French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Attitudes and Identity 9780748695546

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French and Russian in Imperial Russia

Russian Language and Society Series Series Editor: Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, University of Edinburgh This series of academic monographs and edited volumes consists of important scholarly accounts of interrelationships between Russian language and society, and aims to foster an opinion-shaping ‘linguistic turn’ in the international scholarly debate within Russian Studies, and to develop new sociolinguistic and linguo-cultural perspectives on Russian. The series embraces a broad scope of approaches including those advanced in sociolinguistics, rhetoric, critical linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, politics of language, language policy and related and interdisciplinary areas. Series Editor Dr Lara Ryazanova-Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Russian, and the Academic Director of the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, at the University of Edinburgh. Editorial Board Professor David Andrews (Georgetown University) Professor Lenore Grenoble (University of Chicago) Professor John Joseph (University of Edinburgh) Professor Vladimir Plungian (Institute of Russian Language/​Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences) Professor Patrick Seriot (Université de Lausanne) Dr Alexei Yurchak (University of California, Berkeley) Titles available in the series: The Russian Language Outside the Nation, ed. Lara Ryazanova-Clarke Discourses of Regulation and Resistance: Censoring Translation in the Stalin and Khrushchev Soviet Era, Samantha Sherry French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Use among the Russian Elite, ed. Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Attitudes and Identity, ed. Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent

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French and Russian in Imperial Russia Language Attitudes and Identity Edited by Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent

EDINBURGH University Press

© editorial matter and organisation Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent, 2015 © the chapters their several authors, 2015 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun - Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/​13 Monotype Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 9553 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 9554 6 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 0364 1 (epub) The right of Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

Preface vii Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices xi Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References xv Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia xvi Introduction 1 Derek Offord, Gesine Argent, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke and Vladislav Rjéoutski   1. The Pan-European Justification of a Multilingual Russian Society in the Late Eighteenth Century Stephen Bruce

16

  2. Princess Dashkova and the Politics of Language in Eighteenth-Century Russia Michelle Lamarche Marrese

31

  3. Plating ‘Russian Gold’ with ‘French Copper’: Aleksandr Sumarokov and Eighteenth-Century Franco-Russian Translation 48 Svetlana Skomorokhova   4. Francophone Culture in Russia Seen through the Russian and French Periodical Press Carole Chapin   5. Linguistic Gallophobia in Russian Comedy Derek Offord   6. The Linguistic Debate between Karamzin and Shishkov: Evaluating Russian–French Language Contact Gesine Argent

64 79

100

vi  con t e nts   7. Language and Conservative Politics in Alexandrine Russia G. M. Hamburg

118

  8. Seduction, Subterfuge, Subversion: Ivan Krylov’s Rewriting of Molière D. Brian Kim

139

  9. The French Language of Fashion in Early NineteenthCentury Russia Olga Vassilieva-Codognet

156

10. Oтечество, отчизна, родина: Russian ‘Translations’ of Patrie in the Napoleonic Period Sara Dickinson

179

11. Treatment of Francophonie in Pushkin’s Prose Fiction Derek Offord

197

12. Love à la mode: Russian Words and French Sources Victor Zhivov

214

Conclusion 242 Gesine Argent and Derek Offord Notes on contributors 248 Index 251

Preface

The book we introduce here is the second of two volumes that concern an aspect of the social, cultural and political history of language in Imperial Russia, focusing on the period from the Enlightenment to the age of Pushkin. The volumes deal with the profound impact which the French language and the culture that it bore had on Russian high society and on the consciousness of the social and literary elite in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, when French was an international language among such elites in the European world. They explore the coexistence, competition and commingling of the two languages and the possible benefits and allegedly detrimental effects of Franco-Russian bilingualism. The two volumes are closely tied together in approach as well as subject-matter. They are conceived as original contributions to the multidisciplinary study of language. They address, from a historical viewpoint, subjects of interest to sociolinguists (especially language use and language choice, bilingualism and multilingualism, code-switching and language attitudes). At the same time, much of their subject-matter (social and national identity, nationalism, linguistic and cultural borrowing) falls within the purview of social, political and cultural historians, or of Slavists (who have an interest in the relationship between Russian and Western culture and debate about it) or of students of the European Enlightenment, Neo-Classicism and Romanticism. The volumes share a main title, French and Russian in Imperial Russia, and are conceived as complementary to one another, but their focus is different and each is intended to be capable of standing on its own. The first volume, sub-titled Language Use among the Russian Elite, examines the functions of French in Russia in various spheres, domains and genres in the period in question and the interplay and intermixing of French

viii  prefac e and Russian. It also provides some examples of French lexical influence on Russian. It is concerned primarily with linguistic practice. The second volume, sub-titled Language Attitudes and Identity, investigates the effects of the use of French and analyses Russian perceptions of the phenomenon of elite bilingualism. It explores Russian literary and intellectual resistance to francophonie and its role in the formation of social, political and cultural identity as Russia began to flourish as an imperial state in the eighteenth century and as a form of cultural nationalism came into being there in the nineteenth. Of course, this distinction between actual linguistic usage, on the one hand, and linguistic perceptions and attitudes, on the other, should not be drawn too rigidly. After all, usage and perceptions are closely related. (Not that the relationship is always straightforward: Gallophobic attitudes could be expressed in French, for example, and many writers whom we might consider linguistic nationalists freely used French in some contexts, for one reason or another.) Accordingly, there are chapters in our volumes which deal with both aspects of our subject. Nevertheless, in most cases the balance of material in an individual chapter will clearly tilt towards one side or the other. The volumes focus, as we have said, on the period from around the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, although some chapters consider matters that relate to decades slightly before or after that timespan, and most chapters focus on certain parts of that period rather than attempting to cover the whole of it. The period may be considered the heyday of the French language in Russia and also the time when the modern Russian standard language (литературный язык), which found its realisation in classical Russian literature, was coming into full bloom. We have chosen to define the beginning and the end of the period we examine by reference to intellectual or cultural movements, for two broad reasons. First, there is no precise date at either end of the period which marks a natural boundary of a sort that is of particular interest from the point of view of the social, political or cultural history of language. To begin our study in 1762, when Catherine II came to the throne, for example, would be to give undue importance to the reigns of monarchs in the periodisation of cultural and linguistic history. After all, there is no major shift of linguistic usage with the accession of Catherine, since her predecessor Elizabeth had already encouraged the use of French and the introduction of French culture to the Russian court in the 1740s and 1750s and sections of the nobility were already becoming francophone during Elizabeth’s reign. Nor do we want to give the impression that individual monarchs played the most important role in the introduction of cultural and associated linguistic changes, although cultural and linguistic practice at court was indeed a very significant driver of such

p r e f a c e   ix changes. Secondly, though, the great majority of our chapters do fall within that stretch of time that is encompassed, in Russia, by the Age of the Enlightenment and the Romantic period, in the course of which attitudes towards language shifted significantly in ways that we discuss in the introduction to this volume. Moreover, the Romantic period is roughly coterminous in Russia with the lifetime of Pushkin (1799–1837), who was the dominant figure in the creation of modern Russian literature and modern literary Russian and to whom we give due prominence in both volumes. The volumes have their origins in two international events that took place in the summer of 2012. One of these events, a symposium on ‘Enlightened Russian’, was held at the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre at the University of Edinburgh, directed by Lara RyazanovaClarke, from 30 August to 1 September. The other event, a conference on ‘The French Language in Russia’, took place at the University of Bristol from 12–14 September. This conference was conceived as part of a three-and-a-half-year project on ‘The History of the French Language in Russia’ which has been wholly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the UK. The conference programme, a report on the event and abstracts and recordings of the papers delivered at it can be found on the project website at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ arts/research/french-in-russia/conference/. However, the volumes are not conceived as proceedings of the two academic events we have mentioned, at which delegates delivered almost fifty papers in all. Rather, they represent a proportion of the papers prepared for those events, carefully selected, arranged and expanded to provide a multifaceted and interdisciplinary but tightly themed introduction to a subject that has not hitherto been much studied in depth. In many cases, the material in the conference papers has been substantially changed both to sharpen focus on linguistic matters and to broaden the scope of coverage in accordance with the aims of these volumes. Several other chapters (the two chapters on Pushkin, the chapters on Russian comedy and on the debate between Karamzin and Shishkov, both introductory chapters and both conclusions) have been written specifically for this work, in order to lend it the greatest possible coherence. Two chapters in this volume have been translated by Derek Offord, one from French (Chapter 9) and one from Russian (Chapter 12). It is a pleasant obligation to acknowledge, first and foremost, the support of the AHRC for the project on ‘The History of the French Language in Russia’, based in the University of Bristol, which has provided the main platform for the production of these two volumes. This project, which commenced on 1 August 2011, has been led by Derek

x  prefa c e Offord, supported by three post-doctoral fellows (Vladislav Rjéoutski, from August 2011 to November 2013), Sarah Turner (from August 2011 to March 2012) and Gesine Argent (from July 2012 to the present) and by a research postgraduate, Jessica Tipton (from October 2011 to the present). We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of staff in numerous archives and libraries, especially those institutions listed in the abbreviations below, and staff at Edinburgh University Press for their efficient and helpful advice and support at all stages in the preparation of these volumes. Particular thanks are due, lastly, to Anna Oxbury, who through her meticulous reading of the manuscripts has brought about innumerable improvements in the presentation of the volumes and ensured a higher level of editorial consistency than we would otherwise have achieved. Finally, we recognise the contributions made to our Bristol conference in 2012, and more broadly to the study of the subject we have been investigating, by two scholars who have recently passed away, Catherine Viollet and Victor Zhivov. We respectfully dedicate our work to the memory of these two colleagues. We also publish the full-blown chapter into which Zhivov developed his Bristol conference paper. We do this with virtually no editorial intervention and with the kind permission of his daughter, Margarita, in the hope that it will serve as a fitting afterword to our second volume and as a tribute to this outstanding scholar. Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski, Gesine Argent

dates , tran s literation , editorial practices   dates , tran s literation , editorial practices

Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices

OLD ST Y LE AND NE W STYLE DATES In 1700, Peter the Great adopted the Julian calendar, which was eleven days behind the Gregorian calendar in the eighteenth century, twelve days behind in the nineteenth and thirteen days behind in the twentieth. Thus the Bol’shevik Revolution took place in Russia on 25 October 1917 according to the Julian calendar but on 7 November according to the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar, which Western states had begun to adopt in preference to the Julian calendar in 1582, was not adopted in Russia until 1918. In this book, dates are given in the Old Style (OS; i.e. according to the Julian calendar) when the event to which reference is made took place in pre-revolutionary Russia and in the New Style (NS; i.e. according to the Gregorian calendar) when it took place outside Russia. In some instances, the NS date is given in brackets after the OS date, e.g. 18 (29) August 1771.

TRANSLITERATION We have followed the Library of Congress system of transliteration in the text, lists of references and endnotes in each chapter of this volume. Thus Russian surnames ending in -ский have been rendered with -skii (e.g. Dostoevskii) rather than the commonly used English form -sky (Dostoevsky). The Russian soft sign has everywhere been transliterated with an apostrophe, e.g. Gogol’. Russian words printed in pre-­ revolutionary orthography (e.g. the titles of eighteenth- and ­nineteenth-century journals) have been transliterated from their modernised form (thus Sovremennik rather than Sovremennik’’).

xii  d ate s , tr a ns lite r a t io n, e di t o r i a l p r a c t i c e s

FOR M S OF FORENA MES We have preferred transliterated Russian forenames (e.g. Aleksandr, Ekaterina, Petr) to translated ones (Alexander, Catherine, Peter), except in the case of monarchs and other members of the Russian royal family (e.g. Alexander I, Catherine II, Peter the Great), who are familiar to the English-speaking reader from the translated form of their names. We also use the form Alexander in the case of the nineteenth-century thinker Herzen, because we refer to him by the German form of his surname which will be familiar to English speakers.

Q U OTATIONS IN FOREI GN LANG U AG ES Quotations and individual words that are given in the text in the language of the original are italicised (and, if they are in Russian, with modernised Cyrillic orthography). Where there is a need to indicate that certain parts of an italicised quotation were highlighted in some way in the original source, we have done this by use of bold font.

TRANSLATION OF Q UOTATIONS IN FOREI G N LANG U A GES In many cases (for example, when authors are merely quoting an opinion or a statement about a fact), we have not considered it necessary to retain the language of the original and the quotation has been translated into English. However, in many other cases (for instance, when language usage is being illustrated), it has seemed important to retain the original. In these cases, we have also provided a translation. Our policy has been to put the translation in an endnote, in order not to break the flow of the text of the chapter, unless the quotation is very short (five words or fewer). In chapters translated from French or Russian by Derek Offord (these are indictated in the preface) he is also responsible for the translation of quotations from those languages. In the remaining chapters, which were written by their authors in English, the translation belongs to the author(s) of the chapter in question, unless otherwise indicated.

d ates, tra ns lite r a t io n, e dito r i a l p r a c t i c e s   xiii

TRANSLATION OF TITLES In the text of each chapter, titles of novels, plays, poems, articles, chapters and other works written in a language other than English have been translated, but the original title (in transliterated form, if it was in Russian) is usually also given, in brackets, when the work is mentioned in the chapter for the first time. In the references, as a rule, only the foreign-language title is given.

TITLES OF PERIODICALS Titles of Russian periodicals, on the other hand, are presented in the text of a chapter in their transliterated form. A translation of the title is also given, in brackets, when the title is first mentioned in that chapter. Likewise, titles of French periodicals are left in their original form, but are also translated at first mention in the text.

ORTHO G RAPH Y IN Q UOTATIONS In quotations in English and French we have retained the spelling, accents and use of capitals of the original. In quotations from Russian documents of the pre-revolutionary era, however, we have modernised the orthography, eliminating, for example, the hard sign at the end of words ending in a hard consonant and replacing obsolete letters with those that have been used instead since the Russian orthographic reform of 1918.

DATES OF WOR KS Dates given in parentheses after the titles of works mentioned in the text are, unless otherwise stated, the date of first publication, not the date of composition.

REFERENCES IN T H E TEX T In general, references to sources are given in the text, in accordance with the author–date system, but if the reference is very lengthy (as in the case of some references to archival sources) then it may be placed in an endnote instead.

xiv  d ates , tr a ns lite r a t io n, e di t o r i a l p r a c t i c e s

ELLIPSES Where we have omitted material from a quotation or title we have indicated the omission by use of three dots in square brackets (i.e. [. . .]), in order to distinguish this type of ellipsis from suspension points (i.e. . . .) that have been used by the author who is being quoted.

Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References

NA M ES OF ARC H I V ES, LI B RARIES AND COLLECTIONS OF DOC UM ENTS USED AKV NLS RGADA RGALI RGB RGIA RIA SIRIO

Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov, Moscow Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva, Moscow Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka, Moscow Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, St Petersburg Royal Irish Academy, Dublin Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva

OT HER A B B RE V IATIONS USED IN TH IS V OL U ME d. delo (dossier, file) ed. khr. edinitsa khraneniia (individual file) f. fond (collection) fol. folio (list in Russian) Fr. French k. karton (carton) op. opis’ (inventory) OR Otdel rukopisei (manuscripts department) r. recto razd. razdel (division) v. verso

Dates of Reigns in Eighteenthand Nineteenth-Century Russia

Peter I (i.e. Peter the Great; 1672–1725, son of Tsar Alexis (ruled 1645–76); co-ruled with his half-brother Ivan V 1689–96 and sole ruler 1696–1725) Catherine I (1684–1727, Lithuanian peasant taken captive by the Russians in 1702; consort of Peter I from 1703 and his wife from 1712; reigned 1725–7) Peter II (1715–30, infant son of Prince Alexis (1690–1718), who was the son of Peter I; reigned 1727–30) Anne (1693–1740, daughter of Ivan V; reigned 1730–40) Elizabeth (1709–61, daughter of Peter I and Catherine I; reigned 1741–61) Peter III (1728–62, son of a daughter of Peter I and of Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp; reigned 1761 (OS) or 1762 (NS) – 1762) Catherine II (i.e. Catherine the Great; German princess who came to Russia as fiancée of the future Peter III, 1729–96; reigned 1762–96) Paul (1754–1801, son of Peter III and Catherine II; reigned 1796–1801) Alexander I (1777–1825, son of Paul; reigned 1801–25) Nicholas I (1796–1855, son of Paul and younger brother of Alexander I; reigned 1825–55) Alexander II (1818–81, son of Nicholas I; reigned 1855–81) Alexander III (1845–94, son of Alexander II; reigned 1881–94) Nicholas II (1868–1918, son of Alexander III; reigned 1894–1917)

In memory of Catherine Viollet and Victor Zhivov

Introduction Derek Offord, Gesine Argent, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke and Vladislav Rjéoutski

I

n the first of our two volumes we examined the use of French in ­eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russia and considered factors which governed language choice. In broad surveys and case studies, the contributors to that volume explored such matters as the way Catherine II used French, linguistic practice among the nobility (or at least, among certain sections of it and in certain families), the Russian francophone press, nobles’ personal correspondence, and types of writing and literary forms in which French was used in Russia, such as albums and travel diaries. They studied the phenomenon of codeswitching, analysing factors which might trigger it, and the effect of French on certain areas of Russian lexis, such as architectural terminology and fashion. They also discussed the extent to which Russian elite society was not merely bilingual or even multilingual but, in certain respects, diglossic. The volume we introduce here focuses more sharply on language attitudes and the relationship between language and identity. In other words, we are now concerned not so much with actual usage as with perceptions of usage and its effects, as these were expressed in language debate, much of which was conducted in journalism or even on the stage. In examining language attitudes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia, contributors to this volume refer more frequently to certain types of subjective writing, especially imaginative literature and polemical articles or treatises, which were discussed in the section on primary sources in our introduction to Volume 1. Their findings should accordingly be of interest to literary and intellectual historians, who routinely draw on this sort of material, as well as to historical sociolinguists and social historians. In order to prepare the ground for this investigation into language attitudes and identity marking, we shall use this introduction

2  d . off o rd, g. a r ge nt , l . r yaz a n o v a - c l a r k e , v . r j é o u t s k i to ­contextualise the shift in attitudes towards the use of both French and Russian which we believe can be traced in Russia over the period encompassed by our volumes, from around the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth. This was a period in European cultural and intellectual history when the Enlightenment was giving way to Romanticism and when empires were being challenged by the rise of nationalism. The shift was associated with the emergence of new views about what a nation was, who had the strongest entitlement to speak for it and where its true essence was to be found. The shift also entailed a change in the type of identity that language use was felt to express, with national identity, as opposed to social identity, coming to the fore. The value of elite bilingualism, when it was viewed through the lens of a kind of nineteenth-century nationalism (the cultural nationalism we describe below) and from outside the social elite, or by members of the elite who had become alienated from it, could be more widely questioned than it previously had been.1 In speaking of such shifts we do not pretend that they were straightforward. Russian linguistic culture in the period from the Enlightenment to the age of Aleksandr Pushkin was complicated by at least two important factors. One of these factors was the occurrence of apparent paradoxes in the language practice of the Russian elite and its attitude towards bilingualism. Reservations about the use of French, for example, were expressed from as early as the mid-eighteenth century by Russian writers who were themselves responsible for the introduction of Western ideas and literary forms into Russia. (One partial explanation of this fact may be that some of the eighteenth-century critics of Russian francophonie were members of the middling or petty nobility who wished to differentiate themselves from, or were somewhat resentful of, courtiers and other aristocrats who displayed their status through their foreignlanguage use.) Moreover, Russians who were sharply critical of Russian francophonie nevertheless used French freely, even for communication with their compatriots, and sometimes even articulated their linguistic Gallophobia in the very language whose use they deplored. The other complicating factor to which we have referred was that the group chiefly responsible for shaping language attitudes in Russia changed over the period in question. Whereas in the eighteenth century the most influential group, from the cultural point of view, was the nobility (notwithstanding the observation we have just made about differences within that estate), in the mid-nineteenth century the most influential group was the emerging intelligentsia. These intellectual descendants of the members of Russia’s version of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters should not be closely identified with the nobility, although many of them –

i n t r o du c t i o n   3 especially in the first half of the century – were indeed of noble origin. Members of the intelligentsia did not uniformly or even in the main subscribe to the normal values of the noble estate, especially the values of the aristocratic stratum of it, or to the notion that the French language carried high symbolic value, although they did of course use their knowledge of foreign languages (especially their reading knowledge) in their journalistic careers.

LAN G U A G E U SE, LIN GUISTIC ATTITU DES AND IDENTIT Y We turn now to language attitudes and the notion of identity, subjects that are explored in many chapters in this volume. Language is not merely a means of transmitting information, posing questions, making requests or expressing wants, needs, ideas, feelings and so forth. Like other codes, such as manners and dress, it is also emblematic of identity, indicating how users view themselves and how they would like others to perceive them (although the impressions created in observers by the use of a code, of course, may not be those that users of the code wish to create). So tightly is identity intertwined with language use and language choice that some scholars have suggested it may be seen as a distinct function of language (Joseph 2004: 20). It has been argued that in a multilingual or bilingual culture – as exemplified by Russia at the time under discussion – every act of speaking, of language choice or indeed of silence could indicate an assertion of identity (Gumperz 1982; Heller 1982; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). Negotiation of identities in a discursive act through a choice or pattern of alternations of linguistic varieties, or code-switching, has been discussed by several generations of scholars (Gumperz 1982; Myers-Scotton 1993, 1998 and others). Unlike some theories of identity, which treat identity as a stable pre-discursive construct that correlates with language behaviour and is reflected in discourse, an alternative understanding that has been more widely accepted in contemporary scholarship and is recognised in this volume assumes that identity is situated, imagined, fluid and discursively constructed. (This is not to deny the importance of symbols and discourses which serve as long-lasting markers of identity for various social groups and whole societies.) Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge have succinctly summarised this approach to identities, defining them as social, discursive and narrative options offered by a particular society in a specific time and place to which individuals and groups of

4  d . off o rd, g. a r ge nt , l . r yaz a n o v a - c l a r k e , v . r j é o u t s k i individuals appeal in an attempt to self-name, to self-characterize, and to claim social spaces and social prerogatives. (2004: 19) In a multilingual culture in particular, the expression of linguistic attitudes in discourse and practice (for example, by teaching certain languages) may be considered important means of identity production. Linguistic attitudes – that is, sets of explicitly expressed or implicitly signalled opinions and beliefs about language and evaluations of it – are manifestations of a broader concept, language ideologies, which Susan Gal describes as being ‘never only about language. They posit close relations between linguistic practices and other social activities and have semiotic properties that provide insights into the workings of ideologies more generally’ (2005: 24). Pierre Bourdieu has described the mechanism that enables language attitudes to function in a society, arguing that linguistic practices have a symbolic value which is convertible into social, economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1991). Thus linguistic attitudes serve to establish solidarity among users, or to differentiate them from one another, by ascribing value to languages and linguistic varieties and by correlating them with the imagined traits of the language user, such as their social, political, moral, aesthetic and intellectual character (see also Gal and Irvine 1995). Of the various types of identity which language choice and language use may help to display, it is national identity and social identity that are the focus of attention in this volume. We shall begin our discussion with consideration of the former. In the mid-eighteenth century, at the rough point at which our study of linguistic practice in Russia begins, the place of language was not so central in the conceptions that European monarchic and imperial polities had of themselves as it would become in the nation states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or in communities aspiring to become nations. Nonetheless, language use in Russia, by the age of Catherine, was already perceived to be bound up with the identity of the nation as a whole, as well as with the identity of its social elite, as Stephen Bruce shows in Chapter 1 of this volume, where he examines the justification of a multilingual Russian society. Not only was familiarity with foreign languages a prerequisite for adoption of Western practices, exploitation of Western skills and reception of Western ideas, as Volume 1 has demonstrated. Command of them, and especially of French, was also a means of constructing the image of Russia as a European power that Catherine explicitly promoted. At the same time, there were many signs of a growing interest in the qualities and potentialities of the Russian language. Much effort

i n t r o du c t i o n   5 was devoted, in the second half of the eighteenth century, to the teaching and study of it in educational institutions such as the Noble Land Cadet Corps. Attempts to describe and codify it, such as compilation of a Russian dictionary by the Russian Academy that was founded in 1783, multiplied. Literary production in Russian greatly increased. These developments, which we briefly outlined in Chapter 1 of our first volume, indicated a desire on the part of the Russian elite and Catherine herself – pace those foreigners who characterised Russians as skilled imitators of European civilisation lacking creative capacities of their own – to retain a strong Russian component in the identity of the nation as it was reimagining itself as part of the European community. However, the status of language among the possible markers of national identity rose towards the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth as a result of the Romantic and nationalist movements. Romanticism was closely associated with celebration of national distinctiveness, difference from the other. Attention came in the Romantic period to be focused not so much on the classical world, in which Enlightenment thinkers had sought reason and order (esteemed in Classicist aesthetics), as on the Middle Ages, when the roots of modern nations were supposed to have been established. Peoples’ distinctive identity was thought to have found expression in such vehicles as oral poetry, folksong, dress and custom (Burke 1978: chapter 1). Language, of course, was another such vehicle, as thinkers of the eighteenth-­century German Counter-Enlightenment such as Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder contended and as the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte would argue forcefully in the early 1800s (Berlin 1976; Koepke 1990; Joseph 2004).2 It was ultimately German Romanticism that shaped the paradigm of linguistic ideology according to which a people’s nationhood, character and land are inextricably bound up with language. This linguo-ideological myth has endured into the twentyfirst century and is still ‘globally hegemonic today’ (Woolard 1998: 17). The German sources of Russian linguistic nationalism are explored in Chapter 7 of this volume, where Gary Hamburg writes about conservative thinkers in the age of Alexander I (which, paradoxical as it might at first sight seem, was also a high point of Russian elite cosmopolitanism). The development of the view that language was a major feature of the identity of a national community, and that nations were organic entities with their distinctive language and culture, can be associated with the rise of nationalism as well as Romanticism. This phenomenon is traced by Eric Hobsbawm, in his classic study, from the year 1780 (Hobsbawm 1990) and the modernity of it is also stressed by Ernest Gellner (1983).3 The classification of types of nationalism as ‘political’ or

6  d . off o rd, g. a r ge nt , l . r yaz a n o v a - c l a r k e , v . r j é o u t s k i ‘cultural’, which has been proposed by such scholars as Anthony Smith (1991, 1998, 2001), John Hutchinson (1987) and, in relation to Russia during the period under consideration, Susanna Rabow-Edling (2006), is particularly helpful for us, as students of the social and cultural history of language. Political nationalists, according to this model, conceive of the territorial nation as a unit held together by shared civic values and equal legal rights within a political community (Smith 1991: 9–11). They may prize the rule of law more highly than popular or demotic culture. Statesmen, legislators and agitators are prominent among them. Cultural nationalists, on the other hand, aspire to regenerate an imagined ‘community of common descent’ in which birth, family ties and native culture are of paramount importance (Smith 1991: 11–12). They seek – in Rabow-Edling’s words – ‘to recover the “creative force” of the nation’, substituting ‘for the legal and rational concept of citizenship the much vaguer concept of “the people”, which can only be understood intuitively’ (Rabow-Edling 2006: 64–5). This exclusive, cultural or ‘ethnic’ conception of a nation, it has been argued, is more characteristic of less advanced countries on the periphery of European civilisation than of Western European nations which took the lead in industrialisation and the development of parliamentary democracy. The roots of cultural nationalism can be detected in the eighteenth-century Russian literary community, whose consciousness of nationhood was well described long ago by Hans Rogger (1960) and some members of which expressed that consciousness in the hostility to Russians’ alleged Gallomania that is explored by several contributors in this volume (see Chapters 4–8 inclusive). Cultural nationalism came to be widespread among the nineteenthcentury Russian intelligentsia, particularly – but not exclusively – among groups who might be defined as Romantic conservatives, such as the Alexandrine thinkers discussed by Hamburg (see also Martin 1997), the Slavophiles (славянофилы) of the 1840s and 1850s and the Native-Soil Conservatives (почвенники) of the early 1860s, among whom Fedor Dostoevskii was prominent (Dowler 1982; 1995). The proponents of cultural nationalism, in the main, were thinkers, artists, such as poets and novelists, or scholars, such as historians, folklorists and – most importantly for our purposes here – philologists and lexicographers (Smith 1991: 12).4 The influx into Russia of ideas about language that were gaining currency in Europe as the Enlightenment waned and Romanticism waxed; the growth of nationalism of the cultural variety, which encouraged interest in the Russian vernacular; and, very importantly, the flowering of an imaginative literature in that vernacular, especially from the 1820s onwards – these factors had a much deeper effect than wartime

i n t r o du c t i o n   7 Gallophobia in the Napoleonic period on Russian linguistic attitudes. We say this because French did not begin to lose its value as a prestige language immediately after the invasion of Russia by the Grande Armée in 1812, despite the somewhat token linguistic gestures made in metropolitan society around that time, which are described by Pushkin in his short piece of prose fiction Roslavlev (examined by Derek Offord in Chapter 11 in this volume) and, much later on, by Lev Tolstoi in War and Peace (Voina i mir, 1865–9). What made the new language attitudes we have described particularly potent in Russia from the age of Nicholas I was the decline in the status of the nobility, among whom French was a prestige language. (We turn here to the link between language and social identity.) For one thing, the economic wellbeing of the nobility was not assured in Europe’s new industrial age. The struggle to maintain the style of life that seemed to befit men and women of elevated social status on the proceeds of backward methods of farming is attested by the striking abundance of references to financial difficulties and indebtedness in Russian noble correspondence, even before the abolition of serfdom in 1861 deprived landowners of their source of free labour. What is more important to us here, though, is the diminution of the moral authority of the nobility in the eyes of public opinion, which was beginning to be shaped, from the late part of the period with which we are concerned, by a literary community and, in particular, the emergent intelligentsia we mentioned earlier. There is a large literature on definition of the term ‘intelligentsia’ (for a recent survey and fresh interpretation by one of the contributors to this volume, see Hamburg 2010). The key points for us here are these. First, the grouping was of socially diverse origin, consisting both of nobles and, increasingly, non-nobles (so-called разночинцы, or people of various ranks). Second, its loyalties transcended class allegiance, since its members conceived of themselves first and foremost as representatives of independent public opinion in an oppressive polity where heterodoxy was subversive. Viewed through the writings of this socially déraciné group, the nobility came to be seen as tainted by their privilege and particularly by their legal ownership of other human beings, the serfs. The right of the nobility to see itself as the flower of the nation, in the way in which Montesquieu had seen the nobility in eighteenth-century France, was challenged by the intelligentsia, who aspired to play the role of keeper of the nation’s conscience, speaking truth to power (of which the intelligentsia was quite independent). The question arose, moreover, of where the supposed essence of the nation for whom the intelligentsia claimed to speak was to be found. From the mid-nineteenth century a large number of major writers and thinkers – and painters and c­ omposers

8  d . off o rd, g. a r ge nt , l . r yaz a n o v a - c l a r k e , v . r j é o u t s k i too – sought this essence among the common people. Following the Slavophiles, Dostoevskii, for example, would clearly locate the distinctive spirit of Russia in the pious peasantry. So too would Tolstoi (who was not, however, writing in the Slavophile tradition) in his portrait of the humble peasant Platon Karataev in War and Peace. It is useful here to invoke again Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, to which we have also referred in a recent article on the functions and value of foreign languages more generally (German and English, as well as French) in eighteenth-century Russia (Argent et al. 2015). The value of French in the Russian linguistic marketplace was bound to be affected by a lowering of the reputation of the social estate which used that language as a symbolic means of affirming its status and, conversely, by the rising moral authority of an intellectual community which did not endorse the codes of the francophone social elite. As the authority of the noble elite passed to the intelligentsia, which was relatively ill-defined socially, the value of bilingualism as a marker of social status fell. How could the prestige language of the nobility maintain its worth, after all, when influential public voices were abjuring the glitter of the haut monde and its douceur de vivre and when they were commending instead new forms of cultural capital, such as simplicity, unmercenariness (бессребреность) and altruistic service to the common people?5 On the other hand, the value of Russian, including the Russian of the monolingual common people, rose steeply, as the model of cultural nationalism discussed above would lead us to expect. This rise in value was attested by the attention paid by lexicographers, ethnographers and folklorists, such as Vladimir Dal’ and Aleksandr Afanas’ev, from the middle of the nineteenth century, to the rich store of Russian popular idiom, proverbs and sayings.

FOREIG N -LAN GUA GE USE AND ALLEG IANCE There is one further question, or set of questions, that needs to be addressed here in connection with the role of language choice and language use in the construction and display of identity. In what way exactly, or to what extent, do users of a foreign language identify themselves with a people, class, group or culture when their language choice is determined by some purpose that is not purely utilitarian, that is to say when the language chosen is not the only available language in which people can make themselves understood to one another? Does language choice imply sympathy for the government or social order of the people who are the principal speakers of that language, or a supposed affinity

i n t r o du c t i o n   9 with that people’s national character, whatever that might be? More particularly, does the choice of French by Russians in the period we are examining suggest some political or emotional loyalty to France as a whole or to the French sovereign or the French nobility? If the eighteenth-century journalists and dramatists examined in this volume by Carole Chapin, Derek Offord and D. Brian Kim6 are to be believed, then the use of French by Russians implied identification with the supposed character of the native speakers of that language. French character, moreover, was described by these journalists and dramatists in accordance with a highly negative stereotype derived in part from the writings of French moralists themselves. The supposed vices of the French and flaws in their character included insincerity, superficiality and frivolity (ветреность). (The last two of these, at least, may be seen as the reverse of the gaiety and light-heartedness that were admired in the French salon.) There was a danger, then, according to many Russian writers who will be examined in this volume, that Russians’ use of French would affect national character in damaging ways. Prominent among French defects that might harm Russians, many Russian writers supposed, was slavish obedience to the dictates of fashion. (This sort of complaint, incidentally, was heard right across Europe; indeed it too came partly from France itself, where the vices of the civilised man were often contrasted with the supposed virtues of the bon sauvage (good savage).) Fashion is a subject to which there is copious reference in this volume, for it was closely tied to language use in various ways. For one thing, French fashion was a rich source of borrowing into Russian (the Russian word мода is itself a French loanword), as shown by Xénia Borderioux in Chapter 10 of Volume 1, and by Olga VassilievaCodognet, in Chapter 9 of this volume. However, fashion has a further level of significance for the cultural history of language, for language choice itself may often seem to amount to an act of observance of fashion. In both spheres, language and fashion, moreover, appearances can be misleading, as Pushkin shows, once light-heartedly and once more seriously, in short works of prose fiction that are examined by Derek Offord in Chapter 11 in this volume. The supposedly dangerous habit of using, or rather abusing, French, then, might be encouraged by fashion, but what inculcated it in the first place was poor education, or rather poor upbringing (воспитание), that is to say the method of forming a child’s character as well as imparting information and knowledge to it. It is bad education that is the root cause of the anxiety among Russian writers about the loyalties of generations of children of the Russian elite who have been tutored in French by foreigners. Negative images of foreigners who offer some service to the

10  d. offord, g. argent, l. ryazanova-clarke, v. rjéoutski Russian nobility, especially services relating to the upbringing of their children, abound in Russian literature throughout the period covered by our investigation. Over and over again the French tutor or governess displays some combination of arrogance, indolence, ignorance, cynicism and contempt for Russia and its vernacular. Passing on both their imperfect knowledge of their own language and their flawed morals and cultural habits, such immigrants are accused of have a corrupting effect on Russia’s youth. This view of the foreign tutor was not confined, incidentally, to Gallophobic men of letters, as Gesine Argent shows in Chapter 6 of this volume: the supposedly more Western-oriented Nikolai Karamzin and even Pushkin also complained about the dangers of having Russian children educated by French tutors (Rjéoutski 2012). In the final analysis, foreigners, it was alleged, might undermine loyalty to the Russian nation. It turns out, for example, that Denis Fonvizin’s fop Ivanushka in The Brigadier (Brigadir, 1869) boarded with a French coachman before he went to Paris, and it is to this man, Ivanushka confesses, that he owes his love for the French and his low opinion of Russians. If he had had the misfortune to fall into the hands of a Russian tutor who loved his country, he opines in Act V, Scene 2 of the play, he would not have turned out the way he has. Thus the association of foreign-language use not only with sympathy for the culture of another people but even with disloyalty to one’s own nation, as if choice of a foreign language were an act of treason, is a common trope in literary sources that are valuable for the study of Russian linguistic attitudes. However, the popularity of the trope should not lead us to believe that choice of a foreign language necessarily entails any powerful attraction to the culture of the people for whom the language in question is a mother tongue, or any affinity with their perceived character or loyalty to their system of social and political organisation. (The point may seem obvious, but it is still worth stating here, since the thrust of the discourse on language use in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russia tends to obscure it.) After all, a multiplicity of viewpoints may be represented among an ethnos, irrespective of the class structure and political regime of the state in which it is concentrated. Nor, of course, are political and social orders static and permanently enduring. The bourgeois France of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe (1830–48) and the Second Republic (1848–52) was very different from the aristocratic France of the ancien régime. Nonetheless, Russians who admired the urbanity and elegance of representatives of the latter – Andrei Rostopchin, son of the governor of Moscow at the time of Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, is a good example (see Offord and Rjéoutski 2013) – did not stop using French in the mid-nineteenth century, despite

i n t r o du c t i o n   11 their distaste for the modern nation, which they considered vulgar, and representatives of it such as Eugène Sue and George Sand, whom they detested. This is because the French language, for Rostopchin, was associated not with an ethnos or a modern state but with a pan-European aristocratic culture that was sadly fading but to which he still felt he belonged. We take the view, then, that has recently been put forward by Wladimir Berelowitch (2015: 56): in the eighteenth century the French language was detached in the minds of many Russians from any idea of the French nation.7 The universality of French in the eighteenthcentury European world and its association with the Enlightenment and with high culture and high society enabled people who were not French to speak that language without feeling that they were expressing an allegiance to France, at least to the French state, in much the same way that twenty-first-century foreign users of English as a lingua franca may feel no attachment to the country in which the language originated. Nor, we should add, do we mean to imply that Russians’ use of French in preference to Russian in many situations indicated that they lacked national consciousness or a firm sense of Russian identity. As the study of the Stroganov family by Vladislav Rjéoutski and Vladimir Somov (Volume 1, Chapter 3) has shown, by 1812 Aleksandr Stroganov was already formulating a conception of the Russian nation that included adherence to the Orthodox faith and a view of the Russian peasant as the guardian of specifically Russian values. (This conception foreshadows the nineteenth-century cultural nationalism of which we have spoken.) Nowhere, though, does Stroganov insist on the use of Russian as a mark of Russianness. The Russian national consciousness that was already emerging in the eighteenth century, finally, was reflected in patriotism, which was not at all endangered by foreign-language use, but it was patriotism of a different sort from that which would develop in the post-Romantic age of cultural nationalism, when language choice and the sense of nationhood were strongly linked. Indeed, love of country was a key virtue in the value system of writers in the age of Catherine. However, that love, which was more reasoned than intuitive, had as its object a fatherland (отечество), rather than the native soil (родина) to which later writers would appeal.8 Patriotism of this sort – which had its roots in the West, where it was articulated in entries on patrie and patriotisme in the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and d’Alembert – was fully compatible with cosmopolitanism and a multilingual identity.9 * * *

12  d. offord, g. argent, l. ryazanova-clarke, v. rjéoutski In this introduction we have brought to light the primary concerns of this volume by focusing on the importance of linguistic metadiscourse in the construction of Russian national identity and of the social identity of the noble elite who adopted French as a prestige language from the mideighteenth century. Language use, language choice, language mixing – the subject-matter of many chapters in Volume 1 – were important topics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia as the expanding empire received and reworked European ideas, created a secular culture in the Western mould and sought its own space in the European mental landscape. Catherine II herself, members of the noble estate who were emancipated in 1762 from obligatory service to the state, participants in the emergent literary community – all sought to be both European as well as Russian and used French for this purpose in their various ways. A critique of the use of French, or at least of Russians’ alleged infatuation with it, began in the literary community at an early stage in the history of Russian francophonie, around the middle of the eighteenth century. This critique was particularly pronounced in satirical journalism and comic drama. Francophonie could be presented by those who wrote in these media as symptomatic of the corruption of national character by the supposed faults of native speakers of French and, at worst, as indications of national disloyalty during a golden age of military success and imperial expansion. Russians’ addiction to fashion (of which Paris was the universal capital) and their appetite for the education provided by foreigners, in which the acquisition of the French language had a central place, were indicative of the problem and at the same time helped to exacerbate it. However, the visibility of this critique of Russians’ language practice does not prove that its authors accurately described the linguistic situation in Russia in their time or that their apprehensions about the consequences of the use of French there were justified. It is also difficult to judge – because we have at our disposal only those written sources that have come down to us – how widely shared those authors’ views were outside the emergent literary community, particularly because some of those authors were not undiscriminating admirers, or professed themselves not to be admirers, of Russia’s Westernised high society, with which the use of French was associated. (The difficulty is compounded by the fact that Russian writers were assimilating pan-European tropes, some of which were similarly critical of French mores, the sophisticated beau monde and francophonie.) However, the unpublished non-literary sources available in Russian archives would seem to indicate that, in the eighteenth century at least, Franco-Russian bilingualism was less problematic to the Russian elite than literary sources were already suggesting.

i n t r o du c t i o n   13 Indeed, it was a means by which the nobility could establish a new social identity as part of a European corporation, as well as a means by which the sovereign could present herself as an enlightened European monarch and by which writers could join the European Republic of Letters. In the nineteenth century, on the other hand, once the Russian literary community and the emergent intelligentsia had begun to receive Romanticism and embrace the cultural nationalism that had spread across Europe as a whole, the association between language and sense of nationhood made bilingualism, or multilingualism, less attractive. It is this later evaluation of Franco-Russian bilingualism, supported by the testimony of highly accomplished imaginative writers who in the nineteenth century were transforming the Russian vernacular into a vehicle for a literature that was indisputably on a par with the major European literatures, that has tended to prevail in modern understandings of language use in Imperial Russia. As this second volume should show, the picture was in fact more complex.

NOTES 1. For some examples, see Chapter 11, by Derek Offord, on treatment of Russian francophonie in Pushkin’s prose. 2. It has been argued, however, that Herder’s ideas themselves can be traced to the French Enlightenment (Aarsleff 1982; Joseph 2004: 44). 3. For a dissenting view about the modernity of the phenomenon, see Hastings (1997). 4. Acceptance of this distinction between political and cultural nationalism is not to deny, of course, that political nationalists might exploit cultural nationalism for political ends, such as territorial expansion. For further recent scholarship on Russian nationalism in various historical periods, see, for example, Brubaker (1996); Brudny (1998); Hosking and Service (1998); Tuminez (2000); Laruelle (2009); Alapuro et al. (2012); Bassin and Kelly (2012); and Ryazanova-Clarke (2012). 5. It is worth repeating that, as before, the critics of Russian francophonie in many cases had an excellent command of French. Alexander Herzen, Dostoevskii and Tolstoi are examples. 6. In Chapters 4, 5 and 8 respectively. 7. See Volume 1, Chapter 3, for a study of language use among the Stroganovs which bears out this view of francophonie as free of implied Francophilia. 8. The concepts of отечество and родина are re-explored by Sara Dickinson in Chapter 10 in this volume. 9. The concept of the ‘son of the fatherland’ (сын отечества) was developed by French thinkers of the Enlightenment: see the article ‘Patriote’ in the Encyclopédie and Nikolai Novikov’s tirade against the non-patriot, who prefers foreign lands to his own (Jones 1984: 99).

14  d. offord, g. argent, l. ryazanova-clarke, v. rjéoutski

REFERENCES Aarsleff, H. (1982), From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Alapuro, R., A. Mustajoki and P. Pesonen (eds) (2012), Understanding Russianness, London: Routledge. Argent, G., D. Offord and V. Rjéoutski (2015), ‘The functions and value of foreign languages in eighteenth-century Russia’, Russian Review, 74: 1, 1–19. Bassin, M. and C. Kelly (2012), Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berelowitch, W. (2015), ‘Francophonie in Russia under Catherine II: general reflections and individual cases’, Russian Review, 74: 1, 41–56. Berlin, I. (1976), Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, London: Hogarth Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991), Language and Symbolic Power, ed. J. B. Thompson, trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson, Cambridge: Polity Press. Brubaker, R. (1996), Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in New Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brudny, I. (1998), Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953– 1991, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burke, P. (1978), Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, London: Temple Smith. Dowler, W. (1982), Dostoevsky, Grigor’ev, and Native-Soil Conservatism, Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press. Dowler, W. (1995), An Unnecessary Man: The Life of Apollon Grigor’ev, Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press. Gal, S. (2005), ‘Language ideologies compared: metaphors of public/private’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15: 1, 23–37. Gal, S. and J. Irvine (1995), ‘The boundaries of languages and disciplines: how ideologies construct difference’, Social Research, 62: 4, 967–1001. Gellner, E. (1983), Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell. Gumperz, J. (ed.) (1982), Language and Social Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamburg, G. M. (2010), ‘Russian intelligentsias’, in W. Leatherbarrow and D. Offord (eds), A History of Russian Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 44–69. Hastings, A. (1997), The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heller, M. (1982), ‘Negotiations of language choice in Montreal’, in J. Gumperz (ed.), Language and Social Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 108–18. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990), Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hosking, G. and R. Service (eds) (1998), Russian Nationalism, Past and Present, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hutchinson, J. (1987), The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State, London: Allen and Unwin. Jones, W. G. (1984), Nikolay Novikov: Enlightener of Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joseph, J. (2004), Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

i n t r o du c t i o n   15 Koepke, W. (ed.) (1990), Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History and the Enlightenment, Columbia, SC: Camden House. Laruelle, M. (ed.) (2009), Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia, Abingdon: Routledge. Le Page, R. and A. Tabouret-Keller (1985), Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martin, A. (1997), Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Myers-Scotton, C. (1993), Code-Switching: Evidence From Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Myers-Scotton, C. (1998), ‘Structural uniformities vs. community differences in code­ switching’, in R. Jacobson (ed.), Codeswitching Worldwide, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 91–108. Offord, D. and V. Rjéoutski (2013), ‘Xenophobia in French: Count Andrei Rostopchin’s reflections in the catalogue of his library’ at https://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/introduc​ tion/xenophobia-french-count-andrei-rostopchin%E2%80%99s-reflections-cata​ logue-his-library (last accessed on 19 August 2014). Pavlenko, A. and A. Blackledge (2004), ‘Introduction: new theoretical approaches to the study of negotiation of identities in the multilingual context’, in A. Pavlenko and A. Blackledge (eds), Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Context, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 1–33. Rabow-Edling, S. (2006), Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Rjéoutski, V. (2012), ‘Le Précepteur français comme ennemi: la construction de son image en Russie (deuxième moitié du XVIIIe – première moitié du XIXe siècle)’, in B. Krulic (ed.), L’ennemi en regard(s). Images, usages et interprétations dans l’histoire et la littérature, Paris: Peter Lang, pp. 31–45. Rogger, H. (1960), National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ryazanova-Clarke, L. (2012), ‘The “West” in the linguistic construction of Russianness in contemporary public discourse’, in Alapuro, R., A. Mustajoki and P. Pesonen (eds), Understanding Russianness, London: Routledge, pp. 3–18. Smith, A. D. (1991), National Identity, London: Penguin. Smith, A. D. (1998), Nationalism and Modernism, London: Routledge. Smith, A. D. (2001), Nationalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Tuminez, A. (2000), Russian Nationalism since 1856: Ideology and the Making of Foreign Policy, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Woolard, K. (1998), ‘Introduction: language ideology as a field of enquiry’, in B. B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard and P. V. Kroskrity (eds), Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–47.

chapter 1

The Pan-European Justification of a Multilingual Russian Society in the Late Eighteenth Century Stephen Bruce

E

h bien, mon prince. Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des поместья, de la famille Buonaparte.1 These first words of Lev Tolstoi’s War and Peace (Voina i mir, 1869), spoken by a Russian society hostess in St Petersburg in 1805, have introduced many lovers of Russian literature to the surprising and vital importance of the French language in Russia in that period. Why did the Russian characters in Tolstoi’s novel often speak in French? Tolstoi’s answer to this question becomes clear enough over the course of the novel: French was an artificial language in Russia, part of a broader Westernising process that had come to suppress, but not destroy, a simpler and nobler Russian national character. Tolstoi’s opinions reflect a late-nineteenth-century consensus that placed the use of Western European languages in opposition to true Russianness. But speakers of foreign languages in the eighteenth century often viewed the matter quite differently. The intellectual correspondence within Russia and between Russians and their Western European counterparts shows that they frequently rationalised their adoption of French and other Western European languages by combining French Enlightenment theories about the merits of different languages with native Russian notions of social hierarchy. Russian national identity was a consideration, but it was not held to be an impediment to the use of Western European languages. In this chapter, I survey some aspects of the debate on the uses of different languages in the second half of the eighteenth century, then move to focus on the correspondence of Empress Catherine II (the Great). Despite her German background and her special position in Russian society, Catherine’s views on language reflected the broader language debate. Her correspondence points to an awareness among the Russian elite that Western European languages were tools they could use simulta-

justificati o n o f a mu l t ilingu a l r u s s i a n s o c i e t y   17 neously to achieve acceptance in the broader European social sphere and to establish a social distance from the Russian-speaking lower classes. An agent of imperial power such as Catherine could champion Russian, and promote its use in literature and education, while simultaneously promoting and using French and German. By analysing these cultural and societal rationales behind foreign-language use, I aim to deepen our understanding of language as a site of both group identity formation and the assertion of imperial power in late eighteenth-century Russia.

WESTERN E U ROPEAN LAN GUA GES IN RU SSIA Until recent years, the history of Western European languages in Russia had been largely overlooked, with some notable exceptions (including Vorob’ev and Sedina 2007 and Marrese 2010). The existence of this lacuna is partly due to a teleological narrative that sees Western European languages merely as an impediment to the ultimate emergence of true Russian language – and nationality – in the nineteenth century. The dominance of Western European languages until the early nineteenth century may indeed have hindered the development of a Russian literature, as writers such as Karamzin maintained, but it arose from causes beyond simple imitation, and the languages served many purposes. In fact, in the eighteenth century, different languages in Russia occupied different positions in a complex and fluid hierarchy (Argent et al. 2015). Moreover, a simple nationalistic perspective obstructs our ability to see the vital imperial processes taking place during this period, most notably the external colonisation of Poland, the Black Sea area and the Far East, and the internal colonisation of the culturally and economically distant Russian peasantry (examples of recent literature on the subject include Khodarkovsky 2002, Burbank et al. 2007 and Etkind 2011). The prime motivation behind most language use, of course, is the desire to communicate with others and fit into a larger community. For many in the Russian elite, the primary imagined community was that of European enlightened society; their cultural kinship with the Russian lower classes was often secondary. Even in the nineteenth century, as Liah Greenfeld (1992: 189–274) points out, the assumption that Russia was in a European environment was key to many Russians’ claims to national superiority. Russia was not unique in its complex inter-relation of Enlightenment ideals and national identity. In France itself, attempts by the political elite to form a national culture were thwarted by the regional identities of the lower classes and the cosmopolitan identity of the elite. In Russia,

18  stephe n br uce however, with its position on the geographic periphery of the dominant Western culture, the adoption and transformation of cultural ideas were more visible than they were in Central and Western Europe. Here I am following Franco Venturi (1971), who emphasised the ‘peripheral’ areas of the Western world, such as Italy, Greece and Russia, as sites in which the tensions and transformations in the Enlightenment could best be observed. In exploring the language hierarchy of the Russian Empire during this period, we should note that French, though prominent, did not extend into all domains of elite language use. Church Slavonic remained the language of the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian, specifically in its bureaucratic form, the приказной язык (chancery language), continued to be used throughout the eighteenth century in many administrative functions. The use of German also presents an interesting picture. As a Western European language, it entered Russia as a prestige language, particularly in the realm of science. It was the dominant language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which included such notables as the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. Yet, German was also one of the vernacular languages of the Russian Empire, being spoken not only by German immigrants in Moscow and St Petersburg but also by native-born German speakers in the Baltic states. Imperially speaking, therefore, German was in some sense subordinate to the needs of the Russian-speaking metropole, even as the language itself represented a colonising cultural importation from Western Europe. At the same time that certain European languages were seen as occupying different positions in this system of linguistic power, Russians also proposed more abstract reasons for choosing various languages. They participated in a larger debate within the European ‘Republic of Letters’ on the merits of different languages, motivated by the perceived need for a universal language (Lauzon 2010). Most relevant for the Russian debate was Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772. The Encyclopédie and other Enlightenment texts were widely read in Russia and received state approbation from Catherine II, who also corresponded personally with Diderot and Voltaire (Kopanev 2004). The ‘preliminary discourse’ or introduction, written by d’Alembert, describes the decline of Latin as a universal language and the emergence of French. While the author viewed French as capable of fulfilling this role, he wrote that other nations, including ‘the Swedes, the Danes and the Russians’, would soon follow suit and want their own national languages (Alembert 1751: vol. 1, p. xxx). Nicolas Beauzée, in the article ‘Langue’ (Language), was more confident about the lasting power of French: after discussing the merits of German, English and Italian, he

justificati o n o f a mu l t ilingu a l r u s s i a n s o c i e t y   19 commented that French was the language most likely to succeed Latin as a universal language, which was due ‘as much to the richness of our [i.e. French] literature as to the influence of our government on the general politics of Europe’ (Beauzée 1765: vol. 9, p. 266). The Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov had in fact advanced the same argument in a manuscript around 1756. Arguing for the usefulness of literature in forming civilisation, Lomonosov pointed to the example of France, writing that ‘one can justly doubt whether it was her power that attracted the veneration of other states, or rather her sciences, especially of the literary variety, which had purified and decorated her language through the diligence of her skilled writers’ (Lomonosov 1952a: vol. 7, p. 581). But Lomonosov did not see Russian as very far behind; in fact, in his Russian Grammar (Rossiiskaia grammatika, 1755), he seemed to place it above French or any other language. He began the introduction to his grammar with an anecdote still heard in various versions today: ‘Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, used to say that one should speak Spanish to God, French to one’s friends, German to one’s enemies, and Italian to the female sex.’ But for Lomonosov, whereas these languages had single purposes, Russian was multifunctional: Had [Charles] been versed in the Russian language, then he would certainly have added that it is appropriate to speak to all of these in that language, because he would have found in it the splendour of Spanish, the vivacity of French, the strength of German, the tenderness of Italian, and moreover the richness and concise expressivity of Greek and Latin. (Lomonosov 1952b: vol. 7, p. 391) Despite his praise of Russian, Lomonosov clearly saw the benefit of using Western European languages, and he was content to straddle the line, using Western European languages in his scientific work and Russian in his promotion of a national poetic tradition.

CAT HERINE AND V OLTAIRE These Enlightenment notions of the merits of different languages emerged at several points in Catherine’s correspondence with Voltaire. (Catherine’s correspondence, which was not published until well into the nineteenth century, did not have a direct impact on the language debate, but it does reflect the attempts of a politically and culturally powerful figure to reconcile notions of Europeanness and Russianness.) Catherine and Voltaire first became personally acquainted in 1762, shortly after Catherine’s

20  stephe n br uce accession to the throne, through the Swiss François-Pierre Pictet, who was thought by some witnesses to be Catherine’s secretary (Reddaway 1971: xii–xiii). Voltaire had already developed a scholarly interest in Russia when collecting materials for a history of Peter the Great. Although their correspondence was conducted entirely in French, they both eulogised the Russian language. Catherine had learned French from French tutors in her youth in Germany and through her reading of Rabelais, Montaigne and Molière, among others. William Reddaway notes that ‘if it was her Russian that critics in the ’sixties praised, it was because they took her French for granted’ (p. xx). Within Catherine’s correspondence with Voltaire, the subject of language generally arose in three contexts: discussion of Catherine’s Instruction (Nakaz) and its reception in Europe, commentary about the progress of Catherine’s first war with Turkey and Voltaire’s attempts to have various young noblemen introduced into Russian society. I shall deal with each of these contexts in turn. Catherine composed the Instruction as a guide for the All-Russian Legislative Commission of 1767, whose purpose was to create a new code of laws for Russia to replace the Sobornoe ulozhenie, a law code which had been in effect since 1649. Catherine relied heavily on Western European jurists, especially Montesquieu and Beccaria, at times copying their words verbatim. Although the project was never realised, its progressive nature led to consternation abroad, particularly in France, where the Instruction was banned. Voltaire, for his part, was one of the main promoters of the Instruction within Europe, and his correspondence with the Russian empress made numerous references to it. Catherine sent Voltaire ‘the least bad’ French translation of her Instruction on 15 (26) March 1767, noting that it had already appeared in much poorer translations across Europe: ‘[it] was mangled so much in the newspapers of Holland that people did not really know what it meant.’ She attributed the problems of translation to specific virtues of the Russian language: ‘In Russian it is an esteemed piece: the richness and the strong expressions of our language made it so. The translation was all the more troublesome’ (Reddaway 1971: 16). This statement is especially remarkable given the fact that many sentences were borrowed from the French and Italian sources. Nevertheless, Voltaire responded on 26 May 1767 that the Russian language had ‘inversions and turns of phrase that are lacking in ours’ (Reddaway 1971: 17). He did not defend French against the criticism that it lacked certain stylistic possibilities and was willing to accept that a language he did not know could be more suitable for enlightenment. Moreover, this acknowledgement corresponded to his assumed role as a promoter of cosmopolitanism. Voltaire continued, however, with the following anecdote:

justificati o n o f a mu l t ilingu a l r u s s i a n s o c i e t y   21 I am not like a lady of the court of Versailles, who said: ‘It’s certainly too bad that the incident at the tower of Babel produced the confusion of languages; without that, everyone would have always spoken French.’ The emperor of China, Kang-hi, your neighbour, asked a missionary if one could write verse in the languages of Europe; he [the emperor] did not think it possible. (p. 16)2 By making the comparison between Russian and Chinese, Voltaire implicitly kept Russian in the same category as exotic non-European languages; he was willing to praise it for Catherine’s benefit, but could not overlook its otherness. Even after the Commission failed to produce a set of laws and Catherine gave up on her grand legislative project, Voltaire continued to express his admiration of Catherine’s smaller legal achievements, and the two correspondents turned again to the theme of translation. In 1775, Catherine published a provincial law code, about which she wrote to Voltaire on 14 (25) June 1776, mentioning a translation in German but repeating her annoyance at the task of having to produce one in French. Russian, with its freedom of word order and rich vocabulary, suffered upon translation into French, which she saw as having a relatively poor lexicon; indeed, she wrote, ‘one must be you [Voltaire] to have turned it to such good account and made such good use of it as you have done’ (p. 210). Voltaire wrote on 5 December 1777 with grandiloquent praise of the rulebook, but still argued for the value of translation. He himself had begun to translate it into the ‘language of the Welches’. His use of this Swiss moniker for French-speakers, which he adopted after his move from Paris to Ferney, near Geneva, reflected his own ambivalent relationship with French political culture. But apart from French, he foresaw a translation in Chinese and in all other languages; in fact, it would be the ‘gospel of the universe’ (p. 213). The reference to Chinese implies a great diffusion of Catherine’s work, but the recurrence of this comparison suggests that both languages, from Voltaire’s Western perspective, may have seemed exceptionally alien. Voltaire also brought up language several times during his discussion of the events of Russia’s war with the Ottoman Empire (1768–74). He expressed a sometimes violent anti-Turkish sentiment, framed in terms of praise for Catherine’s cultural and military achievements. In 1769 he wrote that if Catherine were to establish herself in Constantinople, his protégé Galatin would soon learn Greek, ‘for one must absolutely chase the Turkish language out of Europe, as well as all those who speak it’ (p. 27). Voltaire evidently saw Catherine’s ambitions for conquering Turkey in partly cultural terms: she would incorporate Greek, with

22  stephe n br uce its associations of classical heritage, into her multilingual empire, and defend it against the barbarian Turks. Later, in 1770, Voltaire expanded on the same linguistic implications of a victory over Turkey: ‘if you were sovereign of Constantinople, Your Majesty would quite quickly establish a fine Greek academy’ (p. 71). Catherine would not be seen simply as a patron of the arts, but as a classical Greek heroine, deserving of a ‘Catherinead’ (the Greek suffix suggesting either an epic poem like The Iliad or a festival like the Olympiad); moreover, ‘the Zeuxises and Phidiases would cover the earth in your images’ (p. 71). Voltaire concluded this vision in triumphalist tones, again repeating the linguistic aspect of a potential victory: ‘the fall of the Ottoman Empire would be celebrated in Greek; Athens would be one of your capitals; the Greek language would become the universal language; all the merchants of the Aegean Sea would request Greek passports from your majesty’ (p. 71). In other words, Catherine, as a patron of the arts and letters, would reach her apotheosis by conquering Greece and reviving classical culture. Voltaire also criticised the education of the Turkish sultan, implicitly making Catherine shine in comparison. He repeated a story that the sultan met an ambassador of England and spoke to him in Italian, which he found ‘hard to believe; the Turks learn Arabic at most’ (in fact, the Ottomans did regularly use Italian in their diplomacy); moreover he doubted that the sultan had an academy (p. 85). For Voltaire, multilingualism (in European languages) was the mark of a modern European sovereign, just as a national academy was a vital milestone in the refinement of a country’s culture. By doubting the Mustafa’s linguistic abilities, he denied him membership in the Republic of Letters. The final relevant thread of Voltaire’s correspondence with Catherine is Voltaire’s numerous attempts to have young noblemen of his acquaintance admitted into Russian society. He foregrounded these noblemen’s linguistic accomplishments and ambitions, since he knew the value of Western European languages in Russia. One example is the Baron of Pellemberg, whom Voltaire described thus: ‘a Flemish gentleman, young, worthy, educated, knowledgeable in several languages, who absolutely wants to learn Russian, and to be at your service; what’s more, a good musician’ (p. 166). By mentioning both the baron’s existing linguistic accomplishments and his desire to learn Russian, Voltaire cannily responded to Catherine’s twofold aim of fostering Western European languages and developing native Russian traditions in her empire. For Voltaire, the Russian Empire provided rich opportunities for noblemen to develop their linguistic capabilities. According to Voltaire, a young Swiss acquaintance of his had exclaimed upon reading Catherine’s Instruction: ‘My God, how I should like to be Russian!’ Voltaire

justificati o n o f a mu l t ilingu a l r u s s i a n s o c i e t y   23 responded, ‘it is up to you to be Russian’, and that the youth, instead of going to Germany as he planned, should go to Riga, where he could learn German and Russian at the same time (p. 26). The selection of Riga as a particularly good place for study allows Voltaire to show his appreciation of the multilingual nature of the Russian Empire, and his recommendation that knowledge of Russian be added to the young man’s educational qualifications suggests his acceptance of Russian as a language of educated society. In all this correspondence, we must allow for a great deal of flattery; both Voltaire and Catherine had an interest in maintaining their correspondence and avoided criticism of each other. Nevertheless, these sources allow us to see how Catherine and Voltaire together developed a notion of how language fitted into her role as an enlightened monarch, covering a remarkable range of political activity: an attempted enactment of legal reform, a proposed conquest of Turkey and re-establishment of Greek civilisation, and the patronage afforded to ambitious young noblemen. At the same time, their correspondence highlights tensions inherent in Russia’s multilingualism. A form of proto-nationalism meant that Catherine felt the need to defend and promote the language of the majority of her subjects, and she expressed this national sentiment by claiming that Russian was ‘rich’ and ‘strong’ when contrasted with French. The importance of French in Europe, though, made her continue to use that language in much of her public and private life, and Catherine knew that focusing too much on Russianness would put her at risk of being identified as exotic and non-European.

CAT HERINE , G RI MM AND FREDERIC K OF PRU SSIA Some of the same themes that arose in Voltaire’s correspondence appeared in a pan-European debate surrounding the status of the German language. This debate was characterised by the same tensions between national justifications for language use and a desire to participate in European society by using the more widely spoken French. The German debate, however, had to take account of an additional intricacy, the large German-speaking minority in the Russian Empire, including a long-standing population in the Baltic provinces and recent immigrants, encouraged by Catherine to settle along the Volga. In November 1780, King Frederick II of Prussia (that is to say, Frederick the Great) published a treatise On German Literature (De la littérature allemande) that set off a flurry of debate, which eventually found its way into the greater European discussion of language. In this treatise,

24  stephe n br uce which was written in French, Frederick cast a critical eye on the German language and literary tradition, setting it in unfavourable opposition to French, Latin and Greek. Claiming objectivity, he dismissed German as ‘half-barbarous’, divided into unintelligible dialects and without an established artistic style or national ‘purity’ (Friedrich 1969: 42). He then performed a rhetorical search for German writers equal to those of France, identifying only a few who met the same standard. He attributed the poor development of German to the tumult of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which had prevented Germans from developing a national literary culture (pp. 42–4). As remedies for this backward state of German, the Prussian monarch proposed steps ranging from changes to the education system to modification of the sounds of the language itself, though he made no concrete legislative proposals. Although the Prussian monarch saw a bright future for the German language, he expressed a preference for the continued use of French, largely because of its universality in European educated society: French was ‘a master key that will admit you into all the houses and all the cities’, allowing the traveller to be understood ‘from Lisbon to Petersburg, and from Stockholm to Naples’. Moreover, Frederick’s reader could then avoid having to learn other languages, ‘which would overload your memory with words, in place of which you can fill it with things, which is much preferable’ (p. 76). Recalling the Enlightenment desire for a universal language, Frederick dismissed whatever benefits might arise from a multilingual state in favour of the pragmatic simplicity of using a single language. Frederick’s essay met with a flood of criticism, and only a few positive reviews (pp. 7–8). The main complaint concerned Frederick’s neglect of several major figures in German literature, including Lessing and Herder. In fact, despite his opening flourish in praise of reason, Frederick’s prejudice in favour of the French style must have seemed obvious to most German observers. The essay, therefore, cannot be taken as representative of German society as a whole, but it is still useful in furthering our understanding of the Russian debate on Western European languages. It confirmed the status of French as a lingua franca in Western European society, which was generally accepted, even by Frederick’s opponents, in Germany as in Russia. Furthermore, it generated commentary in Russia, among both German-speaking subjects of the Russian Empire and native Russians, who praised Catherine for her support of the German language and German literature. Catherine personally responded to Frederick’s treatise in her correspondence with Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, a German-born French author who spent several years in Russia in the 1770s and who at times corresponded with the empress almost daily.3 Grimm was the first

justificati o n o f a mu l t ilingu a l r u s s i a n s o c i e t y   25 to inform her of the debate, chastising the Prussian king for his ignorance (italics indicate German in the original; roman type indicates French): Now one certainly cannot deny that the illustrious author is no match for his material and judges the German language much as a blind man would colours. It is morally instructive, for those who reflect, to see a great prince, and what is worse, a great mind, who every day spends considerable time reading, live in the midst of his fatherland, the capital of which possesses writers of the first degree, without being aware of this. (Grot and Shtendman 1881: 129–30) Grimm perhaps intended his partial use of German to show his support for German culture and give him stronger justification for criticising Frederick’s lack of national sentiment. Of course, although Grimm claimed to be more aware of German literature than Frederick, he himself no longer even lived in Germany and, like Frederick, he wrote for the most part in French. Nevertheless, Grimm believed that Frederick had a moral obligation as a leader to support German literature. Catherine responded to Grimm’s letter by attributing Frederick’s ignorance to his old age and isolated position: ‘What can one do? He has become a creature of habit, he sees hardly anyone, and when he sees someone, he speaks and the others listen; no one has an interest in contradicting him, and he is feared’ (Grot and Shtendman 1878: 202). She pithily identified herself with Frederick (though he was seventeen years older): ‘Age means something. In 1740 [the year of Frederick’s accession] we were young, and we are young no longer’ (p. 202). Yet she did not consider herself to be so out of touch as her German peer, and elsewhere in her correspondence with Grimm she mentioned the German authors, such as Christoph Friedrich Nicolai and Moritz August von Thümmel, who she believed wrote well in German, ‘despite the belittlers of German literature’, mostly because of the strong influence of Voltaire, ‘the god of charm’ (p. 208). The linkage between the German writers and Voltaire demonstrates the importance that Catherine attached to both national and pan-European elements of language and literature: she considered German literature to be interesting as a separate field, but she felt that it reached its heights by means of foreign borrowing and imitation. This mixing of national and European considerations was also characteristic of Catherine’s own literary endeavours, such as her opera libretti, which combined themes borrowed from both Western Europe and the Russian folk tradition. Catherine’s correspondence with Grimm was intimate and not widely known at the time, but her self-presentation as both a Russian and a

26  stephe n br uce European monarch, which comes across in her other cultural endeavours, both influenced and reflected the elite Russian mentalité of this period. Catherine was a strong proponent of the Russian language, especially in the sphere of education, but she was also a defender of German. Although national concerns, such as the creation of a standardised literary Russian, became more important towards the end of the eighteenth century, many in the Russian gentry did not yet regard national feeling as precluding simultaneous use of Western European linguistic and cultural forms. Elite, educated users of German could thus feel that their culture was acceptable to Russian imperial society, when, paradoxically, it was not compatible with Frederick’s exclusionary Francophilia. The effect of this debate about language on the Russian literary world’s comparative judgement of these two monarchs is visible when we examine the responses to Frederick’s essay that were published in Russia. Some of these were translations of Western European works, such as a pamphlet published in 1783 in St Petersburg by Johann Karl Schnor, on the printing press of the Lutheran Church. This was a Russian translation of a German response to Frederick’s essay, written by the jurist Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. This response was originally published in 1781 and was widely read in Western Europe, by a young Goethe among others (Friedrich 1969: 13). The Russian translation is worthy of study not only because it suggests a wider Russian audience for the German-language debate, but also because it includes an opening poem, a dedication and footnotes by the translator, the German-Russian Andrei Meier. The poem revealed the translator’s saturation in the liberal debate on social advancement: ‘the present age has this good fortune, / That any person can discover thoughts / With the same audacity as the ruler of lands’ (Meier 1783: 5). The notion of some kind of equality of opportunity is perhaps heightened in the dedication, which Meier addressed to Prince Aleksandr Viazemskii, the Procurator General of the Senate. Meier praised Viazemskii, whom he calls a ‘Russian Cato and a Maecenas as well’ (p. 6), for knowing and supporting both Russian and German. Just as the original German author Jerusalem was of lowly origin but became famous through his writings, so the German-Russian Meier hoped to achieve recognition through his translations, for which he relied on the cosmopolitan support of Viazemskii. Meier thus supposed there was a connection between support for German and progressive social m ­ obility – a point of view that stands in striking contrast to the belief, held by the nineteenth-century Slavophiles and others, that Western European languages were impeding Russia’s national development.

justificati o n o f a mu l t ilingu a l r u s s i a n s o c i e t y   27 Nor was Meier’s praise for Russian supporters of the German language limited to his patron. In the annotations to his translation, Meier paid similar tribute to the empress, noting that although Jerusalem, ‘probably because of his own particular loyalties’, mentioned only Frederick, ‘all Europe knows that the Russian Empress CATHERINE II, because her state has a large number of Germans, has ordered people to study German more than other European languages, and has given awards to the foremost writers in Germany’ (p. 19). Meier went on to commend two other German-speaking monarchs. It is difficult to tell how much of this praise was feigned for political purposes; nevertheless, the recognition of Catherine as one of the rulers of Germans supporting German literature is significant, as it highlighted the capacity of the Russian elite, and of Catherine in particular, to present themselves as supporters both of universal enlightenment and of literature in the various national vernaculars of the empire. Another response to Frederick’s essay, by the German jurist Justus Möser, was reprinted in Russia in 1783 (the same year as Meier’s translation of Jerusalem). Möser defended existing German literature and argued that Frederick should lead the progress of literature by example, in helping Germans turn to their ‘ancient roots’. In this case the Russian edition contained no direct comparisons between the Prussian and Russian linguistic situations, but thanks to the work of Rostislav Danilevskii we know that the journal in which it was published, the Bibliothek der Journale (Library of Journals), had a wide-ranging audience, including not only elite figures such as the playwright Denis Fonvizin and the Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna but also merchants, teachers and actors. Thus the readership was a combination of those in Russia who learned German in order to appreciate German literature and those who grew up there speaking German or who used it in business. Möser’s essay was published alongside pieces by Klopstock, Goethe and other German authors. This journal attests to the existence of a thriving literary community of German-speakers in the capital, whose increasingly nationalistic views of language did not preclude their simultaneous cultural exchange with elite Russians. The interests of this community are reflected to an even greater degree in some later issues of the journal, which contained poems in German with both Russian and German motifs (Danilevskii 1980). As the debate on Frederick’s essay came to a close, Catherine had successfully bolstered her image as an enlightened monarch, ‘benevolently’ furthering the national interests of this sizeable minority in her empire. Simultaneously, German-speakers were able to carve out a cultural space for themselves in the Russian Empire, at a time when growing

28  stephe n br uce national sentiments were not incompatible with broader imperial cultural norms. * * * This chapter has given only a glimpse of how Catherine II attempted to integrate Western European languages into a new notion of Russianness. By promoting French and German as well as Russian, the empress attempted to foster a vision of the Russian Empire as combining the best aspects of European Enlightenment with a rich native heritage and social make-up. This vision, however, was short lived, and the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed a shift in the attitude of some Russians towards Western European languages. National concerns that were already present during the reign of Catherine came to the fore and began to discourage the use of Western European languages. Although some have attributed this change to a national resurgence in resistance to Napoleon’s 1812 invasion (a theme of War and Peace), there were earlier precedents. Already in 1802, for instance, Nikolai Karamzin complained about the widespread use of French in elite society – especially by Russian women, who should, he asserted, serve as a model to Russian male writers (Karamzin 1964). The specifics of this shift in language mentality are the subject for Gesine Argent’s Chapter 6 in this volume. But what is significant for our discussion in this chapter is that the language shift distorted the lens through which later historians have viewed the history of language in Russia. The examples and analysis here show that members of the Russian eighteenth-century elite sought to balance their paramount desire for inclusion in the Western European culture of sociability with their concerns about supporting national culture. Although the equilibrium they found was ephemeral, the multilingualism that they fostered continued to be a defining characteristic of Russian elite culture up to the revolutions of 1917.

NOTES 1. ‘And so, my prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than appanages, estates, of the Buonaparte family.’ 2. The reference is to the Chinese emperor Kang-xi (K’ang-hsi), who lived from 1654 to 1722. 3. On Catherine’s correspondence with Grimm, see also Chapter 2, by Georges Dulac, in Volume 1.

justificati o n o f a mu l t ilingu a l r u s s i a n s o c i e t y   29

REFERENCES Alembert, J. d’ (1751), ‘Discours préliminaire des éditeurs’, in Encyclopédie, Paris: Briasson, vol. 1, pp. i–xlv. Argent, G., D. Offord and V. Rjéoutski (eds) (2015), ‘ The functions and value of foreign languages in eighteenth-century Russia’, Russian Review, 74: 1, 1–19. Beauzée, N. (1765), ‘Langue (Gramm.)’, in Encyclopédie, Paris: Briasson, vol. 9, pp. 249–66. Burbank, J., M. von Hagen and A. Remnev (eds) (2007), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Danilevskii, R. Iu. (1980), ‘Nemetskie zhurnaly Peterburga v 1770–1810-kh gg. (Kharakteristika literaturnykh pozitsii)’, in Russskie istochniki dlia istorii zarubezhnykh literatur. Sbornik issledovanii i materialov, Leningrad: Nauka, pp. 62–105. Diderot, D. and J. d’Alembert (eds) (1751–72), Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand. Available at http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu (last accessed on 24 June 2014). Etkind, A. (2011), Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience, Cambridge: Polity Press. Friedrich der Große (1969), De la littérature allemande, ed. Christoph Gutknecht and Peter Kerne, Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Greenfeld, L. (1992), Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grot, Ia. K. and G. F. Shtendman (eds) (1878), Sbornik russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, vol. 23, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk. Grot, Ia. K. and G. F. Shtendman (eds) (1881), Sbornik russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, vol. 33, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk. Karamzin, N. M. (1964), ‘Otchego v Rossii malo avtorskikh talantov’, in N. M.Karamzin, Izbrannye sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura. Available at http://www.az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_0620.shtml (last accessed on 28 May 2014). Khodarkovsky, M. (2002), Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kopanev, N. A. (2004), ‘Le libraire-éditeur parisien Antoine-Claude Briasson et la culture russe au milieu du XVIIIe siècle’, in J.-P. Poussou, A. Mézin and Y. PerretGentil (eds), L’influence française en Russie au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Institut d’études slaves/Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, pp. 185–200. Lauzon, M. (2010), Signs of Light: French and British Theories of Linguistic Communication, 1648–1789, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lomonosov, M. V. (1952a), ‘O nyneshnem sostoianii slovesnykh nauk v Rossii’, in M. V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, vol. 7, pp. 579–83. Available at http://www.feb-web.ru/feb/lomonos/texts/lo0/ lo7/lo7-5792.htm (last accessed on 28 May 2014). Lomonosov, M. V. (1952b), ‘Rossiiskaia grammatika’, in M. V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, vol. 7, pp. 389–578. Available at http://www.feb-web.ru/feb/lomonos/texts/lo0/lo7/lo7-3892.htm (last accessed on 24 June 2014). Marrese, M. Lamarche (2010), ‘“The poetics of everyday behavior” revisited: Lotman, gender, and the evolution of Russian noble identity’, Kritika, 11: 4, 701–39.

