V. F. Odoevsky: His Life, Times and Milieu 9781474241427, 9781474285766, 9781474241410

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Biographical Introduction
I Introduction
II Family and Childhood
III Education and the 'Lyubomudry' Years
IV Marriage and Government Service
V The Odoyevsky Personality
VI The Last Years
Part 1: Odoyevksy's Creative Activity
Chapter One The Writer
I The 1820s
1820-24
1824-30
II 1830-44
The Mature Period
Variegated Tales
The 'Artistic' Tales
The 'Society' Tales
The Philosophical-Romantic Tales
The Utopian/Science-fiction Tales
Russian Nights
III The Post-1844 Period
IV Conclusion
Chapter Two The Thinker
I Odoyevsky's Philosophical Development
II Odoyevsky and the Philosophical Tradition
III Odoyevsky and the Slavophiles
Chapter Three The Musician
I The Musical Dimension
II Odoyevsky's Early Musical Career
III Odoyevsky's Ideas on Music
IV Odoyevsky and Russian Music
V Odoyevsky and Western Music
VI Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner: Personal Contacts
VII Odoyevsky and Russian Musical Life
Chapter Four The Popular Educator: Odoyevsky's activities as Pedagogue, Philanthropist and Children's Writer
I The Pedagogue
Functionary and Theorist
The Passion for Science
The Promotion of Science
II The Philanthropist
III The Children's Writer
Part 2: Odoyevsky and his Age
Chapter Five Odoyevsky and Tsarist Society
I Decembrism
II Reaction and Reform
III Censorship and Journalism
IV The Tsarist Establishment
V The Official Ideology
Chapter Six Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu:His Circle and Relationships
I A. I. Odoyevsky
II D. V. Venevitinov
III A. S. Griboyedov
IV V. K. Kyukhel'beker
V A. S. Pushkin
VI N. V. Gogol'
VII M. Yu. Lermontov
VIII V. G. Belinsky
IX F. M. Dostoyevsky
X L S . Turgenev
XI L.N.Tolstoy
XII Ye. P. Rostopchina and S. A. Sobolevsky
Postscript: In Conclusion
Appendix I: The Odoyevsky family tree: 18th-19th centuries
Appendix II: S. A. Sobolevsky's epigrams on V. F. Odoyevsky
Appendix III: Glossary of Odoyevsky's contemporaries
Notes
Bibliography
Selective index of works by Odoyevsky
Index

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V. F. Odoevsky

History: Bloomsbury Academic Collections

This Collection of 23 reissued titles from The Athlone Press and Leicester University Press offers a distinguished selection of titles that showcase the width and breadth of historical study, as well as the interdisciplinary nature of the subject. Crossing over into politics, linguistics, economics, politics, military and maritime history, and science, this Collection encompasses titles on British, European and global subjects from the Early Modern period to the late 20th Century. The collection is available both in e-book and print versions. Titles in History are available in the following subsets: History: British History History: European History History: History of Latin America History: History of Medicine

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V. F. Odoevsky His Life, Times and Milieu Neil Cornwell History: European History BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC COLLECTIONS

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in 1986 by The Athlone Press This edition published by Bloomsbury Academic 2015 © Neil Cornwell 2015 Neil Cornwell has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-4142-7 ePDF: 978-1-4742-4141-0 Set: 978-1-4742-4156-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Series: Bloomsbury Academic Collections, ISSN 2051-0012

Printed and bound in Great Britain

The life, times and milieu of V. F. Odoyevsky

The life, times and milieu of V. F. ODOYEVSKY

1804-1869 NEIL CORNWELL

THE ATHLONE PRESS LONDON

First published in Great Britain in 1986 by The Athlone Press Ltd 44 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4LY Copyright© 1986NEIL CORNWELL British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cornwell, Neil The life, times and milieu ofV.F. Odoyevsky, 1804-1869. 1. Odoevskii, V. F. -Biography 2. Authors, Russian - 19th century - Biography I. Title 891.78'309 PG3337.03 ISBN 0-485-11279-5

All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writingfrom the publisher. Typesetting by The Word Factory, Rossendale, Lancashire Printed in Great Britain at Redwood Burn, Trowbridge

Contents Foreword by Sir Isaiah Berlin Preface Acknowledgments

ix xi XV

Biographical Introduction I II III IV V VI

Introduction Family and Childhood Education and the 'Lyubomudry' Years Marriage and Government Service The Odoyevsky Personality The Last Years Part 1

1 2 70 11 20 26

Odoyevksy's Creative Activity

ipter One The Writer I The 1820s 1820-24 1824-30 II 1830-44 The Mature Period Variegated Tales The 'Artistic' Tales The 'Society' Tales The Philosophical-Romantic Tales The Utopian/Science-fiction Tales Russian Nights III The Post-1844 Period IV Conclusion

31 35 37 38 46 50 55 64 66 69 72

Chapter Two The Thinker I Odoyevsky's Philosophical Development II Odoyevsky and the Philosophical Tradition III Odoyevsky and the Slavophiles

75 91 114

Chapter Three The Musician I The Musical Dimension II Odoyevsky's Early Musical Career III Odoyevsky's Ideas on Music IV Odoyevsky and Russian Music V Odoyevsky and Western Music VI Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner: Personal Contacts VII Odoyevsky and Russian Musical Life

121 123 127 134 142 150 157

Chapter Four The Popular Educator: Odoyevsky's activities as Pedagogue, Philanthropist and Children's Writer I The Pedagogue Functionary and Theorist The Passion for Science The Promotion of Science II The Philanthropist III The Children's Writer Part 2

162 162 165 166 169 173

Odoyevsky and his Age

Chapter Five Odoyevsky and Tsarist Society I II III IV V

Decembrism Reaction and Reform Censorship and Journalism The Tsarist Establishment The Official Ideology

179 183 196 205 209

Chapter Six Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu: His Circle and Relationships I A. I. Odoyevsky II D. V. Venevitinov III A. S. Griboyedov IV V. K. Kyukhel'beker V A. S. Pushkin VI N. V. Gogol' VII M. Yu. Lermontov VIII V. G. Belinsky IX F. M. Dostoyevsky X L S . Turgenev XI L.N.Tolstoy XII Ye. P. Rostopchina and S. A. Sobolevsky Postscript: In Conclusion Appendix I The Odoyevsky family tree: 18th-19th centuries II S. A. Sobolevsky's epigrams on V. F. Odoyevsky III Glossary of Odoyevsky's contemporaries Notes Bibliography Selective index of works by Odoyevsky Index

228 231 234 237 241 248 253 257 260 263 265 268 275 280 282 285 290 370 403 407

Foreword The life and works of Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky deserve far more attention than they have been accorded even in his own country. He is a remarkably interesting figure, both as a man and as a thinker: a gifted disciple of the German Romantic philosophers of his day, he was steeped in both Russian and Western culture more deeply than almost anyone else in Russian history. Odoyevsky was very versatile: a polymath, a talented imaginative writer, one of the two editors of the best and most influential literary journal produced during the golden age of Russian poetry, a musician and an inspired writer on music, the earliest of Russian writers of science fiction, an original and influential theorist of education, and an organizer of charitable enterprises in his country - yet perhaps best known today as a friend of the great galaxy of the Russian writers of his time - from Zhukovsky, Griboyedov, Pushkin, Tyutchev, Lermontov, Gogol', Belinsky to Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy - whom he regularly met in his drawing room and who held him in great affection. He was host to the most famous Western composers of the day - Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner - when they visited St Petersburg. Mildly eccentric, self-deprecatingly modest, impressionable, responsive, hospitable to people and ideas, he was a man of lasting enthusiasm. A devoted admirer of the philosopher Schelling, he acquired from his writings a view of art as the deepest and most unifying expression of the ever-advancing, self-generating world spirit, a movement incapable of being described or analysed in the language, or by the canons, of ordinary commonsense, or the laws of the natural sciences, a spirit conscious of itself most vividly in poetry and philosophy, but above all in music, which, as the early German Romantics had believed, is the most direct language of the human soul. The two musical essays in the best-known collection of his writings, Russian Nights - 'Sebastian Bach' and 'Beethoven's Last Quartet' - are of an order comparable to the richest and most evocative writing of Jean-Paul Richter or E. T. A. Hoffmann. Dr CornwelPs lucid and scrupulously scholarly and comprehensive study is, in my view, the fullest and most exhaustive account of

x

Foreword

Odoyevsky's manifold activities to be found in any language. It is also exceedingly well written. His description of Odoyevsky's relationships with the Russian society of his time - government officialdom, the social problems of Tsarist Russia in his day, but above all, of course, with the imaginative writers, composers and critics - supersedes all other studies of the man and his activities, and is likely to remain authoritative for many years. Odoyevsky has at last received his just deserts at the hands, remarkably enough, of an English writer. Isaiah Berlin

Preface I Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky was a far more central figure in Russian cultural life of the nineteenth century than has generally been recognized - even in Russia and certainly in the West. A man of many parts and many careers - principally in literature, music, education and public service - Odoyevsky is today mainly remembered as the writer of a brand of romantic philosophical fiction which is proving of greater interest to many present-day readers than it did to some of his contemporaries and their successors. The following statement on the 'text' by Roland Barthes, in his famous essay 'The Death of the Author' (see Image-Music-Text (London, 1977) p. 146), might almost have been written with Odoyevsky's Russian Nights in mind: We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture. Romantic thought, and romantic literary practice, it may be argued, engendered not only modernism, but modern literary theory as well; and, indeed, certain notions of Odoyevsky's, to be found in both his fiction and his philosophical writings, may well interest readers of such theoretical figures as Tzvetan Todorov and Umberto Eco. The stress placed here, however, on Odoyevsky's thought is not so much forward looking as backward; Odoyevsky is placed in the context of nineteenthcentury Russian thinking and his main ideas are traced back, through Schelling, to the Hermetic and theosophical traditions, finding their roots in the philosophy of antiquity. Given the diversity of Odoyevsky's interests, and the range of material considered, certain sections of this book may tend towards the

xii

Preface

abstruse; if this be so, it is hoped that readers will find compensations in the lighter' biographical and historical areas. This study, it should be said, is not primarily either a literary or a philosophical one. It is essentially a thematic biography, or a 'life and times', oudining Odoyevsky's career and participation in various spheres of Russian life. Readers whose interest in Odoyevsky is primarily literary are therefore referred to the chapters here on him as writer and as thinker, and to that on his literary relations with other prominent figures of the time ('all Russian literature', wrote Shevyryov, 'was to be found on the divan at Odoyevsky's'), as well as to articles which I have published elsewhere. A full literary study of Odoyevsky has, of course, yet to be undertaken. As the first book on this figure in English, and the first of comparable length for many years in any language, the present study details fully, in notes and bibliography, its dependence on the many primary and secondary materials utilized, quoting extensively from obscure, or on occasion unpublished, sources. Despite the length of this study, however, the scope of its subject is such that it in certain respects remains an introductory essay, or series of essays. This is so in two senses. The first arises from Odoyevsky's status in Western - and particularly British and American - scholarship, in respect of which he has claims to be considered 'the forgotten man' of nineteenth-gentury Russian culture. A number of American theses have been written on Odoyevsky; however, these cover only certain (comparatively) restricted aspects of his activities. In terms of published material, nothing of greater than article length has so far appeared in English and the number of items in this category are few and far between. Histories of Russian literature usually accord Odoyevsky's works but a paragraph or two; histories of thought have been more generous but their treatment has tended, in the absence of an overall perspective, to simplify or distort. The first English-language article on Odoyevsky as a music critic appeared only in 1982. His other activities and his relationships with the main figures of his age would appear to be still largely unknown. Despite the volume of Russian and Soviet scholarship on Odoyevsky, and the revival of interest in him in the Soviet Union over the past decade and a half, no book-length study (specialized pamphlets by G. Bernandt and V. S. Virginsky apart) has been published in Russian since 1913. The second sense in which the present study remains introductory arises from the range of Odoyevsky's writings and undertakings. More

Preface

xiii

detailed investigations of all or many aspects of his multi-faceted life and works are, of course, still needed. It is hoped that the present study at least will prepare the ground.

II Any study of V. F. Odoyevsky is inevitably heavily indebted to the labours of P. N. Sakulin, whose colossal unfinished 1100-page opus of 1913 remains an invaluable source. My debt also to the efforts of recent Soviet scholarship will be evident throughout. Acknowledgements are due to the staff of the manuscript section and the reading rooms of the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library in Leningrad and the British Library, London; special thanks are due to library staff of Queen's University (Belfast) and the Inter-Library Loans Division of the British Library at Boston Spa (and all who participated in this system for my benefit in libraries at home and abroad). I should like to thank members of the Department of Slavonic Studies of the Queen's University of Belfast for their constant interest and encouragement; members of the Irish Slavists' Association, the Neo-Formalist Circle and the Nineteenth-Century Literature Study group of BUAS for enduring the reading of papers on Odoyevsky; the editors of Quinquereme, The Slavonic and East European Review, Essays in Poetics and Renaissance and Modern Studies for publishing articles on the same figure; and Mr Robert Reid for including my contribution in his collection of essays on Russian romanticism. Overlap between the content of most of these articles and that of the present study has been kept, it is hoped, as minimal as possible. Thanks are due, for assistance rendered or information supplied at various stages, to Mr David Williams (from his own experiences of Odoyevsky research); Dr John McNair (for pertinent material from the archive of P. D. Boborykin); Dr Chris Thomas (with reference to the fate of the Sobolevsky collection); and Professors Simon Karlinsky, Arnold McMillin, Heinrich Stammler and Vittorio Strada. Soviet colleagues who have given me invaluable assistance with references, information and (in many cases) copies of their published work include: Professor B. F. Yegorov, Yu. V. Mann, M. I. Medovoy and V. I. Sakharoy. Gratitude is due, for secretarial skills and perseverance, to Elizabeth Kelly and Janet Armstrong.

xiv

Preface

Finally, I wish to thank my parents for their encouragement and support; and, for their patience, Maggie, Katerina and Juliet.

Ill Transliteration is intended to follow the SEER guidelines, with very minor modifications, particularly with names (e.g. 'Odoyevsky', but 'Yuriy' and 'moskovskiy'); some conventional spellings have been retained (e.g. 'Tchaikovsky') and the occasional anglicization (in the case of'Alexander', leading to the infelicity of'Alexander Aleksandrovich'). Dates are 'Old Style'. All translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. Titles of books and stories in the text are normally given in English translation, but names of journals in Russian. In the notes all titles are normally given in Russian. When the language used in the original is French (rather than Russian), this is normally indicated and, where significant, the original French is reproduced in the notes. NC Belfast, January 1985

Acknowledgments Generous financial assistance towards the publication of this book has been received from the following bodies or institutions: The British Academy, The Queen's University of Belfast, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, and Twenty-Seven Foundation Awards. I am grateful to the Publications Committee of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies for agreeing to accept this book in its London East European Series.

