2016/2017
FRENCH NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRAVEL LITERATURE ON RUSSIA
Master in East European Studies
Amsterdam, 3 July 2017
Master Thesis directed by Dr. C.U. Noack
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There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Christian Noack, for his help, feedback and interest in my progress during my Master thesis and during the East European Studies Master program. Furthermore, I would like to thank everyone at the University of Amsterdam who has accompanied me during the year. Finally, I wish to thank my proof-readers and my family for their advice and support.
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Table of Contents
Introduction ...... 6 Methods of research ...... 10 Border crossing into Russia ...... 11 Madame de Staël ...... 11 Jacques Ancelot ...... 11 Astolphe de Custine...... 12 Charles de Saint-Julien ...... 12 Alexandre Dumas (père) ...... 12 Théophile Gautier ...... 13 Armand Silvestre ...... 13 I - Moscow in nineteenth-century travel literature ...... 14 Madame de Staël ...... 15 Jacques Ancelot ...... 16 Astolphe de Custine...... 16 Charles de Saint-Julien ...... 18 Alexandre Dumas (père) ...... 20 Théophile Gautier ...... 20 Armand Silvestre ...... 21 Comparison ...... 22 II - St. Petersburg in nineteenth century travel writings ...... 24 Madame de Staël ...... 24 Jacques Ancelot ...... 25 Astolphe de Custine...... 28 Charles de Saint-Julien ...... 30 Alexandre Dumas (père) ...... 31 Théophile Gautier ...... 32 Armand Silvestre ...... 34 Conclusion ...... 36 III - The Russian people in nineteenth-century travel writings ...... 37 Madame de Staël ...... 37 Jacques Ancelot ...... 41 Astolphe de Custine...... 44 Charles de Saint-Julien ...... 46 Théophile Gautier ...... 47 Alexandre Dumas (père) and Armand Silvestre ...... 48
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Conclusion ...... 48 Departures from the Russian Empire ...... 50 Madame de Staël ...... 50 Jacques Ancelot ...... 50 Astolphe de Custine...... 51 Charles de Saint-Julien ...... 51 Alexandre Dumas (père) ...... 52 Théophile Gautier ...... 52 Armand Silvestre ...... 52 Conclusion ...... 54 Bibliography ...... 57
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Introduction
The intellectual curiosity for Russia was already instigated during the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. This included the quite unexplored Russian Empire, at that time still a remote area of the world. Especially when political instability occurred due to the French Revolution and Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, Russia became a more common destination among French writers, due to an improved transport system which made travel become easier in the course of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, after Napoleon’s forced retreat out of Moscow, Russia’s status as a great power was solidified with the Congress of Vienna, becoming the warrant of the conservative European order against the disorder of revolutions.
The aim of this study is to examine the travel accounts of seven French writers who visited Moscow and St. Petersburg during the nineteenth century. On their journey, they wrote about their experiences, adventures and, above all, their perceptions of Russia and its people. The aim is to uncover the French attitude towards Russia and to measure to what extent these travellers recognised or evaluated the elements they encountered according to a scheme that juxtaposed Europe and the Orient.
Thus, the primary subject of this thesis is the nineteenth century French perspective on Russia. Travel writing not only informs its readers on the discovery of new lands, but describes them as either converging or diverging with the readers’ culture(s) and values. Too often, as Alessandro Vitale pointed out, the descriptions of Russia given by Westernizers or Slavophiles within Russia reflect too much on geopolitical aspirations, rather than on interpretations of lifestyle and cultural patterns.1 Travel accounts might thus provide a useful alternative to interpret if nineteenth century Russia was depicted as European or Oriental in French travel writings. In order to provide a clear structure for the theoretical framework, the key concepts associated with this thesis and the research question will be discussed in this chapter. The ideas of Otherness (‘Self and Other’), Orientalism, Europeanness, and Euro-Orientalism are the conceptual foundation of this thesis. More generally, the concept of othering, recognized in the four principles listed above, is a means of consolidating one’s own identity, in this case, the
1 Alessandro Vitale, “Russia and the West: The Myth of Russian Cultural Homogeneity and the ‘Siberian Paradox,’” Telos Press, accessed February 24, 2017, http://www.telospress.com/russia-and-the-west-the-myth- of-russian-cultural-homogeneity-and-the-siberian-paradox/. 6
French identity. Several general works on these concepts are concrete examples for this study: the works of Venner, Vergara, and Adamovsky will be discussed in more detail below.
The theory that will be applied to the research question is concerned with the creation of the ‘Other’ in order to conceive an identity for the Self. Nineteenth-century travel literature was in part written with the intention of discovering and recording the unknown parts of the world. By doing so, it has created a psychological distance between the writer and the discovered land. This phenomenon has been theoretically developed, for example in the book Orientalism of Edward Said, which led to polemic debates on Western superiority and the (mis)representation of the Orient by the West. The theoretical framework of this study consists of articles and books which elaborate for the most part on Said’s Orientalism.
Prior to Said’s work, Simone de Beauvoir already stated in her work The Second Sex that “Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other against itself.”2 This duality of ‘Self and Other’ manifested itself in the encounters between the peoples of the Western empires and the inhabitants of new lands (the Orient), in the age of imperialism and colonialism. According to Said’s classical study of Orientalism of 1978, the notion of duality between Self and Other occurs and his study focuses on the perception of the East by the West during the colonisation of the Oriental territories. His book interprets the process of othering, in this case, the othering of the Orient.
Dominique Venner extended the notion of the Western identity by explaining that “all of history testifies that Europe is a very old community of civilizations.”3 He enumerated the historical events and the concepts of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, colonialism, and nationalism, among others, which had propagated through the whole of Europe, without skipping one nation. He continued by stating that “every great movement in one country of Europe immediately found its equivalent among its sister countries and nowhere else.”4 These quotes from Venner’s book showed that the European identity could only be found in Europe and that it found its origins centuries ago, because according to him “identity is born from the threat of otherness”.5 With consideration of the hypotheses concerning the Orient in Said’s
2 Simone de Beauvoir, De tweede sekse (Bijleveld, 2000). 3 Dominique Venner, “Dominique Venner, ‘Europe and Europeanness,’” Counter-Currents Publishing, accessed February 24, 2017, http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/06/europe-and-europeanness/. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 7 book, it is possible to apply the same process of orientalising the Orient in order to Europeanise that what is inherent to the Europeans.
Javier Vergara further developed the concept of the European identity and explained in The History of Europe and its Constituent Countries: Considerations in Favour of the New Europe the feeling of belonging to Europe.6 Just as Venner, Vergara enumerated the phenomena that shaped Europe into the formation of its actual identity. He discussed an important factor, the civilising ideal. A strong European ideal which promoted democracy, and other values that the West ascribed to itself. Said did indeed criticise the colonial Empires (and later the West) on their democracy promotion, cynically stating that “it had a mission to enlighten, civilise, bring order and democracy, and that it used force only as a last resort.”7 This nevertheless helped create the identity of a civilised European entity.
Adamovsky began with an examination of the French perception of the social classes in Eastern Europe in depth. According to Adamovsky, Western civilisations were linked to the liberal-bourgeois ideology. The intention was to examine how the Russian civilisation was perceived from this ideological point of view, once the Self and Other were being defined. It is important to consider that higher social classes within the Russian Empire may be regarded as more ‘civilised’ than the lower classes. In the second chapter of his article on Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France8, Adamovsky developed his theory on Euro-Orientalism, which responded to the debate on the differences between the West and the Orient, mentioned in the theories here above. He discussed several phenomena within the Occidental perception of the East. Another transferable element in Adamovsky’s works was whether the author included Russia into Europe or whether the important aspects of Russia’s society were used to separate it from ‘civilised’ Europe. This element was thus interwoven with the perception of social and cultural differences between Western Europe and Russia. Such differences, entirely apart from the portrayal of social class in the sources, will occupy an important place in this thesis as well, mainly because the nineteenth-century French travelogues treat them as discrepancies from the European norm.
6 Javier Vergara, “The History of Europe and Its Constituent Countries. Considerations in Favour of the New Europe,” JSSE-Journal of Social Science Education 6, no. 1 (2007). 7 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014), Preface, XXI. 8 Ezequiel Adamovsky, “E uro‐Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810–1880,” The Journal of Modern History 77, no. 3 (September 2005): 591–628. 8
The topic of this thesis concerns all notions mentioned above but differs from the initial research done on those topics of (Euro-)Orientalism and Otherness. Adamovsky’s Euro- Orientalism focused on geographical Eastern Europe as a whole, which cannot be seen as being identical with Russia. They are nevertheless both applicable to the thesis subject when interpreting these theories regarding aspects in which the distinction between Self and Other can be made. In the case of monuments, one could see, through a Western lens, for example, an exoticism in architecture. By exploring the French travelogues and letters on Russia, the aim will be to find passages in which one can read comparable descriptions, either claiming the “Europeanness” or “non-Europeanness” of the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg and their inhabitants. Moreover, this thesis suggests a different timeframe than the works mentioned above, namely the nineteenth century between the travel account of Madame de Staël of 1812 and Armand Silvestre’s book of impressions of 1890. Its primary focus will lie on seven published books of travel literature that were published in this century. These include the diaries of Madame de Staël, the letters of Jacques Ancelot, the four volumes of Astolphe de Custine, the illustrated book of Charles de Saint-Julien, the two volumes of Théophile Gautier, the book of impressions of Alexandre Dumas (père) and lastly, the account of the journey of Armand Silvestre.
Both the Self and Other are important in the collective identity produced in the travel literature by these French writers, through which Russia can be depicted in or outside the European borders. Travel literature consisted of giving a detailed description of the land- or cityscapes, referring to earlier published accounts, confirming or challenging their observations.
The border crossings of these writers into Russia is an important momentum, marking the first contact with this foreign land, of which they had only heard of through books and stories. The entrance into the country is, therefore, a way of getting acquainted with the writers and to assess their general mindset before moving to the first chapter. This first chapter will describe Moscow’s monuments as perceived by the Frenchmen of that time. By contrast, the second chapter focusses on the monuments in St. Petersburg. The third chapter will provide an image of the Russian people inhabiting both cities as perceived through a French lens, before displaying their departure from Russia as a conclusive remark.
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Methods of research
Moscow and St. Petersburg share many features, both have been the capital of Russia and represented Russia’s most important cities. The choice of examining these two cities is therefore not surprising. However, the two cities also differ in a wide range of aspects, some of which will be highlighted in this thesis, such as the characteristics of the architecture and monuments. Furthermore, the social aspects of the Russian people as a whole will be outlined. The primary focus will thus lie on the division between European and Oriental features.
Two methods of research will be used, namely a discourse analysis of the travel literature in combination with a comparative approach. The comparisons will be made between the different French perceptions of the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the Russian people in general in the nineteenth century based on what is European and what are Oriental features. The use of these methods will enhance the understanding of the different perceptions of these cities and on their population. The two capital cities are chosen because they were the most important cities and the most visited parts of Russia at that time. Furthermore, nowadays Moscow and St. Petersburg are seen as two opposites, which makes the analysis of anterior perceptions interesting, principally to examine if Russia can be ascribed to a continent, and if so to one or more.
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Border crossing into Russia
The first contact with the country of destination seems of secondary importance, however it can reveal the intentions and feelings of the traveller, and allows these foreigners to bring forth their first impression of the country.
Madame de Staël
Madame de Staël arrived in the Russian Empire, by passing through the Austrian border into what is now Ukraine, on 14 July 1812, the anniversary of the first day of the French Revolution. She felt that, once she entered Russia, “the circle of the French history, which started on 14 July 1879, closed.”9 Her negative perspective on Napoleon, as an émigré, resonated through her account, which brought positivity towards her perception of Russia. This started when she passed the border by stating “We were not used to consider Russia as Europe’s freest state: but the yoke that the French Emperor weighs on all nations of the continent is so huge, that we believe ourselves to be in a republic once we arrive in a country where Napoleon’s tyranny cannot be felt anymore.”10 She swore that she would never put foot again in a country subject in any way to the Emperor Napoleon and thus questioned her ever returning to France again.11 As to her Russian hosts, Madame de Staël was surprised that they remained courteous towards her, even when Napoleon had already entered the country.