30  stephe n br uce Meier, A. (trans.) (1783), Ieruzalemovo tvorenie o nemetskom iazyke i uchenosti [. . .], St Petersburg: Schnor. Reddaway, W. F. (ed.) (1971), Documents of Catherine the Great: The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767 in the English Text of 1768, New York: Russell and Russell. Venturi, F. (1971), Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vorob’ev, Iu. K. and I. V. Sedina (2007), Zapadnoevropeiskie iazyki v russkoi kul’ture XVIII veka, Saransk: Izdatel’stvo Mordovskogo universiteta.

c h apter 2

Princess Dashkova and the Politics of Language in Eighteenth-Century Russia Michelle Lamarche Marrese

I

n a letter composed in 1807, during her extended stay with Princess Ekaterina Dashkova on her estate at Troitskoe, Catherine Wilmot informed a friend in Ireland, ‘Most good-naturedly the Princess has enter’d into our wish of rummaging for Russia in this country, and as the merchants and peasants still preserve their practices, she order’d a Russian entertainment’ (RIA, MS 12.L.30, p. 159; Wilmot 1935: 248).1 Like her sister, Martha, Catherine remarked on the pervasiveness of foreign influence that she observed in Russia, criticising the tendency of the Russians she encountered – especially women – to imitate French customs and manners. Catherine poked fun at her own inability to learn Russian, declaring that ‘My powers of idleness [. . .] increase daily!’, while noting that Martha had learned to speak and to read ‘wonderfully [. . .] The Princess teaches her & they correspond in notes, every day almost’ (RIA, MS 12.L.30, pp. 47–8; Wilmot 1935: 203). Ironically, although her letters were composed in English, Catherine wrote much of her own journal – as well as her extensive notes on religion and folklore among the Russian peasantry – in French, and confessed to reading French novels pour me distraire un peu. . . (to amuse myself a little) (RIA, MS 12.L.31, p. 35). The letters and journals of the Wilmot sisters touched repeatedly on the significance of multilingualism and cultural borrowing in Russian society. Far from being an anomaly, their commentary was well in keeping with the growing conviction of their contemporaries that language occupied a central place in the construction of individual and national identity. Both sisters devoted much of their stay with Princess Dashkova to seeking the ‘authentic’ in Russian culture – a pursuit that reflected the aspirations of their hostess (Byrne 2009). As we shall see, the Wilmot sisters’ observations about Russian society thus bring to the

32  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e fore three preoccupations in the life of Dashkova in particular and in European society more generally at the turn of the nineteenth century: the role of multilingualism in shaping (or undermining) linguistic and cultural identity; the dangers inherent in cultural borrowing, particularly in the Russian case; and the interplay between gender and language reform.

‘ I SPO KE R USSIAN V ERY B ADLY ’ : LAN G U AG E C HOICE IN DASH KO V A ’ S W RITING In Dashkova’s memoirs, the acquisition and use of language surface on frequent occasions as a key element in her personal mythology. Dashkova’s education, like that of her noble counterparts, included mastery of at least four languages, with a particular emphasis on French. Indeed, one of the most widely quoted passages from Dashkova’s memoirs is her assertion that, having been raised in a French-speaking family in St Petersburg, she learned to speak Russian properly only after her marriage. As was the case with so many of her contemporaries, Dashkova’s Memoirs and the greater part of her correspondence were composed in French. That being said, the archive of the Vorontsov family – Dashkova’s natal clan – suggests that she was in fact raised in a far more complex linguistic and cultural environment than she portrays in her account of her life. Overwhelmingly, scholars have accepted Dashkova’s assertion that she ‘learned Russian as she would a foreign language’, since it was her sole means of communicating with her mother-in-law and much of her husband’s family (Kurochkina 2003: 14; Smith 2006: 24). Indeed, scholars such as Aleksandr Afanas’ev argued that Dashkova’s literary work in Russian was characterised by the absence of a ‘natural affinity’ with her native tongue (Afanas’ev 1860: 183). The majority of Dashkova’s letters to her brother Aleksandr were written in French, with the occasional communication in Russian, such as her letter after Catherine II’s ascension to power, informing him of her appointment as lady-in-waiting to the empress (AKV, vol. 5 (1876), p. 163). Yet the written artefacts of the Vorontsov family indicate that Dashkova not only took lessons in Russian (presumably to improve her ability to write in that language), but that she was exposed to Russian conversation on a regular basis. Like her mother-in-law, Dashkova’s father, Count Roman Larionovich Vorontsov, knew little, if any, French: the letters of his children to him, including those of Dashkova, were composed solely in Russian (AKV, vol. 31 (1885), pp. 21–68, 409–24).2

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   33 Despite the growing inclination of many noble men and women born after the mid-eighteenth century to communicate in French, routine interaction with their families, as well as with nannies and house serfs, nonetheless made speaking and reading knowledge of Russian imperative, even for nobles who could not write it well. Baroness Anna Stroganova, who was raised with Dashkova in the home of Stroganova’s father, maintained a regular correspondence with her parents in 1761 while she lived in Vienna with her husband. Stroganova composed her letters primarily in French, yet she obviously spoke and read Russian: both of her parents wrote to her exclusively in that language. Their correspondence, as well as the contents of Mikhail Vorontsov’s library, indicate that Stroganova’s father could write in French when the occasion required; her mother, however, knew no language other than Russian.3 Indeed, when Dashkova wrote to her aunt and uncle from Moscow soon after her marriage to Mikhail Dashkov, her letter to her uncle was written in French; the letter to her aunt, however, was written in perfectly grammatical Russian – another indication that Dashkova’s knowledge of Russian long predated her marriage and the time she spent with her husband’s family (RGADA, f. 1261, op. 11, ed. khr. 102, 362). Dashkova’s choice of French or Russian depended largely upon her correspondents: with Aleksandr, she communicated almost exclusively in French, even when her letters touched upon estate affairs – a topic that was often discussed in Russian among her contemporaries who made use of both languages.4 A letter to Aleksandr in 1775, in which she wrote about her lack of desire to set eyes on Pugachev, the leader of a peasant rebellion that devastated much of central Russia, survives in Russian, albeit with an excursion into French at the end of the letter (AKV, vol. 5 (1876), p. 183). Dashkova’s correspondence with Count Nikolai Sheremetev, on the other hand, was conducted primarily in Russian, with postscripts in French conveying greetings from her son; her letters to Count Rumiantsev and to Prince Potemkin – both on official matters concerning her son’s military service – were written to the former in their native language and to the latter in French, although Russian seems to have been the language Potemkin preferred when writing personal letters to Empress Catherine II and when composing his heated missives to his niece, Varvara Ėngel’gardt.5 In short, subject matter had little bearing on Dashkova’s choice of language: she composed both personal and business letters in French and Russian, at times mingling the two, particularly in her letters to Martha Wilmot and her family at the end of her life.6

34  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e

DASHK O V A ’ S NATIONALIST MISSION Following her extended travels throughout Europe and her appointment as Director of the Academy of Sciences, however, Dashkova not only published plays and essays in Russian journals, but became an avid proponent of making Russian the focal point of education for young noble men and women. In an essay written in 1783, Dashkova argued that it would be better for Taniushka not to learn [. . .] to chatter in French, and thus not pick up those disgusting feelings in the head and heart that a vile and often debauched French maid impresses on her. She could be a better wife, mother, and lady if she were taught in her own native language instead of learning a foreign one badly, and if she loved her native land instead of disdaining it. (Dashkova 2001b: 122; quoted by Rosslyn 2000: 20) Dashkova thus shared the conviction of her contemporaries that fluency in Russian was instrumental in fostering traditional gender conventions. Young women who were immersed in Russian language and culture were more likely to demonstrate ‘respect for parents, love of order, modesty in housekeeping’, rather than ‘extravagance, frivolity, and carelessness’ – all being characteristics that Dashkova’s cohort associated with the French. Indeed, in her essays, Dashkova consistently lamented the influence of French morals on both noble men and women, resulting in the failure of parents to take charge of their children’s upbringing and the marked lack of veneration of young people for their elders, their native country and their responsibilities to society (Dashkova 2001a: 216). Despite frequent references to her own success in subverting contemporary expectations for women, Dashkova’s essays and memoirs never deviated from their advocacy of traditional gender roles for young Russian men and women, and the danger of foreign influence in undermining her notions of propriety. During her visit to Rome, Dashkova expressed repugnance after a visit to the theatre, ‘which was somewhat disgusting since men acted female roles’. The irony of the pride she took in donning the uniform of a Guards officer and looking ‘like a boy of fifteen’ when she accompanied Catherine to review her troops in 1762 is all the more striking to the reader of Dashkova’s account of her life: while claiming such liberties as her own right, the princess declined to extend them to others, regardless of their sex (Dashkova 1995: 174, 79). Similarly, Dashkova exhibited considerable inconsistency in her pronouncements on the necessity of cultivating the Russian language and Russian culture and the vanity she demonstrated in her own multilingual-

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   35 ism, as well as that of her children. As early as 1763, Dashkova became an active participant in translating essays, primarily from French, for a Russian readership in the journals that appeared early in Catherine’s reign (Longmire 1955: 91). In her Memoirs, Dashkova placed herself at the centre of the creation of the Russian Academy, which would take on responsibility for standardising the rules of Russian grammar, compiling a good dictionary, and doing away with ‘the absurdity of using foreign words [. . .] while having our own which were far more vivid’ (Dashkova 1995: 213).7 Catherine appointed Dashkova as director, despite the latter’s alleged objections: an appointment that Dashkova’s sister, Elizaveta Polianskaia, noted only in a passing comment to their brother, Semen Vorontsov: ‘You must know that there is a new Russian Academy of which the Princess is also the director’ (RGADA, f. 1261, op. 3, ed. khr. 1891, fol. 5 v. (1783)). Yet as director of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Dashkova continued to make use of French in her official correspondence: her letters to Catherine II were frequently composed in French, as were her exchanges with Prince Aleksandr Bezborodko, secretary to the empress (RGALI, f. 1241 (Dashkova Ekaterina Romanovna), op. 1, ed. khr. 1, 2, 4). Moreover, throughout Dashkova’s tenure as director, the records of the Academy of Sciences were, as before, written in French. Even in her most critical essays on the influence of French manners and morals in Russia, Dashkova by no means discouraged young nobles from striving to be bilingual: instead, she objected to ‘jabbering in French’ as the primary focus of noble education and to placing responsibility for the teaching of French, as well as all other subjects, in the hands of French emigrés who were ill-qualified to convey knowledge in any subject and unlikely to encourage traditional values such as respect for parents in their young charges.8 As the use of French had become ‘universal’ among the nobility, she argued, German and Russian instructors, who spoke French without an accent, would serve just as well (Dashkova 2001a: 214–16).

MU LTILIN G U ALIS M IN T H E LIFE OF DASH K OV A AND HER CONTE M PORARIES Dashkova’s fluency in several languages was far from atypical of her contemporaries (on the cultural bilingualism of the Russian nobility see Marrese 2010). Multilingualism, particularly the use of French, was central to defining social status among the eighteenth-century nobility. Noble parents such as Countess Dar’ia Saltykova and her husband,

36  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e Field Marshal Ivan Saltykov, routinely employed foreign tutors and governesses and insisted that their children strive to master numerous languages: their three daughters frequently composed letters of identical content to their parents in Russian, French, German, English and Italian, stating explicitly that ‘this will be the repetition of that what [sic] I wrote in all the other letters’ (RGADA, f. 1386 (Saltykovy), op. 2, ed. khr. 5, 20, 23, 71). Dashkova herself acknowledged that her uncle ‘spared nothing’ to ensure that she and her cousin, Anna Stroganova, ‘received the very best education’, which included the acquisition of ‘perfect knowledge of four languages, particularly French’ (Dashkova 1995: 32). Dashkova failed to specify the other three languages of which she had ‘perfect’ command, commenting only that ‘a state councilor taught us Italian and Mr. Bekhteev [the future tutor to Grand Duke Paul] gave us Russian lessons whenever we felt like it’ (Dashkova 1995: 32). Although French occupied the central role in the arsenal of languages the cultivated Russian noblewoman was expected to have at her command, the ability to communicate in four or five foreign tongues was not unusual for the elite. In the account of her life, Dashkova boasted on numerous occasions of her ability to acquire foreign languages with particular ease. This was especially the case with English. Dashkova’s love of all things British – which stood in stark contrast to her antipathy to French manners and morals – is amply documented both in her memoirs and in the accounts of the Wilmot sisters. Her ‘Anglophilia’, furthermore, embraced Scotland as well as England: she described the years she spent in Edinburgh as ‘the happiest and most peaceful’ of her entire life; her travels throughout Europe were also notable for the appearance of English friends she encountered wherever she travelled. At the end of her years abroad, Dashkova noted that her choice of country when taking her son abroad had not been difficult: ‘I believed his happiness would best be served by giving him an English education’, and that she had not been disappointed in her conviction (Dashkova 1995: 147, 185). During the years they spent with Dashkova, Martha and Catherine Wilmot often remarked upon Dashkova’s passion for their native land. In a letter written in 1805, Catherine – herself an eloquent critic of all things French – quoted Dashkova as saying, ‘I do think, God almighty himself might be proud, when he says, I have made an Englishwoman.’ Catherine then added, in her acerbic way, ‘She is not half so fond of English men’ (RIA, MS 12.L.30, pp. 84–5). Martha also noted that ‘Her English taste presides, and she has really created from rather a barren situation one of the most lovely and magnificent places that is to be found anywhere’ (RIA, MS 12.M.18 (25 August 1803, unpaginated)).

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   37 The question of Dashkova’s mastery of English, as well as her fluency in other languages, was the subject of some discussion among her friends and acquaintances. Dashkova herself harboured few doubts about her abilities: during her stay in Germany in 1770, she claimed that within three weeks she was able to understand everything she read in English, ‘including Shakespeare’. Two English friends read with her each morning and corrected her pronunciation. They ‘were the only teachers I have ever had in that language, with which I soon became fairly familiar’, Dashkova declared (1995: 122). And, at least in written communication, Dashkova seems to have acquired near fluency over the years she spent among the British. A letter to the Principal of Edinburgh University, William Robertson, written after her return to Russia, reveals few mistakes in English, albeit with the occasional Gallicism, such as her declaration that ‘I have taken the habit of not to live for Le Moi, but for my friends’ (NLS, MS 3942, fol. 265). Similarly, Dashkova wrote her daily notes to Martha, as well as letters to Martha’s parents, in English as well as in French; again, with relatively little awkwardness (RIA, MS 12.L.25 (unpaginated)). Yet the testimony of Lord William Wedderburn, a friend in London, and of the Wilmot sisters suggests that Dashkova’s speaking abilities in English left much to be desired. As Wedderburn noted, although Dashkova spoke English with few inhibitions, her conversation might not be as clear to her interlocutors as it was to herself. Catherine Wilmot exclaimed as well about ‘the marvellous contradiction of her speaking like an infant in her broken English’, and observed that she was unconscious of whether she spoke French, English or Russian, or ‘mingles them in every sentence’ (RIA, MS 12.L.30, p. 45; Wilmot 1935: 201). By contrast, Catherine described Dashkova’s daughter, Anastasiia Shcherbinina, as ‘highly skilled in languages, and mistress of the art of pleasing – I never heard an Englishwoman express herself so well as she does in English’ (RIA, MS 12.L.30, p. 14; Wilmot 1935: 173). Although Dashkova took particular pride in her ability to express herself in English, she also made use of, and drew attention to, her knowledge of other languages. Catherine Wilmot remarked that Dashkova spoke both German and Italian with equal fluency, although with a poor accent, which diminished the pleasure she otherwise derived from Dashkova’s lively conversation (RIA, MS 12.L.30, p. 14). While travelling in Naples, Dashkova surveyed the excavations at Pompeii and remarked to the king that the latter should be reconstructed in its original state and opened to tourists, which would increase the revenue of the kingdom. ‘The King, forgetting apparently that I knew Italian,

38  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e said: “She is a clever person, I believe she is right, and all these antiquaries who make a worship of such things were never able to think of it.”’ Dashkova was, moreover, lavish in her praise of women who were familiar with languages she did not know. Upon discovering that her friend the British sculptress Anne Damer was fluent in both Latin and Greek, Dashkova asked ‘[Were you] afraid of humiliating me? But I have told you before: I am very ignorant.’ Significantly, Dashkova also commended Mrs Damer’s modesty, noting that she ‘would never parade her talents and learning’. At the same time, Dashkova did not hesitate to reveal the language deficiencies of her beloved empress, pointing out that – contrary to popular belief – Catherine II knew neither Greek nor Latin (Dashkova 1995: 176, 175, 243). Dashkova’s attention to her multilingualism derived in part from the satisfaction she took in her intellectual accomplishments – ­accomplishments, which, she was quick to note, she had achieved independently, with little or no instruction. Lord Wedderburn also drew attention to Dashkova’s autodidacticism, writing to Robertson that I can only tell you that she has uncommon Parts and a very strong mind which she had begun a little late and by her own exertions to cultivate, consequently you must expect to find a little roughness in it [. . .] Her conversation tho’ it is sensible and animated wants distinction. (NLS, MS 3492, f. 291) Read against the backdrop of Dashkova’s frequent references to her ability to communicate in several languages, her silence on the topic of French is all the more striking. Throughout her Memoirs, Dashkova rarely hesitated to record the compliments she received on her language abilities, her intellectual acumen, even – in the case of her encounter with Voltaire – the beauty of her speaking voice. Yet at no point during her travels in Europe did she draw attention to her ability to speak and write fluently in French. For nobles of both sexes in Dashkova’s circle at court, fluency in French was taken virtually for granted, and – in the formulation of the Soviet cultural critic Iurii Lotman – had become, in many contexts, semiotically insignificant.9 That being said, Dashkova’s counterparts were nonetheless acutely aware of gradations in French fluency, especially when searching for language instructors for their children. Upon meeting the tutor of her sister’s children, Dar’ia Saltykova assured Natal’ia Golitsyna that, despite his Swiss origin, the gentleman had spent years in Paris and spoke ‘very good’ and ‘extremely correct’ French (RGB, OR, f. 64 (Viazemy), k. 101, ed. khr. 8, fol. 1 v. (1776)).

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   39

WO M EN AND MULTILIN GUALIS M Dashkova’s attention to the command of foreign languages as a marker of a cultivated mind was far from unusual in Enlightenment Europe. Nonetheless, facility in several languages bore a kind of symbolic weight in Russia that was not the case in other European cultures. Although multilingualism was widespread among the upper levels of the European nobility in the eighteenth century, in the Russian context facility for foreign languages took on a special significance for both Western observers and Russian contemporaries. European spectators at the Russian court repeatedly underscored ‘imitation’ and ‘flexibility’ as defining traits of the Russian nobility: attributes that highlighted the vital differences between Russia (a culture still in its infancy) and more developed cultures in the West, and that manifested themselves in the character of the Russians they encountered.10 The Wilmot sisters were far from the only visitors to Russia who disapproved of the influence of French culture on the Russian nobility. In a typical account, composed at the end of the eighteenth century, Charles Masson remarked that the ‘noble Russian [. . .] has, in fact, a great aptitude for adopting the opinions, manners, and languages of other nations [. . .] This suppleness of mind and senses is a distinguishing feature.’ According to the son of John Sinclair, the latter strongly disapproved of the predominance of ‘French customs and phraseology’ at the Swedish court where he spent many years, but it was Russia he singled out as ‘the most imitative of nations’ (Marrese 2010: 707). Similarly, in 1769 Lord Cathcart, the British ambassador to Russia, noted that ‘the Russians in general are men of no education or Principles of knowledge of any sort, tho’ not without quickness of Parts’ (NLS, Acc. 12686/10 [A73], p. 487). By contrast, while deploring both the ignorance and cunning of the male population of the Russian court, foreign visitors commented favourably on the language skills of Russian women. Indeed, the subject of women’s language abilities became a commonplace in the correspondence of many foreign diplomats: more than one European observer remarked upon the aptitude for languages which many ladies displayed and which, they asserted, outstripped that of their male counterparts – a commentary that was well in keeping with their general view of gender disorder in Russia in the era of female rule (Marrese 2010: 731). Thus, although Dashkova was an anomaly among her contemporaries in her passion for learning, multilingualism was considered imperative for women, at least at the highest levels of court.11 Yet the question of why multilingualism featured so prominently in the education of Russian noblewomen, and how their education compared with that of

40  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e their European contemporaries, has attracted little attention. In her work on French women and literacy in the Age of Enlightenment, Dena Goodman observes that educators constantly lamented the inability of women to write grammatically and to spell in their own language; indeed, the lack of punctuation and the phonetic spelling that characterised the letters of Russian women in both their native language and in French were prominent features of the letters of elite French women as well. Foreign languages, however, occupied a lesser role in the education of young Frenchwomen. The study of Latin remained overwhelmingly the purview of men; at best, young women were encouraged to acquire some knowledge of Italian or English. Just as French often functioned as a ‘language of intimacy’ for Russian nobles of both sexes, for young French women, Italian could function as a ‘secret language’ in which they could discuss intimate matters, since, as one woman wrote, ‘in French [. . .] anyone could read’ (Goodman 2009: 258). Elite women in Britain also used French as a ‘private’ language for their reflections, as Jane Hamilton, Lady Cathcart, did in the notebooks she kept from childhood until her demise in 1771 (NLS, Acc. 12686/[A66]).12 For Russian noblewomen, as for their counterparts in Europe and in America, both literacy and multilingualism initiated them into the ‘Republic of Taste’, if not the ‘Republic of Letters’ (Kelly 2008). And yet, for most young Russian women, the acquisition of languages was associated with accomplishment, rather than with education: the ability to converse fluently in several languages was a display of decorative feminine achievement, as Dashkova herself implied when she wrote that her education consisted primarily of learning to dance and to draw, as well as to speak four languages – an education which she deemed inadequate, as nothing was done ‘for the improvement of our hearts and minds’ (Dashkova 1995: 32). Indeed, the commentary of European diplomats was devoted primarily to the facility with which young Russian women engaged in charming conversation in several languages, and to their accomplishments as graceful dancers, skilful actresses and able musicians. As the Earl of Buckingham noted, after an evening of entertainment at the Russian court in 1763, ‘I believe so many fine women were never seen upon any stage, and must add, that few countries could produce them’ (SIRIO 1873: 77–9). Thus, from the mid-eighteenth century, noblewomen’s multilingualism served as a means to draw them into the ‘public sphere’ of the court, rather than the realm of learning and letters. Elizabeth Sander argues that, during the Petrine era, as women made their initial appearance at court, ‘dance was, perhaps, the most effective means by which Russians and foreigners could find a common language through shared enjoy-

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   41 ment, and it was virtually the only mode of social interaction that facilitated contact between men and women’ (Sander 2007: 81). Diplomats’ accounts after the mid-eighteenth century, on the other hand, made far more frequent references to Russian women’s talent for making lively and multilingual conversation. For Dashkova, however, multilingualism served less as a decorative accomplishment, and more as a means to expand her range of learning and, during her journeys abroad, to take part in the cultural diplomacy necessary to elevate the status of Russia in the eyes of European intellectuals. Indeed, for all the pleasure she took in demonstrating her abilities in several languages, Dashkova repeatedly categorised the study of foreign languages as a feature of the genteel upbringing for women that produced only useless coquettes. Despite the care Dashkova took to ensure that her own children were fluent in several languages, in this formulation she equated foreign languages with ‘refinement’, which undermined the qualities of modesty and domesticity she deemed appropriate for members of her sex. Multilingualism also offered opportunities for self-fashioning throughout Dashkova’s life. Ironically, while she opposed any violation of traditional gender ideologies among her female contemporaries, Dashkova was prone to refer to herself in the masculine gender in her communications in French and in English – a practice she did not adopt in Russian. In two striking examples, Dashkova spoke of herself as a ‘chevalier’ in her communications with the Wilmot family, while she signed a note to Martha Wilmot in 1805 as ‘the old soldier of Krouglo’.13

‘EV EN IN T HE PRO V INCES , AT TI M ES NO ONE SPEAK S R U SSIAN ’ By the time that Dashkova composed her Memoirs, the conviction that the Russian nobility had turned its back on both its native language and customs, as the words quoted above (Belova 2003: 275) seem to suggest, had become a recurring theme in contemporary journals. Yet the assertions of historians that ‘speaking Russian and knowing its grammar were not considered essential at the turn of the century’ and that Russian nobles were divorced from their native language and their native land (Pushkareva 2003: 116; Figes 2002: 53–7; Belova 2003: 275) is simply not borne out by archival documents. Correspondence among Russian nobles until late in the eighteenth century was conducted, more often than not, in Russian; many of those who communicated primarily in French, such as Princess Natal’ia Golitsyna and the members of her family, had

42  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e spent prolonged periods of time abroad, where French was the primary language of communication. Golitsyna’s father was the diplomat Count Petr Chernyshev and both she and her sister, Dar’ia Saltykova, spent most of their childhood in Europe. Princess Repnina had lived for years in Constantinople when she confessed her poor knowledge of Russian to her cousin, Prince Kurakin, while Fedor Karzhavin admitted to his father that, having spent eight years in Paris, he had lost his ability to communicate in his native tongue (Marrese 2010: 725).14 For Golitsyna, the difficulty of finding tutors who were fluent in Russian was a source of ongoing frustration: while assuring Prince Aleksandr Golitsyn that she had no qualms about the ability of her sons to learn Russian once they returned to their country and to avert the danger of appearing like ‘foreigners’, she could find no one in Paris, aside from a priest who spoke with a Ukrainian accent and whose knowledge was limited to matters that pertained to religion (RGADA, f. 1263 (Golitsyny), op. 1, ed. khr. 7288, fols 1v.–2 (1787)). It was not until the nineteenth century that the use of French became commonplace among nobles outside the narrow circle of the court. Despite his own prominent role in promoting French culture at the court of Empress Elizabeth, Ivan Shuvalov’s letters to his sister, Praskov’ia Golitsyna, make clear that his sister knew only Russian – a conclusion supported by the testimony of her daughter, Countess Varvara Golovina, who remarked, ‘My mother was not rich, and had no opportunity of giving me a brilliant education’ (Golovine 1910: 2; RNB, OR, f. 875, ed. khr. 4, 7). In the provinces, as late as 1834, women such as Princess Irina Urusova lamented the difficulty of finding competent instructors in French for her children; she herself wrote only in Russian, although she occasionally addressed her sister as ma trés chere soeur (my very dear sister) (RGADA, f. 1616, op. 2, ed. khr. 10, fol. 9). And even as the use of French became ever more pervasive, speaking and reading Russian remained imperative for nobles of both sexes in their communications with servants and bailiffs. Women such as Sof’ia Stroganova (the daughter of Natal’ia Golitsyna) carried on personal correspondence with her family in French; her business matters, however, were conducted in Russian (RGADA, f. 1278 (Stroganovy), op. 1, ed. khr. 73, 355, 358, 657). Similarly, the poet Zinaida Volkonskaia conducted business in Russian, despite her alleged inability to speak her native language (RGALI, f. 172, op. 1, ed. khr. 203, 242). Rather than describing the true state of affairs at the end of the eighteenth century, the conviction of Russian intellectuals that their elite compatriots had become alienated from their native culture was part of a pan-European preoccupation with identifying the ‘spirit’ of the nation.

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   43 The Wilmot sisters exemplified this concern, acting as ‘amateur anthropologists’ in the search for what was ‘authentic’ in Russian culture. In her journal, Martha Wilmot remarked upon the ‘unique attire of merchants’ wives’, adding that the customs of the merchantry were ‘the only thing which is perfectly original (in Russia), except the peasants’ (RIA, MS 12.L.22, p. 71). More striking still is a passage in which she noted that ‘I am reading a little essay in Italian [. . .] on the present taste for literature in Italy,’ The author, she wrote, deplores the preference given to foreign productions & foreign [. . .] languages, & the magpie mingle of foreign expressions with the language of the country. He naturally looks upon it as the forerunner of further humiliation [. . .] & speaks so reasonably upon the subject that I am more than ever jealous of the preservation and perfectionizing of English, which I look upon as a bulwark for the independence of the Nation. (RIA, MS 12.L.22, pp. 112–13) Martha’s remarks were reminiscent of similar observations she made about conversations with Russians, complaining that ‘the everlasting mixture of french & Russ prevents my enjoying half the conversation that goes forward, as I cannot comprehend the latter language which is of course constantly used’ (Wilmot 1935: 105). Dashkova’s fluency in Russian, as well as in the other languages she employed, remains a topic of debate. It is worth noting, however, that disparity between written and spoken language was the rule rather than the exception among women throughout Europe, and not confined to the written artefacts of Russian noblewomen. As one young French girl wrote to a friend in 1773, ‘One would never imagine in reading your letters that you speak as correctly as you do, why does your writing not correspond to it?’ (Goodman 2009: 127). Poor spelling, erratic grammar and lack of punctuation characterised the letters of Russian noblewomen as well: mistakes that may have provoked the ire of parents, but were the natural outcome of the shortcomings of their education and of communicating in languages that had yet to be standardised in the eighteenth century. * * * In regard to language, as in so many dimensions of her life, Dashkova epitomised the contradictions of her contemporaries and of her era. On one level, wittingly or not, her essays, plays and Memoirs highlighted the intersection between debates concerning language and anxiety about changing gender conventions and foreign influence in the late e­ ighteenth

44  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e century. They also underscored the tension between Dashkova’s cosmopolitanism and her desire to oversee the advancement of Russian language and culture. Like so many of her noble counterparts, Dashkova made use of multilingualism to demonstrate her citizenship in a wider European culture and as a means of defining her social status. At the same time, she shared the misgivings of her contemporaries about the danger of European influence undermining what was unique in Russian culture. Both the acquisition of foreign languages and her campaign to standardise the Russian language became an integral part of her self-presentation over time. Unlike the vast majority of her female compatriots, she took advantage of her knowledge actively to elevate the status of Russia in the eyes of Western observers. As a result, Dashkova also fulfilled the more personal ambition of promoting her own image as Russia’s foremost woman of letters – a status that culminated on her return to Russia in her appointment by Catherine as director of the Academy of Sciences.

NOTES I would like to thank Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski, Gesine Argent and Michael Marrese for their thoughtful comments and editing, which have greatly improved this essay.   1. The underlining in this and all subsequent quotations from the letters of Catherine and Martha Wilmot belongs to the sisters themselves.   2. See also RGADA, f. 1261 (Vorontsovy), op. 11, ed. khr. 913 and op. 3, ed. khr. 1715 (1765–82).   3. For M. L. Vorontsov’s letters to his nephew, Aleksandr Vorontsov, see AKV, 31 (1885), pp. 84–404. One letter survives in French (pp. 190–1). For his library, see AKV, vol. 32 (1886), pp. 102–3. For his letters to his daughter and other kin, see AKV, vol. 4 (1872), pp. 459–79, and RGADA, f. 1261, op. 3, ed. khr. 182 (1764).   4. On code-switching see Chapter 7, by Jessica Tipton, in Volume 1. Emilie Murphy makes similar observations in her Masters dissertation (Murphy 2009).   5. RGIA, f. 1088 (Sheremetevy), op. 1, ed. khr. 174 (1802–7); RGADA, f. 11 (Perepiska raznykh lits), ed. khr. 45 (Dopolnenie), ed. khr. 925 and ed. khr. 854, fols 32–46.   6. In her memoirs, Dashkova cites an instance of writing a letter ‘partly in Russian and partly in French’ as an example of the ‘incoherence’ of her mind in the weeks before the palace revolution of 1762. See Dashkova (1995: 65) and Marrese (2010: 735). For Dashkova’s letters to Martha Wilmot, see British Library, Manuscript Division, Hardwicke Papers, Additional MS 31, 911, fols 126–43.   7. There is little archival evidence of Dashkova’s role in taking the initiative to bring the dictionary into being, although her role in overseeing and contributing to the dictionary is well-documented. See Bogatova (2001: 11–22). Among Catherine’s papers, one document exists concerning the dictionary and the members of the Academy who would take responsibility for particular words. Dashkova’s name does not appear among these. See RGADA, f. 10 (Kabinet Ekateriny II), op. 2, ed. khr. 380. In her

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   45 declaration on the establishment of the Russian Academy, however, Catherine attributes the plan for the Academy to Dashkova. See Polnoe sobranie zakonov, 21: 15. 839 (30 September 1783).   8. Dashkova contended that the vast majority of French instructors, both male and female, had no ability to teach and had chosen their calling simply as a means of avoiding more demanding work (Dashkova 2001a: 214). As Vladislav Rjéoutski argues, however, the notion of a ‘professional’ instructor is an anachronism when applied to the eighteenth century; he also notes that the education of German instructors was, by and large, higher than that of their French counterparts (Rjéoutski 2013: 121–2).   9. In his description of the ‘Russian dinners’ held by the Decembrist Kondratii Ryleev in the 1820s, Lotman observed that the guests smoked cigars, while making a point of eating traditional Russian dishes, such as cabbage and rye bread. ‘The cigar is strictly a matter of habit, testifying to the profound Europeanisation of everyday life, while the cabbage is an ideologically weighted sign’ (Lotman 1985: 137). 10. It will not escape the reader that ‘flexibility’ and an aptitude for ‘imitation’ are also characteristics gendered ‘feminine’, and opposed to masculine characteristics of ‘originality’ and ‘invention’. 11. The archival record demonstrates, however, that the true state of affairs was more complex. Noblewomen lagged behind their male counterparts in acquiring even the rudiments of literacy (Marrese 2002: 213–15). Moreover, in a survey of more than thirty archival collections of noble family papers from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, I found that – at least for women – writing in French did not become commonplace until the very end of the eighteenth century. Even women who were part of court circles often composed their letters exclusively in Russian (see Marrese 2010: 717–18, 731–2). 12. There are twenty-four notebooks, dating from 1745 until 1771. 13. British Library, Manuscript Division, Hardwicke Papers, Additional MS 35, 526, f. 193 (1804); RIA, MS 12.L.19, p. i (1805). 14. As Anna Kuxhausen notes, the fine performance of young women at Smol’nyi Institute during their language examinations in 1783 suggests that their command of Russian was never as deplorable as the Commission on Public Schools had alleged. Kuxhausen also notes that the letters of the young charges of Smol’nyi to Catherine II were composed exclusively in Russian (see Kuxhausen 2013: 139, 128). This assertion is not borne out by the letters of Aleksandra Levshina, who wrote to Catherine in a mixture of both Russian and French: RGADA, f. 5 (Perepiska vysochaishikh osob s chastnymi litsami), ed. khr. 125, fols 1–29.

REFERENCES Afanas’ev, A. N. (1860), ‘Literaturnye trudy kniagini E. R. Dashkovoi’, Otechestvennye zapiski, 183: 181–218. AKV (1870–95), P. I. Bartenev (ed.), Moscow: Tipografiia A. I. Mamontova, vols 4 (1872), 5 (1876), 31 (1885), 32 (1886). Belova, A. V. (2003), ‘Povsednevnost’ russkoi provintsial’noi dvorianki kontsa XVIII– pervoi poloviny XIX v. (K postanovke problemy)’, in N. L. Pushkareva (ed.), Sotsial’naia istoriia. Ezhegodnik, 2003. Zhenskaia i gendernaia istoriia, Moscow: ROSSPEN, pp. 269–99.

46  miche ll e l a mar c he ma r r e s e Bogatova, G. A. (2001) ‘E. R. Dashkova i slovar’ ee ėpokhi’, in G. A. Bogatova (ed.), Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi 1789–1794, vol. 1, Moscow: Moskovskii gumanitarnyi institut imeni E. R. Dashkovoi, pp. 11–22. British Library, Manuscript Division, Hardwicke Papers, Additional MS 31, 35, 526, 911. Byrne, A. (2009), ‘The Irish in Russia, 1690–1815: travel, gender, self-fashioning’, PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Dashkova, E. R. (1995), The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova: Russia in the Time of Catherine the Great, trans. and ed. K. Fitzlyon; introduction by J. M. Gheith, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dashkova, E. R. (2001a), ‘K gospodam izdateliam “Ezhemesiachnykh sochinenii”: Voprosy’, in Dashkova, Sochineniia, pis’ma, dokumenty, ed. G. I. Smagina, St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, pp. 214–16. Dashkova, E. R. (2001b), ‘O smysle slova “Vospitanie”’, in Sochineniia, pis’ma, dokumenty, ed. G. I. Smagina, St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, pp. 120–7. Figes, O. (2002), Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, New York: Metropolitan Books and Henry Holt and Company. Golovine, V. (1910), Memoirs of Countess Golovine: A Lady at the Court of Catherine II, London: David Nutt. Goodman, D. (2009), Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kelly, C. E. (2008), ‘Reading and the problem of accomplishment’, in H. Brayman Hackel and C. E. Kelly (eds), Reading Women: Literacy, Authorship, and Culture in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 124–43. Kurochkina, I. N. (2003), ‘The formation of behavioral culture in Russian society of the second half of the eighteenth century’, Russian Studies in History, 42: 1, 9–27. Kuxhausen, A. (2013), From the Womb to the Body Politic: Raising the Nation in Enlightenment Russia, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Longmire, R. A. (1955), ‘Princess Dashkova and the intellectual life of eighteenth century Russia’, MA thesis, University of London. Lotman, Iu. M. (1985), ‘The Decembrist in daily life (Everyday behavior as a historical-psychological category)’, in A. D. Nakhimovsky and A. S. Nakhimovsky (eds), The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 95–149. Marrese, M. Lamarche (2002), A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700–1861, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Marrese, M. Lamarche (2010), ‘“The poetics of everyday behavior” revisited: Lotman, gender, and the evolution of Russian noble identity’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 11: 4, 701–39. Murphy, E. (2009), ‘“Je suis plusieurs”: plural subjectivities in life-writing by three francophone Russian women, 1800–1825’, MA thesis, University of Nottingham. NLS, Acc. 12686/[A66], Acc. 12686/10 [A73], MS 3942. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (1830), St Petersburg: v tipografii II Otdeleniia sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo velichestva Kantseliarii, vol. 21. Protokoly zasedanii konferentsii Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk s 1725 po 1803 goda, Tom III (1771–1785); Tom IV (1786–1803) (1900, 1911), St Petersburg. Pushkareva, N. L. (2003), ‘Russian noblewomen’s education in the home as revealed in late 18th- and early 19th-century memoirs’, in W. Rosslyn (ed.), Women and Gender in 18th-Century Russia, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 111–28.

prin cess d as hk o va a nd t he po l itics o f l a n gu a g e   47 RGADA, f. 5 (Perepiska vysochaishikh osob s chastnymi litsami), ed. khr. 125; f. 10 (Kabinet Ekateriny II), op. 2, ed. khr. 380; f. 11 (Perepiska raznykh lits), ed. khr. 45 (Dopolnenie), 854, 925; f. 1261 (Vorontsovy), op. 3, ed. khr. 182, 1715, 1891, and op. 11, ed. khr. 102, 362, 913; f. 1263 (Golitsyny), op. 1, ed. khr. 1–2; f. 1278 (Stroganovy), op. 1, ed. khr. 73, 355, 358, 657; f. 1386 (Saltykovy), op. 2, ed. khr. 5, 20, 23, 71; f. 1616 (Urusovy), op. 2, ed. khr. 10. RGALI, f. 172 (Volkonskaia, Z. A.), op. 1, ed. khr. 203, 242; f. 1241 (Dashkova Ekaterina Romanovna), op. 1, ed. khr. 1, 2, 4. RGB, OR, f. 64 (Viazemy), k. 101, ed. khr. 8. RGIA, f. 1088 (Sheremetevy), op. 1, ed. khr. 174. RIA, MS 12.L.19, 12.L.22, 12.L.25, 12.L.30, 12.L.31, 12.M.18 (Wilmot Papers). Rjéoutski, V. (2013), ‘Les précepteurs francophones en Russie au XVIIIe siècle’, in V. Rjéoutski and A. Tchoudinov (eds), Le précepteur francophone en Europe (XVIIe– XIXe siècles), Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 117–38. RNB, OR, f. 875 (Shuvalov I. I. i Golitsyna (urozhdennaia Shuvalova) P. I.), ed. khr. 4, 7. Rosslyn, W. (2000), Feats of Agreeable Usefulness: Translations by Russian Women, 1763– 1825, Fichtenwalde: Verlag F. K. Göpfert. Sander, E. C. (2007), Social Dancing in Peter the Great’s Russia, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. SIRIO (1873), vol. 12, ed. Ia. K. Grot. Smith, M. (2006), The Influence of French on Eighteenth-Century Literary Russian: Semantic and Phraseological Calques, Oxford: Peter Lang. Wilmot [Martha Wilmot Bradford] (1935), The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot, 1803–1808, edited by the Marchioness of Londonderry and H. M. Hyde, London: Macmillan and Co.

chapter 3

sumarokov and franco-russian translation

Plating ‘Russian Gold’ with ‘French Copper’: Aleksandr Sumarokov and Eighteenth-Century Franco-Russian Translation Svetlana Skomorokhova

A

leksandr Sumarokov (1717–77) was heralded by his contemporaries as Russia’s own ‘Molière’, ‘Boileau’s successor’, the ‘Northern Racine’, the ‘Russian La Fontaine’. However, after only a few decades of Russian literary development the same comparisons with French writers were employed to condemn him as a ‘weak child of lessons by others’ (слабое дитя чужих уроков) (Pushkin [1816] 1959: 370) and his works as mediocre imitations of French authors. Dismissive descriptions of Sumarokov as an eccentric or a ‘pathetic figure’ (Terras 1991: 131) and Soviet class-bound interpretations are now slowly giving way to more nuanced revisionist approaches which present him, for example, as both devout Orthodox Christian and Voltairean philosophe, a critic and a staunch defender of pre-Petrine Russia, a rabid enemy of tearful comedies and passionate proponent of sentiment and tenderness, a francophile and a proto-slavophile, a believer in literary taste rather than classicist rules. (Ewington 2010: 4) In this fairly lengthy list of Sumarokov’s activities there is one significant omission: his role as a translator. In fact, Sumarokov’s legacy has barely been examined through the prism of translation studies. This chapter aims to fill this gap, bringing the theoretical perspective of Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (Even-Zohar 1978, reworked in Even-Zohar 1990) to bear on the discussion of Sumarokov’s paradoxes. For the purposes of the argument here, only a few major postulates of Even-Zohar’s theory, which was developed within the field of translation studies, have been selected. They will be applied to the discussion

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   49 of hierarchical literary interactions within one literary system (the Russian system) and to the role of Franco-Russian translation within it. By focusing our discussion on translated literature in one national literature, we are able to take both an external and internal view of literary interrelation processes. This approach makes it possible to consider both the importing and exporting sides, rather than only the source side or the target side. It also challenges us to locate post-Petrine Russian literature within the ‘centre–periphery’ hierarchies of the contemporaneous European polysystem. I argue that the seeming contradiction of Sumarokov’s insistence on conforming to French literary patterns (the translation strategy of foreignisation), on the one hand, and purification of modern literary Russian (the strategy of domestication), on the other, presents less of a logical conflict when approached polysystemically. His translation strategy, defined here in accordance with conventional Russian translation terminology as ‘free translation’ (вольный перевод), is seen as a choice which several factors more or less compelled him to make. These factors included the predominance of the rhetoric of les belles infidèles (unfaithful beauties) in French literary translation, which coincided with Russian translation tradition, both pre- and post-Petrine, and Sumarokov’s views on authorship and on the codification of the Russian vernacular.

A POLY S Y STE M IC APPROAC H TO EI G H TEENTH CENT U R Y FRANCO-R USSIAN TRANSLATION The paradoxes in Sumarokov’s work that have been highlighted by literary history (for Ewington (2010: 4), for instance, Sumarokov is both a ‘francophile’ and a ‘proto-slavophile’) are less striking when analysed through the prism of translation studies, a field which has regularly dealt with interlingual and intercultural paradoxes (Savory 1957: 49) in its millennia-long practice. Marginalised in national literary histories, translation is normally discussed in canon accounts only at times of intense cultural import, when there is a dearth of local authors or when literary works are produced anonymously. In Russian literary history, such intense literary and linguistic exchange was typical of both the medieval period and the eighteenth century, when the critical mass of literary import was greater than that of the ‘original’ production. While the age of Kievan Rus’ has attracted numerous studies (though in the field of literary historiography rather than translation studies, it should be noted), few translation studies scholars have paid attention to post-Petrine belles lettres. In fact, until Sergey Tyulenev’s recent monograph, ‘paradoxically,

50  svetl a na s ko mo r o kh o va there has been no attempt to describe fully the role of translation in the reformation of Russia in the eighteenth century’ (Tyulenev 2012: 64). Alexei Evstratov, in a recent paper (Evstratov 2013: 32), supports the idea that a holistic approach to the role of translation is needed, arguing that ‘the significance of translation in eighteenth-century Russia needs to be understood for political, cultural and literary spheres.’ If we try to provide a holistic picture of translation in post-Petrine Russia, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the existing approaches to literary production of the time which had a similar (holistic) purpose/ function. Systemic approaches to the treatment of translated literature within the corpus of eighteenth-century Russian literature as a whole belong to a tradition that goes back nearly a century, from Russian formalist approaches that can be found in the early works of Grigorii Gukovskii, first published in 1926–8 (Gukovskii 2001a and 2001b), to Iurii Lotman ([1985] 1992) and the Tartu Semiotic School (Lotman and Uspenskii 1985) and Tyulenev’s recent approximations of Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory (Tyulenev 2011, 2012), to name only a few. From the perspective of translation studies, such approaches to analysis of the literary production of post-Petrine Russia are, essentially, a compromise made by historians of the Russian literary canon to include literary production that is otherwise excluded or marginalised, that is to say translated literature, which is traditionally regarded as ‘secondary’ and ‘unoriginal’ writing: On traditional grounds one could suggest that the whole of noncanonized literature, literature for youth and children, epigonic literature and the whole corpus of translated literature be considered secondary systems. Primary systems, on the other hand, would be original canonized literature for adults of both sexes, if it is not epigonic. (Even-Zohar 1978: 13; my emphasis) Such compromises make it possible to maintain linear continuity in literary chronology, particularly during the periods of ‘dips’ in ‘original’ literary production, thus acknowledging that translation activities may have ‘originality’ during periods of intense cultural borrowing and approximation: It cannot be said that the works of the eighteenth-century Russian poets were a mere imitation of French models [. . .] In the periods of [the empresses] Elizabeth and Catherine Russian poetry turned to foreign literatures in order to learn to build its own, which would be different from the one observed and would be based on reception

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   51 of the foreign material. It was flooded with translations. (Gukovskii [1928] 2001a: 40) Following Gukovskii in his view that there was literary continuity, Lotman goes further and questions the traditional centre–periphery hierarchies when they are applied to the post-Petrine period: To see the explanation of this fact [the existence of a critical mass of translations as opposed to original writing in the Russian literature of the period] in the alleged ‘immaturity’ or ‘dependency’ of eighteenth-century Russian literature is as scientifically unsatisfactory as it is to ignore it, assigning translated literature a place at the far periphery of the literary process. ([1985] 1992: 22) Lotman finds similarities between eighteenth-century Russian literary contexts and the literature of Kievan Rus’ as discussed by Dmitrii Likhachev (1973: 15–23) and applies the term transplantation that was used by Likhachev to describe the cultural transfers en masse in the eighteenth century. Lotman even finds ‘features of typological parallelism between the two epochs’ ([1985] 1992: 22), typologies which, I suggest, can only be comfortably linked along the axis of translation. Yet while ‘transplantation’ in both Likhachev’s and Lotman’s interpretation highlights the receptive powers of the target literary system, use of the term could be criticised on the grounds that, to a certain extent, transplantation occurs in the case of every successful translation.1 It follows that translation history in any particular target literature can be seen as a history of multiple transplantations, a history of rewriting and reinterpretation of major source texts, whose ‘cultural strata’ (Likhachev 1973: 22) acquire a different function in the target literary system a priori because the system components are different. Therefore, when following Lotman in the search for a place for translated literature that would go beyond conventional literary boundaries, we might plausibly extend this search further than individual ‘transplantations’. Even-Zohar’s polysystemic theory offers a useful systemic approach to the interpretation of the eighteenth-century Russian literary scene, where translated literature exerted the main influence.2 The originality of this theory, in which European literary centre–periphery hierarchies are at the core, lends it particular validity in the Franco-Russian context. Moreover, it has methodological connections with Russian formalism (particularly the system theory of Iurii Tynianov), for Even-Zohar is aware of Russian literary history and its compatibility with his theoretical formulations (1990: 1).

52  svetl a na s ko mo r o kh o va Even-Zohar stretches the term ‘system’ to ‘polysystem’ in order to highlight the complexity of literary production, where various agents, patrons and negotiators are involved in complex interactions as part of a literary process. He then leaves the confines of a national literature and extends this terminology to several national literatures which, he argues, also exist in a systemic relationship. This relationship is first and foremost of a hierarchical nature, with the notion of prestige lying at its core. In looking at literary interrelations within Europe, Even-Zohar sees European literatures as one system with ‘obvious hierarchical relations: some literatures assume a position in the centre while others are pushed to the periphery’ (Even-Zohar 1990: 48). Within this dynamic system literatures are striving for prestige and centrality: Central ones are ‘major’ and ‘strong’, whereas peripheral ones are ‘minor’ and ‘weak’ from the point of view of relations within the system (the reader is asked not to translate these statements into aesthetic value judgments!). Those literatures which assume a peripheral position behave like all peripheral entities: they take over features which are often outdated for the central system; they are usually target literatures and rarely function as source literatures. Of course it may happen that under certain conditions (which have not yet been clarified) a ‘peripheral’ literature may rise to a central position and become a major source literature [. . .]. On the other hand a central literature may be pushed to the periphery. (1990: 40) The systemic arrangements are such that ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ literatures coexist and develop in a symbiosis similar to commensurate relationships between organisms in nature. According to Even-Zohar, symbiosis is ‘often dictated by the “defective” nature of a certain literature, that is to say its lack of certain systems (types, genres), which is frequently a result of socio-cultural conditions’ (1978: 46). This interrelationship is mostly seen as temporary and exists under certain conditions: (a) when a polysystem has not yet been crystallized, that is to say, when a literature is ‘young’, in the process of being established; (b) when a literature is either ‘peripheral’ or ‘weak’, or both; and (c) when there are turning points, crises, or literary vacuums in a literature. (1990: 23) Translated literature, in this case, becomes a temporary aid suited to the needs of the ‘weaker’ literature. Even-Zohar’s ‘termini technici’ (1990: 14), which, he insists, are used

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   53 without any evaluative suggestions, have been criticised for their judgemental overtones (see the summary of the arguments in Gentzler (2001), and the discussion of the terminology in Chang (2011)). Definition of Russian eighteenth-century literature as ‘defective’ or ‘weak’ would contradict nationalist readings of its history and would contravene the need for objectivity in terminology. However, similar evaluative judgements perpetuate the myth of the discontinuity and ‘new start’ of eighteenthcentury Russian literature (Lotman and Uspenskii 1985: 52–4) and even the idea that Russia only belatedly became aware of high European culture. If we leave these theories aside and cast a closer look at Russian eighteenth-century literary production, several conclusions are possible. Firstly, Russian literature at the time exhibited some behavioural characteristics of a ‘new’ literature, given the cultural appropriation en masse of various genres and literary forms via translation into Russian ‘in order to make it functionable as a literary language’ (Even-Zohar 1990: 47). Secondly, and hardly surprisingly, it becomes clear that eighteenth-century Russian literature began contextualising itself within the European literary system, thus beginning a tradition that continues to this day. Since eighteenth-century Russian authors were acutely aware of a need to equal and, they hoped, eventually to surpass French literature, it is fair to conclude that Russian self-validation occurred within the context of European discourse about centre–periphery prestige positions, in which Russia sought to achieve cultural centrality alongside first the Parisian and later the ‘Greenwich literary meridian’ (Casanova 2007). Thus, ‘central’ French literature became a cultural benchmark to ‘learn from’ (Gukovskii [1928] 2001a: 40) and, eventually, to supersede in order to attain centrality within the European literary system. Consequently, Russia suddenly began to import literary products within a short period: ‘Even in the first decade of Catherine’s reign the literary productivity became five times greater than during the previous decade’ (Slonim 1964: 32). Indeed, the volume of translation became so great that it came to the forefront of literary production in the Russian polysystem: ‘The number of translated works in eighteenth-century Russia is not only great in its absolute and relative sense – it is so great that it cannot be denied as being a certain specific attribute of the culture of that period in general!’ (Lotman [1985] 1992: 22). As the ratio between original and translated novels published in literary journals was 1 : 31 (p. 22), it is safe to suggest that translation assumes the central position in the Russian eighteenth-century literary polysystem, helping it to fill the gaps, providing new moulds and genres and importing linguistic borrowings from the centre to the periphery. Therefore, an unequal relationship between original and translated works is temporarily consolidated in the

54  svetl a na s ko mo r o kh o va ­

polysystem of a new or a less-developed literature, with ‘the result that a relation of dependency is established not only in secondary systems, but in the very centre of these literatures’ (Even-Zohar 1978: 23). Even-Zohar goes on to say that while ‘stronger’ literatures can afford the luxury of looking for solutions to their deficiencies in their own internal resources, ‘the “weak” literatures in such situations often depend on import alone’ (p. 23). Ernest Simmons (1932: 791) provides the necessary data for this conclusion: Under the spell of this French influence there was little incentive for original literary effort, and the majority of printed works in Catherine’s time were translations from French. In the drama, for example, up to 1787 there had been 134 translations of French plays, and only thirty from German and five from English. Even-Zohar takes this dependency even further, suggesting that ‘a source literature may function for a target literature almost as if it were a part of it’ (1978: 45). This is applicable either to ‘the literature of a minority group within a majority group, or to groups which are geographically connected to or politically subjugated by some other group’ (p. 45). His examples include the symbiosis of Ukrainian and Russian (pp. 45–6), but it could equally be argued that French literature also served as part of Russian literary production at this time. Dmitrii Tiulichev (1988) states that over a twenty-year period, 1722–42, the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg received almost 1,500 books in French, the majority of which remained untranslated. Multilingalism and bilingualism were widespread: to give just one example, Sumarokov’s education, typically for the time, was multilingual, and he studied in French and German. In practice multilingualism entailed casual linguistic code-switching and macaronic usage, of which Sumarokov was extremely critical in a number of his works, including ‘On Extirpation of Foreign Words from Russian’ (‘O istreblenii chuzhikh slov iz russkogo iazyka’) and ‘Language Corruption’ (‘Porcha iazyka’). It was also used to verify translation strategies, since readers had the linguistic competence to compare source texts and target texts. This was the argument used by Vasilii Trediakovskii in the preface ‘To the Reader’ (‘K chitateliu’) to his translation of Voyage to the Island of Love (Voyage de l’isle d’amour): ‘I am quietly very pleased with myself just for managing to translate it: for though it is not large, it is wise, and all those who have read it in French can believe me’ ([1730] 1989: 190). Thus, typically for situations of bilingualism, the purpose of translation becomes not the transfer of information, but the development of the

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   55 target literature (Skomorokhova 2013), with translators attaining literary prestige on a par with the original authors. Applying polysystemic notions to the Russian literature of Sumarokov’s time, we may conclude that the literature of his day was culturally dependent on French literature. It conformed for a while to the behavioural patterns of a ‘new’ or ‘minority’ literature reliant on cultural importation from the hegemonic language. It also engaged in extensive linguistic borrowing from the hegemonic language in order to sustain the target language and increase its prestige.

SUM ARO K O V: T H E TRANSLATOR AS CO MPETITOR Sumarokov was a polyglot and an active translator for most of his literary career. A graduate of the Land Cadet Corps, he knew French and German, and there is also evidence that he knew Italian (Gukovskii 1941: 365) and Polish (Berkov 1962: 381). He translated numerous literary works from French and German, spoke and corresponded in several languages and translated his own letters. He also wrote about translation, giving advice to novice translators, engaged in heated debates on translation with his contemporaries and wrote reviews of translations. He even took part in translation ‘competitions’, as when he, Mikhail Lomonosov and Trediakovskii each translated Psalm 143 for a special publication containing all three versions in 1744, and when he and Lomonosov translated Jean-Baptiste Rousseau’s ode ‘To Fortune’ (‘A la Fortune’) in 1760 (Gukovskii 2001: 251–76). However, in spite of the plethora of evidence of his multilingual activities, Sumarokov as a translator is hardly commented upon in current academic discourse, where he is presented ‘almost exclusively as a playwright and poet’ (Drage 2013: 873). Notable exceptions are few in number: in a paper published in the first edition of what would become the main professional journal for Soviet translators, Tetradi perevodchika (A Translator’s Workbook), Ada Fiterman (1963) gives a short account of Sumarokov’s linguistic views and uses his translation of Hamlet as a case study. Though this paper may be singled out as the most detailed analysis of Sumarokov’s translation strategies in comparison with other existing publications on the subject, it can hardly be defined as ‘an overview of Sumarokov’s translation method’ (Ewington 2010: 211) as it offers only a short account of his views on Russian language usage, with an emphasis on his purism. Moreover, Fiterman’s textual analysis of Gamlet is essentially limited to listing Trediakovskii’s critical comments and Sumarokov’s refutation of those, with only two quotations

56  svetl a na s ko mo r o kh o va from the actual translation analysed by the author (Fiterman 1963: 17, 19). Nor is this analysis linked to Fiterman’s initial theoretical investigation of Sumarokov’s views on either translation or linguistic borrowing. However, given the limited size of the publication (the article, published in the inaugural issue of the journal, is only seven pages long), it would be unreasonable to expect detailed treatment of Sumarokov’s translation strategy. As it is, it represents a pioneering attempt at an account of Sumarokov’s legacy as a translator, a subject that still needs a detailed study. Sumarokov’s translation of Hamlet is again considered in Irina Keshabyan’s comparative corpora study of the concepts of ‘vengeance’ and ‘honour’ in Shakespeare’s text and Sumarokov’s version (Keshabyan 2009). Surprisingly, though, Keshabyan’s analysis is not based on Sumarokov’s source text, which ‘acts only as a reference text as we deal with the English translation of this text, translated by Richard Fortune in 1970’ (Keshabyan 2009: 236). Given that Sumarokov used French as a relay language, the analysis becomes dependent on a multilayered translation process: Shakespeare–La Place–Sumarokov–Fortune– Shakespeare. Several scholars undertake textual analysis to compare Sumarokov’s translations against the source texts. David Marshall Lang has compared extracts from Sumarokov’s ‘Epistle on Poetry’ (‘Epistola o stikhotvorstve’, 1748) to the corresponding passages in Boileau’s ‘Poetic Art’ (‘L’Art poétique’, 1674) (Lang 1948). Joachim Klein has compared Sumarokov’s version of Fénelon’s Adventures of Telemachus (Les aventures de Télémaque, 1699) to the source text (Klein 2005: 71–80). Other scholars have compared his translations of Fleming’s sonnets about Moscow to Fleming’s original (Spitzer 1989; Ober and Wade 1990). A comparative literary approach informs Michael Heim Berman’s doctoral thesis, ‘Trediakovskij, Sumarokov and Lomonosov as Translators of West European Literature’ (1971), where a classification of Sumarokov’s translations is provided. Berman claims that ‘translation was [. . .] no more than a sideline for Sumarokov’ (Berman 1971: 185), a point which may be deduced from his existing translations. However, the significance of translation is apparent from Sumarokov’s correspondence throughout his career (for example, he translated his own letters and mentioned translation issues), and translation becomes crucial to an understanding of the author’s position within his contemporary literary scene. Without it, as I indicated in my introduction, a study of Sumarokov reverts to a collection of paradoxes, where he is seen, on the one hand, as a Russophone and a purist who consolidates efforts on the codification of the Russian vernacular and has his own school of followers, and, on the other hand, a mediocre imitator or (and, perhaps,

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   57 worse) an unskilled translator accused of using ‘translationese’. Thus his comedies, it has been said, ‘are adaptations of French plays, with a feeble sprinkling of Russian traits. Their dialogue is a stilted prose that had never been spoken by anyone and reeked of translation’ (Mirsky [1926] 1999: 54). If Sumarokov’s writings are seen as ‘adaptations’ (domesticating or ‘free’ translation strategy) containing ‘translationese’ (foreignisation or ‘literal’ strategy), then it is worth considering the translation strategies he reverted to in the context of the dominating literary translation poetics of the day. In the context of the Russian system’s dependency on French literature that was discussed in the previous section of this chapter, French cultural influence on Russian literary production also stretched to include translation strategies. In eighteenth-century France, the dominating approach was the so-called belles infidèles method, or ‘free translation’ method in Russian terminology, which can be defined in translation studies as extreme domestication. Adopted by French literati in the early seventeenth century, this method ‘continued to be a dominant feature of translation into French well into the eighteenth century’ (Salama­-Carr 1998: 411). Some of its core tenets originated in the principles of translation put forward by Etienne Dolet, who recommended vernacular use, avoidance of word-for-word translation and clarification of obscurities. Its greatest proponent was Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, whose translations included multiple ‘corrections’ of ‘erroneous’ source texts rewritten to suit contemporary tastes. This practice was consolidated by a number of seventeenth-century translators, such as Louis Giry, Benserade, Pierre Perrin, Paul Pellisson and Jean Segrain. Monsieur de la Valterie, for instance, insisted that he had stayed true to Homer by rewriting him, as the latter would not have ‘intended to offend the reader’ (Salama­-Carr 1998: 411). This translation strategy would have appealed to Sumarokov for a number of reasons besides the much-discussed imitation of the dominant aesthetics (Klein 2005: 303–6). Firstly, it complemented the longstanding tradition inherited from anonymous translators of medieval Rus’ where anonymity allowed for significant rewritings of secular source texts. A number of European medieval romances and ‘light’ readings were translated and rewritten using relay languages, such as Polish. Eighteenth-century Russian literature had also created precedents for the widespread recycling of materials, and translators regularly added or omitted large chunks of source texts or replaced them with passages of their own. This was done by both of Sumarokov’s competitors in literary translation, Lomonosov and Trediakovskii, with the latter exclaiming ‘Why should readers care whether the words they read are mine or

58  svetl a na s ko mo r o kh o va someone else’s, as long as what they read is pleasurable, important, and useful?’ (Friedberg 1997: 30). Secondly, the dynamic character of the Petrine reforms called for a new type of translation: the summarising and adaptation of the original to clarify its message. In his ‘Edict to Zotov for Avoiding Future Mistakes’ (‘Ukaz Zotovu ob izbeganii v budushchem oshibok’), promulgated in 1709, Peter writes: ‘In translation, discourse should not be kept as it was said, but, when the sense has been understood, it should be written in one’s own language as clearly as it can be’ (quoted by Fedorov 1983: 41). Sumarokov could sympathise with these principles because of his preference for ‘simplicity’ and clarity in poetic discourse, which he commended in his ‘Instruction to Aspiring Writers’ (‘Nastavlenie khotiashchim byti pisatel’iami’): Кто пишет, должен мысль очистить наперед И прежде самому себе подати свет, Дабы писание воображалось ясно И речи бы текли свободно и согласно. По сем скажу, какой похвален перевод. Имеет склада всяк различие народ: Что очень хорошо на языке французском, То может скаредно во складе быти русском. (Sumarokov [c. 1774] 1957: 134–5)3

Thus, successful translation strategy, to Sumarokov, could never be ‘foreignising’, as he argued for syntactic and lexical clarity: Коль речи и слова поставишь без порядка, И будет перевод твой некая загадка, Которую никто не отгадает ввек, Хотя и все слова исправно ты нарек. (Sumarokov [c. 1774] 1957: 134–5)4

Thirdly, since the Russian language required normalisation, translators had much freedom when it came to linguistic choice and rewriting: they could act not only as translators but also as ‘gatekeepers’ of linguistic borrowings, that is to say codifiers, stylists and purifiers of Russian. Thus Sumarokov used Trediakovskii’s version of The Adventures of Telemachus to illustrate his own stylistic inclinations via intralingual translation (Nikolaev 2002: 143–9). ‘Gatekeeping’ also had a cultural dimension: like French translators, Sumarokov took responsibility for protecting the public from ‘bad taste’ or offensive passages. In his translation of

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   59 Voltaire’s Micromégas, defined by Amanda Ewington as ‘a stylistic experiment’ (2010: 112), he goes beyond stylistic innovation and ‘effectively strips the tale of its anticlerical context’ (p. 114). Fourthly, Sumarokov saw himself as an original author operating within the context of the European, and particularly French, literary polysystem. He was ‘keenly interested in the spread of his work outside Russia’, and a number of translations of his works appeared ‘during his life-time, mostly [translations] into French but in some cases into German’ (Rjéoutski and Offord 2013). He proudly quoted Voltaire’s letter as proof of his literary authority and of the existence of dialogue with a primary member of the ‘central’ literature (Sumarokov [1771–4] 1957: 201). He was upset when Count Andrei Shuvalov ascribed a secondary literary position to him in L’Année littéraire (The Year in Literature), saying he had been ‘abused [. . .] in front of all Europe’ (Reyfman 1990: 17). Yet his status as an original Russian writer was paramount. Acknowledging his debt to Racine, he nevertheless stressed his own innovations: It was as if I was walking without a guide through a forest which hid the dwelling of the muses from my eyes, and though I owe much to Racine, I saw him when I had left that forest and when Mount Parnassus had already appeared before my eyes. But Racine is French and could not give me any instruction in Russian. For Russian and clarity of expression I am indebted to no-one but myself, in either verse or prose. ([1759] 2002: 301) Sumarokov saw himself as a Russian author who was entitled to present foreign authors in the way that was most fitting for a Russian readership, in Russian ‘fashion’. The best practitioner of this cultural appropriation and successful translation was Catherine II herself, as he explained in a poem ‘On the French Language’ (‘O frantsuzskom iazyke’): Стремится нас она наукой озарять, А не в французов нас некстати претворить, И неоспориму дает на то надежду, Сама в российскую облекшися одежду. ([1771–4] 1957: 192)5

If translation is regarded as changing clothes, then adaptations of originals to suit different tastes and fashions become inevitable: И мода стран чужих России не закон (And the fashions of other countries are not laws for Russia) (p. 192). Foreignising translators, dressed in

60  svetl a na s ko mo r o kh o va unfashionable foreign clothes, are then seen as inadequate or even ‘mad’: Французского хватив, он стал совсем безумен (upon tasting French, he became completely mad) (p. 192). Sumarokov believed such translators were ‘plating Russian gold with French copper’ (русско золото французской медью медит) (p. 192). In stating this (and simultaneously neologising the verb медить), he effectively reduced the highly favoured and much imitated French culture to a level associated with cheapness and poverty. Therefore, a successful translator should never slavishly follow the author: he knows better what is needed by the target audience, as implied in Sumarakov’s ‘Instruction to Aspiring Writers’ (p. 134) and ‘Language Corruption’ (p. 223). If Trediakovskii believed that ‘a translator differs from a creator in name only’ ([1730] 1989: 190), Sumarokov saw the translator as co-creator: Не мни, переводя, что склад тебе готов: / Творец дарует мысль, но не дарует, слов (Sumarokov [c. 1774] 1957: 134).6 His literary practice provides numerous examples of free translations where the thoughts of the original as well as the words are ‘refashioned’ in accordance with Sumarokov’s poetics, making him not only a co-author, but a competitor on a par with the creator of the source text. Such ‘refashioning’ becomes even more important in the context of his theatre involvement, as the main requirement of the translation of drama is performability. * * * Sumarokov’s preference for ‘free translation’ was rather inevitable, given the prevailing translation tradition with which he sought to engage and compete. He believed it was his right to codify the Russian vernacular and enlighten his readers by reinterpreting the models central to the European literary polysystem. By placing his work in the context of the European polysystem, within which Sumarokov conformed to the dominant patterns and ideas of his day and competed with the aim of gaining a prestigious literary position both as a European and a Russian author, we may form a more nuanced view of this writer’s apparent paradoxes. His controversial support for both linguistic purism and language innovation, his adherence to the norms of French poetics and his bold refashioning of French authors according to Russian stylistics all highlight the complex relations between French and Russian in the eighteenth-century Russian Empire. Seen in this light, Sumarokov may be read not as he used to be, as an odd figure belonging to a bygone era, but in a new way. His life and work illustrate the tension between homogenisation and heterogenisation, which are the central themes in current globalisation debates within world literature and translation studies.

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   61

NOTES 1. Another possible criticism of the term is that it may imply that something is being foisted upon the target system. In that case, the target system is seen as having a passive role, rather than an active one. For Lotman, however, transplantation is an active process which verifies the target literature’s creative reception mechanisms. 2. Blending descriptive translation studies with Luhmann’s social systems theory, Tyulenev (2012) argues for the use of ‘system’ rather than ‘polysystem’ to include other types of cultural production. While I recognise this as a productive approach in line with Pym’s ideas of the translated text as a locus of culture or translators as agents of cultural change (2003), its literary focus allows the original use of Even-Zohar’s coinage. 3. ‘Those who write should first clarify their thoughts, / And, first of all, enlighten themselves, / So that the writing will be imagined clearly / And the speeches will flow freely and in accord. / Here I will say what translation is worthy of praise. / Different peoples have different ways of discourse: / What can be very good in French / Can be very poor in Russian.’ 4. ‘If you are going to put speeches and words in no order / Then your translation will be a mystery / Which no one ever will be able to puzzle out, / Even though you have used all the proper words.’ 5. ‘She aims to enlighten us with learning, / And not to turn us suddenly into the French, / And of that she gives us undeniable hope / By donning Russian clothes herself.’ 6. ‘Do not think that you are given discourse: / The creator gives the thought but not the words.’

REFERENCES Berkov, P. N. (1962) ‘Shest’ pisem A. P. Sumarokova k istoriografu G.-F. Milleru (1767–1769) i chetyre zapiski poslednego k Sumarokovu’, XVIII vek. Sbornik 5, ed. P. N. Berkov, Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, pp. 376–82. Berman, M. H. (1971), ‘Trediakovskij, Sumarokov and Lomonosov as Translators of West European Literature’, PhD thesis, Harvard University. Casanova, P. (2007), World Republic of Letters, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chang, N. F. (2011), ‘In defence of polysystem theory’, Target, 23: 2, 311–47. Drage, C. L. (2013), ‘Ewington, Amanda: A Voltaire for Russia: A. P. Sumarokov’s Journey from Poet-Critic to Russian Philosophe’ [Review of Ewington 2010], The Slavonic and East European Review, 91: 4, 872–4. Even-Zohar, I. (1978), Papers in Historical Poetics, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. Even-Zohar, I. (1990), ‘Polysystem Studies’, Poetics Today, 11: 1, 1–253. Evstratov, Alexei (2013) ‘Drama translation in eighteenth-century Russia: masters and servants on the court stage in the 1760s’, in L. Burnett and E. Lygo (eds), Art as Accommodation: Literary Translation in Russia, Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 31–54. Ewington, A. (2010), A Voltaire for Russia: A. P. Sumarokov’s Journey from Poet-Critic to Russian Philosophe, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

62  svetl a na s ko mo r o kh o va Fedorov, A. V. (1983), Osnovy obshchei teorii perevoda (Lingvisticheskie problemy), 4th edn, Moscow: Vysshaia shkola. Fiterman, A. (1963), ‘Sumarokov – perevodchik i sovremennaia emu kritika’, Tetradi perevodchika, 1: 12–19. Friedberg, M. (1997), Literary Translation in Russia: A Cultural History, University Park: Pennsylvania State Press. Gentzler, E. (2001), Contemporary Translation Theories (revised 2nd edn), Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gukovskii, G. A. (1941), ‘Sumarokov i ego literaturno-obshchestvennoe okruzhenie’, in Istoriia russkoi literatury: V 10 t., Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1941–56, vol. 3: Literatura XVIII veka, part 1, pp. 349–420. Gukovskii, G. A. (2001a), ‘Lomonosov, Sumarokov, shkola Sumarokova’, in V. M. Zhivov (ed.), Rannie raboty po istorii russskoi poėzii XVIII veka, Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, pp. 40–71. Gukovskii, G. A. (2001b), ‘K voprosu o russkom klassitsizme (Sostiazaniia i perevody)’, in V. M. Zhivov (ed.), Rannie raboty po istorii russskoi poėzii XVIII veka, Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, pp. 251–76. Keshabyan, I. (2009), ‘Analysing the concepts of vengeance and hono(u)r in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sumarokov’s Gamlet: a corpus-based approach to literature’, International Journal of English Studies, 9 (special issue: Recent and Applied Corpus-Based Studies): 235–57. Klein, J. (2005), Puti kul’turnogo importa: Trudy po russkoi literatury XVIII veka, Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury. Lang, D. M. (1948), ‘Boileau and Sumarokov: the manifesto of Russian classicism’, Modern Language Review, 43: 4, 500–6. Likhachev, D. S. (1973), Razvitie russkoi literatury X–XVII vekov: Ėpokhi i stili, Leningrad: Nauka. Lotman, Iu. M. [1985] (1992), ‘“Ezda v ostrov liubvi” Trediakovskogo i funk-​ tsiia perevodnoi literatury v russkoi kul’ture pervoi poloviny XVIII veka’, in Iu. M. Lotman, Izbrannye stat’i, 3 vols, Tallinn: Aleksandra, vol. 2, pp. 22–8. Lotman, Iu. M. and B. A. Uspenskii (1985), ‘Binary models in the dynamics of Russian culture’, in A. D. Nakhimovsky and A. S. Nakhimovsky (eds), The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History: Essays by Iurii M. Lotman, Lidia Ia. Ginsburg, Boris A. Uspenskii, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 30–66. Mirsky, D. S. [1926] (1999), A History of Russian Literature, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Nikolaev, S. I. (2002), ‘A. P. Sumarokov – perevodchik s russkogo iazyka na russkii’, Russian Literature: Eighteenth-Century Russian Literature, 52: 1, 141–9. Ober, K. H. and M. R. Wade (1990), ‘Moßkaw/Moskva: Sumarokov’s Translations of Fleming’s Sonnets’, Germano-Slavica, 6: 5, 259–84. Pushkin, A. S. [1816] (1959), ‘K Zhukovskomu’, in D. D. Blagoi et al. (eds), Sobranie sochinenii v 10 tomakh, vol. 1: Stikhotvoreniia 1814–1822, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, pp. 368–71. Pym, A. (2003) ‘Alternatives to borders in translation theory’, in S. Petrilli (ed.), Translation Translation, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 451–63. Reyfman, I. (1990), Vasilii Trediakovsky: The Fool of the ‘New’ Russian Literature, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rjeoutski, V. and D. Offord (2013), ‘Translation and propaganda in the mid-eighteenth century: French versions of Sumarokov’s tragedy Sinav and Truvor’, at http://frinru.

sum aroko v a nd f r a nco - r us s ia n t r a n s l a t i o n   63 ilrt.bris.ac.uk/introduction/translation-and-propaganda-mid-eighteenth-centuryfrench-versions-sumarokov%E2%80%99s-tragedy (last accessed on 18 February 2014). Salama­-Carr, M. (1998), ‘The French tradition’, in M. Baker (ed.), Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, London: Routledge, pp. 406–11. Savory, T. (1957), The Art of Translation, London: Jonathan Cape. Simmons, E. J. (1932), ‘Catherine the Great and Shakespeare’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 47: 790–806. Skomorokhova, S. (2013) ‘The Belarusian literary landscape and translation “waves”’, Translation Studies, 6: 2, 183–98. Slonim, M. (1964), The Epic of Russian Literature: From its Origins through Tolstoy, New York: Oxford University Press. Spitzer, C. (1989), ‘Alexander Sumarokov’s translations of Paul Fleming’s Sonnets to Moscow’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 23: 3, 331–8. Sumarokov, A. P. (1957), Izbrannye proizvedeniia, ed. P. N. Berkov, Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’. Sumarokov, A. P. [1759] (2002), ‘K nesmyslennym rifmotvortsam’, Kritika XVII veka, compiled by A. M. Ranchin and V. L. Korovin, Moscow: Olimp, AST, pp. 300–2. Terras, V. (1991), A History of Russian Literature, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Tiulichev, D. V. (1988), Knigoizdatel’skaia deiatel’nost’ Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk i M. V. Lomonosov, Leningrad: Akademii nauk SSSR. Trediakovskii, V. ([1730] 1989), ‘K chitateliu’, Istoriia russkogo literaturnogo iazyka, compiled by A. N. Kozhin, 2nd edn, Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, pp. 190–1. Tyulenev, S. (2011), Applying Luhmann to Translation Studies: Translation in Society, New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Tyulenev, S. (2012), Translation and the Westernization of Eighteenth-Century Russia, Berlin: Frank & Timme GmbH.

chapter 4

Francophone Culture in Russia Seen through the Russian and French Periodical Press Carole Chapin

T

he French language was widely known and used in high society in eighteenth-century Russia; indeed it was commonly considered superior to Russian. However, during the second half of the century, debate began about the respective merits of the two languages and the supposed effects of Russian francophonie. While some Russian literati thought that Russian national culture could be improved if Russians used the French language and imitated French belles lettres, other writers, including dramatists such as Aleksandr Sumarokov and Vladimir Lukin and certain individuals who anonymously represented court opinion in periodical publications, found various ways of expressing concern at the prospect of foreign cultural domination. Attempts to resist such domination included the creation of fictitious Francophile characters whose extravagant behaviour was ridiculed in imaginative literature, on the stage1 and in articles that appeared in the periodical press, which became one of the major fora for linguistic debate. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of journalistic contributions to discussion of Russian francophonie. (I am not concerned here with the occurrence of French in Russian periodicals – a subject which would itself constitute a worthwhile field for investigation – or with the Russian francophone press.2) In the process of considering this discussion, I hope to show that the periodical press was an important medium for the development of linguistic attitudes. I shall begin by briefly examining the journalistic context in which debate about language use in Russia developed, focusing on the appearance of a new type of periodical in eighteenth-century Europe, and in Russia in particular. Next, I shall analyse the discussion itself, concentrating on discourses which defend the Russian language and on comments on the French language and its use, which range from statements about its value to

fr an cophon e cult ure t hro ugh the pe r i o di c a l p r e s s   65 expressions of outright Gallophobia. However, I shall not restrict myself to what was written in Russia (although I shall focus mainly on that), for debate about Russian francophonie crossed international borders, finding its way even into the French press, to which I shall also devote a brief section. By examining both Russian and French material, we might gauge the impact of the discussion of Russian francophonie at international level and see how international networks were used to disseminate and broaden views about this phenomenon.