The lie in art, the lie in science and the lie in life have always been both my enemies and my tormentors. Everywhere I have pursued them and everywhere they have pursued me. V. F. ODOYEVSKY

They laugh at me because I am always busy! You do not realize, gentlemen, how much there is to do in this world; I have to bring down to this world those poetic thoughts which come to me and pursue me; I have to bring out those philosophical thoughts at which I arrived after long experience and suffering; the masses have no books - and we do not have our own music, our own architecture; medicine in Europe as a whole is still in its infancy; the old is forgotten, the new is unknown; our folk tales are being lost; the ancient discoveries are being forgotten; science must be moved forward; its treasures must be extricated from beneath the dust of centuries. There the young do not know the straight and narrow path, here the old are drawn into the mire; the former must be encouraged, the latter made to understand. That's how much there is to do! What? I have carried out only a thousandth part. How can I, after this, look on coolly while people waste time on cards, hunting, horses, promotions, sloth and so on and so forth? V. F. ODOYEVSKY

Biographical Introduction A pen writes slowly if at least a few drops of one's own blood are not added to the inkwell. Any creative art costs a part of one's vital phosphorus. There is no worthwhile activity without self-immolation. V. F. Odoyevsky I

Introduction

In 1874 N. V. Putyata, when introducing a selection of the unpublished papers of his friend V. F. Odoyevsky, expressed the hope that a 'detailed and punctilious biography' would appear 'before long'.1 Over a century later, such a biography is still awaited. , In his biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, Odoyevsky wrote: Biographers of Bach, as well as of other artists, describe his life as they do the life of any other man. They tell you when he was born, with whom he studied, whom he married.. . . They overlook the sacred life of an artist, the development of his creative power, this real life, only remnants of which manifest themselves in the artist's daily life.2 In contrast to this approach, he continued: There is only one source for the artist's life: his works. Whether he be a musician, a poet,\or a painter - in his works you will find his spirit, his character, his face; in them you will find even those events which have escaped the chronological pen of historians, (p. 106) The story Sebastian Bach is, of course, largely fiction, with an underlying element of romantic philosophy. This is not the intention, it need hardly be said, of the present biographical sketch - nor, indeed, of this study as a whole. At the same time, all the material is not readily

2

Biographical Introduction

available to compile a biography as such of the former, traditional type. Odoyevsky's views on the subject notwithstanding, however, it is to be hoped that such a biography will be written by a Soviet scholar, sooner rather than later. In the continued absence of any such thing, a general sketch of Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky's life can be put together from diverse published sources: Odoyevsky's posthumously published papers, scattered letters, incidental biographical information in Sakulin's monumental volume,3 and many other sources from the nineteenth century and from more recent scholarship. Odoyevsky's archive is immense and, to some degree, scattered; it is obviously the main source still to be systematically tapped and the wealth of detail ordered. This will only be done, working on the foundations laid by Sakulin, by some person or persons over a lengthy period of time and possessed of certain paleographical skills. Short-term researchers will discover isolated items of interest (such as are included in the present study) but will not acquire the full picture. Neither will biographers derive great help from Odoyevsky's conscious efforts at autobiography. His memoirs were never written, his diaries are sketchy and devoid of detail (much from his diaries and travel notes remains unpublished), his correspondence has not been collected and his autobiographical writings are fragmentary, to say the least. Autobiography, indeed, he regarded as an impossible exercise in his own case: 'How do people find time to relate in an autobiography what they do? My life is split into thousands of personages and actions and there is not time to note it down!'4 In detail, too, many of Odoyevsky's own comments and recollections on his life are far from being fully dependable.

II

Family and Childhood

The first point in Odoyevsky's biography on which he himself was no reliable authority is his date of birth. This event occurred at the end of July (probably July 31) of either 1803 or 1804; sources are almost equally divided between the two dates and Odoyevsky himself left contradictory statements.5 Even A. I. Odoyevsky's claim to be a year older than his cousin is inconclusive, as there may be some doubt about the year of his birth, too.6 The categorical assertion made in 1903, to declare that year Odoyevsky's 'centenary', that 'all sources, apart from the stone on his grave, on which "1804" is to be seen, testify

Family and Childhood

3

thus', can certainly not be upheld.7 The organizers of the commemorative evening of the 175th anniversary of his birth, on the other hand, were not so confident; although the programme was inscribed with the dates '1803-1869', the event was held roughly between the rival dates of August 12 (New Style) 1978 and 1979: on 16 December 1978. For the purposes of the present study, we shall accept the word of the tombstone. The Odoyevsky family claimed descent from Rurik and was reckoned, by the mid nineteenth century, the oldest family in Russia. V. F. Odoyevsky, as the last of the Odoyevsky line, thus came to acquire the honorary position of'senior nobleman' of Russia; even before that, we are told, he had been dubbed 'Monmorancy russe, because of the , antiquity of his stock'.8 According to the 'Genealogy of the Odoyevsky Princes', to be found in Odoyevsky's archive, the descent comes from Rurik through Yaroslav Vladimirovich and the Chernigov grand princes (such as Svyatoslav, d. 1076; and Oleg of Tmutarakan and Chernigov, d. 1115); the name 'Odoyevsky' came to pass from 1227, following the relocation of Prince Roman Semyonovich (son of Semyon Glukhovsky), in the face of the Tatar rampage, from Novosil to the district of Odoyev, in the province of Tula. 9 Various illustrious Odoyevskys were prominent over the centuries in Russian history; the most notable of these were the princes Ivan Bol'shoy Nikitich Odoyevsky and Ivan Men'shoy Nikitich Odoyevsky commanders in Novgorod and Vologda respectively around the 'Time of Troubles'; and Nikita Ivanovich Odoyevsky, 'the man chiefly responsible for compiling the Code' (the Ulozheniye of 1649) which finally established the system of serfdom.10 A reversal in the fortunes of the house of Odoyevsky occurred, however, in the eighteenth century. The responsibility for this seemingly lay with Prince Ivan Vasil'evich Odoyevsky (1710-58, greatgrandfather of Vladimir Fyodorovich) who, from being 'one of the wealthiest men of his time, having inherited a large fortune from the Lykov family', not only lost his great house on the Tverskaya (now Gorky Street, Moscow), but, according to his distant relative, the ideologist of the 'Old Nobility', Prince M. M. Shcherbatov: . . . so ruined himself by his immoderate voluptuousness (slastolyubiyem), that, having sold all his estates, he only left himself with a small number of servants. These were musicians, and by going round to various places to play, and receiving payment, they thereby kept him for the rest of his life.11

4

Biographical Introduction

As well as being an irresponsible spendthrift, this Odoyevsky is also said to have been 'a notorious card-sharper',12 which fact no doubt is not unconnected with Vladimir Fyodorovich's life-long aversion to cards, reflected in many of his writings; he ho doubt heard plenty of these notorious misdeeds during his childhood, from, one may surmise, his grandfather Sergey Ivanovich who lived until 1811, and with whom he spent his early childhood. Another son of the miscreant, Pyotr Ivanovich, played his own part in finishing off the family fortune by generous acts of philanthropy.13 The family heirs were, therefore, obliged to enter government service from necessity, being dependent on the accompanying salary for their livelihood. Vladimir's father, Fyodor Sergeyevich Odoyevsky, was, until his early death in 1808, director of the Moscow Assignation Bank and a State Councillor. Vladimir's failure to enter the service, between 1822 and 1826, seems certain to have caused family tensions (such tensions between literature and the service are reflected in his fiction); from his marriage in 1826, there was no question but that he would enter the service and be dependent on his salary for the rest of his life. Little more is known of Odoyevsky's father; Vladimir's brief reminiscences can add little: He died when I was not yet five years old - consequently I have retained no recollection of him apart from travelling with him to our place at Kalistovo, outside Moscow, along the Troitskaya road, when he took me on his horse for a minute. He died after an operation to remove a stone [kamennaya bolezrt] which was carried o u t . . . rather disastrously.14 The one vital fact, as far as we are concerned, is his contracting of an unequal and unlikely marriage with a peasant girl named Yekaterina Alekseyevna Fillipova; we know nothing of the circumstances of this event. There is one interesting, if brief, surviving description of Odoyevsky's mother, written by his friend V. P. Titov, who visited Odoyevsky at his mother's estate in the country during school-holidays in the early days of their long friendship, which dated from 1818. Soon after the death of her husband, Prince F. S. Odoyevsky, she had married a provincial official named Pavel Ivanovich Sechenov; Titov writes of them:

Family and Childhood

5

I remember very well both her and Sechenov: he, to be quite frank, was an insignificant person, uneducated, having the sort of attitude which would not [illegible] inspire in a young [illegible] any particular respect or sympathy. She was a woman also of little upbringing, weak in body and character, but preserving noticeable traces of the beauty in which must be sought the sole blame for her first marriage, which was obviously a quite uneven, match and, it may well be, more or less a fortuitous one. 15 Titov's somewhat ungenerous attitude to the mother of his friend was coloured, apart from personal impressions and aristocratic prejudice, by 'the oral reminiscences of Princess L'vova' (a relative of the Odoyevskys, who may well have been not totally well disposed towards this intruder from the lower orders). In any event (and a slight element of speculation must enter here and there for want of hard evidence), Odoyevsky appears to have retained a reasonably close relationship with his mother, who lived until some time in the 1850s. Furthermore, her letters to him reveal a certain feel for literature, not to say critical acumen, which must have contributed in some significant measure to his own literary proclivities and gifts.16 Literary inclinations were, of course, also to be found on the Odoyevsky side of the family; the most striking instance is that of Alexander Ivanovich Odoyevsky, first cousin of Vladimir and future Decembrist poet (on their relations, see Chapter Six). Mention might also be made, however, of Ivan Ivanovich Odoyevsky (probably Vladimir's great-uncle), who translated the supposed Ossian's The Death of Cuchullain into Russian (via French) in 1807; his daughter, Varvara Ivanovna (Vladimir's aunt, who, four years older than he, married S. S. Lanskoy, future minister and Vladimir's future brother-in-law) Lanskaya (nee Odoyevskaya), on the other hand, translated Zagoskin's novel Yuriy Miloslavsky into English in 1833, dedicating the publication to Sir Walter Scott.17 Following his father's death in 1808, Vladimir was placd under the joint guardianship of his great-uncle P. I. Odoyevsky, the philanthropist, and of his mother.18 We gather from Titov's reminiscences that the young Vladimir lived partly with his mother and partly with his grandfather, Prince Sergey Ivanovich, until the death of the latter in 1811 (Princess Ye. V. L'vova suggested to Titov that the young Vladimir would have felt more at home with his grandfather than in the household of his mother); thereafter Vladimir probably spent more time with his mother, but lived also in Moscow with his other guardian.19

6

Biographical Introduction

Titov never saw the old Prince Odoyevsky and neither, he claims, did any of his contemporaries. All these circumstances suggest strongly that the feelings of loneliness and alienation conveyed by Odoyevsky's early fiction of the 1820s were autobiographical in in20

spiration. 'I was born prematurely at seven or eight months,' Odoyevsky records, 'and later they told me that at birth I was immediately wrapped in a hot hide, taken from a freshly-killed ram, and that my life cost the lives of at least thirty rams'; Titov was told that the infant Odoyevsky, a seven-month baby, was born so weak that his finger-nails had not formed.21 Apart from the drastic action of one Richter, who held the young Odoyevsky when afflicted with whooping-cough to an open window in winter 'despite the horror of my mother', the delicate boy appears to have been suitably mollycoddled: a German nanny muffled him in his bed, burnt 'powders' and closed the bed-curtains tight, 'from which it always felt stuffy at night'; he was also subjected to 'bouillon baths' ('which I found very unpleasant' - and which were later to be visited upon the protagonist in SiVfida) and 'white wine baths'. 22 Odoyevsky considered that the circumstances of his birth made him 'more impressionable than other children' and the treatment accorded him left him with 'extreme fineness of skin, to which I am obliged for frequent attacks of rheumatism, constant sensitivity to cold and general muscular weakness in what is generally a healthy state of the organism'; he adds; At the age of 18 to 20, doctors prophesied consumption for me, but here I am past the age of 47, having survived pneumonia - and I am left only with an incurable, abnormal condition of the mucous membranes.23 Before leaving the period of Odoyevsky's childhood, we might pause for a moment to speculate on whether the eight-year-old Vladimir was in residence in Moscow around the beginning of September 1812, when the infant Alexander Herzen (aged five months) was temporarily settled, with his father (I. A. Yakovlyov) and family, having been displaced by the Napoleonic troops, in P. I. Odoyevsky's house. 24

7

III Education and the 'Lyubomudry' Years The young Odoyevsky was educated from 1816 to 1822, at the Moscow University Blagorodnyy Pansion, in its day (from 1779 until Nicholas I turned it into an official gimnaziya in 1830) the top educational establishment of Russia, on a par with the more famous Lycee at Tsarskoye Selo. Under the directorship of A. A. Prokopovich-Antonsky, it shared the best-known Moscow scholars of the day with Moscow University; teachers included 1.1. Davydov (recently returned from Germany and steeped in romantic philosophy), M. G. Pavlov (Schellingian philosopher and physicist), and A. F. Merzlyakov (poet and classical aesthetician); later, the poet and translator S. Ye. Raich joined the staff. Students included, over the years, Zhukovsky, Griboyedov, Tyutchev, a number of prominent Decembrists and later Ogaryov and Lermontov. The education given was extremely broad for its day, with a strong artistic bias, involving demanding academic courses in philosphy, languages, literatures and translation, plus theology, psychology, logic and various sciences.25 Davydov mentioned Odoyevsky, in 1819, as an outstanding student, especially in the area of 'Russian compositions and translations'.26 Sure enough, Odoyevsky graduated in 1822 with the Pansion's gold medallion for the year; this achievement entitled him to entry to the government service at the tenth point in the table of ranks (of which privilege he did not avail himself before 1826). S. P. Shevyryov and Titov were the top students of the following batch. Apart from the early philosophical influences, Odoyevsky's appreciation of Russian literature was cultivated during his Pansion years: Zhukovsky and Batyushkov were particularly popular as poets.27 The Pansion had a rich library and issued its own journals and almanacs, in which Odoyevsky was able to make his literary debut; it also had philosophical and literary discussion circles and, through its Director (Prokopovich was the then president), an entree to the Society for the Lovers of Russian Philology,28 at whose meetings in the Pansion building, M. P. Pogodin recalls seeing Odoyevsky, from 1819 or 1820: The meetings, in the spirit of the times, were distinguished by a special solemnity. The President entrusted the senior pupils with the reception of the guests. As though it were now, I remember Odoyevsky: a well-formed, thinnish youth, good-looking, in a narrow-fitting tail-coat of a dark cherry colour; with a senatorial air

