Abstract
Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler provoked a veritable deluge of imitative literature. Sipovsky writes that Karamzin was “... the first Russian who sharply outlined the image of a ‘sensitive’, ‘high-minded’ youth living the full life of his soul — this image which had dimly flashed before many of his contemporaries, found in him, for the first time, a full, clear, and Russian expression, and summoned forth on the literary scene a whole series of related images.”1 These “related images” almost invariably were to take the form of humanitarian platitudes expressed in the self-conscious idiom of the fashionable salon.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Sipovsky, p. 473.
N. G. Maksimov, Moskovskij Merkurij 1803 goda, Istoriko-Bibliografičeškoe Izsledovanie (St. Petersburg: Tipo-Litografia A. E. Vineke, 1903).
Maksimov. pp. 15–18.
If they acknowledge the cruelty and baseness of poverty at all, these narrators assuage their consciences and delicate sensibilities by self-serving and insignificant acts of charity. For example Bryusilov’s narrator, upon spying a poor woman (whose demeanor shows innate nobility) in the street, pronounces the following speech: “And this too is a human being, my heart told me, she suffers want deprived of the essentials, you have too much (lišena neob-xodimogo, ty imeeš lišnee)… enough of that… I gave the old woman — a trifle to be sure — as much as I could — but with true zealousness…” Bryusilov, My Journey or the Adventures of One Day (Moë putešestvie ili priključenija odnogo dnja) (St. Petersburg: V Imperatorskoj Tipografii, 1803), p. 92.
Sipovsky, pp. 538–539.
Putešestvie kritiki, (Moscow: Moscow University Press, 1951), p. 24.
“My friend! French teachers are no less dangerous and harmful than the French conquerors: the former destroy good morals; the latter — Kingdoms.” F. Glinka, Pis’ma russkogo oficera (Moscow: Russkij vestnik na 1814 god, 1814), VII, 67.
He sees the sandy shores of the Oka, shaded by dark-green firs, as “Bleak, Ossianic pictures” (unylye Ossianovskie kartiny), VI, 62.
Glinka, VII, 16.
Ibid., VI, 89.
Ibid., VII, 85–86.
Ibid., VII, 91–92.
A. Bestuzhev, Poezdka v Revel’ (St. Petersburg: A. Pljusar, 1821), p. 1.
Poedzka, p. 20.
Poezka, p. 51.
Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid., p. 13.
In a recent monograph J. Henzel tries to interpret the historical parts of the Poezka as Decembrist polemics. He provides no evidence for this assumption other than an unconvincing citation from V. Bazanov’s Očerki dekabristskoj literatury, Publisistika, Proza, Kritika, (Moscow, 1953)
See Janusz Henzel, Proza Aleksandra Biezstużewa-Marlinskiego w okresie peterburgskim (Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1967), pp. 142–144.
Poezdka, p. 2.
Alexander Vel’tman, Strannik (Moscow: V tipografii Semëna Selivanovskogo, Vols. 1–2, 1831, Vol. 3, 1832), II, 20.
Ibid., I, 119.
B. Bukhshtab, “Pervye romany Vel’tmana,” Russkaja Proza (Pod redakciej: B. Eixenbaumai Ju. Tynjanova, “Akademia” Leningrad, 1926), p. 200.
Ibid., p. 201.
Bukhshtab, p. 199.
Roboli, “Literatura putešestvij,” pp. 66–72.
V. Shklovsky, O teorii prozy (Moscow, 1929), p. 180
quoted in V. Erlich, Russian Formalism (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1965), p. 193.
Russian Formalism, p. 194. Erlich is paraphrasing Tynyanov’s thought in Gogol’ i Dostoevskij. K teorii parodii.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1973 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wilson, R.K. (1973). The Epigones. In: The Literary Travelogue. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1997-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1997-2_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-247-1558-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-1997-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive