Major Influences on Preromantic Writing in Russia

Abstract

The writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau were an influence of considerable importance for late sentimental and preromantic literature. His works were translated into Russian almost in their entirety in the course of the eighteenth century. An early wave of interest began in 1767 and ended in 1771. During that time the reader’s attention seems to have centered on Rousseau’s moral and philosophical treatises.¹ Despite the fact that the official attitude to Rousseau’s ideas was entirely negative, they were enthusiastically accepted by the liberal aristocracy.² By and large, Rousseau’s beliefs were already known well in Russia in the early 1760’s. His letter to Voltaire which contained a compressed statement of his convictions had been translated as early as 1762.³ In this letter Rousseau countered Voltaire’s charge that the order of the world was senseless with his own belief in the meaningfulness of the divine or natural order. His antithesis of nature and society was already formulated there.