Refractions of Rome in the Russian Political Imagination by Olga Greco

$Refractions of Rome in the Russian Political Imagination by Olga Greco$ From Triumphal Gates to Triumphant Rotting: Refractions of Rome in the Russian Political Imagination by Olga Greco A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Professor Valerie A. Kivelson, Chair Assistant Professor Paolo Asso Associate Professor Basil J. Dufallo Assistant Professor Benjamin B. Paloff With much gratitude to Valerie Kivelson, for her unflagging support, to Yana, for her coffee and tangerines, and to the Prawns, for keeping me sane. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ............................................................................................................................... ii Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter I. Writing Empire: Lomonosov’s Rivalry with Imperial Rome ................................... 31 II. Qualifying Empire: Morals and Ethics of Derzhavin’s Romans ............................... 76 III. Freedom, Tyrannicide, and Roman Heroes in the Works of Pushkin and Ryleev .. 122 IV. Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov and the Rejection of the Political [Rome] .................. 175 V. Blok, Catiline, and the Decomposition of Empire .................................................. 222 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 271 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 274 iii Introduction The story of classical reception in Russia is quite unlike that of Western Europe. Its earliest manifestations were not part of school education, and, until the eighteenth century, there was little admiration for or even awareness of the famous authors of antiquity. Instead, the introduction of classical literature and history was firmly tied to the development of autocracy and empire. As a result, it was ancient Rome and, especially, imperial Rome that attracted the initial attention. From the start, it was distinguished from ancient Greece.1 The preface of the very first dictionary to include Greek and Latin vocabulary clearly articulates this distinction: “Greek language,” writes the dictionary’s compiler Fedor Polikarpov, “is the language of wisdom, Latin of autocracy” ("Греческий язык есть язык мудрости, латинский - единоначальствия."). This text dates to 1704, the period when Peter the Great, the first Russian imperator, put classics to use in his imperial spectacles, performing Roman triumphs, commissioning artwork of himself in Roman garb, and importing Roman political terminology.2 Antiquity, in Iurii Vorob’ev’s formulation, “had to serve the interests of the new Russia.”3 Since 1 The same distinction is implicitly or explicitly articulated in the works of a number of writers I discuss. A. Pushkin, as G. Knabe has written, uses Greek references primarily in mythological contexts and Roman ones in historical and political ones (Russkaia Antichnost’, 146); Ivan Goncharov likewise distinguishes between the historical and political Rome and the mythological Greece, though, as I show, there is a dynamic dialogue between these categories instead of a simple distinction. Finally, Blok specifically singles out Rome as a model for empire and revolution and only briefly refers to Greece in the context of philosophy ruined by Cicero’s mediocrity. 2 In 1711, he founded a Senate, modelled in name though not function on the Roman institution of that name. He also accepted a number of Roman titles, including “imperator,” “pater patriae,” and “maximus.” (Stephen Baehr, The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia, 50). It is important to note that scholars have questioned just how Roman these Roman allusions were. Paul Bushkovitch, for instance, argues that their more immediate significance was the “imitation and rivalry with the Hapsburgs” and Rome’s role as a “background for the birth of Christ.” (Bushkovitch, “Roman Empire in the Era of Peter the Great,” 158 and 161). Without engaging with the theoretical issue of what is or is not authentic reception or authentic use of Rome here, I will just note that Rome always seems to be about something other than Rome itself, as my dissertation will hopefully demonstrate. 3 Vorob’ev, Iu. K. Latinskii iazyk v russkoi kul’ture XVII-XVIII vekov, 4. 1 these interests also included the development of imperial literature and ideology, one of the crucial purposes of the importation of classics4 was to provide the vocabulary, genres, and structures for this new literature.5 As Russian literature continued growing, the number and functions of Roman allusions became numerous and varied, many of them apolitical. At the same time, however, the initial role and connotations of ancient Rome were never quite forgotten, and, time after time, we see Russian authors turn to Roman history to respond to the political developments in their contemporary Russia. As late as the twentieth century, the Russian Symbolist poet Viacheslav Ivanov noted that he felt no kinship to ancient Rome because he was “indifferent to the imperial ideal.”6 One of the goals of this dissertation is to explore this persistence and importance of the political Rome from the early days of the Russian Empire to the Russian Revolution of 1917. I offer six case studies from six authors, each of whom served as a prominent literary voice in his generation and historical moment, both in the estimation of his contemporaries and of later scholarship: Mikhail Lomonosov (1711 - 1765), Gavrila Derzhavin (1743 - 1816), Kondratii Ryleev (1795-1826), Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891), and Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921). Despite the difference in their historical circumstances, each of these writers turns to Roman history and literature to think through and respond to Russian history and politics. However, Rome is a variable rather than a constant, and my more important goal is to draw attention to variability, to refractions of Rome, because Russian Romes are 4 See Vorob’ev’s work or a detailed study of the various functions performed by the Latin language, including its role in the development of science, technology, education and diplomacy. 5 Wes, in what seems to be a too extreme but very intriguing formulation, argues "...there was never any question in Russia of a rediscovery of classical antiquity. Antiquity was discovered. The discoverers incorporated their discovery into the frame of reference of their own time. They discovered what fitted into the frame. What did not fit into the frame was not discovered. This frame was in the first place the frame of autocracy" (173). 6 Rudich, “Vyacheslav Ivanov and Classical Antiquity,” 278. 2 numerous. They pass through the mediums of changing political circumstances, value systems, literary trends, and legacies of earlier Romes. The Rome of Lomonosov (Ch. 1), for instance, is a proud imperial rival to Russia, the competition with which elevates Russia and its rulers above other nations, but the Rome of Pushkin and Ryleev (Ch. 3) is the land of passionate struggle against autocracy; that of Blok (Ch. 5) is a bloated decomposing corpse awaiting destruction and implicitly negating previous – admirable – Romes. This multiplicity is important to emphasize because of one sentence that has become "the best known example of a Russian claim to classical credentials,"7 “the best-known instance of Russia’s self-identification with Rome.”8 This sentence comes from a letter by a sixteenth- century monk from Pskov and reads: “Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and there will not be a fourth” ("Два убо Рима падоша, а третий стоит, а четвертому не быти"9). Its ubiquity is a problem. In the first place, as a number of scholars have pointed out, the letter was likely neither written nor interpreted, nor used, to promote the ideas that it has come to represent in later scholarship.10 More importantly, however, the statement is dangerous because it seems to offer a neat (and profoundly inaccurate) way of characterizing Russia’s relationship to reception, especially in the earlier periods. Out of its original context, the sentiment can suggest that Russia was striving to identify itself with Rome. After accepting this attempt at identification, one can find in this “doctrine” the justification of territorial expansion, attempts to claim status among European nations, and other purposes that identifying oneself as Rome might entail. 7 Torlone 13. 8 Kalb 15. 9 Catalano 147. 10 For a detailed analysis of the epistle, from its dating to its context and content, see Nikolai Andreev’s article “Filofey and his Epistle to Ivan Vasil'jevich.” For a more recent emphatic reminder about the inaccuracy of pointing to the idea of “Third Rome” as “an early justification for Russian expansionism” and imperial ambition, see Daniel Rowland’s "Moscow – the Third Rome or the New Israel." For an account of how the misunderstanding of the concept arose in the nineteenth century and developed thereafter, see Marshall Poe’s “Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformations of a ‘Pivotal Moment.’” 3 An assumption of identification, however, is too neat and simplistic, and it erases the dynamic complexity in the creation and negotiation of meanings that references to Rome often contain, regardless of the period in question.11 In the texts that I have studied

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