8

Biographical Introduction of importance which even then distinguished his attractive appearance, he conducted the ladies, respectfully showing them to their appointed places.29

The Pansion, therefore, supplied Odoyevsky with a thorough grounding for his encyclopedic interests and literary proclivities and an extensive knowledge of foreign languages.30 I. I. Zamotin has remarked that 'the questing of his youthful idealism did not find an answer in the family and social milieu which surrounded him';31 this disillusion, which had found its expression, along with the importance of his relationship with his cousin Alexander, in the unpublished work The Diary of a Student {Dnevnik studenta)y was channelled eventually into a passion for further study particularly the study of philosophy. According to Ye. V. LVova, Odoyevsky, even as a youth, always had a staid quality about him beyond his years, preferring the company of his elders whom he liked to engage in debate; some of these, such as his godfather, and L'vova's father, Prince Vladimir Semyonovich L'vov, were far from delighted by this precociousness, accounting its proponent a presumptuous and disorderly 'pedant'.32 However, the suggestion, made by a number of commentators, of Odoyevsky in the first half of the 1820s playing the role of Griboyedov's Chatsky, the aloof and sharp-tongued social rebel, while an intriguing one, would seem to derive mainly from Odoyevsky's own literary protagonist of that period (named Arist - see Chapter One) and is not easily squared with memoir accounts of his personality in later years.33 The years 1822-5 saw Odoyevsky establish himself in the forefront of Russian intellectual life; for all the dilettantish quality of Russian cultural circles of that period, it must be said that Odoyevsky, in those years not involved either in government service or with the distractions of his many other later activities, was more of a full-time (one might almost say professional) litterateur for that brief, but vital, formative period than he was ever to be again. He published stories, apologues, reviews, philosophical essays and his first music reviews; he planned a number of more ambitious projects; and in 1824-5 he edited, with Vil'gePm KyukhePbeker, the four issues of the almanac Mnemozina. In 1823 he began to frequent the 'Raich circle'.34 The adherents included Pogodin and A. I. Koshelev (both of whom have left their reminiscences), Tyutchev, N. V. Putyata, Titov, Shevyryov and A. N. Murav'yov; in the lively discussions, aesthetics and literature took pride of place, but philosophy, history 'and other sciences, by stealth, from time to time dared to raise their voice'.35 This was an open 'Society of friends', meeting twice weekly.

Education and the 'Lyubomudry' Years

9

Membership of the various circles and groupings of Moscow intellectual life frequently overlapped to a considerable degree. Koshelev also recalls the grouping known as 'the youths of the Archive': he began service in the Moscow Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs together with Ivan Kireyevsky (about 1822); others starting at around the same time included Dmitriy and Aleksey Venevitinov, Titov, Shevyryov, N. A. Mel'gunov, S. MaPtsov (later the only survivor of the destruction of the Russian mission in Persia, in which Griboyedov was killed), S. A. Sobolevsky, the two Meshchersky princes, Prince N. I. Trubestskoy, I. P. Ozerov 'and other welleducated youths'. 36 Odoyevsky was not an 'archival youth' (contrary to the impression of some commentators), but he was on very close terms with a number of them; many of their names will recur throughout this study. The other society of the period, in which Odoyevsky played a leading part, and with whieh he is mainly associated, in this period of life, in the histories of Russian culture, was the Society of Wisdomloving (Obshchestvo lyubomudriya - hereafter the 'Lyubomudry'). This group, Koshelev informs us, met 'secretly, and of its existence we told no one'; the members were Odoyevsky, Ivan Kireyevsky, Dmitriy Venevitinov, N. M. Rozhalin and Koshelev himself; occasional (or fringe) members were Titov, Mel'gunov, Shevyryov and Pogodin.37 The meetings took place in Odoyevsky's study; Odoyevsky chaired the proceedings and Venevitinov (the secretary) did much of the talking. German philosophy dominated the discussions (Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Oken) and members read their own philosophical compositions. The society was hastily dissolved following the events of 14 December 1825. Talk of new journals was in the air at the Raich circle; Pogodin recalls: Our journal, however, did not come into being. Polevoy, encouraged by Prince Vyazemsky, was already thinking up the [Moscow] Telegraph, and Odoyevsky, when he met Kyukhel'beker, announced the following year the publication of Mnemozina, an almanac in four books.38 Mnemozina was conceived largely as a vehicle for Lyubomudry ideas; however, it also attracted contributions from leading writers of the time (Pushkin, Griboyedov, Vyazemsky, Yazykov, Denis Davydov and Polevoy) as well as from the editors (who contributed about half the

10

Biographical Introduction

copy to each issue) and Shevyryov. It represents a landmark in Russian cultural development, but this was recognized only subsequently. It was the first journal to tackle seriously philosophical and theoretical problems, but its scholarly 'professorish' tone and elitist approach held little appeal for the Russian readership of the day, accustomed to the more low-brow publications of Bulgarin and Grech. 39 Mnemozina also allowed itself, rather unwisely, to become embroiled in a somewhat degrading bout of polemics with the publishers just named;40 this was but the beginning of a long period of bitter personal relations which will be alluded to again elsewhere. The fourth issue of Mnemozina had to be delayed until well into 1825; it then folded - largely for financial reasons. At the time of its demise, the almanac had precisely 157 subscribers, of whom just over half were residents of Moscow; many were leading literary figures and many others were friends or relatives of the editors (the journal Polyarnaya zvezda [The Polar Star], edited by Ryleyev and Bestuzhev, had around 1500 subscribers, while the publications of Bulgarin and Grech enjoyed a readership well into the thousands). The writer and memoirist I. I. Panayev, who did not know Odoyevsky until later, maintains that Odoyevsky's 'spirits fell' after the folding of Mnemozina: Odoyevsky in the 20s was editor of a journal, together with V. Kyukherbeker. He promised to become a serious literary figure, but after the closure of Mnemozina and his move to Petersburg his literary energy weakened. . . . Many of his relatives and friends were exiled.. . . The blow of 14 December resounded over the whole of Russia: everyone took a grip on themselves and moderated. In Petersburg Odoyevsky continued to engage in literature, but as nothing more than a dilettante.41 Despite the literal truth of Panayev's remarks, Odoyevsky's main literary accomplishments lay still ahead of him; nevertheless, the two events referred to by Panayev effectively brought to a close the early phase of Odoyevsky's career and the first Moscow phase of his life.

11 IV

Marriage and Government Service

Odoyevsky's relationship to the Decembrist events is discussed in Chapter Five. However, coincidentally or otherwise, a completely new era in his life began in 1826: he married, he entered government service, and he moved to St Petersburg, which was to remain his abode for the next thirty-five years. His life over this period can be said to have been shared, for the first decade and a half, evenly or unevenly as the case may be, between the service and literary pursuits; thereafter literary activity assumed a lesser importance - and indeed virtually ceased for a considerable period - as the encroachments of philanthropic and pedagogical affairs increased. Odoyevsky approached everything he did extremely conscientiously; thus he was always overworked, weary and delicate of health, while very many of the countless projects in all conceivable areas of his multifarious range of interests remained unrealized. The niece of Prince P. I. Odoyevsky (and, therefore, the aunt of Vladimir) Varvara Ivanovna, had married Sergey Stepanovich Lanskoy (a future minister of Alexander II).42 In March of 1826 the engagement was announced between Vladimir Odoyevsky and OPga Stepanovna Lanskaya (Lanskoy's sister).43 Odoyevsky informed his mother, in a letter dated 10 August, that permission for the marriage had now been received from the Empress ('as a fitting reward for our firmness and patience').44 What story may be behind this comment, we do not know. On 17 September 1826, OPga Stepanovna became the Princess Odoyevskaya. Nothing would appear to be known about the circumstances of the match, romantic or otherwise. We may only remark that the family connection already existing between the Odoyevskys and the Lanskoys may suggest that the choice made was less than a wholly imaginative one (though this in itself would have been by no means unusual in the circles of the Russian nobility). Furthermore the age difference (OPga Stepanovna was born in 1797 and outlived Vladimir by three years) of some six or seven years (in 1826, Vladimir Odoyevsky was still only twenty-two) may suggest a connection with the remarks of Ye. V. LVova, mentioned above; by choosing an older woman, Vladimir may have been continuing an urge to make himself seem older than his years; if so, this may be linked to the less than satisfactory family circumstances of his childhood. The couple had no children. The available evidence suggests that the marriage was probably a happy one in the early stages, and perhaps again later on; however, there were certainly tensions and stormy passages in the middle.

12

Biographical Introduction

On his arrival in Petersburg in late September 1826, Odoyevsky wrote to Sobolevsky in Moscow, expressing his disappointment in just missing Griboyedov and exhorting him to: Tell him about my marriage, describe to him the woman who alone has had the courage to understand me, to take a hand in me, a woman with a lucid mind and a warm heart - in a word, tell him everything you know, tell him what I cannot myself express in words.45 Venevitinov, Odoyevsky's closest friend at the time, sent the following description in December of that year to Sobolevsky: I haven't forgotten that I promised to describe to you Odoyevsky's daily life.... You should see him; he's like a fish in water, caressing his wife like a lover, paying court to the ladies like a suitor. She is a very cheerful and sweet woman in everyone's eyes, so what must she be in the eyes of our perceptive Odoyevsky? You arrive to see them in the mornings; they sit next to each other like a pair of doves, joking and kissing; I just laugh. It's rather an amusing scene. You arrive in the evening; she pours the tea, he entertains his ladies. It should be said that he is in great favour at his relatives' house, and receives people in the evenings.46 In a joint letter with Venevitinov to friends in Moscow, Odoyevsky joked to Titov: 'the children are asking for porridge and the wife - for I won't say what'.47 The joke may have been wearing slightly thin, however, by 1829, when the composer A. N. Verstovsky wrote to Odoyevsky, adding as a PS 'kiss the children'.48 The following ecstatic impressions of the Odoyevskys were written in 1832 by A. G. Lavalle: Pr. Od. is younger than his wife, whom he adores.... He spends a lot of time on literature and even more on his service duties, which he considers sacred. . . . The Princess is an excellent woman, very pleasant in society, with a fine spirit. She lives only for her husband. This union of all there is of the very highest - of mind and spirit enchants and delights me. 49 Ol'ga Stepanovna is said to have looked after Odoyevsky 'with a maternal tenderness'. 50 However, there were limits to this, as when Pogodin wrote to her in 1831, suggesting that she 'take her husband in

Marriage and Government Service

13

hand'; this not only provoked a reply from Odoyevsky that an irregular lifestyle was part of the Russian nature, but from Ol'ga Stepanovna the riposte: 'the more you scold Vladimir, the more disorderly a life he will lead'.51 Nevertheless, a considerable amount of scolding must have taken place over the decade of the 1830s, justifiably or otherwise, for Odoyevsky to have written in French the following pompous epistle, addressed to his wife in the third person: Considering that life is too short for suffering, that, moreover, the duties of service and of social position impose obligations on us which demand for their accomplishment peace and quiet during the day and rest during the night; that, besides, alterations in domestic routine, arrived at from a case of the simple question of one's inner life to the case of noisy scenes, cannot at a certain age fail to bring upon us ineradicable ridicule, I have given myself my word of honour that if once more all my efforts to prevent such scenes should be ineffective, and should my wife allow herself once more the kind of monomania which causes her to run barefooted and in her nightdress for half the night around the entire house and to wake the whole household as well as the neighbours with her cries and imprecations, preventing me from working by day and reposing by night after the fatigues of the day - 1 have given myself, I say, my word of honour, certain as I am of the justice of my claims to peace and domestic quiet, to quit this house in the course of the 24 hours following such a scene, leaving my wife full mistress of the abode, and to transport myself to some place wheresoever I may devote myself calmly to the occupations which are imposed on me by my social status, abjuring the impardonable weakness which up to the present has made me sacrifice my duties to the monomania of my wife which only grows worse by dint of this same weakness. Having once left this house - it will be never to return. Spb. Pr[ince] V. Odoyevsky52 5 October 1840 This letter, the fact and the manner of its writing (and, indeed, the language in which it is written - a salutary reminder that even a writer who struggled to uphold the use of the Russian language as a literary and a conversational medium conducted much of his private life in a foreign tongue) afford a fascinating glimpse into an intimate rela-

14

Biograph ical Introduction

tionship of which little is known/Whether the letter was even delivered it is, of course, impossible to say. Certainly there would appear to be no record of a dramatic exit from the Odoyevsky apartment. We shall return shortly to further consideration of the personalities of the Odoyevskys, in the light of surviving evidence. We now turn to a brief outline of Odoyevsky's career in the government service.53 Odoyevsky entered the service on 5 July 1826, assigned to work at the Deputies' Assembly of the Moscow Nobility. He soon moved to St Petersburg and from 17 October 1826 was appointed to the Censorship Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a year later becoming Secretary to the General Meeting of the Censorship Committee. In 1828 he became section-head in the Department of Spiritual Matters Related to Foreign Creeds [!] and shortly afterwards Librarian to the Committee of Foreign Censorship, a post he held for several years. In 1833 he was made a member of the General Meeting of the Economic Department and served on diverse committees and commissions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, looking into such matters as the development of a new fish glue, economy stoves and mechanical kitchen ranges. He moved in 1838 to the Ministry of State Domains, serving as an educational consultant and heading a committee on children's homes, and was appointed to the Second Department (not to be confused with the Third, but concerned from 1826 with the codification of law) of His Majesty's Own Chancery. In 1846 he managed to transfer from his main post at the Second Department to the quiet backwaters of the Imperial Public Library and the Rumyantsev Museum, of which institutions he became Deputy-Director and Director respectively. Odoyevsky thus held an extremely varied range of posts, often two or more simultaneously. Some of these official activities will be mentioned again in Chapters Four and Five. Overwork and the complaint of lack of time to pursue his true interests and projects of real importance to him was, not surprisingly, a constant refrain throughout Odoyevsky's working life, beginning quite soon after the establishment of his fixed Petersburg lifestyle. In a letter to N. A. Polevoy (of late 1828 or early 1829), he lamented: In my sphere, into which fate has thrown me, I am often bored and tormented by work which is frequently constrained, almost always dry and usually fruitless. I recall with sadness that time when I dedicated my mental activity to the arts. 54

Marriage and Government Service

15

The composer Verstovsky was given a similar story in 1828. The younger Lavalle daughter, Aleksandra Kossakovskaya, reported in 1833 on the current lean patch in Russian literature (due largely to Pushkin's 'incomprehensible' laziness, following his marriage) to her sister in Siberia, adding: 'Odoyevsky promises us a few more stories of the Variegated Tales type, but he does not have too much time to get on with them, since he is very busy in the service.'55 Odoyevsky finished a letter to Shevyryov, in 1836, with the words: Farewell, I've no time to write, snowed under with work: I carry on my shoulders the Journal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and now they are sticking me on a Learned Committee of the Ministry of State Domains. Well, you know that now I'm hardly a literary man at all, but rather a chemist and a mechanic.56 Odoyevsky's plight was not, however, universally recognized: P. A. Pletnyov, in 1840, advised his constant correspondent, Ya. K. Grot, who was awaiting a story from Odoyevsky for a Finnish collection, not to rely on it in view of the latter's 'drowsiness', and further reports, after a midday visit to Odoyevsky: 'indeed, he was sprawled on cushions with his cat'.57 Odoyevsky's close friend of that period, Countess Yevdokiya ('Dodo') Rostopchina, the poetess and authoress of society tales, on the other hand, remembered him from the salubrious environs of Pyatigorsk in May 1839 with an 'if only you were here too' letter: 'But you, meanwhile, are stifling behind your pen and papers - official ones at that; you are bored in deserted Petersburg and wasting your poor self away over a thousand unpleasant and annoying troubles.' 58 Odoyevsky himself considered the question, in a jotting dated October 1840, and came up with an answer: Sometimes I am asked why I work so assiduously since, in the last analysis, people are convinced that I am not ambitious: Ladies and Gentlemen, I do it: firstly, because of a thing which is completely unknown to you and which is called conscience and, secondly, to have no need of any of you.59 Odoyevsky noted his ability to do without sleep when immersed in work and to take brief naps during the day; although this facility may well have been 'highly important in the anxious and back-breaking life' which he led ('. . . v zhizni trevozhnoy i chernorabochey'),60 it may well also have contributed to domestic tensions.