TH E RISE OF ‘ SPECTATORS ’ Articles in the periodical press provide important material for literary and historical research on eighteenth-century society, as they were vehicles for contemporary debates and contributed to the transmission of ideas at both national and international level. Scholarship on the history of Russian journalism (Berkov 1952) and on its function as a forum for sources, translations and cultural exchange (Rak 2010) gives us an insight into the dynamism of this emerging genre of non-fictional prose. It should be noted that the literary press was far from a homogeneous corpus. There were many different periodicals and they had distinct forms, were subject to diverse influences and took different editorial lines and political positions, which were not always made explicit. It is particularly interesting to analyse not only the information contained in the articles that appeared in the periodical press but also journalists’ own attitudes towards the phenomena they observed and their own linguistic practice (whether they quoted passages in French, for example). The role played by the Russian press in debate about language was bound up with the emergence of a new kind of journal in eighteenthcentury Europe, the ‘Spectator’. This journalistic genre originated in England at the beginning of the century, when the first Spectator (Addison et al. [1711] 1965) was published, and it soon spread widely in Europe. Also known as ‘moral weeklies’, these periodicals were distinctive in both content and form. They discussed such questions as how people should behave in a changing society and which linguistic varieties they should use in public spaces such as coffee shops, public houses and salons (Ertler et al. 2011). They also became a medium for new forms of conversation, opening up the possibility of debate, for the articles in them, besides being informative, were conceived as short essays often purporting to be letters sent by an author (who was also a reader) to another author, the editor. These polyphonic exchanges reveal the complexity of the subjects discussed. Furthermore, the debates took place at

66  carol e c hap in an international level: periodicals circulated beyond national boundaries, so that similar subjects were discussed in different countries. Journals quoted other journals and translated articles ‘in a game of repetitions and reciprocal influences that would not cease until the disappearance of the spectator genre’ (Ertler et al. 2012). This sort of exchange occurred between France and Russia too; indeed the development of ‘spectators’ seems to have had a significant influence on the development of Russian journalism (Chapin 2012b). In Russia, the first periodical was published in 1703, shortly after Peter the Great himself had expressed a wish to give the country an official organ of communication (Berkov 1952: 21–32). This was the newspaper Vedomosti (News) (Orlov 1703), which changed its name in 1728 to Sankt Petersburgskie vedomosti (St Petersburg News). The paper dealt mainly with political or military issues until 1728, when Primechaniia k Vedomostiam (Notes on the News) began to be published. This new publication, which lasted until 1742, contained excerpts from literature of various kinds (poetry, fictional prose, essays and translations) and miscellaneous writings in other fields in the humanities. Many of the writings reproduced in the periodical originated in France or Germany and were translated from French or German. Over the following decades there developed a steady stream of official periodicals and also of private and more literary initiatives, such as Sumarokov’s Trudoliubivaia pchela (The Busy Bee), which contained not only news but also short essays on politics, philosophy and morals, and satirical passages close in style to contributions to the ‘spectators’. However, the decisive moment, according to Pavel Berkov (Berkov 1952: 225), came in 1769 with the publication of Vsiakaia vsiachina (All Sorts of Things), the first ‘satirical magazine’, of which Catherine II herself was one of the anonymous editors. During the following decade, more than twenty periodicals appeared, twice as many as had been published since the beginning of the eighteenth century (Berkov 1952: 225). This proliferation of periodicals is not surprising, as Vsiakaia vsiachina was never meant to be an isolated initiative. Indeed, in the first number of the journal, in January 1769, Catherine explicitly called for further publications of this sort – ‘children’3 of Vsiakaia vsiachina – to encourage the development of the new genre. Such publications duly appeared soon afterwards. In January 1769, Mikhail Chulkov’s I to i se (This and That) was launched, followed in the same year by Smes’ (The Medley), whose editor has not been identified, and Fedor Ėmin’s Adskaia pochta (The Post from Hell) and, in subsequent years, by many others. The best-known periodicals of the period are those edited by Nikolai Novikov, who is recognised as the one of the founders of satirical literature in Russia (Monnier 1981; Jones 1984). The first periodical he edited,

fr an cophon e cult ure t hro ugh the pe r i o di c a l p r e s s   67 Truten’ (The Drone), came out from May 1769 until April 1770. He then published Pustomelia (The Tatler), which was clearly inspired – as its title suggests – by Steele’s Tatler (1709). This link with the ‘spectators’ is also perceptible in his later periodicals Zhivopisets (The Painter, 1771) and Koshelek (The Purse, 1774). Novikov worked with talented collaborators and used satire effectively but cautiously. He constantly created new forms and moods, and his publications showed that journals and articles in them were not only records of their time but could also be considered literary works in their own right (Monnier 1981: 353–65). It was at the very moment, during the second half of eighteenth century, when satirical magazines, ‘spectators’, began to flourish in Russia that debate about language use became commonplace there. Both phenomena reflected the development of a new social and national consciousness. Before we turn from the context in which language use was discussed in the late eighteenth-century Russian periodical press to the discussion itself, it is worth noting, finally, how important foreign languages were in both the public and the private education offered to the Russian elite at that time and how closely linked the Russian press was to higher education. Russian intellectuals of the 1760s – including imaginative writers, the editors of periodicals and other contributors to the periodical press – received an education in which tuition in foreign languages, especially French, had a prominent place and in which translation exercises took up much time (Jones 1984: 7–14). When the University of Moscow was founded in 1755, a publishing house was soon set up under its aegis, and in 1762 a periodical, Sobranie luchshikh sochinenii (A Collection of the Best Works), edited by a German member of staff at the university, Johann Reichel, was printed on its press. Students of the university, among them the future dramatist Denis Fonvizin, used their language skills to contribute to this periodical by collecting and translating writings from all over Europe, including extracts from many French works. Such individuals’ perceptions of language matters were crucial in the construction of the image of language that would later circulate in Russian works of literature. Writers such as Fonvizin may have had apprehensions about Russian francophonie, but they did not doubt that knowledge of French had symbolic significance as a sign of a good, traditional education. The point comes across in Novikov’s Pustomelia, which tells the story of a noble father in a provincial family, whose merry life did not prevent him from raising his son Dobroserd as all reasonable fathers raise their children in our time [. . .] he taught him foreign languages so that he might enlighten his reason and adorn his memory by reading famed authors. With the help of his

68  carol e c hap in mentors, Dobroserd soon learnt three languages, French, English and German. (Novikov 1770) It is clear, moreover, that Russian journal editors, whatever their attitude towards Russians’ use of French, expected their readership to be francophone, since many journals, especially the more serious ones, contained untranslated French quotations in Russian text (Chapin 2012a), as did, for instance, Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskogo slova (Companion of the Lovers of the Russian Word).

LANG U A GE DEB ATE IN T H E RU SSIAN PERIODICAL PRESS While not denying the importance of French linguistic and cultural influence on Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century, contributors to Russian periodicals wondered to what extent the use of French as a medium for certain types of writing and social interaction and the prominence of the French language in Russian education were compatible with attempts to promote the development of the Russian language and to boost national culture. Articles on this subject in Russian periodicals addressed such matters as the presumed inadequacies of Russian and bemoaned the supposedly detrimental effects of Russians’ use of French. Writers defended the use of Russian for the literary purposes of the new Westernised cultural elite, for instance, insisting that it was capable of expressing abstract or poetic ideas. Thus we find Sumarokov, as early as 1759, implying in his Trudoliubivaia pchela that the dearth of literary works in Russian stemmed from a lack of literary models rather than any inherent weakness in that language. His primary purpose here was to defend himself against critics who accused him of being too heavily dependent on French authors. Racine, he wrote, is French and could not give me any instruction in Russian. For Russian and clarity of expression I am indebted to no-one but myself, in either verse or prose. I am just indebted to my father for teaching me the basis of the Russian language. (Sumarokov 1759) However, Sumarokov also hoped to persuade his readers that Russian could be improved, if only writers and readers would begin to use it. The author of a passage in Novikov’s Zhivopisets resorts to an ironic technique much used by eighteenth-century satirical journals to achieve a

fr an cophon e cult ure t hro ugh the pe r i o di c a l p r e s s   69 similar purpose. In 1772, the periodical published a fictitious letter from a Russian writer debunking the idea that a language other than Russian was needed for the development of literature and the arts. His inability to produce a literary masterpiece, the letter-writer suggested, was due to the weakness of his native language: What should I do? I’d like to write, but I don’t know what to write about: I think I could write on any subject, but I haven’t written anything yet. You shouldn’t think it’s because I haven’t got the ability [. . .] I don’t write verse because Russian isn’t fit for poetry: I’d have written poetry in French, but unfortunately Voltaire, Racine and a lot of other writers were born before me. (Novikov 1772) In 1792, Ivan Krylov, writing in Zritel’ (The Spectator), was still ruing the perception that French was superior to Russian: It has become fashionable now to hold your own language in such low esteem that if it happened that you had to write in Russian, you would think or write in French and then translate, and say afterwards that not much can be expressed in Russian! (Krylov 1792) Krylov defended the vernacular in a more straightforward way than Novikov’s satirical commentator: French pronunciation is as different from Russian pronunciation as night from day: people who know both languages can see that Russian requires each letter to be clearly pronounced without adding any that are unnecessary, whereas French makes you swallow up many of its letters, as if it is ashamed of the way it is pronounced. So it is impossible for us Russians not to feel the superiority of our language, when we can express clearly all the ideas that the human mind can imagine. (Krylov 1792)4 Criticism of the habit of using French in Russia merged with anxiety about the model of education that the Russian elite had embraced. As Russian periodicals constantly reminded their readers, a good education was above all a literary one, and since no good books had been written in Russian children should be taught French and/or German as a greater priority than their mother tongue; indeed they should be raised in francophone culture. The editor of Poleznoe uveselenie (Useful Entertainment) generalised about this problem in Russian education as early as 1760:

70  carol e c hap in Everybody teaches their children languages, especially French. What for? Is it so that the child should be able to prattle to everybody in a language that isn’t his own and so that he can slip foreign words into his native tongue while at the same time scorning it, so that he makes it as ugly, absurd and shocking as himself? So let him behave like a madman; without even reading any bad books he himself will come to look like a bad book which has neither rhyme nor reason. (Kheraskov 1760) The narrator of Dobroserd’s story in Novikov’s Pustomelia again underlined the possible pitfalls of a multilingual education, when he explained that Dobroserd’s father did not follow the example of a lot of foolhardy old men who teach French and German to their children only so that they might chatter in foreign languages with idle French and German people who have left their homeland. (Novikov 1770) The Grand Tour of Europe that young aristocrats commonly undertook to complete their education could exacerbate this educational problem, as an article of 1783 in Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskogo slova suggests. The author asked a young Russian whom he met abroad what his destination was. He proudly replied that he was going to Paris. It was not difficult just from his reply to get some idea of the disposition of this young grandee. Two years later I met him again in another place. His cortege was smaller, but his carriage was the same. I asked him where he was going and what had happened to his travelling companions. Now he answered not in his native tongue but in French, saying that he was travelling from Paris to take the waters in Spa. (Dashkova 1783b) If children were to be taught French, then, it should not be to prepare them to participate in social events or follow fashion, let alone to enable them to converse with their compatriots in a foreign language. It should be for some more serious educational purpose, such as to introduce them to the best fruits of Western reason or to equip them for service to their country in some military, diplomatic, pedagogical or other useful role. Concerns about the use of the French language and its prominence in the curriculum of Russian noble children merged into a more general Gallophobia. The character of the ‘French-Russian’, who larded his

fr an cophon e cult ure t hro ugh the pe r i o di c a l p r e s s   71 speech with French expressions and Russian Gallicisms and foolishly imitated French fashions and mannerisms, is frequently ridiculed in Russian periodicals, as well as on the stage, as in the following passage from an article that appeared in Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskogo slova: The frivolous Russian Parisian doesn’t get married because c’est du bon ton [it’s good form] to be single, and because he doesn’t want to make his life even harder than it already is, as he’s busy trying to dodge and cheat his creditors. And finally, because he doesn’t want to waste time on the education of children and running a house when he could spend it at the theatre [. . .] (Dashkova 1783a) The use of the French expression c’est du bon ton within a Russian sentence seems incongruous and invites mockery, but his fondness for French expressions is not the only trait of the Russian Parisian that is being censured: he is also idle and selfish, accumulates debts and likes nothing better than the theatre. In other words, he displays vices that are stereotypically attributed to French people in general and Parisians in particular. Indeed, the article implies that appropriation of the French language entails adoption of vices that are thought to go with it. Attitudes towards foreign-language use and cultural dependency in the age of Catherine are nicely illustrated by a debate that was conducted in a number of periodicals about a play by Charles Collé, Depuis and Deronnais (Depuis et Deronnais). This play had been translated by Lukin and was performed in Russia in 1769 as The Father-in-Law and Son-inLaw (Test’ i ziat’). (Lukin had already ridiculed excessive linguistic borrowing from French in The Trinket-Vendor (Shchepetil’nik; 1765), which is discussed in the following chapter in this volume.) The main cause of controversy was Lukin’s translation strategy, especially his attempt to localise Collé’s play, that is to say to transpose it to the Russian context. Critics were divided: some considered the play still too foreign in Lukin’s translated version, while others thought it should never have been translated into Russian at all, because French was the language of theatre. Vsiakaia vsiachina, for example, imagined a spectator making a list of all the details in the play that were still ‘too French’. The narrator would rather have seen a play that differed to an even greater extent from the original, a play that was more ‘Russian’: What dramatic rules make the actors keep crying ‘Ah! Ah!’, and what does this mean? Why does Isidor, who calls his lover Sof’ia Menandrovna when she’s not there, keep saying to her ‘Sof’ia! Ah! Sof’ia! I just adore you’ when they are together. The comedy is

72  carol e c hap in transposed to our mores and the action takes place in Petersburg; but lovers don’t speak like that here. (Anon. 1769–70) A few days later, Smes’ published a direct answer to this article. Here the author tried to explain the play’s lack of success in Russia by comparing the translated version to the original, implying that the play had been spoilt by performance in Russian. To bring the discussion to a conclusion, the reviewer invented an authoritative figure, a Parisian who declares ex cathedra that the play was ‘very good in French’ and comments more generally on the comic drama being performed on the Russian stage: Suddenly some young chap who, I later found out, had just come from Paris [. . .] shouted out ‘Anyone who criticises these comedies lacks good taste!’ And if the public didn’t like them, it was only because the actors weren’t any good. ‘I’d give everything I have’, he went on, ‘to see the plays performed in Russian the way they were performed in Paris when I saw them there [. . .]’ Then he started saying that these comedies were good in French, and that they had been well staged in the Paris theatre, nobody was disputing that; they were just saying that they were badly translated. (Anon. 1769) Truten’ published a further response to the play, from a no doubt fictitious reader, who said he thought Depuis and Deronnais had been ‘well translated’ (Novikov 1769). There was more to this discussion, of course, than a purely literary evaluation of a new play: attitudes to language use and choice of translation method implied a cultural stance. Expression of a preference for a translation over the French original, localisation of the translation – these were ways of voicing apprehension about Russian cultural dependency and a desire for national autonomy at a time when the Russian elite was being increasingly exposed to European culture. In sum, then, material published in the late eighteenth-century Russian periodical press frequently drew attention to the presence of the French language in Russia and its impact on Russian, deplored frivolous or boastful use of French by Russians, and resisted the view that Russian was not fit for native literary production. However, we should beware of taking what was written in the periodicals from which the above examples have been drawn as faithful records of linguistic practice or accurate descriptions of people who could be observed in Russian society. As other chapters in these volumes show, there is ample published and unpublished archival evidence, such as diaries, récits de voyages, albums, dance cards and so forth, to indicate that the use of French in elite

fr an cophon e cult ure t hro ugh the pe r i o di c a l p r e s s   73 writing and social interaction was considered unexceptionable, even de rigueur in many situations. Unlike papers that conveyed ‘news’, then, the satirical journals I have examined produced a discourse, or a dialogue, which was often ironic or sarcastic and which was not to be regarded as literally true. The stereotypical petits-maîtres portrayed in them were comic literary creations designed to warn of the dangers of infatuation with the French language, and with French culture more broadly, rather than to dissuade the Russian elite from continuing to use French, which was a major means of communication in eighteenth-century Europe, in all its many functions.

TH E VIE W OF R USSIAN FRANCOP HONIE IN FRENCH PERIODICALS The periodical press, as I have emphasised, was widely disseminated in eighteenth-century Europe, in the form of translations and adaptations of articles or quotations from them (Rak 2010). What was printed in French periodicals could therefore have an influence on Russian readers, even if indirectly. However, information and ideas did not flow only in one direction: there were echoes in the French press of the discussion about language use that was conducted in Russian periodicals. An article published in the late 1750s in the French journal L’Année littéraire (The Year in Literature), which was edited by Elie-Catherine Fréron, provides an early indication of the possible interest of linguistic developments in Russia to French readers. The author of the article quotes a speech delivered in Russia by Guillaume Raoult, a Frenchman who had taken up a position at the newly founded University of Moscow. Presenting Raoult as the Head of the Department of ‘French belleslettres’ at the university (although the extant sources suggest that in fact he was only a lector there (Mézin and Rjéoutski 2011: 698)), L’Année littéraire reports him as saying: The post I am about to fill in your institution would naturally lead me to speak to you about the French language, if that subject had not already been dealt with by one of my colleagues in a speech as eloquent as it was weighty. Without fearing to be accused of bias and partiality, I could tell you that the French language, adopted by all civilised nations, has become the universal language [. . .] [and] that having in a sense been elevated by the magnificent reigns of Louis XIII, Louis XIV and Louis XV and by the immortal works of the Bossuets, Corneilles and Racines, it has now almost

74  carol e c hap in replaced the languages of Athens and Rome, whose masterpieces in all genres of writing it has equalled. (Fréron 1758) On one level, this article flatters French readers by making them aware of the importance of their language in Russian higher education, simply by mentioning that positions were offered to French teachers in the University of Moscow. It also indicates what sort of statements about language use were likely to be acceptable to Raoult’s Russian audience at the university. After all, Raoult appears to show humility, by refraining from asserting the superiority of French. And yet, in fact he underlines the hegemonic status of French, by drawing readers’ attention to the virtues of the French language as a means of communication throughout Europe. This pride in the international status of French and the spread of French to Russia finds expression elsewhere in Fréron’s periodical as well. For example, Fréron underlines the fact that the Russian aristocracy spoke French by affecting to believe that readers will be astonished to learn that a Russian (Andrei Shuvalov, whom Fréron knew personally) was the author of a letter written in perfect French that was being published in L’Année littéraire: ‘You must be not a little surprised, Sir, that this young Russian Lord writes in our language in such a pure and elegant style’ (Fréron 1760). Other examples in a number of journals, such as Le Journal étranger (The Foreign Journal), La Gazette universelle de littérature (The Universal Literary Gazette) and L’Esprit des journaux (The Spirit of Journals) (Prévost 1755; Anon. 1776a, 1776b), show that French writers were keenly aware of the fact that their language was used in Russia and that they viewed Russian francophonie in a positive way. However, we should not rule out the possibility that accounts of Russian francophonie in French periodicals were exaggerated, for they served a useful purpose from the French point of view, reminding readers of their nation’s linguistic primacy in Europe. That primacy went together with cultural leadership, as the editor of La Gazette universelle de littérature pointed out when he wrote about Russian theatre: Theatre has become a part of the education that is provided in Russia. As one might expect, it is French theatre that supplies the plays which the young people who perform them are made to learn; Russia cannot have its own theatre yet. (Anon. 1776a) Although French periodicals, unsurprisingly, used opportunities to advertise the assumed supremacy of French and French culture, we do find L’Année littéraire allowing its readers access, in 1760, to a positive

fr an cophon e cult ure t hro ugh the pe r i o di c a l p r e s s   75 evaluation of the Russian language and the literature that was beginning to be written in it. I have in mind the above-mentioned article by Shuvalov, which described the linguistic and poetic achievement of Mikhail Lomonosov in the Russian literary world of that time: Lomonosow [sic] is a creative genius and the father of our poetry; he embarked on a career that nobody had tried before him and was the first to dare to rhyme in a language which seemed intractable for versification; he was the first to flatten all the obstacles that seemed bound to stand in the way [. . .] He showed us how beautiful and rich our language was; he made us feel its harmony; he developed its charms for us; and to some extent he stripped away its coarseness. (Fréron 1760)5 The publication of such articles in the French press may have been intended to help Russian authors to make a case for the inclusion of Russia in the international literary community, by using journalistic networks for the promotion of the Russian language (Stroev 2010). How, finally, did the French perceive the tendency exhibited by the authors of articles in the Russian periodical press, and by Russian comic dramatists, to ridicule them, or at least to ridicule those Russians who admired the French, the French language and French culture? The late eighteenth-century French periodical press contains copious material, especially reviews of Russian plays, which would help us to answer this question, but which the scope of this chapter does not allow us to examine in detail. Suffice it to quote from reviews of Dmitrii Volkov’s play Education (Vospitanie, 1774) which were published in the Gazette universelle de littérature in 1776. ‘In Russia as in every other country in Europe’, one reviewer observed without rancour, ‘young people pride themselves on doing things “in French style”. They imitate our fashions and assume the airs of our petits-maîtres, and even their manners and morals’ (Anon. 1776b). ‘Dramatic authors’, another wrote with amused sympathy, exhort their compatriots not to succumb to this universal epidemic [imitating the French]. They dress a fool up in French clothes and make him a public laughing stock: but everybody still wants to be French when they come out of the theatre, perhaps because the author has overdone the character or because there is still something likeable underneath the ridiculous outward appearance. The comedy is a pleasant critique of the contemporary manners and morals of the Russians, especially those who think that their

76  carol e c hap in c­ hildren’s education is complete when they can speak French, or when they have spent a lot of money in Paris; and that their daughters are accomplished when they can sing French songs in the French manner. (Anon. 1776b) Thus these French reviewers sensibly took the Russian play in question as a comment on Russian morals rather than an expression of Russian Gallophobia. * * * The perceptions of language use examined in this chapter give us an insight into the social and cultural changes that were taking place in late eighteenth-century Russia. For cultivated members of the Russian elite, communicating in French was a way of demonstrating that they had received a good education. At the same time dissociation of oneself from the French language and the culture it bore was a way of becoming more independent and starting to promote a native culture. The periodical press, like the theatre, was an important vehicle for this movement towards cultural independence, and contributors to it created new forms of ironical discourse for this and other purposes. Russia was a fashionable topic in French periodicals too. French journalists and writers suddenly took an interest in the discussion that French linguistic and cultural pre-eminence in Europe had generated in Russian society. Without denying the superiority of French, they might for diplomatic reasons take up the position of a ‘father’ encouraging the linguistic and literary development of a ‘child’. Only towards the end of the eighteenth century and during the nineteenth did the French change their view of Russia and begin to regard it as a country which was truly independent and creative in the linguistic and cultural spheres. Russian francophonie, both as a tool for intercultural communication and as a controversial subject in its own right, assisted this evolution, because it facilitated – among other things – the development of ideas, networks and international exchange in a new literary genre, the periodical press, that was beginning to flower in Russia, as well as the West, and to create new rhetorical strategies.

NOTES 1. See Chapters 5 and 8 in this volume, by Derek Offord and Brian Kim respectively. 2. On the last of these subjects, see Rjéoutski (2012). 3. ‘But what do I say? My imagination is uplifted to the third heaven: I see the future.

fr an cophon e cult ure t hro ugh the pe r i o di c a l p r e s s   77 I see an endless tribe of all sorts of things. I see legitimate and illegitimate children coming after it . . .’ 4. However, this article also includes a discussion of the merits of the French language. 5. Andrei Shuvalov can be identified as the author of this article by biographical details supplied by Fréron: the initials A. S., the fact that the author had just returned from a trip to Europe and so forth. According to Fréron, Shuvalov came back from Europe convinced that the immense distance separating the French and Russian empires had in fact served to bring their ‘genius’ and ‘spirit’ even closer together.

REFERENCES Addison, J., R. Steele [1711–14] (1965), The Spectator, ed. D. F. Bond, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Anon. (1769), ‘Gospodin izdatel’[. . .]’, Smes’, no. 7. Anon. (1769–70), ‘Gospodin sochinetel’!’, Vsiakaia vsiachina, no. 15. Anon. (1776a), ‘Essai sur l’ancien théâtre Russe’, Gazette universelle de littérature, aux Deux-Ponts, March 1776. Anon. (1776b), ‘Wospitanie, Komedia w’piati. Le Conte, comédie en cinq actes. A Pétersbourg, 1774’, Gazette universelle de littérature, aux Deux-Ponts, May 1776. Berkov, P. N. (1952), Istoriia russkoi zhurnalistiki XVIII veka, Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Chapin, C. (2012a), ‘Incursions francophones dans les périodiques russes au XVIIIe siècle’, in E. Gretchanaia, A. Stroev and C. Viollet (eds), La francophonie européenne aux XVIIIe–XIXe siècles. Perspectives littéraires, historiques et culturelles, Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 197–211. Chapin, C. (2012b), ‘“Spectateurs”, traductions et “périodiques satiriques”: la réception des feuilles moralistes en Russie au XVIIIe siècle’, in K.-D. Ertler, A. Lévrier and M. Fischer (eds), Regards sur les “spectateurs”, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 249–67. Dashkova, E. R. (1783a), ‘O smysle slova vospitanie’, Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskogo slova, part 2. Dashkova, E. R. (1783b), ‘Prosveshchennyi puteshestvennik’, Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskogo slova, part 3, no. 18. Ėmin, F. A. (1769), ‘Ot Krivogo k khramonogomu’, Adskaia pochta, letter 40. Ertler, K.-D., A. Fuchs and M. Fischer (2011), ‘The Spectators in the international context’. Foreword to the research project Moralische Wochenschriften, at http://wwwgewi.uni-graz.at/cocoon/mws/ (last accessed on 12 September 2012). Ertler, K.-D., A. Lévrier and M. Fischer (eds) (2012), Regards sur les “spectateurs”, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Fréron, E.-C. (1758), ‘Discours de M. Rahout prononcé devant une assemblée de l’université impériale de Moscow’, L’Année littéraire, book 3, p. 39. Fréron, E.-C. (1760), ‘Lettre d’un jeune seigneur russe à M. de **’, L’Année littéraire, book 6, letter 9, p. 194. Jones, W. G. (1984), Nikolay Novikov: Enlightener of Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kheraskov, M. M. (1760), ‘O chtenii knig’, Poleznoe uveselenie, 1760–2, part 1. Krylov, I. A. (1792), ‘Teatr (Prodolzhenie)’, Zritel’, August.

78  carol e c hap in Lukin, V. I. (1765), Shchepetil’nik, in Lukin, Sochineniia i perevody, St Petersburg: Ivan Il’ich Glazunov, pp. 192–224. Mézin, A. and V. Rjéoutski (eds) (2011), Les Français en Russie au siècle des Lumières. Dictionnaire des Français, Suisses, Wallons et autres francophones en Russie de Pierre le Grand à Paul Ier, Paris: Amateurs de livres. Monnier, A. (1981), Un publiciste frondeur sous Catherine II. Nicolas Novikov, Paris: Institut d’études slaves. Novikov, N. I. (1769), ‘Gospodin Izdatel’!’, Truten’, May 1769, part 1, no. 3. Novikov, N. I. (1770), ‘Istoricheskoe prikliuchenie’, Pustomelia, June, part 2. Novikov, N. I. (1772), ‘Gospodin zhivopisets!’, Zhivopisets, part 1, no. 21. Orlov, F. P. (ed.) (1702–27), Vedomosti, Moscow and St Petersburg. Prévost, A. F. (1755), ‘Spectacles: Sinav et Trouvor, Tragédie russienne en vers, par M. Somorocoff’, Journal étranger, April, pp. 114–56. Rak, V. D. (2010), Russkie sborniki i periodicheskie izdaniia vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka, St Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt. Rjéoutski, V. (2012), ‘La multiculturalité dans la presse francophone en Russie sous le règne d’Elisabeth Petrovna’, in E. Gretchanaia, A. Stroev and C. Viollet (eds), La francophonie européenne aux XVIIIe–XIXe siècles. Perspectives littéraires, historiques et culturelles, Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 185–95. Stroev, A. F. (2010), ‘Zashchita i proslavlenie Rossii: istoriia sotrudnichestva sheval’e d’Eon i abbata Frerona’, in A. Chubar’ian and F.-D. Lishtenan (eds), Frantsuzy v nauchnoi i intellektual’noi zhizni Rossii, Moscow: Olma Media, pp. 164–74. Sumarokov, A. P. (1759), ‘K nesmyslennym rifmotvortsam’, in Sumarokov (ed.), Trudoliubivaia pchela, St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk, no. 8 (December).

c h apter 5

Linguistic Gallophobia in Russian Comedy Derek Offord

L

iterature, in the broad sense of the term, was an arena for discussion of numerous social, political and aesthetic issues of interest to the elite of eighteenth-century Russia, as the country emerged as a European nation. Within the developing literary corpus, comic drama – like the periodical press1 – was a much used and particularly important genre, serving as a didactic tool with which representatives of the nascent Russian Republic of Letters could seek to improve mores. (This fact partly explains the support the theatre received from the court from the middle of the century on.) The eighteenth-century Russian comic repertoire therefore has a strong – and, to the modern reader, tedious – ­preoccupation with education, in the wider sense of moral upbringing and character formation. It is intensely concerned, as was French literature in the Age of Enlightenment, with reward of virtue and the unmasking of vice. Thus Chistoserdov (Pure of Heart), a character in a play by Vladimir Lukin to which I shall refer again later, reminds the audience that the purpose of comedies is not entertainment but the correction of morals, the improvement of the heart and reason (Lukin 1765: Scene 8).2 At the same time, the relative dearth of public fora for the discussion of ideas in Imperial Russia ensured that theatrical productions – again like literary periodicals, in which many comic dramas were first printed – would function as vehicles for the expression of a rudimentary public opinion. They could convey ideas and opinions that representatives of the emergent literary world wished, if they dared, to broadcast to the court and to people who were influential there.3 It is useful when we now read late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury Russian drama – to which a significant body of scholarship has been devoted, including much work in English (for example Welsh 1966; Karlinsky 1985; Wirtschafter 2003)4 – to bear in mind that such

80  d ere k o f f o rd instrumentalism was uppermost in the minds of its creators. We should therefore beware of taking comic dramaturgical output as an attempt to provide an accurate account of social and linguistic practice, as both Soviet and Western scholars have tended to do.5 It does not reliably demonstrate, as has been claimed, that ‘imitation of French cultural habits led young Russian aristocrats to ape the manners, dress, language and even the pronunciation of the French fops and coquettes slavishly’ (Smith 2006: 377). It would be more accurate to treat the corpus as a medium for the expression of anxieties, tastes, perceptions and opinions, including language attitudes. These attitudes, moreover, were much affected by the subject-matter explored and the positions adopted in Western writings, including French writings, which served as generic models for eighteenth-century Russian playwrights – subject-matter and positions which had to be re-evaluated when they were reprised in the Russian context. Nor do Russian literary treatment of the use of French by people for whom it was not a mother tongue and the attendant debate about French culture seem exceptional phenomena when we view them in the broader European context. In fact, these subjects were stock material for comic drama (itself a cultural importation from France) in several European countries besides Russia in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Mockery of people infatuated with French fashion or prone to codeswitching and the introduction of Gallicisms into the vernacular can be found – to cite only a few of the examples that could be adduced – in John Dryden’s Marriage-à-la-mode (1673) and Sir George Etherege’s Man of Mode (1676) in Restoration England, Ludvig Holberg’s Hans Frandsen, or John of France (Jean de France eller Hans Frandsen, 1722) in Denmark-Norway, Johan Stagnell’s comedy Baron Self-Important and Miss Scrupulous (Baron Sjelfklok och Fröken Granlaga, 1753) in Enlightenment Sweden (Östman 2014) and plays by Vasile Alecsandri and Ion Luca Caragiale in the nineteenth-century Romanian lands (Mihaila 2014). Thus Russian writers’ negative representations of francophonie, which I shall call linguistic Gallophobia, may to some extent be seen as a common European literary trope, whose importation into Russia was influenced in particular by the play by Holberg that I have mentioned (Dillard 1994). In order to demonstrate the popularity and persistence of this trope in Russian comedy, I shall refer in this chapter to eight plays spanning a period of over fifty years. The bulk of these plays, including Denis Fonvizin’s Brigadier (Brigadir), which is the locus classicus of Russian linguistic Gallophobia, belong to the age of Catherine II. However, notable source texts for the phenomenon were produced by Aleksandr

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   81 Sumarokov as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, in the age of Elizabeth, when French linguistic and cultural influence was only just beginning to make itself felt at the Russian court. The trope evidently continued to provoke mirth in the Alexandrine age, when Gallophobia was heightened by anxiety about the threats posed to the Russian polity by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Treatment of the subject of Russian bilingualism and reception of French culture in Russian comic drama does vary, of course, from one playwright to another. And yet, a uniformly negative tone predominates over the whole period covered. Since we are dealing with the establishment of a tradition, the perpetuation of stereotypical views of language and national character, I examine the plays I have selected in rough chronological order. In the process I dwell where appropriate on the playwrights’ engagement with such matters as Russians’ alleged imitativeness, the supposed superficiality of those who admire French culture, the perils of adherence to fashion (with which Russian francophonie is often associated) and the need to assert cultural independence as the sense of Russian nationhood grew stronger.

TH E EARLY CO MEDIES OF S UMAROK OV The first important landmarks in the tradition of Russian linguistic Gallophobia are Sumarokov’s three-act comedy Monsters (Chudovishchi; originally entitled Treteinyi sud, 1750), especially the figure of Diulizh in that play, and the same author’s one-act comedy, The Quarrel of a Husband with His Wife (Ssora u muzha s zhenoi; subsequently entitled Pustaia ssora; also 1750), in which Diulizh reappears. In the first of these plays, Sumarokov has several targets. One is the legal system (a subject that is also treated satirically in the French comic corpus Sumarokov mined for his subject-matter). Another is Sumarokov’s literary adversary Vasilii Trediakovskii, who is portrayed in Monsters as the pedant Krititsiondius. A third, though, is French gallant culture, embodied in the petit-maître, the fop (повеса), and personified by Diulizh, who hopes to marry Infimena, the daughter of the noble couple Barmas and Gidima. In the second play, in which a father (Oront) and mother (Salmina) differ over the choice of a bridegroom for their daughter (Delamida), Sumarokov mounts a more sustained attack on Russians who succumb to French linguistic influence. At the most superficial level, Sumarokov exploits for comic purposes the eighteenth-century influx of loanwords from French into Russian and the practice of code-switching (the actual occurrence

82  d ere k o f f o rd of which among the Russian nobility was explored by Rodolphe Baudin and Jessica Tipton in our first volume). In Monsters, Diulizh lards his speech with French expressions (for example, Grand Dieu (Heavens!), Quelle pensée! Quelle impertinence! (What a thought! What impertinence!) (Sumarokov 1750a: I, 4); Vous parlez, comme un oracle (You speak like an oracle) (I, 6)) and uses numerous Gallicisms, such as риваль (rival) (I, 4), метресса (mistress) (I, 5) and аманта (lover) (I, 6). In The Quarrel of a Husband with His Wife, lexical borrowing is again ridiculed, especially in a scene laden with loanwords such as флатируете, адорирую, меритирую, ремаркировать, презанс, дистре, пансе, эмабль, деесса, эстимую, калите, адоратер, пардонабельно, резонабельны (Sumarokov 1750b: Scene 18).6 A little later in the play, Delamida’s friend Diufiza recommends further linguistic innovation, such as the introduction of monsieur and madame as terms of address in place of сударь and сударыня, not – it should be noted – because she thinks these neologisms are needed to express new concepts but simply for the sake of replacing Russian words with French ones: Вит вместо уборного стола говорят ла тоалет, вместо обоев – tapisserie, вместо простительно – пардонабельно, вместо готовальни – étui. Да мало ли уж эдаких прекрасных слов в варварской наш язык введено. Когда готовальню êtuit называем, так для чего и часы не назвать в русском языке montre? И вместо ‘да’ и ‘нет’ не сказать oui и non? Отчего же тебе кажется, что monsieur и madame ввести трудно? (Sumarokov 1750b: Scene 21; I have used bold type to indicate Gallicisms in Russian, as in subsequent quotations in Russian in this chapter)7

Ridicule of loanwords and code-switching reaches a climax in the macaronic final scene of The Quarrel, in which Diulizh threatens to break a servant’s nose (he coins the verb form касирую from Fr. casser) and Delamida says she intends to put an end to her mother’s dispute with her father (Ma mère, я имею интенцию ваш диспут финировать).8 Finally, Diulizh, to his amazement, is rejected by Delamida: Дюлиж (Дюфизе):  Какую госпожа Деламида сделает резолюцию [résolution], я этого, право не компренирую [from comprendre], и я очень этоне [étonné]. Деламида: Monsieur батюшка и вы, сударыня ma mère, я нейду ни за monsieur Дюлижа, ни (указывая на Фатюя) за этого урода, да и ни за кого. Это очень подло!

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   83 Дюфиза (Деламиде):  Ты, конечно juste резонируешь [from raisonner]. Дюлиж:  Чтоб я не aimable у глазах ее был, это incroyable! (Sumarokov 1750b: Scene 24)9

At a somewhat deeper level in these plays, Sumarokov yokes together language and fashion, establishing a link in the spectator’s mind between the use of French and the triviality and inauthenticity of mode. In Monsters, Diulizh cannot believe that Infimena, whom he is courting, could prefer his rival Valer, and he invokes both fashion and language use as explanations for his incredulity: he’s got about twenty curled locks on his head, he carries a short little cane, a German makes his clothes, he takes snuff [. . .] He’s not had a muff since he was born, he wears short sleeves, and what’s more he knows German. I don’t know how he’s learnt French. (Sumarokov 1750a: II, 5) Gidima too associates French language with fashion, as becomes evident when she is asked by her husband to explain what she sees in her daughter’s suitor Diulizh: ‘he knows a little French, he dances, he dresses like a dandy, he knows a lot of French songs’ (I, 1). More generally, French is associated with gallant society in which people care more about the way they dress than anything else (Sumarokov 1750b: Scenes 1, 6), discuss the merits of applying rouge and wearing an earring on one side only (1750b: Scene 21), sprinkle themselves with perfume, carry pocket mirrors and crave compliments (Sumarokov 1750a: I, 6; Sumarokov 1750b: Scene 13). The new type of social life which Sumarokov is mocking seems to carry a threat to family values, especially the institution of marriage and marital fidelity, which is not expected in the imported gallant world. Delamida will not marry Diulizh, because she ‘esteems’ him; were he to become her husband, she argues, she would cease to hold him in such high regard (Sumarokov 1750b: Scene 18). Again, the presumption of Delamida’s suitor Fatiui that Salmina’s husband Oront is Delamida’s father, Salmina says, proves how stupid this suitor is (1750b: Scene 3). Most importantly, linguistic performance in gallant society, like dress and mores, is already beginning in these comedies by Sumarokov to be linked to sense of national identity, or to a reprehensible lack of it. In Monsters, for example, the francophone Diulizh is presented as repudiating Russian nationality. Not only does he not want to know Russian laws; he would also prefer not to know the Russian language, for it is a ‘stingy language’ (скаредный язык), he says, in which nothing

84  d ere k o f f o rd good could be written. He rues the fact that he was born of a Russian father (Sumarokov 1750a: I, 5; I, 6).10 To the servant Arlikin (who, like Molière’s maidservants, is a source of better sense than his social superiors), Diulizh is a ‘monkey, and not a local one’ (II, 5). The Gallomane Krititsiondius is equally guilty of lack of patriotism: he aims to write a Juvenalian satire ‘against the whole Russian people’ (I, 6; II, 2). In The Quarrel too, the alien character of Diulizh is emphasised. He has taken to billiards, bets on the outcome of the games he plays and drinks wine rather than traditional Russian products such as mead and kvass (Sumarokov 1750b: Scene 2). Indeed, he does not regard himself as Russian and if he were labelled as such he would consider it an insult to which he ought to respond with his sword (1750b: Scene 16). It comes as no surprise that he does not understand a colloquial Russian turn of phrase, вить суженой и конем не объедешь,11 for to value Russian culture and use the Russian language in preference to French is incomprehensible to such Francophile characters. Thus Diulizh, Delamida and Diufiza, in The Quarrel, disparage a lady of their acquaintance who dresses not in the French manner but in a way that is très commun (very common), and who even sings Russian songs, in spite of the fact that she knows French well (1750b: Scene 19). The question arises, though, what exactly it is that Sumarokov is ridiculing in Monsters and The Quarrel. Is it really the bilingualism of the newly Westernised elite, or is it the vices of ignorance and pretentiousness, which had been mocked in the French literary models with which playwrights such as Sumarokov were familiar? It is of interest in this connection that Monsters was first performed (together with Sumarokov’s historical tragedy Sinav and Truvor), in July 1750, at Peterhof, by the amateur troupe of the Court Cadet Theatre and in the presence of the francophone empress herself. The Quarrel was also first performed at the Court Theatre, in January 1751. These facts should give us pause for thought about the degree to which Sumarokov was deploring the cultivation of French fashion and use of the French language in Russia. There is a distinction to be made between discriminating Francophilia, on the one hand, and ignorant Gallomania, on the other. Perhaps it is the latter phenomenon that Sumarokov was deriding. In Monsters, after all, Diulizh mistakenly thinks Molière’s comedy The Doctor in Spite of Himself (Le Médecin malgré lui) is a tragedy and is moved to tears by a scene in it that should have made him laugh (Sumarokov 1750a: I, 6). Moreover, Sumarokov mocks other characters’ ignorance of foreign languages as much as Diulizh’s liking for French. He has some fun, in Monsters, at the expense of Barmas, who thinks Diulizh is speaking German or Latin, a mistake repeated by another character, Khabzei (I,

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   85 4; I, 5). Similarly in The Quarrel, Fatiui, hearing others speak French, believes them to be speaking German (Sumarokov 1750b: Scene 23). Be that as it may, the attitude Sumarokov attributes to Diulizh and other francophone characters does suggest that French, by 1750, was in the ascendancy as a prestige language among the Russian social elite, widely used though German may still have been for more practical purposes, in such domains as higher education and the army and in lower social milieux.

FONV IZIN’ S BRIGADIER AND OTH ER PLAY S OF TH E 1 7 6 0 s Throughout the age of Catherine further playwrights – Ivan Elagin, Aleksandr Karin, Lukin, Iakov Kniazhnin, Dmitrii Khvostov and others – would offer variations on the theme Sumarokov had broached, presenting characters whose Gallomania and linguistic behaviour seem to indicate susceptibility to fashion, shallowness and disloyalty to their native land. Karin’s first original play, a comedy in five acts entitled Russians Returning from France, was written in the mid-1760s (Stepanov 1988– 99).12 Its title is given in Russian sources in various forms (Russkie [or Rossiiane], vozvrashchaiushchiesia [or vernuvshiesia] iz Frantsii). The work was not published and has not survived in its original form, but seems to have been adapted for the stage after Karin’s early death in 1769 and to have been performed in 1789 as a one-act play entitled The Russian Frenchman (Russkii frantsuz). The play contrasts Pustorechin, an emptyheaded nobleman who regrets having to leave Paris, the capital of the beau monde, with an exemplary one, Blagorazumov, who wishes to put what he has learned abroad to the use of his country. Thus Karin offers a balanced view of Russian francophonie: the French language and French ideas and models of behaviour, when adopted in an undiscriminating way, could demean nobles who slavishly followed foreign fashion and weaken Russian patriotism. If received more judiciously, on the other hand, they might be of use to the fatherland (Pigarev 1954: 93; Stepanov 1988–99). The majority of the dramatists who tackled the subject of Russian Gallomania in the age of Catherine, though, took a more uniformly jaundiced view that was perhaps affected by Ivan Elagin’s no longer extant Jean de Molle, or A Russian Frenchman (Zhan de Mole ili Russkii frantsuz, 1764), a freely translated or adapted Russian version of Holberg’s Jean de France. (Elagin’s reworking of Holberg’s play had been staged in

86  d ere k o f f o rd Russia in 1765 (Pigarev 1954: 93; Welsh 1966: 45).) A notable example of this one-sided treatment of Russian use of French in the early years of Catherine’s reign was Lukin’s one-act comedy The Trinket-Vendor (Shchepetil’nik, 1765). This play is no more original than Elagin’s: it was a transposition to Russian conditions of an English ‘dramatic satire’, The Toyshop (1735) by Robert Dodsley, which Lukin knew through a French version published in 1756 (Ivleva 2013). One of Lukin’s mouthpieces in the play, Chistoserdov, brings a nephew from provincial Penza to a trinket-shop in one of the capital cities. The shop is frequented by men and women from various walks of life who exhibit the supposed vices of the Westernised elite. After each scene the virtuous characters in the play (the trinket-vendor, Chistoserdov and his nephew) comment on the type (for instance, a former courtier, a bribe-taker, a conceited writer) who has just been paraded before the audience. Most significant for our purposes is Ver’khogliadov (Superficial), who exemplifies the galant homme. Like Sumarokov’s Diulizh, this character condemns himself in spectators’ eyes by the stream of Gallicisms he uses, especially verbs derived from French with the aid of the Russian suffix -овать: аббесировать, батировать, дефинировать, дивинировать, контрадировать, мокироваться, монтрировать, офрировать, поседировать, прешировать, презентировать, продюировать, жужировать.13 Lukin too, like Sumarokov, deplores the Gallomane’s disparagement of the Russian language and his recommendation that French terms be used instead of Russian ones: Верьхоглядов:  А пар дие [Pardieu]! Рад я, что тебя вижу в добром здоровье, господин Щепетильник. О! проклятой твой титул колет и дерет уши. Пожалуй, брось это варварское имя, а называйся галантерейщиком [from galanterie]. Это будет тре-галан [très galant], и ты сам галант-омом [galant homme] почитаться станешь. Щепетильник:  Я не хочу никогда быть галант-омом и не переменю моего названия, для того, что оно правильно на нашем языке. Верьхоглядов:  О, фидом [fi donc]! на нашем языке! Вот еще какой странной экскюз [excuse]! Наш язык самой зверской и коли бы не мы его чужими орнировали [from ornir] словами, то бы на нем добрым людям без орёру [horreur] дискурировать [from discourir] было не можно. (Lukin 1765: Scene 15; my use of bold to highlight Ver’khogliadov’s Gallicisms)14

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   87 The trinket-vendor, opposing borrowing and insisting on the use of words derived from Slavonic roots, espouses a linguistic nationalism which anticipates that of Shishkov, whose views at the turn of the century are explored in the following chapters by Gesine Argent and Gary Hamburg. Lukin himself endorses this attitude in his preface to the play: just as fops ‘hate their language’, Chistoserdov claims (Lukin 1765: Scene 16), so the playwright loathes ‘the foreign words that disfigure [the Russian] language’ (preface). Moreover, in a stage direction Lukin instructs actors playing the virtuous characters always to pronounce French words which have been absorbed into Russian in the Russian way, whereas the affected visitors to the shop are to pronounce them in the French manner, as in компания with stress on the first vowel of the suffix -ия rather than on the a of the stem (Scene 7). The Trinket-Vendor, then, echoes Sumarokov’s concern about the danger of imitation; indeed, Lukin has his trinket-vendor explicitly describe Ver’khogliadov as a ‘parrot’ (Scene 15). Resistance to imitation is also implicit in Lukin’s practice as a translator of a foreign original. He has translated the French version of Dodsley’s play ‘into our mores’ (на наши нравы), or has domesticated it as we should now say. His version is an ‘adaptation’, if by adaptation we understand ‘a set of translative interventions which result in a text that is not generally accepted as a translation but is nevertheless recognised as representing a source text’ (Baker and Saldanha 2009: 3). However, it was Fonvizin’s Brigadier, completed in 1769, that came to be seen as the definitive critique of Russian Gallomania in the corpus of Russian comedy, even though it had been preceded by so many other plays on the subject.15 Fonvizin presents two noble couples (a brigadier and his wife and a councillor and his wife) who have met to discuss the betrothal of their respective children, Ivanushka and Sof’ia. Each man flirts with the other man’s partner, and the councillor’s wife and Ivanushka, her prospective son-in-law, also flirt with each other. Sof’ia, for her part, wishes to marry an apparently impecunious young man, Dobroliubov. After various misunderstandings and embarrassments, the failings of the two parental couples are revealed and good sense and virtue (embodied in Sof’ia and Dobroliubov, as their names suggest16) are duly rewarded. It can easily be seen from the foregoing discussion of a number of earlier plays that The Brigadier cannot be considered very original. There are parallels with Holberg’s Jean de France, which Fonvizin knew from a German translation (Kantor 1974: 30–2; Strycek 1976: 148; Dillard 1994: 169–71). (Fonvizin knew Holberg’s works well and while still a student at Moscow University translated many of his Moral Fables (Moralske

88  d ere k o f f o rd Fabler, 1751; see Strycek 1976: 56–63) into Russian.) Features of The Brigadier such as the presence of a headstrong wife who is attracted to her daughter’s foppish Francophile suitor and the belief that a visit to Paris is a mark of status are already to be found in Sumarokov’s Quarrel, for instance. Fonvizin also reuses the by now familiar comic devices of saturating the speech of characters who cleave to imported gallant culture with Gallicisms and mixing languages in their utterances in a way that seems grotesque. Ivanushka, for example, constantly uses French terms of address (madame, mademoiselle, mon père, ma mère), French exclamations and oaths (Hélas!, O Bonheur!, Dieu, Pardieu! (Fonvizin 1769: I, 1; I, 3)17), French expressions (de tout mon cœur, avec plaisir, très obligé! (III, 3; IV, 3; V, 1)18) and Russian Gallicisms which are incomprehensible to his non-francophone seniors (резонеман, индиферан, коннесанс (I, 3; V, 2)).19 He despises his parents for not understanding French and uses it as a language in which to say things he does not intend them to understand, as when he tells the councillor’s wife that his father is l’homme le plus bourru, que je connais (III, 3).20 The speech of the councillor’s wife is similarly strewn with Gallicisms (комоднее, екскюзовать, контрадирует (I, 4; II, 6; V, 2)).21 Since both Ivanushka and the councillor’s wife imagine that they will lead happier lives if they are surrounded by French people and have a partner with whom they can speak French, Ivanushka resolves to seek an occasion favorable (favourable opportunity) for them to elope to Paris (II, 6). For all the conventionality of The Brigadier as part of a growing literary tradition, Fonvizin’s treatment of the phenomenon of Gallomania must have struck a chord with contemporary audiences, for the play was staged over a hundred times in St Petersburg and Moscow during the fifty years or so following its premiere in 1772 (Wirtschafter 2003: 240, n. 67). No doubt this popularity was due in part to the vigour of Fonvizin’s characterisation and to the racy Russian in which his comic characters spoke (as opposed to the stilted language of his moralising characters, whose Russian is crammed with abstract concepts – добродетель, честь, самолюбие and себялюбие (virtue, honour, amour-propre, self-love) – that were associated by Fonvizin’s time with Western moral thought. However, it may also be explained by the fact that Fonvizin in significant ways carried the analysis of Russian cultural and linguistic borrowing from France to a deeper level than Sumarokov or other predecessors, making serious points about social, personal and national character which had vitality in the age of Catherine and beyond. Two of these points are bound up with language use. The first point concerns the character of the nobility as a corporation and the signs of worth that the individual nobleman is expected to

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   89 display (see also Offord 2005a). The nobles portrayed in The Brigadier, with the exception of Sof’ia and Dobroliubov, are incarnations of unworthiness. They are inordinately conscious of rank and are preoccupied with material wealth. They evade service and have no useful occupation. They altogether lack the qualities – a sense of duty, the selfless desire to serve, love of country – that Fonvizin and many other eighteenth-century Russian writers believed nobles should exhibit if the nobility itself and the polity in which it had a privileged position were to thrive. This failing in the character of the nobility manifested itself, according to Fonvizin, in a tendency for nobles to mistake superficial, external signs, such as rank and wealth, for inner qualities of character that constitute true worth, especially such Stoic virtues as moderation, mastery of the passions and respect for the civic community. Use of the French language is one such misleading sign. Ivanushka and the councillor’s wife are right in thinking that as nobles they should display merit, but they are wrong in believing that French-speaking, Gallicised Russian and the mere fact that Ivanushka has visited Paris indicate it (Fonvizin 1769: III, 1; III, 3). It is symptomatic of their error, incidentally, that they prefer the Gallicism merit to the Russian dostoinstvo to denote the concept of worth (III, 3). The confusion of the superficial and the substantial, sign and essence, is in turn attributable to poor education, or rather poor upbringing (воспитание, a subject to which Fonvizin and other writers in the age of Catherine return over and over again). The second point that is bound up with language use concerns the threat that French influence poses to Russia as a nation. Choice of the French language in The Brigadier implies identification with what is perceived as French national character. By enthusiastically mixing a foreign tongue with his native Russian, Ivanushka is consciously attempting to assume a foreign persona, which happens in Fonvizin’s opinion to be morally flawed. Ivanushka admits, for example, that étourderie (flippancy, or Russian легкомыслие) is part of his character; indeed if he were not flippant, he muses, then he would not be truly imitating the French. He is also inconstant, for he is horrified by the prospect of having a faithful wife (II, 6). The councillor’s wife, for her part, excuses Ivanushka’s reckless display of passion for her because she believes that caution would be comic in a young man, especially in one who had been to Paris. Ivanushka agrees: O, vous avez raison! [Oh, you’re right!] Caution, constancy, patience were praiseworthy when people didn’t know how one should live in society; as for us who do know what it is que de vivre dans le grand

90  d ere k o f f o rd monde [to live in high society], anyone as rational as ourselves would obviously think we were very funny if we were constant. (II, 6) It will be seen, incidentally, that Fonvizin has translated the lightness and gaiety on which pre-revolutionary French society did indeed pride itself into a negative topos combining superficiality, frivolity, promiscuity, infidelity and deceitfulness.22 As an artist with a desire to generalise and identify what is typical, Fonvizin therefore seems not merely to be suggesting that shallow devotees of French fashion are to be found in Russian society. Nor can he be altogether ridiculing the use of French in Russian society; after all, the private audiences by whom he was fêted even before his play was performed in the theatre included francophone members of the court. Rather he is challenging all those contemporaries who learn French not for the mere instrumentalist purpose of useful communication with members of another speech community and absorption of the best features of their culture but in order to immerse themselves in that culture and who are in danger of losing their native identity as a result. The integrative approach of these Gallomanes to language acquisition, as we might now put it, may be perceived as a rejection of native character or even as a form of betrayal. Or at least, that is the perception that Fonvizin encourages. Ivanushka and the councillor’s wife believe that Russians are inherently inferior to the French. Being Russian, Ivanushka believes, is a défaut (defect) which nothing can entirely efface (II, 6), although his stay in Paris has lightened the burden of his first nationality by making him more French than Russian (III, 4). The councillor’s wife similarly regards her nationality as a ‘terrible ruin’ (ужасная погибель) (II, 6). The brigadier, obtuse though he is, seems to speak for Fonvizin when he questions whether such renunciation of one’s native state is possible or right. Brigadier:  Well what sort of Frenchman are you? I thought you were born in Rus’ [the word that the brigadier uses invokes heroic Old Russia]. Son:  My body was born in Russia, it’s true, but my spirit belonged to the French crown. Brigadier:  But you are more obliged to Russia than to France all the same. (III, 1)23 Thus Gallomania and the love of the French language which is its outward sign seem to Fonvizin to weaken the loyalty of the Russian nobility to the imperial state or the native land. It is somewhat ironic,

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   91 though, and in keeping with what I have said about the derivative nature of Russian linguistic Gallophobia, that the passage I have just quoted, in which the brigadier and his son discuss Ivanushka’s nationality, is borrowed, mutatis mutandis, from a play by the German author Johann Christoph Gottsched.24 Seen in the broadest perspective, Fonvizin’s concern about Russians’ alleged Gallomania reflects the stirring of national consciousness that Hans Rogger described in a classic study many years ago (Rogger 1960), an awakening sense of Russianness to which Elise Wirtschafter also draws attention in her more recent study of Russian Enlightenment theatre (Wirtschafter 2003). Fonvizin himself, it should be noted, employs the emergent concept of nationhood, using the neologism natsiia both in The Brigadier (Fonvizin 1769: V, 2) and in his slightly later Letters from France,25 based on his experience during an extended journey abroad in 1777–8, in which he speaks not through a dramatic character but for himself (Fonvizin 1959: 433). In those letters, incidentally, Fonvizin would challenge French claims to hegemony over Russia, according to which, he facetiously observed, Burgundy was ‘a nearby province [of France] and Russia a distant one’ (p. 472). By this means he sought to undermine, even to reverse, assumptions about the cultural superiority of France in Europe and the extreme inferiority of Russia (see also Offord 2000; Offord 2005b: 49–72) – assumptions which remained influential even after the achievements of Peter the Great and Catherine had been recognised by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire.

K NIAZ HNIN , KH V OSTOV AND KR YLO V Throughout the remainder of Catherine’s reign Russian dramatists continued at regular intervals to offer further variations on the theme of the detrimental effects of Gallomania and of Russians’ preference for the French language to their own. The subject even found its way into comic opera, giving rise to Kniazhnin’s well-known Misfortune from a Carriage (Neschast’e ot karety, 1779). The nobleman Firiulin (the word is derived from a noun meaning ‘gaper’, ‘duffer’) approves of nothing that is Russian. Russian words offend his ear (Kniazhnin 1779: II, 5). He hates Russian names and has accordingly renamed his bailiff, Klementii, as Kleman (that is, Clément) and his jester, Afanasii, as Buffon (I, 4 and I, 6). His wife, for her part, complains that none of the inhabitants on their estate (that is to say, their serfs) know French, although the estate is situated near to St Petersburg, and she obtusely contrasts this state of affairs with that in France,

92  d ere k o f f o rd where even people who live far from the capital are francophone (II, 5). Urgently needing money with which to buy a French carriage – his only consolation in this Russian wasteland (II, 5) – and new French hats for his wife, Firiulin instructs Klementii to sell some of his serfs to the army. Klementii, who has designs on the serf-girl Aniuta, chooses the peasant she is about to marry, Luk’ian (I, 4). Luckily for Aniuta and Luk’ian, though, they have learnt a few French words from a former master (II, 4) and are able to address Firiulin and his wife as monsieur and madame respectively. This skill, combined with their ability to express their love in a sentimental way, persuades Firiulin to spare Luk’ian from military recruitment and to employ him as a personal footman, provided that he will promise never to speak Russian again (II, 5). This happy outcome prompts an absurd chorus: What a joy is this, / How it warms the heart, / To stand at the back, / Not speaking Russian, / And instead of shouting ‘Get going!’ / He’ll shout in French! / What a joy is this, / How it warms the heart, / When he makes a clamour about something / Nobody in the street is going to understand! (II, 5) Again it is left to a non-noble character, in this case Afanasii, to articulate the truth: the rotten fruit of a Russian nobleman’s travel is disdain for Russianness (II, 5). However, A Misfortune from a Carriage has an additional layer of significance for us here. In so far as it deals with serfdom, the comic opera more clearly broaches the subject of the social divide of which noble francophonie is emblematic than the other works I have mentioned. In this respect it anticipates the sharp contrast drawn between Russian elite bilingualism and peasant monolingualism in the writings of mid-nineteenth-century Romantic cultural nationalists such as the Slavophiles. The theme of separation from one’s native land (отечество), which afflicts certain noblemen and noblewomen in the works by Fonvizin and Kniazhnin to which I have referred, is particularly pronounced in Khvostov’s three-act play The Russian Parisian (Ruskoi parizhanets, 1783). Here Khvostov presents another stereotyped nobleman, Frankoliub (Francophile), who has become infatuated with France as a result of a long stay abroad (and of poor upbringing, we may infer, in that his father had thought it wise to send him there). Frankoliub’s overriding ambition, when he comes back to Russia, is to acquire a French wife. This he has arranged to do through third parties without having met or seen his prospective bride. He reasons that if his children are at least half-French then the dishonour of their having a Russian father will be reduced

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   93 (Khvostov 1783: I, 3). Once married, he will return to Paris, a promised land of social gatherings, shows and potential riches (I, 8; II, 6). ‘I shall expatriate myself’ (экспатрируюсь), he says, and the expatriation will be both physical and spiritual. In defiance of his uncle, the right-thinking Blagorazum, who advises him to cast aside his ‘passion for France’ (II, 3), Frankoliub plans to serve the King of France as a musketeer (I, 2). His loyalty to France outweighs that to his Russian family (III, 3). In fact, Frankoliub openly despises Russians in general (for example, III, 12), regards the term ‘Russian’ (русак) as an insult and would like everybody to forget how to speak Russian (III, 5). In accordance with the conventions of didactic comedy, he is duly punished, of course: he is abandoned by the coarse and fickle French woman (a ‘scarecrow’, a ‘monkey’) who turns up at the end of the play, despite his undiscriminating reverence for her as a Frenchwoman. He is also cast out of the home of his father, whose valuables he has had his servant steal, and is rejected by a gullible 44-year-old widow Zhemanikha (the name implies affectation), whom he had pretended to adore. Unreformed, he resolves to sell his wardrobe and set off again for Paris, the only place, he believes, where he can be happy (III, 11–14). The merits and achievements of the French are not overlooked by Khvostov’s mouthpiece Blagorazum in this play (I, 2; I, 6; II, 3), but the characteristics of frivolity (ветреность), dissipation (беспутство) and fondness for empty chatter are again strongly associated with them (I, 2; I, 5; III, 1; III, 4; III, 13). Most importantly, Khvostov – like Fonvizin – challenges the assumption of Russian inferiority that Gallomania implies and vigorously defends the virtues of the ‘upright Russian’, who loves and serves his fatherland. The Russian Parisian may thus reflect a growing self-confidence among the elite of the burgeoning empire, following victory in the war of 1768–74 against the Turks and at the time of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea (1783). This confidence seems to undermine Frankoliub’s foolish Gallomania. Frankoliub ruefully detects a growing spirit of independence in the homeland to which he has returned. Russians, he complains, now esteem the French no more than other foreign peoples. They have abandoned the French way of thinking and speaking and wish to think and write in Russian instead. They believe they can express all their feelings in Russian and that there is no need to mix French words into their vernacular (II, 3). The subject of linguistic Gallophobia was given fresh impetus in the early nineteenth century by the outbreak of hostilities with Napoleon, as we see from Ivan Krylov’s Fashion Shop (Modnaia lavka), a three-act comedy written in 1806, following Napoleon’s defeat of Austrian and Russian forces at the Battle of Austerlitz (1805) (Krylov 1806; see also

94  d ere k o f f o rd Ivleva 2013). The shop is a metaphor for indiscriminate acceptance of what is foreign, especially French (though English influence is also implicated). The play reflects a growing xenophobia, inasmuch as it presents foreigners as fleecing Russians and corrupting their mores. Here, though, it is the language use of foreigners rather than Russians that is the chief object of the dramatist’s scorn. Much fun is had at the expense of the French characters in the play, the shop’s owner and a deceitful adventurer, who mix French and execrable Russian in their speech. * * * The attitude we have encountered in eighteenth-century Russian comedy towards the reception of French culture and fashion and the French language was foreshadowed in English Restoration comedy a century earlier. English dramatists – Etherege in his Man of Mode, Colley Cibber in Love’s Last Shift, Sir John Vanburgh in his Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, and others – ridicule affected characters who adopt French manners and dress and they warn of the possibly ruinous effects of travel to France. Thomas Shadwell’s Lady Fantast in his Bury Fair believes that conversation should be ‘larded’ all over with French phrases. Etherege’s Sir Fopling Flutter goes to Paris a ‘plain, bashful English blockhead’ and returns ‘a fine [. . .] French fop’ (quoted by Schneider 1971: 119). Nearer to Fonvizin’s time, the Danish dramatist Holberg produced an influential variation on the same theme. In the Russian context, though, playwrights’ critique of the craze for French fashion and their negative representation of the use of the French language reflected a deeper anxiety about national worth and autonomy that was occasioned by the sudden influx of Western civilisation into eighteenth-century Russia. Looking back over the Russian comic tradition of mocking Gallomania, we may see it as both an adaptation of imported literary models (a form of cultural translation) and a reaction to the importation of the social world of the galant homme, the soirée and the salon. Dramatists thought they had several grounds for concern. Especially shocking in an age of imperial expansion, when the manly virtue of martial valour was prized above all others, was the supposedly feminine preoccupation with clothes, vestimentary accessories and coiffure, in a word foppery. Perhaps too there was an undercurrent of anxiety among the dramatists (all men, it should be noted) about the equality that women were beginning to enjoy, up to a point, in the new francophone social world, with its polite conversational formulae, its terms of address and its practice of paying compliments, all of which the dramatists mocked. It may be significant in this connection that in a number of the plays examined (Sumarokov’s Monsters and his Quarrel, Fonvizin’s Brigadier, Krylov’s Fashion Shop) a

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   95 forceful wife seems to be beyond the control of her husband, or nearly so. Moreover, the transformation of woman into an object of admiration appears to bring with it a sexual licence that is strongly associated with French character and culture and the speaking of French. Hence Lukin’s Ver’khogliadov, code-switching profusely, commends what he calls a certain ‘seemly smuttiness’ which, авек эспри выговоренное, анимирует компанию and which is regarded as a марк де бон сан [marque de bon sens], трез естиме [très estimée] в дамских серкелях [cercles] (Lukin 1765: Scene 15).26 Similarly, Krylov’s old-style provincial landowner Sumburov, who has brought up his daughter to be a good wife, housekeeper and mother, sees no need for her to be able to prattle (лепетать) in French (Krylov 1806: II, 9). To advocates of traditional ways like the trinket-vendor, then, francophone society promotes frivolity and promiscuity and undermines established gender roles. It would be simplistic to conclude that disparagement of French fashion in the popular branch of literature I have examined implies a rejection of French culture tout court or that criticism of Russians’ indiscriminate use of the French language represents a denial of the need for Russians to learn French. Foreign languages, after all, were among the subjects that the trinket-vendor’s worthy father conscientiously taught his son (Lukin 1765: Scene 1). Nevertheless, users of the language of the beau monde, when they are seen through the lens of Russian comic dramatists, tend to appear not as admirably cultivated cosmopolitans but as superficial and frivolous men and women prone to personal infidelity and national disloyalty. In the last analysis, then, Russian comic dramatists reflect the dilemma of Westernisation. On the one hand, they may be considered representatives of the Enlightenment: they were using French and other European didactic comedy to promote the development of Western secular culture and the values of an urbane civic society in their backward country. On the other hand, they were sufficiently ambivalent about the borrowing in which they were engaged for us to regard them in retrospect as forerunners of an intelligentsia that in the nineteenth century would view language use, and in particular the bilingualism of the Russian nobility, in nationalistic terms.

NOTES I am grateful to Aleksei Evstratov for help in locating the comedy by Khvostov to which I refer.   1. See Chapter 4, by Carole Chapin, in this volume. See also Volume 1, Chapter 4, by Vladislav Rjéoutski and Natalia Speranskaia, on the Russian francophone press.

96  d ere k o f f o rd  2. As the texts of many of the plays examined here (especially those of Fonvizin, Kniazhnin and Sumarokov) have been reproduced in numerous editions, I refer to passages in them by the number of the act and scene in question rather than by page number. The Arabic numerals after references to plays indicate the scene of the play in question. Where the Arabic number is preceded by a Roman numeral, the Roman numeral indicates the act in which the scene is situated. (If references do not contain a Roman numeral it is because the play has only one act.) Where possible, I have used an online version of the text.   3. A comparison may be made with the situation in German and Italian states. The poetry written by some Gallophobic German students, for example, may have been aimed primarily at German authors who were close to the court and perceived as imitators of the French rather than at the French themselves. See the introductory article in Heitz et al. (2011: xvi). I am indebted to Vladislav Rjéoutski for this information.   4. The chief Russian monograph is by Pavel Berkov (1977). This is not to mention more general histories of eighteenth-century Russian literature (e.g. Brown 1980) and work on Denis Fonvizin in particular (e.g. Moser 1979).  5. Take, for example, the statement in a post-war Soviet discussion of Fonvizin’s critique of Gallomania that Fonvizin ‘stigmatised [. . .] an everyday social phenomenon that had become typical of the gentry class’ when he denounced ‘gentry cosmopolitanism and servility towards things foreign’ (Pigarev 1954: 94). Or again, take the straightforward assertion in David Welsh’s survey of Russian comedy that ‘Gallomania was so widespread in Russia that there is hardly a comedy between 1765 and 1823 which does not contain satirical references to it’ (Welsh 1966: 49).   6. ‘you flatter’, ‘I adore’, ‘I deserve’, ‘to notice’, ‘presence’, ‘absent-minded’, ‘thought’, ‘lovable’, ‘goddess’, ‘I esteem’, ‘quality’, ‘admirer’, ‘excusable’, ‘reasonable’.   7. ‘Because people say la toilette rather than dressing-table, tapisserie rather than wallpaper, pardonable rather than forgivable, étui rather than case. Not enough fine words of this sort have been introduced into our barbaric language. If we call a case an étui why shouldn’t we call a watch a montre in Russian? And why shouldn’t we say oui and non instead of ‘yes’ and ‘no’? Why do you think it would be difficult to introduce monsieur and madame?’   8. ‘My mother, I have the intention of ending your dispute.’ Ivanushka has made up the verb finirovat’ by adding a Russian verbal suffix to the French verb finir.  9. Diulizh (to Diufiza): The resolution madame Delamida makes, I really do not comprehend it and I am very astonished. Delamida:  Monsieur father and you, madame my mother, I shall not marry either monsieur Diulizh or (pointing at Fatiui) this freak, or indeed anyone at all. This is all so vulgar! Diufiza (to Delamida): You reason rightly, of course. Diulizh:  It’s incredible that I am not attractive in her eyes!

The words in bold here are translations of the Gallicisms in Sumarokov’s Russian text. 10. Diulizh uses the word natsiia when he regrets that he is of the same nationality as Khabzei. This would appear to be quite an early application of the concept of the nation in Russia. 11. A free translation of the gist of this saying would be ‘For you won’t avoid what is destined to be.’

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   97 12. According to Stepanov (1988–99), it was written no earlier than 1764. 13. i.e. ‘to lower’, ‘to beat’, ‘to define’, ‘to guess’, ‘to contradict’, ‘to make fun of’, ‘to show’, ‘to offer’, ‘to own’, ‘to preach’, ‘to present’, ‘to produce’, ‘to judge’. I have given all these examples in the infinitive form, but that is not the form in which all of these verbs appear in Lukin’s text. 14. [Ver’khogliadov]:  Good Lord! I’m glad to see you in good health, Mr TrinketVendor. Oh, how your confounded title jars. Do get rid of this barbaric name and call yourself a haberdasher. That would be very gallant, and you yourself would be respected as a gentleman. Trinket-Vendor:  I don’t ever want to be a gentleman, and I won’t change my name, because it is right in our language. Ver’khogliadov:  Oh, for shame! In our language! What a strange excuse! Our language is of the most bestial kind and if we didn’t adorn it with foreign words then good people would be unable to discourse in it without disgust. 15. For an English version of The Brigadier, see Fonvizin (1974). 16. ‘Wisdom’ (sophia), in Greek, and ‘love’ (liubov’) of ‘good’ (dobro), in Russian, respectively. 17. ‘Alas!’, ‘Oh happiness!’, ‘God’, ‘Good Lord!’ 18. I.e. ‘with all my heart’, ‘with pleasure’, ‘much obliged’. 19. I.e. ‘reasoning’, ‘indifferent’, ‘acquaintance’. Many other examples could be cited. 20. I.e. ‘the rudest man I know’. 21. I.e. ‘more comfortable’, ‘to excuse’ and ‘contradicts’. Again, many other examples could be given. 22. This stereotypical view of the French was not confined to Russian writings, of course. 23. The Russian word obiazan, which I have rendered here as ‘obliged’, but which could also be translated as ‘bound’, implies duty (not that the brigadier himself has carried out his duty in an exemplary way during his military career, Fonvizin suggests). Fonvizin felt strongly that the Russian nobleman had a moral obligation to serve his fatherland, even after the formal requirement that he do so had been abolished by Peter III in 1762. 24. I.e. Die Hausfranzösin oder die Mamzell: see Strycek 1976: 148, 153–4. 25. Commonly known as Pis’ma iz Frantsii, although that was not the title under which these letters were first published. 26. If ‘uttered with wit, [it] animates the company’; ‘a mark of good sense, much prized in ladies circles’.

REFERENCES Baker, M. and G. Saldanha (eds) (2009), Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies, 2nd edn, London and New York: Routledge. Berkov, P. N. (1977), Istoriia russkoi komedii XVIII veka, Leningrad: Nauka. Brown, W. E. (1980), A History of 18th-Century Russian Literature, Ann Arbor: Ardis. Dillard, C. (1994), ‘Ludvig Holberg in the Russian literary landscape’, in S. H. Rossel (ed.), Ludvig Holberg: A European Writer. A Study in Influence and Reception, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, pp. 162–90.