Jacques Ancelot
Before arriving in St. Petersburg by boat in May 1826, Ancelot made some stops in the Courland area. On the one hand, he complained about the long journey, but by contrast the road was not that long “when thinking about the menacing power of this colossal empire, I was tempted to consider the Cosacks in Palanga [city in Lithuania] far too close to the French borders.12 The minute he arrived in the capital, he wondered if he would have the time to “examine the traditions of this nation which I came to observe from far.”13
9 Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Mémoires de Mme de Staël : Dix Années D’exil : Ouvrage Posthume Publié En 1818 (Hachette Livre, 1861), chapter X, 394. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 François Ancelot, Six mois en Russie: lettres écrites à M. X.-B. Saintines, 1826, à l’époque du couronnement de S.M. l’empereur (Dondey-Dupré, 1827), lettre VI, 34. 13 Ibid., lettre VII, 39. 11
Astolphe de Custine
Astolphe de Custine also took a boat to arrive at his first destination in Russia, St. Petersburg. He recalled the number of formalities he had to undergo, which would not have been in place when traveling by land.14 The border security interrogated all foreigners and de Custine was not the least amused, so he stated the exact conversation between him and a border guard, to emphasise that he had the impression of being at a Tribunal. “It seemed to me that they [border guards] put a big inequality in the manner of treating the travellers.”15 He explained that his ‘new enemies’ did not search him, but they searched his belongings, confiscating almost all of his books. He called their methods “useless formalities.”16
Charles de Saint-Julien
Like Ancelot and de Custine, Charles de Saint-Julien crossed the Baltic Sea to enter St. Petersburg by boat, and travelled from there on to Moscow, the Caucasus and eventually Siberia among others. The view of the new capital bewildered him, he had nothing but positive remarks on this “monumental and picturesque ensemble”, which did not exist 150 years ago.”17
Alexandre Dumas (père)
Dumas was invited at a wedding in St. Petersburg. It was therefore not surprising that he travelled by boat from Stettin to Petersburg. His first contact with the Russian mainland was the Courland area, which belonged to Russia at that time (located in Latvia now). He only mentioned a short summary of historical events that had occurred in the region before perceiving the Russian fleet and then got off the large boat in Cronstadt. When perceiving the contours of the city, Dumas recognised beauty and ugliness, but did not reveal much more in detail, which will characterise his account. He was received very well by his friends and could immediately take a car to his destination in Bezborodko for that evening. He said: “what should surprise a stranger before all else when entering St. Petersburg are the droshkies, the horse- drawn carriages.”18
14 Astolphe de Custine, La Russie en 1839 (Paris: Librairie d’Amyot, 1843), tome I, 251. 15 Ibid., tome I, 253. 16 Ibid., tome I, 254. 17 Charles de Saint-Julien, Voyage Pittoresque En Russie (Paris, 1852), 22–23. 18 Alexandre Dumas, Impressions de voyage en Russie (Paris: F. Bourin, 1989), 151. 12
Théophile Gautier
Gautier reached St. Petersburg with “its beautiful silhouette and its crenelated crown of walls.” The most beautiful diadem of golden sequins and sparkling needles a city could wear.”19 He immediately recognised some of the major buildings the city embellished and “nothing was more splendid than this golden city on the silver horizon.”20 The first thing he described were the Mujiks who took care of the luggage and who wore strange costumes made out of animal skin. He filled in the formalities at the border guard and was happy to leave the silent sea behind him. During his short ride to the hôtel de Russie, his curiosity prevailed.
Armand Silvestre
Silvestre entered Russian territory in Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) where Russian border guards inspected his luggage and controlled his passport. Unlike the other writers he took a train through the Baltic region to St. Petersburg. He left Germany with “a feeling of deliverance.”21 The reason for his discomfort in Germany may have resulted from the Franco- Prussian War of 1870.
19 Théophile Gautier, Voyage En Russie (Paris: Charpentier, 1867), tome I, 108. 20 Ibid., tome I, 109. 21 Armand Silvestre, La Russie. Impressions. Portraits. Paysages (Paris: Edition Nationale Emile Testard & Cie, 1892), 28. 13
I - Moscow in nineteenth-century travel literature
In order to study the French nineteenth-century travel literature in context, a short summary will be provided of the events that occurred in this century. At the end of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution took place in France. Many fled the country for different reasons. During the century that followed the French Revolution, republics and monarchies alternated. This resulted in the escape of prominent figures into exile, and in the tradition of keeping travel diaries, or road journals, which were later published for the public. This chapter will follow the journey of prominent and less famous French travellers to Moscow during the nineteenth century. Different events, such as Napoleon’s invasion into Moscow and the fire of 1812 as well as the impact of the Crimean Wars during 1855-1856, have affected their points of view on Moscow and on the Russian society. Moreover, a short summary of the changing circumstances in Moscow and St. Petersburg will provide a necessary understanding of the characteristics these cities possessed. The aim of the analyses of the travelogues is the search for similarities and contrasts in their interpretation of the city’s monuments.
Moscow had to give up its title as the capital of the Russian Empire because Tsar Peter the Great established St. Petersburg as its new capital, this lasted from 1721 until 1917. One of the reasons for this change included the travels of Peter the Great to Europe in the late seventeenth century and his Western/European thinking. After his visits to England and Holland he became aware of Russia’s backwardness and thus his primary aim was to improve military engineering, shipbuilding and reorganise the government and its resources.22 The experiences abroad made him want to modernise the Russian Empire and therefore he established a new capital, St. Petersburg or Petrograd, on a newly acquired territory on the Baltic Sea. He moved all important persons, art and institutions to St. Petersburg and opened a “window to Europe”. At that time, the country had to face threats from different sides, among which the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Tatars, and Sweden. Tsar Peter I was determined to protect and even expand his lands. While he primarily focussed on building the city of St. Petersburg, it will be interesting to examine if Moscow too underwent changes during that period.
The travel accounts of several French writers, assisted by their guides and translators to make the journey safe, will take us to Moscow.
22 “Peter the Great and the Russian Empire,” accessed April 7, 2017, http://www.fact- index.com/p/pe/peter_the_great_and_the_russian_empire.html. 14
Madame de Staël
Madame de Staël was among the first to enter Moscow, just before Napoleon’s arrival in 1812. In her Dix Années d’Exil, she first described anecdotes of her life in Paris and continued by providing a chronology of events during her journey from Coppet in Switzerland, through Austria, Poland, Russia and to Sweden, before her arrival in England. Therefore her travel accounts on Moscow and St. Petersburg were quite restricted and formed only a small part of her book. She had read earlier published travel journals just as her younger peers, and with the ideas of the Enlightenment and some sort of superiority in mind, she left revolutionary France. Even before she arrived in the city of Moscow, “the golden domes already announce Moscow.”23 She immediately linked the golden ornaments, such as the cupolas, to the Orient, but also revealed that “Asia and Europe are united in this huge city.”24 The churches bore the imprint of luxury which they obtained from Asia. Moreover, although she perceived the Orient as a place where wealth was omnipresent, she referred without hesitation to disorder. Further, the Orient was a space unlike orderly Europe, where the monuments had bizarre forms and the people looked primitive. This primitivism was ascribed to the ruler (Alexander I), the system as well as to the people.
She wrote about the Kremlin that its strange forms and structure reminded her more of Turkish minarets than of a fortress as they were known in the West. And although the construction seemed Oriental from the outside, the “footprint of Christianity is visible through the multitude of venerated churches within the Kremlin.”25
As we will witness in the other travel accounts, de Staël perceived that “the commercial establishments are of an Oriental nature; men with turbans or other diverse costumes coming from the Orient display the rarest products.”26
Madame de Staël also questioned Peter the Great’s decision on changing Russia’s capital. Was it to hide the Oriental traditions so visible in Moscow? She was not sure whether he made the right choice in relocating the capital at the extremity of his empire and suggested that “this is a big question which probably needs centuries of reflection.”27
23 Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Mémoires de Mme de Staël : Dix Années D’exil : Ouvrage Posthume Publié En 1818 (Hachette Livre, 1861), 418. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 421. 26 Ibid., 424. 27 Ibid., 423.
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Jacques Ancelot
Jacques Ancelot travelled to Moscow in 1826 and his published book Six mois en Russie was nothing more than a collection of letters he wrote to his friend Xavier Saintines. These letters were initially not made to be published because Ancelot was anxious about the criticisms he would receive as he explained in his foreword, but a year later he still decided to make his observations available to anyone who might be interested. He explained that as an impartial traveller he might provide diverging experiences that could benefit the debate on Russia.
Ancelot primarily paid attention to the architecture and was astonished by the irregularity of the buildings, and their unusual forms. He stated that: “these strange constructions belong to no existing system of architecture in the world, and one is still searching for these models in different parts of the world”.28 He went further into detail when examining Saint-Basil Cathedral and came to the conclusion that “this piece of art transcends one’s most peculiar imagination.”29 Like the other writers, he made the comparison with colourful fruit. According to Ancelot and many others, the domes on top of these Christian churches provided them with an Oriental physiognomy.
About the Kremlin, he was less affirmative, concluding that “the architects who have raised this mass of buildings did only obey to the caprices of their imagination, but the ensemble pleases the eye anyway because of its varied oddness.”30
Astolphe de Custine
De Custine wrote that most people travel because they are bored, but he would not identify with that attitude and recognised that, in this world, the differences were becoming increasingly rare, due to an increased modernising West (Russia included), so one had to treasure them for the moment.31 Reasonably, he argued that the next generations of travellers would do better than the early travellers of the nineteenth century and that the spaces within Russia would be increasingly uncovered and explored.
In his travel account La Russie en 1839, Marquis de Custine experienced Moscow in summer and appreciated the environment, and noticed that Russia, “in the luminescence of the
28 François Ancelot, Six mois en Russie: lettres écrites à M. X.-B. Saintines, 1826, à l’époque du couronnement de S.M. l’empereur (Dondey-Dupré, 1827), lettre XXVIII, 249. 29 Ibid., lettre XXVIII, 253. 30 Ibid., lettre XXIX, 260. 31 Astolphe de Custine, La Russie en 1839 (Paris: Librairie d’Amyot, 1843), Tome III, lettre XXVII, 373-374.
16 sun, is neither European nor Asian, but uniquely Russian.”32 He described the light in Moscow as different from any light he had seen in Europe. Highly interesting as well is that de Custine’s travel stories were written from a particular critical point of view which will be examined in more detail below, nevertheless, he seemed to admire the singularity of the buildings in Moscow more than he could criticise it. Astolphe de Custine, who had visited St. Petersburg before Moscow, called Moscow “the Christian Orient”, which showed to which extent European and Asian characteristics were attributed to this city.33 He shared his astonishment and admiration concerning the domes of all different kinds, “recalling tropical fruit.”34 The Frenchman even compared the domes of the churches to the tsars, who were keeping an eye on the population in this way. According to him, the Russians would not escape from this invisible prison, even the climate was an accomplice.35 He referred to the mass of buildings which encircled the people, combined with the permanent surveillance of the emperor, which restrained their freedom. The cold climate in winter only facilitated the construction of frightening massive buildings in which the people were kept warm, instead of light religious edifices which appealed to the eye. Notably, unlike his peers, he disliked the Saint-Basil Cathedral which was in his eyes only pretty from far.
De Custine seemed to be intrigued by the Kremlin as a whole. He liked to call it “the prison of the ghosts [sic]”, and referred more than once to a prison.36 He attempted to trace the origin of this intriguing space, which led him to Ivan the Terrible. According to him, no absolute reign matched the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and in his words “our world will never see another piece of art resembling the Kremlin”. In his eyes, “the Kremlin without the tsars is like a theatre without light and actors.”37 He suggested that Moscow should be the only natural capital of the Russian Empire, principally because of the Kremlin. He even stated that Moscow (or the Kremlin) “served as border between the West and the Orient: the ancient and the new world are present: under the successors of Genghis Khan, Asia has waded into Europe one last time; and, when it withdrew, it kicked the ground, resulting in the rise of the Kremlin!”38 He clearly noticed that both Europe and Asia were present in the monument.39 De Custine contradicted himself several times. He compared Moscow to Persepolis, Bagdad, Nineveh, Babylon, and
32 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXVII, 415. 33 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXIV, 255. 34 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXV, 289-290. 35 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXV, 291. 36 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXV, 286. 37 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXVII, 394. 38 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXIV, 269. 39 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXV, 293.
