The Epistolary Novel in Eighteenth-Century Russia
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Vorträge und Abhandlungen zur Slavistik ∙ Band 41 (eBook - Digi20-Retro) Maarten Fraanje The Epistolary Novel in Eighteenth-Century Russia Verlag Otto Sagner München ∙ Berlin ∙ Washington D.C. Digitalisiert im Rahmen der Kooperation mit dem DFG-Projekt „Digi20“ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, München. OCR-Bearbeitung und Erstellung des eBooks durch den Verlag Otto Sagner: http://verlag.kubon-sagner.de © bei Verlag Otto Sagner. Eine Verwertung oder Weitergabe der Texte und Abbildungen, insbesondere durch Vervielfältigung, ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages unzulässig. «Verlag Otto Sagner» ist ein Imprint der Kubon & Sagner GmbH. Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access ISBN 3-87690-800-0 © by Verlag Otto Sagner, München 2001. Abteilung der Firma Kubon & Sagner, Buchexport/import GmbH, München Offsetdruck: Kurt Urlaub, Bamberg Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access 00056177 Vorträge und Abhandlungen zur Slavistik herausgegeben von Peter Thiergen (Bamberg) Band 41 2001 VERLAG OTTO SAGNER * MÜNCHEN Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access ן •f Bayerisch I »aatobfblloth•* I I MOochM 1 Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access 00066177 Maarten Fraanje The Epistolary Novel in Eighteenth-Century Russia Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access 00066177 PVA 2001. 4599 Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access 00056177 CONTENTS Acknowledgements............................................................................................. ix A Note on the T ext............................................................................................... x Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1. T h e R ise o f t h e R u ssia n N o v e l .......................................................................... 7 2. A B r ief Histo r y o f t h e E pist o l a r y N o v e l ................................................ 13 3. L e t t e r W r itin g a n d L it e r a t u r e in 1 8t h -C e n t u r y R u s s ia ................ 25 4. F.A. E m in ’s “T h e L e t t e r s o f E r n e st a n d D o r a v r a ” ............................. 39 5. N .F . E m in ’s “R o z a ” a n d “ A n Ir o n y o f F a t e ” .............................................. 69 6. M.V. S u s h k o v ’s “T h e R u s s ia n W e r t h e r” .................................................... 93 7. “ S o m e L e t t e r s fr o m m y F r ie n d ” ......................................................................I l l 8. N .N . M u r a v 'e v ’s “ V s e v o l o d a n d V e l e s l a v a ” ........................................ 121 9. “The Suicide” ...............................................................................................................139 10. T h e E p ist o l a r y N o v e l in R u s s ia : C o n c l u s io n ........................................ 157 Резю ме................................................................................................................. 171 Bibliography ........................................................................................................177 Index ................................................................................................................... 193 Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access г г а ״л'Д, -в?; ״J F Ъ г ■ע >1 :r.r Ж 1^י :v:1< , ־*־•д !*Ji: vrflf *TS н&: ז?י ы Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is the result of research for my doctoral dissertation conducted at the Slavic Department of the University of Leiden within the framework of a programme devoted to the study of eighteenth-century Russian culture and literature. During the course of my work, 1 profited greatly from the knowledge and theoretical insights that my supervisor J. Klein has gained in this field. In addition, I would like to thank Mrs. N.D. Kochetkova and the members of the Section for the Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature of the Pushkin House (IRLI) in St. Petersburg for allowing me to present parts of my book as papers and to publish articles on related subjects in the Section’s periodical. My participation in meetings and conferences of the international Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia and discussions with its members were also of invaluable assistance. I would especially like to thank Mrs. M. di Salvo, with whom I discussed the drafts of some chapters of my book. Travel grants from the Dutch Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education (NUFFIC) and the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) enabled me to carry out essential research in the Russian national libraries in St.Petersburg (summer 1997) and Moscow (winter of 1997-98). I am also grateful to the International Library Exchange for helping me to obtain microfilms of material that was difficult to consult otherwise. Finally, I wish to thank Ms C. Ferrer for correcting my English and helping to edit the text. Leiden, March 2001 Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access 00056177 A NOTE ON THE TEXT Although I have used the Library of Congress system for transliterating Russian, I will occasionally simplify given names such as Iuliia and Mariia into their English equivalents, Julia and Maria. When names are meant to be foreign, as in the case of Genrikh, I will use the original form, for example, Heinrich. Likewise, I have retained the original French for names such as Ribaupierre and de Saint-Glin (in Russian: de-Sanglen). Names of royals are given in their English equivalents: Peter instead of Petr, Catherine instead of Ekaterina. References to pages of the novel under discussion will be given between brackets in the main body of the text. If the chapter discusses two epistolary novels by the same author, the year of the text’s appearance will be added. In the case of variant editions of the same novel, a letter ‘a’ or ‘b’ will be added, for example: (1766a: vi), (1788a: 23), (1789: 129). Full details of these editions are included in the bibliography. Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access INTRODUCTION The history of the Russian novel can be traced back to early medieval times with manuscript translations of Byzantine novels. However, it was only in the eighteenth century that Russian novelistic fiction started to appear in print and that educated Russians thought it no disgrace to confess that they themselves were authors of such texts. The acceptance of something like literature as an estimable cultural expression, and indirectly of the novel as an important literary genre, was only possible within conditions created by the reforms of Peter the Great. One of these conditions was an intense conversance with the secular culture of Western Europe. It follows that eighteenth-century Russian literature stands less in a closed national tradition that developed gradually from medieval times, than that it adopts its ideas and forms from a stockpile of thousands of years of European literature. However, the fascinating aspect of eighteenth-century Russian literature is that the particular Russian context informs aesthetic notions and gives the form of individual literary works a special aspect. The subject of this book is an episode in the early history of the Russian novel: the adoption of one of the most significant novelistic forms of eighteenth-century European literature, the epistolary novel. This is the genre of novels such as Richardson’s “Pamela” and “Clarissa”, Rousseau’s “New Heloise” ( La Nouvelle Héloïse), Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” (Die Leiden des jungen Werther), and Choderlos de Laclos’s “Dangerous Liaisons” {Les liaisons dangereuses). During the eighteenth century - which, it could be argued, as a cultural epoch came to a close with Napoleon’s Russian expedition of 1812 - seven Russian epistolary novels appeared. These novels are: “The Letters of Emest and Doravra” ( Pis'ma Ernesta i Doravry) (1 7 6 6 ) by Fedor Emin, the two novels by his son Nikolai Emin “Roza” (1 7 8 8 ) and “An Irony of Fate” ( Igra sud'by) (17 8 9 ), Mikhail Sushkov’s “Russian Werther” Rossiiskii( Verter) (1792), Nikolai Murav'ev’s “Vsevolod and Veleslava” (Vsevolod i Veleslava) (1 8 0 7 ) and two shorter, anonymous novels published in literary journals, “Some Letters from my Friend” ( Neskol'ko pisem moego druga) (1 7 9 4 ) and “The Suicide” (Samoubiistvo) (1810). I have restricted myself to these seven texts because other epistolary texts from the period do not answer the definition of the genre that I will give in chapter 2 of this book or because they have survived only in a fragmented form. In the case of one epistolary novel - perhaps the first to be written in Russian - 1 was not able to trace the Maarten Fraanje - 9783954794126 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:31:18AM via free access 2 Introduction whereabouts of the manuscript. Its existence is only known from the accounts of foreigners visiting the Russian capital in the I760’s. They relate how Aleksandra Kamenskaia ( 1740-1769), the wife of the poet Aleksei Rzhevskii, read to a small St. Petersburg audience a novel entitled “The Kabardin Letters” (Pis'ma Kabardinskiia ), which they characterise as an imitation of Mme Graffi gny’s “Peruvian Letters” (Lettres péruviennes)} According to this account, Kamenskaia’s epistolary novel seems to tell the exotic love story of a female prisoner from a noble Caucasian tribe that fought on the Russian side in the ongoing war with the Ottoman Empire.