98  d ere k o f f o rd Fonvizin, D. I. (1769), Brigadir, at http://www.klassika.ru/read.html?proza/fonvizin/brigadir.txt&page=0 (last accessed on 11 October 2014). Printed version: Fonvizin, Sobranie sochinenii, ed. G. P. Makogonenko, 2 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, vol. 1, pp. 45–103. Fonvizin, D. I. (1959), ‘Pis’ma iz vtorogo zagranichnogo puteshestviia (1777–1778)’, in Fonvizin, Sobranie sochinenii, ed. G. P. Makogonenko, 2 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, vol. 2, pp. 412–95. Fonvizin, D. I. (1974), Dramatic Works of D. I. Fonvizin, ed. M. Kantor, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Heitz, R., Y.-G. Mix, J. Mondot and N. Birkner (eds) (2011), Gallophilie und Gallophobie in der Literatur und in den Medien in Deutschland und in Italien im 18. Jahrhundert, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. Ivleva, V. (2013), ‘The locus of the fashion shop in Russian literature from 1764 to 1806’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 46: 363–83. Kantor, M. (1974), ‘Introduction’, in Dramatic Works of D. I. Fonvizin, ed. Kantor, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 11–45. Karlinsky, S. (1985), Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin, Berkeley: University of California Press. Khvostov, D. (dated 1783 in this version), Russkoi frantsuz, komediia v trekh deistviiakh, available in the British Library (General Reference 1343.h.8). Kniazhnin, Ia. B. (1779), Neschast’e ot karety, at http://az.lib.ru/k/knjazhnin_j_b/ text_0050.shtml (last accessed on 11 October 2014). Printed version: Kniazhnin, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, ed. L. I. Kulakova, Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, pp. 563–89. Krylov, I. A. (1806), Modnaia lavka, at http://az.lib.ru/k/krylow_i_a/text_0070.shtml (last accessed on 25 February 2014). Lukin, V. (1765), Shchepetil’nik, at http://az.lib.ru/l/lukin_w_i/text_0050.shtml (last accessed on 10 October 2014). Mihaila, M. (2014), ‘The beginnings and the golden age of francophonie among the Romanians’, in V. Rjéoutski, G. Argent and D. Offord (eds), European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language, Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 337–70. Moser, C. A. (1979), Denis Fonvizin, Boston: Twayne. Offord, D. (2000), ‘Beware the garden of earthly delights: Fonvizin and Dostoevskii on life in France’, The Slavonic and East European Review, 78: 4, 625–42. Offord, D. (2005a), ‘Denis Fonvizin and the concept of nobility: an eighteenth-century Russian echo of a western debate’, European History Quarterly, 35: 1, 9–38. Offord, D. (2005b), Journeys to a Graveyard: Perceptions of Europe in Classical Russian Travel Writing, Dordrecht: Springer. Östman, M. (2014), ‘French in Sweden in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in V. Rjéoutski, G. Argent and D. Offord (eds), European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language, Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 273–306. Pigarev, K. V. (1954), Tvorchestvo Fonvizina, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Rogger, H. (1960), National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schneider, B. R., Jr (1971), The Ethos of Restoration Comedy, Urbana, Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press.

lin guis t ic gal l o p ho bia in r u s s i a n c o m e dy   99 Smith, M. (2006), The Influence of French on Eighteenth-Century Literary Russian: Semantic and Phraseological Calques, Oxford: Peter Lang. Stepanov, V. P. (1988–99), ‘Karin Aleksandr Grigor’evich’, in Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XVIII veka, at http://russian_xviii_centure.academic.ru/360/ (last accessed on 10 October 2014). Strycek, A. (1976), La Russie des Lumières: Denis Fonvizine, Paris: Librairie des Cinq Continents. Sumarokov, A. P. (1750a), Chudovishchi, at http://az.lib.ru/s/sumarokow_a_p/ text_0370.shtml (last accessed on 10 October 2014). Sumarokov, A. P. (1750b), Ssora u muzha s zhenoi, at http://az.lib.ru/s/sumarokow_a_p/ text_0410.shtml (last accessed on 10 October 2014). Welsh, D. J. (1966), Russian Comedy 1765–1823, The Hague: Mouton. Wirtschafter, E. K. (2003), The Play of Ideas in Russian Enlightenment Theater, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

chapter 6

The Linguistic Debate between Karamzin and Shishkov: Evaluating Russian–French Language Contact Gesine Argent

T

he late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Russia was a period of extensive debates about language. These polemics were not only a significant cultural phenomenon at the time, but markedly influenced subsequent thought on language and continue to be referenced in contemporary language commentary. The Karamzin/ Shishkov language polemic constituted what Jan Blommaert (1999: 10) calls a highly formative debate, providing ‘stock arguments which underlie the construction of authoritative (folk as well as expert) rhetoric about the issues’. Indeed this polemic has itself become a stock subject even up to present-day language discussions. In this chapter I focus on how language contact between Russian and French is evaluated in the thought of the two key figures in the debate: the writer and historian Nikolai Karamzin and the essayist and statesman Aleksandr Shishkov. Both viewed language as of primary importance not only for the development of Russian literature but also for Russia’s general standing within Europe. Karamzin’s and Shishkov’s pronouncements on Russian and French must be seen against the background of a general drive for refinement of the new Russian literary language and clarification of the basic principles of linguistic and stylistic theory. This drive and the question of the role of French in the process did not start with Karamzin and Shishkov. Forerunners include writers of satires and comedies (dealt with in Chapter 4 in this volume) and there had been attempts to codify the Russian language and create order within the multitude of varieties used such as Church Slavonic, chancery language and spoken language (просторечие), most notably the systems intended to codify Russian into different styles for different genres that were devised by Vasilii Trediakovskii in the 1730s and Mikhail Lomonosov in the 1750s. The

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   101 language polemics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century arose out of this context. Any particular language debate is connected to wider issues, since ‘language attitudes stand proxy for a much more comprehensive set of social and political attitudes’ (Milroy and Milroy 1999: 45 f.). The Russian debates, for example, were taking place in a literary scene that was closely associated with politics (Al’tshuller 2007: 29). The linguistic views of Shishkov in conjunction with his political activity are examined by Gary Hamburg in the following chapter. Here, I concentrate on the themes featured in Karamzin’s and Shishkov’s writings on language, analysing how linguistic ideologies are expressed. It is important to note that the aim is not to arrive at a picture of language use. I focus on what thinkers say about language and how they say it, rather than take their comments as a truthful account of what the language scene was like. Oleg Proskurin (2000: 19 f.) points out that others have fallen into this trap in studies of the Russian language polemics of this time, and reminds us that extreme positions and pronouncements are in some way the masks of constructed literary personae. In what follows, I first give a description of the language debate and the main works of Karamzin and Shishkov, the style of argumentation they adopted and the involvement of their followers. Then I analyse some major argumentation strategies in the writings of the two thinkers.

TH E M ETADISCURSI V E ACTI V ITIES OF K ARAMZIN AND S HISHK O V AND T H EIR FOLLOWERS Scholarship on language about language (metadiscourse) highlights the fact that metadiscourse is evaluative and serves to establish what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ language (Jaworski et al. 2004: 4). Specific evaluations are based on language ideologies, that is to say ‘cultural conceptions of the nature, form and purpose of language’ (Gal and Woolard 1995: 130). Not everyone is allowed to participate authoritatively in such a debate. For the viewpoints put forward to be authoritative, there must be ‘ideology brokers’ (Blommaert 1999: 9) who can claim authority in the debate. Karamzin and Shishkov are just such ideology brokers, thanks to their eminent positions as a very popular author (Karamzin) and patriotic statesman who, despite fluctuating political influence, had gained a group of followers (Shishkov). Their pronouncements on language matters thus had considerable influence, especially as they prominently expressed sentiments felt by others.

102  gesine a r ge nt The writings of Karamzin and Shishkov on language As regards Karamzin, several remarks in his Letters of a Russian Traveller (Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, 1791–1801) show that language issues were already close to his heart when he wrote that work. Indeed, around the same time, in Moskovskii zhurnal (Moscow Journal, 1791–2) Karamzin criticises authors who ‘from time to time turn over the compost of our language and drag out in triumph various obsolete words, long since replaced by others much better and equally expressive’ (quoted in Cross 1971: 53). Karamzin’s own language practice reportedly relied heavily on French. In 1800, the poet Gavrila Kamenev recounted that Karamzin used many French words, such as имажинация (imagination), сентименты (sentiments), tourment (torment) or énergie (energy), at the rate of one French word in ten Russian ones ([1800] 1864: 77).1 His ego-documents, examined by Liubov Sapchenko in Chapter 8 of Volume 1, are characterised by use of both French and Russian. It is worth noting that Karamzin also used the French language to communicate his ideas and an image of Russia to Europe. To this end he wrote an anonymous contribution about Russian literature in French for Le Spectateur du Nord (The Spectator of the North). Using French produced the desired effect, as the editor wrote a complimentary note about the level of French language skill that, one could see from the article, had clearly been attained in Russia (Karamzin 1797: 58). Using French, then, not only gave Karamzin the means to make himself understood abroad, but also served as a mark of general distinction for all Russia. Karamzin started writing specifically on language issues towards the end of the century, for example in the short text ‘On the Richness of Language’ (‘O bogatstve iazyka’, 1795). In 1802, several of Karamzin’s texts allocate a key role to language: ‘On Love of the Fatherland and National Pride’ (‘O liubvi k otechestvu i narodnoi gordosti’), ‘A Curiosity’ (‘Strannost’’) and ‘Why is there so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’ (‘Otchego v Rossii malo avtorskikh talantov?’). Eventually, Karamzin turned away from literary questions to concentrate on history, and his pronouncements on language became fewer. Karamzin urged authors to write in a pleasing style and to use language that was suitable for writing in any genre, readable by all and not ponderous. He took French literature and theory as models, particularly Vaugelas, whose influence was near universal in Europe at the time (Breuillard 2002: 759). Some categories of Karamzinian thought, such as the labelling of Church Slavonic as a hard (жесткий) language and the new literary language as tender, derived from French theories which opposed unpolished baroque language and the new French literary lan-

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   103 guage (Zhivov 2009: 137). Indeed, it should be noted that the discussions about the development of the French language and its role in shaping French civilisation were directly influencing Russian linguistic culture. Despite this influence and early statements that cultural borrowing in general was legitimate, Karamzin argued that only necessary material should be borrowed and that the ultimate aim should be to develop Russian as a language that deserved to be used in its own right. He thought Russian was suitable for such development: the language should take its rightful place among other European languages by creating a literature that would contribute to the communal culture of Europe, he remarked in 1818 to the Imperial Russian Academy (Anderson 1971: 169). Shishkov’s first detailed pronouncement on language issues was the ‘Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language’ (‘Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka’, 1803), in which he attacked writing in the Karamzinian style and responded in detail to Karamzin’s statements in his article ‘Why is there so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’. In 1804, Shishkov published an ‘Addition to the Work called Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language’ (‘Pribavlenie k sochineniiu nazyvaemomu Rassuzhdeniiu [sic] o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka’), responding to criticisms of his work. Another cluster of works on language coincided roughly with the foundation of the Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word (Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova, see below) and, more broadly, with the period of war with France (1805–12) and the consequent rise of patriotic sentiment. Thus in 1811 he published ‘A treatise on the eloquence of the scriptures and on what makes the Russian language rich, abundant, beautiful and strong and how it can be still further spread, enriched and perfected’ (‘Rassuzhdenie o krasnorechii sviashchennogo pisaniia i o tom, v chem sostoit bogatstvo, obilie, krasota i sila rossiiskogo iazyka i kakimi sredstvami onyi eshche bolee raspostranit’, obogatit’ i usovershenstvovat’ mozhno’). In 1811 he opened the Symposium with a programmatic speech (Shishkov [1812] 1825), and at meetings he read his ‘Meditation on Love of the Fatherland’ (‘Rassuzhdenie o liubvi k otechestvu’), which was published in 1812 and features language as a central topic. In the same year the volume ‘Dialogues on Literature between Persons A and B’ (‘Razgovory o slovesnosti mezhdu dvumia litsami Az i Buki’), appeared, in which Shishkov reiterated his main beliefs. Shishkov’s basic conception of language rests on two premisses: firstly, that Church Slavonic and Russian are the same language or, at most, that Russian is a dialect of Church Slavonic, and, secondly, that languages are specific to nations and are cultural organisms (Cooper 2008: 54). The latter point

104  gesine a r ge nt in particular is closely associated with Shishkov’s strongly Gallophobic stance. Common ground and differences It is worth noting that Shishkov and Karamzin had many views in common. They both held conservative political beliefs and had a similar background and upbringing, but the commonalities extend also to linguistic views; for example, both reject bureaucratic and dialectal lexical material (Zhivov 2009: 368). Nonetheless, the comments on language made by both, and the people who followed them, are still characterised as a debate, and a polemical one at that. It was conducted in sharp terms and did not shy away from personal attacks, satire and joking at the expense of opponents. In his ‘Discourse’, Shishkov belittled Karamzin’s ‘Why is there so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’, which he referred to as ‘some little book’ (later arguing that this phrase preserved the author’s anonymity, despite the fact he also quoted the work’s title). Shishkov’s responses to any criticisms of his own work were vociferous, although he claimed that they were based on a desire to be useful rather than wounded pride (Makarov [1803] 1864; Shishkov [1804] 1824b: 355). With apparent grace, he pointed out that the anonymity of all quoted sources had been preserved so as to avoid personal attacks, but his authorial strategy was shrewder than that. Giving the impression that he had quoted examples of ‘bad’ Russian from numerous books rather suited Shishkov’s purposes. However, it has been shown that they almost all stem from one book: The Comforts of Melancholy (Utekhi melankholii) by the minor writer Aleksandr Obrezkov (Proskurin 2000: 22–6). Not only did this writer’s style bear no resemblance to Karamzin’s, his work was despised by Karamzinians such as Petr Viazemskii and made an object of ridicule at their meetings (Proskurin 2000: 35–7). Shishkov cited examples of Obrezkov’s writing, the extremely poor quality of which was immediately obvious to all, alongside a very small number of phrases that were commonly known to have been written by Karamzin, and tacitly let the assumption stand that he was citing ‘Karamzinian’ writing t­hroughout – a strategy that was detected by contemporary Karamzinians, but led numerous scholars until the twentieth century to conclude that Shishkov was mainly quoting writing by Karamzin and major figures following in his tradition (Proskurin 2000: 44–6). Shishkov and his followers equally received their share of ridicule. Even his supporters, for example Sergei Aksakov, described Shishkov in terms that were hardly flattering, as a cranky, absent-minded man who cared little about society or anything other than his scholarship on

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   105 language (Aksakov [1856] 1955). His opponents took every opportunity to mock him, although it must be noted that Karamzin was an exception: Karamzin generally ignored his critics, avoided confrontation and refrained from criticising contemporary authors in Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe), the journal he edited, so as not to discourage the fledgling Russian literature (Todd 1997: 51). Even today, many new words which Shishkov supposedly made up to replace borrowed French words but which were never actually used are cited to show the futility of his efforts to stem the tide of linguistic innovation. Many of these words, though, such as the infamous мокроступы for галоши (galoshes), were in fact invented by opponents of the Symposium (Al’tshuller 2007: 58). Sniping between their camps notwithstanding, the relationship between Shishkov and Karamzin seems to have developed into a certain mutual respect with passing years. Shishkov made approving remarks about Karamzin (Shishkov [1836] 2006), and Aksakov reported that Karamzin told him in 1816 that although Shishkov had much anger and gall, and was evidently feeling personal animosity towards him, he was saying many truthful things (Aksakov [1856] 1955: 312). The two groups in context Of course, Karamzin and Shishkov were not the only ones to concern themselves with language issues; rather, they were the most outstanding figures in two opposing camps commonly separated into innovators and archaists, after Iurii Tynianov introduced these terms ([1929] 1967). (It has been argued that the terms are misleading, as Shishkovian thought was in fact innovative (Cooper 2008: 64), as discussed below.) The polemic was characterised by parodies about the other side such as Vasilii Zhukovskii’s poem about Shishkov, ‘Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors’ (‘Pevets vo stane russkikh voinov’) ([1812] 1959: 149–66), or Aleksandr Izmailov’s satirical poems and fairytales aimed at Shishkov and Sergei Glinka (Proskurin 2000: 116–32). Insults were traded. Vasilii Pushkin wrote a poem to Zhukovskii originally published in Tsvetnik (The Flower Garden) in 1810, stating that he saw virtue in the Slavonic language but hated barbaric taste (Pushkin 1893). Shishkov responded by accusing Pushkin of behaving like people in a Parisian back-street, and Pushkin retaliated by making personal attacks on the archaists Platon Shirinskii-Shikhmatov and Aleksandr Shakhovskoi (Hollingsworth 1966: 312). Although the two opposing camps were not sharply distinct, but rather presented a continuum of opinions, it is nonetheless possible to draw dividing lines between them. In the flourishing scene of societies,

106  gesine a r ge nt salons and associations of the time, certain groups were associated with either the Karamzinian or Shishkovian line of thought. Karamzin’s thought was followed in the Friendly Literary Society (Druzhestvennoe literaturnoe obshchestvo) and the Free Society for Lovers of Literature, Sciences and the Arts (Vol’noe obshchestvo liubitelei slovesnosti, nauk i khudozhestv), both founded in 1801. The membership and activities of such groups fluctuated over time; for example, in 1810 the Free Society gained more members and the polemic about styles entered a more vigorous phase (Proskurin 2000: 116). Some core members of the society Arzamas, which had been founded in response to renewed sniping from the archaists and existed from 1815 to 1818, had been members of the Free Society (Hollingsworth 1966). On the other side, in 1811, Shishkov founded the Symposium for Lovers of the Russian Word (Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova), a diverse group with members who had a wide range of outlooks but among whom there was a strong core of archaists (Al’tshuller 2007: 27). Particular journals played a significant role in the dissemination of the ideas of each camp. Karamzin was editor of the journal Vestnik Evropy. The Symposium eventually also published a journal, Chteniia v besede liubitelei russkogo slova (Readings at the Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word). As an antidote to this, the Sankt Peterburgskii vestnik (St Petersburg Courier) featured polemical treatment of archaist tendencies. Many of the core Symposium members, such as Shishkov, Gavrila Derzhavin, Dmitrii Khvostov and ShirinskiiShikhmatov, published works in Russkii vestnik (The Russian Courier) whose editor Sergei Glinka was sympathetic to Shishkovian views (see Chapter 7 by Gary Hamburg in this volume; also Lupareva 2010: 140). Since language debates are never divorced from a political background, it is not surprising that this particular debate was affected by political hostility between Russia and France. Both Karamzin and Shishkov wrote about patriotism and the nation, linking language issues to the topic, most obviously in Karamzin’s ‘Love of the Fatherland’ ([1802] 1964b) and Shishkov’s ‘Meditation’ ([1811] 1864b). Karamzin stated that if a person grows up with a foreign language, it will become the language they are used to and lead to problems because love of one’s native language is important for fostering patriotic feeling. Shishkov thought along the same lines, but conceived of the connection between languages and nations as much stronger, linking a language inextricably to a particular nation. In this respect his thought was innovative for its time, accommodating new Herderian ideas about language, although it is unclear whether he was influenced directly or indirectly by Herder (Zhivov 2009: 370; see also Chapter 7 in this volume). The main difference in the two writers’ thoughts on language and the nation, and on the

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   107 role that the widespread use of French played in this relationship, is that the proponents of the new style distinguished between ‘good’ French culture and ‘bad’ French revolutionaries and warmongers, whereas the archaists believed that French culture and France’s status as a political enemy of Russia were closely linked (Martin 1997: 33). However, whilst in 1812 and the immediate aftermath of the war and Napoleon’s defeat there was a surge of patriotic feeling, leading to a general preference for patriotic genres and the archaic style favoured by Shishkov’s school, the victory was short-lived. Already in 1815, leading literary figures had begun to make fun of Shishkov again, and the Arzamas circle continued to develop the style advocated by Karamzin (Cooper 2010: 63).

AR G U M ENTATION STRATEGIES I turn now to an examination of Karamzin’s and Shishkov’s argumentation strategies. Overall, the debate is characterised by an abundance of purist argumentation against French influence on Russian language and culture. Metaphors used in their writing already give an indication of such purism. Shishkov uses a variety of metaphors to describe the state of the language culture as he perceives it, frequently invoking the ‘infection’ with love of French, then likening the infection to a landslide threatening the Russian language. He also uses biblical imagery, comparing Russian words within a Francophile environment, for example, to seeds that have been trampled upon or fallen on stone ([1803] 1813: 48, cf. Luke 8: 5–6). Such metaphors instantly convey a negative image of foreignisms. Shishkov’s metaphors for phenomena to do with language contact are not original or unique. Nils Langer and Agnete Nesse (2012: 610) point out the striking similarity of arguments to justify purism in different language cultures and times. Underlying such metaphors is the myth of linguistic homogeneity: that languages can reach perfection (Watts 2012: 595). Although of course languages never can reach a ‘finished state’, because they need to be adaptable to the purposes of ongoing social practice (Watts 2012: 595), the drive for a standard, perfectly suitable language is found in all purist metadiscourse, including that of Karamzin and Shishkov. In the following textual analysis, I present the arguments put forward by Karamzin and Shishkov on the state of Russian and its use, the root causes of perceived problems, and the solutions they proposed.

108  gesine a r ge nt The state of the Russian language and its use Both Karamzin and Shishkov stress that Russian is a rich, beautiful language. Already in his Letters of a Russian Traveller, Karamzin wrote about the capacity of Russian poetry ‘to prove that our language is not offensive to the ear’, making listeners notice the ‘particular harmony’ of Russian verse (Karamzin [1791] 2003: 93). Later, in ‘Love of the Fatherland’, Karamzin stated that Russian is expressive enough for all genres, that ‘it is richer in harmony than French, more capable of outpourings of the soul; has more analogous words, that is [words] corresponding to the expressed action: a characteristic that only root languages have!’ ([1802] 1964b: 285). He stresses the superiority of Russian in a text where this trope functions to strengthen national feeling in the reader. In the first volume of his History of the Russian State (Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, 1816–29) Karamzin similarly affirms that ‘the language [of the Russian people], when governed by the talent and taste of an intelligent writer, can today bear comparison in strength, beauty and agreeability with the best ancient and modern languages’ ([1816] 1969b: 70). In sum, Karamzin considers Russian to be rich, expressive and at least on a par with, if not superior to, other languages, including French. Shishkov’s statements on the richness of Russian are similar to Karamzin’s, but are more numerous and phrased in stronger, more emotive terms and use more rhetorical questions. It should be noted that when Shishkov speaks of the richness and beauty of the language, he is concerned mostly with Slavonic. All the same, those comments do reflect his opinion of the Russian language, since for him Slavonic and Russian cannot be separated from one another: ‘What, after all, is “Russian”, as distinguished from “Slavonic”? A dream, a riddle. Is it not strange to assert the existence of a language which contains not a single word?’ ([1810] 1864a: 94) Indeed, Shishkov affirms that there is nothing more nonsensical than to think that the Slavonic language is unnecessary for creation of the new Russian style ([1803] 1813: 66), because ‘the Slavonic language is the root and foundation of the Russian language; it gives it richness, sense, strength, beauty’ ([1803] 1813: 90). Both Shishkov and Karamzin held that despite its superior qualities, the Russian language is not used or respected enough. Shishkov put forward the well-worn argument that the language in itself is good and rich, but speakers’ lack of knowledge poses problems ([1803] 1813: 301). Karamzin expresses similar ideas. In a letter to Charles Bonnet, quoted in his Letters of a Russian Traveller, he explained that ‘our language, although very rich, has not been cultivated enough.’ He thought that

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   109 Russian was no worse than other languages for conversation but that members of high society, especially women, failed to make the effort to find Russian words to express their thoughts ([1791] 2003: 203, 391). He took up this idea again a decade later in ‘Love of the Fatherland’, stating that ‘it is our misfortune that we want to say everything in French and do not think to work on the elaboration of our own language.’ He praised the English, who ‘prefer to whistle and hiss in English even with those they love most tenderly rather than speak a foreign language which they all know’ ([1802] 1964b: 285, 286). The idea of the uncultivated Russian language, voiced by Shishkov and Karamzin and their followers, became accepted as self-evident by subsequent students of the period. This idea of Russian being cultivated at this time perpetuates what Richard Watts (2012: 585 f.) calls the funnel view of language history: language is conceived of as a large mixture of different styles and varieties, which at a certain point in history are poured together through some vessel into a refined standard form. Shishkov is strongly opposed to the mixing of French and Russian, likening the mixture to ‘a grey kaftan with lapels and collar. This is even worse than real foreign dress’ ([1804] 1824b: 386). In the second edition of his ‘Discourse’, although not in the first, he concedes that it is good to know French, but still objects to the mixing of it with Russian, for language mixing, according to Shishkov, is a sign of a lack of respect for one’s native language, even if speakers might believe the use of French words would enrich Russian. It is often the mixing of languages, rather than just the use of a foreign language, that leads to the strongest condemnation, because those who subscribe to the standardlanguage myth view any mixture as an aberration from what ought to be a pure, fixed code. Speakers’ lack of knowledge was linked by both Karamzin and Shishkov to a failure to read Russian-language books. While Karamzin conceded that the French had been writing works of literature and philosophy for a long time and many excellent French works were thus readily available, he admonished Russians for not reading Russian authors enough and for preferring French literature ([1802] 1964b: 285). Shishkov echoed this point in his ‘Discourse’, claiming that the only way which leads into the ‘temple of literature’ is reading books in one’s native language ([1803] 1813: 7). Shishkov predicted that when they read Russian books, readers would realise how rich Russian was and ‘throw away the French language just as a child throws away its favourite wooden toy when it is shown the same one in gold’ ([1804] 1824b: 402). However, Shishkov admitted that despite the richness of Russian, the language was only now starting to be developed properly for use. Both Karamzin and Shishkov offer a utilitarian view of language as a tool that

110  gesine a r ge nt must be honed until it is of optimum usability, but, as I will show below, they combine this with an essentialist view of language as an expression of the identity of the nation (Gasparov 2004: 132). Root causes of use of French instead of Russian Karamzin and Shishkov broadly agree on the root causes of the linguistic situation they observe. Education plays a major role in their argumentation: the education of young Russians should not be placed in the hands of foreigners. In ‘A Curiosity’ (1802), Karamzin discussed an advertisement which aimed to attract Russian students to a boarding school in France. He objected that France would become the students’ homeland and bemoaned the lack of time for education and study, deducing that even the nobility who studied longest did not have time to read and write constantly ([1802] 1982: 103). Shishkov similarly maintained that children could not acquire a good knowledge of their own language if they were entrusted to French educators from an early age and ended up imitating them as parrots imitate humans and despising their own language ([1803] 1813: 164). Likewise, Russians should be tutored by Russians in patriotism: foreigners, Shishkov claimed, could not instil love for the fatherland in Russians because they did not have this love of Russia themselves ([1811] 1864b: 99). The argument that Russians are imitating the French like parrots is a recurrent theme in Shishkov’s texts. He complained that the French have ‘taught us everything: how to dress, how to walk, how to stand, how to sing, how to talk, how to bow, and even how to blow our noses and cough’ ([1803] 1813: 337). Language is put on a par with other cultural practices which Shishkov perceived as taken from the French, and he angrily claimed that the French had harnessed the Russians to their chariot, and the Russians were proud to pull them along ([1803] 1813: 339). Karamzin also used the metaphor of parroting and aping, stating in his Letters of a Russian Traveller that people with a smattering of French needlessly mangled that language in order to speak to their compatriots, as one was deaf and mute without French in so-called good society. ‘How can you not have national self-respect? Why be parrots and apes at once?’ asks Karamzin ([1791] 2003: 391). The image of parroting and condemnation of imitation had already been important concerns of Gallophobic comedies, as Derek Offord has shown in the previous chapter. Shishkov was not only opposed to imitation per se, but was especially incensed that the object of imitation should be a people he considered morally unsound. Casting doubt on the moral integrity of French people and French literature, he claimed that many of the Frenchmen in Russia

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   111 had come there because of differences with the Parisian police, and that ‘nowhere are there so many false, seductive, unwise, harmful and infectious thoughts as in French books’ ([1804] 1824b: 369). Thinkers sympathetic to Shishkov’s views voiced similar opinions about the French and their language, for example Sergei Glinka, who stated in his essay ‘Voltaire’s Discourse on the Poverty of the French Language’ (‘Vol’terovo rassuzhdenie o bednosti frantsuzskogo iazyka’) that there was ample proof of the barbarity of the foppish French language (Lupareva 2010: 141). Language is thus personified and directly linked with the perceived qualities of its speakers. Other authors echoed such sentiments later, for example Ivan Murav’ev-Apostol, who stated that although there may be some honest Frenchmen (whom he pitied for having been born as such) their barbaric literature and decadent morals were not a good example for Russians. Linking this moral point to language, he concluded that ‘I cannot but agree with those who ascribe untold evil to our use of the French language’ (Murav’ev-Apostol [1824] 2002: 17), because in his view it had deprived Russians of a proper education. Morals and language practice are linked together causally, a fact which strengthens the case for using one kind of language, pure Russian, and not another. Next, I examine how Karamzin and Shishkov thought this purity should be achieved. Proposed solutions For all the similarities between Shishkov’s and Karamzin’s thinking on the state of Russian and foreign influences, there are vast differences in the strategies they believed would solve the problems that they perceived as affecting the Russian language. Karamzin was of the opinion that the lexis in existing sacred and secular writing had not yet been used by writers for the production of good literature, which should enrich words with ideas and show how it is possible to express thoughts in a pleasing way ([1802] 1969a: 193). However, he suggested that any potential Russian authors look elsewhere, to the spoken language, to perfect their knowledge of Russian. The French, after all, wrote in the way they spoke, and the French language was already recorded in books in all its nuances, whereas Russian was only partly recorded in writing. Not that the spoken Russian of the elite yet provided a complete model for writers to follow. As Karamzin pointed out, only French was spoken in Russian high society, and Russians still had to speak about many subjects, if they used their native language, in the way that a talented Russian wrote. Nonetheless, there were a number of strategies, which Karamzin listed in ‘Why is there so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’, that authors might

112  gesine a r ge nt adopt to develop their style: ‘To make up, to compose expressions; to divine the best choice of words; to give some new twist to the old; to present them in a new association, but so skilfully as to deceive readers and conceal from them the uncommonness of the expression!’ ([1802] 1969a: 193–4). Shishkov, on the other hand, insisted that the only way to develop Russian was to concentrate on the Slavonic language, which he considered the root and basis of the Russian language. He therefore postulated that Russians must ‘study it, and draw from it, not from any Bonnets, Voltaires, Youngs or Thomsons, the art of speaking well’ ([1803] 1813: 40). Shishkov invoked the past as an ideal time that should be reinstated or at least used as a good example: ‘We see in our forefathers examples of many virtues: they loved their fatherland, were firm in faith, revered the tsar and the laws’ ([1804] 1824b: 458). Shishkov deduced that the language practice of such virtuous people was worth emulating. Intertwining linguistic and moral issues is common in metadiscourse, connecting language use to the maintenance or breakdown of moral order (Cameron 2004: 313). Shishkov accepted that every language is enriched by others, although in his opinion not by borrowings, but by gaining the new knowledge that is needed to build new branches from the root of one’s own language. As proof of the richness and suitability of sacred texts as sources for the development of Russian, Shishkov gave examples not only from French and German Bible translations, which he considered (with no convincing argumentation) weaker than the Slavonic translation, but also from the Slavonic versions of the sacred texts. He simply claimed to have used the first examples he came across, arguing that rich, expressive language is found everywhere in sacred Russian texts ([1803] 1813: 86, 121). He drew a clear parallel between religion and the history of language, contending that the state of Russian until the introduction of the Orthodox faith in Russia in the tenth century was entirely unclear, and that ‘suddenly’ language appeared alongside faith ([1810] 1864a: 92). Shishkov summed his key argument up at the beginning of ‘Dialogues on Literature’: ‘A: Does our language have sufficient rules for writing correctly? B: Yes, entirely sufficient and firm rules. A: Where are they? B: In church books’ ([1812] 1824c: 1–2). The Karamzinians, on the other hand, considered Church Slavonic a bookish language that had to be learnt like a foreign one, and Slavonicisms as borrowings that contravened the purity of Russian. Although borrowing from French was not considered ideal, it was preferred by Karamzinians to borrowing from Slavonic (Zhivov 2009: 359, 367). Shishkov was heavily criticised for his views. In a review of ‘Dialogues’ in Vestnik Evropy, Mikhail Kachenovskii argued against Shishkov’s

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   113 insistence that Slavonic and Russian were the same language, pointing out that Russian had developed to the point where laws and books were written in it, and that according to Shishkovian logic most European languages would be mere dialects (Kachenovskii 1811). Dmitrii Dashkov, a vocal critic of Shishkov, wrote a review of Shishkov’s translation of and commentary on La Harpe in which he strongly criticised Shishkov’s argument but agreed with him on certain points, for example that the language needed to be fixed, and that contemporary writers employed a ‘barbaric mix’ of language ([1810] 1864a: 112–16; quotation from p. 114). Shishkov responded strongly to the criticisms, to which Dashkov replied with an essay ‘On the Easiest Method of Refuting Criticism’ ([1811] 1864b: 117–25), rebuking Shishkov for not engaging with criticism but merely reiterating his points. Shishkov, in turn, accused his critics of not supplying the same quantity of examples as he himself had to prove their points ([1804] 1824b: 365). However, Shishkov’s own examples frequently amount to little more than unsubstantiated opinions on linguistic matters which his contemporaries rejected for much the same reasons as linguists today. For instance, Shishkov justified his much-derided theory that words like глубоко (deep) and широко (wide) are compounds of око (eye) on the grounds that since other compound words exist, these words must also be compounds ([1812] 1824c: 183). The same poor reasoning is found in his statement in ‘Dialogues on Literature’ that French is illogical: the French word for ‘shock’, Shishkov declared, is ‘choc’, which is pronounced ‘shok’ but is written with the letters c h o c, which correspond to the Cyrillic letters ц г о ц (ts g o ts). Shishkov deduced that the Cyrillic alphabet is thus more natural and orderly. Such unfounded assertions, combined with his insistence that writers use Slavonic, led to widespread mockery of his statements. His arguments did not correspond to what was accepted as common sense in the linguistic culture of the age, as so many authors were opposed to developing Russian on the basis of Church language. At the same time, it is not entirely fair to dismiss Shishkov’s views as purely reactionary mysticism. In his response to criticism of his ‘Discourse’, Shishkov denies that he wants to ‘dress everyone in caftans’ ([1804] 1824b: 361). Indeed, it was the desire to look towards the ancient roots of language that made his thinking innovative, as such ideas had gained momentum in Europe. Although his rhetoric does suggest that he would have preferred Russians not to read foreign materials, Shishkov was progressive in some sense. Shishkovists did not consider a focus on nationality (народность) and the past to be at odds with progressive, enlightened ideas, because they adhered to the Romantic notion circulating in Europe at that time, according to which enlightened peoples have a

114  gesine a r ge nt history that they need to respect and only savage peoples have no history (Zhivov 2009: 374). However, as the innovative idea was to go back to the past, it was seen as archaic, especially in subsequent descriptions of this language debate. * * * Overall, Shishkov and Karamzin and their respective followers fundamentally disagreed about how the Russian language should be developed, whether by studying Church Slavonic and using its resources (Shishkov) or by using European models as inspiration (Karamzin). Their evaluative comments were made in the hope that they would help to create a Russian standard language. Purist discourse occurs mostly when there is already a standard. Such discourse characterises the structure of the language as immovable and finite, and is based on the myth of the ‘fixed code’ (Harris 2002). There is a close link between purism and the existence of a standard language: ‘the removal of undesirable elements can only really be effective if it is clear what needs to be cleansed from the language, and this presupposes the existence of a norm, of the perception of one’ (Langer and Nesse 2012: 612). In the Russian case that I have discussed, the code is only in the process of being ‘fixed’. In much commentary on language change, James Milroy (1992: 3) states, change is described as a transitional and dysfunctional stage, a disease that may strike an already structured language now and then, and commentators do not acknowledge that language change is ongoing. In our case, again, the debate is somewhat different. Language change is welcomed, but all participants consider it a transitional stage on the way from chaos to the creation of ‘the’ Russian language that will henceforth be the accepted standard, universally usable language. In such discourse, purist statements are to be expected. Langer and Nesse (2012: 613) point out that ‘purism is often used as an important tool in the creation of standard languages and for strengthening their status in the community’. They cite Einar Haugen’s categorisation of four stages of standardisation (Haugen [1966] 1997): selection, codification, implementation and elaboration. Purist commentary can apply to any of these stages. In summary, Karamzin held that Russian was already in a good state and must simply be used more by intelligent, talented people in order to be refined, whereas Shishkov saw a greater need for development, through the creation of a style which was informed by sacred texts. In other words, for Karamzin, selection had already taken place, and now codification and implementation should be overseen by talented authors. Shishkov, on the other hand, thought that selection was still to occur.

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   115

NOTE 1. It should be noted that Kamenev does not distinguish here between code-switching into French (for example using the word ‘énergie’ in a Russian sentence) and the use of French loanwords like imazhinatsiia (imagination) or sentimenty (feelings) that have been given Russian grammatical forms.

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116  gesine a r ge nt Jaworski, A., N. Coupland and D. Galasiński (eds) (2004), Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kachenovskii, M. T. (1811), ‘Razgovory o slovesnosti’, Vestnik Evropy, part 57: 12–13, at http://az.lib.ru/k/kachenowskij_m_t/text_1811_razgovory_o_slovesnosti_oldorfo. shtml (last accessed on 27 August 2014). Kamenev, G. [1800] (1864), ‘Pis’ma’, in A. D. Galakhov (ed.), Istoricheskaia khristomatiia novogo perioda russkoi slovesnosti, vol. 2, St Petersburg: Tipografiia morskogo ministerstva, pp. 77–9. Karamzin, N. M. (1797), ‘Lettre au Spectateur sur la littérature russe’, in Le Spectateur du Nord, vol. 4, Hamburg: Pierre François Fauche, pp. 53–71. Karamzin, N. M. (1802), ‘Strannost’’, Vestnik Evropy, 1: 2, 52–7. Karamzin, N. M. [1802] (1964a), ‘O bogatstve iazyka’, in Izbrannye sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, ed. P. Berkov and G. Makagonenko, 2 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, vol. 2, p. 142. Karamzin, N. M. [1802] (1964b), ‘O liubvi k otechestvu i narodnoi gordosti’, in Izbrannye sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, ed. P. Berkov and G. Makogonenko, 2 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, vol. 2, pp. 280–7. Karamzin, N. M. [1802] (1969a), ‘Why is there so little writing talent in Russia?’, in H. M. Nebel (ed.), Selected Prose of N. M. Karamzin, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, pp. 191–6. Karamzin, N. M. [1816] (1969b), Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, vol. 1, The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Karamzin, N. M. [1802] (1982), ‘Otchego v Rossii malo avtorskikh talantov?’, in Izbrannye stat’i i pis’ma, Moscow: Sovremennik, pp. 101–4. Karamzin, N. [1791] (2003), Letters of a Russian Traveller, trans. A. Kahn, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Khomiakov, A. S. (1900), ‘Razgovor v podmoskovnoi’, in A. S. Khomiakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, pp. 202–30. Langer, N. and A. Nesse (2012), ‘Linguistic purism’, in J. M. Hernández-Campoy and J. C. Conde-Silvestre (eds), Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, Oxford: WileyBlackwell, pp. 607–25. Lotman, Iu. M. and B. A. Uspenskii (1975), ‘Spory o iazyke v nachale XIX veka kak fakt russkoi kul’tury (“Proisshestvie v tsarstve tenei, ili sud’bina rossiiskogo iazyka” – ­neizvestnoe sochinenie Semena Bobrova)’, Uchenye zapiski Tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 358: 168–322 (Trudy po russkoi i slavianskoi filologii, 24). Lupareva, N. N. (2010), ‘S. N. Glinka v spore o “starom” i “novom” sloge russkogo iazyka v nachale XIX stoletiia’, Vestnik Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriia: Lingvistika i mezhkul’turnaia kommunikatsiia, 2: 139–43. Makarov, P. I. [1803] (1864), ‘Kritika na knigu Shishkova: Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka’, in A. D. Galakhov (ed.), Istoricheskaia khristomatiia novogo perioda russkoi slovesnosti, vol. 2, St Petersburg: Tipografiia morskogo ministerstva, pp. 109–11. Martin, A. M. (1997), Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Martinsen, D. (ed.) (1997), Literary Journals in Imperial Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milroy, J. (1992), Language Variation and Change: On the Historical Sociolinguistics of English, Oxford: Blackwell.

l i nguistic d eba t e be t we e n kar a mz in a n d s h i s hk o v   117 Milroy, J. and L. Milroy (1999), Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English, London: Routledge. Murav’ev-Apostol, I. M. [1824] (2002), Pis’ma iz Moskvy v Nizhnii Novgorod, ed. V. A. Koshelev, St Petersburg: Nauka. Proskurin, O. A. (2000), Literaturnye skandaly pushkinskoi ėpokhi, Moscow: OGI. Pushkin, V. L. (1893), ‘K V. A. Zhukovskomu’, in V. L. Pushkin, Sochineniia, St Petersburg: Tipografiia E. Evdokimova, pp. 70–1. Shishkov, A. S. [1803] (1813), Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge Rossiiskogo iazyka, St Petersburg: V meditsinskoi tipografii. Shishkov, A. S. [1803] (1824a), ‘Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka’, in Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov Admirala Shishkova, vol. 2, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 1–352. Shishkov, A. S. [1804] (1824b), ‘Pribavlenie k sochineniiu nazyvaemomu Rassuzhdeniiu [sic] o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka’, in Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov Admirala Shishkova, vol. 2, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 353–466. Shishkov, A. S. [1812] (1824c), ‘Razgovory o slovesnosti mezhdu dvumia litsami Az i Buki’, in Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov Admirala Shishkova, vol. 3, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 1–168. Shishkov, A. S. [1812] (1825), ‘Rech’ pri otkrytii Besedy liubitelei russkogo slova’, Sochineniia i perevody Admirala Shishkova, Chast’ IV, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 108–46. Shishkov, A. S. (1828), ‘Otvet na pis’mo’, in Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov Admirala Shishkova, vol. 12, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 236–61. Shishkov, A. S. [1810] (1864a), ‘Rassuzhdenie o krasnorechii sviashchennogo pisaniia i o tom, v chem sostoit bogatstvo, obilie, krasota i sila rossiiskogo iazyka i kakimi sredstvami onyi eshche bolee raspostranit’, obogatit’ i usovershenstvovat’ mozhno’, in A. D. Galakhov (ed.), Istoricheskaia khristomatiia novogo perioda russkoi slovesnosti, vol. 2, St Petersburg: Tipografiia morskogo ministerstva, pp. 92–5. Shishkov, A. S. [1811] (1864b), ‘Rassuzhdenie o liubvi k otechestvu’, in A. D. Galakhov (ed.), Istoricheskaia khristomatiia novogo perioda russkoi slovesnosti, vol. 2, St Petersburg: Tipografiia morskogo ministerstva, pp. 99–101. Shishkov, A. S. [1836] (2006), ‘Nechto o Karamzine’, in L. A. Sapchenko (ed.), Karamzin: pro et contra, St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkoi Khristianskoi gumanitarnoi akademii, pp. 223–4. Todd, W. M. III (1997), ‘Periodicals in literary life of the early nineteenth century’, in D. Martinsen (ed.), Literary Journals in Imperial Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–63. Tynianov, Iu. N. [1929] (1967), Arkhaisty i novatory, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Watts, R. (2012), ‘Language myths’, in J. M. Hernández-Campoy and J. C. CondeSilvestre (eds), Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 585–606. Zhivov, V. (2009), Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Boston: Academic Studies Press. Zhukovskii, V. A. [1812] (1959), ‘Pevets vo stane russkikh voinov’, in V. A. Zhukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii v 4 tomakh, vol. 1, Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudo­ zhestvennoi literatury, pp. 149–66.

chapter 7

Language and Conservative Politics in Alexandrine Russia G. M. Hamburg

B

etween 1801 and 1820, there emerged in Russia a powerful conservative movement that upheld the Russian state, the Orthodox faith and Russia’s distinctive cultural identity against challenges from Napoleonic France, Western philosophy and European cosmopolitanism (Martin 1997; Al’tshuller 2007). To a remarkable degree, three leading Russian conservatives of this period – Aleksandr Shishkov (1754–1841), Fedor Rostopchin (1763–1826) and Sergei Glinka (1776–1847) – predicated their ideas of Russian nationhood on assumptions about the intrinsic worth of the Russian language as compared to the value of the French language (Institut obshchestvennoi mysli 2010: 114–17, 404–7, 588–90). Their obsessive attention to native linguistic culture and to the dangers allegedly posed to that culture by the French tongue raises the question whether the conservative nationalism of the Alexandrine era was essentially a linguistic nationalism. Shishkov and Rostopchin were important political figures of the war era: Shishkov was a decorated naval officer who, from March 1812 to August 1814, served as the tsar’s state secretary; Rostopchin, who had briefly directed the College of Foreign Affairs under Emperor Paul I, was persona non grata in Alexander’s Russia until the tsar appointed him Governor-General of Moscow in 1812. Shishkov’s and Rostopchin’s key political writings on language and patriotism dated between 1803 and early 1812, years when their political views were unacceptable at court and when each thought of himself as a voice crying in the wilderness. Glinka, on the other hand, never held high political office. He was a literary intellectual, the co-founder with Platon Beketov of the journal Russkii vestnik (The Russian Courier). Glinka’s journal had a minuscule circulation (at first there were just a hundred subscribers), but it was probably the most significant conservative journal to appear in Russia

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   119 before the French invasion of 1812. After the expulsion and defeat of the French army, Glinka distinguished himself as an essayist, memoirist and historian. His Russian History (Russkaia istoriia, published 1817–19) was the first full-scale history of the Russian Empire to incorporate the Napoleonic Wars. Because Glinka’s history suffered by comparison to Nikolai Karamzin’s History of the Russian State (Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, 1816–29), one of the most remarkable intellectual and literary monuments of Imperial Russia, it has been unjustly forgotten, even though it was vividly written and widely read in its day.

S H IS HK O V , ROSTOPC H IN AND G LIN K A AND T HE CONTEXT FOR T H EIR LINGU ISTIC V IE WS Anyone investigating the cultural views of Shishkov, Rostopchin and Glinka must confront at the outset the fact that these Russian conservatives read, spoke and wrote French. Shishkov’s early publications included a three-language nautical dictionary (Shishkov 1795) and a translation of Charles Romme’s Principles and Guidelines of the Art of Building and Arming Naval Vessels (Principes et préceptes généraux de l’art de construire et d’armer les vaisseaux) (1793–5). Rostopchin knew German and French; in fact, towards the end of his life, when living in Paris, he composed his memoirs in French (Rostopchin 1839; 1853 – I: 303–11; Offord and Rjéoutski 2013: 5–7).1 He also wrote a French-language defence of his conduct during the Moscow fire of 1812 (Rostopchin 1853 – II: 255–98). For his part, Glinka was educated in a bilingual (French- and Russian-speaking) environment. His formal education, at the Noble Infantry Cadet Corps from 1785 to 1795, demanded study of French military treatises, such as Vauban’s work on fortification, but also the reading of French classical drama, French philosophical tales by Voltaire, philosophical tracts by Helvétius and Rousseau’s educational tracts. In other words, these three critics of Russian Francophilia were themselves beneficiaries of and adepts in French culture and, to one degree or another, participants in, as well as opponents of, its dissemination in Russia. There is no straightforward resolution to the apparent paradox of Russian intellectuals who were simultaneously connoisseurs and critics of the French tongue. It may be that knowledge of the French language and an assessment of its supposedly pernicious effects on Russian life were factors sufficient to lead Shishkov, Rostopchin and Glinka towards linguistic nationalism; on the other hand, there is the possibility that their deep knowledge of French fostered in them a kind of ‘second identity’,

120  g . m . h a mbu r g to use the historian Richard Cobb’s term, and that the inner tension between their first (Russian) and second (French) identities accounted for the final vehemence of their rejection of things French and their fervent embrace of Russianness (Cobb 1969). The cultural-aversion hypothesis seems to fit both Shishkov and Rostopchin. Shishkov was alarmed by the wild, drunken parties thrown by Alexander’s courtiers in 1801 and 1802 and the French-inspired political radicalism expressed, in his opinion, by Alexander’s intimates in the Unofficial Committee (Shishkov 1870: 83–5). His dislike of French habits may therefore have sprung partly from moralistic irritation over dissolute living, which he regarded as ‘un-Russian’, and partly from a political judgement that the courtiers’ French ways of thinking might destabilise Russia. Until late 1804 or early 1805, Rostopchin worried more about British policy than about French cultural influences; indeed, he warned that making war with France would cause Russia ‘nothing but harm’ (Ségur 1871: 138). Rostopchin’s turn against the French occurred only during the Russo-French conflict in the years 1805–7, probably because wartime antagonism between the Russians and the French made it expedient for him to blame the French for the external and internal perils facing the Russian Empire. In spite of his own knowledge of the French language and later choice to write in French for Parisian audiences, Rostopchin’s anti-French polemics before 1812 had a ‘populist’ or ‘nativist’ Russian flavour (Offord and Rjéoutski 2013: 3–5). The French-as-‘second identity’ hypothesis is especially tempting as an explanation of Glinka’s youthful path. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Glinka revered Napoleon as a modern Julius Caesar and confessed his aspiration to serve Napoleon as a common soldier (Glinka 2004: 216). Glinka’s embrace of the anti-French right resembled a ‘conversion experience’, with the dual triggers of conversion being his shocked realisation in 1805–6 that the French army might invade Russia and his intensive reading of Russian historical chronicles in 1807 (Glinka 2004: 359–60). However, we cannot understand the conservatives’ views of language and politics without also mentioning two Russian cultural developments of the late eighteenth century that informed their perspectives. First, and perhaps most important to Shishkov, was Mikhail Lomonosov’s philological argument that the modern Russian language was grounded in Church texts. Lomonosov developed this idea in his essay ‘On the Use of Church Books in the Russian Language’ (‘O pol’ze knig tserkovnykh v Rossiiskom iazyke’) (Lomonosov 1847: 527–35). In it, he maintained that Russians had ‘acquired from Church books the capacity to express vividly the most important and exalted of ideas’. Moreover, familiarity with Church language had knit Russians together into a single

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   121 community, regardless of whether they lived in the countryside or in the city (pp. 531–2). Lomonosov thought this linguistic community tighter and more ‘natural’ than that existing, say, in Germany, where peasants from one region could scarcely understand the local dialects spoken in another region. He argued that the connection between Church Slavonic and modern Russian would ultimately turn contemporary Russians against the ‘absurdities’, the ‘strange and savage locutions’ that were invading the Russian language from other tongues (Lomonosov 1847: 53; Zhivov 1996). The second development was the debate in Russia between 1750 and 1780 over the influence of French language and culture on Russian language and culture. From the mid-eighteenth century, there appeared in Russia a series of critiques of French fashion and of Russian Francophilia. These included Aleksandr Sumarokov’s play Monsters (Chudovishchi, 1750), Mikhail Kheraskov’s comedy The Atheist (Bezbozhnik, 1761), Ivan Elagin’s Jean de Molle, or A Russian Frenchman (Zhan de Mole ili Russkii frantsuz, 1764) (an adaptation of Holberg’s Jean de France eller Hans Frandsen) and Aleksandr Karin’s A Russian Returned from France (Rossiianin, vozvrativshiisia iz Frantsii, 1760s) (the text of which has since been lost), which ridiculed Russians who expressed shame over their Russianness. The Empress Catherine herself later contributed to this genre with her play Mme Vorchalkina’s Nameday (Imeniny gospozhi Vorchalkinoi, 1772). The most remarkable of these critiques, of course, was Denis Fonvizin’s Brigadier (Brigadir, completed in 1769, published 1783), in which the tension between Russianness and Frenchness was awkwardly embodied in the conflict between the would-be Frenchman Ivanushka and his patriotic father, the brigadier. At various points in the play, Fonvizin suggested that Russian grammar itself was disintegrating, owing to the intrusion of French neologisms. Sumarokov’s play and Fonvizin’s comedy were known to Shishkov and Rostopchin. Shishkov alluded to Sumarokov in his ‘Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language’ (see below). Rostopchin’s broad parody of Russian Francophilia drew on Fonvizin’s Brigadier. Fonvizin’s tight link between proper use of the Russian language and love of country affected many subsequent thinkers, including Shishkov, Rostopchin and Glinka (on Gallophobia in Russian comedy see also Chapter 5 in this volume). The Russian conservatives were also aware of the general European discussion about language, culture and politics launched in the late 1760s by Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder. This discussion revolved around the origin and functions of language. Hamann had put forward the following propositions: that language originated in the

122  g . m . h a mbu r g relationship between human beings and God; that language developed as the embodiment of human experience and social tradition; and that language is constitutive of thought and therefore of identity (Hamann 1967; Haynes 2007). Herder had explained the origin of language in purely human, or empirical, terms. However, he had agreed with Hamann that language embodies human experience and social tradition, and that it is constitutive of identity. Moreover, Herder held the view that, even though there exists a common human nature (something he called Humanität), human beings have always lived in smaller aggregations sharply differing from one another in outlook and habit. Where these groups have spoken different languages, their cultural differences have often proved difficult to bridge. Indeed, Herder pointed to the difficulty of translating a text into another language and analysed the formidable problems of understanding or interpreting a text written in another language or culture (Forster 2008; 2010). He did not think the task of translation was insuperable, but, by explaining the intellectual processes necessary to complete the task, he demonstrated the likelihood that translation will foster intellectual confusion. In his Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784–91), Herder explored the implications of the existence of separate languages, customs and cultures for past politics. Although he maintained optimistically that the end of history would witness the final triumph of reason (Herder 1828: 516–17), he devoted most of the book to the distinctions among European peoples. His treatment of the Slavic peoples in chapter 4 of book XVI emphasised their relative backwardness and dependence on their more powerful Western neighbours (Herder 1828: 287–90). On the face of it, Herder’s conception of language was both fully rational and compatible with late Enlightenment notions of historical progress, although it is easy to see how a champion of national particularism might utilise it to reject linguistic borrowing and justify cultural exclusivism. Very instructive in this regard was Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s defence of the German language and of German messianism in his Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation, 1807–8). There Fichte traced the German superiority over the French to Germans’ relative lack of linguistic borrowing from Latinate tongues. He adopted a strong form of the proposition that language and national identity are linked, when he claimed: ‘People are formed by language far more than language is formed by people.’ He contended: ‘The language of a given people is necessarily just what it is, and, in reality, people do not express its knowledge, but its knowledge expresses itself out of the mouths of people’ (Fichte 1824: 89–91; 1922: 55–6). This view, which came close to asserting that

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   123 language is the sole determinant of national character, sat in tension with Fichte’s argument that Germans could save themselves from French domination only by submitting to a programme of moral education like that advocated by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Politically, Fichte elaborated a programme combining German moralism, national awakening and Machiavellism (Fichte 1995). He demanded that Germans rise above individualism, accept the need for self-sacrifice for the sake of their fatherland, and mobilise themselves to defeat the French. Although most of his speeches to the German nation focused on the cultural task of national mobilisation through education, his addresses were generally interpreted as a veiled call for Prussian and pan-German military action against Napoleon. There is no direct evidence that either Shishkov or Rostopchin had read Hamann and Herder, but, since Hamann’s and Herder’s ideas about language and nation were already widely diffused in Europe by the end of the eighteenth century, the chances of encountering their theories indirectly was very high. It is at least conceivable that Rostopchin read one or both of the German linguists in 1786–7, during his studies abroad: he spent time in Berlin, Göttingen and Leipzig listening to lectures and reading unsystematically. Fichte became a sensation only in 1807–8, after Shishkov had finished his ‘Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language’ but before his patriotic essays of the period 1810 to 1812; Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation appeared virtually simultaneously with Rostopchin’s political pamphlet Thoughts Aloud on the Red Staircase (on which see below). Therefore, in citing the case of Fichte, we are probably dealing with a parallel and independent development, rather than with a direct influence, although there is an outside chance that Shishkov’s addresses of 1810–12 on love of the fatherland were influenced by Fichte. One final point about the Russian and pan-European intellectual contexts for our Russian conservatives: politically speaking, they were indeterminate – that is, they were susceptible either to a ‘leftist’ or to a ‘rightist’ development. Lomonosov was a fervent monarchist and champion of the Great Russian ethnos, but also a man of the moderate Enlightenment. The Russian Francophobes of the period 1750 to 1780 were all statists, but late in his life Fonvizin advocated a ruleof-law state, with divided government. Hamann opposed what he considered narrow rationalism, and he has sometimes been classified as a Counter-Enlightenment thinker; however, he was no lover of the Prussian monarchy, and he was probably a republican at heart. Herder was a republican and a democrat. The young Fichte sympathised with the French Revolution and developed a political philosophy based on

124  g . m . h a mbu r g c­ ontract theory, but he later moved towards a conservative communitarianism. Thus, the political logic of Russian conservatism was not dictated by the eighteenth-century contexts in which thinking about language and politics developed: rather Shishkov, Rostopchin and Glinka took existing paradigms for understanding language and national identity and adapted them to conservative purposes.

S H IS HK O V In 1803, Shishkov published an essay on philology entitled ‘Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language’ (‘Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka’, Shishkov 1824 – I). In it he likened his contemporaries’ passionate preference for the French language over their native tongue to an incurable disease or to a mental disorder. He contended that the roots of the Russian language were to be found in Old Slavonic – a language that derived its power from classical Greece and from the Greek written by Church fathers. In his opinion, to abandon the richness of Slavonic for the relative poverty of French was like shifting one’s home from a solid foundation onto ‘infertile marshland’ (1824 – I: 2–3). Nevertheless, Shishkov complained, over the course of the eighteenth century, Russians had proved more rather than less inclined to devote themselves to the French tongue. He compared the influx of French words into contemporary Russian to a ‘violent flood’ (p. 3). In his own time, domestic education had privileged learning of French language and literature over mastery of Russian language and literature, with dire results: well-born Russians had developed contempt for their native language and Russian customs (p. 6). Worse still, because reading books in one’s native language is ‘the only path to the temple of literature’, he alleged, Russian consumers of French books could not enrich their native cultural heritage; instead, they plunged themselves and their country ‘deeper and deeper into ignorance’ (pp. 10–11). They condemned themselves, and threatened to condemn Russia, to ‘servile imitation’ of the French (p. 13). Shishkov assumed that languages are to some degree incommensurable. This was so because each native word has a ‘root’ or denotative meaning and many auxiliary or connotative meanings. Thus, even if a translator succeeds in conveying a concept from one language to another by finding words with the requisite denotations, the rich associative power of words in the original language will almost inevitably be lost in the target language (pp. 33–9). Moreover, Shishkov observed, the process of translation sometimes raises or lowers the rhetorical valency

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   125 of a translated expression, thus distorting its emotional suggestiveness. When foreign words are imported into a native language, Shishkov argued, the result, often as not, is a ‘disordering’ or ‘distortion’ of the native tongue – its impoverishment rather than its enrichment (p. 23). In the worst cases, the introduction of foreign terms into Russian had led to incomprehensibility: to muddy thinking and therefore to intellectual ‘corruption’. Often, the use of foreign terms in Russian had resulted in a laughable artificiality in the spoken and written language rather than in clarity and simplicity (pp. 54–5). According to Shishkov, therefore, ‘every people has its own repertoire of expressions (состав речей) and its own network of concepts (сцепление понятий), and consequently it must express them using its own words, not foreign or borrowed words’ (p. 42). This proposition amounted to an association of national identity with national language – indeed, it posited language as the essence of national identity to the degree that language is the medium of thought and of self-expression. According to Shishkov, when contemporary Russians abandoned the reading of Slavonic texts in favour of French texts, they turned their backs not only on the Russian nation but also on the Orthodox spiritual tradition. The Russian literature that contemporaries wrote was therefore mere ‘bandying of words’ (пустословие; 1824 – I: 83). To rectify the situation, Russians would have to return to the abandoned Slavonic texts, especially the Slavonic Bible. Shishkov believed that Russia’s literary legacy had more spiritual and intellectual profundity to impart to Russians than the French language could offer to the French or the German language could offer to the Germans. The profundity came not just from the truth of Orthodox teachings, but from the ‘majesty, concision, power and richness’ of Russian spiritual texts (p. 121). Shishkov stated that Russia had had its share of first-rate religious writers, but he maintained that the country had produced very few good secular writers, precisely because secular authors did not bother to read spiritual texts (pp. 121–2). At one point in the ‘Discourse’, Shishkov compared the reading of the Slavonic Bible to the flight of a bee in search of pollen (p. 80). If Russian culture was suffering from a kind of spiritual and intellectual laziness, the situation could only be remedied by transforming young Russians into a hive of ‘industrious bees’ gathering honey from the scriptures. Much of Shishkov’s ‘Discourse’ discussed the reincorporation of Slavonic words and their rich religious associations into the contemporary Russian language (pp. 172–287). Shishkov’s ‘Discourse’ repeated certain Francophobic tropes of the eighteenth century, such as the argument that Russian nobles had neglected their native language and their native spiritual tradition in

126  g . m . h a mbu r g favour of acquiring a superficial knowledge of French literature. His reverence for Church texts followed the example of Lomonosov, whom Shishkov regarded as a lyric poet without equal. In both these senses, Shishkov’s ‘Discourse’ was a derivative essay (Stoiunin 1880: 86–7). At moments, Shishkov seemed to imply in it that Russia would be better off if its elites abandoned modern Russian and returned to the use of the Slavonic language, an implication that he came close to validating in a letter of explanation to critics, when he compared the high moral tone of seventeenth-century Muscovite life to the ‘corrupt morals’ (развратные нравы) of contemporary life and to the ‘torrent of blood’ shed in the French Revolution (Shishkov 1824 – II: 422). Yet Shishkov’s programme was more positive than negative. In his essay, he certainly did not claim that study of the French language is intrinsically pointless or damaging, much less that the Russian Empire should be walled off from foreign influences; instead, he linked genuine Russianness to appreciation of the country’s religious legacy. He neither rejected secular literature nor demeaned the many types of knowledge essential to writing it; instead, he merely asserted that secular writers could not achieve their ultimate aims unless they manifested the proper spiritual sensitivity. In the historical literature devoted to Shishkov, the tendency has been to regard him as a linguistic archaist and political extremist. For example, Vladimir Stoiunin, one of Shishkov’s first biographers, observed: ‘He [Shishkov] predicted the destruction of Russia unless society could be restrained from emulating French ways of life. The extremism of his views is explained by the extremism with which Russian lords sympathised with everything French, without analysing what was good and what was bad in it’ (Stoiunin 1880: 95). This characterisation of Shishkov’s views went beyond the evidence of his writing, and, in fact, made nonsense of his ‘Discourse’, which was optimistic rather than pessimistic. If Shishkov did have a deepest fear in 1803, it was not Russia’s destruction but rather the danger of cultural amnesia: Russians were losing contact with their intellectual legacy and were foundering in the ‘irrationality and absurdity of the existing alien tongue excavated from French books’ (Shishkov 1824 – II: 464). He hoped that Russians would recover from this amnesia, and was confident they would do so, but he did not pretend the recovery would be easy. Between early 1810 and the French invasion in 1812, Shishkov wrote his two signature political essays: ‘Speech on the Opening of the Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word’ (‘Rech’ pri otkrytii Besedy liubitelei russkogo slova’, 1810) and ‘Meditation on Love of the Fatherland’ (‘Rassuzhdenie o liubvi k otechestvu’, 1812). In his ‘Speech’, Shishkov described language (слово) as a ‘heavenly gift’ lifting human

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   127 beings above animals and national literature as a gift that renders a people autonomous of others. He argued that Russians should ‘pay attention to the literature of other peoples, but should love their own’ (Shishkov 1825 – I: 145). In his ‘Meditation’, Shishkov rejected cosmopolitanism in favour of ardent patriotism: A man who regards himself as a citizen of the world – that is, as not belonging to any people – acts as if he did not recognise his father, mother, family or tribe. He thereby excludes himself from the genus homo sapiens and numbers himself among the animals. (Shishkov 1825 – II: 148) Shishkov described the Russian people as strong, because of their language and their faith: ‘Language made them of one mind, faith made them of one spirit’ (1825 – II: 161). In his opinion, language and faith are the foundations of viable political community, a community that unites its members, rich and poor, in observance of the law and disposes them to fight bravely to defend the community against outsiders (pp. 176–9). He thought love of the fatherland must be learned at home, from other members of the language and faith community. Such love cannot be taught by foreigners: ‘They [foreigners] may teach me mathematics, mechanics or physics, but even the most honest among them cannot teach me to love my native land and people, for he does not know them, lacks the sense of them, and cannot acquire it.’ Indeed, ‘the foreigner involuntarily inculcates in me his own values and extirpates my own; he draws me near to his customs and distances me from my own’ (p. 181). These tendencies are the more pernicious when foreigners are ‘of bad character, tending to disbelief, licence, cosmopolitanism, to the new and destructive philosophy that, by deceptive names, teaches the intellectual anarchy of treason, “humane” murder and slavery’ (p. 182). The best shields against the malady of cosmopolitanism were faith and proper cultivation of one’s native tongue. Shishkov’s programme for love of country rested therefore on ‘faith, education and language’ (вера, воспитание, язык) (p. 187). Shishkov’s ‘Speech’ and ‘Meditation’ restated the basic arguments of his earlier ‘Discourse’ concerning the importance of literature and the need to educate young people in love of literature and in religious faith. The ‘Meditation’ extended Shishkov’s cultural and linguistic nationalism of 1803 by making it into a political programme for the defence of Russia against ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘destructive [modern] philosophy’ and ‘intellectual anarchy’. Paradoxically, whereas the 1803 ‘Discourse’ had focused on the specific problem of ‘invasion’ by French words, the 1812

128  g . m . h a mbu r g ‘Meditation’, written under the threat of a French military invasion, focused on more abstract problems – cosmopolitanism and alien philosophy. Yet by 1812 Shishkov’s readership did not need reminding that the main contemporary threat to Russia emanated from France – from French culture, French philosophy, French lawlessness. Put another way, by 1812, ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘modern philosophy’ and ‘intellectual anarchy’ had become code words in the Russian political lexicon signifying both military peril and the French cultural malady. By then, antipathy to the undisciplined use of the French language, to the immoderate consumption of French literature and to French values was understood as a fundamental element of Shishkov’s conservative nationalism.

ROSTOPC H IN As we hinted above, Rostopchin’s politics before 1805 were more anti-British than anti-French. Indeed, as late as May 1804 Rostopchin worried that war with France would cause Russia ‘nothing but harm’ (Ségur 1871: 138). After the battle of Austerlitz in late 1805, he blamed Russia’s plight on the tsar’s fecklessness and on the ‘depravity’ of Russian high society; however, even then Rostopchin did not attribute society’s corruption to French linguistic or cultural influences. Not until his anti-French polemic of late 1806/early 1807, Oh! The French! (Akh! Frantsuzy!), did he criticise Russian nobles for their immoderate love of French things. In this short work, he attacked Russians who preferred French language and customs to Russian language and customs. He called on Russians to return to faith in God and to Orthodox practices (Ségur 1871: 144–6). In the years 1807–8, Rostopchin wrote a series of short satirical fictions centred on a moral hero, the patriotic landowner Sila Bogatyrev, who served as the spokesperson for Rostopchin’s cultural and political views. The most famous of these satires was the pamphlet Thoughts Aloud on the Red Staircase (Mysli vslukh na Krasnom kryl’tse, 1807) – a document read by nobles all over central Russia (Rostopchin 1853 – III). The pamphlet began by asking: ‘How long will we [Russians] be monkeys [imitating the French]?’ (p. 8). Bogatyrev accused the French of ‘ignoring the law of God and of regarding Russians as savage beasts, as bears’ (p. 9). Meanwhile, young Russians who had been raised in the French spirit do not respect their parents, have contempt for their elders, and, being nothing themselves, desire to be everything. They turn out

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   129 to be both philanthropists and misanthropes: philanthropists who love humankind but ruin their peasants; misanthropes who run from educated society to low dives. (p. 10) According to Rostopchin’s Bogatyrev, young Russians’ mindless imitation of French manners was the more offensive because the French were a rebellious people, who in the last twenty years ‘had destroyed everything, burnt everything, and pillaged everything’. They had ‘left nothing in its place; they had scorned the law; they had killed their officials; they had profaned their churches; and they had executed their king’ (p. 14). Having tortured and killed their own countrymen, ‘cutting off heads like cabbages’, they had invaded their neighbours’ lands. They had put Bonaparte in power at the cost of destroying their own republic. According to Bogatyrev, ‘the [French] Revolution is a fire, each Frenchman a smouldering brand, and Bonaparte a poker to stir them up’ (p. 16). In Thoughts Aloud, French-speaking is again presented as a corrupting influence in Russia. Of course, many heroes of the Russian past had learned the French language, but, unlike present-day Russians, ‘none of them had striven to learn it better than the Russian tongue’ (pp. 12–13). Young people of the present day, however, ‘read [Les Amours du chevalier de] Faublas but not history; if they had read history, they would have seen that in every Frenchman’s head is a windmill, a hospital and an insane asylum’ (p.14). Rostopchin complained that the French language had served as a destructive factor in contemporary Russian culture. He lamented that young Russian Francophiles had debased all that is holy in Russian society: instead of asking for ‘God’s help’, they said Bon jour (Good day); instead of ‘Father’, they said Monsieur (Sir); instead of ‘Honoured Mother’ (старуха мать), they said Maman; instead of ‘slave’ (холоп), they said Mon ami (My friend); instead of ‘Moscow’, they said Ridicule; instead of ‘Russia’, they said Fi donc (Shame on you) (pp. 9–10). Rostopchin reiterated several of these ideas in an 1808 letter to one of his readers. Again under the pseudonym of his hero Bogatyrev, Rostopchin boasted: ‘The devil himself cannot change me from a Russian into a foreigner.’ He promised to continue living like Russians of old: ‘Our elders did not sniff or smoke tobacco; they drank neither tea nor coffee; they did not sip bouillon, spit into handkerchiefs, take prescribed medicines, banter in French, or play charades; but they lived longer, slept more soundly, knew their business better, and they died as Christians’ (Rostopchin 1853 – IV: 143–4). The letter grounded Rostopchin’s ­linguistic nationalism in exclusivist cultural Russo-centrism.

130  g . m . h a mbu r g

G LIN K A As we noted above, Glinka was an outsider to the political world in which Shishkov and Rostopchin had operated as major players. Nor did his status as an impecunious member of a middling provincial noble family compensate for this relative political inexperience: indeed, Glinka felt acutely the social distance between himself and the older conservatives. He nevertheless maintained respectful, though rather formal, relations with Shishkov. In 1807, he consulted with Shishkov on the text of his play Mikhail, Prince of Chernigov (Mikhail, kniaz’ Chernigovskii) (Lupareva 2010: 140). In Russkii vestnik in 1811, Glinka published excerpts of Shishkov’s ‘Dialogues on Literature between Persons A and B’ (‘Razgovory o slovesnosti mezhdu dvumia litsami Az i Buki’), a booklength treatise in which Shishkov repeated and formalised the views on language he had first articulated in the 1803 ‘Discourse’ (Shishkov 1824 – III: 1–168; Glinka 1811 – I: 80–130; Glinka 1811 – II: 8–43). Glinka sympathised with the admiral’s political programme and therefore celebrated Shishkov’s 1812 political success in replacing Mikhail Speranskii as state-secretary (Glinka 2004: 305–6). In spite of the gap in age, official experience and social status, Glinka developed friendly relations with Rostopchin. He revelled in Rostopchin’s Thoughts Aloud on the Red Staircase, a publication that to some degree inspired the journal Russkii vestnik. In a conversation of 1808 with Rostopchin, Glinka praised the count’s famous pamphlet for ‘expressing the spirit of the Russian people’ (Glinka 1845 – I: 220). After Glinka printed the first number of Russkii vestnik in 1808, he received an encouraging letter from Rostopchin and, later that year, he published a continuation of Rostopchin’s Thoughts Aloud on the Red Staircase. In 1810, Rostopchin invited Glinka to his Sokol’niki dacha. There he asked Glinka to act as a ‘mentor’ to his oldest son, because the count felt Glinka’s criticisms of current Franco-centric educational practices coincided with his own (Glinka 1895: 256–7). In 1812, at the height of the invasion, as French forces cut deep into Russia’s interior, Glinka saluted Rostopchin’s efforts to mobilise Russian arms and minds against the French. He depicted Rostopchin in mid-July 1812 as ‘the representative of the national spirit’ (Glinka 1845 – I: 243). Glinka’s praise of and friendship with Shishkov and Rostopchin from 1807 to 1812 suggested that he, too, connected use of the Russian language with healthy nationhood. In fact, in one of his occasional historical essays, Glinka defined the Russian word as ‘the motive force of the national spirit’ (Glinka 1845 – II: 4). Yet, as we observed above, Glinka’s linguistic nationalism was neither theoretical like Shishkov’s

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   131 nor Machiavellian like Rostopchin’s: it was rather an existential result of his own intellectual struggle to define a future path that made sense in a seemingly irrational world. Glinka’s turn to conservatism came partly as a result of his doubts about the Russian Enlightenment and partly under the influence of his reading of ancient Russian chronicles, a programme of reading he commenced in 1807. He described the reading of these chronicles in the countryside, under the shade of leafy trees, as ‘the happiest days of my life’ (Glinka 2004: 359–60). It was as if he had decided to escape the confusing francophone world of his first thirty years by plunging into the world of Old Russian literature, a world of which he previously knew almost nothing. When he first sketched out the principles of his conservatism, Glinka settled on the slogan, ‘God, faith and country’ (Бог, вера, отечество) as the clearest expression of his ideals. By the standards of latter-day Russian conservatism of the sort championed by Sergei Uvarov in his doctrine of Official Nationality, Glinka’s tripartite slogan was conspicuous for excluding the autocratic state as a political ideal. In his memoirs, Glinka further distilled his political ideals to two: family and country (2004: 295). His emphasis on the private sphere (that is, on family and faith) and on social community rather than strong government as the basis of Russian patriotism, made him an uncomfortable ally for statists like Shishkov and Rostopchin. Unlike Shishkov and Rostopchin, Glinka favoured the abolition of serfdom on moral grounds. He considered serf ownership both a personal ‘sin’ and a national disgrace (p. 222), but he also hated serfdom because it vitiated the possibility for genuine unity among Russians. Unlike Shishkov and Rostopchin, Glinka advocated freedom of the press. In 1826–7, he sharply criticised Shishkov’s censorship statute. In his memoirs, Glinka wrote: ‘Woe to that society where [government officials] make mountains out of molehills and where, in order to control ideas, officials put them in chains’ (p. 410). At times, Glinka sounded like a communitarian conservative; at other moments, he sounded almost like a libertarian. He was aware of the conflicting elements of his conservatism and proud of his eclecticism; indeed, in his memoirs, he boasted ‘nobody has ever succeeded in defining me by a casual label’ (p. 391). Glinka used Russkii vestnik to criticise the direction of cultural change in Russia since the late seventeenth century. One of his central charges was that pre-Petrine Russians had abhorred luxury, whereas his contemporaries ‘rushed after it, forgetting the moderation and virtues of their forefathers.’ In their headlong pursuit of fancy domestic furniture and fashionable clothing, Glinka thought, his contemporaries ‘had ruined the poor’ and, in many cases, turned themselves into dissolute spendthrifts.