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Palmyra, thus anything but European. He also asserted that the Russians played an important role in the aspects of the city, that they liked vanity and appearance, which was expressed in the style of Moscow’s buildings.40 He perceived the Kremlin as disproportionate and not in harmony with the needs of a modern civilisation, and called it a Northern Acropolis, a barbaric Pantheon or the Alcazar of the Slavs.41 Furthermore, he mainly described the Kremlin as disorderly and as violent as can be. He primarily blamed Ivan the Terrible and his successors for this, who had been ruling and controlling the people. As to the Treasure Room in the Kremlin, the marquis described it as a ridiculous, incoherent and outright ugly space. What the writers such as de Custine perceived as the core of the Kremlin was a construct the “Enlightened West” did not want to face anymore, despotism, cruelness, fanaticism, barbarism, and stagnation.42
Charles de Saint-Julien
Charles de Saint-Julien was a quite unknown traveller and writer in the nineteenth century and had lived in Russia for over fifteen years. He travelled again to St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1851 and wrote his Voyage pittoresque en Russie. De Saint-Julien had devoted a whole chapter on Moscow in his over 520-page book, thus making it a very broad read. His travelogue showed great care with regard to history, he gave a detailed historical account of Moscow’s origins and its rulers. He also included and described the roads taken between the different cities.
First of all, Saint-Julien divided Moscow into three aspects: a religious, architectural and commercial aspect.43 He categorised Moscow as an industrial city, which did not marry well with the military. That is maybe why all military structures were to be found in St. Petersburg.44 The religious aspect involved the Russian popular religious practices even more so than the churches that Moscow possessed. In his account, the Russians breathed religion in the way they expressed themselves, by signs and rituals. Almost all writers referred to the present religiosity, probably as an implicit contrast to Europe. Moreover, as a recurring phenomenon, when he spoke of the religious monuments, he was unable to categorise the style
40 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXVIII, 427. 41 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XXV, 288. 42 Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, “Why the ‘Othering’ of Russia Is Neither Historical Analysis Nor Helpful,” Muftah, April 14, 2015, http://muftah.org/why-the-othering-of-russia-is-neither-historical-analysis-nor-helpful/. 43 Charles de Saint-Julien, Voyage Pittoresque En Russie (Paris, 1852), 177-178, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015026685597. 44 Ibid., 179. 18 of architecture he perceived, knowing that “it is not gothic art, nor Moorish or Byzantine; even less so classical art of the Antiquity: it is some kind of composite art, in which the imagination of the architects inspired by the Orient, has melted in all lines and ornaments.”45 Unlike some other writers, de Saint-Julien detected some harmony in the middle of these strange decorations which pleased the eye of the visitor and explained that “if the crosses would not have been on top of the domes, he certainly would assume they were minarets and mosques”.46 Because the cupolas clearly were Oriental imitations.47
The third aspect manifested itself in the many markets Moscow possessed. Saint-Julien noticed “the traders gazing at the buyers from the doorstep of their stands, with their floating beards and long kaftans, which would even amaze the bazaars of Baghdad and Basra.”48 He admitted that the city’s beauty belonged to a different civilisation, closer to Byzantium or India than to contemporary Europe and explicitly linked the Kremlin to the “old Muscovite genius”, whereas St. Petersburg represented a more modern idea.49 Indeed, he remarked, like those of some other writers suggesting that, instead of destroying buildings to improve the view on historical buildings, the Russians built new constructions next to the ingenious Kremlin and other highly aesthetic edifices.50 When mentioning the Kremlin, he firstly admitted that “this style of architecture can only be found in the Kremlin or in some Oriental poem” and that “the singular irregularity is not without harmony, this extraordinary fantasy of the artist which imagines the mind in a world of dreams and chimeras.”51 Within the Kremlin walls, describing the Treasury, he enlisted the objects in this room with accuracy. It included gold, diamonds, and next to it Middle-Age byzantine art and semi-barbaric art from an unknown Orient.52 He mentioned the strange association these artefacts evoke. He compared it to an exhibition of objects coming from an enchanted palace from Arabic tales.53 Subsequently, the visit of the Saint-Basil Cathedral was being reviewed. According to de Saint-Julien, “it is the most marvellously unusual construction one can imagine.”54 And the
45 Ibid., 193. 46 Ibid., 166. 47 Ibid., 194. 48 Ibid., 202. 49 Ibid., 166. 50 Ibid., 185. 51 Ibid., 183. 52 Ibid., 186. 53 Ibid., 190. 54 Ibid., 207.
19 irregularity and incoherence of the composition would be called barbaric if the artistic aesthetics did not overwhelm the entire construction.55
Alexandre Dumas (père)
Alexandre Dumas was one of the most famous French writers of his century. In September 1858, he spent two weeks in Moscow, but his Impressions de voyage en Russie narrated only a minimum on the city of Moscow itself. The book was an extensive gathering of anecdotes and encounters with Russians Dumas experienced and did not read like a description of places. On Moscow, he hastily spoke of the Saint-Basil Cathedral as “the dream of a sick spirit, executed by an insane architect.”56 Furthermore, he felt like “he had finally reached the old Russia, the real Russia, when entering Moscow, and not some counterfeit Russia like St. Petersburg.”57
Théophile Gautier
Théophile Gautier was a French artist of renown and had travelled many places before visiting the Russian Empire. During the winter of 1858, he finally spent time both in St. Petersburg and Moscow and discovered the country under thick layers of snow. An interesting fact is that he and Ancelot, discussed above, both called Moscow “Russia’s real capital.”58
Gautier’s narrative concentrated mainly on the climatic conditions within the country and its snowy landscapes. Throughout his travelogue, he stayed primarily neutral and objective. Gautier restrained himself most of the time from dividing certain aspects of Moscow into Oriental and Occidental spheres, except for some monuments and their architecture.
For instance, although Gautier perceived not much difference between the housing in the two cities, he could not possibly avoid the polychromatic domes of the hundreds of churches. In front of the Saint-Basil Cathedral, he seemed to be confused as if it were a fantastic mirage, which would fade with a gentle breeze. He abandoned the attempt to try to compare this cathedral which obviously had no equal.59 He nevertheless identified numerous elements when entering Moscow’s most perplexing construction. Gautier saw a mix of Catholic worship and Orthodox saints, combined with Byzantine elements, which gave the whole a quite
55 Ibid., 208. 56 Alexandre Dumas, Impressions de voyage en Russie (Paris: F. Bourin, 1989), 480. 57 Ibid., 507. 58 Théophile Gautier, Voyage En Russie (Paris: Charpentier, 1867), volume 2, 1. 59 Ibid., volume 2, 29.
20 primitive appearance.60 At the same time, he emphasised that the domes of this church could be Hindu, Chinese or Tibetan. He complimented the beauty of the artefact, declaring that there was nothing more splendid, beautiful and rich than the Saint-Basil Cathedral. His concluding remarks included the original primitivity of the Kremlin, which he considered being of real Muscovite taste.61 Yet, he also judged the Kremlin from the outside as Oriental.
Gautier’s writings were poetic, which made his critique on the constructions less apparent, but in reality whilst giving the impression of staying objective, he utilised the noun primitivism more than any other writer.
Armand Silvestre
Armand Silvestre went to Russia in 1890 and wrote La Russie. Impressions. Portraits. Paysages which was published in 1892. The writer and poet Silvestre was less famous than some other writers that have been reviewed above, he nonetheless had written a lot of prose, poems, and pieces of theatre with influence and in an attempt to shed a new light on Russia, his travel account was reasonably original being one of the last of the nineteenth century.
Interesting is that religion took a central place in his accounts, calling, for example, the religious buildings “Christian mosques.”62 He designated Moscow as a land full of mysticisms, on the “doorstep of the jealous sentinel Orient.”63 He linked the buildings within the Kremlin to different kinds of religions. “Within the Kremlin, the heart of Holy Moscow never stops beating, even under the yoke of the conqueror”.64 For him, the Kremlin was the centre of religious life in Moscow.65 He called one of the cathedrals within the Kremlin of a Greek- Oriental style, with Byzantine elements and referred to the architecture of the churches within the Kremlin as Mount Athos style, with Muscovite austerity.66 More general, he overall conceived Russian contemporary art as missing a sense of aesthetics.67
60 Ibid., volume 2, 33. 61 Ibid., volume 2, 65. 62 Armand Silvestre, La Russie. Impressions. Portraits. Paysages (Paris: Edition Nationale Emile Testard & Cie, 1892), 98. 63 Ibid., 102. 64 Ibid., 113. 65 Ibid., 117. 66 Ibid., 111. 67 Ibid., 119.
21
Armand Silvestre watched the domes of the Saint-Basil Cathedral shining in gold and compared Moscow and this church particularly to “a curtain which opens itself to the Orient.”68 According to him, the monument descended from a ‘wild Orient’.
He did not come across the Occidental Catholic tradition in Russia, because “the gothic architecture within Catholicism symbolises harmony which has no place in Moscow, a madly sun-kissed Oriental city, in which all forms take the shape of different sorts of fruits.”69 Moreover, he criticised the practice of Christianity, which was of a liturgical nature; the real Christian Christianity, inspired by the holy word was nowhere to be found.
Comparison
The travelogues that are analysed above have influenced each other and most travellers have visited St. Petersburg, which enabled them to compare the two main cities of the Russian Empire. De Custine travelled to Moscow in 1839, so twenty-seven years after Madame de Staëls’ journey. He criticised her writings because of her fame. He suggested that famous persons kept a diary purely for societal purposes, whereas less famous travellers depicted the reality better because of their willingness to keep one.
In the first place, what fascinated, or at least surprised the travellers were Moscow’s monuments. The monuments were immediately linked to the reign of Ivan the Terrible in most of the travel accounts. The monuments at the centre of attraction were the Saint Basil’s Cathedral, on the Red Square, the Kremlin, and its Treasury. In general, as European visitors could not identify with the unusual models of architecture which were omnipresent in the city and they all seemed to agree that this was either a mix of Oriental and European structures or a style of architecture whose origins had not been categorised by art-historians. More specifically, the travellers of the Romantic period often referred to the scenes of Thousand and One Nights, to come to terms with the strange architecture constructions and the inexhaustible sense of imagination the Russians and their rulers supposedly possessed. The foreigners identified golden pyramids and bell towers in the form of minarets. Many ascribed a Byzantine or Asian style to the palaces and temples and attributed an Oriental twist to the churches and their bulbous domes. In some cases, this was considered to be of bad taste.
68 Ibid., 98. 69 Ibid., 125.
22
In relation to the monuments, one could find the importance of the aspect of seasons. Dumas, for example, witnessed Moscow in winter whereas most of the other Frenchmen saw Moscow in summer, which enhanced the link made between Moscow and the Orient. For that matter, most of the writings contained the same vocabulary in describing the city and it is true that the French writers who spent time in Moscow shared the view that the colourful image Moscow possessed in the nineteenth century came from the Orient. They often referred to Asia when mentioning the commercial markets and seemed to have ideas on what the Orient looked like. At the same time, nearly all of them also underlined the fact that Moscow could neither be compared to Europe nor to Asia. The travel accounts of Madame de Staël, Astolphe de Custine, and Théophile Gautier among others showed this inability to categorize Moscow in existing frames. Furthermore, it was common to compliment Moscow on being the real embodiment of Russia, very unlike the new capital city of St. Petersburg. This had been noticed by Ancelot and Dumas and rightly put into question by Madame de Staël. The travellers have attempted to label the religious traditions and constructions as well as the religious mores of the population. This has sometimes resulted in an amalgam of analysing the ethical values instead of the religious values inherent to the Orthodox faith. Lastly, considering the origins of the writers, Napoleon and the fire of 1812 were implicitly or explicitly referred to more than once. They have shown their curiosity towards the events that happened in the early nineteenth century and were eager to discover the impact this had on the city and its people.
23
II - St. Petersburg in nineteenth century travel writings
This chapter will take the study of the writings of the French travellers, whose work on Moscow has been examined in the first chapter, to the northern capital, St. Petersburg. The overall focus will lie on the cityscape of St. Petersburg, and the prominent monuments, such as the Summer and Winter Palace, the various cathedrals and the Peter and Paul Fortress. St. Petersburg’s nature, by contrast, was often represented through descriptions of the river Neva and the seasonal climate changes. Obviously, most of the visitors did not forget to mention the role of Peter the Great, who built the city at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
This chapter has the intention to establish the viewpoints of the French writers on the outlook of St. Petersburg, which may or may not existentially vary from the perspectives on Moscow. The main aim is to detect what the authors focus on, and to what extent they refer to Oriental or European influences. It might just as well appear that the setting is considered as Russian in nature. This could mean that the writers identified features inherent to Russia, that could neither be ascribed to a European nor an Oriental style.
Madame de Staël
Most of the travellers visited St. Petersburg before travelling to Moscow. This was not the case for Madame de Staël, who had to escape from France after Napoleon had declared her a persona non grata. Due to the political instability in contemporary Europe and, mainly, Napoleon’s conquests, she was not able to reach England, so she had to take a detour on her journey, passing through Kyiv, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Stockholm before arriving at her destination in England. Most of the time she was followed by the invading French Army, which arrived just days after her visit to Moscow in 1812.
De Staël was remarkably positive about St. Petersburg. In her account she referred to St. Petersburg as the city of the tsars, she added that it was “one of the finest cities in the world” and argued that magically “all the wonders of Europe and Asia [sic] start up from the middle of the deserts”.70 This was a strikingly positive note on the origin of the capital of the Russian empire, with which most of the other writers discussed here could not agree because of the barbarity of the act of building a city that cost so many lives. De Staël went even further as to
70 Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Mémoires de Mme de Staël : Dix Années D’exil : Ouvrage Posthume Publié En 1818 (Hachette Livre, 1861), chapter XVI, 431. 24 say that “this magnificent labour of man is worthy of the transparent water which adorns it”, only to conclude on a slightly critical note, that “had Peter I directed similar undertakings towards the South of his empire, he would not have obtained what he wished for, a navy; but he would perhaps have better conformed to the character of his nation.”71 She probably alluded to the cold climate, which seemed to be incompatible with the nature of the people, who generally liked to spend their days outside, as they were used to in the rest of the country. Furthermore, by raising such a navy on the outskirts of Russia, the Emperor seemed not to have taken into account the aspects of the nature specific to that part of the Empire.
She was invited more than once to Russian dinners and larger parties which allowed her to assess the interiors of Petersburg townhouses, and her judgment was that “the plants of the South, the perfumes of the Orient, and the divans of Asia embellish these residences.”72 The noblewoman was aware of the modern streets and she found that “the buildings still possess a dazzling whiteness”, so she compared them to phantoms in the moonlight.73 Nonetheless, she did not further provide detailed judgements on the buildings, palaces, and other monuments.
Jacques Ancelot
Jacques Ancelot arrived in St. Petersburg in May 1826 and stayed for about two or three months. In his letters, he was eager to report to his friend Xavier-Boniface Saintines what he was about to see. Before coming to St. Petersburg he was aware of the history of the foundation of the city and called it “an improvised city of monotone regularity”74 and underlined that he only recognised Moscow as Russia’s true capital. He criticised the way Peter the Great crowned St. Petersburg as capital of the Russian empire, stating that “even if we imagine that the court of France or England receded from Paris or London, the newly chosen cities will become merely the seats of government, Paris and London will nevertheless remain the capital cities of these two kingdoms.”75 Ancelot implied here that the features of Moscow would invariably represent the Russian Empire better than St. Petersburg.
He also articulated that “if the tsar was to decide to change his residence today, it would only take a few years before this majestic scaffolding collapsed; and this city; which does not
71 Ibid., chapter XVI, 434. 72 Ibid., chapter XVI, 435. 73 Ibid., chapter XVI, 433-434. 74 François Ancelot, Six mois en Russie: lettres écrites à M. X.-B. Saintines, 1826, à l’époque du couronnement de S.M. l’empereur (Dondey-Dupré, 1827), lettre VII, 40. 75 François Ancelot, Six mois en Russie: lettres écrites à M. X.-B. Saintines, 1826, à l’époque du couronnement de S.M. l’empereur (Dondey-Dupré, 1827), lettre VII, 40-41. 25 uphold the affection of the peoples, will soon become a simple port”.76 It showed that Ancelot had little appreciation for this pompously built city. He made it even clearer by repeatedly formulating in his letters that “even if my eyes were dazzled, my soul was not satisfied at all.”77 He did not deny that, at first sight, he was amazed by the appearance of the city but “I soon got bored of being astonished and apprehensive of the grandeur of the city, what is left after every step is that there is neither place for happiness, nor for liberty.”78 He clearly pointed to the absence of historical origins when he wrote that he could only visit the innumerable structures which decorated St. Petersburg because “one should renounce at studying anything but the objects of these magnificent and sad conquests of a hasty civilisation, an apparent victory against the sea by the might of only one will, […]”.79
Ancelot visited the monuments in the city and reported on the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Neva river, the Winter Palace, the Hermitage, and the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. The Peter and Paul Fortress was built by Peter the Great to protect his city from invaders and to lock up prisoners. Ancelot briefly described the fortress only by enumerating the buildings he perceived within the fortress, such as the Mint and the Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral. Within the cathedral, the remains of the rulers after Peter I lay in their tombs, but Ancelot was more impressed by the trophies on the walls which reminded him of the achievements of these emperors, more than the epitaphs on their graves. He distinguished “these luxurious shields, clubs, halberds, these Persian, Moldavian or Turkish banners, which envelop the royal tombs with a glorious shadow”.80 There is an assumed connotation of the Orient in this description because the objects represented Russian conquests in the Orient, rather than objects of Northern conquests like the ones in Sweden or Finland.
Ancelot poetically admired the Neva river, in a season “when the ice on the Neva breaks, the shiny city is no longer separated from Europe’s trade.”81 This happening was celebrated by the entire population, a part of whom would be able to exchange the city for a boat for a short period of time, leaving them with a feeling of being free. Soon after, Ancelot observed “the
76 Ibid., lettre VII, 41. 77 Ibid., lettre VII, 43. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., lettre XXII, 168. 81 Ibid., lettre XXII, 168-169.
26 zigzagging boats, happy with the awakening of nature, saluting the sun as a long lost friend, who they were hoping to see again, but who would only stay for a short while.”82
The French playwright then visited the Winter Palace, where the imperial family habitually resided. Since Catherine II, the Hermitage museum had been located there as well. Ancelot immediately criticised the costs of the construction of the Winter Palace for the number of people that perished while building it, while adding that, in his point of view, “the regrets as to the appearance of this building […] of bad taste” would only accumulate over the years.83 Moreover, he further criticised the residence as “belonging to the century of degeneration and affectation, […], of extravagance and luxury.”84 This critique also appeared in the description of the Winter Palace by Gautier and Silvestre.
Ancelot’s reviews on the Hermitage, its library and its theatre, were more warm- heartedly, acknowledging that “the curiosity of the travellers is awakened by the innumerable number of objects the Hermitage contains.”85 His close attention to, and his admiration for the numerous paintings of foreign artists could be explained by the fact that they generally emanated from the West, a civilisation he was part of and could identify with while being far from home. Thus, although St. Petersburg looked European, Ancelot ‘orientalised’ the city in a way, by exclusively recognising objects that truly originated from Europe.
The summer residence of the tsars, also called the Catherine Palace, was located in Tsarskoe Selo, less than 30 kilometres South from the city centre of St. Petersburg. Next to the palace, the Frenchman perceived “a Chinese village, distinguishable by the strange ornaments of Asian taste.”86 It is notable that this was one of the only passages in which he explicitly described something Oriental in taste in the surrounding area of St. Petersburg, and promptly used the word bizarre without hesitation. Besides the contrast between the small village and the baroque palace, he once more recognised the uniformity of the park in Tsarskoe Selo “which insinuated art was achieved and nature was subverted.” Furthermore, as in Petersburg, “the long straight avenues corresponded to its majestic architecture.”87 As to the interiors of the palaces
82 Ibid., lettre XXII, 169. 83 Ibid., lettre XXV, 198. 84 Ibid., lettre XXV, 199. 85 Ibid., lettre XXV, 198. 86 Ibid., lettre XVII, 120. 87 Ibid., lettre XVII, 121.
27 he had visited in the Russian capital, they were “marvels of luxury and power, who looked the same everywhere”, but did not procure him with passion or interest on his part.88
Astolphe de Custine
The marquis de Custine reached St. Petersburg in July 1839. His narrative on the monuments and the city’s nature were closely intertwined. Taking the example of the Winter Palace, for example, which was still partly covered in scaffoldings after the fire in December 1837, he instantly made clear how he perceived St. Petersburg. For him, it was an expression of “the pride of one man, who was inclined to build extraordinary things by the force of men, against the laws of nature.”89 In one sentence, he underlined Peter the Great’s narcissism, the beauty of the constructions, the cost of human lives for the sake of building this new capital, and the unfavourable grounds and climate which would have made such a project inconceivable under any other circumstances.
Astolphe de Custine shared the generally negative impression of the flatlands on which St. Petersburg had been built with his fellow travellers of the nineteenth century. He criticised the imperturbable regularity and the grandeur of the avenues, which made it, according to him, the most monotone capital of Europe. Like Ancelot, he could not agree with St. Petersburg being the real capital of the Russian empire. He described “a city without character, more pompous than imposing, rather colossal than beautiful, filled with edifices exempt of style or taste, without any historical significance.”90
The Frenchman warned his reader several times that “the imitation of the classic monuments will shock you when you consider the climate in which these models are awkwardly transplanted.”91 Yet, he did not only refer to the lack of harmony between these creations of mankind on the one hand, and the severe nature on the other but also expressed his aversion as to the character of the imitation that he ascribed to the city’s architecture. For example, he mentioned that the monuments in the style of classic antiquity “did neither fit the nature of the soil, nor the climate or the costumes and traditions of these people”.92 Furthermore, he continued that “to imitate that what is perfect, is to spoil it, we should copy the models strictly
88 Ibid. 89 Astolphe de Custine, La Russie en 1839 (Paris: Librairie d’Amyot, 1843), tome I, lettre VIII, 257. 90 Ibid., tome II, lettre XIV, 178. 91 Ibid., tome I, lettre VIII, 246. 92 Ibid., tome I, lettre VIII, 247.
28 or invent them anew”.93 His tirade did not stop here, as he added that “nature and history are nowhere to be found in the Russian civilisation; nothing has come up out of the ground or from the people; there has been no progress, one fine day all of it was imported from abroad.”94 This was a harsh critique on the imperial family who was, in de Custine’s eyes, unsuccessfully attempting to imitate the West. In his opinion, all structures in the city were made “out of self- love and not for the love of art.”95 The irony in his writing indicated his revulsion towards a man like Peter the Great, who was responsible for the death of thousands of men, “just for the sake of owning a European city and acquiring the renown of a great people.”96
Although de Custine did not approve of the imitations and the poor taste of the monuments, he showed some sort of admiration towards this city that had emerged from the sea.97 He realised that “few political crises would cause as much damage as this annual revolt of nature against an incomplete and impossible civilisation.”98 Moreover, De Custine attempted to depict two different images of Petersburg, one by day and one by night. He perceived that “in the opposition of Petersburg’s two faces [day and night], there was a symbolical sense to be found”, linking day-time to the modern city and the future, and night-time to the old city and the past.99 He was very pleased with the light effects of dusk and dawn during these white nights, which was only to be found in the North, and watched and described the sun set and rise more than once.
According to de Custine, the only monuments carrying some originality were the Russian churches, as he pointed to his readers. “Soon you will be struck by the number of steeples, towers, metallic needles who appear everywhere: this at least is national architecture,”100 as “the golden ornaments these churches possess are part of the national tradition.”101 He was more forthcoming towards the imported Byzantine style, because, as the Russians are Greek in religion, their borrowing is justified.102 Other than that, he stated that “these churches had maintained their primitive originality”, which was meant to be positive. 103
93 Ibid., tome I, lettre VIII, 248. 94 Ibid., tome II, lettre XIV, 165. 95 Ibid., tome II, lettre XI, 45. 96 Ibid., tome II, lettre XIV, 160. 97 Ibid., tome I, lettre VIII, 250. 98 Ibid., tome II, lettre XIV, 166. 99 Ibid., tome III, lettre XXI, 131. 100 Ibid., tome I, lettre VIII, 246. 101 Ibid., tome III, lettre XXI, 221. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., tome I, lettre VIII, 246.