16

Biographical Introduction

The 1831 cholera epidemic Odoyevsky observed with a horror strongly tinged with curiosity, describing the Boccaccio-type sores, the jolly faces of the coffin-makers counting their money and the crowds of people by the churches 'who had discovered the art of making devotion look repulsive'; all in all there was a Walter Scott novel written in the faces.61 When the 1854 cholera epidemic occurred, in which he was a sufferer, Odoyevsky treated it as an opportunity for moral and spiritual self-examination, worked and dictated from his bed and, when he felt all was lost, wrote of his indifference to life and inclination for death, observing that it was a golden opportunity to bid farewell to various scoundrels and tricksters: 'that is the oblique good which scoundrels bring to this world; they help honest people to die more peacefully'.62 In the 1830s, Odoyevsky played a prominent part in the expansion of literary journalism, particularly by his involvement in the founding of Sovremennik (The Contemporary) and the refurbishing of Otechestvennyye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland). He had also been due to contribute to Ivan Kireyevsky's Yevropeyets (The European, abruptly closed down, soon after its opening in 1832), and in 1835 had signed an application, along with Vyazemsky, Gogol', Zhukovsky and Pushkin, to set up a new publication to be called 'The Northern Spectator' ('Severnyy zritel"), for which permission was not granted.63 He enjoyed close relations in this period with the Pushkin Pleiad,64 with Gogol', and later with Lermontov, as well as with Glinka, Dargomyzhsky and the Viel'gorsky brothers and other prominent figures in literary and musical circles. Many of these points and personalities will be dealt with in some detail in subsequent chapters. The 1830s and the beginning of the 1840s were a particularly hectic period in Odoyevsky's life, during which time his literary output, his government committee work, his journalistic activity and the social and cultural life of the Odoyevsky salon were all in full swing. Foreign visitors frequented the gatherings and left their impressions; the French writer, Hippolyte Auger, had been told of Odoyevsky: 'An excellent musician, you always find him in time . . . at the piano', and recalls how (about 1840): And indeed, one evening when he had invited me to take tea with him, he made music until daybreak. A Monsieur Opotchinine, an officer in the imperial navy who possessed a charming voice and the great art of charming the ears, did not allow us to notice the time pass from the night before to the next day.65

Marriage and Government Service

17

In 1842 Odoyevsky obtained four months' leave and travelled to Europe for, it would seem, the first time; Pletnyov wrote to Grot on May 29: 'Odoyevsky is soon leaving by the dry route with his wife for Germany and Italy for treatment (God knows for what!).'66 The main event of the trip, at least as far as the biographer is concerned, would appear to have been the meeting with Schelling (described in Chapter Two). On the return journey, stranded for a while in a blizzard at a post house, Odoyevsky took to reflecting on nature, philosophy and life: Once what a wide scope there would have been for my pride! And now what a sad feeling! . . . to be certain that one must sell one's talent and double it, and meanwhile be afraid of squandering it in vain.. . . Oh! narrow is your path; inexpressible! - and people think my life is all roses! . . . Phew, how foul you are, human clothing.67 Odoyevsky finally produced his three-volume collection of 'Complete Works' in 1844 {Sochineniya v tryokh chastyakh). The collection had been promised for several years; one may assume that the delays were caused by a combination of excess work and procrastination plus, in the latter stages, illness.68 Many works were not included, especially from the early period, and the reception given the collection was mixed. Odoyevsky's career as a writer of fiction had now, to all intents and purposes, come to a premature close. Educational activities, particularly the production of Rural Reading (SeVskoye chteniye)^ and the administration of the philanthropic enterprise, the Society for Visiting the Poor of St Petersburg, took over as Odoyevsky's most timeconsuming occupations. Attempts to link the cessation of his fiction writing with observations of depression and philosophical pessimism, such as that noted above, do not really stand up to examination. A somewhat bizarre interest of Odoyevsky's, which came to prominence in the mid 1840s, was that of culinary science. 'Science' is the appropriate word here, as Odoyevsky considered gastronomy to be a branch of chemistry, distilling his sauces in retorts. Memoirists have left a record of what this meant to the Odoyevskys' dinner guests; V. A. Sollogub recalls, with an acute absence of relish, the monthly occasions when Odoyevsky would regale his victims with his latest dishes: and our stomachs would writhe, even in advance; at these dinners there would be served in alimentation some sort of chemical sauces,

18

Biographical Introduction invented by the host himself, which were so revolting that even now, almost forty years later, my heart contracts at just the recollection of them.69

In the period 1844-6, Odoyevsky published a number of gastronomical pieces in Literaturnaya gazeta and Otechestvennyye zapiski under the name of 'Mister Puff, doctor of encyclopedias and other sciences', covering such topics as the preservation of meat, eggs, greens, the pickling of vegetables and fruits for winter, and old-style Russian pies; recipes featured, as did such concepts as table etiquette and 'kitchen morality', comprising such salutory declarations as: 'What is needed, all the same, for a good dinner? What is needed are conscientiousness, good management and a little enlightenment.'70 Doctor Puff (the name probably derives from E. T. A. Hoffmann's Kater Murr) suddenly disappeared from the scene, to the distress of Otechestvennyye zapiskfs editor, A. A. Krayevsky, to be replaced by his 'pupil' ('ad^yunkt Skaramushev').71 In 1846 Odoyevsky, along with his job as Director of the Rumyantsev Museum, acquired there an apartment. In the same year he bought a modest country estate, named Rongas, in Finland, which, his financial position being what it was, he would let out when he was not in residence.72 Here he would spend the summers, attempting 'to break the strings which hold me tied to Petersburg'; loath to put pen to paper, he would study insects under the microscope and dream of establishing a new system of botanical classification; he wrote from Vyborg in 1850 to an unknown correspondent: 'The Petersburg threshing-machine has worn me down and plagued me beyond the extent of human patience . . . it's time to consider a salary-less existence in Finland.'73 Odoyevsky's acquaintances did not tend to have complete confidence, by the 1840s, in any extra projects which he might undertake. Pletnyov wrote to Grot in 1841 of a plan by Krayevsky and Odoyevsky to compile a collection of all writers to have mentioned Russia, from the Arabs to the Swedes, of all centuries, in the original and in translation: 'these people are for ever up to their ears in enterprise and debts'. 74 In 1849, of Odoyevsky's proposal to save the publishing house 'Illyustratsiya', Grot, for his part, told Pletnyov: I cannot believe that Odoyevsky's enterprise could be successful. How could he conduct a business which demands constant attention and thoroughness! Even without that, he cannot manage to deal with all his own affairs.75

Marriage and Government Service

19

Odoyevsky had also become unusually short-tempered during this strenuous period; in 1847, Pletnyov reports on strained relations between Odoyevsky and the prickly memoirist, F. F. VigeP (which had never been smooth): 'Odoyevsky and VigeP can't stand one another, and even curse at each other - something which has never occurred before with Odoyevsky, under any circumstance.'76 In an interim assessment of his life, dating from the early 1850s, Odoyevsky remarks that he had committed the blunder of attempting to do something in this world, had taught art to do something, but had forgotten the art of blowing his own trumpet. He observes that he had had the good fortune to achieve quite a lot ('not counting the failures'): he was the first to attack scholasticism and classicism, he had spelt out the significance of Russia in the world ('which now many subsist on'), had helped put out many an edition; in the administrative realm he points to the 1828 censorship statute, authorial copyright ('which no one thought of before me'), the Nobility Elections Statute, the company shares statute, the life insurance society ('which everyone laughed at') and the children's homes ('which no one had ever wished to believe were possible'). He also mentioned projects then still in progress: the Society for Visiting the Poor, the Mariiskiy Institute, his 'dry' pedagogical work, books for the people ('which no one had thought of') etc. etc. . . . ('I forget them all myself). All this was undertaken, not for any thanks it might bring, 'but to attempt to placate that worm which sits in my chest'. He concludes: 'Am I really not allowed a spark of self-esteem in this world? Is there after all a certain tie between mother and child, a tie for life?'77 Much had changed, both in Odoyevsky's life and in Russian society, by 1850. The surviving liberals, and moderate conservatives even, of the Pushkin period felt the political and social atmosphere to be stultifying. Pletnyov wrote (this time to Zhukovsky) in that year: Odoyevsky, as I informed you, is lost to our circle, having transferred his allegiance to a new circle of people, calling themselves a society for visiting the poor. Even I more willingly stay at home in the family rather than seek society. Pure radiant literature bound all of us together and gave us life. Now it is no more. All interests are turned to mastery of getting rich and being profligate. Obviously the good old days are never going to come back to us. 78

20

V The Odoyevsky Personality We pause now to see what picture emerges of the personality of the Odoyevskys from the letters and memoirs of their contemporaries. Let us first turn to OPga Stepanovna. The most favourable comments on Princess Odoyevskaya tend to come, not surprisingly, from Odoyevsky's oldest and closest friends. Pogodin, who probably scarcely saw her until the couple returned to live in Moscow in the 1860s, describes her as Odoyevsky's beloved, 'who became his good genius, guardian, keeper and wet-nurse' for the rest of his life; it should also be remembered that these reminiscences were delivered at a commemorative evening of the Society of the Lovers of Russian Philology (in 1869, shortly after Odoyevsky's death, while Ol'ga Stepanovna was still alive).79 Similarly, Sollogub remembers her as the perfect salon hostess, against whom Glinka's attempt at a salon had to be measured: 'what he needed was a nanny, a hostess, very nearly a sick-nurse, as was the unforgettable Princess Ol'ga Stepanovna, that model of goodness and devotion, and not a woman of the world.'80 An exception to this tendency would seem to be another very old friend, Ivan Kireyevsky; in a letter of 1854 (by which time Odoyevsky had long had serious differences with the Slavophiles), in which he is anxious to patch up a quarrel and assure Odoyevsky of his continued friendship, he adds: I ask you also to tell the Princess that her feelings towards me do not change one iota mine towards her, and tomorrow when they sing in church: 'and let us forgive those who trespass against us', I shall be thinking of her with a feeling of most sincere favour.81 It might be added that Gogol', Lermontov and Turgenev would all appear to have been on good terms with Ol'ga Stepanovna. The view taken by more casual visitors to the Odoyevsky circle of the Princess tends not always to be so favourable. The German musician, Wilhelm Lenz, referring to his visits of 1833, mentions Ol'ga Stepanovna pouring the tea herself (her tea-pouring is made much of by memoirists, as we see in Chapter Six) and informs us that 'she was called la belle Creole, since her complexion was like that of a Creole girl and she had once been renowned for her beauty'.82 Yuriy Arnol'd, the musician, comments that the Lanskoys were descended from Tatar khans and that Odoyevskaya, combining ancient descents, felt it incumbent on her to preserve 'all the purity of her aristocratic

The Odoyevsky Personality

21

resplendency'; an intelligent and educated nineteenth-century woman, proud of her husband's lineage and his 'little branch of the laurel grove of the Russian Parnassus', she at the same time sought to preserve him from the idea of equality with all those called by the muse: this was her real outlook, Arnol'd maintains, despite her reputation as 'the most tolerant, affectionate, humane and courteous lady aristocrat\83 The division of the Odoyevsky salon into the cultural wing and the society wing, and Odoyevskaya's attendant snobbishness, as alleged by Arnol'd and A. Ya. Panayeva, is elaborated upon in Chapter Six. Pletnyov, too, reports the Princess's replying to Grot's suggestion of providing her with a Finnish lady's companion with the retort: 'I hate companions. That breed disgusts me.' 84 It would be intriguing to learn more of the relations between Princess Odoyevskaya and Countess Rostopchina, whom Pletnyov considered a 'coquette'; the one clue is the reported remarks of Rostopchina in 1840 with reference to a decorative box (evidently made by herself) which she had given to Odoyevsky: 'your wife doesn't like my work! Your wife is a monster!'85 V. S. Serova (wife of the composer), visiting the Odoyevskys in the 1860s refers to Ol'ga Stepanovna as 'a rather obese personage [tuchnaya osoba], rarely parted from her armchair and her ever-present lap-dog'.86 Of course, there were people who just did not like Ol'ga Stepanovna, or who disapproved of her from their own social or political standpoint. F. F. VigeP (whose dislike of Odoyevsky is referred to here on more than one occasion) would no doubt have enjoyed telling Hippolyte Auger: 'Prince Odoevski is an elegant personage; Monsieur Blondoff believes him to be very capable and the princess, his wife, claims that he is not: it is not our business.'87 In Slavophile circles, the fact of Belinsky's being presented to Princess Odoyevskaya appears to have occasioned a certain mirth; and finally, the radicals: Nekrasov writes to Ivan Turgenev in 1856 of confusion in the Odoyevsky household over the fate of a Turgenev letter to Odoyevsky: The Princess came in and announced that she had recently received a letter from you . . . 'such a charming letter' (her own words)... Oh, you crackpot, Turgenev! Why on earth were you writing to that silly woman?88 While Pogodin's somewhat hagiographic statement, referred to above, undoubtedly contains an element of truth, it is only one side of the story and, as we have seen, the story did not please everyone. V. I.