132  g . m . h a mbu r g He warned that fashion-seeking was especially devastating to young women, ‘who were being driven into vice’ by it (Proskurin 2000: 136–8). In an 1811 essay on language, Glinka seemed to link Russia’s unfortunate moral transformation directly to linguistic changes: When word meanings change, so do concepts; words are linked tightly with ideas, and ideas with actions. What will happen if each century or half-century, words, concepts and actions change; and, finally, if every year and every month, we ourselves will be reeducated according to foreign whims of taste and fashion? (Glinka 1811 – III: 91; Lupareva 2010: 140–1) Glinka criticised eighteenth-century Russians and his own contemporaries for their preference for the French language over their native Russian: he labelled this phenomenon ‘the dominion of a foreign tongue’ (чужеязычие), and asserted flatly: ‘The Russian secular language has been eclipsed by the dominion of a foreign tongue’ (Lupareva 2010: 142). In his moralistic cultural criticism before 1812, Glinka took cues from both Shishkov and Rostopchin. In language criticism, he was probably closer to Shiskhov, sharing the admiral’s belief in the richness and vitality of pre-Petrine language as well as Shishkov’s anxiety over foreign linguistic borrowing. He dissented from Shishkov in placing less emphasis on the importance of Church Slavonic than on Old Russian secular texts (Lupareva 2010: 142). Glinka’s benchmark in matters of language was the popular dialect rather than the language of worship. Although he wrote a great deal about language before 1812, Glinka did not assign it the same outsized significance as a marker of nationhood that Shishkov did, even if his occasional remarks seemed to do so. Glinka’s finest work, his Russian History, depicted the country’s past in moral terms – as a battleground between good and evil, virtue and vice. On the national battleground, the forces of evil and vice sometimes triumphed, but their victories were short-lived. According to Glinka, because God is the sovereign of human destiny and because He wills the good, history must witness the ultimate triumph of the good. In the second volume of his history, in a discussion of the murders of the eleventh-century Kievan princes Boris and Gleb, Glinka declared: ‘The triumph of malefactors is never certain; the scourge of humanity can never hide from the reproach of conscience or from the avenging truth of God’s right hand or from the defender of the innocent’ (Glinka 1823 – I: 28). Glinka argued that the triumph of the good will finally come in Russia when all Russians, regardless of their social stations, join together as

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   133 ‘true sons of the fatherland’ (Glinka 1823 – II: 214). In his opinion, social unanimity could not be imposed from above, by order of the state; instead, he regarded social unanimity as the driving force in the creation of a worthy government (pp. 214–15). In other words, for Glinka, it was a profound mistake to argue, as Karamzin did in his History of the Russian State, that Russia had prospered because of its strong unitary government; in fact, Glinka believed, the causal vector worked the other way, with the state being a reflection of society. In the volumes of his history devoted to the French Revolution and to the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, Glinka argued that European peace had broken down in the late eighteenth century because the French people had abandoned the Christian moral code, rejecting its imperative to ‘do unto others as we wish they would do unto us’ (Glinka 1823 – III: 18). He attributed the moral corruption of France to ‘conceited philosophers, envious of God Himself, looking down on other human beings, on God’s creatures, with pity’ (pp. 30–1). This philosophical conceit was the product of a ‘ruinous way of thinking’ rooted in the French political vocabulary. According to Glinka, under the influence of the American War for Independence, the French had begun to speak openly of ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’, terms which they did not use precisely but which quickly acquired talismanic force in their struggle against the monarchy and against established belief. These words, coupled with the arrogance of the philosophers, ‘plumbed the depths of hell and unleashed hell on earth’ (p. 40). In Glinka’s view, Russians had been unpardonably slow to understand the French threat. He laid much of this responsibility at Catherine’s door, for the empress could not imagine that France, which took pride in its political culture, would be the first country to exhibit itself as prone to anarchy and to every sort of horror [. . .] She hoped that the suddenly flaring rebellion [in France] would prove a momentary conflagration which would burn itself out without intervention from afar. (pp. 42, 47–8) Glinka also criticised the Emperor Paul for allowing himself to be gulled into negotiations with Napoleon, and the Emperor Alexander for failing to act decisively against Napoleon before 1805. Unlike Shishkov and Rostopchin, however, Glinka did not attribute the imperial failure to confront the French chiefly to Russian Francophilia; indeed, Glinka admitted, at certain key moments the Russian government’s opposition to the French had been resolute. Rather Glinka seemed to think that Russian statecraft and military action were less important in explaining

134  g . m . h a mbu r g European events than was the design of Providence – namely, God’s plan to ‘raise [Napoleon] up to the highest degree of might in order all the more clearly and triumphantly to assure his fall’ (pp. 225–6, 228). Indeed, Glinka’s argument was that, in human affairs, the decisions of tsars, emperors, generals and common soldiers matter, but only in determining the timing of events, because God charts the actual course of human development. Human beings are bold, heroic and wise to the degree that they collaborate with Providence; meanwhile, boldness and heroism in the service of evil may win a soldier or a sovereign temporary fame, but only at the cost of blindness to God’s will and therefore of final destruction. In the case of the 1812 invasion of Russia, the French people, corrupted by false philosophy and a faulty political vocabulary, chose to follow a man who dreamt, against divine laws, of universal dominion. When the Russians defeated Napoleon’s forces, they acted as instruments of divine retribution against the sinful French. Glinka’s providential theory of history evidently rested on a general assumption about the role of language in politics: when writers and politicians have deviated from the truth, their language has ceased to correspond with God’s design for humanity and thus has become a pernicious historical force; on the other hand, whenever language has mirrored the divine will, it has constituted a positive historical force. In Glinka’s opinion, therefore, only truthful language can be of benefit to a great nation, for true words alone express the people’s God-given spiritual power. * * * Each of the three Russian conservatives examined in this chapter made important contributions to Russia’s self-understanding. Shishkov’s major contribution came in his war manifestos, documents written in a terse high Russian, with many Church Slavonic words. Rostopchin’s came in his war broadsheets, written in his approximation of demotic Russian, which probably had little positive effect in the city of Moscow but had a big impact outside the city, in firming up Russians’ fighting morale. Glinka’s contribution was to make a first draft of the national myth of 1812 that Lev Tolstoi developed ingeniously, fifty years later, in War and Peace (Voina i mir). Glinka’s ironical treatment of French culture, his ridicule of Napoleon, his treatment of the French invasion as a mysterious effect of Providential design, his understanding of Russian victory as a popular phenomenon – all anticipated Tolstoi’s novel. Wartime conservatism was therefore a factor in Russia’s survival in 1812, and it became a seedbed of Russians’ national self-image in the long nineteenth century.

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   135 The differences among the three conservatives were real, but they were largely matters of emphasis. Shishkov and Rostopchin were statists, who celebrated autocratic power but also the autocrat’s ability to set an example for Russia’s elites. Before the French invasion, Glinka did not think the autocracy was as important to Russia’s survival as was the Russian people; in his Russian History, he paid rhetorical tribute to the government as a focal point for popular loyalty and as an expression of national spirit, but he continued to underline the popular nature of the war. Meanwhile, Shishkov’s conservatism stressed the religious provenance of the Russian language; Rostopchin took linguistic and cultural differences between Russians and French less seriously than he took the exercise of power; Glinka regarded language, faith and education as invisible bonds linking common people and their social superiors. It may seem to readers of Glinka’s Russian History that his conservatism was of different stamp than that of Shishkov and Rostopchin. Yet Glinka’s history cited Shishkov’s war bulletins and Rostopchin’s broadsheets as evidence of the deep love of country animating Russia’s war effort (Glinka 1823 – IV, 77). Glinka’s moralism resembled Shishkov’s. Meanwhile, Glinka’s dismissal of Napoleon, his ridicule of the French leader and of the French pretension to control Russia, recalled Rostopchin’s sarcasm towards the French from 1807 on. Most importantly for our purposes here, Glinka’s view of the Russian people as a moral community sustained by a common faith but also bound by a common language and way of thought – this view embodied the central idea of these Russian conservatives about the linkage between language and national identity.

NOTE 1. The Roman numerals in references to Rostopchin (1853) and also to Glinka (1823) and Shishkov (1824 and 1825) do not refer to volume numbers but to (a) the order in which works in an edition are cited in this chapter (in the case of Rostopchin 1853) or (b) the position of the work cited in a sequence of journal numbers (in Glinka 1811) or (c) its position in a number of parts to an edition (Glinka 1823 and 1845; Shishkov 1824 and 1825). For full details of each work, see the References at the end of this chapter.

REFERENCES Al’tshuller, M. (2007), Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova. U istokov russkogo slavianofil’stva, 2nd edn, Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.

136  g . m . h a mbu r g Cobb, R. (1969), A Second Identity: Essays on France and French History, London and New York: Oxford University Press. Fichte, J. G. (1824), Reden an die deutsche Nation. Neue wohlfeilere Auflage, Leipzig: Bei Friedrich Ludwig Berbig. Fichte, J. G. (1922), Addresses to the German Nation, trans. R. F. Jones and G. H. Turnbull, Chicago and London: The Open Court Publishing Company. Fichte, J. G. (1995), ‘Über Machiavelli als Schriftsteller, und Stellen aus seinen Schriften’, in Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Band 9. Werke 1806–1807, ed. R. Lauth and H. Gliwitzky, Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, pp. 213–86. Forster, M. N. (2008), ‘Johann Gottfried Herder’, in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 edn), at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall 2008/entries/herder/ (last accessed on 15 February 2014). Forster, M. N. (2010), After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Glinka, S. N. (1811 – I), ‘Vypiski iz razgovorov o slovesnosti, sochinennykh A. S. Shishkovym’, Russkii vestnik, 5: 80–130. Glinka, S. N. (1811 – II), ‘Vypiski iz razgovorov o slovesnosti, sochinennykh A. S. Shishkovym’, Russkii vestnik, 7: 8–43. Glinka, S. N. (1811 – III), ‘Nravstvennoe ob’’iasnenie nekotorykh slov i rechenii’, Russkii vestnik, 8: 91–103. Glinka, S. N. (1823 – I), Russkaia istoriia. Chast’ vtoraia, 3rd edn, Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia. Glinka, S. N. (1823 – II), Russkaia istoriia. Chast’ piataia, 3rd edn, Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia. Glinka, S. N. (1823 – III), Russkaia istoriia. Chast’ desiataia, 3rd edn, Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia. Glinka, S. N. (1823 – IV), Russkaia istoriia. Chast’ dvenadtsataia, 3rd edn, Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia. Glinka, S. N. (1845 – I), Russkoe chtenie. Otechestvennye istoricheskie pamiatniki XVIII i XIX stoletiia. Chast’ pervaia, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Otdel’nogo korpusa vnutrennei strazhi. Glinka, S. N. (1845 – II), Russkoe chtenie. Otechestvennye istoricheskie pamiatniki XVIII i XIX stoletiia. Chast’ vtoraia, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Otdel’nogo korpusa vnutrennei strazhi. Glinka, S. N. (1895), Zapiski Sergeia Nikolaevicha Glinki, St Petersburg: Izdanie Russkaia Starina. Glinka, S. N. (2004), Zapiski, Moscow: Zakharov. Hamann, J. G. (1967), Schriften zur Sprache. Einleitung und Anmerkungen von Josef Simon, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Haynes, K. (ed.) (2007), Hamann: Writings on Philosophy and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herder, J. G. (1828), Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Dritte Auflage. Zweiter Band. Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Hertenoch. Institut obshchestvennoi mysli (2010), Russkii konservatizm serediny XVIII – nachala XX veka. Entsiklopediia, ed. V. V. Shelokhaev et al., Moscow: ROSSPEN. Lomonosov, M. V. (1847), ‘O pol’ze knig tserkovnykh v Rossiiskom iazyke’, in Sochineniia Lomonosova, vol. 1, ed. A. Smirdin, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Vtorogo Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantseliarii, pp. 527–35.

l a n gu a g e and c o ns e r vat i v e p o l i t i c s   137 Lupareva, N. N. (2010), ‘S. N. Glinka v spore o “starom” i “novom” sloge russkogo iazyka v nachale XIX stoletiia’, Vestnik Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriia: Lingvistika i mezhkul’turnaia kommunikatsiia, 2: 139–43. Martin, A. M. (1997), Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Offord, D. and V. Rjéoutski (2013), ‘French in the nineteenth-century Russian salon: Fiodor Rostopchin’s “memoirs”’, at http://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/texts (last accessed on 2 June 2014). Proskurin, O. (2000), Literaturnye skandaly pushkinskoi ėpokhi, Moscow: OGI. Rostopchin, F. V. (1839), ‘Mes mémoires ou moi au naturel, écrits en dix minutes’, re-publication from Le Temps, 26 April, at http://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/texts (last accessed on 2 June 2014). Rostopchin, F. V. (1853 – I), ‘Mes mémoires ou moi au naturel, écrits en dix minutes’, in Sochineniia Rostopchina (grafa Fedora Vasil’evicha), ed. A. Smirdin, St Petersburg: Tipografiia A. Dmitrieva, pp. 312–20. Rostopchin, F. V. (1853 – II), ‘La verité sur l’incendie du Moscou’, Sochineniia Rostopchina (grafa Fedora Vasil’evicha), ed. A. Smirdin, St Petersburg: Tipografiia A. Dmitrieva, pp. 255–98. Rostopchin, F. V. (1853 – III), Mysli vslukh na Krasnom kryl’tse, in Sochineniia Rostopchina (grafa Fedora Vasil’evicha), ed. A. Smirdin, St Petersburg: Tipografiia A. Dmitrieva, pp. 5–18. Rostopchin, F. V. (1853 – IV), ‘Otvet Sily Andreevicha Bogatyreva Ustinu Ul’ianovichu Venikovu’, Sochineniia Rostopchina (grafa Fedora Vasil’evicha), ed. A. Smirdin, St Petersburg: Tipografiia A. Dmitrieva, pp. 139–44. Ségur, M. le Comte A. de (1871), Vie du Comte Rostopchin. Gouverneur de Moscou en 1812, Paris: Bray et Retaux. Shishkov, A. S. (1793–5), Morskoe iskusstvo ili Glavnye nachala i pravila nauchaiushchie iskusstvu stroeniia, vooruzheniia, pravleniia i vozhdeniia korablei, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Morskogo shliakhetnogo kadetskogo korpusa. Shishkov, A. S. (1795), Treiazychnyi morskoi slovar’ na angliiskom, frantsuzskom i rossiiskom iazykakh, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Morskogo shliakhetnogo kadetskogo korpusa. Shishkov, A. S. (1824 – I), ‘Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge Rossiiskogo iazyka’, Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov Admirala Shishkova. Chast’ II, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 1–357. Shishkov, A. S. (1824 – II), ‘Primechaniia na kritiku, izdannuiu v Moskovskom Merkurie, na knigu, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge’, Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov Admirala Shishkova. Chast’ II, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 412–65. Shishkov, A. S. (1824 – III), ‘Razgovory o slovesnosti mezhdu dvumia litsami Az i Buki’, Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov Admirala Shishkova. Chast’ III, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 1–168. Shishkov, A. S. (1825 – I), ‘Rech’ pri otkrytii Besedy liubitelei russkogo slova’, Sochineniia i perevody Admirala Shishkova. Chast’ IV, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 108–46. Shishkov, A. S. (1825 – II), ‘Rassuzhdenie o liubvi k otechestvu, chitannoe v 1812 godu v Besede liubitelei russkogo slova’, Sochinenii i perevody Admirala Shishkova. Chast’ IV, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, pp. 147–85.

138  g . m . h a mbu r g Shishkov, A. S. (1870), Zapiski, mneniia i perepiska Admirala A. S. Shishkova, vol. 1, ed. N. Kiselev and Iu. Samarin, Berlin: B. Behr’s Buchhandlung. Stoiunin, V. (1880), Istoricheskie sochineniia: Aleksandr Semenovich Shishkov. Chast’ I, St Petersburg: Tipografiia A. S. Suvorina. Zhivov, V. M. (1996), Iazyk i kul’tura v Rossii XVIII veka, Moscow: Shkola ‘Iazyki russkoi kul’tury’.

c h apter 8

Seduction, Subterfuge, Subversion: Ivan Krylov’s Rewriting of Molière D. Brian Kim

I

van Krylov’s last work for the stage, A Lesson for Daughters (Urok dochkam), premiered in St Petersburg on 18 June 1807. This one-act comedy tells the story of two young Russian sisters who foolishly fall in love with an ordinary servant simply because of his appearance, and served as an exhortation against Gallomania in Russia’s citizenry. A Lesson for Daughters performed well in the theatres of the capitals until the mid-1830s and experienced revivals into the Soviet period, hence the general evaluation of the play as one of the best and most popular of Krylov’s dramaturgical œuvre.1 Particularly during the Napoleonic Wars, which saw the closure of the French theatre in Moscow, critics welcomed the play’s anti-French subject-matter.2 In the year following the play’s premiere, the journal Dramaticheskii vestnik (The Dramatic Herald) published some anonymous verse in praise of the play: С каким искусством ты умел то описать, Что всякий день должны, к несчастью, мы встречать! (Danilov 1947: 64)3

Krylov is remembered today primarily for his fables; A Lesson for Daughters was composed in 1806 and 1807, between the writing of Krylov’s first fables and their publication. Thus this play, in particular, can be understood in the larger context of Krylov’s œuvre as a natural stepping stone from dramatic works to fables; this is evidenced by the didactic nature of the play, which is explicitly suggested by its title. Krylov would soon abandon drama after finding that the fable was a more effective medium for imparting the lessons he considered most important; nevertheless, A Lesson for Daughters is one of the works he included in his 1818 list of books recommended in all fields of knowledge.

140  d . b r ian k im Despite his critique of Gallomania, Krylov in fact relied on a foreign model to develop the plot of this play: Molière’s Affected Young Ladies (Les précieuses ridicules, 1659). When we consider the specificity of its aim, the circumstances of the origins of Krylov’s last play become especially strange: in a satire of Gallomania, why would the playwright follow, of all things, a French model to make the point? A Lesson for Daughters invites us to investigate the paradox of its creation with a particular eye to processes of adaptation taking place in a Russia at war with France. Generally speaking, ‘translators mediate between literary traditions, and they do so with some goal in mind, other than that of “making the original available” in a neutral, objective way’ (Lefevere 1992: 6). Translation is a subjective endeavour, a process by which an original work may be radically changed for consumption in the target culture. This is perhaps one reason why André Lefevere proposes that ‘the study of translations should be subsumed under the more encompassing heading of rewriting’ (1992: 6). Although Krylov’s play is not a direct translation of Molière, A Lesson for Daughters can be characterised broadly as an adaptation, exhibiting qualities of both a translation and an original work. In other words, Krylov subjects The Affected Young Ladies to a process of rewriting, the final product of which is a play that is neither wholly identical to, nor wholly different from, the original. This chapter takes A Lesson for Daughters as a case study of rewriting in the French–Russian intercultural nexus. The relationship between language and culture comes to the forefront as the driving force behind the plot of the play. Here, language constitutes a culture’s external appearance, and endows a foreign culture with seductive power. Language signifies the benefits that a foreign culture may provide, but simultaneously accords it a dangerous quality by virtue of its very foreignness. With A Lesson for Daughters, Krylov is in the realm of subversion, having transposed Molière’s play from seventeenth-century France to nineteenth-century Russia and translated the satire of the original into a form directly relevant to the concerns of his own environment, and – crucially – no longer relevant to those of Molière.

LIN G U ISTIC LIAISONS Krylov’s Lesson for Daughters mocks a Russian preoccupation with all things French, much as Molière’s Affected Young Ladies mocks a provincial preoccupation with Parisian airs. Both centre on the seduction of two foolish young women by servants who deviously exploit their superficial pretensions to refinement in order to gain access to their good graces.

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   141 Both plays thus emphasise the dangerous, seductive power of appearances, and seduction in both is made possible by the young women’s misguided views on education. Let us first examine the role of language in A Lesson for Daughters, for the greatest tension throughout Krylov’s comedy arises from the value judgements associated with individual languages and the implicit association of language with culture. Both French and Russian are specifically coded in A Lesson for Daughters. Fekla and Luker’ia, the daughters of the nobleman Vel’karov, want nothing to do with the Russian language, whereas their father forbids them outright from speaking French. Vel’karov implicitly equates linguistic loyalties with cultural ones; he aims to keep his daughters away from what he finds objectionable about French culture, and identifies the French language as the medium that makes their attraction to it possible. Such policing only works against him, however, as it causes his daughters to fixate on what they have been denied. As their maid comments in the opening scene: бедные барышни без французского языка, как без хлеба, сохнут (Krylov [1807] 2001: 412).4 In the daughters’ system of value judgements, French is a prestige language, offering them a reminder of the life they have been forced to leave behind in the city. It signifies their conception of high culture and comes to represent everything their Russian father has taken away from them. In their eyes, the French education they have received qualifies them to pass judgement on the culture of their native country and to dismiss its meagre merits without scruple. Indeed, Vel’karov’s daughters constantly appeal to the degree and quality of their education in defence of their pro-French attitudes. A prestige language is in part defined as such by its use in educational settings, and the fact that Fekla’s and Luker’ia’s supposedly superior education has been conducted in French to a large extent drives their actions.5 Regarding their father’s insistence that they speak only Russian, Luker’ia sarcastically laments: Прекрасно, божественно, с нашим вкусом, с нашими дарованиями, зарыть нас живых в деревне; – нет, да на что ж мы так воспитаны? к чему потрачено это время и деньги? (Krylov [1807] 2001: 414).6 In the sisters’ opinion, their education unequivocally distinguishes them from provincial Russians, and it is insufferable that two young ladies of their obvious talent should now be reduced to life in provincial Russia, speaking Russian and being courted by uninteresting Russian suitors. One is reminded of Voltaire’s stay at the Prussian court in 1750, whence he registered his satisfaction that the language of that court was French and that ‘German is for the soldiers and the horses’ (Voltaire [1750] 1880: 190). Though Vel’karov recommends fine suitors, Fekla and Luker’ia do not deign even to meet them, for these suitors are Russian. Even Magdelon

142  d . b r ian k im and Cathos, the affected young ladies of Molière’s play, at least grant their suitors La Grange and Du Croisy the minimal courtesy of an audience before dismissing them. Fekla and Luker’ia can determine whether a suitor is worth their attention simply by asking about his nationality, because, for the two sisters, anything Russian is immediately endowed with negative qualities. If the French and Russian languages themselves can be conceptualised as suitors vying for the attentions of the two young women, it is not difficult to imagine which would win their favours. On the other hand, it can be argued that Magdelon and Cathos meet their suitors only because such a simple binary is not available to them. Magdelon and Cathos have received their ‘education’ from the prescriptions of romance novels. For these affected young ladies, if a courtship should resemble something other than the process depicted in novels it is devoid of merit. Magdelon elaborates: Mon père, voilà ma cousine qui vous dira, aussi bien que moi, que le mariage ne doit jamais arriver qu’après les autres aventures. Il faut qu’un amant, pour être agréable, sache débiter les beaux sentiments, pousser le doux, le tendre et le passionné, et que sa recherche soit dans les formes. (Molière [1659] 1971: 268)7 Like Fekla and Luker’ia, Magdelon and Cathos subscribe to a system of behaviours and characteristics that enables them to judge whether a suitor is acceptable; unlike them, they cannot tie this system to a simple binary of nationality and must instead rely on vague conceptions of beauty, feeling and passion. Though their knowledge of the French language may be real, Fekla and Luker’ia take their admiration of French culture to the point of simple foolishness. They take pleasure only in the society of their pet parrot; as long as the bird can speak French, it is irrelevant that the only thing he can say is vous êtes une sotte (you’re a fool) (Krylov [1807] 2001: 415). The clearest manifestation of the two sisters’ conflation of French culture with high culture is, of course, their adulation of the servant Semen, who has presented himself to them as a French marquis: Слуга:  Какой-то француз просит позволения войти. Велькаров:  Спроси, кто и зачем? Слуга уходит. Лукерья (тихо):  Сестрица, душенька, француз! Фекла (так же):  Француз, душенька сестрица, уж хоть бы взглянуть на него! пойдем-ко. (Krylov [1807] 2001: 418)8

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   143 This scene bears a striking resemblance to its counterpart in The Affected Young Ladies, in which the arrival of the marquis is announced to Magdelon and Cathos: Marotte:  Il me l’a nommé le Marquis de Mascarille. Magdelon:  Ah! ma chère, un marquis! Oui, allez dire qu’on nous peut voir. C’est sans doute un bel esprit qui aura ouï parler de nous. Cathos:  Assurément, ma chère. Magdelon:  Il faut le recevoir dans cette salle basse, plutôt qu’en notre chambre. Ajustons un peu nos cheveux au moins, et soutenons notre réputation. (Molière [1659] 1971: 271)9 Let us note that the visitor in A Lesson for Daughters is introduced first as a Frenchman, and only subsequently identified as a marquis. This distinction, obviously unnecessary in The Affected Young Ladies, serves to highlight the more important aspect of Semen’s assumed identity. Слуга (возвращаясь):  Его зовут Маркиз! Лукерья (тихо сестре):  Сестрица душенька, маркиз! Фекла (так же):  Маркиз, душенька сестрица! верно, какойнибудь знатный – (Krylov [1807] 2001: 418)10

In both plays, because the visitor is a marquis, it must follow that he is also un bel esprit (man of wit) or знатный (distinguished noble). Like Magdelon and Cathos, Fekla and Luker’ia proceed to fuss over the details of their toilette. Are shawls still worn in Paris? Should they appear to be reading? Even if Magdelon’s hortatory soutenons notre réputation finds no direct analogue in A Lesson for Daughters, it is clear that both pairs of young ladies share a concern with appearances. When they finally meet the marquis, Fekla and Luker’ia are unable to see past his title. Before Semen makes his entrance, Fekla is preoccupied with appearing to read a book, but his glib deflection of Luker’ia’s question about popular authors in France is enough to lead Fekla to the ludicrous conclusion that и в Париже по-французски только говорят, а не читают (Krylov [1807] 2001: 424).11 Like their governess before him, Semen assumes the role of the girls’ spokesperson for French culture. His words thus become a dangerous tool, capable of effecting a sudden transformation in the two sisters’ evaluation of the importance of literacy in their previous education. This episode also cements the idea that the education Fekla and Luker’ia have received is largely ­meaningless, and

144  d . b r ian k im that they have developed a fierce pride not in education itself, but only in its appearance. Fixation on appearances is also treated in The Affected Young Ladies. Magdelon and Cathos are concerned not so much with education itself as with its perceived end result. Vague though such terms as bel air and beau style may be, they point to cultural phenomena traditionally associated with elegance and exacting taste of the sort that generally correlates with level of education, hence the précieuses’ preoccupation with novels, poetry, theatre and opera. The Marquis de Mascarille, however, as a valet disguised as a noble suitor who has come to call on Magdelon and Cathos, is no more deserving of the title than Semen of his. Mascarille’s ‘poetry’ makes this clear: Oh! oh! je n’y prenais pas garde: Tandis que, sans songer à mal, je vous regarde, Votre œil en tapinois me dérobe mon cœur. Au voleur, au voleur, au voleur, au voleur! (Molière [1659] 1971: 276)12 The final line of this verse reveals it to be devoid of aesthetic value; this is further substantiated by Mascarille’s subsequent commentary, in which he draws special attention to the extraordinary quality of the ‘oh! oh!’ Magdelon declares the four iterations of ‘au voleur’ to be ‘un tour spirituel et galant’ (witty and gallant), strongly suggesting that the young ladies’ interest in the markers of high culture is just as superficial as Fekla’s and Luker’ia’s interest in education; they tout the hallmarks of Parisian culture, but remain incapable of judging it properly, even as they suffer from a constant desire to do so (Molière [1659] 1971: 277). There is a commentary on education in Molière’s play as well as in Krylov’s: Mascarille:  Je veux vous dire l’air que j’ai fait dessus. Cathos:  Vous avez appris la musique? Mascarille:  Moi? Point du tout. Cathos:  Et comment donc cela se peut-il? Mascarille:  Les gens de qualité savent tout sans avoir jamais rien appris. (Molière [1659] 1971: 277)13 The title of marquis accords Mascarille a cultural authority to which Magdelon and Cathos submit completely, despite the fact that the false marquis makes fools of the young ladies with every sentence. Similarly,

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   145 let us recall Fekla and Luker’ia taking Semen at his word when he informs them that Parisians do not read. The mere appearance of Parisian high culture constitutes all the qualifications both pairs of young ladies seek in a suitor. In both A Lesson for Daughters and The Affected Young Ladies, a false suitor seduces a pair of young ladies with pretensions to education. At this juncture, it is interesting to note the etymological relationship of the words ‘educate’ and ‘seduce’ – both stem from the Latin dūcere, (to lead), but whereas to educate is to lead out of ignorance, to seduce is to lead astray. The disparate yet connected meanings of education and seduction lie at the core of Magdelon’s and Cathos’s story: the high culture that enthrals them is associated with the end result of education, but their reception of Mascarille reveals that their understanding of education is quite tenuous. Magdelon and Cathos have been seduced by the ideas their romance novels present, and can presumably be seduced by anyone who utilises such ideas effectively. Similarly, Fekla and Luker’ia maintain a steadfast belief in the value of their education, but the superficiality of the education to which they cling reveals that they have really been seduced by the glamour of French language and culture. Their actual seduction by Semen serves as a symbol of the perils brought by an education that does not fulfil the task of leading out of ignorance. To return to the issue of rewriting, we may designate seduction as the first step of the process. It represents the desire, born of the seductive power of the foreign, to convey a foreign work into one’s own cultural sphere. Just as the young ladies of these plays are attracted to cultural phenomena that are in some way beyond their own purview, so did Russian playwrights such as Krylov identify a desired object in French culture and rewrite it into the sphere of Russian culture. The term seduction becomes especially useful to our discussion of things that take place in wartime precisely because of the danger it implies. When the rewritten culture is that of the military enemy, any education that might be acquired therefrom takes on a suspect quality. In order to avoid the pitfalls of seduction, the playwright must find a way to advance the process of appropriation beyond translation. Instead of simply remaining in the realm of the surface appearances that accompany individual languages, he or she must engage in a freer act of rewriting. The task of the rewriter, then, is at odds with Fekla’s and Luker’ia’s simple adoration of a foreign culture: it is to interiorise the desirable aspects of the foreign whilst keeping its undesirable aspects at bay.

146  d . b r ian k im

T H E M AN IN T H E G ILDED M AS K Although The Affected Young Ladies does not treat the problem of who speaks which language in which situation, its focus on appearances extends from the effects of education – exhibited in the cultural phenomena associated with the intellectual elite – to appearances in the most fundamental sense of the word. When the true identity of the false noblemen in Molière’s play is revealed, Mascarille and his companion Jodelet are not only denounced as the valets of La Grange and Du Croisy, but also stripped of the clothing they have borrowed from their masters: Mascarille:  Voilà le marquisat et la vicomté à bas. Du Croisy:  Ha! ha! coquins, vous avez l’audace d’aller sur nos brisées! Vous irez chercher autre part de quoi vous rendre agréables aux yeux de vos belles, je vous en assure. La Grange:  C’est trop que de nous supplanter, et de nous supplanter avec nos propres habits. Mascarille:  Ô Fortune, quelle est ton inconstance! Du Croisy:  Vite, qu’on leur ôte jusqu’à la moindre chose. La Grange:  Qu’on emporte toutes ces hardes, dépêchez. Maintenant, Mesdames, en l’état qu’ils sont, vous pouvez continuer vos amours avec eux tant qu’il vous plaira; nous vous laissons toute sorte de liberté pour cela, et nous vous protestons, Monsieur et moi, que nous n’en serons aucunement jaloux. (Molière [1659] 1971: 285–6)14 Consequently, clothing functions as the primary tool by which the real noblemen exact their revenge on Magdelon and Cathos. The noblemen’s finery endows Mascarille with his aforementioned cultural authority, enabling him to extol the virtues of writing poetry simply for the sake of being able to say that he writes poetry. Dressing in a manner more befitting his master invests Mascarille with the right to claim that he is capable of any cultural exercise required of a nobleman; that is, that a person of noble birth can turn his or her hand to any endeavour, even if the reality is that he or she lacks the requisite background for it. Molière’s false noblemen demonstrate that adorning themselves with fancy clothing and behaving accordingly transforms them into the type of suitor most attractive to the affected young ladies. In their search for a life that reads like a romance novel, Magdelon and Cathos stake everything on participating in those activities that evoke their ideas of what high society must be: courtship, poetry recital, singing, wearing fancy dress, attendance at soirées and balls. Their preoccupation with

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   147 such activities leaves them blind to what is actually of substance; or, as Mascarille puts it in his last line in the play: on n’aime ici que la vaine apparence, et [. . .] on n’y considère point la vertu toute nue (Molière [1659] 1971: 286).15 In A Lesson for Daughters, it is Vel’karov’s rule prohibiting the use of languages other than Russian in his household that makes it possible for Semen to act out his masquerade. Vel’karov himself has created the conditions, however inadvertently, that allow the non-francophone Semen to construct and maintain his façade. However, the pretence lasts only until he is finally called upon to speak the language he cannot speak, having made the fatal mistake of identifying himself as Marquis Glagol’. Given the play’s preoccupation with matters of language, it is no accident that Glagol’ is the name for the marquis that Semen comes up with. This choice exemplifies the tensions between the Russian and French tendencies in the play. It is a reference to the Russian translation of Abbé Prévost’s Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality Who Has Withdrawn from the World (Mémoires et aventures d’un homme de qualité qui s’est retiré du monde), rendered in Russian as Prikliucheniia markiza G., ili Zhizn’ blagorodnogo cheloveka ostavivshego svet. The name of Marquis Glagol’ (Глаголь with a soft sign at the end) stems from the traditional name of the fourth letter of the Russian alphabet (the letter г, or g), indicating the importance of the written word to his masquerade. It also brings to mind another related word, глаголъ (with a hard sign at the end), the archaic meaning of which may be glossed as ‘word’ or ‘speech’. By virtue of their phonetic and etymological similarity, the form with a soft-sign глаголь and the form with a hard-sign глаголъ belong to a semantic web with the notions of letter and script, on the one hand, and word, speech, utterance and language, on the other. All of these connotations are important in the figure of Semen, for whom Glagol’ happens simply to be the first marquis to come to mind. For our purposes, however, it is the perfect moniker for a Russian masquerading as a Frenchman, whose name not only points to the idea of translation between French and Russian via the reference to Prévost, but also suggests the indispensable role played by the written word in Semen’s disguise. Glagol’, then, can be seen as a microcosm for Semen’s entire roleplay, as the disguise he constructs is based completely on language. The story he tells Vel’karov at the beginning of his ruse lays the foundation: bandits have made away with all his worldly possessions, including any papers that might identify him. By pretending that there is no written proof of his presumed identity, Semen creates a situation which, in the play’s action, must be sustained entirely by his oral performance of the role. We have seen the power of Semen’s speech to alter the behaviour of

148  d . b r ian k im Fekla and Luker’ia in his capacity as a spokesperson for French culture; this power stems wholly from his ability to manipulate glagol’ in order to construct an appearance of himself that is contrary to his true nature. Glagol’ is the identity Semen takes on in two ways: not only is it the name that pops into his mind under dire circumstances, but it also serves as the medium through which he is able to perform that identity. It is where the two systems of Russian and French intersect and overlap. Semen’s linguistic subterfuge also extends into the realms of syntax and phonetics. Rather than simply relying on the meaning of his words, Semen takes pains to alter the very quality of his Russian in order to lend a greater degree of verisimilitude to his claim that he has learned Russian only during the time he has spent away from France. For this reason, as Marquis Glagol’ he imitates the grammatical mistakes characteristic of a foreign speaker of Russian. Furthermore, Semen introduces changes into his Russian at the level of individual phones, bedecking his speech with a series of sounds meant to resemble a French accent. In the text of the play, this accent is reflected in the substitution of letters that indicates the changes Semen has made to his pronunciation. His first lines as Marquis Glagol’ aptly illustrate the transformation he imposes on his language: Милостивия государини, ви видите пред собою утифительного маркиза, которого злополушния нешастия, и нешастния горести, соправшиеся наподобие, когда великие туши с приткою молниею несносные для всякого шувствительного серса, которое серса подобно большой шлюпке на морских волнах катается, кидается и бросается из педы на горе, из горя на нешасие, из нешасия на погибель, из погибели ошень, ошень жалко, сударини, што не могу вам этого рассказать по-французски. (Krylov [1807] 2001: 422; my use of bold)16

Although Krylov conveys the false marquis’s accent largely by merely replacing letters representing Russian sounds foreign to the French language with letters standing for phones that a French speaker can more easily pronounce, one of these alternations exemplifies the running conflict between Russian and French in A Lesson for Daughters. This is Semen’s replacement of nearly every incidence of the Russian [i], a high central unrounded vowel represented by the Cyrillic letter ы, with the high front unrounded vowel [i] (represented by Cyrillic и), which is more common across the world’s languages and shared by Russian and French. This substitution is what lays bare the exact nature of Semen’s phonetic masquerade for Vel’karov, who perceives it as the disguise unravels:

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   149 Велькаров (особо):  Ба! и Даша в замешательстве, тут, верно, есть обман! Так вас называют маркиз Глаголь? Семен:  Милостивий государь, я удивляюсь, што это вас удивляет. [. . .] Велькаров: [. . .] Господин маркиз! Я позволяю или, лучше сказать, я требую, чтоб ты дочерям моим при мне рассказал по-французски жалкое приключение, как тебя в лесу ограбили. Даша (особо):  Прощай, маркизство! – Лукерья:  Ах! какое счастие! Семен:  Милостивый государь! Велькаров:  Посмотри-ко, ты уже чище по-русски стал выговаривать; скоренько научился! (Krylov [1807] 2001: 433)17

His oral performance notwithstanding, the only way to differentiate between Semen the servant and Semen the marquis on the printed page is to examine the incongruous graphemes that lend the speech of the latter its foreign character. Semen is capable not only of producing a distorted form of his language that might befit a French nobleman who speaks Russian only as a second language, but also of speaking a homegrown, earthy variety of Russian largely inaccessible to foreign speakers. As Marquis Glagol’, he is, so to speak, a sheep in wolf’s clothing – the glittering veneer of French sounds forming the mask of glagol’ over the Russian beneath. Just as Mascarille – whose name stems from the word masque – and Jodelet dress in the physical clothing of their masters to bolster their assumed identities, so Semen ‘dresses’ in the accent of a foreigner’s speech, effectively translating the image of the French nobleman into a Russian persona. It is this makeshift, temporary dress afforded him by the manipulation of language that wins him the physical coat he receives from Vel’karov by virtue of his successful execution, in the first instance, of the role of Marquis Glagol’. The example of Semen invites us to consider the notion of translation as subterfuge; that is, the idea that the translation of a foreign work constitutes its introduction into the target culture dressed in the trappings of the target language. While Semen’s masquerade cannot be taken as a direct allegory of the translation of French cultural products into Russian, his manipulation of his speech aptly illustrates the capacity of language to act as the surface appearance of a given culture. Had Krylov undertaken a simple translation of Molière into Russian, the play would have amounted to a French work existing in the Russian cultural

150  d . b r ian k im milieu: it would have had all the appearances of a Russian work (that is, a linguistic dissimulation of sorts), but it would have remained French – the property of the enemy – at its base. Thus translation, as a mode of rewriting, does not necessarily signal the full appropriation of a foreign idea into a domestic context in and of itself; that is, the mere fact of the language in which a work is rewritten does not determine whether that work lies at the centre or the periphery of the receiving culture. Just as Mascarille may float between the roles of valet and marquis, and more pertinently, just as Semen is able to wander between Russian and French personae exemplified by the respective languages, a person engaging in rewriting manipulates the appearance of a text. The movement between languages signals a shift in the axiological hierarchy of literary and cultural products. Full appropriation relies on the subversive nature of an act of rewriting that does not acknowledge the power of the original culture, and so does away with the danger inherent in embracing the enemy’s ideas as one’s own.

AN APPROPRIATE ( D ) ENLI GH TEN M ENT This subversive act is one in which Sirkku Aaltonen claims ‘the foreign is rewritten to serve the Self without breaking away entirely from it [. . .] alterity is appropriated and its significance denied’ (Aaltonen 2000: 73–4). This certainly applies to Krylov, who lifts the plots and character types of Molière’s play out of their original French context and situates them in the Russian countryside, altering details so as to give his adaptation a more Russian flavour. In the play itself, Vel’karov is the figure capable of denying the significance of alterity when circumstances call for it. This may seem a strange proposition in the light of Vel’karov’s heavy-handed methods concerning the use of French in his household; however, Fekla and Luker’ia have been forbidden to speak French because they have succumbed to the idea that using a language means subscribing to the cultural values for which it stands. To be sure, Vel’karov is openly disdainful of those aspects of French culture to which his daughters have taken a fancy, but on the other hand, he also explicitly acknowledges the benefits the use of the language can bring: Да, да. – Если он по-русски не говорит, то говорите с ним по-французски, я даже этого и требую; есть случаи, где знание языков употребить и нужно, и полезно. – Но русскому с русским, кажется, всего приличнее говорить отечественным языком, которого, благодаря истинному

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   151 просвещению, зачинают переставать стыдиться. (Krylov [1807] 2001: 419)18

Vel’karov does not make the same mistake of arbitrarily assigning all elements of one culture to the category of ‘good’ as his daughters do, and so emerges as the antithesis to the superficial education embraced by Fekla and Luker’ia. It is not his ultimate aim to instil in his daughters a reverence for Russian language and culture to the total exclusion of other languages and cultures. Lurking in the background of our discussion of Vel’karov’s attitude towards his daughters’ behaviour is the discourse of the Enlightenment. Vel’karov praises true enlightenment (истинноe просвещениe) and upbraids his daughters for failing to measure up to the raisonnable ideal. Although the sisters’ bad behaviour is linked to their adoration of French culture, the ideas Vel’karov himself embraces also have their origin in France. What Vel’karov argues for, then, is itself an originally foreign mode of thought which he adapts for the Russian cultural sphere for his own purposes – that is, he denies the significance of alterity and appropriates the property of the other as that of the self. The story of Vel’karov and his daughters reflects a general trend that Ludmila Pimenova has identified in eighteenth-century Russian discourse surrounding the importation of French Enlightenment ideals: while on the one hand ‘French influence is interpreted as corruption of good national character’, on the other hand ‘elements which have been approved and admitted are in fact interiorised and are not perceived as foreign’ (Pimenova 1999: 212–13). This trend, along with Vel’karov’s endorsement of the use of French in appropriate situations, allows us to extrapolate and conclude that the boundaries between French and Russian at this point are not actually as rigid as the play might imply at first glance. Although Vel’karov’s discourse may have some roots in the French Enlightenment, the ideas to which he subscribes have been so thoroughly assimilated into the Russian cultural consciousness by this time that they do not necessarily appear to be foreign at all. This blurring of the line between cultures indicates that appropriation has taken place: when Vel’karov speaks against certain characteristics of a culture while using others as the basis for his argument, this is an instance of subversion. That is, through the character of Vel’karov, Krylov shows that an element of the source culture has seamlessly become part of the target. It is this interiorisation of the desirable aspect of the foreign that makes it possible for translated literature to recede to the periphery and make way for original Russian work.

152  d . b r ian k im Vel’karov’s attitude towards foreign languages and cultures most likely mirrors that of Krylov himself. If Vel’karov’s reasoning can be characterised as subversive, so too can Krylov’s choice of model for A Lesson for Daughters. The fact that the origins of this Russian satire of Gallomania are situated in a French model, along with the circumstances of its popular reception, effectively demonstrates Krylov’s success in transplanting a foreign cultural product into his domestic cultural sphere. Critics have disagreed as to whether A Lesson for Daughters is a translation, a copy, a reworking or simply a fresh take on the old theme of Gallomania. The multifarious nature of this dispute testifies to Krylov’s successful appropriation of Molière’s play into the Russian cultural sphere – an appropriation so successful as to veil the true origins of A Lesson for Daughters as a product of rewriting and to cause some critics to treat it as a dramatic work with the status and prestige of an original product in itself. Thus A Lesson for Daughters is not only disguised as a Russian work, but also exemplifies subversion at its best – the play constitutes not just a retelling of a foreign story, but even goes so far as to speak against its own origins. * * * Those who straddle the line between two cultures and translate (or otherwise rewrite) a literary work are endowed with the power to make a significant contribution to the importing culture’s conception of the imported culture; as Lefevere puts it, ‘they are image makers, exerting the power of subversion under the guise of objectivity’ (Lefevere 1992: 7). Through engaging in the act of rewriting, Krylov is able to subvert the original aim of Molière’s play, adapting The Affected Young Ladies in such a way that the focus shifts from the issues of préciosité relevant to Molière to the more urgent concerns of the presence and reception of French culture in a Russia at war with France. His subversive rewriting of Molière’s play attests to Russia’s continuing progress in the task of removing the translated literature of the cultural hegemon to the periphery of the literary–cultural polysystem, making more room for original, Russian work at the centre.19 While A Lesson for Daughters appears at first sight only to thematise the rejection of French cultural encroachment, Krylov’s play also depicts the processes of cultural appropriation in the stages of seduction, subterfuge and, finally, subversion. The play not only provides a commentary on the situation, but also constitutes a possible solution to the problem in and of itself. A Lesson for Daughters thus stands both as a record of the interactions between French and Russian culture at the beginning of the nineteenth century and as an example of what can be achieved by a culture at war that imports ideas originating in the land of the enemy.

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   153

NOTES   1. This is a sentiment echoed by many critics, including Danilov (1947), Kołakowski (1968), Fomichev (1975), and Karlinsky (1985), among others. On the history of the play’s staging and reception, see Danilov (1947) and Fomichev (1975).   2. Both Frame (2006) and Schuler (2009) provide discussions on the increase in the number of patriotic plays staged in St Petersburg during this time. Frame also treats the rise and decline of the French troupe’s activity in the capitals.   3. ‘With what artistry have you managed to describe what, sadly, we must come across each day!’   4. ‘without the French language, the poor misses are wasting away as though they were without bread.’   5. See Kahane (1986) for further information on the category of the prestige language.   6. ‘Wonderful, just divine, that with our taste, with our talents, we should be buried alive in the countryside. No! What was all our education for, then? Why was all that time and money wasted?’   7. ‘Father, my cousin will tell you, just as well as I, that marriage should never occur until after the other adventures are over. A lover, in order to be acceptable, should be able to toy with noble fancies, and play the gamut of emotion, sweet and tender and impassioned. And he should woo according to the rules.’ Here and elsewhere I have used translations by Morris Bishop in his Eight Plays by Molière, New York: The Modern Library, 1957.  8. Servant:  There is a Frenchman requesting leave to enter. Vel’karov:  Find out who he is and what he wants. Exit the servant. Luker’ia (quietly):  Sister, dearest, a Frenchman! Fekla (also quietly):  A Frenchman, dearest sister, oh for just one look at him! Let’s go and look.  9. Marotte:  He says he’s the Marquis de Mascarille. Magdelon:  Oh, my dear, a marquis! Yes, go and tell him that he can see us. (To Cathos) No doubt he’s one of the wits who has heard about us. Cathos:  Oh, assuredly, my dear. Magdelon:  We’d better receive him in this parlor, and not in our bedroom [. . .] Let’s just arrange our hair a little, and support our reputation. 10. Servant (returning):  He’s called Marquis! Luker’ia (quietly to her sister):  Sister dearest, a marquis! Fekla (the same):  A marquis, dearest sister! Surely he must be some distinguished – 11. ‘even in Paris they only speak French; they don’t read it.’ 12. ‘Oh, oh! I was so carefree and impudent! I was just gazing at you, as who wouldn’t? You stole my heart, engulfing me in grief; Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief!’ 13. Mascarille:  I must sing you the tune I’ve composed for it. Cathos:  You’ve studied music? Mascarille:  What, me? Not at all. Cathos:  How is it possible, then—

154  d . b r ian k im Mascarille: People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything. 14. Mascarille:  Now the marquisate and the viscounty are humbled in the dust. Du Croisy:  Aha, you rascals, you wanted to follow in our footsteps! You’ll have to go somewhere else for the equipment to charm your beauties, I can assure you. La Grange:  It’s too much, to try to take our places, and especially with our own clothes. Mascarille:  Ah, Fortune, what is thy inconstancy! Du Croisy:  Come on, take everything off them. La Grange:  Take away all these clothes; hurry. Now, ladies, in their present state, you can continue your love passages with them as much as you please. We will leave you full liberty to do so, and my friend and I protest that we shall not be jealous at all. 15. ‘here only vain appearances are prized, and there is no esteem for naked virtue.’ 16. ‘Good mesdemoiselles, you see before you a glorieux marquis, ’ose désastreux mizfortunes, and mizfortunate sorrow, which ’ave gazered az great black clouds wiz sudden lightning intolérable to every ’eart sensible, which ’eart like a big boat is swaying and tossed on ze sea waves and zrown from calamité to grief, from grief to mizfortune, from mizfortune to perdition, from perdition so, so pitoyable, mesdemoiselles, zat I cannot recount you of zis in French.’ My main aim in translating this particular passage has been to draw special attention to the exaggerated phonetics of a stereotypical French speaker in English, much as Krylov’s rendering of the false marquis’s lines caricatures the Russian of a native French speaker. [Editor’s note: we have corrected one obvious typographical error in the source from which the Russian passage quoted here is taken.] 17. Vel’karov (aside):  Bah! Even Dasha is confused. There’s definitely some trickery here. So! Your name is Marquis Glagol? Semen: Good sieur (Милостивий государь), I am amazed zat zat amazes you. [. . .] Vel’karov:  Sir Marquis! I will allow – that is, I will require – that, in my presence, you relate to my daughters in French the pitiable circumstances of how you were robbed in the forest. Dasha (aside):  Farewell, marquisate! Luker’ia:  Oh, what happiness! Semen:  Good sir (Милостивый государь)! Vel’karov:  Well, well, look at that – you’re already speaking Russian more clearly; taught yourself right quick, didn’t you! 18. ‘Yes, yes. If he does not speak Russian, then speak to him in French – actually, I will go so far as to require this. There are situations in which the ability to use languages is both necessary and useful. But it seems to me most proper for a Russian, when speaking with another Russian, to speak his native tongue, and thanks to true enlightenment people are beginning to stop being ashamed of Russian.’ 19. See Even-Zohar (1990) for an overview of polysystem theory, and also Chapter 3 in this volume.

k r y l o v ’s r e w ritin g o f m o l i è r e   155

REFERENCES Aaltonen, S. (2000), Time-Sharing on Stage: Drama Translation in Theatre and Society, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Danilov, S. S. (1947), ‘Posledniaia p’esa Krylova’, in E. Kuznetsov (ed.), Russkie klassiki i teatr, Leningrad: Iskusstvo, pp. 164–91. Even-Zohar, I. (1990), ‘Polysystem studies’, Poetics Today, 11: 1, 1–270. Fomichev, S. A. (1975), ‘Dramaturgiia Krylova nachala XIX veka’, in I. Z. Serman (ed.), Ivan Andreevich Krylov: Problemy tvorchestva, Leningrad: Nauka, pp. 130–53. Frame, M. (2006), School for Citizens: Theatre and Civil Society in Imperial Russia, New Haven: Yale University Press. Kahane, H. (1986), ‘A typology of the prestige language’, Language, 62: 3, 495–508. Karlinsky, S. (1985), Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kołakowski, T. (1968), Dramaturgia Iwana Kryłowa, Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich. Krylov, I. A. [1807] (2001), Polnoe sobranie dramaticheskikh sochinenii, St Petersburg: Giperion, pp. 407–34. Lefevere, A. (1992), Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context, New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Molière [1659] (1971), Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, Paris: Gallimard, pp. 247–88. Pimenova, L. (1999), ‘Gallomanie et gallophobie dans la culture russe au siècle des Lumières’, in D. Bell, L. Pimenova and S. Pujol (eds), La Recherche dix-huitiémiste. Raison universelle et culture nationale au siècle des Lumières, Paris: Honoré Champion, pp. 201–14. Schuler, C. (2009), Theater and Identity in Imperial Russia, Iowa City: Iowa University Press. Voltaire [1750] (1880), Œuvres complètes, vol. 37, Paris: Garnier Frères.

c hapter 9

The French Language of Fashion in Early NineteenthCentury Russia Olga Vassilieva-Codognet

T

hroughout early nineteenth-century Europe, and despite far from negligible competiton from English and German, it was French that was the main lingua franca for fashion. The language of Voltaire – or rather that of the Journal des Dames et des Modes (Journal of Ladies and Fashions) (Kleinert 2001), the inspired invention of Pierre de la Mésangère, which was to have such a lasting influence on the whole fashion press of the first half of the nineteenth century – enjoyed this privileged status for two basic reasons. First, the Parisian capital was the main purveyor of fashion for the European elites of the ancien régime (Roche 1989) and, second, French was (and would remain for some time to come) the lingua franca of those elites themselves. In the Russian case, French even challenged the national language and was the favourite language of the aristocracy (Grechanaia 2010). The debates about the Russian language, on the new and old styles, which set the supporters of Karamzin against those of Shishkov and called into question the role and use of French in Russia in the early nineteenth century, are well enough known (Lotman and Uspenskii 1996; Zhivov 1996; Proskurin 2000).1 However, it is less well known that these language polemics frequently had recourse to clothing metaphors which also contrasted Russian and French practices. I shall refer to some revealing examples of such metaphors, before coming to the heart of my study, namely the role of French as the language of fashion in early nineteenth-century Russia. After introducing the Russian fashion journals of that time, I shall analyse in detail the different types of use (retention of the original, translation, transliteration and so on) that these journals made of the vocabulary of French fashion. This is undoubtedly one of the least-known aspects of the great enterprise of importing Parisian fashion into Imperial Russia. Before coming to questions of language, though, it is worth recalling how

t h e f r e nc h la n gu ag e o f f a s h i o n   157 great the power of fashion was – its empire and its hold – at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which I shall now do through an allegorical tale of that time.

T H E T Y RANN Y OF FAS H ION In 1802, there appeared in Vestnik Evropy (The Herald of Europe),2 a journal that Karamzin had founded that year, an allegorical story in which a personification of fashion featured. This was a translation, done by Karamzin, of a French text entitled ‘What a Day! or the Seven Women, an Allegorical Tale’ (‘Quelle journée! ou Les sept femmes, un conte allégorique’), which was part of a collection by Pierre-Edouard Lemontey that had been published in Paris the previous year (Lemontey 1801). Lemontey’s story is framed as a quest: the main character, a young man named Fabrice, will not rest until he has been reunited with the love of his life, Sophia, the ideal woman and an embodiment of Wisdom. On the way, he comes across a hysterical woman, Fashion, who tries to convince him that he absolutely must submit to her diktats: he should do things which are the flavour of the month (go to the opera, attend a geometry course and so on) and, evidently, he should dress according to the last word in fashion, in ‘Quaker costume, Lapp shoes, Arab waistcoats, Etruscan trousers and Madagascan shirts’ (p. 53). As for Fashion, she was: a madwoman who danced with more vigour than grace and rolled Italian notes round in her throat. She had worn skin and a touchedup complexion, both hair and a wig, a veil and no blouse. But the more bizarre she looked, the more people seemed to applaud her. (p. 52) In the narrative economy of this story, this artificial and contradictory Fashion, whom all the world praises to the skies, is the first of the eponymous seven women (Fashion, Sensual Pleasure, Justice, Disease, Envy, Ambition and Death), each of whom personifies an obstacle that Fabrice must face in his quest for Wisdom. In each instance, our hero will have to give up several years of his life in order to escape the clutches of these possessive and perfidious women, and Fabrice will sacrifice his best years to Fashion. Thus at the beginning of the nineteenth century fashion would seem to rule unchallenged over the hearts of young Europeans. Indeed, in the same year and the same periodical, Karamzin, writing under the

158  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t ­ seudonym V. Mulatov, published a satirical text which mocked the p blind acceptance of French fashion in Russia (Mulatov 1802). The author denounced the tyranny of the modern fashion that obliged women to wear clothes like those worn in olden times, which revealed their bodies to such an extent that they left nothing to men’s imagination. He deplored the fact that Russian women slavishly copied the practices of these shameless Frenchwomen – flowers that had sprung from ground saturated with the blood of the victims of the guillotine! – so that they could offer themselves to universal view re-dressed (or rather undressed) in just their ‘heavenly zephyr’.3 Next, it is the turn of an uncultivated character of Siberian origin to declare that all these ‘lunatics’ whose clothes are more suited to the intimacy of the bedroom than to the etiquette of the drawing-room should be sent back home. It falls to a hypochondriac doctor to conclude that the ancient hang of clothes made fashionable by Napoleon’s first wife, the Empress Josephine, was better suited to a Mediterranean climate than to the Russian winter and was bound to carry off the unknowing women who wore such clothes to their graves! Of course, criticism of fashion is a topos as old as fashion itself. But if Karamzin’s text did indeed denounce the excesses of fashion, nonetheless it looks less like a criticism designed to persuade people of a point of view than an outrageous accusation intended to cause mirth, and nobody could miss its tongue-in-cheek character. Karamzin was tackling here a subject which was particularly painful for his readers, because the Russian public, so fond of the ‘novelties of fashion’, still remembered the repression to which French fashion, or what was perceived as such, had been subjected during the reign of Paul I. Paul had thought that French clothes in the latest mode were dangerous, because they amounted to a means by which French ideas, that is to say revolutionary ideas, could enter the country. From this point of view, Paul was the worthy son of his mother. Indeed, Catherine, in her time, had already taken measures to restrict the aforesaid Western fashion, as much for symbolic reasons, out of a wish to express a Russian national identity, as for economic ones connected with the exorbitant financial cost of importing Western fashion. To counter this fashion, she had applied herself to promotion of a Russian costume which brought national elements to the fore. Thus she had introduced a ceremonial dress that ladies of the court were obliged to wear at official events. The dress in question consisted of a sarafan francisé (Frenchified sarafan4) (Kirsanova 1997), that is to say a low-cut dress which had long, slit, hanging sleeves and a short train. Vestimentary expression of Russian patriotism became more attractive during the Napoleonic Wars, which pitted the Russians against the French. Certain ladies of the Russian aristocracy could now be seen

t h e f r e nc h la n gu ag e o f f a s h i o n   159 ­ isplaying their national feeling by dressing in the Russian manner, d showing off a кокошник (peasant head-dress) or a sarafan for the good cause. On the male side, on the other hand, the military costumes of Russian officers and French officers were very similar, which almost cost Denis Davydov and his men their lives when Russian peasants mistook them for French officers. (One is bound to say that it was easy to make such a mistake, given the Western uniform that Davydov’s hussars wore and the French that they spoke!) However, these eruptions of Francophobia were short-lived, to the extent that they never led to the establishment, among the Russian aristocracy as a whole, of a form of dress that was independent of the Western model and that could be worn every day. To return to the year 1802, which saw the publication of Karamzin’s tale, the death of Paul in the previous year had changed the situation. After the difficult period when those who wore round hats, morning-coats, waistcoats and so forth were subject to zealous policing (Tereshchuk 2011: 325–30), the year 1802 celebrated a return to normality, and the ‘anti-fashion’ of the preceding years merely made this forbidden fruit, fashion, seem all the more desirable. However, Karamzin too had succumbed to fashion when he was a young man. When he returned from his travels of 1789–90 in Europe, his friends found him changed in ‘body and mind’, ‘in a fashionable morningcoat, with his hair in a bun and with a comb in it, and with ribbons in his shoes’ (Lotman 1997: 193). Shortly afterwards, in 1791, Aleksei Kutuzov compared Karamzin himself to a ‘monkey’ and a ‘parrot’. Some ten years later we shall find these same words, ‘monkey’ and ‘parrot’, coming from Karamzin’s own pen, in his article ‘A Curiosity’ (‘Strannost’’) (1802), where he uses them to describe young Russians educated in France who, when they return to their native land, show themselves to have lost all cultural identity and to be no longer capable of anything other than listing the names of Parisian actors who are in vogue (Karamzin 1802b). In attacking feather-brained young Gallomanes in this way, Karamzin was no doubt acquitting himself of the mocking charge that had been levelled against him ten years earlier. Nonetheless, as a portrait executed in 1803 shows, Karamzin was still sporting a hairstyle à la Titus (forbidden under Paul I), which was the sign of an elegant man. It is evidently this image of Karamzin that the poet Aleksandr Voeikov chose to preserve in his satirical poem ‘The Madhouse’ (‘Dom sumasshedshikh’): Карамзин, Тит Ливий русский! Ты, как Шаликов, стонал, Щеголял как шут французский... Ах, кто молод не бывал?5

160  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t

FAS HION AS A M ETAP H OR Fashion, though, is not just a matter of hair-styles and clothes. Through its power of fascination, it extends beyond its own realm and into the domain of social practices, serving as a metaphor and intruding into the intellectual debates of its time. Thus one can detect several metaphors that make use of fashion – whether these be taken in good part or in bad part – at the heart of early nineteenth-century debates about the integrity of the Russian language. It is true that in Russia language and clothing were particularly closely linked to one another: both attested to the same process of Europeanisation of traditional Russian culture which, although it had been going on since Peter the Great, had still not reached a critical point by the end of the eighteenth century. Since these correlations between language and clothes have been analysed at length by Proskurin (1999: 301–47), I shall merely borrow from him, in this section of my chapter, a few of the arguments about language and clothing which pitted Shishkov and the supporters of Karamzin against one another, before finishing with a little known bon mot of Pushkin’s. In reply to someone who had asked him what he had against neologisms, Shishkov had replied that words which had a Russian root but were calques from French were particularly abominable because they were like a ‘grey kaftan with lapels and cuffs’ (Proskurin 1999: 331). Likewise, to explain his objection to the introduction of non-native characters in the literary domain, Shishkov had again made use of a clothing metaphor. However, this time he argued a contrario: if he was willing to grant a Russian tailor the right to follow a French pattern when he cut out a new costume, on the other hand he challenged the right of a Russian poet to transpose French verse into Russian verse. In response to these attacks, the Karamzin camp willingly agreed to endorse the dandy’s clothes that Shishkov and his supporters offered them. In a poem entitled ‘Everyone Cut in His Own Way’ (‘Vsiakii na svoi pokroi’), the poet Petr Viazemskii, an imitator of Karamzin and a perfect dandy, surpassed Shishkov in his use of the clothing metaphor: Портных у нас в столице много, Все моде следуют одной: Шьют ровной, кажется, иглой, Но видишь, всматриваясь строго, Что каждый шьет на свой покрой. Портными нас всех можно счислить: Покрой у каждого свой есть.

(Viazemskii 1982: 125)6

t h e f r e nc h la n gu ag e o f f a s h i o n   161 Viazemskii’s taste for wordplay was well known to his contemporaries. In his response to Viazemskii, who had sent him a poem by the French writer Casimir Delavigne, Pushkin thanked his correspondent in the following way: ‘Thank you for Casimir (how can one cut a pun out of him? See if you can). You seem to like Casimir, but I don’t.’ If Pushkin is suggesting that Viazemskii cut out (выкроить) a pun from the name of Casimir Delavigne – in the same way that one cuts a shape out of a piece of cloth – it is because the forename of the mediocre French poet, no less than his surname, Delavigne (that is, de la vigne (from the vine)), invites wordplay: in the French language of fashion of that time, people said casimir rather than cachemire to denote the material cashmere, which was imported from England (Pushkin 1989: letter 144). Thus Viazemskii and Shishkov both used the medium – and the prestige – of fashion to wage a controversy about the form of the Russian language. We might even note that both writers were implicated in a more personal way in activities relating to fashion, or rather the fashion press: the former wrote in journals aimed at women, while the latter found himself at the other end of the production chain – and on the other side of the barricade – in the role of censor. Let us now see what place fashion had in the Russian periodicals of this time.

FAS HION IN R U SSIAN JO U RNALS Articles on dress – the history of costume as well as what was new in fashion – had made their entry into the Russian press during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.7 In the period that interests us here, and alongside foreign fashion publications such as the Journal des Dames et des Modes, which continued to reign supreme, there appeared a number of Russian-language periodicals which included sections devoted to fashion. Many of these periodicals had a precarious existence. If the most resilient of them managed to last for a decade, many never celebrated their first anniversary, owing to competition from foreign journals, lack of subscribers and the all-powerful censorship. Although these journals were above all aimed at women, from the aristocracy and the emergent bourgeoisie, they were also read by men, as demonstrated by the presentation, albeit very occasional, of costume sketches for men in them. The texts and engravings in their fashion columns were taken directly from French journals and were an asset that was far from insignificant for the journals’ sales. As a rule, the text in a fashion section was divided between long descriptions of what was new in Paris at a particular moment and

162  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t short captions which went into detail about the names, materials and colours of the clothes illustrated by the engravings. The early years of the nineteenth century saw the birth of the Moskovskii merkurii (Moscow Mercury, 1803), Zhurnal dlia milykh (Journal for Loved Ones, 1804), Aglaia (1808–12), Damskii zhurnal (Ladies’ Journal, 1806, 1823–33; hereafter DZh in references) and Kabinet Aspazii (Aspasia’s Closet, 1815).8 The first of these was founded by Petr Makarov, the next three by Petr Shalikov and Mikhail Makarov, and the last by a group of young poets. We are dealing, then, with supporters of Karamzin who launched reviews aimed at women with the intention of inducing them to read in Russian. To offer accounts of Parisian fashions in their reviews – just like offering love stories there, or romances to be sung – was a sure means of enticing women from the Russian aristocracy and making them become loyal readers of their publications.9 It is worth pausing briefly on the approach of the founders of these journals for women in order to place it in its historical context. It was Karamzin himself who, in his famous article ‘Why is there so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’ (‘Otchego v Rossii malo avtorskikh talantov?’) (1802), wrote that ‘society women do not have the patience to listen to or read Russian literature, because they find that people with taste do not speak like that’.10 Thus for Karamzin women of good society are the arbiters of language – an idea which plainly brings to mind the practices of the French salons hosted by women from the seventeenth century. Consequently, any aspiring Russian author, if he wanted to make progress in his art, would have to listen to the conversations going on around him, to perfect his knowledge of the language. And here a new problem arises: in our best houses people speak French! We should have only to listen to our sweet ladies in order to embellish a novel or comedy with gentle and felicitous expressions, but they enchant us with phrases that are not Russian. (Karamzin 1802a) We should hasten to add that this ‘language of women’ was nowhere to be found, as Jean Breuillard pointed out so felicitously (Breuillard 2002: 76): it did not correspond to any observable linguistic reality but was above all a convenient fiction for Karamzin, a master-device in his theoretical and rhetorical system. If Karamzin’s main aim was reform of the Russian language, it was also important to him, and to his disciples, to be seen to be trying to make femmes savantes out of Russian women – if we may go beyond Molière and use the term in a positive sense.

t h e f r e nc h la n gu ag e o f f a s h i o n   163 Let us return to our survey of Russian fashion journals. We should set a place apart in it for the Nouvelle bibliothèque des Dames (New Library for Ladies) launched in 1815 by Alexandre Pluchart, a ‘Russian printer’11 born in Valenciennes. Pluchart established himself in St Petersburg in the early nineteenth century, having first directed the Senate printing works there, before opening his own French and Russian printing establishment opposite the Admiralty. Pluchart’s review took up texts published in various French journals of the time and also engravings drawn from the Journal des Dames et des Modes.12 Although the dreadful Napoleonic episode was over by 1815, it might have remained fresh in people’s minds, so the launch, in that year, of a journal written in French from the first line to the last spoke volumes about the status the French language still had on the banks of the Neva. If previous journals had a limited circulation, the same could not be said of the Moskovskii telegraf (Moscow Telegraph; hereafter MT in references) founded by Nikolai Polevoi in 1825. In his first issue, Polevoi deplored the poor state of the female press: ‘I confess’, he wrote, that ‘I have been ashamed to read journals, especially those aimed at women’ (MT 1825, 1, no. 1, p. 8). Moskovskii telegraf was a success both in terms of quantity (the journal soon had more than a thousand readers) and quality (Pushkin described it, when it first came out, as the best journal of its time (Pushkin 1989: letter 165)). Fashion featured in it in supplements in Russian. Occasionally these supplements included items on ‘German Fashion’ or ‘News of English Fashion’. Much more frequently, though, they were devoted to ‘Parisian Fashions’, and it was only these supplements, moreover, that had both a title and a text in the language of the country in question, namely French, followed by a translation of them into Russian. The 1830s saw the appearance of a number of new publications aimed at women and dealing with fashion. Galateia (Galatea, 1829–30 and 1839–40) continued in the same vein as previous journals. Girlianda (The Garland, 1831–2) was the first attempt of Mikhail Bestuzhev-Riumin as an editor in the domain of the women’s press (Ruane 2009: 89–90). Molva (The Rumour, 1831–6) was a supplement of Moskovskii teleskop (The Moscow Telescope) and targeted middle-class women. Vaza (The Vase, 1831(?)–84) inaugurated a new era in the Russian fashion press: founded by a woman, Elizaveta Safonova, it was aimed at dressmakers and milliners – as well as at women from the petty nobility and the middle class who liked to embroider – and it offered them patterns for clothes and embroidery patterns (Lisovskii 1915: 77). The section devoted to what was new was subdivided into ‘Parisian Fashions’ and ‘Petersburg Fashion’. The presence of a column on Russian fashion, which had been

164  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t absent from the journals of the early part of the century, reflected the large circulation of Vaza in small towns where people wanted to keep abreast of the latest fashions in the Russian capital. What, though, was the place of French in these Russian fashion journals?

FRENC H IN R U SSIAN FAS H ION JO U RNALS French words printed in Latin letters can be found in all the Russian fashion journals. However, the amount of French varies very much from one journal to another, ranging from whole pages in Moskovskii telegraf and Galateia to just a few words in Damskii zhurnal, Molva and Vaza. In the first sort of case, the Russian reader had before her a French text taken from a French journal and flanked by a Russian translation of it. If she was sufficiently competent in French she would not look at the Russian version. If, on the other hand, she did not have much knowledge of French then she would be able to make use of the Russian translation, while at the same time having a sense of taking part in the life of Parisian society. In the second sort of case, the reader was faced with a Russian text sprinkled with words in French. As a rule, the French word in the Russian text would appear in one of three different forms: in brackets after the Russian term that translated it; in its French form with no translation; or in transliteration in Cyrillic. I shall give some examples of the different ways in which French could be rendered in Russian text. In each instance, I shall place the original French text in brackets after the Russian passage. My set of examples will begin with words expressing colours, an important semantic category in the fashion language of this period.13 Construction of a calque Наряд щеголя, запросто, составляет: редингот, из беловатого сукна, с перламутровыми пуговицами, или из двойного мериноса, цвета темнозеленаго или головы негра [. . .] (MT 1826, 10, no. 15, p. 54) (Le costume d’un merveilleux en négligé consiste en une redingote de drap blanchâtre avec boutons en nacre, ou de mérinos double, gros vert ou tête de nègre [. . .])14 Faced with a colour unknown in Russian, the translator has calqued the French expression, but this calque was short-lived.

t h e f r e nc h la n gu ag e o f f a s h i o n   165 Keeping the French word Для креповых платьев теперь изобрели бахрому из перьев, прелестную: мы приметили таковую из белых перьев, с оконечностями цвета vapeur, нашитую сверх рубца, креповoго платья того же цвета, это произвело совершенно новое, приятное впечатление. (Galateia 1829: 9, no. 45, p. 325; vapeur in italics in French original) ([. . .] sur des robes de crêpe, des franges en plumes [. . .] en plumes blanches, ayant les bouts couleur vapeur qui, placées au-dessus de l’ourlet d’une robe en crêpe vapeur, étaient d’un effet extrêmement nouveau.)15 The translator has not dared to translate the French word with its Russian equivalent – perhaps for fear of coming too close to hinting at the bathhouse – and has contented himself with using the French word as it stands, highlighting it with italics (rendered by bold in my quotation above). Change of meaning Для города делают бархатные – капоты иногда зеленые, а по большой части пунцовoго цвету (DZh 1806)16 (Pour la ville, on fait faire des capotes en velours, quelquefois vert, mais plus communément amaranthe) (Journal des Dames et des Modes 1806: no. 21, p. 167)17 Here the translator has not introduced a Gallicism or kept the French word but has changed the shade of red. We might note that transliteration of the word amaranthe would again be found in Russian fashion reviews some twenty years later and, above all, that the Russian word chosen by our translator, namely пунцовый, attested in dictionaries from 1724, is also a Gallicism, though an older one that had already been assimilated. (Indeed it had been assimilated to such an extent that the Dictionary of the Russian Academy (Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi 1789–94) does not even indicate the French origin of the word!) The word is in fact derived from ponceau, which is attested from the sixteenth century and means ‘poppy’ (Fuchs 1546: 178). Transliteration Из модных цветов самый новейший называется: тукановый, так названный по имени тукана, Бразильской птицы, у которой шея оранжевого оттенка. (MT 1829: 30, no. 22, pp. 282–3) (De toutes les couleurs à la mode la plus nouvelle se nomme toucan, à cause de la nuance orangée de la gorge de toucan, oiseau de Brésil.)18

166  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t As with numerous other colours or shades of them, French has devised the adjective toucan from a substantive whose referent has a characteristic colour and Russian has proceeded in the same way. In the long term, тукановый has not lasted, the exotic bird having been unable to acclimatise in the severe Russian conditions. Mistakes носят казимировые жилеты, белого или верблюжьего цвета (MT 1827: 18, no. 23, p. 152) (On met dessous un gilet de casimir blanc ou chamois)19 Here the translator in Moskovskii telegraf has mixed up the chamois with the camel (Fr. chameau)! This mistake had not been made, incidentally, by Damskii zhurnal some years earlier: on that occasion, Shalikov’s journal explained to its readers that the chamois was a ‘wild goat’ and transliterated the French term a few lines further on in order to be able to express this new shade of colour that was in vogue. Alongside problems related to the particular nature of colours, we should note that certain abstract French words could also cause problems. It was this absence of fine abstract or moral shades of meaning in the Russian language that Viazemskii regretted in an article of 1827 (Viazemskii 1878–96: vol. 1, p. 270). Thus in the passage щеголихи носят платье кисейное с цветными клетками по голубой земле (elegant women wear a muslin checked dress with colours on a light blue background), it is the concrete word ‘ground’ (земля) that renders the abstract French word fond (DZh 1823: 4, no. 19, p. 38). In fact, the dictionary of 1786 was not yet aware of the word фон (Polnyi frantsuzskoi i rossiiskoi leksikon 1786). The word is found from 1829 in Galateia: на ярком фоне (on a bright background) (Galateia 1829: 8, no. 37, p. 46), while the Latin form appears again in 1831 in Girlianda: о маленьких чепчиках, fond которых цвета лимонного (little bonnets with lemon lining) (Girlianda 1831: 2, nos 24–5, p. 190). Fashion techniques also brought their share of headaches for translators. Thus the biais of the expression coupe en biais (bias cut) would first be either kept as it was or translated by words derived from the etymon кос, such as вкось (slantwise) and косяк (slant) (MT 1823: 16, no. 14, p. 59), before it appeared in the transliterated form биэ,20 which would yield the modern substantive бейка, attested in 1957 (BAS 2004–) but already present in 1867 in Modnyi magazin (The Fashion Shop). If it was not always easy for the translator to convey all the nuances of Parisian fashion in Russian, it was sometimes hardly any easier for the reader to understand precisely what was meant by such and such a

t h e f r e nc h la n gu ag e o f f a s h i o n   167 French word that she did not know. Fortunately for the reader, though, there were pictures.

