sisters and brothers-in- law, and my dear friends in America, Poland and Europe, for their unstinting love, support and encouragement. iii Dedication In memory of Professor Robert A. Maguire iv 1 Introduction The representatives of emerging Romantic movements all over Europe faced a formidable challenge: to define themselves, and by doing so, to formulate their literary and artistic aspirations. This task of Romantic self-identification was perhaps nowhere more difficult than in Russia. In Western Europe, particularly in Germany and in England, the transition from Classicism, to the Sturm und Drang movement and concurrently Sentimentalism in England, to Neoclassicism, and finally to the Romantic movement proper, progressed gradually over 100 years. Thus, the young German and English Romantics who appeared on the literary scene at the end of the eighteenth century represented an entirely new generation of writers: rebels against, but at the same time, the heirs of, the preceding traditions. In Russia, due to historical and cultural circumstances, the same process took place over the first 25-30 years of the nineteenth century, with opposing trends existing and co-existing not only within one generation of writers, but often within one author’s work. During the period of such an intense cultural “growth spurt,” a paramount task for Russian writers was the establishment of their individual and, equally important, national literary identity. The Romantic movement in Russia, like the Classical, Sentimental and Neoclassical movements before it, followed existing Western literary models; within this context writers attempted to define the national character (narodnost’) of Russian literature. The Russian Romantics shared the key Romantic sensibility with their Western counterparts: an antinomy of the Self vs. the Other as a way of determining one’s own poetic identity. I will argue that the Russians found such an Other in the Polish Romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) who, as Pushkin poetically described him, “lived among us/Amidst a tribe foreign to him,” (“Он 2 между нами жил/Средь племени ему чужого”) between 1824-1829. Therefore examining the image of Mickiewicz as a Romantic poet in the eyes of his Russian contemporaries demonstrates the process by which they established their own Romantic identity. The Russian strategy of establishing Romantic identity in relation to the Other followed earlier Western, particularly German models formed during the early Romantic period (die Frühromantiker). Known as “Jena Romanticism” (or “the Jena school”), early German Romanticism developed in the city where some members of this movement lived, lectured and studied at the local university at the turn of the nineteenth century. The philosophical foundations that defined the relationship between the Romantic self and the Other were set forth in Jena. Briefly examining the aesthetic theories of the leading figure of the Jena School, Friedrich Schlegel (1772- 1829), facilitates our understanding of the development of the Russian Romantic identity in relation to Adam Mickiewicz. The influential Jena circle of friends and collaborators led by Friedrich and his brother Wilhelm (1767-1845) also included such formative figures of German Romanticism as the poet Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg 1772-1801), the philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), the poet and novelist Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) and the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). The circle gathered around the brothers Schlegel consisted of young, brilliant, very different but, “sympathetically minded individuals…whose mutually supportive considerations of philosophy, literature, and science became enmeshed in the tangle of their personal and professional 3 relationships.”1 The life experiences they shared with one another affected their work, but then, “they composed Romantic poetry and became the passionate, ironic and adventuresome individuals their verse described – thus did life imitate art.”2 This phenomenon of modern literature, which Friedrich Schlegel described as romantische Poesie, came into being through the process he called sympoetize and symphilosophize: Perhaps there would be a birth of a whole new era of the sciences and arts if symphilosophy and sympoetry became so universal and heartfelt that it would no longer be anything extraordinary for several complementary minds to create communal works of art. One is often struck by the idea that two minds really belong together, like divided halves that can realize their full potential only when joined. (Athenaeum Fragments. No 125)3 This fragment conveys the atmosphere of excitement, the sense of creating something new and “extraordinary” that young Romantics felt when they came together to symphilosophize and sympoetize during their frequent gatherings (and in the brothers Schlegel’s journal Athenaeum 1798-1800), while at the same time it reveals a deep need, almost a necessity, for each other: they knew that they could not fully realize their creative potential without the Other. A member of the Jena circle and F. Schlegel’s close friend, Novalis in his Logological Fragments I (No. 3), described the “True collaboration in philosophy,” (italics in the original) as a “common movement toward a beloved