22

Biographical Introduction

Sakharov may well have placed OPga Stepanovna in something of a nutshell by terming her 'an imperious and ambitious woman'.89 I. I. Sreznevsky records a visit to the Odoyevskys in 1839; apart from mentioning their involvement in the founding of children's homes (in which Ol'ga Stepanovna may have been the driving force - seven had been formed by 1839, housing up to 1000 children, aged three to nine), commenting on the 'rich library' and their collection of pictures, he left the following description of the couple: . . . the Princess comes in, looking something like a swarthy fur hat. The Prince, in a black, second-hand dressing-gown-cumfrock-coat, in a dark cap beneath which another white one was visible, in all of which he looked very like a German sausage-maker - he was also thin, hamster-like and ordinary; his face, though, was nice, kind and wise.90 This picture, for all its rather extravagant imagery, is nevertheless not discordant with other impressions. I. I. Panayev writes: 'Odoyevsky's very attire struck me: the black silk pointed cap on his head and a long frock-coat to his heels made him look like some sort of medieval astrologist or alchemist.'91 Panayev's feelings towards Odoyevsky were ambivalent: affectionate, yet tinged with mockery at times; nevertheless, he left perhaps the fullest account of Odoyevsky and his gatherings. A. P. Pyatkovsky, however, whose admiration for Odoyevsky cannot be doubted, also recalls at their first meeting, in 1860: 'the rather small figure of the host, dressed in some sort of eccentric costume with a little cap on his head and in large old-fashioned spectacles, worn on his forehead'. What would have seemed in anyone else pretentious eccentricity, in this case 'harmonized fully with his actual originality of personality'.92 Panayev leaves the following personal description: When I was at Odoyevsky's for the first time he made a strong impression on me. His attractive, sympathetic appearance, the mysterious tone in which he spoke about everything under the sun, the concern in the movements of the man, preoccupied by something serious, the constantly pensive, meditative expression of the face all this could not fail to affect m e . . . . I felt an inner fever when he started talking to me. 93

The Odoyevsky Personality

23

Yuriy ArnoPd leaves quite a full, if idiosyncratic, depiction (relating to the 1840s): Odoyevsky was not broad in the shoulders, but generally fraillooking. In order not to look younger than his wife, who was six years older than he, one mutual acquaintance whispered to me, he always walks rather bent, with his head drooping, as if from tiredness. His hands and legs are pure-bred: small and narrow. His face is similar to the type of the famous old portaits of the Grand Princes of Vladimir and Moscow . . . that same wide large forehead, straight nose and small mouth with the thickish, good-natured, smiling lips; except for the dark brown, shot almost with black, smooth hair, especially at the temples. The eyes are blue-grey, intelligent but not peaceful enough, rather they timidly, almost timorously and absently look round . . . his flat and rather hurried speech sounds some note of indecision, lack of self-assurance; the timbre of his tenor voice in itself is pleasant, affectionate. But the absence of any intonation in his speech, when he speaks for long, produces in one a certain languor which, of course, furthers the note of haste already mentioned.94 These traits do not go, Arnol'd considers, with his general character, which consists rather of honour, staightforwardness, generosity and 'angelic patience'. The most strikingly, no doubt idealized description comes from the German traveller, Konig, relating to 1837: If you were to visit Petersburg, you would certainly meet in society especially in its upper circles a handsome young man of medium height with expressive blue eyes, a pale face and black hair; he is elegantly dressed, takes but little part in life's distractions, looking somewhat absent-mindedly and sometimes filled with Byronic derision for his surroundings. If you look closely, you will notice that his absent-mindedness is explained by his inner concentration, the reverie which at times transforms his face. It is Prince Odoyevsky.95 V. P. Titov referred to what he termed Odoyevsky's 'feminine gentleness of heart'; F. I. Timiryazev talked of his 'feminine-tender nature'; while I. Ye. Betsky commented in 1842: 'there's something too feminine about Odoyevsky'.96 This feature, no doubt connected in part at least with Odoyevsky's sensitive skin, must have provided him, for quite some time at least (and perhaps contrary to his own efforts),

24

Biographical Introduction

with the quality of agelessness remarked on by A. Ya. Panayeva (referring to the 1840s) and Pyatkovsky (the 1860s).97 Odoyevsky was accorded his full share of hagiographic praise (by Titov, Pogodin and Sollogub) as a paragon of the virtues of patience, gendeness, love for humanity, modesty and continence; some later writers continued this tradition (Pyatkovsky wrote of Odoyevsky's 'sacred, hard-working life'; Lezin of 'the sacred duty to resurrect the memory of this outstanding personality').98 Sollogub, in his later memoirs, added some slightly more human features; for instance, Odoyevsky was 'more innocent than a lamb', but: He was notable for one more aptitude: in the most innocent way and completely open-heartedly and without any ulterior motive he would tell ladies the most indecent things; in this he was completely unlike GogoP, who had the gift of being able to tell the most salty jokes without provoking anger from his female listeners, whereas poor Odoyevsky would be interrupted with indignation.99 Other traits emerge here and there: Pyatkovsky admits that Odoyevsky could react irritably to the Princess Mimis of this world (see Odoyevsky's story of that name, outlined in Chapter One); Grigorovich remarks on his 'childish naivety'; Panayev dwells on his gullibility; his disorganization, unreliability and capacity to create muddle and complications are frequently aired.100 His versatility, sudden new thoughts, schemes and hypotheses caused him not to be taken seriously by the society around him, who regarded his conversation and his learning with mirth.101 There is little outright personal hostility in the memoir accounts of Odoyevsky; those most sensitive to the social divide of the Odoyevsky salon (see Chapter Six), such as Panayev and Arnol'd, give full credit to Odoyevsky for his good nature and genuineness in personal relations and his willingness, despite the jeers of aristocratic cronies, 'to mingle openly with the literary hoi polloi'.102 Both these commentators consider that Odoyevsky's multifaceted occupations resulted in a chaos of misplaced effort, conversational confusion and nervous disorder (in Arnol'd's view, caused 'from the acquiring of such a mass of knowledge');103 they regarded him, as did many of his contemporaries, as a dilettante encyclopedist and had little appreciation of his creative work. Arnol'd, who seems to have been obsessed with breeding, thinks that the ultimate driving force behind Odoyevsky's activities was 'pride in his breeding' (Panayeva claims Odoyevsky to have been the only

The Odoyevsky Personality

25

litterateur who travelled everywhere with a lackey!); Panayev depicts him rather as more and more of a comic figure obsessed with ridiculous 104

inventions, as time went on. A number of observers, however, commented in their different ways on the all too obvious split, or contradiction, in Odoyevsky's life. ArnoPd saw him as 'in spirit: a poet-philosopher', but 'in theflesh:a prince of ancient lineage'.105 Panayev, back in 1839, had written to Belinksy: I have not set foot in a single salon for over two years, apart from Prince Odoyevsky's diminutive salon. It's a pity that he was born a prince and must on occasion necessarily be or seem one. An artist in the soul, he himself feels the awkwardness of his position and it torments him, or at least it seems so to me. Two heterogeneous elements are struggling in him and neither can overcome the other.106 Alexander Herzen, perhaps as unfavourably disposed as anyone towards Odoyevsky (apart from VigeP, and out-and-out enemies, such as Bulgarin and Senkovsky), for possible reasons which we shall touch on in Chapter Five, wrote to Ogaryov in 1841, advising him against moving to St Petersburg: Prince Odoyevsky has been seeking a means for many years of being at the same time a man of Petersburg and a man of humanity, but he doesn't have much success; he plays the role of some sort of Zwittergestalt and, notwithstanding all his charm of spirit, one can see the gentleman-in-waiting key in his back.107 The irony is stingingly effective in view of Odoyevsky's own literary theme of puppetry and automatism. Descriptions of Odoyevsky in his later years suggest a liveliness that belied his age and fully corresponds with the range of activities which he maintained. Prince Golitsyn recalls that in this period: 'Odoyevsky was on the short side, rather lean, with very thin facial features, and extremely active and jolly'; Ksenofont Polevoy, meeting Odoyevsky for the first time in thirty years, remarked: 'he is in spirit now the same ardent, noble youth whom I remember in his cosy Moscow study'.108 Alexander Nikitenko, seeing Odoyevsky in 1866, noted in his diary: I visited Prince Odoyevsky, who has come here for a few days. I hadn't seen him for about eight years. He has scarcely changed

26

Biographical Introduction physically and otherwise is the same as ever. He is still the same intelligent person, inclined toward speculation; the same noble, honest man, active and involved, as before; and with that same youthful face. Only his legs, he says, are serving him poorly.109

Odoyevsky's humour is not the characteristic which comes through most strongly in the memoir accounts which we have been considering. Nevertheless, a certain quality of wit features throughout Odoyevsky's writing, being particularly evident in his notebooks and diaries, which betray also an interest in the bizarre, the violent and the mildly obscene. Recorded instances of the kind of irmocznl faux pas alluded to by Sollogub, though, are unfortunately extremely rare. Afanasiy Fet, however, recalls an occasion when Odoyevsky, visiting a girls' institution of which he was a trustee and observing a sewing class, to the head-mistress's embarrassment insisted that the inmates should be able to darn men's underpants. 110 When the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna complained that Pyatkovsky was too young to teach final-year girl students, Odoyevsky consoled him by saying: 'Youth is the kind of defect which passes with every day'.111 Perhaps his most sprightly quip, however, comes in a jotting on scholasticism: Scholasticism. When Galileo discovered the satellites ofJupiter, the Ptolomaists replied that this was absurd; there could not be more than seven planets because in the human body there are only seven orifices: two ears, two eyes, two nostrils and a mouth . . . but there's something else they forgot, the scoundrels!112

VI The Last Years Odoyevsky's financial means were extemely limited from the 1820s and 1830s; Princess Odoyevskaya owned a Petersburg dacha and the Finnish myza was purchased, but little income was involved.113 It was always a question of living on salary plus literary or other journalistic fees. The Odoyevskys' residences were always borrowed or rented, and always modest in size. Odoyevsky's diary complains of his financial state - while still in Petersburg and after moving to Moscow.114 Commenting on the meagre existence of this Russian prince, the British ambassador, Lord Napier, exclaimed: 'He wouldn't live like this in London.' 115

The Last Years

27

The Crimean War had a considerable impact on Odoyevsky, not least in its being the cause of the closure of the Society for Visiting the Poor, in 1855 (see Chapter Four). In 1856-7, the Odoyevskys travelled abroad again for an extended period, carrying eight trunks; Odoyevsky studied music and wrote articles in the Western press refuting the calumnies against Russia. He wrote copious travel notes (most of which look as if they were written in a highly mobile carriage), covering Konigsberg, Marienburg, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar (where he had dealings with the Grand Duchess Mariya Pavlovna and wrote notes on Lizst) and ceasing in Paris (Turgenev's Paris address is noted); they subsequently went to Nice and Switzerland.116 Odoyevsky made official visits on behalf of the Imperial Public Library in 1858 to the University of Jena and in 1859 to the Schiller centenary celebrations in Weimar. Over-conscientious in whatever tasks he undertook, Odoyevsky complained of overwork in his library and museum posts too. His long-standing disillusion with Petersburg life increased with the closure of his philanthropic society; his financial state was worsening and he had long been escaping as much as possible to his Finnish residence or abroad. With plans afoot to move the Rumyantsev Museum to Moscow, he saw his chance of a move back to his native city, to a quieter and cheaper life. He did not wish to continue his sixteen-year stint as 'faithful museum dog', but did not hide from his acquaintances his feelings at his pending departure: 'I know that Moscow will bore me', he said'. . . but nothing can mar the bliss which seizes me in freeing myself from the thousand chains which fetter me in Petersburg.'117 Odoyevsky secured an appointment to the Moscow Senate, and left St Petersburg with his wife on 16 May 1862. Shortly after the return to Moscow, Pogodin and other surviving friends held a celebratory dinner in his honour. Once he was installed in Moscow, Odoyevsky was as busy as ever. He took up law studies with great vigour and quickly became an extremely hard-working senator - indeed, he was told by Sobolevsky of 'the surprise of many senators: how can I get seriously involved in senatorial business!'118 He engaged in publicistic activity to defend the reforms, of which he was a strong supporter; studied and wrote about music; was prominent in various artistic circles (including a circle in which the dramatist Ostrovsky and others read their works119) and revived his own 'evenings' along the former Petersburg lines. According to Pyatkovsky, Odoyevsky worked to the limit in public life in Moscow, then he would go home to rest, where

28

Biographical Introduction

he could turn his attentions to such things as the laws of acoustics, 'the archeological development of musical knowledge', galvanism, the deduction of mathematical tables, 'the contemplation of the natural sciences, medicine, physiology, pedagogy etc. That's how he rested!'120 Late interests included numerology, stenography and (rather belatedly in 1868!) the improvement of his handwriting.121 According to A. I. Koshelev, Odoyevsky intended, with the coming closure of the Senate in Moscow, to go into complete retirement to write up his memoirs from his copious archive.122 He wrote to Alexander II (probably in 1868, but it was delivered to its addressee only posthumously) suggesting a gradual withdrawal from Senate duties, which currently demanded his attention for twelve hours a day ('nocturnal work, formerly my favourite time, has now become impossible'), in order to be able to offer his services as something of a court historian, after the fashion of Karamzin.123 None of this, however, was to come to pass. Odoyevsky died on 27 February 1869, after a short illness which began with a chill on 23 February when he was attending a lecture on Russian song; his diary entries of 24 and 25 February mention a chill, a pain in the ribs and particularly hiccups.124 The cause of death was inflammation of the brain. At the time of his death he was working on arrangements for a Moscow archeological conference and planning his historical projects.