FAS HION IN PICT U RES Nowadays, as in earlier times, the pictures that fashion journals offer their readers are one of their surest attractions. The drawings of a piece of clothing that are presented in fashion images, of course, are only a distant evocation of real clothing. If the image-clothing does not actually match the written clothing described in the text of the journal in question,21 nevertheless it does not altogether differ from it, so that the combination of the two sorts of information, visual and verbal, enables the reader the better to imagine the real clothing that was worn in Paris. From an artistic point of view, the pictures of fashion in nineteenth-century Russian journals are copied from French images by Russian engravers who added to them a text in Russian and sometimes put their signature on them. Among these Russian artists, we frequently come across a certain Afanas’ev, who worked for Galateia, Molva and Moskovskii telegraf.22 Returning to our linguistic considerations, let us examine an engraving taken from Damskii zhurnal which is presented in Figure 9.1, and the descriptions of the two outfits pictured there (DZh 1825: no. 16). Шляпка из соломы сарачинского пшена (paille de riz), с колосьями и лентами. Косынка тюллевая с бантами (ruches), приколотая сзади углом к поясу. Блуз en écorse [sic], выложенный сгибами (de plis).23 Шляпа с низкою тульею и узкими полями. Повязка косынки Англинская. Жилет из пике. Фрак зелено-миртовый. Панталоны en satin de fil.24

The description of the female outfit may have been problematic for a Russian lady. At any rate, the editor was evidently puzzled by the term écorse, for he inserted the following note: ‘Surely not made of bark? At any rate, we do not know of this material.’ In fact, we are dealing here with a generic term applied to fabrics made with ligneous fibres (Hardouin-Fugier et al. 1994: 179). If the engraving is of no help in this instance, the same cannot be said of ruches or plis when readers did not know these words. As for the paille de riz, the translation сарачинского пшена was incorrect, since the costly paille de riz was made near Modena with plaited threads of white wood, willow or poplar (Dictionnaire du

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Figure 9.1  Engraving of woman’s and man’s outfits from Damskii zhurnal (1825) Photograph: author’s original

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Figure 9.2  Engraving of women’s outfits from Moskovskii telegraf (1831) Photograph: author’s original

170  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t commerce et des marchandises 1841: vol. 1, p. 531). The man’s outfit, which was plainer, posed fewer problems: the satin de fil is the only French from the original that has been retained, along with a large number of transliterated terms. We might note, lastly, that the insistence on the fact that the neckerchief should be tied à l’anglaise was indicative of the galloping Anglomania that was current in Paris at that time. In certain cases, the image is the only thing that enables the reader to understand what the text is about. Thus the engraving from Moskovskii telegraf in Figure 9.2, for example, mentions цапли (herons) and платье, вышитое фасонами (dress embroidered with façons) (MT 1831: no. 2).25 The word héron denoted a tuft of heron plumes26 and façons was used in the sense of ‘diverse features or enrichments that are given to a piece of work’ (Furetière 1690) – a meaning of façon/фасон that has now disappeared from both French and Russian. Sometimes the translator might replace a term that his readers did not know, or did not know very well, with a better-known one. Thus in an engraving from Galateia (1829: 6, no. 35), the robe de foulard pictured in Figure 9.3 has become Платье из Индейской тафты (a dress of Indian taffeta). This is probably because foulard was a light fabric that brought to mind headscarves imported from the Indies (Hardouin-Fugier 1994: 197), while тафта was a material that was well known in Russia. As Figure 9.4 shows (MT 1829: 30, no. 21), coiffure governed toilet, and ornamention on dress followed it. This becomes clear from the text that accompanies this engraving: под стать головной уборке (what goes with coiffure). Figure 9.5 (Galateia 1829: 26, no. 24), finally, shows us that the Russian language of costume, of course, had already imported a number of terms from other foreign languages. Thus, the peignoir de mousseline brodée (embroidered muslin dressing-gown) depicted there is translated as Кисейный вышитый пудермантель: mousseline has become киссея (borrowed from Turkish käsi) and peignoir has become пудермантель, a transliteration of a German word made up from two French words. In the long run, mousseline and peignoir ended up being transliterated and re-entering Russian. For its part, пудермантель (albeit in the more Russified form пудреник (Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi 1789–94: 1174)27) was no longer used by 1900. I shall bring my examination of the French language of fashion in early nineteenth-century Russia to a close with reference to an episode that was comical, but telling. It concerned the poor transliteration of a word from the French language of fashion and the unfortunate consequences that ensued.

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Figure 9.3  Engraving of woman’s outfit from Galateia (1829) Photograph: author’s original

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Figure 9.4  Engraving of coiffure and outfits from Moskovskii telegraf (1829) Photograph: author’s original

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Figure 9.5  Engraving of woman’s outfit from Galateia (1829) Photograph: author’s original

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‘ G RIP U S ’ E ! G RIP U S ’ E ! ’ In 1827, in an open letter to his readers, the editor of Moskovskii telegraf, Nikolai Polevoi, took stock of what could be called the ‘Gripus’e Affair’. Two years previously (MT 1825: 4, no. 14, p. 309), Moskovskii telegraf had reprinted in translation an article from the Journal des Dames et des Modes in which des robes de mousseline, de jaconnat, de batiste bleue, rose et gris-poussière had been mentioned (Journal des Dames et des Modes: 15 July 1825, p. 312).28 In the article in Moskovskii telegraf the dresses had come to be of ‘light blue, pink and gripus’e colour’. Now, the transliteration of gris-poussière as грипусье is faulty, as it takes no account of the final syllable. One could even argue that the author, instead of transliterating, should have created a calque пыльно-серый, as in the case of tête de nègre that was mentioned above. The mistake did the rounds of rival journals, provoking sarcastic remarks and jubilation everywhere, so much so that ‘Gripus’e’ became a defamatory surname for Polevoi himself and Грипусье! Грипусье! a rallying cry for his adversaries. It should be said that many people could not forgive Polevoi for his negative judgements about the Russian press and scoffed at his common social origin and his vodka factory. One after another, all the journals made fun of the poor knowledge of French that the editor of Moskovskii telegraf had displayed, until the unfortunate Gripus’e – ‘following the laws of gravity’, Polevoi wrote – ended his career at Shalikov’s Damskii zhurnal. Beyond the professional jealousies that this affair revealed, which all in all were trite, the misadventures of this uncertain shade of grey in the world of Russian publishing enable us to gain a better idea of the status that French still had: it enjoyed such prestige that it was unacceptable for an editor not to have a command of that language. It is not without relevance for our subject that gris-poussière was one of those shades of colour which the French fashion of that time, or to be more exact its language, had a genius for inventing. The Parisian beau monde was mad about such neologisms, which lived only for a few seasons but had an immense power of evocation. The improbable gris-poussière was perceived by contemporaries both as a word of fashion and a word that was in fashion. As such, it had to be known and spelt correctly – which the unfortunate Polevoi had not been able to do. * * * In early nineteenth-century Russia, Western fashion in general and French fashion in particular enjoyed unprecedented prestige: it dominated court life and governed the appearance of an elite which entirely directed its gaze towards Western Europe, one of whose languages,

t h e f r e nc h la n gu ag e o f f a s h i o n   175 e­ specially French, it often spoke. Confident of its power of seduction, French fashion even infiltrated the linguistic debates of that time, becoming for some the model to follow and for others the counter-model to avoid. As is right and proper, the language of this fashion, the language that enabled one to name such and such an item of clothing, material, colour or cut, was pre-eminently – almost by definition – French. However, it was at this time that the use of French in good society in Russia began to ebb. Fashion journals printed in Russia witnessed this gradual but undeniable change of tide as well: between the third decade of the nineteenth century and the middle of it, the place of French in the fashion press was no longer the same, and the female readers of Galateia and Moskovskii telegraf who were comfortable in French were succeeded by those of Vaza, who did not have a command of that language. All the same, French words continued to be available (although there were fewer and fewer of them), not only to express both abstract and concrete notions in a technical vocabulary but also to provide tokens of authenticity and lend distinction to any attempt to import Parisian fashion. Perhaps the most important point, though, lies elsewhere, in those cohorts of French words which were being transliterated and which percolated little by little into Russian (mousseline, peignoir, batiste, fond and so forth). These invisible armies, a veritable fifth column of Parisian falbalas et fanfreluches (frills and trimmings), would succeed where Napoleon’s troops had woefully failed: they conquered the immense Russian Empire.

NOTES   1. On the debate between Karamzin and Shishkov and their respective supporters, see also Chapter 6, by Gesine Argent, in this volume.   2. For Vestnik Evropy and other Russian periodicals, see Svodnyi katalog serial’nykh izdanii (1997–).   3. ‘Zephyr’ means here some garment of light material.   4. A sarafan is a traditional Russian pinafore worn by peasant women and girls.   5. ‘Karamzin, Russia’s Titus Livy, / You groaned like Shalikov, / You swaggered around like a French clown. . . / Ah! Who has not been young?’   6. ‘We have many tailors in our capital, / They all follow the same fashion: / They all seem to sew with a similar needle / But if you look more closely you’ll see / That each makes clothes to his own cut. We [writers] are all like tailors: / Each one has his own cut.’   7. On Novikov’s pioneering enterprises in the field of womens’ journals, see Pirozhkova (1994). On the first magazine on Russian fashion, see Baudin (2002). For an example of a journal of that time that addresses the subject of historical or exotic costume, see Zhabreva (2007: 45–51).

176  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t   8. We should also mention, for the sake of completeness, the Modnyi vestnik launched by P. Zubov in 1816.   9. For an analysis of the content of these women’s journals, as well as their unrecognised aesthetic value, see Hammarberg (2001). 10. Vinogradov (1935: 216) was one of the first to discuss this feminisation of the Russian language. 11. This is the title of an excellent work dedicated to Pluchart that was printed in Valenciennes shortly after his death in 1827 (Archives historiques et littéraires 1837: 186–7). 12. Pluchart’s review was not plagiarised from de la Mésangère’s journal, unlike the Journal des Dames et des Modes set up in Frankfurt by Jean-Baptiste-François Lemaire, which was a pure counterfeit of its Parisian publication of the same name (Kleinert 2001: 43). 13. See, for example, the 300 or so colour terms collected by the young Algirdas Julien Greimas in his admirable lexicographic study (Greimas 2000: 142). 14. ‘The casual dress of a dandy consists of a frock-coat of whitish cloth with mother-ofpearl buttons, or of double merino wool, dark green or the colour of a negro’s head [. . .]’ 15. ‘[. . .] on crêpe dresses, fringes made out of feathers [. . .] in steam-coloured white feathers, which, if placed above the hem of a dress of steam-coloured crêpe, produced an extremely novel effect.’ 16. From the reprint of 1906, ed. V. I. Pokrovskii, Moscow: Izdanie Imperatorskogo obshchestva istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete, p. 19. 17. ‘For the city people have velvet bonnets made, sometimes green but more commonly of amaranth colour.’ 18. ‘Of all the colours that are in fashion the latest is called toucan, because of the orange shade of the throat of the toucan, a bird from Brazil.’ 19. ‘Underneath they wear a waistcoat made of white or chamois cashmere.’ 20. The word was still very much alive in the second half of the nineteenth century: see the examples of bie in Epishkin (2010). 21. I have taken the three categories of clothing (image-clothing, written clothing and real clothing) from Roland Barthes (1967: 16–19). 22. His forename was probably Afanasii. On this artist, see Rovinskii (1895: 38–46). 23. ‘A straw hat made of buckwheat straw (rice straw), with ears of corn and ribbons. Piece of tulle cut on the bias with bows (ruches), the end of which has been pinned to the belt at the back. Pleated blouse en écorce.’ 24. ‘Hat with a low crown and narrow brim. Neckerchief tied in the English manner. Piqué waistcoat. Myrtle-green morning-coat. Trousers in satin thread.’ 25. The words Novyi Zhivopisets that one can read on this engraving are the name of the supplement that was appended to Moskovskii telegraf from 1827 on. 26. The Russian Empress Mar’ia Fedorovna, the wife of Alexander III, had in her wardrobe a lilac tulle hat decorated with an héron of this sort. This object, which belongs to the Hermitage Collections (inventory no. Inv. ERT-11509), was displayed at the exhibition Pri dvore rossiiskikh imperatorov. Kostium XVIII–nachala XX veka v sobranii Ermitazha which was open in St Petersburg from 17 May to 21 September 2014. 27. See the entry pudromant in Kirsanova (1995). 28. ‘dresses made of blue, pink and dust-grey muslin, jackonet, cambric’.

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REFERENCES Archives historiques et littéraires du Nord de la France et du Midi de la Belgique (1837), Valenciennes: Bureau des Archives du Nord, vol. 1. Barthes, R. (1967), Système de la Mode, Paris: Seuil. BAS [Bol’shoi academicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka] (2004–), Moscow and St Petersburg: Nauka. Baudin, R. (2002), ‘Mode et modernité en Russie au XVIIIe siècle: le “Magasin des modes nouvelles”, premier journal russe consacré à la mode’, Modernités russes, 4: 57–68. Breuillard, J. (2002), ‘La “langue des femmes” dans la littérature russe (fin du XVIIe siècle et début du XIXe)’, Modernités russes, 4: 69–80. Dictionnaire du commerce et des marchandises (1841), Paris: Guillaumin. Epishkin, N. I. (2010), Istoricheskii slovar’ gallitsizmov, Moscow: Slovarnoe izdatel’stvo ETS. Fuchs, L. (1546), De historia stirpium commentarii, Paris: Roigny. Furetière, A. (1690), Dictionnaire universel, The Hague: Leers. Grechanaia, E. P. (2010), Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski: Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke (XVIII–pervaia polovina XIX veka), Moscow: IMLI RAN. Greimas, A. J. (2000), La mode en 1830, Paris: Seuil. Hammarberg, G. (2001), ‘Reading à la mode: the first Russian women’s journals’, in J. Klein, S. Dixon and M. Fraanje (eds), Reflections on Russia in the Eighteenth Century, Cologne: Böhlau, pp. 218–32. Hardouin-Fugier, E. et al. (1994), Les Etoffes. Dictionnaire historique, Paris: Les éditions de l’amateur. Karamzin, N. M. (1802a), ‘Otchego v Rossii malo avtorskikh talantov?’, Vestnik Evropy, no. 14, 33–41. Karamzin, N. M. (1802b), ‘Strannost’’, Vestnik Evropy, 1: 2, 52–7. Kirsanova, R. A. (1995), Kostium v russkoi khudozhestvennoi kul’ture v 18–pervoi polovine XX vv., Moscow: Bol’shaia rossiiskaia ėntsiklopediia. Kirsanova, R. A. (1997), ‘Ofrantsuzhennyi sarafan’, Rodina, 7: 33–7. Kleinert, A. (2001), Le ‘Journal des Dames et des Modes’ ou la conquête de l’Europe féminine, Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke. Lemontey, P.-E. (1801), Raison, Folie, chacun son mot; petit cours de morale mis à la portée des vieux enfans, Paris: Deterville. Lisovskii, N. M. (1915), Bibliografiia russkoi periodicheskoi pechati, Petrograd: Literaturnoe obozrenie. Lotman, Iu. M. (1997), Sotvorenie Karamzina, St Petersburg: Iskusstvo. Lotman, Iu. M. and B. A. Uspenskii (1996), ‘Spory o iazyke kak fakt russkoi kul’tury’, in B. A. Uspenskii, Izbrannye trudy, Moscow: Shkola ‘Iazyki russkoi kul’tury’, vol. 2, pp. 411–572. Mulatov V. (1802), ‘O legkoi odezhde molodykh krasavits deviatogo na desiat’ veka’, Vestnik Evropy, 2: 7, 250–6. Pirozhkova, T. F. (1994), ‘Zhurnal dlia “prekrasnogo pola”’, Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, 10: 6, 26–36. Polnyi frantsuzskoi i rossiiskoi leksikon (1786), St Petersburg: Imperatorskaia tipografiia. Proskurin, O. A. (1999), ‘Prilozheniia “Chto skryvalos’ pod pantalonami”’, in Poėziia Pushkina ili Podvizhnyi palimpsest, Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, pp. 301–47.

178  ol g a v as s ilie v a- c o do g ne t Proskurin, O. A. (2000), ‘U istokov mifa o “novom sloge”’, in Literaturnye skandaly pushkinskoi ėpokhi, Moscow: OGI, pp. 19–46. Pushkin, A. S. (1989), Pis’ma, ed. B. A. Modzalevskii, Moscow: Kniga, vol. 1 (1815–25). Roche, D. (1989), La culture des apparences. Une histoire du vêtement (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle), Paris: Fayard. Rovinskii, D. A. (1895), Podrobnyi slovar’ russkikh graverov XVI–XIX vv., St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 1. Ruane, C. (2009), The Empire’s New Clothes, New Haven: Yale University Press. Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi (1789–94), St Petersburg: pri Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk. Svodnyi katalog serial’nykh izdanii [1801–25] (1997–), St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Rossiiskoi natsional’noi biblioteki. Tereshchuk, A. V. (2011), Pavel I. Zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, St Petersburg: Vita Nova. Viazemskii, P. A. (1878–96), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 12 vols, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Stasiulevicha, vol. 1, pp. 270–81. Viazemskii, P. A. (1982), Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, vol. 1, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura. Vinogradov, V. V. (1935), Iazyk Pushkina, Moscow and Leningrad: Academiia. Zhabreva, A. E. (2007), ‘Kostium i moda na stranitsakh zhurnala “Lekarstvo ot skuki i zabot”’, 10 konferentsiia Moda i dizain ‘Istoricheskii opyt-novye tekhnologii’, St Petersburg: SPbGUTD/REM, pp. 45–51. Zhivov, V. M. (1996), Iazyk i kul’tura v Rossii XVIII veka, Moscow: Shkola ‘Iazyki russkoi kul’tury’.

c h apter 10

Oтечество, отчизна, родина: Russian ‘Translations’ of Patrie in the Napoleonic Period Sara Dickinson

E

lite Russian culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries exhibited a curious mixture of dependence on French idiom and linguistic patriotism. Even patriotic rhetoric itself was heavily shaped by French usage and contexts, and no less so towards the end of the century as the struggle for linguistic independence grew more acute under pressure from Napoleon. Alexander Herzen,1 writing roughly fifty years after the Napoleonic Wars, described these as a cultural turning point that had ‘intensely developed a sentiment of national consciousness and love for the родина [любовь к родине]’ (Gertsen [1861] 1956: 136). Prior to that time, in his view, the Russian elite had remained so bound to the French language for the conceptualisation of its own national identity and native land that it had relied on French even in moments of impassioned patriotism: In order to love Russian history, the [pre-Napoleonic era] patriots transposed it onto European mores, generally translating RomanoGreek patriotism from French into Russian without going further than the verse Pour un cœur bien né, que la patrie est chère! (Gertsen [1861] 1956: 136)2 An illustration of such indebtedness to French thought and language may be seen in the letters that the statesman Mikhail Shcherbatov wrote to his son in 1775. Admonishing the boy on the importance of applying himself with diligence to his studies, Shcherbatov broke with his customary practice of corresponding in Russian to lecture young Dmitrii in French, a linguistic shift that he evidently felt necessary in order to fully explain various ideas derived from the French Enlightenment; primary among these was amour de la patrie, a synonym for ‘patriotism’, which

180  sara dic k ins o n Shcherbatov regarded as the supreme virtue (Offord and Rjéoutski 2013a; Shcherbatov [1775] 2013).3 Herzen correctly underlines the importance of classical and French examples for eighteenth-century Russian patriotism. In addition to being highly regarded in Russian political thought, such patriotism was considered an important virtue for the cultivated upper classes and was often based on educational curricula that followed French models together with French versions of classical texts and paradigms. In both Russia and France, patriotic discourse was also affected by Sentimentalist and preRomantic cultural currents, the rise of sensibility encouraging patriotism and the term patrie itself, ‘a fashionable, useful, and emotive concept’ (Campbell 2007: 12). Herzen unfairly suggests that late eighteenth-century Russians were unable or unwilling to translate patrie into Russian, however. In Catherine’s era, the term отечество was a widely used Russian-language synonym and Shcherbatov’s amour de la patrie was easily translated by many of his contemporaries as любовь к отечествy. Towards the end of the century, the selection of an appropriate lexeme for the Russian native land grew more complex: if отечество dominated in official and bureaucratic discourse, it was flanked in literary texts by отчизна and родина,4 terms used with increasing emotional and rhetorical effect in the Napoleonic period. Evidence of a definite linguistic shift may be seen in the fact that by the mid-nineteenth century, Herzen himself rendered his own deep feeling for the patrie as любовь к родине. This chapter explores how literary texts from the Napoleonic era ‘translated’ the concept of French patrie into Russian. Oтечество, отчизна and родина gave slightly different nuances to Russian formulations of relationships to home and their connotations developed against the backdrop of writers’ linguistic and cultural ties with France. As the texts of Aleksandr Radishchev, Nikolai Karamzin, Vasilii Zhukovskii and Fedor Glinka demonstrate, the selection of an effective equivalent for patrie was not a purely ‘Russian’ problem, but involved slippage and ambiguity relating to the term patrie and its changing sociolinguistic connotations in French cultural discourse. In France as in Russia, elite terms for the homeland were closely tied to the nobility’s preoccupations with its social position and changing role vis-à-vis the peasantry, and отечество, отчизна and родина acquired new significance in Russia hand-in-hand with semantic change in the term patrie. In Russian texts, the equivalence of patrie with отечество is first asserted and then probed, as these writers muse on their public relationship to the state and on their personal relationship to the specific rural territories within it.

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IN RU SSIA , PATRIE IN FRANCE

For most of the eighteenth century, отечество served as the Russian language’s unproblematic alternative to patrie. Indeed, the two terms could be used in parallel by bilingual members of the Russian elite, the choice between them based simply on the language being used at a given moment. A high-sounding Latinate calque similarly derived from the root for father, отечество had reigned virtually unchallenged in civic discourse since 1721, when Peter I had translated the Roman imperial title pater patriae (father of the fatherland) into отец отечества and assumed this as his own official title. Peter thus set the tone for the subsequent ‘ninety-odd years extending [. . .] to the 1812 Fatherland (or Patriotic) War’, an era that ‘could well be termed “the Fatherland century” in Russia’, while in the educated discourse of this same period, the term родина was ‘conspicuous by its absence’ (Stockdale 2010: 26). A preference for отечество over both родина and отчизна is corroborated by literary texts: отечество occurs 180 times in the Collected Works of Denis Fonvizin,5 for example, while родина appears only three times and отчизна not at all.6 The emergence and spread of the term отечество during Catherine’s era was closely related to the rhetorical needs of the state. As Ingrid Schierle has observed, ‘Wars, imperial expansion, and the creation of estates demanded a greater commitment to the common good and a redefined relationship between the individual and the community’, resulting in the ‘creation of a patriotic emotional culture’ that was shaped and encouraged by ‘the invocation of love of the fatherland’ (Schierle 2009: 66–7). The term отечество thus took on an ‘increased emotional burden’ and was particularly emphasised when the state was under threat or in danger (Schierle 2012: 208, 223) or in the event of abrupt shifts between rulers, those ‘violent changes of power’ that, Schierle reminds us, were a frequent occurrence in the eighteenth or ‘century of palace revolutions’ (2009: 71; 2012: 224). Отечество also served to forge rhetorical emotional links between the autocracy on one hand and the institutions of family and Church on the other, thus construing the state in the light of affective bonds, paternal authority and ‘a new sense of community, which was no longer exclusively built on religious values’ (Schierle 2009: 68). In France as well, the term patrie belonged to an emotionally charged linguistic sphere and was deliberately ‘promoted’ for political motives. Like Roman patria, patrie had once referred to the local site of one’s upbringing or father’s home, but by the mid-eighteenth century that more spatially restricted meaning had largely been replaced by the use of patrie to designate the state itself. Extended in part to serve as the

182  sara dic k ins o n overarching raison d’être of the French army, the cause for which it was to fight, patrie became a rallying cry for multiple generations of French patriots, supplanting the French king in political rhetoric well before 1789 (Campbell 2007: 10–15); patrie’s rhetorical force remained strong through the Revolution, the First Republic and the Napoleonic Empire (Hughes 2012: 59, 66) – despite sociological changes in the constitution of the ‘patriot’. The allegiance of elite officers had been the primary concern of political strategists during the ancien régime, but after 1789, when the King’s person was replaced by ‘the French’ or ‘the French nation’, those at the helm of the state and army made concerted efforts to extend the concept of amour de la patrie to the lower ranks, the soldiers’ loyalty to ‘the whole’ being a strategic and political necessity (Hughes 2012: 59). As a result, the patriot of 1815 was just as easily a member of the elite as a paysan, or peasant. At the same time, this geographically expanded patrie could also have different and even contrasting meanings. When used by Voltaire, for example, it bespoke an ideal land ‘where one is well’ since the subject of ‘a good king’ (Suratteau 1983: 366, 367) – and thus an imagined polity whose qualities were not necessarily identical to those of the actual French regime. Indeed, love for the patrie was not only theoretically distinct, but also even possibly opposed to sentiments of allegiance to a sovereign. This semantic rift was felt in Russia as well, where a potentially seditious element in the word patrie was perceived even prior to the French Revolution. When Diderot had argued in his Encyclopédie (vol. 12, 1765), for example, that patrie and amour de la patrie were republican in nature, the entry for patrie was simply omitted from Russian translations (Schierle 2007: 285). The concept of patrie continued to raise autocratic hackles during the post-revolutionary era of reaction that was the reign of Tsar Paul; he outlawed the corresponding lexeme отечество as too incendiary, substituting it with государство, or state, a ‘more neutral term’ (Schierle 2007: 284), certainly, but also one that etymologically recalls the presence of the государь, or sovereign, at the state’s core. Another variety of patrie, that intended by Rousseau in his use of the word, promulgated not politics and reason as the means for bettering government, but the ‘cultivation’ of a deep emotive connection to the region of one’s birth (le pays natal); the quality of a given state could be judged by the extent to which a sense of personal and local connection to the patrie flourished among its residents (Suratteau 1983: 368–9). This more sentimentally construed patrie could also be rendered in Russian as отечество, as made evident in an essay written by Karamzin on любовь к отечеству when the term re-emerged after the death of Paul. That said, the influence of Rousseau’s model on Karamzin may also be

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seen in the latter’s use of the term отчизна and reliance on the concept of родина in order to fully describe the notion of patriotic allegiance. Before examining Karamzin in detail though, let us briefly consider how отечество, отчизна and родина, the Russian alternatives to patrie, were understood on the eve of the Napoleonic conflict. ОТЕЧЕСТВО , ОТЧИЗНА

NAPOLEON

AND

РОДИНА

B EFORE

Like Fonvizin, Karamzin generally preferred the term отечество to either отчизна or родина: отечество and its derivatives appear in his Letters of a Russian Traveller (Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika (1791–1801) eighty times, отчизна four and родина only three. Well known in cultural history for successfully infusing the Russian literary language with translations and calques from French, Karamzin considered отечество the functional equivalent to patrie, as is obvious from a 1797 article that he wrote to publicise his Letters in which the traveller’s glad cry at returning to his native land – rendered in the original as Берег! отечество! благословляю вас! ([1791–1801] 1984: 388)7 – is cast in French as Terre, terre! je te salue, ô ma patrie! (p. 462). Отчизна for Karamzin signified a historically distant or figurative and metaphorical ‘homeland’: he uses it in his Letters to mean the afterlife; the home town of Pontius Pilate; the ‘native land of the arts’, presumably Italy; and the yearning for home experienced by the eleventh-century Princess Anna who was sent from Kiev to marry Henry I of France (pp. 168, 211, 281, 300). In Radishchev’s Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow (Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu, 1790), we find an indication that отчизна was not only a high-style synonym for отечество, but could also be used for the description of elite ties to rural areas, a concept tinged with the awareness of property ownership and patrimonial lands. Commenting on an incompetent civil servant who retires to the rural region of his childhood, Radishchev notes that: An exceptional attachment to one’s own отчизна frequently has its origins in vanity. A man of low station attaining prestige, or a poor man acquiring wealth, shakes off all his timid bashfulness, that last and weakest root of virtue, and prefers the place of his birth [своего рождения] for the display of his pomp and pride. ([1790] 1938: 271) Like many of his French contemporaries, Radishchev perceived a conflict between an elevated attachment to the state and an unsavoury

184  sara dic k ins o n attachment to the local. In his view, more patriotically minded noblemen, charged with upholding the honour of the state as their own, would do better to shy away from an explicit bond with their own rural properties. Loyalty to отечество, in other words, contrasted with allegiance to отчизна, which was not considered a virtue. Patriots should combine ‘moral nobility’ with their social rank and act on a sense of duty that would urge them out of the provinces and towards public life and civil service. The emotional pull of the family home, a particular attraction for the less enlightened and less elite, constituted a potential threat to the civic welfare of the entire Russian polity. French culture was also sensitive to a potential conflict between national sentiment and local allegiance, sometimes expressed in a contrast between the terms patrie and pays. Like patrie, the lexeme pays could theoretically represent either a specific locale or the state itself (Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise 1740: 289, 295–6), but was in fact more often used to indicate smaller areas, such as the region or village of one’s childhood, and not widely employed in the motivational rhetoric of the state or armed forces. In fact, pays often referred to the rural peasant homesteads from which the majority of the Grande Armée’s troops issued and was thus reminiscent of the localised significance once described by the term patrie itself. Since that more geographically restricted meaning had become antithetical to patrie in late eighteenth-century France, pays could be used as a term of contrast. While it is true that amour du pays was not necessarily irreconcilable with amour de la patrie (Puzelat 1996: 104), the pull of the local was nonetheless a major problem for Napoleon’s political and military strategists, who sought actively to wean peasant soldiers from an attachment to their native villages and redirect their sense of allegiance to the all-embracing state. The term patrie was often invoked in this context and if amour de la patrie was proclaimed to be a virtue, succumbing to the lure of the pays could even be considered an illness: mal du pays, or longing for a return to the village home, constituted a diagnosable pathology that preoccupied Napoleon’s medical staff as it wrought havoc among his peasant troops (Dodman 2011: 121–2). In Russia as well, as Radishchev’s example illustrates, a contrast between patriotism towards the state and attachment to one’s native region constituted a potential civic problem, but the conflict was arguably less acute and described in slightly different terminology. While Russian use of отечество was thoroughly influenced by the importance of patrie in France and in francophone Europe, the ‘translation’ of pays into the reality of Catherinian Russia was less evident: the countryside hosted serf agriculture and produced peasant conscripts for the tsarist army, while the city was linked with elite advancement and public life, with education

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and careers in government service. In Russia as in France, a particularly strong attachment to the rural homestead was generally considered characteristic of the peasant, and the term родина, later selected by Herzen as the object of his own affections, was usually that which indicated a peasant’s place of origin and the object of his deep and loyal sentiment. Rare in literary texts before the Napoleonic period, родина was not simply a contrasting alternative to отечество, but a distinct and sometimes complementary notion that was particularly prevalent in certain registers, its choice being related to questions of genre and class. As we have seen, Karamzin preferred the term отечество for the description of his own patriotic sentiments; as for Radishchev, let the peasant feel attachment to the local, he had implicitly suggested, the true nobleman properly feels allegiance to the state. The term родина does not appear in either Radishchev’s Journey or his Complete Collected Works; instead he uses отчизна to designate отечество’s ‘opposite’, a ‘nobleman’s pays’ or rural point of reference far removed from civic life and yet clearly distinct from the sentimental sphere of the peasant. The three occurrences of родина in Karamzin’s Letters evoke an idealised and non-Russian rural environment: while Karamzin associates this term with feelings of allegiance to place or kin, these are experienced by pastoral (or pastoralised) Arcadian figures, specifically Swiss peasants and forest nymphs, as in his translation of Pope’s ‘Windsor-Forest’ (1736), where a nymph’s plea to be transported to safety – ‘Let me, O let me, to the shades repair, / My native shades [. . .]’ (lines 199–200) – becomes a request for conveyance в дубравы [. . .] / на родину мою! (Karamzin [1791–1801] 1984: 352).8 As generic shepherds of the Sentimentalist era slowly acquired more specifically Russian traits, they were credited with profound feelings of attachment to native Russian territory. Poetic images of idyllic swains frequently shaded into sentimentalised images of Russian soldiers who, stationed far from home, tended to utter the word родина in the context of their longing for it. The humble soldier’s desire to rejoin his loved ones constituted a literary trope popular in Russia even before Napoleon’s irruption into Europe, peasant yearning for the homeland often reflecting the onerous military obligations (including 25-year terms of service) required of actual serf soldiers by the tsarist state. Fonvizin had used the term родина in the context of a peasant soldier’s joyful homecoming as far back as 1783 (1959: 26) and Karamzin, in a verse of 1796 celebrating Paul’s accession to the throne, wrote of the new tsar’s clemency, his throwing open of prison doors, and his liberation of conscripted ­peasants, who, torn from herds and ploughs Чтоб вечно воинами быть, / Расстались с родиной своею (1966: 188).9 In 1795, Pavel Gagarin assumed the perspective of a peasant soldier in a stylised

186  sara dic k ins o n poetic song elaborating the sentiment of тоска по родине (longing for home), a phrase that also serves as the verse’s title. The first-person voice here bemoans compulsory military service – Я привязан / К незнакомой стороне, / Цепью должности обвязан10 – as he laments his distance from the ‘dear родина’ and faraway loved ones (Gagarin [1795] 1990). Such simply expressed sentiments of the heart helped suggest that the speaker was himself a peasant conscript, rather than the highly placed fligel’-ad’’iutant that Prince Gagarin actually was (Kochetkova 1988). Idyllic visions of yearned-for rural life helped to prepare the ground for later appreciation both of Russian rural territories and of the Russian peasantry. This appreciation was subsequently manifested both in the nineteenth-century conviction that national specificity and cultural origins were related to peasant lifeways and in the elite’s admiration and gratitude for the heroic service of the народ (common people) during the Napoleonic Wars. Nonetheless, before explicitly celebrating peasant patriotism, elite writers experimented with the appropriation of a stylised, emotional attachment to the родина for themselves. It was during the Napoleonic era that родина became available to this class for the description of its own sentiments, first as a synonym for the family home or отчизна, and then as a sentimentalised version of the patrie.

K ARA M ZIN ON PATRIE AND PATRIOTIS M Karamzin indicated his eagerness to incorporate love for the родина into the nobleman’s sentimental biography in an 1802 essay entitled ‘On Love of the Fatherland and National Pride’ (‘O liubvi k otechestvu i narodnoi gordosti’). Taking любовь к отечеству, the Russian calque of amour de la patrie, as its main subject, Karamzin’s text links the civic discourse of the French Enlightenment to the era following Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov’s engagement of 1799 with Napoleon in Italy; written in the same year that Napoleon established the Legion of Honour to inspire his troops (Hughes 2012: 61), Karamzin’s text also explicitly aims to stir patriotic feeling. The essay’s tripartite concept of patriotism begins with an initial stage or level, ‘physical love for the отечество’, that may be seen in the love for the родина, or the geographical region of one’s rural childhood, which is common to all humanity: Man loves the place of his birth and upbringing. This attachment is common to all persons and peoples, it is the business of nature and must be termed physical. The родина is dear to the heart not because of its specifically regional beauty, nor its clear sky, nor

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pleasant climate, but for captivating recollections, which surround, so to speak, the dawn and cradle of the human race. There is nothing in the world dearer than life: it is our first happiness – and the beginning of any beneficence has for our imagination some kind of special charm. [. . .] The Laplander, born practically in nature’s tomb, nonetheless loves the cold gloom of his land. Move him to happy Italy: with gaze and heart he will turn towards the North like a magnet; the bright shining of the sun will not produce such sweet feelings in his soul as the day that is overcast, the whistle of the blizzard, or the fall of snow: these remind him of the отечество! The same inclination of the nerves that is formed in man by climate is what attaches us to the родина. (Karamzin [1802] 1964b: 280; ‘physical’ italicised in the original) Attachment to the родина is the prerequisite for the more mature and manlier patriotism to be attained later by a select few. Stage two is ‘moral patriotism’, an equally natural love for those who hail from the same region or state, after which only a handful of subjects go on to the final phase, ‘political patriotism’, or ‘that great virtue for which the Greeks and Romans were renowned’, and which is expressed in ‘love for the welfare and glory of the отечество and the desire to assist it in all ways’ ([1802] 1964b: 282). Karamzin thus posits love for родина and отечество, pays and patrie, as complementary, rather than mutually exclusive sentiments: for the elite subject, these are nesting attachments representing different levels of abstraction or elevation. Having famously recognised peasant emotion in the story ‘Poor Liza’ (‘Bednaia Liza’, 1792) with the phrase и крестьянки любить умеют! (1964a: 607),11 Karamzin here argues just as provocatively that ‘even noblemen can love their rural homes’ and that having warm feelings for the site of one’s own childhood is not only reasonable, but also innate.

Z H U K O V S K II ’S

ОТЧИЗНА

Despite the imposing cultural pedigree of the concept of любовь к отечеству, that phrase appears nowhere in Zhukovskii’s famous ‘Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors’ (‘Pevets vo stane russkikh voinov’, 1812), a poem written shortly after the fall of Moscow, bursting with patriotic feeling, and often taken as the most important literary text from the Napoleonic period. Avoiding отечество completely, Zhukovskii favours a combination of родина and отчизна to create a conception of the homeland that is very striking in this era of extreme patriotic

188  sara dic k ins o n sentiment. Though the lexeme отчизна resembles отечество in being derived from отец (father), it carries a specific folk-historical colouring in Zhukovskii’s usage to suggest a patrie simultaneously writ both large and local. With отчизна, Zhukovskii conjures up a romanticised notion of a pre-imperial medieval state governed by a fraternal band of knightly figures, or princely дружина (retinue, bodyguard), the realm of a bygone age when there was little distinction for the elite between one’s patrimonial holdings or ‘father’s property’ (вотчина) and the state itself. The success of Zhukovskii’s verse indubitably derives in part from its suggestion that Russia’s elite enjoyed a deep and even familial bond with state authority in an era that Marc Raeff describes as beset by the acute sense that any such connection had been irreparably lost (1966: 159). More intimate and familiar than отечество, отчизна represents the state purged of specifically imperial overtones, a folk-poetic version of the patrie, a paternally flavoured родина. While this ‘archaising’ use of отчизна had also been employed by Radishchev in his ‘Historical Song’ (‘Pesn’ istoricheskaia’) from 1801 or 1802, a catalogue of heroic and patriotic deeds from classical antiquity, Zhukovskii employs the term to illustrate a specifically Russian national past. Moreover, in an era when the search for antidotes to the seductive, but increasingly unpatriotic appeal of all things French was particularly strong, he offers a vision of Russia that pre-dates French cultural influence and the tormented give and take of relations with the West that characterised the ‘Fatherland century’. ‘A Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors’ reduces Napoleon’s army to little more than yet another serial enemy confronted over the course of the ages by the vanquishing богатыри (heroic knights of folklore) of ancient Rus’. Отчизна, Zhukovskii suggests, is that entity for which Russians have bravely fought and died ever since they had a shared culture and language. He also stylises the relationships among the elite officers who made up his readership as the expression of a broad, popular spirit, отчизна linguistically suggesting an epoch when all ranks presumably drew upon a common fund of Slavonic language and elite speech was closer to the peasant idiom than was the case in the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, ‘A Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors’ is organised in a call-and-response pattern that casts the poet (or caller) in the role of a commanding officer who is rallying his men on the eve of battle – while leading them in drink – and whose words, and the choral responses to them, underline a common bond among all the participants, be they officers or soldiers: Отчизне кубок сей, друзья!12 (Zhukovskii [1812] 1999: 151). Zhukovskii thus blurs the boundaries between nobility and народ, dissolving in fraternal camaraderie the hierarchical relationships that characterised Russian society in general and

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the military in particular. If not quite a nod towards the legitimisation of peasant culture, it did suggest a general cultural rapprochement between the elite officers of the imperial army and their peasant troops.

G LIN K A ’ S

РОДИНА

Another key Napoleonic-era text was Fedor Glinka’s Letters of a Russian Officer (Pis’ma russkogo ofitsera, 1812–15), written serially on the front lines and published in Russian journals during the war.13 Like Fonvizin, Karamzin and Radishchev, Glinka favoured the lexeme отечество in his descriptions of patriotic sentiment, but his text also demonstrates a semantic shift in the meaning of родина as it is absorbed by the expanding sphere of elite literary emotions. The account begins in June 1812 with the fall of Smolensk, and Glinka, a native of that region, first speaks of родина in the context of its heart-rending demise: ‘Your heart would burst if you were to see the misfortune of my родина’, he writes to his presumed addressee (Glinka [1812–15] 1870: vol. 1, 8 August 1812). Smolensk is not only Glinka’s elite pays, but also the site of his patrimony and he more explicitly comments on the propertied component of his loss in lines of poetry, using родина as Radishchev had used отчизна: Итак я теперь – / Наследия отцов и родины лишен14 (13 August 1812). If the notion of inheritance might be seen to distinguish Glinka’s experience from that of the peasant, the French invasion guaranteed that similar losses were universally felt in rural areas and Glinka also uses the term родина to describe the widespread popular suffering as the народ were forced from huts and homeland by the French. Material and emotional patrimonies thus blend in a general spirit of deprivation, as Glinka confirms several months later when passing near Smolensk, now westward, on the heels of the retreating French army: Imagine, my friend, that I’m now only sixty versts15 from my родина and I can’t look in!.. It’s true, there’s nothing to even see there: everything has been ravaged and deserted! I would find only ashes and ruins; but how sweet it would be to pray once more in my life on the graves of my forefathers! (26 October 1812) Though Glinka uses the word отечество far more than родина, it is also true that his conception of отечество looks back to and draws upon a sentiment of allegiance and attachment to the родина, his ‘political patriotism’ having been significantly deepened by the painful experience of the destruction of his родина. The French invasion of both o­ fficial,

190  sara dic k ins o n political space (отечество) and family lands (отчизна, родина) melded these concepts in the nobleman’s world-view. While elite любовь к отечеству became more thoroughly imbued with attachment to the rural homestead, peasant patriotism widened to provide defence of the empire. In Glinka’s view, peasant love for the родина extended from amour du pays to amour de la patrie. Severely underestimating the Russian народ was Napoleon’s greatest mistake: ‘These very people, who seemed worthless to [the French] in their humble simplicity, revealed themselves to be the true heroes of the age’, he writes, their finest qualities being ‘faith, loyalty and love for the родина’ (Glinka [1812–15] 1870: vol. 2), that is to say the patriotism that later became Herzen’s. Insofar as the defensive war of 1812 obscured distinctions between home and state, or родина and отечество, it ostensibly resolved for the Russian army the problem of conflicting loyalties to pays and patrie that beset the troops of Napoleon. When Glinka marched towards France with the army of Alexander I, his own родина became vaguer and broader, no longer concretely linked to Smolensk, and eventually assumed the dimensions of отечество to become a synonym for patrie: ‘It’s spring, it’s spring’, he writes from Warsaw, ‘Oh! were I in the родина with my friends!.. But the родина is far away, and we are moving on’ ([1812–15] 1870: vol. 1, February 1813). If Karamzin had cast homecoming from abroad as a return to отечество or patrie, Glinka (like the exiled Herzen) felt his faraway native land as родина. His Letters of a Russian Officer thus illustrate the nesting attachments to the homeland that had been suggested by Karamzin in his essay of 1802 – with the substitution of родина for отечество: Glinka’s родина was first his region and then his Russia, first pays, and then patrie. Such geographical extension of родина’s ‘signified’ is confirmed by Russian lexicography. Defined in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy (1794) as simply ‘the place where one is born’ (Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi 1794: 30), родина by the 1860s came to include both a ‘broad meaning’ of ‘the land [or] political state of one’s birth’ and a ‘narrow meaning’ of the ‘town [or] village’ in which such birth occurred (Dal’ 1863–6).16 By the middle of the nineteenth century, Dal’s ordering suggests, the broad meaning had overtaken the narrow.

T H E PATRIE AND TH E PEOPLE Which of these Russian alternatives to patrie was used to inspire patriotic deeds from the common soldier during the Wars? If there was ‘little evidence’ in mid-century France ‘that the language of patrie was employed

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by the popular classes’ (Campbell 2007: 15), by the Napoleonic era patrie had become a full-fledged rhetorical term and was used effectively to incite even the humblest infantry. And certainly отечество belonged to a similar sphere of official rhetoric in Russia where ‘military authorities succeeded in indoctrinating [peasant troops] sufficiently to make them loyal and submissive soldiers who gladly fought for Tsar and Fatherland’ (Curtiss 1968: 113–14). It is also true, however, that peasant soldiers generally did what they were told (pp. 111–12), in which context recourse to any particular selection or combination of the terms отечество, отчизна and родина was hardly a pressing issue. There was only one member of the Russian elite in this period, Herzen holds, who was capable of effectively communicating with actual peasants in an idiom comprehensible to them, namely ‘the Frenchified Count Rostopchin’, who served as military commander of Moscow during the Napoleonic Wars (Gertsen [1861] 1956: 136). Rostopchin’s linguistic talents materialised in the affiches that he posted throughout the city before and after the French takeover, documents that generally refer to отечество in their attempt to rouse patriotic feeling. In the more urgent texts written when French occupation of the city had become inevitable, however, and in which Rostopchin endeavours specifically to impress patriotic sentiments in the more humble residents who had remained behind, he eloquently ‘translates’ the concept of amour de la patrie by dropping отечество altogether and likewise ignoring the other Russian synonyms. Moscow’s military commander eloquently conveys his message to the people through a series of paternal images – Father, God and tsar – all enraged at the родина’s destruction and each threatening to turn his punitive anger on recalcitrant members of the народ: He among you who heeds the villain and bows down to the Frenchman is an unworthy father’s son, a heretic before God’s law, a criminal before his sovereign, [and] gives himself over to prosecution and abuse – and his soul shall be cast with the evildoers into Hell and shall burn in flame as our mother Moscow burned. (Rostopchin [1812] 1912: 20 September)17 The finer points of distinction between the terms отечество, отчизна and родина as a translation for patrie remained a problem largely for the elite. Glinka’s Letters of a Russian Officer and Zhukovskii’s ‘Bard’ were directed at the nobility, the same group that had been the primary audience for patriotic speechmaking in Catherinian Russia and that had tended in that era to avail itself of the term отечество in discussions of patriotic feeling. By the end of the Napoleonic period, as we have seen,

192  sara dic k ins o n Russian ‘well-born hearts’ were no longer interested solely in either patrie or отечество. The wars had encouraged the spread or popularisation of the term отчизна and especially родина, the experience of martial conflict helping to diffuse a sentiment of regional attachment that became blurred with allegiance to the state. As a result, the once humble родина was established as a viable alternative for the translation of patrie and deemed a worthy object of the elite’s patriotic love. Родина was also used to signify the nobility’s pays. Thus, if the term had been used before the Napoleonic era to capture what elite writers imagined to be a peasant’s perspective, during the years of conflict, as the elite proclaimed its own attachment to provincial territorities, родина came to signify both rural home and imperial state, ostensibly for nobleman and peasant alike. The elite could share its newly discovered любовь к родине with the народ, Russians whose hearts, though less well-born, were equally prone to adore their native land – at least in literary texts. * * * The evolution of the term родина was fostered by Sentimentalism’s attention to emotional expression, by the patriotic spirit inculcated by Catherine and further encouraged by Napoleon, by the defensive war fought on Russian soil, and by the Russian elite’s growing awareness of the Russian people. As родина itself took on the ‘increased emotional burden’ that Schierle describes as having characterised отечество in the eighteenth century, the term assumed a trajectory distinct from that of the statist patrie or отечество. Родина’s changing shape was also symptomatic of the historical and cultural process by which elite writers forged an enduring connection with the rural territories of their childhood and eventually, sometimes, with the peasants who lived there. It is tempting to speculate that the evolution of patriotic culture in Russia, reaching its apotheosis in the Russian response to the French offensive, had a reciprocal impact on contemporary French thought, whose own conceptions of patrie were severely tested in the Napoleonic Wars and arguably found wanting. Perhaps the French experience of the ‘War of the Fatherland’ (Отечественная война) in Russia, coupled with a growing respect for the peasant soldiers of both the French and Russian armies, eventually contributed to the revaluation of provincial space that Stéphane Gerson (2003) describes as taking place in France during the 1830s and 1840s and to French culture’s openness to consider the countryside afresh as a possible source of beauty, strength and national identity. In Russia, as in France, the Napoleonic era left its trace on patriotic discourse and on understandings of patrie. Prior to that time, Russians

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had often translated patrie as отечество or chosen not to translate it at all. As we have seen, their choice was sometimes based simply on linguistic code (for example, by Karamzin), although Shcherbatov’s example indicates that speakers could prefer one language over another in the discussion of patriotic themes, and hence the term patrie, with its French and supranational associations, over the term отечество, with its domestic ring. Moreover, the significance of Russian отечество seems to have often followed that of French patrie, at least until the Napoleonic period when patriotic Russian sentiments were both required and felt with particularly urgency. While the term patrie had a number of political and sociolinguistic connotations that отечество did not automatically or immediately share, many of these were eventually associated with the Russian lexeme as well: patrie was problematically ‘republican’ in the view of Diderot’s Russian translators, for example, just as the lexeme отечество was later understood by Tsar Paul. The calquing of French or French-inspired terms sometimes encountered obstacles in Russian. The term pays, for example, which overlapped with Russian край (region), деревня (countryside, village), родина (native land, homeland, place of birth) and even отчизна (patrimonial lands), had no obvious single equivalent. Furthermore, the associations inherent in the term pays, including its perceived contrast with patrie, were not easily applied to the socio-economic realities of Russian geography. In France, as we have seen, patrie evolved in contradistinction to pays, its emotional component consciously emphasised by politicians and military strategists in order that it should supplant pays in the hearts and minds of soldiers and people, while reticence on the part of elite culture to embrace rural life became an implicit theme in the distinction between Voltaire’s patrie and the homeland promoted by Rousseau. Indeed, Rousseau’s use of patrie illustrates how that term was itself sentimentalised and thus enlarged – precisely through an association with the native pays – to become the object of an allegiance mixed with deep affection. Evidence of a similarly profound, even ‘innate’ love for the отечество proliferated in elite Russian cultural discourse as well, particularly during and after the experience of the Napoleonic Wars. As this chapter demonstrates, the deeper and more essential or intrinsic such sentiment was felt to be, the more likely it was to be directed towards the родина, rather than the отечество. The ‘untranslatability’ of the term родина reflects in part the fact that it had no precise equivalent in French; still more important to its peculiar specificity is the trace that родина carries of the Russian experience of the Napoleonic Wars, in whose crucible the elite forged new emotive links with native terrain, with the Russian народ and with the Russian language.

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NOTES I am grateful to the editors of this volume for their careful reading and very helpful suggestions.   1. I use the form of his name that is most familiar in English. The Russian form of his name is transliterated, according the system being used in these volumes, as ‘Aleksandr Gertsen’, and it is that form that will be found in the References.   2. ‘For a well-born heart, only the patrie is dear!’ The French line is from Voltaire’s Tancrède, where the protagonist declares at the beginning of Act III: A tous les cœurs bien nés que la patrie est chère!   3. For discussion of how foreign-language use could be reconciled with intense patriotism in the eighteenth-century Russian nobility, see the last section of Volume 1, Chapter 3, by Vladislav Rjéoutski and Vladimir Somov.   4. On the term Rossiia, another possible equivalent for patrie, see Schierle (2012).  5. On the association made by Fonvizin and other eighteenth-century dramatists between patriotism and language use, see Chapter 5, by Derek Offord, in this volume.   6. The data on Fonvizin and other similar statistics in this chapter are based on electronic word searches that have been performed on the site of the Russian Virtual Library (Russkaia virtual’naia biblioteka, at http://www.rvb.ru), with the help of its very useful concordance (Ukazatel’ slovoform).   7. ‘The shore! Отечество! I hail you!’   8. ‘into the oak forests [. . .] to my родина!’   9. ‘to become eternal warriors, / had been separated from their родина’. 10. ‘I’m tied / To an unfamiliar land, / By the chain of obligation wound.’ 11. ‘even peasant women know how to love!’ 12. ‘This glass to the отчизна, friends!’ 13. On Glinka’s brother, Sergei, and his views on language, see Chapter 7, by Gary Hamburg, in this volume. 14. ‘And thus I’m now / Deprived of the inheritance of my forefathers and of my родина.’ 15. A verst was a pre-revolutionary unit of distance, roughly equal to a kilometre. 16. This definition of родина is taken from what is apparently the first edition of Dal’ (1863–6), which is available, albeit without page numbers, at http://slovari.yandex. ru/ (last accessed on 13 April 2014); it remains unchanged in the second edition (1882: 11) and virtually identical in the third (1907: 1697). 17. On Rostopchin’s linguistic views and habits, see Chapter 7, by Gary Hamburg, in this volume and also Offord and Rjéoutski (2013b).

REFERENCES Campbell, P. R. (2007), ‘The language of patriotism in France, 1750–1770’, e-France 1, pp. 1–43. Curtiss, J. S. (1968), ‘The peasant and the army’, in W. S. Vucinich (ed.), The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russian Culture, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 108–32. Dal’, V. I. (1863–6), Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka, 4 vols, at http:// slovari.yandex.ru/ (last accessed on 13 April 2014).

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Dal’, V. I. (1882), Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka, 2nd edn, St Petersburg and Moscow: M. O. Vol’f, vol. 4. Dal’, V. I. (1907), Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka, 3rd edn, St Petersburg and Moscow: M. O. Vol’f, vol. 3. Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise (1740), 3rd edn, Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, vol. 2. Dodman, T. (2011), ‘Homesick epoch: dying of nostalgia in post-revolutionary France’, PhD thesis, the University of Chicago. Fonvizin, D. I. [1783] (1959), ‘Pouchenie, govorennoe v dukhov den’ Iereem Vasiliem v sele P***’, in Fonvizin, Sobranie sochinenii v dvukh tomakh, ed. G. P. Makogonenko, Moscow and Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, vol. 2, pp. 24–7. Gagarin, P. G. [1795] (1990), ‘Toska po rodine’, in N. D. Kochetkova (ed.), Russkaia literatura. Vek XVIII. Lirika, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, at http://lib. pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=5616 (last accessed on 13 April 2014). Gerson, S. (2003), The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in NineteenthCentury France, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gertsen, A. I. [1861] (1956), Byloe i dumy, part 4, in Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii v trid­ tsati tomakh, ed. V. P. Volgin, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk, vol. 9. Glinka, F. N. [1812–15] (1870), Pis’ma russkogo ofitsera o Pol’she, avstriiskikh vladeniiakh, Prussii i Frantsii, s podrobnym opisaniem Otechestvennoi i Zagranichnoi voiny s 1812 po 1814 god, 5 vols, 2nd edn, Moscow: Tipografiia ‘Russkogo’, at http://www.museum. ru/1812/library/Glinka2/index.html (last accessed on 13 April 2014). Hughes, M. J. (2012), Forging Napoleon’s Grande Armée: Motivation, Military Culture, and Masculinity in the French Army, 1800–1808, New York: New York University Press. Karamzin, N. M. [1792] (1964a), ‘Bednaia Liza’, in Karamzin, Izbrannye sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, ed. P. Berkov and G. Makogonenko, 2 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, vol. 1, pp. 605–21. Karamzin, N. M. [1802] (1964b), ‘O liubvi k otechestvu i narodnoi gordosti’, in Karamzin, Izbrannye sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, ed. P. Berkov and G. Makogonenko, 2 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, vol. 2, pp. 280–7. Karamzin, N. M. [1796] (1966), ‘Oda na sluchai prisiagi Moskovskikh zhitelei Pavlu Pervomu’, in Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, ed. Iu. M. Lotman, 2nd edn, Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, pp. 185–90. Karamzin, N. M. [1791–1801] (1984), Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, ed. Iu. M. Lotman, N. A. Marchenko and B. A. Uspenskii, Leningrad: Nauka. Kochetkova, N. D. (1988), ‘Pavel Gavrilovich Gagarin’, in Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka, part 1, Leningrad: Nauka, at http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default. aspx?tabid=460 (last accessed on 13 April 2014). Offord, D. and V. Rjéoutski (2013a), ‘French in the education of the nobility: Mikhail Shcherbatov’s letters to his son Dmitrii’, at https://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/introduction/french-education-nobility-mikhail-shcherbatov%E2%80%99s-letters-his-sondmitrii (last accessed on 13 April 2014). Offord, D. and V. Rjéoutski (2013b), ‘French in the nineteenth-century Russian salon: Fiodor Rostopchin’s “memoirs”’, at http://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/texts (last accessed on 2 June 2014). Puzelat, M. (1996), ‘La notion de pays: un parcours historiographique’, in O. Redon (ed.), Savoirs des lieux. Géographies en histoire, Saint-Denis: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, pp. 89–106. Radishchev, A. N. [1790] (1938), ‘Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu’, in Radishchev,

196  sara dic k ins o n Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, ed. I. K. Luppola, Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, pp. 225–392. Raeff, M. (1966), Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility, San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Rostopchin, F. V. [1812] (1912), ‘Afishi 1812 goda, ili druzheskie poslaniia ot glavnokomanduiushchego v Moskve k zhiteliam ee’, in N. V. Borsuk, Rostopchinskie afishi, St Petersburg, at http://www.museum.ru/1812/Library/Rostopchin/index.html (last accessed on 13 April 2014). Schierle, I. (2007), ‘“For the benefit and glory of the fatherland”: the concept of отечество’, in R. Bartlett and G. Lehmann-Carli (eds), Eighteenth-Century Russia: Society, Culture, Economy. Papers from the VII International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia, Wittenberg 2004, Berlin: Lit Verlag, pp. 283–95. Schierle, I. (2009), ‘Patriotism and emotions: love of the fatherland in Catherinian Russia’, Ab Imperio, 3: 65–93. Schierle, I. (2012). ‘Poniatie “Rossiia” v politicheskoi kul’ture XVIII veka’, in V. M. Zhivov and Iu. V. Kagarlitskii (eds), Ėvoliutsiia poniatii v svete istorii russkoi kul’tury, Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur, pp. 207–32. Shcherbatov, M. M. [1775] (2013), ‘French in the education of the nobility: Mikhail Shcherbatov’s letters to his son Dmitrii’, at https://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/content/ second-manscript (last accessed on 13 April 2014). Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi (1794), St Petersburg: Imperatorskaia Akademiia Nauk, vol. 5. Stockdale, M. K. (2010), ‘What is a fatherland? Changing notions of duty, rights, and belonging in Russia’, in M. Bassin, C. Ely and M. K. Stockdale (eds), Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, pp. 23–48. Suratteau, J-R. (1983), ‘Cosmopolitisme et patriotisme au siècle des Lumières’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 253, pp. 364–89. Zhukovskii, V. A. [1812] (1999), ‘Pevets vo stane russkikh voinov’, in Zhukovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v 20 tomakh, ed. O. B. Lebedeva and A. S. Ianushkevich, Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, vol. 1, pp. 225–44.

c h apter 11

Treatment of Francophonie in Pushkin’s Prose Fiction Derek Offord

P

aradoxical as it may seem from the nationalist viewpoint that has been so influential over the last two hundred years, first in Europe and then globally, multilingualism has often served not only as a stimulus for a nation’s cultural development but also for the formation of its sense of identity. The type of multilingualism in question might be passive, amounting mainly to a reading knowledge of a language that is not the mother tongue. Multilingualism of this sort may occur, for example, when the foreign languages acquired during a people’s cultural awakening are ancient, as was the case with Greek and Latin in European lands during the Renaissance (although Latin could also be a living language in the Church and among scholars). Equally, command of foreign languages might of course be active, as has been the case with French in many European nations at various times, for example, in the Netherlands, Sweden and the Romanian lands in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively (see Rjéoutski et al. 2014: chapters 6, 10 and 121). In the Russian instance, the simultaneity of the flowering of a literary tradition in the vernacular, on the one hand, and the use of French as a prestige language among the social elite, on the other, is strikingly illustrated in the life and œuvre of Aleksandr Pushkin. Although he used French comfortably and extensively in society and in his correspondence,2 Pushkin is by common agreement the principal founding father of modern Russian literature and one of the main authorities invoked when good linguistic usage in the classical age needs to be illustrated (see for example SSRLIa 1950–65). Pushkin’s literary career (if we leave aside his juvenilia) spans the period from 1820, when his narrative poem ‘Ruslan and Liudmila’ (‘Ruslan i Liudmila’) was published, to his death in 1837, at the age of thirty-seven, as a result of the wound sustained in a duel with the adopted

198  d er e k o f f o r d son of the Dutch Ambassador in St Petersburg. This is the period when Romanticism fully established itself in Russia and when the debate about Russian national identity and cultural autonomy that was to reach its first climax in the middle of the century began in earnest. It is also the period when the modern Russian literary language was coming fully into being, a process to which Pushkin’s own writings made a crucial contribution, as comprehensive histories of the Russian language attest (for example Vinogradov 1969: 127–57). Only in the latter part of his career, from the late 1820s on, did Pushkin turn to prose, the medium in which other writers – Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Fedor Dostoevskii, Lev Tolstoi, Nikolai Leskov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and others – would soon establish a great novelistic tradition, depicting the fate of individual characters against a sweeping historical, social, moral and religious background. The ‘prime merits’ that Pushkin saw in prose, he remarked in a fragment of 1822 ‘On Prose’ (‘O proze’), were precision and brevity (точность и краткость) and his chief stylistic model, incidentally, was a French prose-writer: Voltaire, he thought, could be considered an exemplary practitioner of these virtues (Pushkin 1937–49: vol. 11, pp. 18–19). It is for the most part in his prose fiction, rather than in his poetry, that Pushkin refers for some purpose to Russians’ use of French or expresses an attitude, explicit or implicit, towards this practice. Within his corpus of prose, though, references to Russians’ use of French are frequent; in fact, they occur in all Pushkin’s main prose works. In some works – the unfinished historical novel The Blackamoor of Peter the Great (Arap Petra Velikogo), the historical novella The Captain’s Daughter (Kapitanskaia dochka), the novel Dubrovskii (which was also unfinished) and the society tale ‘The Queen of Spades’ (‘Pikovaia dama’) – these references provide historical colour, aid characterisation, advance plot, suggest social milieu or hint at the beginnings of debate about the implications of Westernisation in Russia. I shall deal with references which have these functions in the first section of this chapter, taking the works in question not in the order in which Pushkin wrote them but in the chronological order of the periods in which they were set. References to the subject of French-speaking in Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin (Evgenii Onegin) also need to be mentioned in this section. Next, I discuss a single story, ‘The Peasant Lady’ (‘Baryshnia-Krest’ianka’), which is the closing item in Pushkin’s cycle The Tales of Belkin (Povesti Belkina). Here Pushkin deals with cross-dressing and language choice in a way that is undeniably light-hearted but not without pertinence to the incipient debate about national and cultural identity. Finally, I examine the unfinished historical novel Roslavlev, in which the relationship

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   199 between language use and patriotism is explored in a more serious way and Pushkin comes to a characteristically Olympian view of engagement with other cultures.3

T H E F U NCTIONS OF P U S H K IN ’ S FICTIONAL REFERENCES TO USE OF FRENC H Pushkin’s prose fiction tends to illustrate the view of eighteenth-century Russia that comes across in our two volumes as an environment in which multiple Western influences were in play and several Western languages were known to varying degrees and used for various purposes. Germans and their language have a particularly strong presence in his fictional prose. The neighbour of the eponymous undertaker in one of the stories in The Tales of Belkin is a German shoemaker. The doctor who treats the hussar in ‘The Stationmaster’ (‘Stantsionnyi smotritel’’), another story in that cycle, speaks German to his patient, presumably helping him to devise a plan to elope with the stationmaster’s daughter (Pushkin 1937–49: vol. 8, part 1, p. 101). In ‘The Queen of Spades’, the protagonist Hermann is German and his first letter to Liza, declaring his affections, is translated word for word from a German novel (1937–49: 237). In The Captain’s Daughter, the former soldier Andrei Grinev entrusts his son Petr to an old comrade in arms, Andrei Karlovich, whose patronymic indicates that he had a German father and in whose speech a strong German accent is suggested by the devoiced consonants that I highlight: ‘Поже мой! – сказал он. – Тавно ли, кажется. Андрей Петрович был еще твоих лет, а теперь вот уш какой у него молотец! Ах, фремя, фремя!’ (1937–49: 292).4 The young Petr Grinev tries to persuade Andrei Karlovich that the idiom держать в ежовых руковицах (to rule with a rod of iron), which is how Grinev père wants Andrei Karlovich to treat his son, whom he considers foppish, in fact means ‘to treat kindly, not too severely’ (p. 292). In the tale ‘Egyptian Nights’, (‘Egipetskie nochi’) the poet Charskii has Italian, although this language is not in wide use in St Petersburg society, we are told (1937–49: 267). Again, the nobility of the Alexandrine age has succumbed to the ‘English folly’ (p. 122). Thus in ‘The Peasant Lady’, the wealthy landowner Muromskii has his stable-boys dressed as English jockeys and employs a prim Englishwoman, Miss Jackson, as governess for his daughter. On the linguistic level, though, this Anglomania gives rise only to a sprinkling of English expressions, such as ‘honey-moon’, which occurs in the first of The Tales of Belkin, ‘The Shot’ (‘Vystrel’) (1937–49: 73). However, the foreign language that features most prominently in Pushkin’s prose is

200  d er e k o f f o r d French, because French was the prestige language of the social stratum in which Pushkin himself moved and on which he most often concentrated in his fiction. Pushkin first considers French cultural influence and Russian use of the French language in the unfinished historical novel on which he worked in 1827–8, The Blackamoor of Peter the Great. (He was bound to address the question of Westernisation in a work devoted to Peter’s reign; indeed he may have chosen the subject for this reason.) The opening passages of the story dwell on the decline of morals in French high society and at the dissolute court of Louis XV, in the years immediately after the death of Louis XIV in 1715. It is here that we find Peter’s god-child, Ibrahim, to whom the title of the work refers. Forced to leave Paris, because his love for a married society lady is doomed after she gives birth to his black child, Ibrahim returns to Russia, where he is generously welcomed by Peter. Foreign-language use is among the practices that Ibrahim now finds at Peter’s court. There is no denying at this court that knowledge of foreign languages is a useful skill. Peter himself converses in German with a Swede who had been captured by the Russians in the Great Northern War (1700–21) (1937–49: 23). And yet, the habits and culture with which French is associated have little utility when seen through the eyes of the intensely practical Peter and his supporters. The dandy Korsakov, whom Ibrahim has known in Paris and who greets him in French when they meet again in St Petersburg, does not realise that when Peter smiles on seeing him it is because the sovereign is amused rather than delighted by Korsakov’s fashionable French clothes (pp. 14–15). Social life in St Petersburg has indeed been transformed under Peter by many foreign influences, but it is characterised by a love of simplicity and plain speaking that militates against adoption of French fashion, by men at least. ‘Your trousers are made of velvet, which I do not wear’, Peter upbraids Korsakov, ‘although I am much wealthier than you are. That is extravagant’ (pp. 17–18). It no doubt counts against the French language, in this environment, that French fashion is associated with effeminacy: Peter’s wife, Catherine, is dressed ‘according to the latest Parisian mode’ (pp. 10–11). Pushkin, then, may be tracing the roots of Gallophobia as far back as Peter’s reign. A boyar from an ancient family, Rzhevskii, considers Korsakov a ‘French monkey’ (p. 19). There is also a presentiment of linguistic nationalism and other national s­tereotyping: an aged Russian prince, Lykov, complains that the young Russians now being sent to foreign lands learn ‘to shuffle and chatter in God knows what language, to disrespect their elders and to chase after other people’s wives’ (p. 22). In The Captain’s Daughter, which was published in 1836 but set in the age of Catherine II, at the time of the Pugachev Revolt (1773–4), the

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   201 negative connotations of French influence on the nobility have become more numerous and pronounced, even if they are for the most part implicit rather than explicit in this work. A French educational model and the employment of French-speaking tutors had become commonplace and francophonie was therefore widespread, even among the lowranking provincial gentry represented by the protagonist Petr Grinev, whose father had achieved only the eighth rank in the Table of Ranks (the minimum level required for hereditary noble status). When Petr was eleven years of age, his father hired a French tutor from Moscow to teach the boy ‘French, German and all the sciences’ (1937–49: 279–80; Pushkin’s italics). (It later turns out that the tutor also taught Grinev how to fence (p. 305).) This tutor conforms to the stereotypes of the Frenchman, especially the French tutor, which had become ingrained in Russian literature in the epoch in which Pushkin’s novel was set: he is idle and frivolous and has a liking for the bottle (p. 280). More damaging still to the image of France in Russia, the chief noble villain of the piece, Shvabrin, is strongly associated with the French language and culture. Shvabrin is a young officer who is stationed with Grinev at a remote fortress in the region of Orenburg. In the course of the novel, he wounds Grinev in a duel when Grinev’s attention has been diverted, goes over to the side of the rebel Pugachev, tries to force the captain’s daughter Masha Mironova to marry him after the rebels have captured the fort and executed her parents and, finally, lies to those investigating the revolt about Grinev’s relations with Pugachev. There is something disconcerting, in the humble and prosaic surroundings of their remote outpost, about Shvabrin’s predilection for French culture (he has a collection of French books) and, in particular, his choice of French as the language in which to introduce himself to and converse with Grinev (pp. 296, 299). His francophonie, at the time of a revolt ‘whose aim was the overthrow of the throne and the destruction of the noble kind’ (p. 369), seems in a rather melodramatic way to complement the treason of this superficially drawn character. In Dubrovskii, which was written in 1832–3 and set in a fairly recent past, on the other hand, a character’s knowledge of French serves mainly as a device with which to advance the plot rather than as a means of characterisation or a pretext for comment on the appropriateness of foreignlanguage use in Russia. Dubrovskii deals in a potentially subversive way with a subject of serious social significance. It concerns the sequestration of the modest estate of a man (the father of the eponymous hero) by a cruel and capricious aristocratic neighbour, Kirila Troekurov, who bribes local officials to do his bidding after Dubrovskii has slighted him. Troekurov recruits a new French tutor for his son, or so he believes, to replace a

202  d er e k o f f o r d French governess, mlle Mimi, who has borne one of his many illegitimate children (1937–49: 186–7). However, the tutor turns out to be the vengeful son of Troekurov’s dispossessed neighbour, who has died as a result of the persecution he has endured on Troekurov’s orders. It is not made quite clear in the story how Dubrovskii fils has mastered French, but he could plausibly have learnt it at the Cadet Corps in St Petersburg (p. 162), where he had studied before entering a Guards Regiment as a cornet (p. 172), since that institution had a long tradition of foreign-language teaching (Rjéoutski and Offord 2013). In this instance, then, bilingualism offers Pushkin a chance to use the device of concealed identity, or rather to reuse it, for by the time he wrote Dubrovskii he had already exploited it in the ‘The Peasant Lady’, to which I shall shortly return. In Eugene Onegin the function of references to French is different again. Although composed in verse, the work is described by Pushkin in his sub-title as a ‘novel’ and therefore anticipates not only a transition from poetry to prose but also a shift from a predominantly lyrical approach to subject-matter to more cerebral observation of personal and national character. No work of Pushkin’s has been more seminal, and the seeds of debate about Russia’s relationship to the Western world, for which the classical novel would be an important vehicle, are among those sown by it. The foreign and the native are exemplified respectively in the Westernised society of St Petersburg that Onegin frequents in Canto 1 and the noble household in a peaceful provincial backwater that Pushkin describes in Canto 2 and in which Pushkin’s teenage heroine, his ‘dear Tat’iana’, has been raised. It comes as no surprise that Onegin has been brought up by francophone teachers, first a French governess (Madame) and then an impecunious French tutor (Monsieur l’Abbé) (Canto 1, Stanza 3), so that when he goes out into the world Острижен по последней моде; Как dandy Лондонский одет [. . .] Он по-французски совершенно Мог изъясняться и писал [. . .] (Canto 1, Stanza 4; Pushkin (1937–49): vol. 6, p. 6)5

However, Tat’iana too, it transpires, is francophone, as we learn when Pushkin confesses that French is the language in which his infatuated heroine composes a letter to Onegin: Она по-русски плохо знала, Журналов наших не читала,

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   203 И выражалася с трудом На языке своём родном, Итак, писала по-французски . . . (Canto 3, Stanza 26; 1937–49: vol. 6, p. 63)6

In fact, Russian ladies in general seem to be resisting attempts to make them read Russian, according to the poet: Не все ли, русским языком Владея слабо и с трудом, Его так мило искажали, И в их устах язык чужой Не обратился ли в родной?

(Canto 3, Stanza 27; vol. 6, p. 63)7

And yet, shared language does not in this instance imply similar character. Tat’iana, unlike Onegin, is free of the vices, such as affectation and fecklessness, which are associated with francophonie in so many other Russian writings.8 Her firm moral core is revealed by her rejection of Onegin when they meet again in Pushkin’s final canto, by which time Tat’iana has married a prince and is an assured member of St Petersburg society. To Dostoevskii, she would appear quintessentially Russian. Thus in the famous oration he delivered on Pushkin in 1880, he described her as someone in contact with her native land (родина) and people, the ‘apotheosis of Russian woman’ (Dostoevskii 1972–90: vol. 26, pp. 140–3). In ‘The Queen of Spades’, finally, references to French culture and French-speaking lend authenticity to Pushkin’s depiction of metropolitan society and hint at the ultimately cynical nature of that society. Here the Russian aristocracy rigorously observes the etiquette of the Parisian haut monde, where the aged countess, who holds the gambler’s secret that Hermann hopes to discover, had flourished in the age of Catherine II some sixty years before. Characters use French terms of address, such as grand’-maman (grandma) and Bonjour, mademoiselle Lise (Good day, Miss Lise). They may affectedly refer to each other by French versions of their Russian forenames, such as Lise, in the previous example, and Paul. Moreover, Pushkin offers French headings for the sections into which his text is divided, for example: ‘Il paraît que monsieur est décidément pour les suivantes.’ ‘Que voulez-vous, madame? Elles sont plus fraîches’ (Pushkin 1937–49: vol. 8, part 1, p. 231),9 or again, Vous m’écrivez, mon ange, des lettres de quatre pages plus vite que je ne puis les lire (p. 237)10 and Homme sans mœurs et sans religion! (p. 243).11 This practice stands

204  d er e k o f f o r d in sharp contrast to Pushkin’s use of Russian headings in his historical works The Blackamoor of Peter the Great and The Captain’s Daughter, and in The Tales of Belkin, which deal with Russian provincial life.12 The practice befits the genre of the society tale, of course. It tends to suggest that ‘The Queen of Spades’, like ‘Egyptian Nights’ (in which French headings also occur), is addressed to an exclusive readership consisting of those who are established in society’s networks, initiated into its rituals, complicit in its pretences and well versed in its pursuits, such as cardplaying and gambling. At the same time, the content of the headings may convey the wit, flirtatiousness and insouciance that members of this society strive to display.

‘ T H E PEASANT LAD Y’ : C U LT URAL AND LIN G U ISTIC CROSS -DRESSIN G Pushkin’s tale ‘The Peasant Lady’, to which I now turn, should perhaps not be taken very seriously as a work of literature. Indeed not too much should be read into The Tales of Belkin as a whole, as some critics, mindful of the seminal importance of Pushkin in Russian literature, have tried to do, for the content of these tales is for the most part inconsequential. Written during Pushkin’s famous ‘Boldino autumn’ in 1830 and published anonymously in 1831, the Tales were Pushkin’s ‘first considered and completed venture into prose’ (Bayley 1971: 306). Their significance may lie chiefly in the fact that they were literary experiments in a medium that was coming into its own as Romanticism waned. In any case, Pushkin’s use of multiple narrators to create elaborate frames for the stories, which distances us from the characters and events described, makes it unusually difficult to decide who is saying what to whom and to what extent the tales should be treated as ironic or as parodic (Bayley 1971: 309; Briggs 1994: xiii). The critic Vissarion Belinskii considered the Tales as a whole unworthy of Pushkin’s name and talent and ‘The Peasant Lady’ in particular he regarded as ‘lamentable’. It troubled Belinskii at this stage of his career, when he had come to value the capacity of imaginative writers to indict the autocratic serf-owning order, that the story seemed to depict the way of life of Russian landowners ‘from an idyllic point of view’ (Belinskii 1953–9: vol. 7, p. 577). Nonetheless, ‘The Peasant Lady’ is of some interest for us here, because it hinges on a case of mistaken identity arising out of misleading use of linguistic and vestimentary codes. It deals, albeit in a playful and implausible manner, with language use as a type of cultural cross-dressing. Liza, the daughter of an Anglophile landowner, Muromskii, dresses

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   205 herself as a peasant girl in order to create an opportunity to catch a glimpse of Aleksei Berestov, the son of a neighbouring landowner, while he is out hunting early in the morning. Wearing a peasant-woman’s shirt and sarafan,13 which Liza has made with the help of her peasant maid Nastia, and bast shoes, which she has acquired from a local peasant, she presents herself as the daughter of the blacksmith on her father’s estate. She adopts the name Akulina (common among peasant girls, but not used among the nobility), makes peasant gestures that Nastia has taught her and speaks in a peasant register. Aleksei, for his part, attempts to bring himself down to the social level to which he thinks the girl he has met belongs by passing himself off as Berestov’s valet. However, he cannot convincingly do this: Akulina (that is to say, Liza) tells him he is dressed wrongly and says, in her peasant idiom, баишь иначе, и собаку-то кличешь не по-нашему (Pushkin 1937–49: vol. 8, part 1: 114).14 (Aleksei has called his hunting dogs, which have French names, in French (p. 114).15) When Liza learns that her father has invited Berestov and his son to dinner, she is faced with the prospect of being unmasked. She protects her peasant identity by disguising herself again, in a different way, for this noble event. She comes to dinner in extravagant French clothes, wearing a dress which has a tightened waistline and sleeves à l’imbécile (that is to say, with hoops to widen them, like those worn by Madame de Pompadour). She has covered her fingers, neck and ears with her late mother’s jewellery. She has also whitened her swarthy complexion with a liberal layer of Miss Jackson’s ceruse and antimony and has donned false locks, fluffed up like a Louis XIV wig, which are much lighter than her own hair. To complete the new disguise, she speaks nothing but French throughout the Berestovs’ visit, uttering her words through her teeth and in a sing-song voice (pp. 119–20). Pressing Aleksei at their next tryst about his opinion of the neighbouring landowner’s daughter, Akulina describes Liza as a щеголиха (the female equivalent of a dandy) with whom a peasant girl could not compare (p. 121). As Aleksei’s relationship with Akulina develops, he teaches her – so he thinks – to read and write and they begin a secret correspondence. This means of communication enables him, when he is pressed by his father to marry the Gallicised creature he has met at his neighbour’s dinner, to realise that he loves Akulina and he resolves to propose to her. When he arrives at Muromskii’s house to explain that he wishes to marry the daughter of one of Muromskii’s serfs, there he finds Liza reading his letter. Startled by the collapse of her disguises, the lady who had posed as a peasant girl reacts in French: Mais laissez-moi donc, monsieur; mais êtes-vous fou? p. 124),16 although her resistance, Pushkin hints, will not last long.