29
By attributing this national originality to the Orthodox churches, de Custine did orientalise Russia, whose heritage was closer to Byzantine Greece than to Europe in his mind.
Charles de Saint-Julien
Charles de Saint-Julien started his narrative on St. Petersburg by emphasising that “we have a false and too absolute opinion on Russia which we have inherited from Voltaire”, he meant by this the idea that Peter the Great was “the first Muscovite prince who had the idea to introduce the Western civilisation into Russia; […].”104 According to de Saint-Julien, Peter I had only developed the thoughts of Ivan III, Ivan IV, Boris Godunov and Tsar Alexis.105 As to the creation of St. Petersburg, de Saint-Julien accurately remarked that it was about “conquering nature after having conquered these men,” referring to the Swedes.106
De Saint-Julien visited St. Petersburg in June, so he was also present to witness the city’s white nights which occurred during summer. He admired the sky “purely enlightened by the most tender tints, at a moment in which the Western skies are plunged into darkness.”107 He could not draw nor explain the image that presented itself in front of him, while these white nights were something he had never seen before.
Furthermore, he was surprised to see such a magnificent city, which could have been created by magic. In his own words, “St. Petersburg wears, as imprinted on all edifices, this will power, this spirit of persistence inherent to the Russian nation.”108 He linked art with magic in the capital of Russia, where “art has done it all: it is the magic wand that has created this enchantment.”109 However, in his description of the Winter Palace, he found that the “imagination and the fantasy of the artist dominated too much as if he had forgotten the rules of a natural taste.”110 Otherwise, his description remained quite objective and he attempted only to mention the historical events of the monuments.
De Saint-Julien concluded that “winter is coming and will perhaps erase that what is too European in the city of Peter the Great, to imprint this eminently national stamp in order to compete with the antique Moscow.”111 De Saint-Julien suggested in this paragraph that the
104 Charles de Saint-Julien, Voyage Pittoresque En Russie (Paris, 1852), 23. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., 25. 107 Ibid., 44. 108 Ibid., 21. 109 Ibid., 49. 110 Ibid., 39. 111 Ibid., 69–70.
30 intrinsic winter climate of St. Petersburg was the only way to bring back Russian originality in this European inspired city. Therefore, the climate was put on the same level of importance as the monuments in determining the character of the nation.
Alexandre Dumas (père)
The famous novelist spent the summer months of 1858 in St. Petersburg. He thought that the city was much less picturesque than Moscow, because of its flat underground. “With the shortcomings of immobile flat terrains, only the lovely masses of vegetation bring charm to it.”112 In contrast to the green vegetation, Dumas disliked the green colour, which, in his eyes “is a disease that all Petersburgians suffer from”.113 He obviously alluded to the green roofs of the houses and other structures.
He briefly mentioned the Tauride Palace and qualified the convent of Smolny, being infused with oriental influences, as St. Petersburg’s most beautiful religious edifice. He may have implied that the Oriental beauty of the monument suited the cityscape and the spirit of the nation better than the European imitations he was used to seeing.
Furthermore, he compared the sailing boats on the Neva river to “agile multi-coloured fish, in green, yellow and red, caricatures of the rowing boats of Constantinople”, which presupposed the Oriental character of the naval models. 114
He described the Peter and Paul Fortress as “constructed, like all fortresses, to be a visible symbol of antagonism between the people and its sovereign”.115 He also called it the Bastille of St. Petersburg. When Dumas wrote the Count of Monte-Cristo in 1844, he referred to the prison of Chateau d’If, near Marseille, to compare to the Peter and Paul Fortress. “One day, it will speak like the Château d’If. From that day on, Russia will have a history; until now, she only possesses legends.”116 The French writer concluded that the events that had occurred in the Peter and Paul Fortress were still myths, there did not exist a common truth yet. This obstructed the creation of Russian history.
Although Dumas père spent quite some time in St. Petersburg, his stories concentrated more on large anecdotes on his acquaintances with the Russian bourgeoisie, than on detailed
112 Alexandre Dumas, Impressions de voyage en Russie (Paris: F. Bourin, 1989), 157. 113 Ibid., 158. 114 Ibid., 157. 115 Ibid., 250. 116 Ibid. 31 descriptions of monuments and touristic matters. From this point of view, his travel account could thus be compared to Madame de Staël’s diary. Her travelogue is also quite short on the descriptions and more extensively focussed on the social activities.
Théophile Gautier
Théophile Gautier, another renowned French writer, visited St. Petersburg in the early winter of 1858, in the same year as Dumas. When peace returned after the Crimean war of 1855, in which France and England were involved, and the death of Tsar Nicolas I, the country became easier to visit again for the more famous Frenchmen. As Gautier had travelled through Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey among other places, he had some substantial travel experience to compare with. It was not strange therefore that he called the city a northern Venice, as it was built on twelve islands. Gautier’s account was very descriptive and fairly objective, which made it particularly complete. As a result, he was able to recognise Greek influences, Louis XV sceneries and German-English housing styles from his previous travels. For Gautier, St. Petersburg’s theatres were of muscovite-byzantine style, illustrating that he clearly distinguished the Byzantine Greek from the Greek of classical Athens.117
When he crossed the city at high speed on a droshky (horse-drawn carriage), he recalled that “the modernity of this city formed a magnificent and Babylonian scene.”118 It is remarkable that he labelled the city as Babylonian because Babylon was often seen as the symbol of the vainglory of men. Moreover, he added that “the city was created all at once from the swamp it covered, by the will of someone who did not experience obstacles”.119 He clearly referred to Peter the Great’s power as an absolute monarch.
St. Petersburg’s climate and its nature occupied also an important place in his account. This was primarily due to the season in which he experienced the city. He was surprised when in autumn the Neva river scenery totally changed within a range of a few days, “from the most vivid animation to the immobility of death”, with the frozen river becoming one of the main streets of the city of the tsars.120 He was also able to participate in a ceremony for the
117 Théophile Gautier, Voyage En Russie (Paris: Charpentier, 1867), 244. 118 Ibid., 115. 119 Ibid., 123. 120 Ibid., 156.
32 benediction of the Neva, “a mysterious majestic ceremony coming from the Orient [sic],” so he believed it to be.121
The Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, the biggest cathedral in the city, was one of the few monuments in St. Petersburg he extensively and repeatedly described. It was constructed by a French architect, Auguste Ricard de Montferrand, and the construction took 40 years to complete. The cathedral was completed in 1858, the same year of the visits of Dumas and Gautier. This could explain why the previous writers did not specifically mention what would become the largest cathedral of the city. At first sight, Gautier was immediately intrigued by the dome on top of the cathedral, resembling a miter of gold.122 More so, in winter, “Saint Isaac was of local originality”, referring here to the snow on top of the dome.123 It is true that in most Oriental places one could find these domes. Snow, however, would be the last thing on top of them. The aspect of the Saint Isaac’s Cathedral reminded him of “the Saint-Peter and the Pantheon of Agrippa in Rome, Saint-Paul in London, Sainte-Geneviève and the dome of the Invalides in Paris,” where Napoleon found his final resting place.124 All these monuments embodied the classical architecture, inherited from the Antiquity and which became a widespread phenomenon in Europe. Gautier was amazed by the execution of the apparent simple motifs drawn from the Greek and Roman Antiquity, characterised by the symphony of marble, granite, bronze, and gold.125 Besides, he was also very charmed by the “harmonious variety of tones, of which the sincerity increases its charm”, without falling prey to the patchwork of polychrome architecture.126 It is not surprising that he, once again, branded “the crosses, the dome and the bells of pure gold as Oriental and Byzantine of a Greek church”, because it was an Orthodox Church.127 He stated “one should not think that the cathedral was “cold, monotone and slightly boring because of its perfect regularity. The climate helps, by the creation of unexpected effects, which make this church completely Russian.”128 He furthermore compared the Saint Isaac’s Cathedral to a “Christian Babylon, because the clouds gave the cathedral a prodigious altitude”, giving the tower the possibility of defying God in a way, considering that they believed there was no solid construction possible without Him.129 Gautier
121 Ibid., 189. 122 Ibid., 315. 123 Ibid., 343. 124 Ibid., 317. 125 Ibid., 328. 126 Ibid., 320. 127 Ibid., 321. 128 Ibid., 342. 129 Ibid., 344. 33 ostensibly provided mixed descriptions of this complex structure. He identified a three-fold confrontation between the European architecture of the church, the Oriental details and only ascribed Russianness to the creation of mystery by its peculiar climate.
Armand Silvestre
The poet spent time in the capital in the summer of 1890 and underlined that “those who say St. Petersburg is more beautiful in winter under the snow have certainly not thought about these long white summer nights”.130 He was impressed by the sun which almost never set in summer.
Silvestre admired the art imported from abroad to the Hermitage, where more artworks could be found than in the Louvre. On a more critical note, he believed that “the misfortune was to be found in the Winter Palace, it showed nothing else than the caprice of power, a fantasy of strength, which did not have the same immunities as art, the same mercy as to the future.”131
Silvestre was probably intrigued by famous individuals such as the imperial family and Napoleon and expressed his admiration by expecting that “only the autocratic principle could be dominant, for centuries to come probably, in a country where the all-mighty and the absolute power have realised such miracles, where such hands have tapped into the treasure of the European civilisation with such audacity and such greatness of mind.”132 Adding to that that “the air is still filled with the magic of their two names [Peter and Catherine]”, within the Winter Palace and in the Hermitage.133 Furthermore, he sought to find out if the invasion of the armies of Napoleon had left a mark in the landscape and noticed “for the first time how much the name of Napoleon has remained, I would not say popular, but respected in Russia.”134
The fact that Silvestre often compared St. Petersburg to Paris meant that he saw similarities between the two cities, so one could say that Europeanness was clearly visible in Russia’s capital for Silvestre. He completely opposed Ancelot and de Custine for example, who refused to recognise St. Petersburg as Russia’s capital. According to Silvestre, however, these similarities between the two capitals came at a price. He wrote that “in spite of its artistic wonders, in spite of its beautiful promenade of the islands, which makes exquisite summer
130 Armand Silvestre, La Russie. Impressions. Portraits. Paysages (Paris: Edition Nationale Emile Testard & Cie, 1892), 42. 131 Ibid., 52. 132 Ibid., 53. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid.
34 evenings, with its outright European aspect, St. Petersburg only partially responds to the excessive curiosity of a traveller who has come from so far.”135 Obviously, Silvestre’s comment showed that he (and presumably his predecessors) had come to Russia in the hope of finding contrasting views from the European standard. However, the European imitations in St. Petersburg made it far less ‘exotic’.
Finally, the only two religious monuments he found noteworthy in St. Petersburg were the Saint Isaac’s Cathedral and the Peter and Paul Cathedral located within the Peter and Paul Fortress. He indeed believed that “it was for Moscow that one must preserve its great impressions of religious monuments”.136 Yet again, St. Petersburg did not live up to the expectations, partly because most religious edifices were located in Moscow. Moreover, as perceived in the other accounts, the religious monuments provided a national image. A lack of these resulted in a general lack of interest in the city.
He examined the Isaac’s Cathedral to assess that “it was visibly conceived in the memory of the Pantheon of Rome, and dominated the city with its golden dome supported by a gigantic colonnade.”137 By further commenting that “it would probably collapse someday into the abyss, from which it was only separated by an artificial soil.”138
The second, the Peter and Paul cathedral was located in the heart of the Peter and Paul Fortress and contained the graves of Peter the Great’s successors. Like Gautier, he referred to Napoleon’s last resting place, when describing that “the effect was somewhat that of the chapel of the Invalides.”139 The artist ended this paragraph on an ironic note, regarding the plates indicating the names of the emperors who rest in the cathedral. He called the simple, identical plates “a silent proclamation of human equality before death, in the country of Europe where social differences are most monstrously accused, where extreme power has constantly squandered and crushed misery, is of a magnitude leaving behind a deep emotion.”140
135 Ibid., 79. 136 Ibid., 55. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid., 57. 140 Ibid. 35
Conclusion
Climate, vegetation, and other environmental aspects played a great role in the perception of both Russian cities. It was explicitly ascribed to the Orient in Moscow, whereas the descriptions of the nature and climate in St. Petersburg, which included the Neva river, the vegetation, the sun during the long summer nights and the white, silvery snow in winter respectively, provided a more Russian touch. As the exterior cityscape of St. Petersburg consisted for the most part of European structures, the French travellers sought for an underlying originality, which was expressed through environmental aspects. Most writers connected the magic and mystery of the city to its climate. Thus, although part of the monuments did periodically contain Oriental elements, the essential regularity of the buildings predominated and was attributed to the Russian enigma, which was nor European neither Oriental. This could be explained by the fact that Catherine and Peter the Great were Europe- oriented and cherished their European origins. Therefore, the combination of European classic architecture with the religious attributes of Byzantium contributed to becoming a Russian cocktail. The Frenchmen overall agreed that the foundation and establishment of the new capital of the Russian Empire were accomplished by the desire of a tyrant, where the people paid too high a price for, but which resulted in a mysterious location due to the climate.
