Dostoevsky's French Reception

McCabe, Alexander (2013) Dostoevsky’s French reception: from Vogüé, Gide, Shestov and Berdyaev to Marcel, Camus and Sartre (1880-1959). PhD thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4337/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] University of Glasgow Dostoevsky’s French Reception From Vogüé, Gide, Shestov and Berdyaev to Marcel, Sartre and Camus (1880-1959) Alexander McCabe Thesis submitted to the College of Arts (School of Modern Languages and Cultures) in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2013 © Alexander McCabe 2013 Acknowledgements At the University of Glasgow I thank my supervisors, Dr. Ramona Fotiade and Dr. Andrei Rogatchevski, for their faith and assistance from initial plans to final editing. This gratitude extends also to Dr. Penelope Morris, Dr. Elwira Grossman and Dr. Jim Simpson, whose guidance at turning points in the doctoral process were of no small purport; to Paola Vacca for her kind help in translating from Italian, and above all to Dr. Mariangela Paladino for support and inspiration. I express my gratitude to the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for their generous financial backing, permitting the extended research trips to France and Russia which so enriched the project. These trips would not have been so fruitful were it not for the support received on arrival. For a warm welcome and a wealth of stimulation at RGGU and the Pushkin House during research trips to Russia, I thank in particular Professors Anna Yampolskaya, Oleg Marchenko and Sergei Kibalkin. Thanks also to Dr. Michel Eltchaninoff, and to Anne Laurent, for informative discussions in Paris, and to the staff of the Bibliothèque Louis Notari for their kind assistance at the Schloezer archive in Monaco. I thank Pavel Serdiuk and Mikael Dorokov for proofreading and discussing points of translation analysis and for much besides. For vital support and camaraderie, in chronological order, fellow researchers Sami Sjoberg, Monica Ålgars, my sister and most assiduous proof-reader, Morgana McCabe, Nina Enemark, Jennifer Munro, Emily Ryder, Kari Pries, Poppy Kohner, Elisa Pakkanen, Guillaume Lecomte and Consuelo Tersol. If this journey had even been possible without them, it would have been significantly less meaningful. Finally, my parents, for unwavering support in everything, thank you. Abstract This history of Dostoevsky’s reception in France draws from critical responses, translation analysis, and the comparative analysis of adaptations as well as intertextual dialogues between fictional, critical and philosophical texts. It begins from the earliest translations and critical accounts of the 1880s and 1890s, such as Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé’s seminal moralist reading. It then traces modernist responses and adaptations from the turn of the century to the twenties. Existential readings and re-translations dating from the arrival of émigré critics and religious philosophers in the wake of the Russian Revolution are examined, assessing the contribution of these émigré readings to emerging existential readings and movements in France. Finally, French existentialist fiction is analysed in terms of its intertextual dialogue with Dostoevsky’s work and with speculative and critical writings of French existentialist thinkers on and around the philosophical reflections expressed in Dostoevsky’s fiction. By following specifically the existential and existentialist branches of Dostoevsky’s French reception, an overlooked aspect of the history of French, Russian and European existentialisms comes to the fore, reframed within a pivotal period in the history of European intercultural exchange, and of transmodal literary and philosophical discourse. 3 Table of Contents Introduction p. 5 1. Vogüé and the first translators (1880-1900) p. 23 2. Gide and “ceux qui avaient vingt ans” (1898-1926) p. 73 3. Religious Existential Readings (1921-1930) p. 133 4. Atheist Existentialist Reworkings (1930-1959) p. 188 Conclusions p. 239 Bibliography p. 245 4 Note on Translation and Transliteration All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. Russian names and titles have been transliterated in accordance with the Library of Congress system, with the exception of well-known names (e.g. Dostoevsky) in which case the common English spelling has been used. Names and words transliterated in quotations and references have been left as transliterated in the source. 5 Introduction Reception history has a somewhat antithetical status in relation to dominant, nationalised intellectual and literary histories. This nationalisation itself is constructed and reinforced more by institutionalised disciplinary boundaries than by the reality of reading and writing, in which translated foreign texts play as significant a role as native texts. So long as the task of writing and rewriting histories of French literature falls to specialists of French literature understood as texts authored in French, causal relationships and linear chains of exchange are constructed and reconstructed with a disregard for the fact that translated texts operate just as productively within literary discourse and, as such, in national literary history. Reception history is therefore a means of questioning monolithic, nationalised historical narratives and bringing to the fore the equal significance of translated literature in the emergence of new literary movements. The reception specifically of the 19 th century Russian novel in France is a phenomenon that stands out from all others. Even Nietzsche’s reception historian, Jacques le Rider, has acknowledged that Nietzsche’s colossal wave of reception was second to that of les Russes.1 The particular interest of the chronological framing of the current investigation, i.e. from the late romantic period towards post-modernity and post-colonialism, is significant in that reception history permits a microcosmic view of one culture’s perception of another. The 1 Jacques le Rider’s authoratitive history of Nietzsche’s collosal significance to 20 th century French intellectual life states: “Le seul domaine qui surpasse, par son ampleur, la réception de Nietzsche dans les pays de langue française, est celui de la littérature russe contemporaine e (Dostoïevski, Tolstoï).” See Jacques le Rider, Nietzsche en France: De la fin du XIX siècle au temps présent (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), p. 105. 6 translation boom of the 1880s, when the current history commences, was initially met with striking hostility and fear of intercultural contamination. The history of the gradual and laborious deconstruction of the Volksgeist, the mode of envisioning interculturality that dominated 19 th century discourse emerges. Notions of intercultural clashes subside and cosmopolitanist reading strategies come to the fore. Lefevere’s writings were seminal in approaching the question of translated texts in nationalised literary history: Literary histories, as they have been written until recently, have had little time for translations, since for the literary historian, translation has had to do with ‘language’ only, not with literature – another pernicious outgrowth of the ‘monolinguization’ of literary history by Romantic historiographers intent on creating ‘national’ literatures preferably as uncontaminated as possible by foreign influences. 2 Post-colonialist critics, following the structuralists and semioticians, have attempted to decentralise intellectual histories via translation studies. Selim writes: Literary history is one of the most powerful vehicles by which the nation state protects its legitimacy and authority within and beyond its own borders. […] Literary history is therefore not innocent of the broader political and discursive practices that have shaped the relationship between Europe and its others in modernity. 3 The great interest in the Russian context in the period in question is that Russia’s status as one of Europe’s Oriental other was in dramatic transition, as was the 2 André Lefevere, "Translation: its Genealogy in the West," in Translation, History and Culture , eds Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (London: Printer Publishers, 1990), p. 24. 3 Samah Selim, "Pharoah’s Revenge: Translation, Literary History and Colonial Ambivalence," in Critical Readings in Translation Studies , ed. Mona Baker (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 321. 7 international status of Russian literature. The simultaneity of these processes was, of course, no coincidence. Selim has also written that while the legitimacy of literary history per se has come into question in the post-structuralist context, the reintegration of marginalised histories remains meaningful. 4 To this end, reception histories of Russian literature inclusive of marginalised émigré readings are crucial. The present study’s selection of readings of Dostoevsky is by no means exhaustive, and by no means arbitrary. Starting from the ‘orientalist’ roots of reception in chapter

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