UNIVERSITE D'OTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES 1415 LEO NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOY AND THE EARLY ENGLISH VICTORIAN NOVELISTS: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, CHARLES DICKENS, ANTHONY TROLLOPE AND GEORGE ELIOT "by Victor Buyniak Thesis presented to the Eaculty of Arts of the University of Ottawa through the Department of Slavic Studies as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy /0^L% ^ UIRAWIS j> Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1968 UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UMI Number: DC53767 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform DC53767 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis was prepared under the supervision of Professor Nicolas Pervushin, Ph.D., of the Department of Russian, McGili University, and visiting Professor of the Department of Slavic Studies, University of Ottawa, and Professor Constantine Bida, Ph.D., Head of the Department of Slavic Studies, University of Ottawa. The writer would like to express his gratitude to Dr. Co H„ Andrusyshen, Head of the Department of Slavic Studies, University of Saskatchewan, for his valuable suggestions and advice while the work was in progress. UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES CURRICULUM STUDIORUM Victor Buyniak was born October 12, 1925, in Vysokienice, Poland. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Languages from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, in 1954- He received the Master of Arts degree in Modern Languages from the University of Alberta in 1955. The title of his thesis was The Influence of French, English, and German Writers on the Early Works of L. N. Tolstoy. UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES • TABLE OP CONTENTS Chapter page INTRODUCTION i I. TOLSTOY AND MANY ASPECTS OP ENGLISH CULTURE . 1 a) Tolstoy's early acquaintance with the English language and literature 1 b) The impact of the eighteenth century English novelists on Tolstoy 9 c) His trip to England in 1861 24 d) His extensive reading of works on history, philosophy, and literary criticism by English authors 31 e) Tolstoy's English friends, translators, and followers of his ideas 47 II. TOLSTOY-THACKERAY . 78 III. TOLSTOY-DICSENS 142 IV. TOLSTOY-TROLLOPE 205 V. TOLSTOY-GEORGE ELIOT 234 VI. TOLSTOY AND THE OTHER EARLY VICTORIAN NOVELISTS 271 CONCLUSION 292 BIBLIOGRAPHY 297 Appendix 1. ABSTRACT OP Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy and the Early English Victorian Novelists; William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and George Eliot 317 UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES INTRODUCTION Western literary, philosophical and social ideas were responsible, to a great extent, for the intellectual development of many Russian authors and thinkers of the nineteenth century. Beginning with the eighteenth century, the time of the formation of the new period in Russian li­ terature, Western ideas started penetrating into Russian cultivated society largely through French translations be­ cause of Prance's cultural importance in contemporary Europe. Literary influence appears to be most frequent and most fruitful at the times of the emergence of national literatures and of the radical change of direction of a particular literary tradition in a given literature. This statement holds true in reference to Russian literature as a whole and to the individual Russian authors of the eighteenth and, to a large degree, of the nineteenth cen­ tury when French, English, and German writers and lite­ ratures in turn, and even concurrently, became known in Russia. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), especially in his formative years, drew freely from this extensive source of Western knowledge, and throughout his long and prolific career as a writer, philosopher and social re­ former continued a close contact with it. To evaluate the UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UNIVERSITE D OTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES INTRODUCTION ii literary indebtedness and the intellectual relationship of Tolstoy to the early Victorian novelists, their works and ideas, one has to outline briefly the types of indebtedness and relationship as they appear in various forms of litera­ ture. It is also necessary to give a proper and more de­ tailed account of Tolstoy's acquaintance with the manifold aspects of the English culture, his attitude toward it and his connections with it. One of the aims of comparativists is to define the essence and types of such a literary proclivity. According­ ly, they divide it into: influence, imitation, stylization, 2 borrowing, and parallel. Literary influence on an author results in the presence in his works of pervasive organic qualities in their essential inspiration or artistic pre­ sentation which, otherwise, would be absent, either in this form or at any essential stage of his development. To be meaningful, influence must be manifested intrinsically, upon or within the literary works themselves. It may be 1 See: J.To Shaw, "Literary Indebtedness and Com­ parative Literary Studies", in N»P. Stallknecht and Frenz Horst, editors, Comparative Literature: Method and Per­ spective, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1961, passim. 2 Idem, ibid., p. 63-67. UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UNIVERSITE D'OTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES INTRODUCTION iii shown in style, images, characters, themes, mannerisms, and it may also be revealed in content, thought, ideas, the ge­ neral WeItanschauung presented by particular works. An author may be considered to have been influenced by a fo­ reign author when something from without can be demonstra­ ted to have produced upon him, or in his artistic works, an effect which his native literary tradition and personal de­ velopment do not explain. It is, of course, necessary to provide satisfactory external evidence that the hypothetically influenced author could have been influenced by the author in question. For this purpose, mentions, allusions, quotations, diaries, the attestation of contemporaries and evidences of an author's reading must be used. The influence of literary works upon other literary works is perhaps the most convincingly de­ monstrable type, and perhaps aesthetically the most inte­ resting. In addition, there is an influence upon the writer as a man. Here the mainspring may be from a literary or non- literary man. One of the most complex problems in the study of literary influence is that of direct and indirect im­ petus. The direct influence is often produced by the trans­ lation of the original work. The indirect influence takes place when there is still another author, an intermediary who, being the source of inspiration to the third author, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UNIVERSITE D OTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES INTRODUCTION iv is himself indebted in this respect to the original influ­ encing author. Both direct and indirect influences may em­ phasize certain works of an author, and certain aspects of his creative personality, to the exclusion, or at least de­ precation, of other features. The influencing author must be studied in relationship to the literary traditions where he wrote and exerted his influence. In the case of imitations, the author yields to a certain degree his creative personality to that of another author, usually to some specific work, while at the same time the imitator is being freed from the detailed fidelity expected in a translation. Imitations have often been used as a pedagogic device in an artist's development. Related to an imitation, but perhaps best considered separately, is a stylization in which an author suggests for an artistic purpose another author or literary work, or even the style of an entire period, by a combination of style and subject matter. A case of literary borrowing takes place when a writer helps himself to available materials or methods, especially to aphorisms, images, figures of speech, motifs, plot elements. The term "source" is perhaps most frequently used to indicate the place from which a borrowing is taken. Parallels are often involved in literary movements and may UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA - SC HOO L O F GR ADU AT E ST U D I ES UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES I' M INTRODUCTION v be produced presumably by different literatures and authors operating on the basis largely, if not entirely, of their own literary tradition. Thus, there exist many ways in which not only a beginner but also an experienced author can draw inspiration for his artistic creation from the common treasury of literature accumulated throughout the centuries. The points dealing with literary and artistic re­ lationships outlined above have been taken into conside­ ration in the preparation of this thesis. To better illu­ strate and strengthen the arguments and comparisons, suitable excerpts and quotations from the works of the authors in question are included. Several editions of the original works are used. Relevant passages of various lite­ rary criticisms and opinions are frequently listed to substantiate the statements. In transcribing the Russian names or words in this dissertation,the University of London transliteration system is followed wherever possible. The translations from the Russian language sources, hitherto not rendered in English, are by the present writer. Occasional amendments, particularly in the matter of punctuation and style, in 3 J.T. Shaw, op. cit., p.