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III - The Russian people in nineteenth-century travel writings
French philosophers and intellectuals were notably concerned with Russia and its Enlightenment in the beginning of the nineteenth century, generating a wealth of criticism and theory on the topic. This chapter will, therefore, address the French perception of the characteristics of the Russian people and its emperors. Whilst some accounts focused on the particular cityscapes of Moscow and St. Petersburg, there were also accounts that focused more specifically on the Russian people and the culture of Russia. Although the converging aspects of Moscow and St Petersburg merit separate examination, the characterisation of the Russian population is inherent to the entire Russian Empire. It is therefore interesting to assess these findings simultaneously.
Madame de Staël
As a baroness, Madame de Staël belonged to the French upper class and consequently was able to travel in comfort and to make acquaintances with the nobility very easily along her journeys. Her observations, therefore, deviate from the less aristocratic traveller. In order to gain a better understanding of the context, it is worth noting that Madame de Staël was not only a literary intellectual, but also engaged in revolutionary activities with political dissidents and émigrés in her salon in Paris. Consequently, her ideas and expectations standards were opposed to those of the Russian social classes and nobility, as they did not support revolutions of any kind. In concordance with the Romantic sensibilities of that time, she claimed that “it is always among the people that we must seek for the germs of national character.”141
De Staël compared Russia’s strong patriarchal authority with the Chinese tradition, when referring to the Russian Emperor of that time, Alexander I.142 Russia had become a strong empire during the eighteenth century and de Staël described the outcome of this development as the “natural pride of the nobility, the devotedness inherent in the character of the people, the profound influence of religion and the hatred of foreigners.”143 De Staël, aware of Peter the Great’s attempts to enlighten and civilise the Russian people, however, asserted that “civilisation in Russia had not penetrated beyond the surface.”144 Despite Peter the Great’s
141 Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Mémoires de Mme de Staël : Dix Années D’exil : Ouvrage Posthume Publié En 1818 (Hachette Livre, 1861), chapter XIX, 467. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid., chapter XIII, 414. 144 Ibid., chapter XVII, 448. 37 intentions, de Staël was convinced that a full-fledged civilisation was still too optimistic for this primitive country.
Yet the Russians possessed strength and originality as a disguise of their love of the country and religion.145 De Staël was surprised to see these values preserved, “amidst the wrecks of this bloody history” and asserted that “the nation which preserves such virtues may yet astonish the world.”146 She possibly referred to the Napoleonic wars and Napoleon’s forced retreat from Moscow due to the harsh winter.
In St. Petersburg, the baroness determined that the “traditions [were] imported from the South by a people that had only come into the North by accident”. She went as far as to say that “someday the Russians would bring the climate of their old country to St. Petersburg.”147 This indicated that the will of the Russians to live as they had before moving to the North was so strong that they would do anything to maintain their traditions and could also suggest that their move was not completely voluntarily. De Staël depicted the Russians of the lower classes as distinctly different to indolent, unlike the people of the North who feared the cold.148 This might be seen as a positive feature of Russia’s lower classes, however, she implicitly accentuated their primitive behaviour in facing the cold, by sleeping underneath their cars, on the snow, or upright.
De Staël also mentioned the frequent use of servants, mainly Kalmyks, in the houses of the nobility. Her explanation for the employment of Kalmyks was to “preserve a sample of the Tatars which had been defeated by the Russians.”149 A sentiment upon which De Stael expanded on in her perception of the Russian nobility in general during her visit. It is important to note that de Stael believed that “what is European in [the Russian people] belongs merely to the manners of the court, which are nearly the same in all countries; but their nature is eastern.”150 She spent a great amount of time with the higher classes during parties, ceremonies or dinners. Although the nobility possessed a certain status and was allegedly more hospitable than their French peers, she noted that “this society does not consist of a circle of clever people
145 Ibid. 146 Ibid., chapter XIV, 422. 147 Ibid., chapter XVIII, 450. 148 Ibid., chapter XVI, 434. 149 Ibid., chapter XVIII, 452. 150 Ibid., chapter XI, 404-405. 38 of both sexes, who take pleasure in talking to each other.”151 Madame de Staël explained that Russians were not particularly entertained by serious conversations, but they did enjoy the company of their guests and the dances that belonged to these parties, in order to prevent boredom in a society for whom “learning is of no utility.”152
Russians would merely “acquire distinction through luxury, power, and courage”, leaving aside more “effeminate and vain methods to obtain prominence, such as literature and poetry.”153 De Staël loathed the imitation of European poetry and advised them to “acquire their artistic knowledge through the study of the [ancient] Greeks” and to “develop their poetry on the basis of the deepest inspiration of their own soul.”154 Moreover, she admitted that the Russian language could and should be very well adapted for poetry and music.155 She extended her critique on the scientific institutions in Russia as well, which consisted almost exclusively of foreign scholars, with the exception of one branch of education which she deemed worth mentioning: the well-organised military schools.156 Her explanation of the stagnant level of education referred to the lack of a middle class. In this despotic empire “a few simple ideas of religion and motherland keep the great mass of people under the guidance of a few heads.”157
As discussed in the previous chapters, religion was embodied for one thing in built-up monuments, but it also appeared throughout the Russian everyday life. Several authors observed that “the Russians never pass a church without making the sign of the cross”, and Madame the Staël added that “their long beards add greatly to the religious expression of their physiognomy.”158 This was an implicit link to the Islam and could thus be perceived as Orientalising the religious. She deduced that the Russians did not fear death, “whether it is as a result of their courage or from the inconstancy of their impressions.”159 Furthermore, de Staël added that “they are more susceptible of superstition than emotion: superstition attaches to this life, and religion to another; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is on the contrary by the sacrifice of these same desires, that we are religious.”160 It is interesting that de Staël commented that
151 Ibid., chapter XIII, 416. 152 Ibid., chapter XVIII, 453. 153 Ibid., chapter XIII, 416. 154 Ibid., chapter XIV, 428-429. 155 Ibid., chapter XIV, 428. 156 Ibid. 157 Ibid., chapter XIII, 417. 158 Ibid., chapter XI, 400. 159 Ibid., chapter XVI, 437. 160 Ibid. 39
“the Greek popes have much less knowledge than the Catholic curates or the Protestant ministers; so that the clergy in Russia are really not fit to instruct the people, as in the other countries of Europe [sic].”161 This could be seen as a rather presumptive explanation as to the level of education of the Russian population and its church, which might be interpreted as a case of Western superiority towards the Other. This judgment was not completely unfounded however, rather there was a general assertion in the nineteenth century that Orthodoxy did not develop any real theology. De Staël merely repeated that “the nation is kept together by religion and patriotism but knowledge is of no priority.”162
Peter I instigated a great deal of change during his reign, striving to make everything more European. This shift was evidenced in the manner of clothing in his court, which changed from an oriental influenced, coloured dress to an imitation of a Louis XIV style. Madame de Staël noticed that the European style of dressing did not fit such a people, who were used to Oriental manners.163 She said she “could not bear to see Russians dressed like other Europeans; they seemed to me entering that great regularity of the despotism of Napoleon, which first makes all nations the present of the conscription, then of the war-taxes, and lastly, of the Code Napoleon, in order to govern nations of totally different characters in the same manner.”164 This comment articulated the romantic concept of every nation’s individuality which was easily recognised in the general aversion of imitation, pitted against European Classicism. Indeed, de Staël observed that Muscovite markets contained all sorts of rare Oriental costumes which came from Siberia or India, underlining the Asian character of the city because of its vicinity to these parts of the world.165 The baroness remarked that men and women liked to wear vivid colours, “which are derived from the East, where the sun is so beautiful, that one likes to make its gloss more conspicuous by the objects which it shines upon.”166 This therefore contrasted with the desire for European fashion, which was not made in concordance with the climate and thus, according to de Staël, did not fit the Russian people.
De Staël dedicated a whole chapter to the inherent character of the Russian people. Apart from her own experiences, the account seemed to consist of stereotypes which had existed for centuries. According to Madame de Staël, “the mixture of European civilisation and of Asiatic
161 Ibid., chapter XIX, 465. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid., chapter XIV, 423. 164 Ibid., chapter XI, 400. 165 Ibid., chapter XIV, 424. 166 Ibid., chapter XI, 400. 40 character is the cause of the striking contrasts that exist in this country.”167 The Russians combined “the hardest privations and the most refined enjoyments”, regardless of their social class.168 As to their character, de Staël blended positive features with negative aspects and vice versa, constantly othering the Russian people. She touched upon their violent behaviour, which she presumed was the result of a lack of education. Therefore she perceived it fit to compare them with savages, as “no civilised nation has so much in common with savages as the Russian people.”169 At the same time, the Russians persevered in battles because they did not care much about their own comfort, and their energy and activeness made them surpass every obstacle. The aforementioned characteristics occupied the minds of the Russians more than real emotions, in the words of de Staël. The fact that Russians did not show their emotional state, according to de Staël, could be explained as follows. On the one hand, they were persuaded that prudence was key in a despotic nation, and on the other, they did not attach much importance to feelings. De Staël was convinced that this was the result of their incapacity of meditation and reflection, like all people subject to despotism, she depicted them as more capable of dissimulation than reflection.170 This dissimulation was often translated into silence. De Staël noticed that “this silence is solely occasioned by what he [the Russian] takes a deep interest in.”171 Therefore, the conversations she held with Russians taught her only about their hospitality, which she took as a disguise for their real feelings and opinions. She mentioned that “they are English, French, or German in their manners; but they never cease to be Russians, that is to say combining impetuosity with aloofness, more capable of passion than friendship, more bold than delicate, more devout than virtuous, more brave than chivalrous, and so violent in their desires that nothing can stop them, when their gratification is in question.”172
Jacques Ancelot
Ancelot took a lot of pleasure in studying the habits of the Russian people. He sketched a quite different image of the Russians than Madame de Staël and Astolphe de Custine. His fame had probably not exceeded the French borders, thus changing his situation while traveling. He depicted the Russians as fearless and displaying contempt in the face of danger. According
167 Ibid., chapter XIII, 415. 168 Ibid., chapter XII, 410. 169 Ibid., chapter XIV, 427. 170 Ibid., chapter XVI, 420. 171 Ibid., chapter XIII, 415. 172 Ibid., chapter XIII, 415-416. 41 to him, “one can see the primitive simplicity of men in the midst of civilisation.”173 Considering this comment, he nevertheless primarily expressed admiration towards the people, who allegedly maintained turbulent gaiety and all-embracing tenderness for everyone”, even when drunk.174 Ancelot might have alluded to the widely known stock phrase that in a state of inebriety, one is disinclined to hide the truth.
“Nothing is more surprising, at first sight than the extreme courtesy which distinguishes these simple men, and it presents a singular contrast to their wild outlook and their coarse clothing.”175 Ancelot continued to deliberate that “civilities decorate the language of the people, which we do not find in France in the lower social classes.”176 To him, “they speak with a decency which seems to be the fruit of their education.”177 Ancelot did not perceive this politeness as superficial as the other writers. He went on as to say that “in a military state, this courtesy seemed remarkable, and as I have never witnessed this in any other country, I conclude that it is inherent to the character of the people.”178 His judgement might have differed from De Custine and De Staël’s vision, due to his exchanges with people from other social classes than the Russian nobility. He mentioned that social civility in France was less familiar with the lower classes, so he deduced that the whole Russian population was more educated that the French. Courtesy, however, can be found in all classes of society, as it is a nurtured practice that can simply be acquired through tradition or learning processes.