206  d er e k o f f o r d In a passage as early as the fourth paragraph of ‘The Peasant Lady’, the narrator provides readers with a clue as to how this admittedly shallow story might be interpreted. As a result of their isolation and the relative freedom they enjoy in the countryside, provincial young ladies, the narrator supposes, develop feelings unfamiliar to the ‘distracted’ beauties of the city. Laugh as one might at their eccentricities, these young ladies do have certain qualities, the most notable of which, the narrator thinks, is their особенность характера, самобытность (individualité).17 In the capitals women may receive a better education, but ‘the skills of society soon flatten out character and make spirits that are as uniform as headdress’ (pp. 110–11). The reference to headdress is telling, inasmuch as hats, and coiffure, are conspicuous manifestations of the fashion that dominates the consciousness of high society.18 Now, the concept of самобытность (‘originality’, or perhaps more accurately, the quality of being oneself) is key in the vocabulary of cultural nationalists who were beginning in the 1820s and 1830s, as debate about national character unfolded, to search for signs of Russian distinctiveness. It is significant here that Nikolai Karamzin’s sentimental historical tale ‘Natal’ia, the Boyar’s Daughter’ (‘Natal’ia, boiarskaia doch’’) is the material Aleksei gives Akulina as he supposedly teaches her to read (p. 121). This tale proclaims the authenticity of an organic Russian community that was imagined by some to have existed in the seventeenth century before Russians began to adopt foreign practices. At the same time, it should be noted that Pushkin – no doubt with tongue in cheek – has used a French word, individualité, to gloss the concept of самобытность. Perhaps, then, we should be cautious about treating rural life, lived far from the affected social world of the city, as truly indigenous and free of affectation of its own. After all, the idyllic vision itself has foreign literary origins: Karamzin was much influenced by the European pastoral tradition. The precocious passions of Pushkin’s teenage heroines were also shaped by European reading. Thus Mar’ia, in ‘The Snowstorm’ (‘Metel’’), another of The Tales of Belkin, ‘had been brought up on French novels and consequently was in love’ (1937–49: 77). Pushkin’s treatment of the difference between metropolitan and rural social life and the associated question of Russian national identity in ‘The Peasant Lady’ may therefore yield no certain meaning. Nevertheless, the story does provide readers with food for thought about the relationship of language to identity, the disguises and stratagems that bilingualism might facilitate, the misreadings it might cause and, of course, the class divisions of which it may be indicative. It was soon to be followed, though, by a more serious reflection on the problem of language choice.

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   207

ROSLAVLEV Pushkin’s Roslavlev was written shortly after The Tales of Belkin, in 1831, and was published, in part, in 1836 in the journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary), which Pushkin himself had launched that year. Unlike the behaviour of high society in the contemporary city or the games that amorous young ladies might play in the provinces, the subject-matter of Roslavlev – the Russian response to Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 – was of the utmost seriousness. Subject-matter of this sort was not to be treated flippantly or ambiguously. Nor could there be any doubt that in this story Pushkin was engaging in a current debate about the nation’s attitudes, including its language attitudes. As explicit references at several points make clear, Pushkin’s story is a riposte to and a rewriting of a historical novel by Mikhail Zagoskin, Roslavlev, or the Russians in 1812 (Roslavlev, ili russkie v 1812 godu), published in 1831 (Grushkin 1941). Zagoskin was a staunch loyalist who expressed the view typical among conservative nationalists that the Russian nation was an organic community and that it was best that this community should be ruled by an autocrat (Crowe 1998: 904). Russian supporters of the regime, moreover, felt that they had fresh grounds for hostility towards the French, and towards Russians who embraced French culture, for in 1830 revolution against absolute monarchy had once again broken out in France. The narrator of Roslavlev is a woman who looks back to the time when, at the age of sixteen, she had entered society, in the winter of 1811, that is to say the year before Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Her brother Roslavlev, six years her senior, served at the College of Foreign Affairs in Moscow and was a social success there, ‘dancing and playing the fop’. He persuaded his sister to introduce him to a contemporary of hers, Princess Polina, with whom he had fallen in love. Polina, it turns out, was deeply affected by French culture, having read voraciously in her father’s library, which was stocked mainly with eighteenth-century French literature. She was familiar with everything from Montesquieu to the novels of Crébillon and knew Rousseau by heart. No books in Russian were to be found in her father’s library, except for the works of Aleksandr Sumarokov, which Polina had not opened; indeed she appeared never to have read anything in Russian and even claimed to find it difficult to read Russian print. Pushkin’s portrayal of Polina raises a question of major importance to his generation. How were Russians to regard the sympathetic engagement with French culture exemplified by this young aristocratic woman and, more generally, by the Russian literary elite, who were coming to see themselves as representing the nation? In an illuminating digression

208  d er e k o f f o r d on the latter question, Pushkin reflects on the immaturity of Russian literature, on the difficulty Russians consequently had in expressing themselves in their own language and on the habit of thinking in a foreign language that compensated for this difficulty: The fact of the matter is that we should be glad to read in Russian; but our literature would appear to be no older than Lomonosov and it is still extremely limited. It offers us some excellent poets, of course, but one cannot demand of all readers that they be lovers of poetry alone. In prose all we have is Karamzin’s History;[19] the first two or three novels appeared two or three years ago, whereas in France, England and Germany books which are each more wonderful than the preceding one come out one after the other. We do not even see any translations; or if we do see them, say what you like, I prefer the originals. [. . .] We are forced to draw everything, news and concepts, from foreign books; thus we even think in a foreign language (at least, all those do who think and follow the thoughts of the human race). [. . .] The eternal complaints of our writers about our neglect of Russian books are like the complaints of Russian market-women who are cross because we buy hats at Sichler’s[20] and aren’t satisfied with what is produced by the milliners of Kostroma. (Pushkin 1937–49: vol. 8, part 1, p. 150) Thus it is by no means unpatriotic, Pushkin tells us, to partake of the fruits of a more advanced culture (of which language and headdress are again emblematic). His Polina will not throw away those fruits when wartime Gallophobia takes hold. Instead, she boldly challenges chauvinism and deliberately speaks French in public places. However, Pushkin is repelled just as much by shallow cosmopolitans as by jingoistic patriots. Polina is distressed to think, at a social gathering attended by Mme de Staël during her visit to Russia in 1812, that the great French writer must have regarded the members of Muscovite society whom she encountered as ‘monkeys of enlightenment’ (p. 151). Pushkin makes clear his own distaste for both groups through his narrator’s account of the atmosphere of Russian high society on the eve of Napoleon’s invasion: Everybody was speaking about the impending war and, as far as I recall, quite flippantly. Imitation of the French tone of the age of Louis XV was all the rage. Love of the fatherland seemed like mere attachment to a formal rule [педантство]. The smart alecks of the time extolled Napoleon with fanatical servility and laughed

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   209 at our failures. Unfortunately those who defended our fatherland were rather simple-minded; they could be quite amusingly mocked and they had no influence. Their patriotism was confined to harsh condemnation of the use of French at social gatherings and the introduction of French words [into Russian], and to menacing outbursts against Blacksmiths’ Bridge[21] and so forth. Young people spoke about everything Russian with contempt or indifference and jokingly predicted that Russia would suffer the same fate as the Confederation of the Rhine.[22] (pp. 152–3) Superficial Francophilia, moreover, could quite easily turn into equally superficial patriotism. With the invasion in the summer of 1812, those patriots who deplored French cultural influence and the use of French gained the upper hand and the attitude towards francophonie and French habits in Moscow society changed sharply: Drawing-rooms were filled with patriots: this person would empty the French snuff out of his snuff-box and start sniffing Russian snuff; that one would burn a dozen French pamphlets and another would give up Château Lafite and take to sauerkraut soup. Everyone swore they would stop speaking French [. . .] (p. 153)23 Unlike Zagoskin’s treasonous character of the same name, who abandoned her Roslavlev for a Frenchman, Pushkin’s Polina, while openly francophone and respectful of the achievements of French culture, exhibits a loyalty to Russia which is of a broader and deeper kind than the ­ obility. chauvinism of the bulk of this fickle – indeed rather ignoble – n Her patriotism is inclusive. It embraces love of the Russian common people, for example, whom Mme de Staël had defended in response to a disparaging remark made about them by a noble member of high society. It also embraces women, of whose feelings male patriots seem to take no account. ‘Do women not have a fatherland too?’ Polina asks indignantly, or is it supposed that they were born ‘just [to be] whirled around at balls in the écossaise or to be made to embroider little dogs on canvas at home?’ (p. 153). Most importantly, Polina’s patriotism is based on the notion of self-sacrifice. Confined to her parents’ country estate while Napoleon advances on and occupies Moscow, Polina is persuaded by a French prisoner of war whom her father has agreed to billet that it is the Russians who have set fire to the capital on Napoleon’s entry into it and that this ‘terrible, barbaric greatness of soul’ will spell disaster for the French army and deliver Russia from danger. She takes great pride in this heroic act (p. 308).

210  d er e k o f f o r d Roslavlev, then, is a cautionary tale about the dangers of undiscriminating cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, and chauvinism, on the other. The respect for French culture that Polina exhibits and her francophonie are by no means inconsistent with true patriotism, which consists not in spurning foreign-language use and making other empty gestures in line with current fashion but in willingness to put one’s country above all else, including one’s own life. * * * The use of French is an important fact of Russian life in the hundred years before Pushkin’s birth and in his own lifetime. Once Pushkin turned to prose and began to reflect in that medium on historical and social subject-matter, he often alluded to this fact. The use of French by the upper stratum of Russian society may be symptomatic, of course, of the artificiality of that milieu, and the behaviour of teenage heroines brought up on French fiction certainly invites parody. Foreign-language use and cultural translation more generally may sometimes be frivolous, seeming no more serious than changing clothes or hats in conformity with fashion. And yet, pace the Gallophobes, appearances – in language use as in other things – may be misleading. French reading had introduced a certain refined sensibility and moral consciousness into Russia. The fact that the country that had once provided Russians with a cultural model had become a mortal enemy during the Napoleonic Wars should not have blinded Russians to the virtues of the model, as represented by the thinkers of the French Enlightenment and, in the Napoleonic age itself, by Mme de Staël. Most important of all, perhaps, assimilation of foreign languages and the foreign cultures they bore had been a crucial step in the creation of a culture that would eventually be conceived as authentically Russian. The task now – to which Pushkin made an incomparable contribution – was to create an indigenous literature which would enable Russians to develop the habit of thinking and expressing themselves not in French but in the vernacular.

NOTES  1. By Madeleine van Strien-Chardonneau, Margareta Östman and Ileana Mihaila respectively.   2. See Volume 1, Chapter 9, by Nina Dmitrieva.   3. I do not intend, in this volume on attitudes towards language use, to examine the extent of the influence of French on Pushkin’s literary Russian. The subject has in any case been much studied by Russian scholars (e.g. Vinogradov 1969: 136–9).

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   211 However, it is perhaps worth noting in passing that Pushkin seems in his prose fiction to make a conspicuous display of independence from foreign linguistic influence by using a wealth of native idiom and other features associated with the monolingual lower social strata. Take, for example, the words of a brewer’s wife to her small son in ‘The Stationmaster’, one of The Tales of Belkin: Эй, Ванька! Полно тебе с кошкою возиться. Проводи-ка барина на кладбище да укажи ему смотрителеву могилу (Pushkin 1937–49: vol. 8, part 1, p. 105) (Oi, Van’ka, you’ve been messing around with the cat for long enough. Be a dear and take the gentleman down to the graveyard and show him the stationmaster’s grave). Here the opening interjection, the pejorative diminutive form of the boy’s name, the use of полно in the sense ‘enough of’, the attachment of the attenuating particle -ка to the imperative verb, the use of да as a co-ordinating conjunction and the possessive adjectival form смотрителеву are all colloquial features. We repeatedly come across colloquial turns of phrase, such as ни дать ни взять (p. 22) (just the same) and того и гляди (pp. 192, 198, 199) (it looks as if). Syntactic features of colloquial speech include repetition of a verb to express the protracted nature of an action, for example Но он ехал, ехал, а Жадрина было не видать (p. 80; my use of bold) (He travelled and travelled, but [the village of] Zhadrino wasn’t to be seen), ellipsis produced by the omission of a verb, especially a verb of motion, for example А отколе ты? (p. 81) (Where’ve you come from?) and use of an interjectional predicate, for example Он хлоп, и вдавит муху в стену! (p. 72; my use of bold) (He went bang and squashed the fly into the wall!). There are contracted forms of personal pronouns, which are characteristic of demotic speech, for example Что те надо? (p. 80) (What do you want?). More or less proverbial sayings and colourful idioms abound, for example чин чина почитай (p. 98) (Give rank its due), что с возу упало, то пропало p. 103) (literally ‘What’s fallen off the cart is lost’, that is, ‘It’s no good crying over spilt milk’) and конь и о четырех ногах, да спотыкается (p. 312) (literally ‘a horse has four legs but it still might stumble’, that is, people make mistakes, even if they haven’t in the past). In Dubrovskii, Pushkin quotes extensively from the record of a lawsuit that had taken place in the Alexandrine age, presenting readers with the formulaic, syntactically complex and opaque legal language of the tsarist bureaucracy (1937–49: 167–71). This was another register, like peasant speech, that had been unaffected by the adoption of French for social purposes by the nobility.   4. ‘“My God!”, he said, “it seems a long time ago that Andrei Petrovich was still your age, and look what a fine young man he’s got now! Oh, time, time!”’   5. ‘With his hair cut in the latest fashion, dressed like a London dandy [. . .] he could express himself perfectly in French and wrote it too [. . .]’   6. ‘She knew Russian poorly, didn’t read our journals, and expressed herself with difficulty in her native language, so she wrote in French [. . .]’   7. ‘Having such a poor command of Russian and using it with such difficulty, have they not all been mangling it so sweetly, and has a foreign language not turned on their lips into a native one?’   8. See, for example, Chapter 5 in this volume, on Russian comedy.   9. ‘“It appears that monsieur definitely prefers waiting-maids” – “How can I help it madame? They are fresher.”’ I have taken this translation from Debreczeny (1983: 517). 10. ‘You write me four-page letters, my darling, more quickly than I can read them.’ 11. ‘A man without manners and morals or religion!’ 12. The epigraphs used in The Captain’s Daughter, for example, give the work a strongly

212  d er e k o f f o r d indigenous character. They include extracts from Russian songs (1937–49: vol. 8, part 1, pp. 286, 294, 307, 313, 321, 354), Russian proverbs (pp. 277, 327, 366) and quotations from the eighteenth-century Russian dramatists Denis Fonvizin, Iakov Kniazhnin and Aleksandr Sumarokov (pp. 279, 294, 299, 344, 360) and – at suitably martial junctures – from the epic poet Mikhail Kheraskov (pp. 334, 338). 13. A sarafan is a sleeveless dress with buttons at the front. 14. ‘you talk different, and you don’t call your dog like us.’ 15. Tout beau, Sbogar, ici (Steady boy, Sbogar, come here). Jean Sbogar was the name of a brigand in a novel written by Charles Nodier and published in 1818. 16. ‘Leave me alone Sir, are you mad?’ 17. ‘distinctiveness of character, originality (individuality)’. 18. As several other chapters in our two volumes make clear: see especially Chapter 10, by Xénia Borderioux, in Volume 1 and Chapters 5 (by Derek Offord), 9 (by Olga Vassilieva-Codognet) and 12 (by Victor Zhivov) in this volume. 19. Pushkin has in mind Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, twelve volumes of which appeared over the period 1818–29. 20. Pushkin is referring to the shop of a famous milliner in nineteenth-century St Petersburg. 21. The reference is to Kuznetskii most, a street in Moscow that was known at that time for its foreign shops, especially shops where ladies’ hats could be bought. 22. That is to say, German client states of the First French Empire after Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. 23. Tolstoi also describes this change of mood in War and Peace (especially in volume 3, part 2, chapters 6 and 17 of the novel: see Tolstoi 1928–58: vol. 11).

REFERENCES Bayley, J. (1971), Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Belinskii, V. G. (1953–9), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 13 vols, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Briggs, A. D. P. (1994), ‘Introduction’, in A. S. Pushkin, Povesti pokoinogo Ivana Petrovicha Belkina, London: Bristol Classical Press, pp. vii–xvii. Crowe, N. (1998), ‘Mikhail Nikolaevich Zagoskin 1789–1852’, in N. Cornwell (ed.), Reference Guide to Russian Literature, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, pp. 903–4. Debreczeny, P. (ed.) (1983), Alexander Pushkin: A Complete Prose Fiction, trans. and with an introduction by P. Debreczeny, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dostoevskii, F. M. (1972–90), ‘Pushkin’, in Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, Leningrad: Nauka, vol. 26, pp. 136–49. Grushkin, A. I. (1941), ‘Roslavlev’, at http://feb-web.ru/feb/pushkin/serial/v41/v41323-.htm (last accessed on 17 July 2014). Pushkin, A. S. (1937–49), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 16 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Rjéoutski, V., G. Argent and D. Offord (eds) (2014), European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language, Oxford: Peter Lang.

franco p h o nie in p u s hk in’s p r o s e f i c t i o n   213 Rjéoutski, V. and D. Offord (2013), ‘French in public education in eighteenth-century Russia: the case of the Cadet Corps’, at https://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/introduction/ french-public-education-eighteenth-century-russia-case-cadet-corps (last accessed on 30 July 2014). SSRLIa (i.e. Slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka v 17 tomakh) (1950–65), Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Tolstoi, L. N. (1928–58), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 90 vols, Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. Vinogradov, V. V. (1969), The History of the Russian Literary Language from the Seventeenth Century to the Nineteenth: A Condensed Adaptation into English, with an introduction by L. L. Thomas, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

c hapter 1 2

Love à la mode: Russian Words and French Sources Victor Zhivov

L

ove appeared in Russia quite late, somewhere around the end of the seventeenth century, and at first it had virtually no voice or words with which to express itself. I do not mean, of course, that up until then Russians had lived like wild animals and that there had been no love among them. They seem even to have managed somehow to speak about love, and the love-songs of folklore may partly reflect that capacity. However, folklore existed outside culture (or outside high culture, if you like), and there was no cultural tradition of amorous relationships or the words to go with them: the Russians had no troubadours, no Petrarch, not even a Boccaccio. When love did invade public space, in the Petrine age, the art of courtship and gallant dialogue was almost entirely lacking. The secretary of the Prussian Embassy in St Petersburg, Johann Vockerodt, wrote in the 1720s that women (he had in mind the upper social spheres) had grown fond of the new-found freedom during the reign of Peter and that a surfeit of this freedom was dangerous and undesirable ‘if their matrimonial union [was] to remain firm, for their passions are mostly ardent and are very rarely held in check by upbringing, so that when they fall in love their romantic adventures usually have a very rapid outcome’ (Maikov 1889: 202). L’heure du berger (literally, ‘the shepherd’s hour’, ‘the gloaming’, that is to say the auspicious hour for lovers) was but a moment in Russia, which may explain why this concept was not assimilated by the Russian lexicon of love. Love was not merely a feeling, it was also a skill, and Russians would have to learn it. The main teachers of love in Europe at the time that interests me here were the French. Translations from French were becoming teaching aids. The earliest and most important of these was a translation of Paul Tallement’s1 allegorical novel Journey to the Island of Love (Voyage de l’île d’Amour), which appeared in France in 1663 and

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was published in Vasilii Trediakovskii’s Russian translation in 1730. It is with this work that I shall begin. At the risk of somewhat oversimplifying the actual historical situation, we may say that Trediakovskii’s translation records the first phase in the formation of gallant language in Russia. The features of this phase stand out when set against later writings in which we can see a literary and linguistic tradition that has already developed. This later stage is reflected in Jean-François Dreux du Radier’s Dictionary of Love (Dictionnaire d’amour), which had first appeared in 1741 and which was revised by Aleksandr Khrapovitskii and published in a Russian version in 1768. Of course, the history of amorous vocabulary does not end with The Dictionary of Love. By the time of Konstantin Batiushkov and Aleksandr Pushkin it was undergoing further development, which was brought about both by selection from the diverse material we find in Khrapovitskii and by filling in the gaps which became apparent when the Russian Dictionary of Love was compared to its French model. I shall confine myself here, though, to a comparison of the texts by Trediakovskii and Khrapovitskii. The comparison vividly illustrates the effect of Europeanisation in the sphere with which I am concerned over the period of almost forty years that separates these two books.

T H E JO U RNE Y TO T H E ISLAND OF LO V E I shall begin with Tallemant and Trediakovskii. In France, The Journey to the Island of Love was quite a popular novel in the tradition of Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral romance Astrea (L’Astrée), but it was by no means central to the French literary process in the seventeenth century. In Russia, on the other hand, Tallemant’s novel had quite different significance. It was the first book about love to be printed there, the first novel in the Russian language and the first work in a tradition culminating in Nikolai Karamzin and Pushkin. Trediakovskii’s translation became a textbook for life, in terms of language as well as behaviour (Karlinsky 1963; Lotman 1985). It began to play a didactic role as – in Iurii Lotman’s words – ‘a manual for those who wanted to be in love’ (Lotman 1985: 228), a role it did not have in France. It was an ars amandi (an art of loving)2 but for the public sphere, rather than for the personal sphere, as had been the case with Ovid’s Art of Love (Ars amatoria). The novel provided an epistemological set of tools with which to analyse or define, experience and describe feelings and a yardstick for measurement of those feelings, thus showing what it was right and not right to experience and how one should act if one felt one thing or another. It described two

216  v icto r z h i vo v different types of love, love as passion and love as a game (love à la mode, coquetterie), and for each type it created models of emotions and ways of realising them in conduct. The book was hugely successful and sold out quickly even though the number of copies available was extremely large for the time. Evidently it was purchased first and foremost by noble society in the two capitals. As Trediakovskii wrote from Moscow to Johann Schumacher, the secretary of the Academy of Sciences, early in January 1731, Tout le monde de bon goût veut l’avoir avec rapidité (Pis’ma russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka 1980: 44).3 The Journey to the Island of Love taught people how to feel and at the same time how to speak. Of course, some sort of love vocabulary had existed before this, for instance in translated novels of knight-errantry, such as the story of Prince Bova or The Tale of Peter Golden Keys (Povest’ o Petre Zlatykh kliuchei) or in love lyrics of the time of Peter the Great (although this poetry, by Willem Mons and Egor Stoletov, was not widely circulated). However, only a few specific words, such as ‘love’ and ‘beauty’, were used in such works; the palette was poor, particularly when compared to the opulence offered by French literature from Voiture to Gresset. Trediakovskii strove to create a Russian equivalent of this opulence, which he needed in order to translate the gallant novel. Varying opinions have been expressed as to how successful he was. His Russian text is comprehensible and renders the sense of the French as a whole; in that respect, of course, his work is a success. Some of what Trediakovskii introduced entered the literary tradition and evidently the living language as well, and that too counts as a success. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that Trediakovskii, brought up on French purism, uses borrowings very sparingly, including borrowings that were evidently used by his contemporaries. Subsequent tradition eschewed much of what Trediakovskii had invented. However, that may have been due not to the poor linguistic taste that is often ascribed to Trediakovskii but to his later marginalisation and to the establishment of lexical variants which, although far from perfect in terms of their innate properties, were proposed by writers who enjoyed more success than Trediakovskii. Examples of Trediakovskii’s inventions include любовник (Trediakovskii 1730: 17, 33, 35–8 and so on) for amant (lover) (Tallemant 1788: 243, 251–4 and so on),4 милая (p. 32) for maîtresse (mistress) (p. 250), прикрасы (pp. 5, 6, 145) for attraits (attractions) (pp. 237, 238, 305), скуки (p. 32) for douleurs (sorrows) (p. 250), чувствительный (p. 40) for sensible (sensitive) (p. 254), любовные письма (p. 45) for billets doux (love-letters) (p. 256), разлука (p. 49) for absence (absence) (p. 258), вольность (p. 16) for liberté (freedom) (p. 242), слабость (pp. 16, 52) for langueur (languor) (pp. 243, 259) and so forth. In a whole number

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russian words and french sources   217

of instances, the equivalents found by Trediakovskii failed to take root in Russian literature, and in subsequent tradition the borrowing of a Russian equivalent that was not entirely clear and distinct proved preferable, for example: сходбища (pp. 44, 122) for rendez-vous (pp. 256, 295), свояки (p. 54) for rivaux (rivals) (p. 261), стати (pp. 5, 6, 145) for Graces (the Graces) (p. 237) and любовные потехи (p. 18) for galanterie (love-affair) (p. 243). In certain cases, Trediakovskii himself used borrowings, for example претенциа (p. 22) for prétention (claim) (p. 245), but in general he tended towards purism (Sorokin 1976: 47). The equivalent that Trediakovskii found for coquetterie (coquetry) (p. 285), глазолюбность (p. 103), is particularly striking. Likewise, Amour-coquet (Coquettish Love), who accompanies Tirsis during the second, ribald part of his voyage, is rendered as Купидон глазун (Gawper Cupid). Why exactly Trediakovskii created these words is not clear; he evidently invests the concept глазеть (to gawk) with a meaning which is not recorded in any other source.5 We may assume that a contrast is presumed between serious love as passion and love as a game of outward appearance. It is interesting that as he introduces this figure Trediakovskii writes: Вы изволите видеть, любезныи мои ЛИЦИДА, с описания моего что то есть ГЛАЗОЛЮБНОСТЬ, хотя и многия с неучтивои ненависти называют оную ЧЕСТНЫМ БЛЯДОВСТВОМ (p. 103).6 There is nothing that corresponds to this in the French original, where we find Vous connoissez bien aux marques que je vous en donne que c’étoit la Coquetterie (p. 285).7 It seems likely that Trediakovskii is speaking here not of French opponents of love à la mode, but of Russian ones who perceived the new amorous relationships as straightforward depravity.8 We also find in Trediakovskii’s translation something which is very important for the formation of the vocabulary of love, namely the secularisation of Slavonicisms. Words which had formerly belonged to the religious sphere and quite often had negative connotations in it took on a new meaning with positive erotic connotations (on this process, see Hüttl-Worth [Khiutl’-Vort] 1968: 10–12; Zhivov 1996: 497–509). It was through this process that words such as прелесть, прелестный, мечта (charm, charming, dream) entered the vocabulary of love. These words had previously denoted devilish delusion, that is to say, something unconditionally sinful which was altogether unconnected with joy and of which one ought to repent. These new meanings (or new connotations) emerge because the words in question are calques (arising, in particular, in the course of translation) of such French lexemes as charme, charmant, rêve (see Hüttl-Worth 1956: 144–5; Hüttl-Worth [Khiutl’-Vort] 1963: 145; 1968: 15; Lotman and Uspenskii 1975: 248–9, 296, 301–3, 307–8).

218  v icto r z h i vo v These specific words do not occur in Trediakovskii,9 but something of this repertoire does appear in his writings. The equivalence between страсть (passion) and Fr. passion is especially relevant here. We find this equivalence in several passages in The Journey: compare, for example, во своеи жаркои страсти (in his ardent passion) (p. 14) and dans sa passion (p. 241) or страсть (pp. 93, 95) and passion (pp. 281, 282). In Church Slavonic страсть meant, first, ‘suffering, torment’ (as in the expression страсти Христовы (Christ’s Passion)), and secondly, ‘a strong feeling, sinful as a rule’ (as in the expression избави мя or покрый мя от страстей (deliver me from my passions), which was quite common in prayers) (Sreznevskii 1893–1912: vol. 3, cols 542–3). Trediakovskii’s страсть is a transformation of the latter meaning, realised on the French model. The word is an important element in his vocabulary of love, so that he makes use of it even in cases where nothing in the French original corresponds to it or where something else corresponds to it. As an example of the former sort of case, compare Trediakovskii’s ах! душа моя рвется страстми без успеха (p. 52)10 with Mon âme demeure la proie De cent inutiles désirs (p. 260),11 or Мое сердце все было в страсти (p. 138)12 with J’avois le cœur fort amoureux (p. 302).13 The sense of the original is rendered very freely and this freedom is warranted by the versified nature of the text. Or take examples of the latter sort of case such as гарячая страсть (ardent passion) (p. 38) for tendre ardeur (tender ardour) (p. 254), страсть гаряча (ardent passion) (pp. 41, 52) for flamme (love, passion) (pp. 255, 260), гарячия моея страсти (my ardent passions) (p. 94) for tendresse (tenderness) (p. 281), без страсти (without passion) (p. 94) for sans tendresse (without tenderness) (p. 281), страсти не имеет (has no passion) (p. 95) for n’a point de desirs (has no desires) (p. 281). The last two examples, though, occur in verse, and in verse, as we have already seen, Trediakovskii often uses inexact correspondences for the sake of metre and rhyme. Страсть in the meaning in which Trediakovskii uses it became firmly established in the Russian vocabulary of love. The fate of another of Trediakovskii’s innovations was quite different. The word похоть (lust) is fairly often used in The Journey as an equivalent of Fr. désir (desire). This usage, we should assume, is linked to the etymology of the word похоть (from хотеть (to want)), but it requires the assignment of new meaning to the word, which traditionally had had only negative connotations. Its basic meaning was ‘carnal desire’, denoting a profoundly sinful condition requiring repentance (Sreznevskii 1893–1912: vol. 2, col. 1318); Sreznevskii also cites the meaning ‘желание’ (desire), it is true (vol. 2, col. 1318), but this meaning is rare and, as far as I can judge, it always denotes harmful, bad desire

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(as in John 8: 44, cited by Sreznevskii). Thus traditional похоть was still more disgusting than страсть. And yet for Trediakovskii it was not disgusting at all. I shall give some examples: Тамо все то что небо, воздух, земля, воды произвели лучшее людеи для породы. В чювствителнои похоти весело играет, и в руках любящего с любовью вздыхает.

(p. 72)14

The passage that corresponds to this in the original is as follows: Là tout ce que jamais le ciel, la terre & l’onde Formèrent à l’envi de plus beau dans le monde, A senti des desirs & de l’empressement, Et poussé des soupirs dans les bras d’un amant.

(p. 270)15

Nor are these the only examples; see also, for example: О ежели бы я там взнуздал мою похоть! (p. 45) for Si j’avois dans ce lieu su borner mes desirs! (p. 257);16 Я немог лучше мою доволствовать похоть (p. 109) for Je ne pouvois pas mieux contenter mon desir (p. 288);17 похоть возъимел я так наглую (p. 132) for les Désirs me pressèrent si fort (p. 300);18 Все наши в неи похоти во всем безконечны (p. 147) for L’on n’y trouve jamais de borne à des desirs (p. 306);19 Вся кипящая похоть (p. 86) for L’ardeur de son brûlant desir (p. 277).20 Equally notable is use of the word похоть when it does not correspond to a French word in the original. Thus in Trediakovskii we find the following: Одна любить нерада? То другу искать нада, Дабы непрестать когда в похоти любиться, И не позабыть того что в любви чинится.

(p. 104)21

This corresponds to the following in Tallemant: Hélas! il est si doux de s’y laisser charmer, Qu’alors qu’une Philis refuse d’être nôtre, Il faut en avoir une autre, De peur de cesser d’aimer.

(p. 286)22

220  v icto r z h i vo v Unlike страсть in the meaning passion, похоть in the meaning désir (with positive connotations) was not assimilated in Russian and it is not found in later authors.23 I think this is because of the shocking nature of this usage. Trediakovskii does not simply find an equivalent for the French word désir. The word желание, which was considerably more neutral in its connotations, could have served as an equivalent for it, and this solution was not out of the question for Trediakovskii. He says, for example, но на конец желание, которое она имела, ея премогло чиня еи самое малое насилство (p. 65) for mais les Desirs l’emportèrent à la fin avec un peu de violence (p. 266).24 And yet, he plainly prefers a different solution, one which strikes a blow at traditional cultural (religious) values. His lexical choice in this respect is entirely in keeping with his choice of language more generally. Tallemant’s book, as we know, is translated почти самым простым Руским словом, то есть каковым мы меж собои говорим.25 Trediakovskii has translated in this way because язык славенскои, у нас есть язык церковнои; а сия книга мирская (Trediakovskii 1730: preface, fol. 6 v.–7).26 He is writing a book СЛАДКИЯ ЛЮБВИ (OF SWEET LOVE) (preface, fol. 6 v.–7) and deals defiantly with tradition at all levels. Shock is part of Trediakovskii’s literary strategy, and he counts on there being scandal and instant success. This is a striking case of ‘success strategy’, in Aliona Viala’s terms (Viala 1985: 184–5; on this strategy of Trediakovskii’s, see Zhivov 2002: 565–7 for further detail). The language of his translation is designed to seduce and scandalise the reader. On this level, it accords with the nature of the description, with the frank sexuality (one might say elements of pornography) that Trediakovskii substitutes for the ‘delicate eroticism’, as Simon Karlinsky puts it (Karlinsky 1963: 230), of the French original.27 Tallemant had no desire to scandalise his readers. As Karlinsky writes, ‘Trediakovskii had to resort to outspoken physical descriptions that would have shocked Abbé Tallemant.’ Unlike Karlinsky, I do not think that Trediakovskii was compelled to eroticise Tallemant because of the lack of gallant love in Russia or, as Iurii Sorokin suggests, that he was trying ‘“to transfer” his readers into a sphere of ideas that were more familiar to them’ (Sorokin 1976: 48). After all, he managed quite comfortably without such indecencies in translations of other verses from The Journey. This was a conscious strategy to shock and this same strategy may have had an effect on the creation of the vocabulary of love. I might add, incidentally, that the strategy of shocking and the crude eroticisation of the narrative were quite incompatible with an attempt of the sort that Lotman believes Trediakovskii made to recreate the French salon in Russia (Lotman 1985: 226–7). This is a claim for which, in my view, Lotman has no grounds.

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T H E DICTIONAR Y OF LO V E Almost forty years went by and in that time the basis of the Russian vocabulary of love was created. This statement, of course, requires a certain amount of decoding. What we are really able to observe is the emergence of a literary tradition, the appearance of literary texts on subjects to do with love (and more infrequently on erotic subjects) in which individual lexical resources became accepted and were worked through. It is not easy to say to what extent these same resources were used in the colloquial language (the language of the secular elite). On the whole, we should probably assume that they were indeed used in the colloquial language, since the same expressions are found in texts of diverse genres, but in the case of specific words it is quite often impossible to be sure. It also remains somewhat unclear to what extent the culture of amorous relationships, courting and flirtation which we have designated love à la mode became established in Russian society. It is plausible that in some (elite) sectors of society this culture really did exist and that comedies of the 1750s and 1760s, while they may not have depicted real instances, nevertheless played up situations that were not entirely unknown in real life. French polite culture was assimilated to a degree, and Russian equivalents were found for its verbal component. Khrapovitskii’s reworking of Dreux du Radier’s Dictionary of Love enables us to judge to some extent how far this process had moved on by the end of the 1760s.28 In some respects The Dictionary of Love is both a more complex and a more interesting source of information about gallant culture and gallant language in Russia than Trediakovskii’s Journey to the Island of Love, because it is a reworking of Dreux du Radier’s book rather than a translation of it (as is sometimes claimed: see Sazonova 1999: 132–3; Stepanov 2010: 371). At the same time, the Dictionary is written within the framework ‘of the Ovidian parodic tradition’, as Stéphanie Loubère defines it, and it can be seen as an example ‘of the philosophical turn which amorous didacticism may take at this period’ (Loubère 2007: 255). The same scholar, in another work, describes the Dictionary thus: ‘An alphabetical art of loving, a moral satire by means of articles or a glossary of a form of gallantry that has reached perfection; it reveals on every page treasures of wit and insight that enable us to form a better understanding of the erotic literature of its time’ (Loubère 2006: 338). It is debatable whether all that many treasures can be found in Dreux du Radier, but the genre itself makes this book a special source for the history of gallant France, and its Russian reworking is similarly important for the history of Russian eros. It is the fruit of ironic reflection rather than polite practice, a caricature of a pupil who has mastered this art rather than a textbook of love.29

222  v icto r z h i vo v However, if one is to create a caricature the thing caricatured must be available. This object undoubtedly did exist among the French: libertinage was an important phenomenon in French life. Among the Russians, on the other hand, the phenomenon did not become so highly developed, as we shall see, and so it fell to Khrapovitskii not only to notice similarities but also to design analogues. All the same, he constructs these analogues from Russian material, using material both from Russian life and from Russian literature. The fact that the source is reworked rather than translated has to do, we must assume, with its genre.30 Reworking affects all parts of the dictionary. This reworking begins with the word-list. Khrapovitskii leaves more than half the entries in Dreux’s dictionary without any equivalent and adds over twenty new entries which have no direct equivalent in the French model. No deliberate selectivity can be detected in all these abridgements and additions. There is no rational explanation, for example, why Khrapovitskii cites обожать (to adore) as corresponding to adorer but ignores adorateur, even though обожатель (admirer) occurs repeatedly in the text itself. Khrapovitskii plainly feels entitled to include whatever he wants to write about and to omit whatever he feels he would prefer not to write about, and the additional articles are evidently free variations on a theme rather than means of filling in important gaps. For instance, the entries восхищение (rapture) or целомудрие (chastity), which are added by Khrapovitskii, are in no way different in their manner of execution from the entries taken from Dreux. Nevertheless, some omissions do not seem to be coincidental but may be due to the absence of corresponding phenomena in the Russian context or in the Russian stock of concepts. We could include here the following: • abbé, for the Russians had no abbots, and fathers superior and archimandrites had no contact with games of love; • fripon (rogue): the omission is due not to the absence of rogues in Russia, but to the fact that Dreux had in mind particular cunning ploys of petits-maîtres (dandies), who were not widespread in Russia at the time when the dictionary was compiled; • galanterie (gallantry): a special science of love, courting, had not emerged as a distinct concept in Russia; • prude: this psychological type, or a person who behaved in such a way, had no name either among the Russians and may not even have been represented in society; moreover, when he did emerge, in the age of Pushkin, his behaviour had to be denoted with a borrowed word, прюдство (prudery) (see Slovar’ iazyka Pushkina 2000: vol. 3, p. 913).

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Thus even the selection of entries provides material that helps us to characterise Russian gallant culture. Love, even gallant love (or especially gallant love, in that this is a type of behaviour that stands out in socially marked elite society), recurs in a set social context. Despite all the Russian Francophilia of the mid-­eighteenth century, the French and Russian contexts remained essentially dissimilar, and when Dreux’s Dictionary of Love was being reworked by Khrapovitskii these dissimilarities constantly came to light and, as it were, affected the material adaptation of the text. The entry Аргус (Argus), for instance, is basically an abridgement of an analogous entry in Dreux’s dictionary (1741: 38–40). A few phrases have been removed and some verses have not been translated, especially some couplets from Marivaux’s School for Mothers (L’Ecole des mères), where it is said that mothers naively hope to shelter their daughters from love by appointing Argus, at the sight of whom love ought to vanish, and that mothers of this sort ought to be sent to school.31 In Khrapovitskii the mothers disappear and nursemaids appear instead: Вместо Аргусов бывают и у нас ворчливые мамы; но у таких старушек не сто глаз, и их обмануть очень не мудрено (1768: 8).32 The nursemaid is a figure for whom it is possible to find certain European analogues (for example, Spanish dueñas), but not in gallant France in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. This is plainly a case, in Khrapovitskii, of adaptation to local ways. In other cases, the dissimilarities of realia in France and Russia prompt Khrapovitskii to change the nature of the details he mentions or to modify the way he describes something. Thus in the entry Любовное объявление (Declaration of Love), for instance, we find the following: Хотя у всякаго одинакия намерения, при открытии своей страсти притворной или истинной; однако военной, штатской и придворной, весьма различно изъясняются (1768: 37).33 The passage that corresponds to this in Dreux’s entry Declaration d’Amour is as follows: Il y en a de plusieurs sortes; car un Financier ne déclare pas sa passion comme un Abbé, ni celui-ci comme un Petit-Maître (1741: 87–8).34 Financiers, clergymen and dandies, if indeed they existed in Russian life, did not constitute distinct social groups, so that Khrapovitskii had to find substitutes for them, and he uses the simplest classification of the service class (the nobility) according to type of service rendered (that is, according to those types of service provided for in the Table of Ranks introduced by Peter the Great). Similarly, Khrapovitskii replaces the Tuileries, a very concrete locus of love in Paris (1741: 219–22), with гульбища (promenades) (1768: 20), at the same time discarding everything that Dreux writes about the specific skill of nos Françoises (our French ladies) in amorous contests.35

224  v icto r z h i vo v Dreux du Radier fully appreciates that the art of love he describes is a French achievement (on the belief among seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury French authors that galanterie was an asset of French culture, see Viala (2008: 35–6)). In the entry Thuileries to which I have just referred he writes: Il est vrai que notre nation accoutumée à ces combats, repousse assez heureusement les coups qui y sont portés; mais il est presque impossible qu’un Etranger qui s’y trouve exposé, n’y soit pas vaincu. Nos Françoises ont sur eux l’avantage que les Espagnols ont eu sur les peuples de l’Amerique. (1741: 220–1)36 Khrapovitskii is fully aware of the dependence of Russian pupils on their French teachers and describes this dependence ironically. In the entry Любить (To Love) which corresponds to Aimer in the French original, he says: Все видно, час от часу переменяется, но не думаю, чтоб мы оставили теперешней обычай, он самой сущей Французской (1768: 36–7).37 This corresponds to the following in Dreux: Tout change, mais notre maniere est si commode, que je crois qu’on la conservera (1741: 23).38 In the entry on Мода (Fashion) Khrapovitskii writes: Родилась во Франции; тело, сердце и разум ей подвластны: ныне думают, говорят, пишут, одеваются, ходят, одним словом: во всем поступают по моде. Безпредельная ее власть простирается и над любовью (1768: 40).39 The words about the power of fashion convey Dreux’s statements, but as to the French origin of fashion, that is Khrapovitskii’s interpolation, which points to the source of the manners the Russian author is depicting.40 Comparison of Khrapovitskii’s Dictionary with Trediakovskii’s Journey to the Island of Love shows how substantially the lexicon of love had been filled out over the four decades that had elapsed since the publication of the latter. Thus such important words as прелесть and прелестный, which were absent in Trediakovskii (although charme is found in Tallemant), are completely normal in Khrapovitskii and are used not merely as loan translations but occur quite freely in the author’s text as well. In the entry Грации (The Graces), for example, we find Все прелести в глазах сияют! (1768: 20),41 which corresponds to Que de charmes! Que d’appas! (1741: 137).42 Or again, in the entry Заразы (Allurements): красы, прелести (attractions, charms) (1768: 28), which corresponds to les Appas, les charmes, les attraits (physical charms, charms, attractions) in Dreux (1741: 36). Khrapovitskii also has an entry Прелести (Charms), which corresponds to Attraits (Attractions) in Dreux. In Khrapovitskii we read: Когда уже заразы и красота

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употреблены в росход, то чтоб не повторять теже слова, приходят на ум прелести (1768: 58).43 This corresponds to the following in Dreux: Attraits, quand on s’est servi d’appas, & de charmes, pour diversifier on emploie attrait (1741: 41–2, Dreux’s emphasis).44 Thus Khrapovitskii reconstructs a French series of synonyms. Прелесть and прелестный may be used without any French correspondence, as in the entry Вручить (To Entrust), where we find: Я вам вручаю сердце пронзенное вашими прелестьми (1768: 16).45 In Dreux, in the entry Offrir (To Offer), this sentence takes the following form: Je vous offre un cœur penetré de l’Amour le plus vif (1741: 186).46 Likewise in the entry Искренность (Sincerity), which has no equivalent in Dreux, we find the following: Но часто друг прелестной особы обращается в ея любовника (1768: 30).47 More examples could be provided. Khrapovitskii constantly uses the combination прелестный пол (the charming sex) (1768: 7, 14, 15, 16, 21, 24, 49, 67); this may correspond to Belle, les Dames (Beautiful Woman, Ladies) (1741: 27, 95) in Dreux or it may not correspond to anything (Dreux may use the expression le beau Sexe (the fair sex), for example 1741: 119). Khrapovitskii makes just as much use of the words обожать (to adore) for Fr. adorer and обожатель (admirer) for various French equivalents or indeed when there is no equivalent. The following cases may be seen as early examples in the history of these words in Russia (see Smith 2006: 155–8). The entry Обожать, for instance, begins with the phrase: Священное слово, которое с некоторого времени вошло и в любовные речи (1768: 49);48 compare Dreux’s entry Adorer: ‘Ce terme sacré est passé en Amour’ (1741: 13).49 Обожатель may correspond to amant (lover), as for example in the entry Кокетствовать (To Flirt): водить за собою толпу обожателей (1768: 32);50 in Dreux we have de traîner à sa suite une foule d’Amans (1741: 83). The same equivalence occurs in the entry Купидон (Cupid) (1768: 35); compare Cupidon (1741: 86). The word may also appear without this equivalence (1768: 14, 19, 20–2, 48, 50, 56, 61, 74). Further examples of this sort could be provided, for instance трогать (to touch), тронуты (touched) (1768: 17, 34, 64; once as an equivalent of frapés; трогать as an equivalent of toucher), пленять (to captivate) and плен (captivity) (1768: 19, 22, 26, 28, 52, 55).

TREDIA K O V S K II AND KH RAPO VITS K II CO M PARED Naturally a number of words that were introduced into the Russian lexicon of love by Trediakovskii were kept in use by Khrapovitskii.

226  v icto r z h i vo v This is the case, for example, with the word страсть (passion) as an ­equivalent for Fr. passion, as in the entry Красноречие (Eloquence): во всех сильных страстях не можно без замешательства изъясняться (1768: 33);51 compare Dreux’s entry on Eloquence: Toutes les grandes passions sont muettes (1741: 102).52 Страсть, of course, is also used without French equivalents, for the word had been fully integrated into Russian gallant discourse by Khrapovitskii’s time (see 1768: 13, 15, 19, 33, 36, 37, 50, 52, 55, 59, 67 for examples). In the same way the word вольность (freedom), which had appeared in Trediakovskii in the meaning liberté, stands Khrapovitskii in good stead as well. The entry Вольность appears in Khrapovitskii’s Dictionary (1768: 14) as an equivalent of Dreux’s entry Liberté (1741: 166). In the entry Жертвовать (To Sacrifice) the phrase Жертвовать, сердцем или вольностью (1768: 26)53 corresponds to Je vous sacrifie mon cœur, ma liberté (1741: 207).54 One could supply further examples of this sort. Of course, not all Trediakovskii’s innovations are taken up by Khrapovitskii. As we have said, Trediakovskii consciously shocks, but Khrapovitskii has no such aim. Consequently, похоть, for instance, is of no use to Khrapovitskii as an equivalent for désir. He uses the neutral желание in this function (as Trediakovskii also does occasionally), as in his entry Желание (1768: 25), which corresponds to Dreux’s Desir (1741: 93), and also in his entry Любовь: желание быть взаимно любимым (1768: 38),55 which corresponds to un desir d’être aimé de ce qu’on aime (1741: 30)56 in Dreux. Again, сладостные желания (sweet desires) (1768: 70) in Khrapovitskii’s entry Ум (Mind) corresponds to Dreux’s agréables desirs (pleasant desires) (1741: 199) and so on.57 Although we may assume that Khrapovitskii’s Dictionary played some part in the creation of the Russian discourse of love, Khrapovitskii – unlike Trediakovskii – did not set out to cure Russian love of its dumbness. He did not create a tradition that ran counter to the norms that already existed; rather he laboured within the framework of the usage which had come into being by his time and which had been consolidated in songs and novels, tragedies and comedies, elegies, eclogues and epistolary poems. He does not invent прелесть as an equivalent of Fr. charme, for example, but takes what had repeatedly been tried and tested in the tradition created after the appearance of Trediakovskii’s Journey to the Island of Love (on this tradition see Smith (2006: 138–40); the adjective прелестный is already found in Antiokh Kantemir (Smith 2006: 140)). The same goes for the bulk of the vocabulary of love that Khrapovitskii uses. This reliance on literary tradition finds explicit expression in a number of passages in the Dictionary. Thus in the entry Вздыхание (Sighing), for instance, Khrapovitskii writes: Чтож

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касается до любовных писем и стихов, то они необходимо должны быть наполнены вздыханием, терзанием и прочими на то похожими словами. Ссылаюсь на все елегии, что и они не без вздохов (1768: 13).58 There is nothing in Dreux that corresponds to this passage, and one suspects that Khrapovitskii has in mind Russian elegies which had just come into fashion at the end of the 1750s (see Gukovskii 1927: 48–102; see also Kroneberg 1972) and which made a substantial contribution to the cultivation of the language of amorous feelings.59 In two cases Khrapovitskii speaks about novels which give rise to words and behavioural skills. In the entry Верность (Faithfulness), it is said of an admirer: Он тогда еще становится пред нею на колени, ахает, воздыхает, страстно произносит вытверженные из романов слова (1768: 11).60 Again, in the entry Питаться воздухом (To Live on Air) the unlucky suitor is described in the following words: Также и такой вздыхает понапрасну, которой получил все науки и знание от прилежного чтения Романов, и затмивши весь смысл страстною пустотою, делается смешным любовником (1768: 54).61 In neither case is anything similar to be found in Dreux, so that the novels in question are Russian novels (that is to say, novels published in Russia; by the end of the 1760s there were already several translated novels and occasional original ones: see Sipovskii (1909–10: vol. 1, pp. 42–3)). The essential point is that in all these cases literature is life’s instructor, teaching life how to express itself in words, and that literature has more conspicuously assumed this role in Russia than in France, where gallant culture comes from the palace and the salon to no less an extent than from books.62 The expansion of the vocabulary of love that we see in Khrapovitskii by comparison with what we see in Trediakovskii is linked to a change in the ways in which Russian equivalents for French words were created. Purism is not altogether alien to Khrapovitskii and his lexicon is not at all reminiscent of the vocabulary of the dandies found in the comedies of Sumarokov and Fonvizin, which is full of French loans. However, his purism is moderate and he not infrequently prefers loans to Trediakovskii’s awkward neologisms. It is hard to define the extent to which this approach is affected by the influence of the colloquial language of fashionable society in mid-eighteenth-century Russia, because our information about that language comes primarily from literature, which has some autonomy, and it is from literature, as we have seen, that Khrapovitskii takes his bearings. Be that as it may, no глазолюбности (coquetry) is to be found in Khrapovitskii, the French entry Coquetterie (1741: 83–4) finds its equivalent in his Кокетствовать (1768: 32) and, although the entry Coquette is left without translation, the word кокетка

228  v icto r z h i vo v itself does occur in the Dictionary (1768: 18–19, 50). Trediakovskii, we recall, translated Graces as стати; Khrapovitskii entitles Dreux’s entry Graces (1741: 136) Грации (1768: 20). We might add that Khrapovitskii translates Mode (1741: 175) as Мода (1768: 40–1) and is at ease using this word in other instances as well (pp. 63–4). Khrapovitskii renders Negligé (1741: 181) as Неглиже (1768: 43–4), explaining that this is a French word; however, in 1768 the word was not a complete novelty (see Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XVIII veka 1984–2011: vol. 14, p. 154). Testea-teste (1741: 218) is rendered as Тет-а-тет (1768: 67), and although the entry Rendez-vous (1741: 201) is left without translation in the entry Тет-а-тет just mentioned, readers are told как сделать Рандеву, то есть, назначить свиданье, и позволить Тет-а-Тет (1768: 67).63 There is no doubt that the use of loans from French was an important way of stocking the Russian vocabulary of love for many decades, so that in this respect Khrapovitskii appears basically to have been taking a course that was quite clearly recognised by the late 1760s.

LAC U NAE IN T H E R U SSIAN LE X ICON OF G ALLANTRY As I have already said, Khrapovitskii’s undertaking by no means marked the completion of Russian writers’ work on the formation of the vocabulary of Russian love. On the contrary, it was only an intermediate stage. We should bear in mind in this connection that Russians were working to a French model. This model operated in several ways. Russian ‘lovers’ imitated French amants, assimilated their manners and way of behaving, and needed suitable words to convey French concepts. Many of them spoke French too, and Russian – when it was used by such Russian francophones – was full of loans and calques from French. The writers who were creating a gallant literature quite often reworked French texts and, on a verbal level, were doing the same thing, in the same French manner, that ‘lovers’ did in real life. Language in this sphere found itself directly dependent on culture. Here too it needs to be borne in mind that for all the progress that Russian society did make in matters of gallantry, it never made French galanterie in its entirety all its own. Perhaps it did not have enough time to do this: I would define the period of assimilation of French galanterie as lasting roughly a century, from 1730 to 1830; in the mid-nineteenth century gallant manners began to go out of fashion. Or perhaps Russians did not have the right mentality. At any rate, the French homme galant remained underdeveloped on Russian soil. All these factors had an effect on the characteristics of the Russian lexicon of

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gallantry. If we compare it with the French lexicon, and if, in particular, we compare Dreux’s dictionary with Khrapovitskii’s, then we discover interesting lacunae in Russian, some of which would never actually come to be filled. In such cases, it would seem, lacunae in language correspond – not always directly, perhaps – to lacunae in life itself. To conclude this chapter, I shall examine lacunae of this sort in Khrapovitskii. Perhaps the main lacuna is a concept which is actually central in the sphere of culture we are examining, galanterie. This concept in fact describes the whole field of amorous play, refined erotic or pseudo-erotic relationships and the arts and literature that bear on them, for which la France galante was renowned (see Viala 2008). These French achievements spread from Paris throughout Europe, serving as the foundation for French fashion, but this fashion affected different places in Europe to different degrees. The incompleteness of the Russian realisation of French fashion is evident from the fact that for Dreux’s entry Galanterie (1741: 134–5) Khrapovitskii finds no overall equivalent,64 while for Galant (1741: 132–3) he gives Волокита (Womaniser) as an equivalent (1768: 14–15).65 The entries in Dreux and Khrapovitskii coincide only up to a point. Dreux says that a Galant is a person who has mastered the art (or science) of fashionable love (on love as a science in Dreux, see Loubère 2006: 341), while Khrapovitskii explains to the reader what the skill that the Волокита possesses consists in: Galant. Mot qui emporte pour l’ordinaire la signification d’Amant favorisé, se dit des Amans dressés au manège de Cythere, qui n’ignorent rien dans les termes, & sçavent les employer toujours à propos.66 Волокита показывает себя всегда страстным; хотя того нимало не чувствует. Он не допустит красавицу ни ступить, ни слова сказать, чтоб не осыпать ее с головы до ног лестными похвалами. Удивляется ленточке хорошо завязанной, волосам к лицу убранным, и наконец и булавке со вкусом пришпиленной. Знает все любовные наречия, умеет их к стати употреблять; и у него уже наперед расписано, где ему смущаться, вздыхать, смеяться, а в нужде и плакать.67

Plainly there was no school of Cythera in St Petersburg and so the art of love was not an entirely clear concept. All the expressions in Dreux which are used to signify this concept are either rendered by Khrapovitskii with difficulty or not rendered at all. For example, material from Dreux’s entry Interest (1741: 156–8) is used in the entry Достоинства (Merits) (1768: 22), but Khrapovitskii finds no e­ quivalent

230  v icto r z h i vo v for the phrase les fleurs les plus délicates de la Rhetorique Galante.68 Dreux writes in the entry Fierté (Pride) about un grand Docteur en langue galante (1741: 125),69 but Khrapovitskii does not reproduce this reference in his entry Гордость (Pride) (1768: 19). In the entry Beau (The Beau) Dreux mentions un Galant de profession (1741: 49),70 but when he reworks this entry under the headword Красавец (The Handsome Man) Khrapovitskii is silent about this sort of person (1768: 32–3).71 In Dreux’s entry Inquietude (Anxiety) we read: Il est pourtant vrai que dans l’empire de la pure galanterie, les sujets ne sont jamais sans quelque inquiétude (1741: 155; Dreux’s emphasis).72 In his entry Безпокойство (Anxiety) Khrapovitskii tries to construct some sort of equivalent for this French empire, though not with much success: Но и в истину в любовном ремесле бывает довольно заботы (1768: 9).73 Nor does Волокита seem a good equivalent for Galant. Khrapovitskii can, of course, write about Jupiter as славном волоките (a renowned womaniser) (1768: 8; in Dreux Jupiter gets by without being described in this way (1741: 38)), but the word retains a pejorative tinge (see the set of examples in Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XVIII veka 1984–2011: vol. 4, p. 42). Another interesting lacuna is petit-maître. This lacuna is all the more curious for the fact that the word петиметр did undoubtedly exist in Russian by the 1760s. Elagin’s satirical portrayal of the dandy dates from 1753, and it is hard to believe that Khrapovitskii was unaware of the polemic it had sparked (see Poėty XVIII veka 1972: vol. 2, pp. 372–87). On one occasion Khrapovitskii seems to have rendered the word as вертопрах; in the entry Любить (To Love) he writes: Возможно ли несколько степенным гражданам, перемудрить в ветренности славных в свете вертопрахов? (1768: 37).74 This evidently relates to one of the characters in Dreux’s entry Aimer (To Love), Cleon, who is un petit Maître (1741: 24). This equivalence is familiar in eighteenth-century Russian literature (see Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XVIII veka 1984–2011: vol. 3, p. 54), but it cannot be considered more than partial, because of the stylistic properties of the Russian word, which is demotic and disparaging according to the definition in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy (Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi 1789–94: vol. 1, col. 638); French petitsmaîtres were not empty-headed people. In other cases, Khrapovitskii tries not to mention this typical figure in French gallant culture. Thus in Dreux’s entry Indiscret (The Tell-Tale) (1741: 150–3) there is talk of ces Petits-Maîtres, par exemple, qui sont dans leurs Amours,75 who cannot help bragging about their amorous successes and who resemble Alexander the Great dans ses conquêtes (in his conquests). In Khrapovitskii they are simply любовники (lovers), of whom Многие в своих любовных подвигах подражают Александру Македонскому (1768: 46).76 In his

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entry Письма (Letters) Khrapovitskii speaks about the fact that многие хвастают письмами полученными от женщин, за тем, что всякому хочется прослыть щастливцом; часто же в недостатке клепают и на таких красавиц, кои о них и не ведают (1768: 53).77 When we open Dreux’s Dictionary, we discover that the ‘many’ (многие) in this entry correspond to the dandy: Quelquefois un Petit-Maître laisse échaper devant ses Amis les Lettres d’une Femme que peut-être il ne connoit que de nom: Il veut paroître heureux (1741: 165).78 Omissions of this sort might be most naturally explained by the fact that there were no dandies in Russia, that is to say this particular sociocultural role did not exist (on this socio-cultural role in France, see Viala 2008: 462–3). This explanation would appear not to chime with the polemic about dandies that I have already mentioned, the satires on them in Nikolai Novikov’s journal Zhivopisets (The Painter) and so forth. I suspect that the answer to this riddle lies in the fact that dandies were a purely literary phenomenon. That is to say, they existed exclusively in literature and this description was applied to living people not because they played the socio-cultural role being discussed and were recognised as playing it but because satire transformed reality, as it typically does. We have no reason to suppose that Ivan Shuvalov, at whom Elagin’s satire was aimed, identified himself with French dandies, and there seems to have been no other crowd of dandies around him. In this connection various historical and cultural constructions attached to the concept of ‘dandy culture’ in Russia are in need of some revision. The question ‘So is he not a parody?’ is pertinent here.79 * * * Thus we have seen that the Russian lexicon of love began to be formed in the first decades of the eighteenth century in the context of the high society culture that was developing in Russia at that time. France was then the legislator in the art of love, and translations from French are therefore an important source in that process. This can clearly be seen in Trediakovskii’s translation of Paul Tallemant’s Journey to the Island of Love. This text shows what aims the translator had and how he rendered the French vocabulary that had been devised. Examination of Khrapovitskii’s Dictionary of Love shows how much ground was covered, from both the historico-cultural point of view and the linguistic point of view, during the forty years that separated Khrapovitskii’s work from Trediakovskii’s Journey to the Island of Love, how a literary tradition from which Khrapovitskii could take his bearings had arisen and how authors’ aims had changed (they had renounced purist radicalism and the desire to shock). At the same time, analysis of Khrapovitskii’s

232  v icto r z h i vo v relatively late work makes it clear that French gallant culture had only been partly assimilated in Russia, and consequently the vocabulary of love too remained incomplete and fragmentary by comparison with the equivalent vocabulary of French.

NOTES   1. Editors’ note: known as Paul Tallemant, and we shall hereafter use this form of the name.  2. See Lidiia Sazonova’s treatment of Trediakovskii’s translation as an ars amandi (1999); see also Sazonova (2012: 212–17).   3. ‘Everybody who has good taste wants to get hold of it quickly.’   4. Here and henceforth in references to the Russian translation of Ezda v ostrov liubvi I indicate only pages in the edition of 1730 (Trediakovskii 1730). In references to the French original, pages are given according to the edition of 1788 (Tallemant 1788).   5. Compare the definition in the Dictionary by Dal’: глазничать пск. подсматривать из любопытства, соглядать. Глазун м. глазунья ж. ротозей, праздный зевака, кто шатаясь глазеет; кто нескромно вы(под)сматривает: / у кого глаза на выкате (‘glaznichat’’ (Pskov region) to eye up out of curiosity, spy on. ‘Glazun’ [Dal’ gives the masculine and feminine forms of the word] a gaper, idle person who loafs about gawping; someone who stares indiscreetly; someone with bulging eyes) (Dal’ [1880–2] 1978: vol. 1, p. 354). The neologism may not have been fitting for voyeurism, but voyeurism in love à la mode at that time did not stand out as a distinct erotic practice and did not need to be named.  6. ‘You will kindly see from my description, my dear LITSIDA, that this is COQUETRY, although many people rudely call it DOWNRIGHT WHOREDOM.’   7. ‘You know very well from what I have described to you that this was Coquetry.’   8. See the conversation of three noblemen, which is very informative in this respect, about the amorous relations of their age in The Tale of the Gentleman Alexander (Povest’ o kavalere Aleksandre); although the noblemen bear foreign names they undoubtedly speak about what was happening in Russia as it was being Europeanised. See the retort of Baron Stark: И ты, господин Форьяр, правду говориш, что хорошие жены – бляди, понеже их тонцованием и прелстивая политика, особливо ж которые на все ответы не токмо аммуры содевают, но и нам дают резвую бодрость и смелость милости попросить. Да и не можно красной жене блядью не быть, понеже множество милости просят, пред нею и за нею ходит (And you, Mr Føroyar, are right to say that attractive women are whores because of their dancing and seductiveness, especially those who at every opportunity not only conduct affairs but make us so frisky and bold as to ask for their favours. In fact a beautiful woman can’t help being a whore, because a lot of men are begging for her favours and parading before her and courting her) (Moiseeva 1965: 279). The tale was written, I think, after the appearance of Trediakovskii’s translation but it reflects those oral discursive practices that were characteristic of the post-Petrine period as a whole.   9. The word мечта (dream) does occur in Trediakovskii, but it corresponds to phantôme (apparition) rather than rêve: see its occurrence in палаты Ревнивости (the halls of Jealousy): ПРИВИДEНИЕ всегда себе само чинит нещастие, понеже оно

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родилося от мечты суетные для своего мучения (p. 56), which corresponds to the following in Dreux: les Visions sont toujours leur malheur elles-mêmes, parce qu’elles se forment des phantômes vains pour se tourmenter (Visions are always self-destructive, because they are born out of vain apparitions to torment themselves) (p. 262). Мечта is thus used here in its traditional meaning of something impure (Smith 2006: 55–6). 10. ‘Oh! My soul is bursting with unrequited passions.’ 11. ‘My soul is prey to a hundred vain desires.’ 12. ‘My heart was all in passion.’ 13. ‘My heart was very much in love.’ 14. ‘There are all the best things there that heaven, air, earth and water have made for the human race. In tender desire everything merrily plays and in the arms of a lover sighs with love.’ 15. ‘Everything that heaven, the earth and the waves have ever made that was best in the world has felt desires and eagerness and has heaved sighs in the arms of a lover.’ 16. ‘If I had been able to set a limit on my desires!’ 17. ‘I could not satisfy my desire any better.’ 18. ‘Desires so beset me.’ 19. ‘There are no limits to one’s desires.’ 20. ‘The ardour of his burning desire.’ 21. ‘A woman is not willing to love? Then we must seek another, so as not to stop when we desire to be loved, and not to forget what happens when one is in love.’ 22. ‘Alas! It is so sweet to succumb to charms that when one Phyllis refuses to be ours we must have another, for fear of ceasing to love.’ 23. Lomonosov’s first poem is an exception. In a translation which he made in 1738–9 of Fénelon’s ode ‘Mountains from which daring [. . .]’ (‘Montagnes de qui l’audace’), Lomonosov wrote: О мои коль могут кусты / Хладны, тихи, дать, и густы / Похоти предел моей (Oh how my bushes, cool, tranquil and dense, can set a limit to my desire) (Lomonosov 1950–9: vol. 1, p. 11). This corresponds to Fénelon’s Bornent mieux tous mes désirs (in this same ode). It seems very likely that Lomonosov is directly following Trediakovksii here; we do not find this usage in Lomonosov’s later works. 24. ‘but desires eventually carried her off with a little violence’. In general желание and похоть are equally possible as equivalents for both désir and envie. See, for example, желание as an equivalent for envie in Ибо я чювствовал всегда в себе великое желание, да бы видеть АМИНТУ (p. 51), corresponding to je sentois toujours l’envie de voir Amynte (p. 259) (I always felt a desire to see Aminthe). See also the more complicated case where желание and похоть serve in a pair as equivalents of désir and envie: При СИЛВИИ краснои / Все мое сердце тогда горящи желаньми, / Чтоб похоти сласнои / Моеи тамо угодить, кипело вздыханьми (p. 113); Auprès de l’aimable Sylvie, / Le cœur tout rempli de desirs, / Pour satisfaire à mon envie, / Je poussai mille ardens soupirs (In the presence of the beautiful Sylvie, my heart filled with desire, to satisfy my want, I sighed a thousand ardent sighs) (p. 290). 25. ‘into almost the simplest Russian, that is to say the language we speak among ourselves’. 26. ‘the Slavonic language is for us the language of the Church, whereas this is a secular book.’ 27. See Il’ia Serman’s selection of examples (Serman 1973: 108–9) and also Uspenskii (2008: 122–3). The most vivid example is in verses describing how Tirsis sees Aminthe in the embrace of a successful rival. In place of the gallant lines Ses baisers

234  v icto r z h i vo v redoublés étoient son seul language; / Et l’ingrate y prenoit plasir (His repeated kisses were his only language, and the ungrateful woman took pleasure in them) (p. 277), we find Руки еи давил, щупал и все тело. / А неверна о всем том весма веселилась (He pressed her hands and felt her whole body. And the unfaithful woman greatly enjoyed all of this) (p. 86). And again, in place of Et l’ingrate à ses yeux montroit la même joie / Qu’elle m’avoit fait voire du tems de notre amour (And the ungrateful woman showed his eyes the same joy that she had let me see at the time of our own love) (p. 288), we have чинил, как хотел он с неи се ли то ли / А неверна, как и мне, открыла все груди! (He did as he wanted with her, now this now that, and the unfaithful woman bared her whole bosom to him as she had to me!) (p. 86). Similarly, in the verses where Tirsis describes a dream in which he has seen Aminthe dying in his arms, there is nudity in Trediakovskii, which Tallemant had not envisaged: Je vis mourir entre mes bras / Cette charmante blonde (I saw this charming blond woman die in my arms) (p. 244) = Виделось мне, / кабы тая в моих прекрасная дева / Умре руках вся нагая (I saw this beautiful woman die in my arms, all naked) (p. 19). 28. I am very grateful to my postgraduate student Anna Lukashuk for sharing with me her material on The Dictionary of Love and a number of valuable observations of which I have made use in this work. 29. I think in this connection that Loubère misconstrues the function of the text I am examining, defining Dreux too eulogistically as ‘undoubtedly the most sprightly and unrelenting teacher of love in the Enlightenment’ (Loubère 2006: 350). I would be very cautious about speaking of the ‘jocular quality’ of the Dictionary (see this definition in Sazonova (2012: 229); irony and satire are not jocular and Enlightenment discourse does not always blend well with jocularity. 30. It is worth noting in this connection that the English version of Dreux du Radier’s dictionary, which appeared in London in 1753, is also a reworking rather than a translation (see Dreux du Radier 1753). The innovative quality of the Russian version of the dictionary is manifested in particular in the fact that Khrapovitskii includes fresh quotations from authors he finds attractive. Thus, in the entries on Вечность (Eternity) and Клятвы (Vows) (1768: 12, 31) there are references to the German satirist Gottlieb Rabener (here and hereafter I give only the year and page in references to the Russian text of the Dictionary of Love, for example 1768: 12; in references to the French original of the Dictionnaire d’amour I also give only the year, 1741, and the page number). Dreux did not know this author and in general mentions no German writers. In several instances, Khrapovitskii quotes the comedies of Jean-François Regnard: in the entry Любовь (Love) the comedy Democritus in Love (Démocrite amoureux) is cited (Act I, Scene 5) (1768: 38–9; this is missing in Dreux); in the entry Письма (Letters) the comedy The Absent-Minded Lover (Le Distrait) is mentioned (1768: 53; cf. Regnard 1759: 64–5); in the entry Холодность (Frigidity) Khrapovitskii augments a quotation from the comedy The Gamester (Le Joueur) (Act IV, Scene 7) with two lines which Dreux does not use (1768: 72; cf. Regnard 1823: 66). In the entry Любопытство (Curiosity) there is a reference to Philippe Destouches (1768: 39) and in the entry Покорность (Obedience) Sinon from the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid features (1768: 56–7). 31. Marivaux’s comedy The School for Mothers (L’Ecole des mères) was first performed in 1732. This one-act play ends with an entertainment in which we find the following lines quoted by Dreux: Mère, qui tient un jeune objet / Dans une ignorance profonde, / Loin du monde, / Souvent se trompe en son projet. / Elle croit que l’amour s’envole / Dès qu’il aperçoit un Argus. / Quel abus! / Il faut l’envoyer à l’école (Mother, who keeps

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a young object in profound ignorance, far from the world, often deludes herself in her project. She believes that love flies away as soon as he spots an Argus. What a mistake! She needs to be sent to school) (Marivaux 1878: 464). 32. ‘In place of Arguses we have querulous nursemaids; but such crones don’t have a hundred eyes and it’s quite easy to deceive them.’ 33. ‘Although everyone has the same intentions when declaring their passion, real or feigned, the military man, the civilian and the courtier express themselves in very different ways.’ 34. ‘It may be of various kinds; for a financier does not declare his passion like a clergyman, nor a clergyman like a dandy.’ 35. See also the replacement in the entry Conquetes (Conquests), in a passage which deals with the way in which a beautiful lady prepares to hunt for admirers: la Toilette est le conseil de Guerre, les Thuilleries ou l’Opera le champ de Bataille (the toilette is the council of war, the Tuileries or the Opera the field of battle) (1741: 79). The equivalent to this in Khrapovitskii’s entry Победа (Conquest) is as follows: сборной столик (или тоалет) есть их военной совет; а театр или гульбища место сражения (the dressing-table (toilet) is their council of war, the theatre or promenades the place of battle) (1768: 56). Evidently the toilette as part of the space for games of love was only just beginning to make its appearance in Russia, so it is no coincidence that the word ‘toilet’ is placed in brackets here as a new word. In Khrapovitskii’s entry Старания (Cares), in place of combien de fois ai-je assisté à votre toilette (how many times have I been present at your toilette) (1741: 212) which we find in Dreux’s corresponding entry Soins, we have instead the following: сколько раз я вас провожал в карету (how many times have I accompanied you to your carriage) (1768: 64). The presence of admirers at the toilette may not yet have become an accepted practice in Russia. 36. ‘It is true that our nation, accustomed as it is to these contests, quite successfully parries the blows that are struck against it; but it is almost impossible for a foreigner who is exposed to them not to be overcome. Our French ladies have the same sort of advantage over foreigners that the Spaniards had over the peoples of America.’ 37. ‘Obviously everything is constantly changing, but I don’t think we shall abandon the present custom, which is French to the core.’ 38. ‘Everything changes, but our way is so convenient that I think it will be maintained.’ 39. ‘It was born in France; body, heart and reason are under its control: nowadays people think, speak, write, dress and walk, in short they do all things according to fashion. Its boundless power extends to love too.’ 40. In Dreux we read: La mode a un empire absolu sur les François: leur corps, leur cœur, leur esprit, tout lui est soumis; on s’habille, on marche; on boit; on mange; on tousse, on crache, on pense; on parle; on écrit, on se damne, on se sauve à la mode. En Amour, la mode exerce aussi un despotisme parfait (Fashion has absolute sway over the French: their bodies, their hearts, their minds, everything is subject to it; you get dressed, you walk; you drink; you eat; you cough, you spit, you think; you speak; you write, you damn yourself and find your salvation according to fashion. In Love too, fashion exercises a perfectly despotic power) (1741: 175). For Khrapovitskii, as we see, the domains of fashion were somewhat constricted; evidently he could not have imagined that people coughed and spat according to fashion. In a number of cases he is explaining French realia which could be said to have been undergoing assimilation. Thus in the entry Неглиже (Negligé) this manner of dressing is described and its place in gallant culture is indicated: И так извольте знать, что неглиже есть Французской манер одеваться, которой в новейшие времена, с многими нарядами к нам

236  v icto r z h i vo v выехал. Когда же он признан полезным, то надлежит ему иметь такое же употребление, как и во Франции: где его притворной безпорядок открывает некоторые прелести, закрывает недостатки, одним словом, все лучшее еще лутщим делает. И в нем награждают любовников, затем что и у язычников, Венерины жертвы отличным образом украшались (So please note that negligé is a French manner of dressing, which in recent times has come to us with many types of apparel. When it is acknowledged as useful then it will have to become as widespread as it is in France, where its feigned disarray reveals certain charms or covers up flaws, in a word it makes everything that is good even better. And lovers are rewarded by it, because even among heathens Venus’s victims adorned themselves magnificently) (1768: 43–4). The similarities with Dreux’s entry Negligé are minimal, amounting only to the words victime (victim) and sur l’Autel de Cupidon (on Cupid’s altar) (1741: 182). Whereas Dreux is speaking about what is well known to his readers, Khrapovitskii is enlightening his readers, showing them French novelties. 41. ‘All charms shine in the eyes!’ 42. ‘What a lot of charms! What a lot of allurements!’ 43. ‘Once “allurements” and “beauty” are put into circulation “charms” come to mind so that the same words are not repeated.’ 44. ‘Attractions, when one has made use of allurements and charms, one can use “attraction” for the sake of variety.’ 45. ‘I entrust to you a heart transfixed by your charms.’ 46. ‘I offer you a heart transfixed by the keenest love.’ 47. ‘But often the friend of a charming individual turns into her lover.’ 48. ‘A sacred word, which has recently entered the discourse of love as well.’ 49. ‘This sacred term has passed into Love.’ 50. ‘to make a crowd of admirers follow one around’. 51. ‘when it comes to all the strong passions, one cannot express oneself without confusion.’ 52. ‘All the great passions are dumb.’ 53. ‘To sacrifice, one’s heart or freedom’. 54. ‘I sacrifice my heart, my liberty to you.’ 55. ‘desire to be loved in return’. 56. ‘a desire to be loved by the person one loves’. 57. I should note that желание may also appear as an equivalent for émotion, and this, we may surmise, means that the category of emotions was missing in Russian psychological discourse of that time: compare Khrapovitskii’s и смотрит только, до какой степени своего желания может довесть сердце им гонимой красавицы (sees only to what degree of emotion he can bring the heart of the beauty he is pursuing) (1768: 15) with veulent voir jusqu’à quel degré d’émotion ils reduiront les cœurs qu’ils attaquent (want to see to what degree of emotion they will reduce the hearts they attack) (1741: 133). 58. ‘As far as love letters and verse are concerned, they must be filled with sighing, torment and other similar words. I refer to all elegies, for they too are not without sighs.’ 59. We find attention being directed to Russian poetic exercises in a particularly expressive way in the entry Пламень (Fire). Here Khrapovitskii says: Так же как страсть, горячность, и пр. занимает место любви. А особливо в любовных стихах, всегда ставится для недостатку рифм: минуты, люты; пламень и камень (Just like passion, zeal and so forth take the place of love. And especially in love poetry, writers are always putting минуты and люты or пламень and

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камень because of the dearth of rhymes) (1768: 55; Khrapovitskii’s emphasis). And then some verses are quoted which have evidently been composed by Khrapovitskii himself for the Dictionary of Love: Усугубляешь ты, мои мученья люты. / Для рифмы: в злейшия родился я минуты! / И естьли не возжен в тебе взаимный пламень, / Для той же рифмы: ты имеешь в сердце камень! (You are redoubling my cruel torments. For a rhyme: I was born at the worst moment! And if no mutual fire has been kindled in you, for the same rhyme: you have a heart of stone!). Only the beginning has an equivalent in Dreux’s entry Feux (Il a la même signification qu’amour, c’est un monosillable fort commode pour la poësie galante (It has the same meaning as love, it’s a monosyllable which is very suitable for gallant poetry) (1741: 123). The problems of rhyme to which Khrapovitskii refers are Russian problems. 60. ‘Then he again kneels before her, groans and sighs, passionately uttering words learned by heart from novels.’ 61. ‘He also sighs in vain who has obtained all the sciences and knowledge by diligent reading of novels but has obscured the whole sense of them with empty passion and becomes a ridiculous lover.’ 62. I should also draw attention to the following passage in Khrapovitskii’s entry Мучение (Torment): но вы видевши часто театр, думаете, что без мученья в любви не бывают (but you who have often been to the theatre think that people are not in love if they do not suffer torment) (1768: 41–2). There is no mention of the theatre in Dreux’s entry on this subject. Khrapovitskii’s eye to Russian literary tradition is also reflected in the way in which he transforms French literary names, replacing them with Russian ones. In the entry Любовь (Love) we find the following sentence: Из чего видно, что Елизы, Климены, Филисы, не всегда в стихах занимают место любимых особ (From which it is plain that Elizas, Klimens and Filises are not always the people who are loved in verse) (1768: 39). The equivalent of this in Dreux’s entry Amour is: ces Philis, ces Uranies, ces Calistes, pour qui ils font tant de vers, ne sont pas toujours un objet aimé (these Philises, Uranies and Calistes, for whom so many verses have been written, are not always loved) (1741: 34). Uranies and Callistes are not found in the Russian texts written by Khrapovitskii whereas Elizas, Klimens and Filises are quite well represented: see Eliza in Sumarokov’s poem of 1759 ‘On the Death of the Author’s Sister’ (‘Na smert’ sestry avtorovoi’) (Sumarokov 1769: 202–3), Klimen in Trediakovskii’s poem of 1735 ‘A New and Brief Way’ (‘Novyi i kratkii sposob’) (Trediakovskii 1963: 384), Bogdanovich’s poem of 1763 to Klimena (Bogdanovich 1848: vol. 1, pp. 324–6), Sumarokov’s parody of Trediakovskii in 1750, which appeared in his comedy Tresotinius (Sumarokov 1787: vol. 5, p. 302; see also Uspenskii 2008: 240), and Filis in Sumarokov’s epistle on versification of 1748 (Sumarokov 1787: vol. 1, p. 318) and in a poem of 1755, ‘Witnesses to My Torment and Affliction’ (‘Svideteli toski i stona moego’) (Sumarokov 1787: vol. 8, pp. 152–4; see also the eclogue ‘Filisa’ (vol. 8, pp. 152–4)). 63. ‘how to make a rendez-vous, that is to arrange a meeting and have a tête-à-tête’. 64. Dreux, for his part, considers galanterie just as fundamental as Amour: Galanterie, est souvent le sinonime d’amour [. . .] Toutes les Femmes en général, & les François en particulier sont nées pour la Galanterie (Gallantry is often a synonym for love [. . .] Women in general and the French in particular are born for Gallantry) (1741: 134). 65. Trediakovskii translates Galanterie as любовные потехи (1730: 18) or любовность (1730: 97; see Tallemant 1788: 243, 282). Neither of these equivalents was taken up by the tradition that followed Trediakovskii. The loans галантерия or галантерея appear in Russian texts at quite an early date, beginning with Dragie smeiannye, that

238  v icto r z h i vo v is Molière’s Les précieuses ridicules (The Affected Young Ladies) in Vymen’s translation of 1703 (see Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XVIII veka 1984–2011: vol. 5, 83), but they were used only occasionally and so did not enter the Russian dictionary of love. This is also the case with the loans галант and галантом (p. 83). The adjective галантный appears in Russian later, after the period with which I am concerned here. It is significant that галантерея is assimilated only in the meaning мелочной дорогой товар; предметы щегольства (small precious article; a dandy’s objects, p. 83), which in the modern Russian language provides the name of a shop (a haberdashery) where trifling things are sold. Gallant articles were imported from France but the art of love was more complicated. 66. ‘Gallant. A word which usually carries the meaning of favoured Lover, it is used of Lovers trained in the school of Cythera, who know everything that has to do with terms and can always use them in the right way.’ [Editors’ note: Cythera (the Greek island Kythira) was associated in Greek mythology with Aphrodite, the goddess of love.] 67. ‘The womaniser always appears passionate, although he does not feel in the least passionate. He will not let a beautiful woman take a step or utter a word without showering her from head to foot with flattering praise. He marvels at a little ribbon that is well tied, at hair becomingly arranged and at a pin fastened with taste. He knows all the dialects of love and how to use them appropriately; and he already knows beforehand when he should be embarrassed, sigh, laugh and, if need be, weep.’ 68. ‘the most delicate flowers of Gallant Rhetoric’. 69. ‘a great Doctor in the gallant language’. 70. ‘a Gallant by profession’. 71. See also the reworking of the entry Bruler (To Burn). In Dreux we have the following: vous me regarderiez peut-être comme un sot si je ne vous estocadois quelque doux compliment, quelque galanterie à bout portant (you might look on me as a fool if I did not thrust some sweet compliment at you or some very overt pretty speech) (1741: 61). This is rather complicated for Khrapovitskii and in the entry Горячность (Zeal) he refashions it: И так чтоб не сочли меня дураком, надобно поговорить и о любви (And so I need to talk about love, so that I should not be thought an idiot) (1768: 20). 72. ‘It is true that in the empire of pure gallantry subjects are never without some anxiety.’ 73. ‘But in truth, there are quite a lot of cares in the trade of love.’ 74. ‘Can somewhat staid citizens be more frivolous than those empty-headed people who are so well-known in society?’ 75. ‘these Petits-Maîtres, for example, who are having their affairs’. 76. ‘Many imitate Alexander the Great in their amorous exploits.’ 77. ‘Many boast of letters they have received from women, because each wants to be known as a fortunate man; often too they find fault with beauties who don’t even know about them.’ 78. ‘Sometimes a dandy drops in front of his friends letters from a woman he may know only by name: he wants it to seem as if he has been lucky.’ As mentioned above, dandies also disappear when the entry Declaration d’Amour (Declaration of Love) is reworked. I shall point out other small omissions in Khrapovitskii. Berger is an important component in the French lexicon of love. Dreux remarks: Berger. Mon Berger, ma Bergere, noms synonymes d’amant & de maîtresse (Shepherd. My shepherd, my shepherdess, synonyms of lover and mistress) (1741: 52). Khrapovitskii has an

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entry Пастух (Shepherd) which does not reproduce his French model in its entirety and refers the reader to стихотворческой любови (poetic love) (1768: 52), that is to say to a literary tradition (this is missing in Dreux). There was no Russian equivalent for the French expression l’heure du Berger (the shepherd’s hour) (1741: 53), which had become firmly established in French to denote the time of a lovers’ meeting. Khrapovitskii did try to find an equivalent for the expression je ne sçai quoi (I don’t know what), which was important in French gallant language (see Pierre-Henry 1959). The expression features as a separate entry in Dreux (1741: 148–9), and it is a source for the entry Не знаю что (I don’t know what) in Khrapovitskii (1768: 44–5). Khrapovitskii keeps quite close to the original, using prose to render the lines by Corneille (from Medea (Médée) that are quoted by Dreux: не знаю что, нами вдруг овладеет, и принудит в кого нибудь влюбиться. Сие не знаю что, в том же смысле употребляется как судьба, немилосердной рок, злощастия звезда, под коею родился и пр (‘I don’t know what will suddenly take possession of us and make us fall in love with someone.’ This ‘I don’t know what’ is used in this sense like Destiny, merciless Fate, an ill-fated star under which we are born and so forth (1768: 44).) Compare the following passage in Dreux: Je ne sçai quoi. Souvent je ne sçai quoi qu’on ne veut exprimer, / Nous surprend, nous emporte, & nous force d’aimer. On se retranche sur ces je ne sçai quoi, comme sur Destinée; étoile, fatalité, &c. (Je ne sçai quoi. Often a je ne sais quoi that one does not want to express takes us by surprise, carries us away and compels us to love. We fall back on these je ne sais quoi as on Destiny, the stars, Fate and so forth) (1741: 148; Dreux’s emphasis). However, a single translation does not demonstrate assimilation, and in other parts of his Dictionary Khrapovitskii, when he encounters this expression in Dreux, does not render it in Russian at all. See for instance the entry Simpathie: & se sentent piquer / De ces je ne sçai quoi qu’on ne peut expliquer (and feel themselves pricked by these ‘je ne sais quoi’ that one can’t explain) (1741: 210–12; cf. the entry Сходство нравов (Like-Mindedness) (1768: 66)). Likewise in the entry Сходство нравов Khrapovitskii explains that любовницам и любовникам не надлежит хвалиться, что по достоинствам дают первенство; они сами не знают что их выбор определяет (lovers should not boast that their success is due to merit; they themselves do not know what makes people choose them) (1768: 17). What is said in the original at this point is ne peut être que l’effet du caprice, du je ne sçai quoi (can only be the effect of caprice, of I know not what) (1741: 74). As we see, the French expression disappears in the translation. 79. Editors’ note: Victor Zhivov is referring here to a famous line in Pushkin’s novel in verse of the 1820s, Eugene Onegin (Evgenii Onegin), in which Pushkin’s heroine Tat’iana wonders, as she browses in Onegin’s abandoned library, whether the apparently Byronic hero is really as he seemed (Canto 7, Stanza 24).