PART ONE

Odoyevsky's Creative Activity

CHAPTER ONE

The Writer Why don't I get down to a new edition? Why am I not writing, or at least not publishing anything? And so on and so forth. To ask a writer about such domestic circumstances is almost like asking a Moslem about the health of his wife. V. F. Odoyevsky, 1862

I

T h e 1820s

1820-24 The first steps in Odoyevsky's career as a writer were taken even before the 1820s. As a student of the Pansion for Nobility in Moscow he engaged on a wide range of essays, translations and, it would appear, his first attempts at fiction. A fragment of a 'mythological story' entitled 'Kharon', for example, inscribed '1818', remains in his papers.1 Translations, essays and speeches began to appear from 1820 in the Pansion\ journal Kalliopa and in Vestnik Yevropy (Herald of Europe) - notably the 'Extract from La Bruyere', printed twice.2 Most interesting among Odoyevsky's works of the earliest period is his 'Diary of a Student' (Dnevnik studenta) of 1820-1; as this work has never been published, we remain dependent on quotations and summaries provided by others.3 The work appears to be autobiographical in its subject matter and is in confessional diary form. The student, or authorial persona (presumably the sixteen-year-old Odoyevsky), relates in lyrical fashion his alienation from family, home and society, his strong feelings of friendship for Alexander (presumably A. I. Odoyevsky - see Chapter Six), and his first feelings of love, which result in disillusion. This gives the protagonist a cold and sardonic outlook: 'my laughter is like the laughter of a man whose veins are being pulled; it is said that during this torment a man guffaws horrifically' (Sakulin sees this attitude as 'Pechorin-like').4 'Diary of a

32

The Writer: The 1820$

Student' was not intended for publication and was, therefore, an experimental work; as such it gave fuller rein to the lyric voice in its analysis of emotional experience than is the case with Odoyevsky's published fiction of the 1820s. In the only modern treatment of this work, M. S. Shtern makes considerable claims for its significance as a pointer to Odoyevsky's mature writing and even to the subsequent development of Russian fiction - 'the confrontation of the hero with his surroundings . . . the testing by the hero of friendship and love, the elucidation of the extent to which these respond to the higher demands of human nature' she sees as the blueprint of the future novelistic situation in the fiction of Pushkin, Lermontov and Turgenev.5 The psychologism of this autobiographical prose Shtern sees as deriving from the advance made by lyric poetry, which is seen also in the syntax, 'in which poetic figures . . . combine with colloquial turns of speech' and 'a dynamic rhythm of phrase'. 6 What is clear is that the 'Diary' indicates Odoyevsky's early decision that the strivings of the young protagonist for 'free-expression and at the same time a confluence with the world' can only be realized in 'aesthetic activity'; the diary's accusatory and didactic tone produces the type of discourse which will largely determine the structure of Odoyevsky's fictional works from the apologues of the first half of the 1820s to Russian Nights? One image employed in 'Diary of a Student' is indeed directly developed in the best known of the Odoyevsky apologues. Complaining of the 'dejection, nausea, spleen and spite' engendered in him by the concept and observance of 'the so-called rule of decorum' (pristoynosf), the student comments: 'often outwardly I play the child, but inside - the old man with one foot in the grave'.8 This must have been the first germ of The Old Men - or the Island ofPanchaea (Stariki Hi Ostrov Pankhai, 1824) in which, on the mythical island of Panchaea, as supposedly described by Diodorus Siculus, time runs backwards for those who imbibe 'the waters of the sun', so that they gradually become younger and can achieve the state of immortal youth or, for those who drink too much, deterioration into total infancy (and eventual 'oneday-old' death). The latter category of 'infant geriatrics', not surprisingly, indulge in absurdly frivolous pastimes; Odoyevsky thus, in apologue-parable, or allegorical form, satirizes such social and cultural norms as: society small-talk, the pursuit of undeserved and meaningless honours, haut-monde upbringing, the fetish for empirical knowledge and French theorizing, and the time-honoured practice of holding down the younger generation in the name of 'experience'. Belinsky, reviewing Odoyevsky's Collected Works twenty years later

1820-24

33

(from which Odoyevsky omitted virtually the entire body of his work of the 1820s), praised the apologues as something completely new in Russian literature and went so far as to reprint the texts of two of them (The Old Men - or the Island ofPanchaea and a much shorter one, Alogiy and Epimenid) in his review.9 Of interest among the other apologues which Odoyevsky published in Mnemozina in 1824-5 is one entitled The New Demon (Novyy demon of 1825), which was, by Odoyevsky's admission in the text, partly inspired by the concept of the demon within, mentioned in Pushkin's poemAftfy demon (which had appeared in Mnemozina, vol. HI (1824), later known as simply 'Demon'). The protagonist, Kallidor, a member of a chosen community of an eastern temple, is led out into the world, to meet those who live without, by a stranger (neznakomets). They visit the palace and the wind blows; instead of people, Kallidor sees beasts, cattle and reptiles. He dreams of the temple community but the stranger wakes him. Kallidor fears the stranger but depends upon him for protection from the surrounding beasts. After some time, these animals begin to clothe themselves in human clothing and eventually, indeed, seem to be human. Kallidor, looking in the mirror, sometimes saw himself like those animals; he grew accustomed to his companion and to the beings surrounding him, entered their sphere of activity and began to copy them. Only the chosen of the temple regretted his worldly life.10 There is an 'outer demon' as well as an inner one - 'no less of a torment': a stranger in the guise of a society personage who prides himself on his 'experience'; his inseparable partner is Laziness, who performs a similar demonic role, to turn another young man of promise into what Sakulin describes as 'a future Oblomov' in the accompanying piece, My Stewardess (Moya upraviteVnitsa)}1 Prominent among the twenty or so items which Odoyevsky published in Mnemozina is the society tale Yelladiy, which Belinsky lauded as the first real pavesf of Russian reality.12 Belinsky admitted that the story was indeed 'weak', but saw in it the first attempt to depict Russian society, not in the usual unrealistic idealized way, but as the author actually saw it; he also saw a certain originality and freshness in the composition of Yelladiy and in the feelings about society that the author was trying to arouse.13 Odoyevsky's view of society was indeed a critical one; however, his criticism was based rather on the excesses, weaknesses and immorality of the individuals rather than any critique of the social structure. Greed, card-playing and malicious lying are the motivating forces in Yelladiy; the plot is a contrived mixture of sentimentalism and melodrama; the characters are thinly drawn

34

The Writer: The 1820s

caricatures (the should-be demonic tempter Dobrynsky and his mischievous accomplice Gluposilina). The story compares unfavourably with, but points the way towards, Odoyevsky's main society tales of the 1830s - Princess Mimi and Princess Zizi. The eponymous protagonist Yelladiy was a hapless victim of society intrigue. More typical of this period of Odoyevsky's prose and possibly of greater consequence to the development of Russian literature was the figure of Arist, the protagonist of a number of pieces of 1822-3 and assumed to be something approaching an authorial alter ego. Arist, in fact, appears with an increasing importance in all but the first of a series of works which bear the title or subtitle 'Letters to the Luzhnitskiy Elder', notably the stories The Strange Man (Strannyy chelovek) and Days of Vexation (Dni dosad)}4 The publication of these 'Letters' in Vestnik Yevropyfirstdrew Griboyedov's attention to the young Odoyevsky (and gave rise subsequently to comparisons between Arist and Chatsky - see Chapter Six), while both the figure of Arist and the title The Strange Man have prompted suggestions of a role played by Odoyevsky in establishing an early prototype of the 'superfluous man'. 15 Arist is a sharp-witted and highly educated figure whose interests in literary, musical and philosophical matters make him 'strange' to the Philistine aristocratic society surrounding him, which is interested only in the perennial round of society balls and intrigue, cards and honours lists; like the student in 'Diary of a Student', Arist is drawn to an inner world of books and manuscripts, while keeping a ready tongue with which to combat his adversaries, and finally withdraws to a life of peaceful study in the country, despairing of the idleness, vanity and ignorance which pervade society drawing-rooms. Society personages bear names which sound like characters from the comedies of Fonvizin and Griboyedov - names which not infrequently recur in other works by Odoyevsky (Count Gluposilin, Princess Pustyakova, the moneylender Protsentin). Conversations take place on science, opera, Russian folksong and Schellingian philosophy - taken by the 'society automata' to be 'Japanese'; both ignorance and artificial conventions are attacked, especially Odoyevsky's bete noire, the society ball: 'Finally they erected supper and I, at the end of my tether, despite all of Ernestov's exhortations, made off from the ball, cursing its inventor.'16 The old man, Ernestov, acts at Arist's foil and conversation partner, being of somewhat like mind but of considerably greater 'experience'; in trying to reconcile Arist to the social scene he plays something of the role of demonic tempter: '[Ernestov's] smile seemed to me like Satan's smile when he tortures a sinner.'17

1824-30

35

Odoyevsky's characterizations are generally regarded as being on the weak side and particularly so in his works of the 1820s. Nevertheless Sakulin regards Days of Vexation as 'the most significant among Odoyevsky's works of the 20s', and as providing 'a kaleidoscopic picture of high-society Moscow of the 20s'. 18 The 'instructionaldidactic' basis of these early works, grounded in the eighteenthcentury enlightening tradition in fiction, can be seen as pointing the way towards Odoyevsky's more successful and mature works of this type of the 1830s - stories such as The Brigadier and The Live Corpse. However, Odoyevsky failed to develop his strannyy chelovek type of character in his subsequent fiction (although the shadowy and eccentric philosopher Faust of Russian Nights, may be said to be a descendant of this type - albeit deliberately schematic and in no sense a rounded figure). By contrast, Lermontov developed or projected the strannyy chelovek into such figures as Vadim, the Demon and Pechorin. Arguably, Odoyevsky's failure to develop his own 'superfluous man' into the fictional type which he himself had helped to originate may well have cost him a more prominent place in the histories of Russian literature. 1824-30 The years 1824-5 saw Odoyevsky's highest output of writings of the decade. His contributions to the four issues of Mnemozina number around twenty: stories and apologues; philosophical, aesthetic and publicistic articles and letters. In 1825 he also published another twenty items in N. A. Polevoy's new journal, Moskovskiy telegraf. short stories, articles and musical criticism. Many of these, like the works described above, were short 'instructional-didactic' works, moralistic in nature and in their social criticism, though often containing romantic features; the main influences of this period on Odoyevsky's fiction have generally been acknowledged to be La Bruyere's Les Caracteres and the eastern tale - in particular, the Indian stories of the Pancatantra (a number of Odoyevsky's short works of the period bear the subtitle 'An Indian [or Persian] Tale [or 'Legend']'). Certain of these works introduce philosophical themes and an element of the grotesque which Odoyevsky was to exploit to greater advantage in the 1830s; for example in The Conversation of Two Deceased (Razgovor dvukh pokoynikov, 1825) the two corpses of the title, a poor soldier and a rich man, find their inequality in life levelled by death; there are threads in such works which link them with predecessors in both Russian and

36

The Writer: The 1820s

European literature as well as with Odoyevsky's own subsequent development and with more illustrious works by subsequent Russian writers (in this case, Dostoyevsky's Bobok springs to mind).19 The events of December 1825 and his new life in St Petersburg meant that Odoyevsky published only one item so far traced in 1826 (his habit of publishing under a wide range of pseudonyms leaves open the possibility of further works of this and other periods coming to light20). However, it is a considerable exaggeration to say that 'his name after 1825 almost disappears from the journal pages':21 the year 1827 saw ten published pieces, all but one in Moskovskiy vestnik (Moscow Herald), the new journal edited by Pogodin and regarded as the organ established for a revival, or continuation, of Lyubomudry ideas. The years 1828-9 saw a marked fall-off in Odoyevsky's published output, which is probably to be accounted for by two factors: Odoyevsky's greater involvement in tasks of government service; and his ruminations over far more ambitious literary projects which either remained unrealized (his novel of the Italian renaissance, Giordano Bruno and Pietro Aretino), or which were only to achieve fruition much later (including the long-standing project which underwent considerable metamorphosis before materializing as Russian Nights in 1844). In addition, his archive reveals a number of other projects (novels and plays) abandoned at an early stage - a propensity to which Odoyevsky was prone throughout this career and which he may even have cultivated as a romantic fetish. Odoyevsky's unfinished Bruno, which I. I. Zamotin sees as an attempted parallel to ultra-romantic works by Wackenroder, Tieck and Novalis,22 we discuss, mainly from the philosophical viewpoint, in Chapter Two. Before leaving the 1820s, however, we should make brief mention of some other Odoyevsky works of the late 1820s, as an indication of the range of his literary experimentation at this stage. Following in his own tradition of moralistic social satire is the 'fragment' A Money-lender's Morning (Utro rostovshchika, 1829), again featuring the usurer Protsentin and showing the corrupting power of money in society. Similar in intent but more unusual in its angle of approach is the unpublished 'satirical fragment' Man from a Dog's Point of View, which strikes at such social qualities as bigotry, hypocrisy and obsequiousness.23 Odoyevsky's interest in historical themes stretched, sixteenth-century Italy apart, to the topic of palace revolution in Poland, in the dramatic form of'political tragedy'.24 Perhaps Odoyevsky's most strikingly experimental work of the period is the short work Two Days in the Life of the Terrestrial Globe (Dva dni v zhizni zemnogo shara,

The Mature Period

37

written 1825, published 1828), a story speculating upon the possible results of a comet's impact upon the earth - a theme to which Odoyevsky was to return later, in The Year 4338. What is remarkable about this work of just five pages is that it begins as a society tale, takes on an air of science fiction, and concludes in a Schellingian aura of benign apocalypse, in which 'the heavenly became the earthly, the earthly the heavenly, the sun became the Earth and the Earth the Sun'. 25 Virtually none of Odoyevsky's works of the 1820s were included by him in his collected works of 1844 and few have been reprinted since. Many, of course, remained unfinished; many others, notwithstanding a certain originality, appear immature, artless in construction and paperthin in characterization, even compared to many of his lesser works of the 1830s. Nevertheless, they did have a certain impact on the reader of the time (as Belinsky has testified) and did play a tentative part in the shaping of Russian prose in its most formative decade of the nineteenth century. The basic lines and genres of Odoyevsky's prose were apparent, even in his writings of the Mnemozina period; but perhaps, as one recent commentator has suggested, these works should not be considered so much as belonging to the category of prose fiction: rather they should be regarded as 'satirical/social life sketches, philosophical-psychological etudes \26

II

1830-44

The Mature Period Odoyevsky's fiction published in the years 1830-44 represents by far the greatest quantity of his literary output (especially when it is remembered that he also wrote most of his children's literature, discussed briefly in Chapter Four, during these years) and, by universal critical consent, is superior to the earlier and later periods in both quality and diversity. While it is not possible to maintain hard and fast chronological divisions over this fruitful decade and a half (indeed, as already mentioned, Russian Nights, for a start, has roots stretching back into the 1820s), the period is approximately bounded by the publication of the two 'cycles': Variegated Tales (Pyostryye skazki) in 1833 and Russian Nights (Russkiye nochi) in 1844. Other sub-divisions can only be thematic (tales of 'artists'; society tales; philosophical/romantic tales; and