Furthermore, Ancelot underlined, in contrast to the other travellers, that he had not witnessed one fight in the streets, knowing that “bloody fights do happen in London and Paris”, and he did not understand where their sense of moderation came from.179 He thought that the religious factor played a role in their moderate actions, because “a Russian will help you by instinct and religious sentiment, an act of Christian charity, while the Frenchman knows his worth when he is helping, it is a duty imposed by society.”180 This did not take away that the
173 François Ancelot, Six mois en Russie: lettres écrites à M. X.-B. Saintines, 1826, à l’époque du couronnement de S.M. l’empereur (Dondey-Dupré, 1827), lettre XXXI, 274-275. 174 Ibid., lettre XXXI, 278. 175 Ibid., lettre XXXI, 275-276. 176 Ibid., lettre XXXI, 276. 177 Ibid. 178 Ibid., lettre XXXI, 278. 179 Ibid., lettre XXXI, 276. 180 Ibid., lettre XXXI, 281.
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Russians were violent, it could just have been that Ancelot did not witness a fight during his stay.
Ancelot referred to the Russian Enlightenment, which started in the eighteenth century, under the reigns of Peter and Catherine the Great.181 He imagined Catherine the Great in the gardens of her Palace, “her eyes on Europe, the continent of which she constantly needed praise.”182 The Russian Enlightenment was more focussed on a modernisation of society and the abolition of serfdom than anything else. Ancelot mentioned the Decembrist revolt of 1825, a year before his arrival, and through an anecdote, he kindly condemned the Russian way of thinking. Apparent to him, they could not imagine living in a republic, in which they would not have to fight for an emperor. So the bourgeois Decembrist revolt did not appeal to the masses. Wanting to get rid of one emperor meant for the people that he should be replaced by another, for they could not live without being loyal to an emperor.183 According to Ancelot, the Russian people also supported the new culture of Enlightenment, because of their untouched faith in the sovereign.184 It was true that the people supported the emperor, regardless whether it was a question of loyalty or fear.
Ancelot also participated in the celebration of Semik, the feast of the seventh Thursday after Easter, a national tradition in St. Petersburg, observing that the primitive character of these celebrations lost ground every year. He was pessimistic as to the future, in which “the Russian people of St. Petersburg would have completely sacrificed their original physiognomy to an exterior imitation of modern practices.”185 He clearly pointed at the dangers of Europeanisation, resulting in the loss of their own identity and traditions.
Ancelot touched upon the lack of beauty of these young women at the celebration, partly because of their coloured costumes without any waistline. In contrast, the ladies of the court wore Parisian dresses and only changed into national costumes during events where they had to look Russian.186 Ancelot himself did not particularly like the Russian costumes as Madame de Staël did, and it could be said that his preference would be the European, or French style.
181 Aleksandr V. Gordon, “The Russian Enlightenment: The Meaning of National Archetypes of Power,” Russian Studies in History 48, no. 3 (December 1, 2009): 30–49. 182 Ancelot, Six mois en Russie, lettre XVII, 122. 183 Ibid., lettre XXII, 172-173. 184 Gordon, “The Russian Enlightenment.” 185 Ancelot, Six mois en Russie, lettre XVIII, 133. 186 Ibid., lettre XXXI, 283.
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On a more critical note, he ended his account with the words: “The abjection of the people, their superstitious ignorance, the constant picture of slavery and misery, the silence, prescribed by the form of government, concerning all public affairs, inspire a foreigner, and especially a Frenchman, a boredom which dominates his spirit .”187 The joy of going back to his native country, therefore, filled him with even more joy after a “journey through these bitter and monotonous regions”.188
Astolphe de Custine
De Custine observed a population that lived in constant fear, which made them turn silent. He stated that the whole Russian society was only animated by this fear and vanity. Their fear of the Emperor could produce the appearance of civilisation, but it would never be a well- organised society, for “where there is no liberty, there is no soul nor truth.”189 The prejudice existed that this fear became an advantage for it made Russians courteous towards each other and towards strangers. After a while though, de Custine realised that this prejudice evolved into a sort of fake courtesy which shocked and annoyed him, as it was fear-engendered and to him suddenly became “a means of surveillance”.190 The marquis experienced this courtesy as limiting his and other travellers’ mobility by the number of formalities. As for the unprotected traveller, they had no chance at all to discover the country, since “[the Russians] like the taste of mystery more than the mystery itself”.191 The authority intervened constantly, “these are the mores of Oriental politics disguised in European urbanity.”192 De Custine repeated several times that the alliance between the Orient and the West is what characterised Russia, calling it in the last resort a semi-civilisation. Mystery and silence were primordial features in an autocratic regime since the Emperor was the only person to speak the truth. Their primitive character of Russian society was influenced by the government in so many ways that it led to “useful and useless discretion and superfluous silence to assure the necessary.”193 Underneath their courtesy, the Russians allegedly despised foreigners, “but if they dared to brave the reproach of barbarism, as the real Chinese do, they would not let us into St. Petersburg, as the Chinese exclude us from Peking.”194 This serious accusation of barbarism and the comparison with
187 Ibid., lettre XLIV, 414. 188 Ibid., lettre XLIV, 414-415. 189 Astolphe de Custine, La Russie en 1839 (Paris: Librairie d’Amyot, 1843), Tome II, lettre XV, 211. 190 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XIX, 26. 191 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XIX, 28. 192 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XIX, 26. 193 Ibid., Tome III, lettre XIX, 28. 194 Ibid. 44
China showed that, in the Custine’s eyes, and beyond the surface, Russia was as barbaric as the Chinese, but they did not dare to show it because they liked to keep up their European appearance.
Furthermore, de Custine ascribed a whole range of characteristics to the Slavonic people, such as mistrust, credulity, deception and tenderness, all contrasting characteristics associated with charm. He added elegance and grace, turning everything he touches into something picturesque, stressing the Russians’ simplicity, sensibility, irony, falseness, fineness, charm, grace, combined with a talent for music and a ‘Mongolian greed’. De Custine specified that nothing revealed the habitual suffering of this people better than the sadness of their pleasures, referring to their dramatic and melancholic folk songs.
De Custine spent a great amount of time figuring out what kind of civilisation Russia could be. First of all, he felt that the Russians attempted to fool everyone by the appearance of civilisation. Here again, he pointed at the combination of “a patriarchal tyranny of an Asian government in contact with the theories of modern philanthropy.”195 This spectacle, a semi- barbaric society regulated by fear, he analysed, could only be seen in Russia. On the other hand, as a traveller, he wanted to be amazed by the singularity of the country, which he finally found only in the spirit of the people, who turned out to be unable to hide their primitivism through their allegedly European appearance.
Several times, he attempted to compare France and Russia, consistently placing a high value on his own country’s features. According to him, the “revolutionary tyranny in France is an illness of transition,” while in Russia “the tyranny of despotism is a permanent revolution.”196 De Custine subjectively positioned France as possessing a passion called truth, a still unknown variable in Russia. One of the more provocative citations included: “in order to compare our two peoples, wait until yours exist.”197 The Frenchman insinuated that the Russian people did not genuinely exist as long as they did not possess some kind of liberty, this was a criticism on the despotic government and perhaps on the fear of the entire population.
195 Ibid., Tome II, lettre XIII, 150. 196 Ibid., Tome II, lettre XIII, 151. 197 Ibid., Tome II, lettre XV, 217.
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In the same tone, he continued that the Russians were only able to mimic and make a fool out of other nations, but “I blame them for their pretention to be like us.”198 He was clearly not ready to make similarities, keeping his superiority in mind at all times. Unsurprisingly, he thus found Moscow much more bearable than St. Petersburg, because the ‘imitation game’ there was less obvious and because “the mix of patriarchal traditions of the ancient world and the wealthy manners of modern Europe produces something original.”199 In Moscow, he discovered an interesting combination of the courtesy of ancient Asia and contemporary elegant European languages and felt that the national character had not been completely erased at this “resting point between London and Peking.”200
De Custine illustrated the subject of equality quite interestingly while criticising the Russian autocracy. Whereas several other thinkers believed that equality was one of the main principles of despotism, de Custine made his case by stating that equality in these societies was an illusion. The absolute power claimed by the Emperor was only “arbitrary and capricious, and will never be powerful enough to establish perfect equality among the subjects.”201 Furthermore, he concluded that “the power of despotism does not reside in the equality of its victims, but is only to be found in the ignorance of liberty and in fear of tyranny.”202 De Custine asserted that Russia contained the most unequal society of all countries in Europe. Thus, the notion of equality interfered with the concept of civilisation in Russia. According to de Custine, once men lost the fear which paralyses their thinking, they were likely to become more cultivated and start to fight for their own ideas and feel freer. When de Custine was in Russia in 1839, he posed as a fervent preacher of liberty, hence noticing, above all, that the consequences of a lack of legal liberty was an excess of illegitimate liberty; “where the use [of liberty] is prohibited, abuse introduces itself; denying the right, you create fraud; refusing justice, you open the door to crime.”203
Charles de Saint-Julien
De Saint-Julien already described in his introduction that a country like Russia could only excite the curiosity of the traveller. Like the other writers he recognised that “even if Russia
198 Ibid., Tome I, lettre X, 332. 199 Ibid., Tome IV, lettre XXIX, 18. 200 Ibid., Tome IV, lettre XXIX, 19. 201 Ibid., Tome IV, lettre XXIX, 59. 202 Ibid., Tome IV, lettre XXIX, 62. 203 Ibid., Tome IV, lettre XXIX, 33.
46 had undergone a transformation in its existence, the Slavonic character stayed the same.”204 By that character, he generally meant that they were “generous, beautiful, a bit frivolous and courteous, according to him.”205 The people possessed a moral force and trust, and lacked any foresight because it was not needed, as he witnessed.
Furthermore, he recognised the contrasts in character, nature, and physiognomy without losing the picturesque harmony, which was already underlined by previous travellers. De Saint- Julien thought that “Russia borrowed this strange character from the semi-barbaric Byzantium.” Once the Russians received the first breeze of Western civilisation, which soon after developed in a fertile breeze, they would not give up the tastes and traditions of their rude childhood.”206 He continued by explaining that “this Slavonic nation suddenly turned its back on its first civilisation, and asked the still quite unknown West for help in the areas of science and modern arts.”207 He obviously referred to the actions of Peter the Great and the creation of St. Petersburg. The result of turning to Europe was that the traditions were polished and the court became one of the most gallant in the world.208 De Saint-Julien clearly distinguished the semi- barbarism of their previous Byzantine-influenced civilisation to a more ‘civilised’ European nation. However, “the character of this people is something we, the old people of the continent, wonder about.” There was no common model they could attach it to because it was volatile and full of contrasts.209
Théophile Gautier
Gautier had travelled extensively during his life, mainly within Europe from Spain to Belgium and to the Mediterranean basin including Egypt, Algeria as far as Constantinople and to Russia. Thus he said that “the Russians have Oriental origins, and even in the higher classes, they do not care for any softness of their beds; they sleep wherever they can, almost everywhere, like the Turks, often in their fur coats, on large leather sofas one finds in every corner.”210 As to the European character of the capital he admitted that “we are inclined to forget the real Russia when in St. Petersburg.”211 Because “we could imagine ourselves to be in West End or
204 Ibid., Introduction, 5. 205 Ibid., Introduction, 6. 206 Charles de Saint-Julien, Voyage Pittoresque En Russie (Paris, 1852), Introduction, 1-2. 207 Ibid., Introduction, 3. 208 Ibid., Introduction, 3-4. 209 Ibid. 210 Théophile Gautier, Voyage En Russie (Paris: Charpentier, 1867), chapter X, 214-215. 211 Ibid., chapter X, 214.
47 in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, but soon the local character betrays itself by a wealth of curious details.”212 He pierced through the imitated European façade in St. Petersburg, but he preferred the picturesqueness, like in the case of the servants who would be more picturesque if they were to wear the costumes of their tribe, but this would stand in the way of a European appearance, and the Russians did not wish to seem Asiatic.
Contrarily to the other writers, Gautier acknowledged the Russian knowledge of foreign languages as a sign of intelligence. As to the fashion, the Russian women were “more fashionable than fashion itself.”213 He nevertheless referred to an (imported) European style, which he characterised as elegant, probably because it emanated from Europe.
Alexandre Dumas (père) and Armand Silvestre
Dumas and Silvestre did not specifically describe the characteristics of the Russian people. They both did share their culinary experiences, but, whereas the other writers were quite open and very detailed, Dumas and Silvestre stuck to the surface concerning the civilisation and the national character.