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Conclusion Gesine Argent and Derek Offord

T

he second volume of this work has dealt with language culture and ideologies, language attitudes and debate about the use of French and Russian in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia. In this conclusion, we provide a brief overview of tensions, or seeming tensions, that have become apparent as contributors to the volume have analysed these matters. First, we summarise findings about the role of the French language in the realisation of Catherine’s Enlightenment project and about the use of French to situate Russia in European culture. Then we review the reflections of Russian writers on francophonie in Russia and the way in which the presence of French there contributed to the dynamics in the linguistic culture and, more broadly, the sense of national identity. Lastly, we consider the relationship between the language attitudes that have been examined and linguistic behaviour that seems to contradict them. We emphasise here that identity need not be unitary and that there is no necessity always to explain away complexity or seeming paradox. Engagement with Western European ideas and the role of language in this process is a central theme of this volume, starting in Chapter 1 with Stephen Bruce’s discussion of Catherine’s ideas on language, which reflected French Enlightenment theories. The empress showed respect for the native language and encouraged its literary use and attempts to codify it. However, she also valued the use of French and German as means of creating a vision of the Russian Empire as a fusion of European Enlightenment with native heritage and was careful not to over-emphasise Russianness, in order to avoid being regarded as nonEuropean. Her correspondence with Voltaire may be seen on one level as a stratagem with which to win acceptance for Russia in the European community. Many members of the Russian elite also saw European enlightened society as the primary imagined community with which they

c o n c l u s i o n   243 wished to align themselves. The attitude of Russian imaginative writers to the French literary world was marked by a similar desire to be considered part of Europe while not losing sight of one’s native roots. Svetlana Skomorokhova’s analysis, in Chapter 3, of Aleksandr Sumarokov’s translation activity shows that this writer attempted to place his work in the European literary polysystem but wanted to be considered a Russian author as well as a European one and to affirm his independence of French models and demonstrate the qualities of his native language. Such engagement with French ideas and the French language could be considered derivative. Some European visitors to the Russian court, Michelle Lamarche Marrese points out in Chapter 2, took the multilingual microcosm they found there as proof that the Russian nobility were flexible and skilled in imitation. However, this judgement was not always meant to imply that Russian culture was doomed to remain dependent. In the French press, as Carole Chapin has shown in Chapter 4, the Russian literary community was likened to a learning child who is encouraged in its linguistic and literary development by its father, French culture. In Russia, Nikolai Karamzin considered French models useful for developing the Russian literary language, but with the goal of helping it to mature into a language with its own well-developed vocabulary and range of styles. The tension between the ambition to belong to Europe and the use of French as a means of fulfilling this ambition, on the one hand, and the wish to develop Russian culture and the Russian language, on the other, generated discussions about national consciousness and language matters in the writings of many thinkers and literary authors. Several chapters explore this tension by examining attitudes to French as they were expressed in imaginative literature. Openly Gallophobic sentiments could be found, as francophonie was used to characterise shallow, morally suspect characters. Such examples cannot be taken as a reliable indicator of actual Russian use of French, but they do illustrate the use of francophonie as a topos indicating cultural conflict. Crucially, it was infatuation with the French language and French culture that came under attack, rather than the French language itself. Authors accused people of Gallomania and of speaking French solely in order to be modish. Fashion in a concrete sense was itself heavily influenced by the French language. In Chapter 9 Olga Vassilieva-Codognet charts the status of French as the language of fashion in Russian periodicals and shows that even when the use of French was retreating in society, in the nineteenth century, French words continued to be used in Russian text in order to lend authority and distinction to the topic of Parisian fashion. However, this association of the French language with fashion in

244  g esine ar g e nt a nd de re k of f o r d c­ lothing was also taken up by literary authors to make moralistic points. The Gallophobic statements about language and loose morals that were made by conservative writers such as Aleksandr Shishkov, Fedor Rostopchin and Sergei Glinka in the Alexandrine age, as Gary Hamburg shows in Chapter 7, included complaints about fashion. In Ivan Krylov’s play A Lesson for Daughters, D. Brian Kim argues in Chapter 8, the French language is again associated with fashion, along with superficiality and deceit. In the eighteenth-century Russian comedy examined by Derek Offord in Chapter 5, the close link between language use and fashion sometimes seems even more dangerous: fashion, after all, could be perceived as a female realm, as well as a foreign one, and preoccupation with it might imply both male effeminacy and loss of national focus in a period when Russia was often at war. Even the multilingual cosmopolitan Ekaterina Dashkova seems to have found Russian francophonie in some sense threatening. She was convinced, Marrese points outs, that Russian language skills were crucial to the maintenance of traditional gender roles, because she thought women who were immersed in the Russian language were likely to be modest, orderly and respectful of their elders, not extravagant and careless, that is to say they would not display characteristics associated with the French. Thus, adoption of French culture and the French language did not necessarily confer prestige; it could equally be a sign of disrespect towards one’s seniors, the nation and traditional values. On the evidence of the published literary sources, then, vociferous criticism of noble Russians’ use of French and anxiety about the corrupting effects of francophonie on national character seem to be dominant features of Russian linguistic discourse in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, it is important to bear in mind that the sort of sources examined in the chapters by Chapin, Offord, Hamburg and Kim (that is to say the periodical press, drama, satirical commentary on the types supposedly found in society, wartime treatises and pamphlets and so forth) are polemical. The picture they paint of contemporary Russian society and linguistic practice is therefore not to be taken entirely at face value, as Victor Zhivov points out in Chapter 12. We should also wonder, given the knowledge of linguistic usage that unpublished non-literary sources afford, how representative the linguistic Gallophobia examined in these chapters was of opinion in the Russian elite as a whole. It is useful in this connection to recall a certain point made in Chapter 1 of our first volume about the social origin of some of the eighteenth-century critics of Russians’ supposed infatuation with the French language and French culture: they were not from the highest echelons of the nobility. We may also wonder whether the formation

c o n c l u s i o n   245 of a sense of solidarity among the emergent community of writers was already beginning to set them apart within the elite. Language attitudes were expressed not only in evaluations of the respective merits of French or Russian, but also in discussion of the development and transformation of the Russian language. That Russian needed to undergo significant development was not disputed by many, but there was disagreement about what this process should entail and what its end product should be, as Gesine Argent has shown in her reconsideration of the linguistic ideas of Shishkov and Karamzin in Chapter 6. Despite all their differences, though, both Shishkov and Karamzin fundamentally welcomed language change. Both also considered change a transitional stage in the process of creating ‘the’ Russian language. (From a linguist’s point of view, of course, there is no endpoint to language change, for language is never fixed (Taylor 2013: 112).) Like Catherine II and Dashkova, Shishkov and Karamzin were concerned with actively developing Russian, believing that it was worthy of being the equal of other European languages. It remains to consider how Russians reconciled their reception of things French and their adoption of the French language, on the one hand, with their promotion of Russian culture and the Russian language, on the other. If patriotism really demanded, as Hans Rogger claims, with reference to the eighteenth century, ‘that one speak Russian in preference to French’ (Rogger 1960: 119), then both our volumes have shown that this injunction was not strictly observed even by those who professed to advance a patriotic agenda and insisted on use of the Russian language or berated Russians for using French. For example, Dashkova, although she was to lead the Russian lexicographical project, used French in her official correspondence even as director of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and, despite being critical of French morals, continued to advocate bilingualism. Fedor Rostopchin, as we have seen from Hamburg’s chapter, expressed vehemently Gallophobic sentiments, but he sometimes expressed them in French and he flourished in the francophone salon, in Russia as well as Paris. There is a danger, then, of imposing on our conception of eighteenth-century Russian culture the long-lasting but now tired patterns imposed on it by nineteenth-century Westernisers and Slavophiles, to whom we referred in our introductory chapter in Volume 1.1 Speaking French and using that language for the aims summarised in the conclusion of our first volume was not necessarily at odds with being fervently patriotic, nor with wishing to develop Russian. In any case, hybrid identities, it is worth stressing, were – and of course remain – entirely possible and often unproblematic. Nonetheless, changes in the Russian cultural sphere in the first half

246  g esine ar g e nt a nd de re k of f o r d of the nineteenth century did strengthen the perceived link – of which we are acutely aware in the modern world – between language choice and the sense of collective identity of an ethnos or a nation, as opposed to the sense of identity of a social class. The strong Russian current of opposition to francophonie that had been plainly apparent well before the beginning of the nineteenth century was given further impetus in the Alexandrine age. This development was due not only – perhaps not so much – to the fact that Russia was at war with Napoleon in 1805–7 and 1812–14 as to the rise of Romanticism and nationalism. These panEuropean currents privileged indigenous cultures over the international culture of the social elite, localism over cosmopolitanism. This cultural shift, which had a significant effect on language attitudes, has been illuminated in Sara Dickinson’s close examination in Chapter 10 of the terms by which Russian writers referred to their homeland and of the unstable connotations of those terms. Moreover, Russia’s high culture, from the nineteenth century onwards, was no longer so largely a product of the nobility, whose authority was being challenged by the literary community and the emerging intelligentsia. These two groups, which overlapped but were not identical, contained an increasing proportion of men and women from non-noble backgrounds. Many of these men and women distanced themselves from noble culture, including the practice of using French for communication with their compatriots, and began to see themselves as having a stronger claim than the noble estate to speak for the Russian nation. Where, though, was the ‘essence’ of this nation to be found? Influenced by the cultural nationalism that was becoming widespread in nineteenth-century Europe, writers and thinkers commonly began to regard the monolingual peasantry as its most authentic embodiment and to identify noble Franco-Russian bilingualism as a symptom of the nation’s disintegration. In sum, the metalinguistic landscape in Russia in the timeframe we have used, from the Enlightenment to the age of Pushkin, is characterised by tension and contradictions in several respects. There is the desire to situate Russia in enlightened Europe and to emulate European models, an aspiration which it may at first sight be difficult to reconcile with growing national consciousness. Catherine II exemplified the difficulty, as she strove simultaneously to defend and promote Russian, which, after all, was the language of the majority of her subjects, and to inscribe herself and her empire in a European enlightened community by using and promoting French. Sumarokov supported both linguistic purism and language innovation, and he adhered to French literary norms while also refashioning French authors according to Russian stylistics. Many writers, Sumarokov included, followed French models

c o n c l u s i o n   247 in literature but used them to criticise aspects of French culture and language that were considered harmful as well as to ridicule Russians who blindly followed French fashions. Tension may be seen on the level of personal identity too. As Hamburg argues, there is no easy answer to the question why Russian intellectuals were at once avid users of the French language and critics of its use, but their knowledge of French, he contends, may have given them another identity which was at odds with their Russian one and led ultimately to rejection of everything French. Then again, as Marrese (2010) has shown, many Russians did not themselves perceive the conflict to which nineteenth-century writers drew attention and in fact managed their multiple linguistic identities with ease. Perhaps the most balanced response to the question of how European influence should be received and what attitude should be taken to Franco-Russian bilingualism is offered by Pushkin in his Roslavlev, examined by Offord in Chapter 11 of this volume. Here Pushkin warns against both the dangers of undiscriminating cosmopolitanism and the dangers of chauvinism. In the first of our two volumes we showed in what domains and for what purposes French was used in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia and how individuals strove to find their own best solution and path in the Russian linguistic landscape. In this second volume we have tried to show what part discussion of language use played in elite society and the literary community as conceptions of personal, social and national identity became broader and deeper in the post-Petrine Russian world.

NOTE 1. In any case, ‘Westernism’ is a vague and problematic concept which is badly in need of re-examination, for the differences between Westernism and Slavophilism, both of which are species of nationalism, are sometimes more apparent than real.

REFERENCES Marrese, M. Lamarche (2010), ‘“The poetics of everyday behavior” revisited: Lotman, gender, and the evolution of Russian noble identity’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 11: 4, 701–39. Rogger, H. (1960), National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, T. (2013), ‘Folk psychology and the language myth: what would the integrationist say?’, in R. Harris (ed.), The Language Myth in Western Culture, Richmond: Curzon Press, pp. 100–17.

n o t es o n c o n t r ibut o r s

Notes on Contributors

Gesine Argent is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the AHRCfunded project on ‘The History of the French Language in Russia’ at the University of Bristol. She specialises in the study of Russian language ideologies, examining linguistic culture from a historical sociolinguistic perspective as well as studying contemporary debates about language, language use and the role and character a language has or should have. Stephen Bruce is a doctoral student in the History Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a freelance translator. He specialises in the history of language politics, interactions between language communities across the Russian Empire and the ways in which language choice and language practice express national and transnational identities. Carole Chapin is a PhD candidate at the University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, where she is completing a thesis on the circulation of theatrical ideas in Europe through periodical publications in the eighteenth century. She has a particular interest in cultural relations between France and Russia: she has published articles on the image of Russia in French journals and on the phenomenon of translation and adaptation in the Russian press. Sara Dickinson is an Associate Professor of Russian literature and culture at the University of Genoa. She is a specialist in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian literature and cultural history, with publications that include a book and several articles on travel writing, as well as work on Russian orientalism, women’s writing and various individual authors (Radishchev, Pushkin, Nabokov).

no te s o n c o n t r i bu t o r s   249 G. M. Hamburg is Otho M. Behr Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College in California. He specialises in Russian intellectual history from the sixteenth century to the present, with special emphasis on the history of philosophy, connections between religion and politics and historiography as a dimension of intellectual history. His latest book (forthcoming in 2015) is a study of the Enlightenment in Russia. D. Brian Kim is a PhD candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. His research primarily examines experiences of translation, travel and language learning in pre-revolutionary Russian contexts. His main areas of scholarly interest are translation studies and literary and cultural relationships between Russia, Western Europe and East Asia. Michelle Lamarche Marrese is an independent scholar and a graduate of Yale and Northwestern University. She is a specialist in the history of Imperial Russia, with a concentration on gender and noble culture in the pre-reform period. She has published widely in these fields, including a prize-winning study of language use and noble identity in Kritika (2010) and a book on noblewomen’s property rights. She is presently writing about Princess Dashkova and the impact of female rule on eighteenthcentury noblewomen. Derek Offord is Research Professor in Russian at the University of Bristol and directs the AHRC-funded project on ‘The History of the French Language in Russia’ out of which these volumes mainly arise. He is a specialist in pre-revolutionary Russian history and culture and has published books on the Russian revolutionary movement, early Russian liberalism, Russian travel writing and the broader history of Russian thought, as well as two books on contemporary Russian grammar and usage. Vladislav Rjéoutski is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Moscow, having previously worked on the project team study­ ing ‘The History of the French Language in Russia’ at the University of Bristol. He is a specialist in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian his­tory and culture and the history of education and the press. He has pub­lished books on French emigration to Russia in the eighteenth century and on French-speaking educators in Europe. Lara Ryazanova-Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Russian and Academic Director of the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre at the University

250  n ote s o n co ntr i bu to r s of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on Russian sociolinguistics. Her publications include The Russian Language Today (with Terence Wade, 1999), Collins English-Russian, Russian-English Dictionary (2000), The Russian Language outside the Nation (2014) and (with Petre Petrov) The Vernaculars of Communism: Language, Ideology and Power in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (2015). Svetlana Skomorokhova is an early career researcher at the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick (UK). Her research interests include world literature and postcolonial theories (as applied to Eastern European literary processes), minority literatures and Russian translation studies. She has authored some sixty publications on Russian, Belarusian and Polish comparative literatures. Olga Vassilieva-Codognet obtained her first degree at the St Petersburg State University of Technology and Design and continued her studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where she is completing a thesis under the supervision of Michel Pastoureau. She has edited a collective work on medieval iconography and has written some twenty articles on clothing, potraiture, heraldry, emblems and medieval French literature. Victor Zhivov (1945–2013) was Professor at Berkeley, California, and Deputy Director of the V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. For many years prior to his appointment at these institutions he taught courses on the history of the Russian language at Moscow State University. His academic interests covered a broad range of subjects related to the history of the Russian language and its development in modern times and to the history of Russian literature (especially in the eighteenth century) and Christian culture. A substantial monograph that he wrote on the history of the Russian language is currently being prepared for publication.

Index

Aaltonen, Sirkku, 150 Ablancourt, Nicolas Perrot d’ (1606–64), 57 abolition of serfdom see emancipation of serfs academies see Academy of Sciences; Russian Academy Academy of Sciences (founded in Russia in 1724, opened 1725), 18, 35, 44, 54, 216, 245 adaptation (free translation strategy), 57, 58, 59, 87, 94, 121, 140, 150, 223; see also belles infidèles; domestication; free translation method; translation address see French: for terms of address Adskaia pochta (The Post from Hell; Russian periodical), 66 Afanas’ev, Aleksandr Stepanovich (1817–75), 8, 32 Age of Enlightenment see Enlightenment Aksakov, Sergei Timofeevich (1791–1859), 104–5 albums see French: in albums Alecsandri, Vasile (1821–90), 80 Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’ (1717–83), 11, 18 Alexander I (Aleksandr Pavlovich, 1777–1825; Emperor of Russia 1801–25), 1, 120, 133, 190 Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon, 356–323 bc), 230–1 All Sorts of Things see Vsiakaia vsiachina allegiance (to class or nation), 7, 8–11, 89–90, 95, 141, 184, 185, 209 American War for Independence, 133 amour de la patrie (love of country),

179–80, 182, 184, 186, 190, 191; see also fatherland; homeland; otchizna; patriotism amour du pays (love of region or country), 184, 190 Anglomania, 199 Année littéraire (The Year in Literature; French periodical), 59, 73, 74 aping (as topos in cultural discourse), 80, 84, 110, 159, 200, 208 Arabic, 22 archaists (in Russian linguistic debate), 105–7, 126 aristocracy see nobility Arzamas, 106, 107 Aspasia’s Closet see Kabinet Aspazii Austerlitz, Battle of (1805), 93, 128 Babel, Tower of, 21 Batiushkov, Konstantin Nikolaevich (1787–1855), 215 beau monde see high society Beauzée, Nicolas (1717–89), ‘Language’, 18–19 Beccaria, Cesare, Marchese di Bonesana (1738–94), 20 Beketov, Platon Petrovich (1761–1836), 118 Bekhteev, Fedor Dmitrievich (1716–61), 36 Belinskii, Vissarion Grigor’evich (1811–48), 204 belles infidèles (unfaithful beauties, i.e. free translations), 49, 57 Benserade, Isaac de (1612 or 1613–91), 57 Berelowitch, Wladimir, 11

252  in d e x Berkov, Pavel, 66 Berman, Michael Heim, 56 Bestuzhev-Riumin, Mikhail Alekseevich (c. 1800–32), 163 Bezborodko, Prince Aleksandr Andreevich (1747–99), 35 Bible translations, 112 Bibliothek der Journale (Library of Journals; German periodical), 27 bilingualism, 1, 2, 54 Franco-Russian, 8, 12, 13, 81, 92, 95, 119–20, 202, 245, 246, 247 supposedly detrimental effects of, 111, 118, 125, 129, 132 see also diglossia; multilingualism Blackledge, Adrian, 3 Blommaert, Jan, 100 Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–75), 214 Boileau (Nicolas Boileau-Déspréaux, 1636–1711), 48 Poetic Art, 56 Bonaparte see Napoleon Bonaparte Bonnet, Charles (1720–93), 108, 112 Boris (eleventh-century Russian prince), 132 Bourdieu, Pierre, 4, 8; see also cultural capital Breuillard, Jean, 162 Buckingham, Earl of (John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire, 1723–93), 40 Cadet Corps see Noble Land Cadet Corps calques, 160, 164, 174, 183, 186, 193, 217–18, 228; see also French loanwords; neologisms Caragiale, Ion Luca (1852–1912), 80 card-playing, 204 Cathcart, Charles, 9th Lord (1721–76), 39 Catherine I (née Marta Skowronska, second wife of Peter I, 1684–1727; Empress of Russia 1725–7), 200 Catherine II, the Great (SophieFriederike-Auguste von AnhaltZerbst, 1729–96; Empress of Russia 1762–96), 16–28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 44, 91, 245 construction of image of Russia as European power, 4, 5, 13, 16–17, 242, 246 correspondence with Grimm, 24–6 correspondence with Voltaire, 19–23, 242 Instruction (Nakaz), 20, 22

learning French in youth, 20 measures to promote Russian dress, 158 Mme Vorchalkina’s Nameday, 121 opera libretti, 25 patriotic spirit instilled by, 192 as practitioner of cultural appropriation, 59 praise of Russian, 20, 23 promotion of Russian by, 17, 26, 246 use of French by, 1, 12, 17 use of German by, 17 views on German literature, 25 Vsiakaia vsiachina edited by, 66 see also Legislative Commission chancery language (prikaznoi iazyk), 18, 100 character see French character; national character Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–58), 19 chauvinism see patriotism, jingoistic Chernyshev, Count Petr Grigor’evich (1712–73), 42 Chinese, 21 Chteniia v besede liubitelei russkogo slova (Readings at the Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word; Russian periodical), 106 Chulkov, Mikhail Dmitrievich (1743–92), 66 Church Slavonic, 18, 100, 102–3, 105, 112, 113, 114, 134 Karamzin’s views on, 112 Lomonosov’s views on, 120–1 Shishkov’s views on, 103, 108, 112, 113, 124, 125 in Trediakovskii’s translations of Tallemant, 218–19 views of Sergei Glinka on, 132 see also Slavonic Bible; Slavonicisms Cibber, Colley (1671–1757), Love’s Last Shift, 94 Classicist aesthetics, 5 clothing see dress Cobb, Richard, 120 code-switching, 1, 3, 54 ridiculed in Russian comedy, 80, 81–3, 95 codification see Russian: codification of; Russian: standardisation of coiffure, 94, 206; see also coquetry; fashion, language and Collé, Charles (1709–83), Depuis and Deronnais, 71, 72

i n de x   253 Collection of the Best Works see Sobranie luchshikh sochinenii colloquial language, 221, 227; see also spoken language colonisation, external and internal, 17 comic drama, 12, 71–2, 79–95, 100, 139–52, 221, 244 common people see narod conservative nationalism see nationalism Contemporary see Sovremennik coquetry, 41, 216, 227–8 cosmopolitanism, 5, 11, 20, 95, 118, 127, 128, 208, 210, 246, 247 costume see dress Counter-Enlightenment, 5, 123 Crébillon, Claude Prosper Jolyot de (Crébillon fils, 1707–77), 207 Crimea, annexation of (in 1783), 93 cultural capital, 4, 8; see also symbolic capital cultural nationalism see nationalism Cyrillic alphabet or script, 113, 147, 148–9, 164 Dal’, Vladimir Ivanovich (1801–72), 8, 190 Damer, Anne Seymour (née Conway, 1749–1828), 38 Damskii zhurnal (Ladies’ Journal; Russian periodical), 162, 164, 166, 167, 174 dandies, 83, 160, 205, 222, 223, 230; see also fops; petits-maîtres Danilevskii, Rostislav, 27 Dashkov, Dmitrii Vasil’evich (1788 (OS)–1839), ‘On the Easiest Method of Refuting Criticism’, 113 Dashkov, Mikhail Ivanovich (1736–64), 33 Dashkova, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna (née Vorontsova, 1743–1810), 31–44, 244, 245 Anglophilia of, 36 cosmopolitanism of, 44 fluency in French, 38 knowledge of: English, 36–7; German, 37; Italian, 37–8; Russian, 32–3 languages and personal mythology of, 32–3, 38 Memoirs, 32, 35, 38, 41, 43 multilingualism of, 34–5, 36, 38, 44 promotion of Russian by, 34–5, 44 self-reference in masculine gender, 34, 41

and translation, 35 see also Dictionary of the Russian Academy; Vorontsovs Davydov, Denis Vasil’evich (1784–1839), 159 Delavigne, Casimir Jean François (1793–1843), 161 Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich (1743–1816), 106 Dictionary of the Russian Academy, 5, 165, 190, 230 Diderot, Denis (1713–84), 11, 18, 182, 193 diglossia, 1; see also bilingualism; multilingualism Dodsley, Robert (1704–64), Toyshop, 86 Dolet, Etienne (1509–46), 57 domestication (translation strategy), 49, 57, 72, 87; see also adaptation Dostoevskii, Fedor Mikhailovich (1821–81), 6, 8, 198, 203 ‘Pushkin Speech’, 203 Dramatic Herald see Dramaticheskii vestnik Dramaticheskii vestnik (The Dramatic Herald; Russian periodical), 139 dress, 5, 83, 84, 94, 156–75 and identity, 146, 158–9 language and, 204–5 see also fashion, language and Dreux du Radier, Jean-François (1714–80), Dictionary of Love, 221–31 Drone see Truten’ Dryden, John (1631–1700), Marriage à la Mode, 80 duty (of nobility), 89 education anxiety about foreign influence on, 69–70, 110, 124, 127, 130, 201 importance of foreign languages in, 67, 69–70 of Russian women, 34, 41 as subject in comic drama, 79, 89, 141, 142, 144, 145, 151 Sumarokov’s, 54 as supposed cause of disloyalty when delivered by foreigners, 9–10 see also French: teaching and learning of; French-speaking tutors; governesses; Russian press: debate about education in

254  in d e x ego-writing see French: in albums; French: in diaries; French: in travel diaries or journals Elagin, Ivan Perfil’evich (1725–96), 85, 230, 231 Jean de Molle, or a Russian Frenchman, 85, 121 elegies, 227 Elizabeth, Empress (Elizaveta Petrovna; 1709–61 (–1762 NS); Empress of Russia 1741–61 (–1762 NS)), 42, 50, 81 emancipation of nobility (in 1762), 12 emancipation of serfs (in 1861), 7 Ėmin, Fedor Aleksandrovich (c. 1735–70), 66 Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné […], 11, 18, 182 Ėngelgardt, Varvara Vasil’evna (married name Golitsyna, 1761–1815), 33 English knowledge of in eighteenth-century Russia, 8 as language of fashion, 156 learned by young French women, 40 as lingua franca in twenty-first century, 11 merits of, according to an eighteenthcentury French writer, 18 study of by Russian aristocracy 36 used very little in Pushkin’s prose fiction, 199 see also Karamzin: praise of the English Enlightenment, 2, 6, 11, 17, 18, 95, 123, 151, 246 Age of, 40, 79 French, 179, 186, 210 Russian, 131 Esprit des journaux (The Spirit of Journals; French periodical), 74 essentialist view of language, 110 Etherege, Sir George (1636–92), Man of Mode, 80, 94 ethnographers, 8 Euler, Leonhard (1707–83), 18 Europeanisation see Westernisation Even-Zohar, Itamar, 48, 51–4 Evstratov, Alexei, 49 Ewington, Amanda, 59 exceptionalism see national distinctiveness Far East, colonisation of, 17 fashion, language and, 9, 83, 156–75, 200, 243–4; see also dress

Fashion Shop see Modnyi magazin fatherland (otechestvo) as concept, 11, 179–93 love of, 110, 112, 127, 208 service to, 85 sons of, 133 Fénelon, François (1651–1715), Adventures of Telemachus, 56, 58 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814), 5, 122–3 Addresses to the German Nation, 122–3 Fiterman, Ada, 55–6 Fleming (or Flemming), Paul (1609–40), 56 Flower Garden see Tsvetnik folklorists, 6, 8 folk-song(s), 5 Fonvizin, Denis Ivanovich (1744 or 1745–92), 27, 67, 93, 94, 121, 123, 185, 189, 227 Brigadier, 10, 80, 87–91, 94, 121, 183 Collected Works, 181 Letters from France, 91 treatment of Russian francophonie, 87–91 use of the term rodina, 185 fops, 81, 87, 94; see also dandies Foreign Journal see Journal étranger foreignisation (translation strategy), 49, 58, 59–60 Fortune, Richard, 56 Francomania see Gallomania Francophilia (or Gallophilia), 121, 134, 209, 223 of Frederick II, 26 see also Gallomania francophonie see Russian francophonie Francophobia see Gallophobia Frederick II (the Great, 1712–86; King of Prussia 1740–86), 23–4, 25, 27 On German Literature […], 23–4 Francophilia of, 26 and the German language, 23–4 Free Society for Lovers of Literature, Sciences and the Arts, 106 free translation method, 49 French in albums, 1, 72–3 for architectural terminology, 1 compared with German, 24 compared with Russian, 21 conservative nationalists’ knowledge of, 119 in correspondence, 1, 33, 41–2

i n de x   255 at court, 90 criticism of Russians’ use of, 12, 16, 68–73, 79–95, 109, 129 in diaries, 72–3 as intermediary, relay or vehicular language for translation, 56 as language of aristocracy, 156 as language of education or tuition see French: teaching and learning of below as or in language of fashion, 1, 156–75 as language of friendship, intimacy or proximity, 40 and Latin, 18 as lingua franca, 24, 156 as marker of aristocratic culture, 11 as prestige language or language of distinction, 7, 8, 12, 199–200 as society language, 111, 199–200, 203–4 teaching and learning of, 32, 67 for terms of address, 82, 92, 94, 203 in Tolstoi’s War and Peace, 7, 16 in travel diaries or journals, 1, 72–3 as universal language, 19, 24 women’s use of, 28, 31, 202–3 see also allegiance; Catherine II: use of French by; cultural capital; Frederick II: On German Literature; French loanwords; French-speaking tutors; national identity; Russian francophonie; Russian press: criticism of Russian francophonie in; translation: from French into Russian French character, perceptions of, 9, 12, 71, 89–90, 93, 110–11 French loanwords Karamzin’s view of, 112 in Karamzin’s writings, 102, 183 ridicule of use of, 81–3, 86–7, 88, 89 Shishkov’s opposition to, 105, 109, 124–5 in vocabulary of love, 228 in writings of: Fonvizin, 86–8; Lukin, 86, 95; Sumarokov, 82–3, 227 French press, 73–6 French Revolution (from 1789), 81, 123, 126, 129, 133, 182 French revolution of 1830 see July Revolution French-speaking tutors, 35 image or perception of, 9–10, 110, 201, 202

Fréron, Elie-Catherine (1719–76), 73, 74 Friendly Literary Society, 106 ‘funnel’ view of language, 109 Gagarin, Prince Pavel Gavrilovich (1777–1850), 185–6 Gal, Susan, 4 galant homme, 86, 94, 228 Galateia (Galatea; Russian periodical), 163, 164, 166, 167, 170, 175 gallant society or culture, 83, 214–32; see also dandies; fops; galant homme Gallicisms, 71, 80, 82, 86, 88, 89, 165; see also French loanwords Gallomania, 6, 243 derided in Russian comedy, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90–4, 139, 140, 152 see also Francophilia; Gallophobia Gallophobia, 65, 70, 76, 91, 104, 159, 200, 245 during Napoleonic Wars, 6–7, 81, 208 see also French character; linguistic Gallophobia; Russian press; stereotyping Garland see Girlianda Gazette universelle de littérature (The Universal Literary Gazette; French periodical), 74, 75 Gellner, Ernest, 5 gentry see nobility German in the Academy of Sciences, 18 character of, according to Lomonosov, 19 Dashkova’s knowledge of, 37 debate about status of, 23–8 knowledge of in eighteenth-century Russia, 8, 27 as language of fashion, 156 merits of, according to an eighteenthcentury French writer, 18 as prestige language in Russia, 18, 141 references to in Russian comedy, 84–5 scorned by Frederick II, 24 Sumarokov’s knowledge of, 54, 55 support of Catherine II for, 27 supported by Russian officials, 26 teaching or learning of, 36 used by characters in Pushkin’s prose fiction, 199, 200 see also Catherine II: use of German by; Dashkova: knowledge of Gerson, Stéphane, 192

256  in d e x Gertsen, Aleksandr Ivanovich see Herzen, Alexander Girlianda (The Garland; Russian periodical), 163, 166 Giry, Louis (1596–1665), 57 Gleb (eleventh-century Russian prince), 132 Glinka, Fedor Nikolaevich (1786–1880), 180, 189–90 Letters of a Russian Officer, 189–90, 191 Glinka, Sergei Nikolaevich (1776–1847), 105, 106, 111, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 130–4, 135, 244 admiration of Julius Caesar and Napoleon, 120 knowledge of French, 119 Mikhail, Prince of Chernigov, 130 Russian History, 119, 132, 135 ‘Voltaire’s Discourse on the Poverty of the French Language’, 111 see also Church Slavonic: views of Sergei Glinka on; Providence Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832), 26, 27 Golitsyna, Princess Natal’ia Petrovna (née Countess Chernysheva, 1744–1837), 38, 41–2 Golitsyna, Princess Praskov’ia Ivanovna (née Shuvalova, 1734–1802), 42 Golovina, Varvara Nikolaevna (1766–1819), 42 Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1812–91), 198 Goodman, Dena, 40 Gottsched, Johann Christoph (1700–66), 91 governesses, 10, 36, 202; see also Frenchspeaking tutors Grand Tour, 70 Grande Armée (of Napoleon), 7, 184, 188 Great Northern War (with Sweden, 1700–21), 200 Greece, 18 Greek, 19, 21–2, 24, 28, 124, 197 Greenfeld, Liah, 17 Gresset, Jean-Baptiste-Louis (1709–77), 216 Grimm, Friedrich Melchior (1723–1807), 24–5 Gripus’e affair, 174 Gukovskii, Grigorii, 50, 51 Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88), 5, 121–2, 123

Hamilton, Jane (Lady Cathcart) (1726–71), 40 hats (as item of fashion), 92, 206, 208 Haugen, Einar, 114 haut monde see high society Helvétius, Claude-Adrien (1715–71), 119 Henry I (of France) (1008–60; King of the Franks 1031–60), 183 Herald of Europe see Vestnik Evropy Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744–1803), 5, 24, 106, 121, 122, 123 Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 122 see also translation: Herder’s views on Herzen, Alexander (Aleksandr Ivanovich Gertsen; 1812–70), 179, 180, 185, 190, 191 heterogenisation (as theme in translation studies), 60 high society, 8, 12, 95, 128, 174 Hobsbawm, Eric, 1 Holberg, Ludvig (1684–1754), 85–6, 87, 94 Hans Frandsen, or John of France, 80, 87, 121 Moral Fables, 87–8 homeland (otchizna or rodina), 11, 179–93, 246 Homer (9th or 8th century bc), Iliad, 22 homogenisation (as theme in translation studies), 60 Hutchinson, John, 6 I to i se (This and That; Russian periodical), 66 identity bilingualism and social identity, 8 constructions of, 3–4 fluid, 3–4 in France (of lower classes and elite), 17 hybrid, 245 language and, 1, 3–9, 179, 197, 207–10 multilingual, 11 multiple, 247 national see national identity second, 119–20 social, 2, 7–8, 12, 13, 44, 204–6, 246 unitary, 242 imagined communities, 17, 242–3 imitation detrimental effects of, 87, 124, 128, 129 encouraged by French tutors, 110

i n de x   257 of French customs, fashions or manners, 31, 71, 75, 80, 89, 110, 208 of French literary models, 48, 50, 57, 64 as stimulus for German literature, according to Catherine II, 25 as supposed trait of Russians, 39, 81, 243 see also aping; parrot; Sumarokov: as imitator of French writers imperial expansion, 94 Imperial Russian Academy see Russian Academy industrialisation, 6 Industrious Bee see Trudoliubivaia pchela innovators (in Russian linguistic debate), 105–7 Instruction (Nakaz) see Catherine II instrumentalist approach (to language use), 90 integrative approach (to language use), 90 intelligentsia, 2–3, 6, 7, 13, 95, 246 Italian character of, according to Lomonosov, 19 Dashkova’s knowledge of, 37–8 merits of, according to an eighteenthcentury French writer, 18 as secret language, 40 Sumarokov’s knowledge of, 55 teaching or learning of, 36, 40 Turks’ knowledge of, 22 used by character in Pushkin’s prose fiction, 199 Izmailov, Aleksandr Efimovich (1779–1831), 105 Jerusalem, Karl Wilhelm (1747–72), 26, 27 Journal des Dames et des Modes (Journal of Ladies and Fashions; French periodical), 156, 161, 163, 174 Journal étranger (The Foreign Journal; French periodical), 74 Journal for Loved Ones see Zhurnal dlia milykh Journal of Ladies and Fashions see Journal des Dames et des Modes journals see French press; periodicals; Russian press; satirical journals July Monarchy (in France, 1830–48), 10 July Revolution (1830), 207; see also French Revolution (from 1789)

Kabinet Aspazii (Aspasia’s Closet; Russian periodical), 162 Kachenovskii, Mikhail Trofimovich (1775–1842), 112–13 Kamenev, Gavrila Petrovich (1772–1803), 102 Kang-xi (K’ang Hsi, 1654–1722; Emperor of China 1661–1722), 21 Kantemir, Antiokh Dmitrievich (1708–44), 226 Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich (1766–1826), 17, 100–14, 180, 185, 189, 193, 206, 215, 243, 245 complaining of use of French in Russian society, 28 concern about education of children by French tutors, 10 ‘Curiosity’, 102, 110, 159, 183 ego-writings, 102 on fashion, 157–8 on fatherland and patriotism, 186–7 History of the Russian State, 108, 119, 133, 208 language debate with Shishkov, 100–14, 156, 160 Letters of a Russian Traveller, 102, 108, 110, 183, 185 ‘Natal’ia, the Boyar’s Daughter’, 206 ‘On Love of the Fatherland and National Pride’, 102, 106, 108, 109, 182, 186–7, 190 ‘On the Richness of Language’, 102 ‘Poor Liza’, 187 praise of the English for using their own language, 109 ‘What a Day! […]’, 157 ‘Why is there so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’, 102, 103, 104, 111–12, 162 on women as arbiters of language use, 162 see also calques; Church Slavonic: Karamzin’s views on; French loanwords: Karamzin’s view of; French loanwords: in Karamzin’s writings; Karamzinian style Karamzinian style (‘new’ style’), 103, 107, 156 Karin, Aleksandr Grigor’evich (d. 1769), 85 Russian Frenchman, 85 Russians Returning from France (or A Russian Returned from France), 85, 121

258  in d e x Karlinsky, Simon, 220 Karzhavin, Fedor Vasil’evich (1745–1812), 42 Keshabyan, Irina, 56 Kheraskov, Mikhail Matveevich (1733–1807), Atheist, 121 Khrapovitskii, Aleksandr Vasil’evich (1749–1800 (OS)), 215, 221–32 Khvostov, Dmitrii Ivanovich (1757–1835), 85, 92–3, 106 Russian Parisian, 92–3 Kievan Rus’, 188 literature of, 49, 51 Klein, Joachim, 56 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb (1724–1803), 27 Kniazhnin, Iakov Borisovich (1742–91), 85, 91–2 Misfortune from a Carriage, 91–2 knight-errantry, 216 Koshelek (The Purse; Russian periodical), 67 Krylov, Ivan Andreevich (1769–1844), 69, 93–4, 139–52 fables, 139 Fashion Shop, 93–4, 95 Lesson for Daughters, 139–52, 244 Kutuzov, Aleksei Mikhailovich (1746 or 1747–97), 159 La Fontaine, Jean de (1621–95), 48 La Harpe, Jean-François de (1739–1803), 113 La Valterie (seventeenth-century French translator), 57 Ladies’ Journal see Damskii zhurnal Lang, David Marshall, 56 Langer, Nils, 107, 114 language attitudes, 1, 3–8, 10, 64, 207, 242, 245, 246 language change, 114, 245 language choice, 1, 8–9, 11, 12, 33 and gender roles, 34, 94–5, 244 see also code-switching; French: in correspondence; language mixing language commentary see language attitudes language debate, 18, 23–8, 43, 67, 68–73, 100–14, 121–3, 156, 242, 245; see also comic drama; Glinka, Sergei; Karamzin; Rostopchin, Fedor; satirical journals; Shishkov language ideologies, 4, 5, 101, 242

language mixing, 12, 88, 109, 113; see also code-switching language use and personal mythology, 32 Latin, 19, 24, 38, 84, 197 alphabet or script, 164 decline as universal language, 18 as subject for men only, 40 law code (ulozhenie, of 1649), 20 Lefevere, André, 140, 152 Legislative Commission (of 1767–8), 20, 21 Lemontey, Pierre-Edouard (1762–1826), 157 Leskov, Nikolai Semenovich (1831–95), 198 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), 24 lexicographers, 6, 8 libertinage, 222 Library of Journals see Bibliothek der Journale Likhachev, Dmitrii, 51 lingua franca see French: as lingua franca linguistic essentialism see essentialist view of language linguistic Gallophobia, 2, 244 expressed in comic drama, 79–95 linguistic nationalism, 5, 87, 118, 119, 127, 129, 130–1; see also nationalism linguistic patriotism, 179 linguistic purism, or purist discourse, 56, 60, 107, 112, 114, 216, 227, 231, 246 localisation see domestication Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasil’evich (1711–65), 19, 55, 57, 75, 120–1, 123, 126, 208 ‘On the Use of Church Books in the Russian Language’, 120–1 Russian Grammar, 19 theory of styles, 100 see also Church Slavonic: Lomonosov’s views on Lotman, Iurii Mikhailovich (1922–93), 38, 50, 51, 215, 220 Loubère, Stéphanie, 221 Louis XIV (1638–1715; King of France 1643–1715, subject to regency 1643–61), 200 Louis XV of France (1710–74), 200, 208 Louis-Philippe (1773–1850; King of the French 1830–48), 10 loyalty see allegiance Luhmann, Niklas, 50

i n de x   259 Lukin, Vladimir Ignat’evich (1737–94), 64, 71, 79, 85, 86–7 Father-in-Law and Son-in-Law, 71 Trinket-Vendor, 71, 86–7, 95 Lumières see Enlightenment Makarov, Mikhail Nikolaevich (1789–1847), 162 Makarov, Petr Ivanovich (1765–1804), 162 Maria Fedorovna, Grand Duchess (1759–1828), 27 Marivaux, Pierre de (1688–1763), School for Mothers, 223 Masson, Charles François Philibert (1762–1807), 39 materialism (love of worldly goods, as vice of corrupted nobility), 89 Medley see Smes’ Meier, Andrei (eighteenth-century German-Russian translator), 26–7 Mésangère, Pierre de la (1761–1831), 156 metadiscourse, 12, 100–7 Middle Ages, 5 Milroy, James, 114 Modnyi magazin (The Fashion Shop; Russian periodical), 166 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–73), 20, 48, 84, 140–52, 162 Affected Young Ladies, 140–52 Doctor in Spite of Himself, 84 Molva (The Rumour; Russian periodical), 163, 164, 167 monkeys see aping Mons, Willem (1688–1724), 216 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533–92), 20 Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de, 1689–1755), 7, 20, 207 Moscow Journal see Moskovskii zhurnal Moscow Mercury see Moskovskii merkurii Moscow Telegraph see Moskovskii telegraf Moscow Telescope see Moskovskii teleskop Moscow University, 67, 73–4 Möser, Justus (1720–94), 27 Moskovskii merkurii (The Moscow Mercury; Russian periodical), 162 Moskovskii telegraf (The Moscow Telegraph; Russian periodical), 163, 164, 166, 167, 170, 174, 175 Moskovskii teleskop (The Moscow Telescope; Russian periodical), 163

Moskovskii zhurnal (The Moscow Journal; Russian periodical), 102 multilingualism, 1, 13, 23, 54, 197 disadvantages of, according to Frederick II, 24 as indicator of European citizenship, 44 as mark of European monarch, 22 of Russian elite, 28, 31–2, 35–8 of Russian women, 31–2, 36, 38–41 for self-fashioning, 41 see also bilingualism; Dashkova: multilingualism of; diglossia; Sumarokov: multilingualism of Murav’ev-Apostol, Ivan Matveevich (1762–1851), 111 Nakaz (Instruction) see Catherine II Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), 93, 123, 129, 133, 134, 135, 179, 186, 190, 192, 208, 209 invasion of Russia in 1812, 7, 10, 28, 107, 119, 126, 128, 133, 134 163, 189–90, 207, 208, 209 Napoleonic Wars, 103, 119, 139, 158, 179, 186, 190–1, 193, 210, 246 narod (common people, peasantry), 8, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 209; see also peasantry narodnost’ (nationality), 113 national character, language or language use as expression of, 5, 8–9, 12, 17, 42–3 national distinctiveness, 5 national identity clarified in Russia by francophonie, 242, 243 coming to the fore in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 2 importance of linguistic metadiscourse in construction of, 12 link between language use and sense of, 4–7, 31, 106, 110, 125, 130, 135, 206, 246 not strongly associated with language use in the eighteenth century, 11, 16 threat posed to it by francophonie, according to comic dramatists, 83–4, 90 see also allegiance; dress; Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation; linguistic nationalism; national character

260  in d e x nationalism, 2, 246 conservative, 6, 118–35, 207 cultural, 2, 6, 8, 11, 13, 92, 246 political, 5–6 see also linguistic nationalism; Native-Soil Conservatism; Official Nationality; Slavophiles Native-Soil Conservatism (pochvennichestvo), 6; see also nationalism neologisms, 82, 121, 160, 174, 217–20; see also calques; French loanwords; Gallicisms Nesse, Agnete, 107, 114 New Library for Ladies see Nouvelle bibliothèque des Dames new literary style see Karamzinian style News see Vedomosti newspapers see periodicals Nicholas I (Nikolai Pavlovich, 1796–1855; Emperor of Russia 1825–55), 7 Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich (1733–1811), 25 nobility comic dramatists’ criticism of, 89, 92 decline in status of, 7 language use of, 1, 2, 12–13, 31–44 as social corporation, 88–9 see also emancipation of nobility; French: as language of aristocracy; multilingualism: of Russian elite Noble Land Cadet Corps, 119, 202 Notes on the News see Primechaniia k Vedomostiam Nouvelle bibliothèque des Dames (New Library for Ladies; Russian francophone periodical), 163 Novikov, Nikolai Ivanovich (1744–1818), 66–7, 231 Obrezkov, Aleksandr Vasil’evich (1772– after 1802), Comforts of Melancholy, 104 Official Nationality, 131; see also nationalism Old Russia see Kievan Rus’ Old Russian literature, 131 oral poetry, 5 Orthodox Church, 18 Orthodoxy, 11, 112, 118; see also Church Slavonic Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality see Official Nationality

otchizna (homeland or native region), 179–93 otechestvo see fatherland Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso (43 bc–ad 17 or 18)), Art of Love, 215 Painter see Zhivopisets Paris, as universal capital, 12 parrot (as topos in cultural discourse), 87, 110, 142, 159 pastoral, 206 patrie (fatherland), 11, 179–93 patriotism, 11, 85, 106, 110, 127, 131, 179–93, 199, 208–10, 245 expressed in dress, 158–9 jingoistic (or chauvinism), 208–9, 210, 247 of Russian women, 209 see also fatherland; homeland; linguistic patriotism Paul I (Pavel Petrovich, 1754–1801; Emperor of Russia 1796–1801), 118, 133, 182, 193 attitude towards wearing of French clothes, 158, 159 Pavlenko, Aneta, 3 peasantry, 8, 11, 180, 185–6, 189 colonisation of, 17 monolingualism of, 92, 246 Pellisson, Paul (1624–93), 57 periodicals, 64–76, 79, 161–75, 243 genre of Spectators, 65 see also French press; Russian press; satirical journals Perrin, Pierre (1620–75), 57 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich (1746–1827), 123 Peter I, the Great (Petr Alekseevich, 1672–1725; Tsar of Russia from 1682, sole ruler from 1696, Emperor 1721–5), 66, 91, 181, 223 ‘Edict to Zotov’, 58 see also Petrine reforms; translation: Peter I and; Westernisation petits-maîtres, 73, 75, 222, 230–1; see also dandies; fops Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304–74), 214 Petrine reforms, 58 Pictet, François-Pierre (1728–98), 20 Pluchart, Alexandre (1777–1827), 163 plurilingualism see multilingualism pochvennichestvo see Native-Soil Conservatism

i n de x   261 Poland, 17 Polevoi, Nikolai Alekseevich (1796–1846), 163, 174 Poleznoe uveselenie (Useful Entertainment; Russian periodical), 69 Polianskaia, Elizaveta Romanovna (née Vorontsova, 1739–92), 35 Polish as relay language for translation into Russian, 57 Sumarokov’s knowledge of, 55 political nationalism see nationalism polysystem theory (of translation), 49–55, 59, 60, 152, 243 Pontius Pilate (d. ad 37), 183 Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), ‘Windsor Forest’, 185 Post from Hell see Adskaia pochta Potemkin, Prince Grigorii Aleksandrovich (1739–91), 33 pre-Romanticism, 180 press see French press; periodicals; Russian press; satirical journals prestige language see French: as prestige language Prévost, Abbé, Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality […], 147 prikaznoi iazyk see chancery language Primechaniia k Vedomostiam (Notes on the News; Russian periodical), 66 Proskurin, Oleg, 101, 160 Providence, 134 public opinion, 79 Pugachev revolt (1773–4), 200 Pugachev, Emel’ian Ivanovich (1726–75), 33, 201 purism see linguistic purism Purse see Koshelek Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich (1799–1837), 9, 160, 163, 197–210 age of, 2, 215, 222, 246 attitude of towards Franco-Russian bilingualism, 207–10, 247 Blackamoor of Peter the Great, 198, 200, 204 Captain’s Daughter, 198, 199, 200–1, 204 commentary on language use and identity, 206–10 Dubrovskii, 198, 201–2 on education of Russian nobles by French-speaking tutors, 10, 201 ‘Egyptian Nights’, 199, 204 Eugene Onegin, 198, 202–3

fictional references to Germans and German language, 199, 200 on French in the education of the Russian nobility, 201–2 ‘On Russian Prose’, 198 ‘Peasant Lady’, 198, 199, 202, 204–6 ‘Queen of Spades’, 198, 199, 203, 204 Roslavlev, 7, 198–9, 207–10, 247 Ruslan i Liudmila, 197 ‘Shot’, 199 ‘Snowstorm’, 206 ‘Stationmaster’, 199 Tales of Belkin, 198, 199, 204, 206, 207 treatment of Russian francophonie: in the age of Peter I, 200; in the age of Catherine II, 201; in high society, 203–4, 207–10; in the Napoleonic era, 207–10; among noblewomen, 202–3, 207–10 use of francophonie as a means of advancing plot, 201–2, 204–5 use of language choice as a misleading sign, 204–6 wordplay involving knowledge of French, 161 Pushkin, Vasilii L’vovich (1766–1830), 105 Pustomelia (The Tatler; Russian periodical), 67, 70 Rabelais, François (1494?–1553), 20 Rabow-Edling, Susanna, 6 Racine, Jean (1639–99), 48, 59, 68 Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich (1749–1802), 180, 183–4, 185, 189 Complete Collected Works, 185 ‘Historical Song’, 188 Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow, 183, 185 Raeff, Marc, 188 Raoult, Guillaume (French teacher at Moscow University), 73–4 raznochintsy (intellectuals of non-noble origin), 7 Readings at the Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word see Chteniia v besede liubitelei russkogo slova Reddaway, William, 20 Reichel, Johann-Gottfried (1727–78), 67 Renaissance, 197 Repnina, Natal’ia Aleksandrovna (née Kurakina, 1737–98), 42

262  in d e x Republic of Letters, 2, 13, 18, 22, 79; see also Russian literary community Republic of Taste, 40 Restoration comedy, 94 revolution(s) see French Revolution (from 1789); July Revolution (1830) Robertson, William (1721–93), 37, 38 rodina see homeland Rogger, Hans, 6, 91, 245 Romanticism, 2, 5, 6, 13, 204, 246 Romme, Nicolas-Charles (1745–1805), Principles and Guidelines of the Art of Building and Arming Naval Vessels, 119 Rostopchin, Andrei Fedorovich (1813–92), 10–11 Rostopchin, Fedor Vasil’evich (1763–1826), 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 244, 245 knowledge of French and German, 119 linguistic nationalism of, 119–20, 128–9 Oh! The French, 128 possible knowledge of writings of Hamann and Herder, 123 Russian posters written in 1812 by, 191 Thoughts Aloud on the Red Staircase, 123, 128–9, 130 Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste (1671–1741), ‘To Fortune’, 55 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), 182, 193, 207 educational tracts, 119 influence on Karamzin, 182–3 Rumour see Molva Rus’ (Old Russia) see Kievan Rus’ Russian codification of, 5, 49, 56, 60, 100, 114 compared with French, 21 disparagement of, 83–4, 86 in high society, 109 Karamzin’s reform of, 162 at the Noble Land Cadet Corps, 5 in nobles’ correspondence, 41–2 perceived weaknesses of, 109, 142, 208 praised by Catherine II, 20 in proverbs, 8 rise in value of, 8 standardisation of, 35, 114 supposed qualities of, 4, 19, 20, 108–9 teaching and learning of, 5, 36, 42 use of by Russian nobility, 41–2 women’s use of, 42: according to Karamzin, 109, 162; according to Pushkin, 202–3

word order in, 21 worth of, in eyes of conservative nationalists, 118 see also bilingualism: FrancoRussian; Catherine II: promotion of Russian by; Church Slavonic; code-switching; Dictionary of the Russian Academy; French loanwords; linguistic nationalism; Russian literary language; Voltaire: praising the Russian language Russian Academy (also Imperial Russian Academy, founded 1783), 35, 103; see also Dictionary of the Russian Academy Russian Courier see Russkii vestnik Russian francophonie negative attitudes towards, 67, 201, 209, 243, 244, 246 Russian writers’ treatment of, 80, 85, 92, 197, 203 view of French writers on, 74, 76 see also French: criticism of Russians’ use of; Pushkin: treatment of Russian francophonie; Russian press: criticism of Russian francophonie in Russian literary community, 6, 7, 12, 13, 243, 244–5, 246, 247 Russian literary language, 100, 198 creation or development of, 103, 243, 245 Russian literature, 125 creation and development of, 5, 6, 13, 17, 197 immaturity of, according to Pushkin, 208 representation of foreign tutors in, 9–10 see also Russian literary community; translated literature ‘Russian Parisians’, 71 Russian press, 64–73, 76 criticism of Russian francophonie in, 69–71 debate about education in, 69–70 Gallophobia in, 70–1 influence of Spectators on, 66 language debate in, 68–73 learning of French as viewed by, 67–8 origin of, 66 see also periodicals; satirical journals Russkii vestnik (The Russian Courier; Russian periodical), 106, 118, 130, 131

i n de x   263 Russo-Turkish wars (1768–74 and 1787–92), 20, 21–2, 93 Safonova, Elizaveta Frantsevna (editor of nineteenth-century Russian periodical), 163 St Petersburg Courier see Sankt Peterburgskii vestnik St Petersburg News see Sankt Peterburgskie vedomosti salons, 9, 94, 106, 162, 220, 227 Saltykov, Count Field Marshal Ivan Petrovich (1730–1805), 35–6 Saltykova, Countess Dar’ia Petrovna (née Chernysheva, 1739–1802), 35–6, 38, 42 Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Evgrafovich (Saltykov, pseudonym Shchedrin, 1826–89), 198 samobytnost’ (individuality, distinctiveness), 206 Sand, George (nom de plume of Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant, 1804–76), 11 Sander, Elizabeth, 40 Sankt Peterburgskie vedomosti (The St Petersburg News; Russian periodical), 66 Sankt Peterburgskii vestnik (The St Petersburg Courier; Russian periodical), 106 satirical journals, 12, 64–76, 100, 244 Schierle, Ingrid, 181, 192 Schnor, Johann Karl (1738–1812), 26 Schumacher, Johann Daniel (1690–1761), 216 Second Empire (in France, 1852–70), 10 Segrain, Jean (1624–1701), 57 Sentimentalism, 180, 185, 192 serfdom, 92, 131 service, concept of, 8 Shadwell, Thomas (1642–92), Bury Fair, 94 Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), Hamlet, 56 Shakhovskoi, Prince Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (1777–1831), 105 Shalikov, Petr Ivanovich (1767 or 1768–1852), 162, 166 Shcherbatov, Prince Dmitrii Mikhailovich (1760–1839), 179 Shcherbatov, Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich (1733–90), 179–80, 193

Shcherbinina, Anastasiia Mikhailovna (née Dashkova, 1760–31), 37 Sheremetev, Count Nikolai Petrovich (1751–1809), 33 Shirinskii-Shikhmatov, Platon Aleksandrovich (1790–1853), 105, 106 Shishkov, Admiral Aleksandr Semenovich (1754–1841), 87, 100–14, 118, 119, 123, 124–8, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 161, 244, 245 ‘Addition to the Work called Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language’, 103 compilation of trilingual nautical dictionary, 119 ‘Dialogues on Literature between Persons A and B’, 103, 112, 113, 130 disapproval of courtiers and Unofficial Committee of Alexander I, 120 ‘Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language’, 103, 104, 109, 121, 123, 124–6, 127, 130 indebtedness to Lomonosov, 120–1 knowledge of French, 119 language debate with Karamzin, 100–14, 156, 160 linguistic nationalism of, 124–8 ‘Meditation on Love of the Fatherland’, 103, 106, 126, 127–8 ‘Speech on the Opening of the Symposium […]’, 126–7 translation of work by Charles Romme, 119 ‘Treatise on the eloquence of the scriptures […]’, 103 see also Church Slavonic: Shishkov’s views on; French loanwords: Shishkov’s opposition to; translation: Shishkov’s views on shock (as literary strategy), 220, 226, 231 Shuvalov, Count Andrei Petrovich (1742–89), 59, 74, 75 Shuvalov, Ivan Ivanovich (1727–97), 42, 231 Simmons, Ernest, 54 Sinclair, Sir John (1754–1835), 39 Slavonic see Church Slavonic Slavonic Bible, 125 Slavonicisms, 112, 125, 217–18 Slavophiles, 6, 8, 26, 92, 245 Smes’ (The Medley; Russian periodical), 66, 72

264  in d e x Smith, Anthony, 6 Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskogo slova (Companion of the Lovers of the Russian Word; Russian periodical), 68, 70, 71 Sobranie luchshikh sochinenii (A Collection of the Best Works; Russian periodical), 67 society see French: as society language; high society; Russian: in high society soirées, 94 Sorokin, Iurii, 220 Sovremennik (The Contemporary; Russian periodical), 207 Spanish, 19 Spectateur du Nord (Spectator of the North; German francophone periodical), 102 Spectator of the North see Spectateur du Nord Spectator see Zritel’ Spectator, The (English periodical), 65 Speranskii, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1772–1839), 130 Spirit of Journals see Esprit des journaux spoken language as one of several varieties of Russian that needed to be codified, 100 as source of good Russian usage, 111 Staël, Germaine de (1766–1817), 208, 209, 210 Stagnell, Johan (1711–95), Baron SelfImportant and Miss Scrupulous, 80 standardisation see Russian: standardisation of Steele, Sir Richard (1672–1729), 67 stereotyping, 9, 71, 81, 200, 201; see also French character Stoicism, 89 Stoiunin, Vladimir, 126 Stoletov, Egor Mikhailovich (d. 1736), 216 Stroganov, Count Aleksandr Pavlovich (1794–1814), 11 Stroganova, Baroness Anna Mikhailovna (née Vorontsova, 1743–69), 33, 36 Stroganova, Countess Sof’ia Vladimirovna (née Princess Golitsyna, 1775–1845), 42 Sue, Eugène (1804–57), 11 Sumarokov, Aleksandr Petrovich (1717–77), 48–9, 54–60, 121, 207, 227, 246–7

concern at foreign cultural domination, 64 editor of Trudoliubivaia pchela, 66 ‘Epistle on Poetry’, 56 as imitator of French writers, 48, 56 ‘Instruction to Aspiring Writers’, 58, 60 ‘Language Corruption’, 54, 60 linguistic Gallophobia of, 81–5 Monsters, 81–4, 94, 121 multilingualism of, 54, 55 ‘On Extirpation of Foreign Words from Russian’, 54 ‘On the French Language’, 59 Quarrel of a Husband and His Wife, 81–5, 88, 94 response to critics about indebtedness to French authors, 68 Sinav and Truvor, 84 translation of his work into European languages, 59 treatment of use of French in comedies of, 81–5, 88 see also comic drama; translation: Sumarokov and; Trudoliubivaia pchela Suvorov, Field Marshal Aleksandr Vasil’evich (1730–1800), 186 symbolic capital, or value of language, 3, 4 Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word, 103, 106 Table of Ranks (introduced by Peter I in 1722), 201, 223 Tale of Peter Golden Keys, 216 Tallement, Paul (also known as Tallemant, 1642–1712), Journey to the Island of Love, 214–15, 219, 220, 224, 231 Tartu Semiotic School, 50 Tatler (English periodical), 67; see also Pustomelia teachers see French: teaching and learning of; French-speaking tutors; governesses Tetradi perevodchika (A Translator’s Workbook; Soviet professional journal), 55 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 24 This and That: see I to i se Thomson, James (1700–48), 112 Thümmel, Moritz August von (1738–1817), 25

i n de x   265 Tiulichev, Dmitrii, 54 Tolstoi, Lev Nikolaevich (1828–1910), 8, 16, 198 War and Peace, 7, 8, 16, 28, 134 translated literature, 49–55 translation, 48–60, 139–52, 243 Catherine II and, 21 and codification of Russian, 58 cultural, 94, 210 Dashkova and, 35 from French into Russian, 71–2, 164–7 functions of in Russia, 53–4 Herder’s views on, 122 Peter I and, 58 from Russian into French, 21 Shishkov’s views on, 124–5 strategies for, 57 Sumarokov and, 55–60 Voltaire and, 21 see also adaptation; belles infidèles; domestication; foreignisation; free translation method; polysystem theory; translation studies translation studies, 48, 49, 50, 60 transliteration (as means of receiving loanwords), 165, 170, 174, 175 transplantation (i.e. mass cultural transfer), 51 travel writing see French: in travel diaries or journals Trediakovskii, Vasilii Kirillovich (1703–69), 55, 57–8, 60, 81 Journey to the Island of Love, 54, 215–20, 224, 225–8, 231 theory of styles, 100 ‘To the Reader’, 54 troubadours, 214 Trudoliubivaia pchela (The Industrious Bee; Russian periodical), 66, 68 Truten’ (The Drone; Russian periodical), 67, 72 Tsvetnik (The Flower Garden; Russian periodical), 105 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818–83), 198 Turkish, 21 tutors see French-speaking tutors; governesses Tynianov, Iurii, 51, 105 Tyulenev, Sergey, 49, 50 Ukrainian, 54 ulozhenie see law code

Universal Literary Gazette see Gazette universelle de littérature Unofficial Committee (of Alexander I), 120 upbringing see education Urfé, Honoré d’ (1568–1625), Astrea, 215 Useful Entertainment see Poleznoe uveselenie Uvarov, Count Sergei Semenovich (1786–1855), 131 Vanburgh, Sir John (1664–1726), Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, 94 Vase see Vaza Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre de (1633–1707), 119 Vaugelas, Claude Favre de (1585–1650), 102 Vaza (The Vase; Russian periodical), 163–4, 175 Vedomosti (News; Russian newspaper), 66 Venturi, Franco, 18 Versailles, French court at, 21 Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe; Russian periodical), 105, 106, 112, 157 Viala, Aliona, 220 Viazemskii, Prince Aleksandr Alekseevich (1727–93), 26 Viazemskii, Prince Petr Andreevich (1792–1878), 104, 161, 166 ‘Everyone Cut in His Own Way’, 160 Vockerodt, Johann Gotthilf (1693–1756), 214 Voeikov, Aleksandr Fedotovich (1778 or 1779–1839), ‘The Madhouse’, 159 Voiture, Vincent (1597–1648), 216 Volkonskaia, Princess Zinaida Aleksandrovna (1792–1862), 42 Volkov, Dmitrii Vasil’evich (1727–85), Education, 75 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778), 19–23, 25, 38, 59, 91, 112, 182 exemplary prose style of, 198 and the Greek language, 22 history of Peter the Great, 20 Micromégas, 59 philosophical tales, 119 praising the Russian language, 20 on use of French at the Prussian court, 141 see also Catherine II: correspondence with Voltaire; translation: Voltaire and

266  in d e x Vorontsov, Count Aleksandr Romanovich (1741–1805), 33 Vorontsov, Count Mikhail Illarionovich (1714–67), 33 Vorontsov, Count Roman Larionovich (or Illarionovich) (1717–83), 32 Vorontsov, Count Semen Romanovich (1744–1832), 35 Vorontsovs, Counts, 32 Vsiakaia vsiachina (All Sorts of Things; Russian periodical), 66, 71 Watts, Richard, 109 Westernisation, 95, 198, 200, 215; see also Petrine reforms Westernisers, 245 Wilmot, Catherine (or Katharine, 1773–1824), 31, 36, 37 Wilmot, Martha (married name Bradford, 1774–1873), 31, 33, 36, 37, 41, 43 Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling, 91 women see French: women’s use of; language choice: and gender roles;

multilingualism: of Russian women; Russian: women’s use of Year in Literature see Année littéraire Young, Edward (1683–1765), 112 xenophobia, 94; see also French character; Gallophobia; linguistic Gallophobia; stereotyping Zagoskin, Mikhail Nikolaevich (1789–1852), 207, 209 Roslavlev, or the Russians in 1812, 207 Zhivopisets (The Painter; Russian periodical), 67, 68–9, 231 Zhukovskii, Vasilii Andreevich (1783–1852), 105, 180, 187–9 ‘Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors’, 105, 187–9, 191 Zhurnal dlia milykh (Journal for Loved Ones; Russian periodical), 162 Zritel’ (The Spectator; Russian periodical), 69