38

The Writer: 1830-44

anti-Utopian/science fiction tales); the picture is further complicated by the publication of individual stories, later to be drawn into Russian Nights, throughout the 1830s (for the purposes of this chapter, these will be treated as separate stories in their appropriate categories just mentioned) and by the partial construction of further grandiose projects which either metamorphosed into Russian Nights (as in the case of the cycle 'House of Madmen') or achieved only fragmental publication (as with the unrealized novel SegelieV).21 Odoyevsky's fiction of the 1830s appears to be the product of a more mature artistic consciousness than might have been predicted from his work of the 1820s. Whereas device, artifice and motivation are used to clumsy and obvious effect in the earlier period, much of the work of the 1830s, which is certainly no less adventurous or experimental in form, takes on a dimension of ambivalence. His study and application of romantic aesthetics (its Germanic theory, its Germanic, but also French and Russian practice) adds a question mark to any Odoyevsky text from now on (indeed, in the case of Variegated Tales, with its unusual punctuation and use of the Spanish reverse interrogative sign, two question marks). This is occasioned by the use of a variety of narrational devices (narrators, multiple narrators and spokesmen even the purported publisher of Variegated Tales - embedded narratives and other framing devices), plus an irony which frequently undercuts the narrative at a variety of levels, self-conscious play on the author-reader relationship and other forms of romantic irony, and various forms of parody as well as allegory. First readings of the works of this period tend to pale in the light of subsequent readings. Appreciation of this process has been greatly assisted in recent years by a revival of interest in romantic poetics, though it has always been recognized, at least in part, by the more perceptive of intuitive critics; for example, no less a commentator than Osip Mandelstam wrote: More than once in Russian society there have been periods when the moving spirit of Western literature was read with genius. Thus did Pushkin and his entire generation read Chenier. Thus did the following generation, the generation of Odoyevsky, read Schelling, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Novalis.28 Variegated Tales Variegated Tales can be seen as in many ways a transitional work between Odoyevsky's fictional output of the 1820s and that of the 1830s.

Variegated Tales

39

It is also a work to which the above remarks have particular relevance in that it is a text which has never produced any real critical consensus; this would seem to apply equally to the author as critic, in view of the fact that, when appropriating 'Excerpts from Variegated Tales (1833)' as a section for Part Three of his Collected Works, Odoyevsky omitted a good deal of the original cycle and rearranged the rest. Indeed, the cycle as such has never yet been reprinted. As with Russian Nights, the genesis of Variegated Tales goes back to the 1820s; its maturation must have been a contributory factor to the sparsity of Odoyevsky's publications in the years 1828-9 (there was frequently a longish gestation period in the case of both major 'cycles' and single stories between apparent completion, dating and publication). As early as January 1829, Odoyevsky made reference to Variegated Tales in a letter to Pogodin: 'Having withdrawn from literature for a time in readiness to bring out a big work [boVshoy trud\, I certainly don't want to remind the public of myself by the commission of old sins.' 29 The 'old sins' remained, however - at least as far as some readers were concerned. N. A. Polevoy, in Moskovskiy telegraf, criticized Variegated Tales as too much allegory and too little thought, seeing in them cold imitations of Hoffmann and evidence of Odoyevsky's aristocratic aloofness; Baron Rozen, on the other hand, greeted the cycle as original tales of the miraculous at various levels, reminiscent of 'the one and only Hoffmann'.30 P. A. Vyazemsky did not agree with either of these assessments; in a letter to Zhukovsky, he wrote: Odoyevsky has published his Variegated Tales, the fantastic ones. I haven't seen it yet but they say the edition is a very fine one, fetching and fantastic. I think that Odoyevsky's genre is not the fantastic, at least in the Hoffmannian sense. He has a more observant and reflective mind and his imagination is not at all whimsical and playful.31 Odoyevsky's friends and associates (including Gogol', whose possible hand in the book's design we mention in Chapter Six) responded fairly enthusiastically to the collection; I. I. Davydov went further than Vyazemsky in calling Variegated Tales the first attempt in Russian literature at the philosophical tale; however, a little later, Koshelev wrote to Odoyevsky: 'In general they have not made any great impression: there are very few people who understand them and still fewer who would genuinely appreciate their quality.'32

40

The Writer: 1830-44

This confusion can be attributed to the presence in Variegated Tales of 'old sins' (didactic and allegorical satirical apologues) alongside more innovatory works.33 However, even a brief examination of Variegated Tales reveals a diversity and complexity which has led the original critical doubts and differences to persist. Between the two prefaces at the beginning (from the 'publisher' and the 'author' or rather collector) and the epilogue (itself merely a restating of the epigraph to the last story) we are given stories numbered I to VIII (see Bibliography I:E); there are really a total of seven stories, as VIII is a sequel, or rather a 'reverse' of VII. The first story, The Retort (Retorta) opens its four short chapters with an 'Introduction' which reads like a veritable credo of romanticism on the part of the narrator, or supposed author.34 Chapter Two of the story finds the somewhat eccentric narrator at the usual venue for the opening of an Odoyevsky tale - a society ball; annoyed when the conspiratorial ritual of the card-table asserts its supremacy over the hot air of narratorial digression, our storyteller retreats to cool himself by a fortochka which has been opened 'right opposite the dancing ladies' (p. 15), only to find the air there just as hot, despite the twenty degrees of frost outside; the entire house and its occupants prove to be enclosed 'in a glass retort with a curved nose' (p. 16). Climbing out of the window, our narrator discovers 'why it was so stuffy in the drawing room': 'an accursed Chemist had placed a lamp under us and without mercy was distilling the estimable public!' (p. 17). The narrator (Chapter Three) shrinks from the heat to half his size, his fine clothes have perished, his brains boiled and burst like a bubble; unable to bear this calcination and unwilling to return deformed to the social gathering, he clambers out of the narrow throat of the retort to find that the tormentor of Petersburg society is no exalted diabolic entity, but a demonic five-year-old. Determined to avenge this insult to the nineteenth century, the narrator pokes his nose out of the retort and is immediately, in Chapter Four, cast by the young devil (satanyonok) into a Latin dictionary ('Lucifer had strictly ordered devils to undertake a thorough study of Latin', p. 21); on his travels from page to page through the dictionary he meets 'a spider, a dead body, a night-cap, Igosha and other amiable young people whom the accursed young devil had gathered from all sides of the world and forced to share my fate' (pp. 24-5). Some of these denizens of the dictionary were so seeped in words that they were turning into fairy tales (skazki);35 the narrator himself begins to undergo this transformation:

Variegated Tales

41

my eyes turned into an epigraph, from my head a few chapters sprouted, my torso became a text, and my nails and hair took up the space for linguistic mistakes and misprints, an unavoidable appurtenance to any book (p. 26). At this point the ball ends and the exodus from it breaks the retort; the young imp makes off in alarm, his dictionary thrust under his arm dropping a few pages in his haste along with some of its fictional captives, the narrator (Tour humble servant') included. The narrator manages to somehow transform himself back into a man, whereupon he has the presence of mind to grab his erstwhile comrades from the dropped pages, rolling them into a ball and stuffing them into his pocket in order subsequently 'to present them for the inspection of the esteemed reader' (p. 27). It is thus by this whimsical interplay of society tale and fairy tale and play on the relationship between narrator and reader, integral text and its component parts (characters and devices, words and punctuation), that Odoyevsky motivates his discourse to present, at various removes, the succession of unlikely ('variegated' or 'motley') stories (II—VIII) which follow. The concept of 'fairy tales for old children' was utilized on more than one occasion by Odoyevsky in the 1830s; Odoyevsky has indeed been seen as the originator of the satirical skazka, later taken up by Saltykov-Shchedrin.36 The Tale of a Dead Body Belonging to No One Knows Whom (II) is an exercise in satirical grotesque with the provincial bureaucracy on the receiving end. It also contrives to provide a confrontation of sorts between a minor civil servant and a foreigner. Following the discovery of an unknown body, the local authorities of the Rezhensk district announce that the body will be buried, unless someone comes forward to claim it; the night before burial is due, its disembodied owner appears to the clerk, one Ivan Sevast'yanych, who has been steeling himself for his grisly nocturnal vigil over the corpse in the shed with goose and home-produced spirit. Notable here as developments in the Odoyevskian story (which have invited comparison with Gogol') are the background details and the mental progress of Sevast'yanych through his shtoff intake (1.2 litres of liqueur); the incongruous dialogue which ensues over the terms of repossession of the body; and the multi-ending denouement which has long dissolved into rumour, doubt and the mists of time ('this happened some twenty years since', p. 52). It is worth noting that the epigraph to this story, from the Dikanka Tales, is ascribed to Rudyy Pan'ko (thus emphasizing the

42

The Writer: 1830-44

importance of the narrator), while in the offer of a bribe for the return of the body R. V. Iezuitova divines 'the first contours of the grandiose design of GogoP's Dead Souls'?1 The Life and Adventures of One of our Local Inhabitants in a Glass Jar, or the New Jocko (A Classical Tale) (III) presents a spider's viewpoint on the universe, in the face of a hostile environment in captivity (in a glass jar, returning to the retort motif), with a cannibalistic father the perpetual bane of his family life. Norman Ingham sees in this story 'ostranenie in the extreme'.38 Towards the end of his narrative, the spider, who eventually succumbs to parental ways, addresses his readership - again in a manner anticipatory of Gogol': 'But you laugh, you have no compassion for my calamities' (p. 72); 'what if your globe . . . were nothing but a nest of imperceptible insects on some other world?' (p. 73). The subtitle, 'A Classical Tale' (with its double epigraph from Boileau with Khvostov's translation), is purely ironic, as the story is primarily a burlesque of 'frenetic' French romantic forms, particularly that, popular in Russia, featuring the noble animal as a leading protagonist (as evidenced by the appended title 'the New Jocko').39 The polemical parodic thrust of the story has been lost long since, but a quality of bizarre peculiarity lingers. The Tale of How it Happened that Collegiate Councillor Ivan Bogdanovich Otnosheniye Failed to Offer Holiday Greetings to his Superiors on Easter Sunday (IV) offers a pre-Gogolian look inside a Petersburg chancellery. Ivan Bogdanovich's regular and minutely ordered office life is contrasted with the irresponsibility of his occasional card-playing at-homes, culminating in a demonic game of Boston in which cards come to life and the players are eventually found the next day 'sleeping the sleep of the dead' (p. 88); holiday greetings were, therefore, not offered on that Easter Sunday. Igosha (V), a story considered 'totally incomprehensible' by Belinsky, has been shown by M. A. Tur'yan to have been genuinely based in Russian folklore.40 This story comprises a child's narrative of visitations from a supposedly mythical limbless prankster known as Igosha (on a par, according to Dal', with kikimory and domovyye), put into his mind by the utterances of his nanny and an anecdote of his father's. The boy then attempts to put the blame on Igosha for what are presumed to be his own acts of mischievous vandalism and is punished accordingly. Odoyevsky's views on child psychology are discussed in Chapter Four and Igosha shows a growing interest in the subconscious. However, in the reworked version of the story for his 1844 works, Odoyevsky effectively removes any possible doubt as to

Variegated Tales

43

the 'actual' existence of Igosha by the addition of a paragraph at the end which clarifies the status of the visitations as 'a play of the imagination', which can be occasioned by particular psychological circumstances; the story is now not so much a child's eye view as the retrospective narrative of an adult.41 Jfust a Tale (Prosto skazka) (VI) is, as its title suggests, much more of a simple fairy tale than the other stories in the cycle: various inanimate objects (furniture and wearing apparel - notably a nightcap and a shoe) come to life when Bald Walter dozes off and conduct themselves in human-like squabbles. Participants in the dream are left in mid air when Walter wakes, which appears to illustrate by analogy the dependence of fictional characters upon their author. The Tale of How it is Dangerous for Girls to Walk in a Crowd Along Nevsky Prospekt (VII) is an allegorical cautionary tale of the rape, or at least the adulteration, of Russian beauty; the heart of the unfortunate Slav girl is extracted and steeped in a devilish mixture (again distilled in a retort) of the novels of Mme de Genlis, Chesterfield's Letters, various other Western frivolities, a fistful of Petersburg gossip and a sheaf of diplomatic correspondence. The effect of this treatment is to turn her into a doll able only to parrot the words of others; she is purchased by an admirer who falls for her looks, but she annoys him so much with her trifling demands that he eventually throws her out of the window. This tale's 'opposite', The Same Tale, only in Reverse (VIII) leads into The Wooden Guest or the Tale of the Awakened Doll and Mr. KivakeF; this story is 'framed' by the epigraph, from Goethe's Werther,42 it also begins with a lengthy narratorial digression on society and reactions to some of the tales related earlier: in effect narrator Gomozeyko's parting shot, balancing his introductions at the beginning. The Wooden Guest itself has the beautiful doll resuscitated by the intervention of the 'gloomy thousand-year-old sage, the founder of the Slavonic tribe' (p. 146), sent from the ancient Slavonic fatherland of India; the harmonies of Beethoven, the colours of Raphael and Michelangelo, incantations in Sanscrit ('the ancient Slavonic language', p. 147) and the poetry of Byron, as well as Derzhavin and Pushkin, are used to restore her. Odoyevsky/Gomozeyko's censure of the absurdities of female upbringing in Petersburg society are thus motivated more by concerns of artistic taste than with crude preoccupations of proto-Slavophilism. The restored beauty is bewitched into taking on the wooden-hearted monstrosity KivakeP, the domineering head-nodding devotee of horses and pipe-smoking, who gradually wears her down until he 'again' throws her out of the window