Conclusion
All of the French writers above mentioned a semi- or semi-barbaric civilisation of non- Western origin. The process of civilisation was initiated, but up until the nineteenth century, this only included pure Western imitation. Moreover, the majority of these writers claimed that underneath their Western clothing, furnished interiors and court, their inherited and inherent traditions and characteristics prevailed and could only be ascribed to Oriental influences or Russianness. The character of the people thus revealed, according to these writers, the real face of the Russians. Most of the travellers ascribed a primitive character to the population, which conveyed the superiority of the West on this people. Moreover, interesting is that the majority of those writers preferred to see their hosts in their natural clothing and primitivism, instead of imitating the West. This clearly accentuated the distance between the two civilisations created by the French, who did not approve of the similarities but preferred a hierarchy to maintain their superiority.
Another important feature in creating a gap between France and Russia included the intelligence of the people. On the one hand, the Russian education lagged behind on the Western
212 Ibid., chapter X, 210. 213 Ibid., chapter X, 225. 48 continent, but on the other hand, a part of the writers alleged that even with an improved educational system, the Russians would remain simple-minded, because of their primitive character.
Similar to the monuments described in the first two chapters, the real nature of Russia could not be hidden through imitation, nor assimilation. As long as a despotic government was in place, there would be no opportunity for a Russian civilisation to flourish, since, without liberty, the fear among the population would remain.
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Departures from the Russian Empire
The departures are interesting to look at, in order to examine if the French travellers’ emotions and attitude towards Russia had changed.
Madame de Staël
At the end of September 1812, de Staël left for Sweden, through Finland. She was sad to leave “all that was beautiful and good in St. Petersburg [which] appeared to me in the presence of approaching destruction, and I could not enjoy them without having these painful ideas constantly pursuing me.”214 She nevertheless felt that it was time to go and “certain of the generous opinions and of the noble conduct of the Prince of Sweden, I was more than ever confirmed in the resolution of going to Stockholm, before embarking for England.”215
Madame the Staël accentuated that she lived in fear in a time when “the fate of the world was never exposed to greater dangers.”216 She feared not only the devastation Napoleon’s army caused and would cause but foremost Napoleon himself, “when nations attack each other with fury, we recognize, with sorrow, human destiny in the miseries of humanity; but when a single being spreads misery over the earth in torrents, we experience a sort of superstitious fear which leads us to consider all honourable persons as his victims.”217
Jacques Ancelot
Ancelot saluted Moscow one last time in September 1826, on top of Moscow’s highest point, Sparrow Hill and ended his account with a poem, recalling the Napoleonic War which destroyed the city in 1812. He was filled with “happiness by the thought of being reunited with the objects of my affections.”218 Although he declared that “it is impossible to find more distractions and baits towards curiosity than in Russia”, he still had the impression that “life here flows sadly and without colours.”219 On a more negative note, he described his feelings of
214 de Staël-Holstein, Mémoires de Mme de Staël : Dix Années D’exil : Ouvrage Posthume Publié En 1818, chapter XIX, 462. 215 Ibid., chapter XX, 472. 216 Ibid. 217 Ibid., chapter XX, 472-473. 218 Ancelot, Six mois en Russie, lettre XLIV, 414. 219 Ibid. 50 boredom when in Russia and “the joy of returning home after a journey in these monotone regions.”220
Astolphe de Custine
Astolphe de Custine had most trouble with the border guards, according to his letter. It is therefore not surprising that he felt joy when leaving Russia. “The idea that one get used to the corruption and the character of this administration is revolting, but it does happen. An honest man would become crazy in this country.”221 Finally, on 20 September 1839, he found himself “outside of the Empire of uniformity, scrupulousness and difficulties,” upon arrival in Tilsit, after a boat trip on the Neman river.222 A part from an indescribable joy, he felt free from the yoke of this despotic land in which “everything feels like a double sadness : the fear of power, the absence of the sun!!”223
“We talk freely and believe ourselves to be in a whirlwind of pleasures in a world carried by new ideas.” Yet, he was only in Prussia, but the feeling of leaving Russia blossomed his heart.224 On a more admiring although critical tone, he advanced that many travellers would have had the same sensation by leaving the Russian Empire, however, “no traveller expressed this feeling,” because “the prestige of the Russian government exercises on its spirits. It obtains silence, not only from the subjects, but it is also respected from far, by strangers who were able to escape from its iron discipline.225
Charles de Saint-Julien
After a journey in Siberia, Charles de Saint-Julien returned to St. Petersburg before returning to France. He was filled with joy by the thought of returning home. He would “enjoy the taste of luxury, elegance and civilisation” even more upon arrival.226 He was able to establish the contrast between Paris and Russia. This included the joyful climate in which he was born; he learned to appreciate the charms of his country and to cherish it even more. What he was most impressed about in Russia? “The magnitude and magnificence of its nature.”227
220 Ibid., lettre XLIV, 414-415. 221 Ibid. 222 Ibid. 223 de Custine, La Russie en 1839, tome IV, récit, 398. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid., tome IV, récit, 404-405. 226 Saint-Julien, Voyage Pittoresque En Russie, 533. 227 Ibid., 534. 51
Alexandre Dumas (père)
On 7 November 1858, Dumas saluted the Russia from Rourik and Ivan the Terrible when he left Astrakhan for Baku, where he found the Russia of Peter I and Catherine II and the emperor Nicolas.228 What troubled him most was to pick the right means of transportation in order to make it to the Caucasus. Finally, Dumas and his companions obtained a tarantass (four wheeled horse-drawn carriage) to travel. He feared dying of hunger, not of the possibly dangerous road he was about to take. He ended his letter with a note on Astrakhan, “which felt like we were in St. Petersburg or in Paris, but once we entered the desert, we were really 1000 places away from Paris.”229
Théophile Gautier
Gautier had been prolonging his stay in Russia for months, because of his curiosity along with the remarkable hospitality. After seven months came the departure. He took a train to Pskov and he and his travel companions bought a sort of droshky in a poor state, which brought them to Konigsberg, he already felt melancholically about St. Petersburg. Gautier explained his return extensively. It was a rough journey, but he already missed St. Petersburg and its snow. He became so fond of Russia that he returned in summer to see things he had not seen before. His great affection of Russia was created because “on top of our great attraction towards new things came the most pleasant relations.”230 It is widely known that the people you meet make travelling worthwhile. Gautier was an example of that. According to him “the Russian life enveloped us, sweetly, caressing, flattering, and we had difficulties to lay down this soft pelisse.”231
Armand Silvestre
Silvestre travelled back home from Nijni-Novgorod back to Moscow and from there to Ukraine and Poland. When he took the train to Poland, “this admirable vision of the Orient faded behind a curtain, and reality succeeded this dream cruelly.”232 He found it always “painful to leave behind what we will surely never see again.”233 He already seemed melancholic and was lost in his memories of “the shiny golden domes in the sunlight, then the wild Kremlin in
228 Ibid., chapter LXXII, 718. 229 Dumas, Impressions de voyage en Russie, chapter LXXII, 708. 230 Gautier, Voyage En Russie, tome II, 164. 231 Ibid. 232 Silvestre, La Russie. Impressions. Portraits. Paysages, chapter XIX, 299. 233 Ibid. 52 the moonlight, […], the buzzing of the holy bell towers, the joyful hymns of the Russian choirs in the noisy Hermitage.234 While in the train, he described a boring landscape, in contrast with what he had seen in Russia, until he recognised some resemblance with France and lightened somewhat up.
234 Ibid., chapter XIX, 300. 53
Conclusion
Nowadays, there is an ongoing debate whether Russia belongs to the European or Asian continent. The chapters of this thesis therefore have attempted to answer if the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as their inhabitants were perceived by the French as European, Oriental or ascribed to a Russian nature in the nineteenth century. This research was based on the travel accounts of seven French writers who visited Russia in the nineteenth century. Travel writing evolved during the nineteenth century in a recognised literary stream, which made the study of these published books worthwhile. The features these travelogues obviously had in common were the curiosity for the country, the crossing of the border and the destinations of Moscow and St. Petersburg. What they often did not have in common were their expectations, their previous experiences, their origins, their forms of travelling and their perception of the world.
By studying the descriptions and perspectives of these French visitors, Moscow explicitly possessed a considerable amount of Oriental features in its architecture and its overall cityscape. The colours and the climate added to this Oriental effect. The observations on St. Petersburg however were less obvious and periodically suggested a ‘national character’. Although nothing seemed to appear Oriental at first sight, after a more thorough examination, most writers assessed that this was a façade to hide their Oriental character. Finally, by studying the characteristics of the Russian inhabitants of both cities, the perception of the ascribed features largely pointed at a combination of Oriental and Russian imprints.
The othering mechanism expressed itself in the travelogues in different forms. The accounts on Moscow explicitly referred to the empires and cities situated within the Orient. As to the architecture in Moscow, most travellers did not recognise the characteristic forms of the buildings. Concerning the monuments in St. Petersburg, all writers indicated the imitation of a European classical style. They therefore principally used the particular climate to distinguish the European from Russia. Concerning the people, the writers mostly used a combination of references on Oriental traditions and clothing, along with their primitive characteristics to orientalise the Russian population.
Throughout the analysis of the travel accounts, a number of images recurred repeatedly. In Moscow, the Kremlin was perceived as a surreal and magical monument, which could not be more Russian, although it contained Oriental elements. Most accounts indeed highlighted
54 that, according to them, the Kremlin represented the embodiment of Russia. Not surprisingly, some accounts, therefore, only accepted Moscow as the real capital of Russia. In St. Petersburg, the creation of the city reappeared in all travelogues. A part from Madame de Staël, the writers faced the structures of the city with misbelief, although impressed. Also, the will of Peter the Great was extensively assessed, except in the diary of de Staël, who spent more time criticising Napoleon than Peter the Great. The hospitality of the Russian people was assessed in all five accounts who mentioned the characteristics of the people in chapter three. Astolphe de Custine, for example, could not appreciate the excessive manners of courtesy, whereas Ancelot liked this trait of character. Madame de Staël appreciated the hospitality, but seemed to agree with Gautier that this courtesy was used to hide behind.
Venner and Vergara both defined their theories on the European identity. After a thorough examination of the travelogues, the writers never referred to a common European history which included Russia. Besides, the main historical events between France and Russia, such as the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War, had only distanced and opposed Russia from Europe, as Russia was (perceived as) the enemy. Venner further developed this European identity on the Enlightenment and Vergara focussed on the belonging to Europe and its civilising ideal. The concepts of the Enlightenment and civilisation are allegedly not ascribed to Russia in the examined travel literature. What did occur was the spirit of imitation, mainly in St. Petersburg, which actually excluded the Russian Empire from possible belonging to Europe, according to these French travel literature authors. Furthermore, the notion of civilisation was mentioned in some accounts in the sense of an existence of a Russian civilisation, but it did not include the ‘civilising ideal’, in which the promotion of democracy and human rights figured.
Adamovsky focussed more on social class, whereas the third part of this thesis aimed at constituting the main characteristics of the Russian people. The process of othering truly emerged here. Like the imitation of classical Western monuments in St. Petersburg, the seemingly exaggerated courtesy was never attributed to Western values an sich. Nevertheless, some travellers did accuse the Russians of a fabricated imitated hospitality originated from the West, whereas others assumed this was a characteristic inherent to the Russian people. Moreover, the perceived primitivism of the population in general was almost immediately linked to the peoples of the Orient. All in all, the nineteenth century French writers seemed to agree that Russia could not be seen as European in nature. Although, geographically, they seemed rather hesitant and most writers included a part of Russia into the European continent.
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One can therefore conclude that the travellers altogether were othering Russia into an Oriental/non-Western framework.
Thus, further research on this topic could provide a more universal image of Russia, whether it be in a different time frame or through travel literature emanating from other countries. The immensity of the country adds to the difficulty of ascribing Russia only to one civilisation. As Charles de Saint-Julien stated in his conclusion: “it is not by shortly visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg during the pleasant season that one will recognise Russia, its institutions, its cities, its people, its traditions, its national spirit […] and the expression and value of all things.”235.
235 Charles de Saint-Julien, Voyage Pittoresque En Russie (Paris, 1852), Introduction, V. 56
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