44

The Writer: 1830-44

(p. 155). The use of the word 'again' suggests KivakeP to be a grotesque transformation of the seemingly cultivated young man of VII, just as the beauty is transformed from empty-headed doll to inspired heroine. The repetition of the epigraph reinforces the theme of 'puppetry' (kukol'nost' - who manipulates whom?), seen by M. I. Medovoy as 'the leitmotif of the cycle'.43 The tales are individually slight, but diverse in their use of inventive whimsy, satire and the grotesque; not for the only time in Odoyevsky's oeuvre one has the suspicion that the whole may exceed the sum of the parts. Soviet criticism of this generally neglected cycle has tended to emphasize the angle of social satire.44 A. N. Nikolyukin sees Variegated Tales as anticipating GogoP's Petersburg stories and pre-figuring Odoyevsky's own The Improvisor and The Live Corpse, which 'continue their grotesque-satirical line'. 45 However, Variegated Tales are not to be pinned down as easily as all that. R. V. Iezuitova, while seeing in the cycle a near approach to the subsequent 'satirical-realist Gogol" in its 'realistic analysis of contemporary Russian reality', also points to the constantly undercutting effects of the employment of romantic irony.46 Sakulin claims that 'the real hero of Variegated Tales is Iriney Modestovich Gomozeyko, the author's alter ego'. 47 Some of the quirks of narration in the cycle have been touched on above and Odoyevsky was clearly conscious of the parallels with Rudyy Pan'ko and Ivan Petrovich Belkin (see Chapter Six). The work is clearly best read in the light of both the theory and practice of the poetics of romanticism. V. I. Sakharov, too, sees the tales as allegories, 'complicated by such Hoffmannian romantic motifs as puppetry, automatonism and the speciality of bureaucratic life', directed towards social satire; however, he argues that Odoyevsky was attempting 'to unite pre-romantic prose with the recently-learned rules of romantic poetics' and that it was 'the forthright didacticism and the somewhat archaic quality of the satirical prose' which brought forth the critical reaction of certain contemporaries.48 Furthermore, as the same commentator points out elsewhere, the composition and the reception of Variegated Tales must also be considered in the light of the literary polemics of the day, in which the brand of romanticism with which Odoyevsky was experimenting ran contrary to the more robust variety (a la Victor Hugo) favoured by such as Polevoy and Marlinsky.49 Nevertheless, despite their transitional position in Odoyevsky's development, Variegated Tales are not quite as transitory in their significance as their author modestly indicated a decade later, when,

Variegated Tales

45

introducing the selection deemed worthy of inclusion in his 1844 works, Odoyevsky referred to the cycle as 'a joke, the main aim of which was to demonstrate the possibilities for luxury editions in Russia and to launch woodcuts and other forms of illustration'.50 As a postscript to Variegated Tales, we should consider a little further the figure of Gomozeyko. Sakulin considers the name of Gomozeyko to be 'just as characteristic of the 30s as was Arist of the 20s'; 51 Iriney Modestovich Gomozeyko, 'Master of Philosophy and member of various learned societies', afficionado of occult sciences, who 'knows all possible languages: living, dead and half-dead' and just about everything else (p. x) - a poverty-stricken encyclopedist. Odoyevsky took considerable trouble over the persona of Gomozeyko, as he had further plans for him; his autobiography and 'historical researches' are alluded to in the publisher's introduction (p. iv). The historical researches have not survived, at least in any identifiable form, but the autobiography was started, covering Gomozeyko's provincial upbringing, education and government service (in which he struggled in vain to bring improvement to the urban district sanitary services, only to be accused of practising 'carbonari-type ideas').52 Connected with this project, or extracted from it, is The Story of a Cock, a Cat and a Frog, subtitled 'a provincial's story' and set in Rezhensk (scene of Ivan Sevast'yanych's traumatic experiences with the body which belonged to no one).53 Odoyevsky's knowledge of provincial life and officialdom, really only displayed in these two stories, probably derives from visits to his mother and step-father.54 The story itself is a piece of sheer 'folk' nonsense: an amusing anecdote of provincial credulity and ignorance, not a thousand miles, in either characters or ambiance, from Gogof's Mirgorod. There was to have been much more of Gomozeyko, a whole cycle of adventures (pokhozhdeniya) in the provinces and in the capital; there might have been 'a broad picture of the Russia of those days, illuminated by the lofty idealistic thoughts of Gomozeyko-Odoyevsky', in Sakulin's view: possibly even 'in its own way a DeadSouls\ but with a very different hero. 55 The only subsequent tale, however, in which Gomozeyko makes a return appearance as the garrulous storyteller is The Apparition (Privideniye, published 1838). Gomozeyko, as a social critic, is older, more eccentric and mellower than Arist; disliking society and suffering therein, he is nevertheless drawn to it like a magnet and wishes to reconcile books and society (closer therefore to Ernestov, from the earlier period, than Arist).

46

The Writer: 1830-44

Nevertheless, as Sakulin points out, Gomozeyko (although never fully drawn himself, quite apart from his cycle of adventures) is an interesting persona operating in three spheres: provincial bureaucratic life, the society drawing-rooms of the capital and the higher realms of philosophy ("'the house of madmen" of which he is the first resident').56 The 'Artistic' Tales As we have already remarked, Odoyevsky did not develop his strannyy chelovek ('strange man') type of the early 1820s - epitomized by Arist along what now seem to be the predictable lines which led Russian literature to the 'superfluous man' phenomenon. Arist withdrew from society to the seclusion of his books on his country estate. When he or rather his counterpart in Odoyevsky's fiction of the 1830s emerged, it was to be as a mellower, middle-aged eccentric, much older than Odoyevsky himself but with many of his qualities, in the form of an exaggerated self-projection: the learned chudaki, Gomozeyko and the later Faust of Russian Nights. Odoyevsky's other most readily identifiable character-type of the 1830s is that of another kind of 'strange man', the creative artist. The tormented genius, the deluded creator and the intellectual crank: all were candidates for residence in the uncompleted 'house of madmen'. Odoyevsky published separately four 'artistic' tales proper in the first half of the 1830s; intended for 'The House of Madmen', they were eventually incorporated into Russian Nights. Quite why and when the former project evolved into the latter is, like a good deal else in Odoyevsky's rather complicated literary career, far from clear;57 for present purposes, we are concerned briefly with these works as additional stories, rather than as projected parts of the one cycle or de facto parts of the other. Of the four 'artists' depicted, two are great composers; one is a deluded but harmless madman who imagines himself to be the architect and antiquarian Piranesi; the other is an ungifted poet whose talent, when boosted by occult and improper means, gives him no satisfaction. The two 'biographical' stories are unconcerned with history; they are intuitive, sensitive pictures of the predicament of the great artist: in adversity (the deaf, unappreciated and frustrated Beethoven at the end of his tether and of his life), and over the whole span of his artistic development (the comparatively extended tale of the 'life' of Bach).

The 'Artistic' Tales

47

The depiction of the composer in Beethoven's Last Quartet is fittingly romantic; the misunderstood genius descends into delirium, starving in his Viennese garret in the company of his one remaining student, the girl Louisa. The core of this six-page story is a three-page monologue - a kind of stream-of-consciousness profession defoi - by the composer which, in its moving and frenzied catalogue of the tragedies of creative nonfulfilment, dominates the passages dealing with the misconceptions and conflicts between the artist and society by which it is framed: 'from my earliest years I saw the abyss which divides thought from expression', complains the composer in true Odoyevskian fashion; this realization is compounded in the case of the musician into a double problem of expression, in that even what he does write is not played as intended; 'I get ahead of time', affirms the great artist, 'and act according to the inner laws of nature unnoticed by ordinary men' in a transformation of forms; however, the result is, all too often, that 'the sweet tortures of creation are chained to the paper. Sebastian Bach was finished in Revel in the summer of 1834 and published the following year. The biography of the composer is narrated by a 'researcher' whose particular task in life is the revelation of that 'mysterious language . . . common to all artists' which lies hidden beneath the creative minutiae of'all the works of artists without exception', as 'the poetry of all ages and peoples is one and the same harmonious work'.59 The introduction to this story, through the words of the eccentric researcher, is a crystal clear, barely exaggerated, statement of Odoyevsky's romantic position: Often an idea, started by a great poet is given its final form by the most mediocre; often a dark thought, born in the ordinary man, is brought by a genius to the unshimmering light; more often poets who are separated by time and space answer each other like echoes among the crags: the outcome of The Iliad is preserved in Dante's Comedy. Byron's poetry is the best commentary to Shakespeare; Raphael's secret should be sought in Albrecht Durer; the Strasbourg bell tower is an extension to the Egyptian pyramids; the symphonies of Beethoven are the second generation of the symphonies of Mozart.... All artists labour over the one thing, all speak the same language and therefore involuntarily understand each other.60 The researcher's other innovation as a biographer is to see an artist's works as the only source of his life: 'in them you will find his spirit, his

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character, his physiognomy; in them you will find even those events which have evaded the metrical pen of the historians' (p. 172); just as the universe is our sole clue to the Almighty, so do his works tell us of the artist, in whose life there are no unpoetic moments. There then follows an intuitive artistic chronicle which begins with the Bach family and ends with the composer's death, upon the failure of inspiration and imagination. Odoyevsky's conception of artistic 'biography' appears to be particularly close to that of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, with whom he shares a number of other romantic ideas (such as the inadequacy of language, the work of art as a hieroglyph and the religiously symbolic significance of art).61 Particularly striking is the mystical vision of religion and art which the young Sebastian undergoes in his nocturnal visit to the church in Eisenach (pp. 179-81); this is very similar to the religious experience of music at the rotunda in Wackenroder's 'Letter of a Young German Painter in Rome to his Friend in Nuremberg'. 62 The other major episode, much later, is the infatuation of Bach's half-Italian wife Magdalena with the 'impure seductive melody' (p. 201) of the visiting Venetian vocalist Francesco; impossible love for an unworthy object is Magdalena's undoing, while Bach, pursuing exclusively his own brand of artistic dedication, ends up in his own family 'a professor among his pupils . . . half of his soul was a corpse' (p. 201). Despite (or perhaps even because of) their greatness as artists, Beethoven and Bach were nevertheless flawed as human beings (bezumtsy, 'obsessed by their idee fixe, zealously devoted to the idea of creativity').63 These stories were an unusual innovation in Russian literature and, held in high esteem by such discerning contemporaries as Pushkin, Gogol', Herzen, Polevoy, Nadezhdin and Belinsky, they elevated Odoyevsky to the pinnacle of his literary reputation in the first half of the 1830s. Almost equally well received were his tales of the 'pseudo-artists': Piranesi and Kipriano 'the Improvisor'. Opere del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi invites comparison with Hoffmann's Ritter Gluck in its presentation of a character purporting to be, or believing himself to be, an artistic figure who has been dead for years. In Odoyevsky's case, however, there is no doubt as to the 'false' identity of the protagonist: 'Piranesi' claims to have been taught by Michelangelo 'in his old age' (p. 31). 64 The eccentric (dubbed, even before he claims to be Piranesi, a chudak and an original, p. 28) empathizes to such a degree, presumably in a vast exaggeration of his own artistic frustrations, with the grandiose architectural fantasies and imaginary views of Piranesi that he projects himself into what he

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imagines might have been Piranesi's state of mind, had Piranesi really intended his designs to be realized. However, worse is in store in the psyche of the supposed Piranesi: 'each work which comes out of an artist's head engenders an avenging spirit' {dukh-efiroid, p. 31); these spirits of his frustrated creations persecute him through his existence (like that of the Wandering Jew) which they themselves prolong.65 Kipriano, The Improvisory as a young poet composed his verses with immense difficulty and therefore relapsed into the poverty in which he had originated.66 He turns to Doctor SegelieP, a man of diabolical reputation (who very nearly dominates the story), who accords him the ability 'to produce without effort' and 'to see, know and understand everything' (pp. 148-9). Kipriano's perception and comprehension are immediately transformed: books on the shelves and the letters on their pages assume a state of mobility;67 everything was reduced to 'an arithmetical progression' - the whole of nature lay before Kipriano 'like the skeleton of a beautiful woman, whom the dissector had boiled down so skilfully that there did not remain on her a single living vein' (p. 150). His beloved Charlotte is reduced in his eyes to 'an anatomical preparation' (p. 151); his microscopic vision reduced the world to a mechanistic model, dividing him permanently from the rest of its inhabitants (the artifice of literature, history and philosophy replacing the art or the ideals, music giving way to mechanical vibration). He composed verses instantly and effortlessly, but to no personal satisfaction ('like an aloof priest, long accustomed to the mysteries of his temple', p. 143); indeed he ends as a wandering jester jabbering verses non-stop in a mixture of all languages. This story, too, has affinities with Hoffmann.68 Odoyevsky's imaginative writing is seen here at its best; within the framework of a 'fantastic' variation on the theme of artistic inspiration he attacks the mechanistic philosophy introduced through European enlightenment, presents the contrasuve coupling of sinister mage and ineffectual romantic poet and (in the romantic manner) employs occult motivation to introduce the kind of enhanced vision more usually found in science fiction of the twentieth century. As Odoyevsky himself subsequently realized, links between these four stories inevitably suggest themselves. The stories explore the nature of artistic feeling and the relationship of the artist to those around him. The mechanical, sterile vision of Kipriano, a Salieri (or Pietro Aretino) figure who has acquired knowledge and creative ability illicitly from without, not from within, may be compared to the exhausted imagination of the dying Bach, which, instead of sounds, 'presented to him only the keys, the pipes, the valves of the organ' (p. 201). Odoyevsky wrote to Krayevsky in 1844:

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The Writer: 1830-44 an idea comes to me unexpectedly, spontaneously, and, finally, starts to torment me, growing incessantly into material form; this moment of the psychological process I wanted to express in Piranesi and that is why he is the first act in my psychological drama; then I write . . . (pp. 103-4).

Something of the grandiose unrealized literary edifices of Odoyevsky may, therefore, be reflected in the anguish of his Piranesi; he furthermore communicated to Koshelev that something of his own 'grief was incorporated into Sebastian Bach.69 The theme of artistic inspiration was undoubtedly a personal one.

As a postscript to this section on the 'artistic' tales we may briefly consider the story The Painter (Zhivopisets, 1839), which belonged to an entirely different cycle, 'The Diary of an Undertaker' ('Zapiski grobovshchika'), of which only three stories from a projected thirteen, were ever written.70 The artist in question, Danilo Petrovich, subsides into purist delirium and dire poverty, brought on by his refusal to execute commercial commissions. When, to placate his wife and ward off total starvation, he finally paints a shop sign, he promptly expires. This story cannot be regarded as philosophically significant or artistically successful; however, it does demonstrate the direction of movement (towards realism and 'the natural school' of the 1840s) of a certain strand, at least, of Odoyevsky's writing in the second half of the 1830s. It also presents a somewhat unusual structural feature: the story of the unfortunate painter is given over to a woman of the merchant classes, Marfa Andreyevna, who relates her tale in an affectionate skaz manner, devoid of any understanding of the artistic feeling at the root of her narrative. The 'Society' Tales Odoyevsky's society tales (svetskiye povesti) are in many ways a continuation of the main trends of his fiction of the 1820s; the tone is frequently 'instructional'; the setting is predominantly the salon and the ballroom; the subject-matter is society intrigue; under scrutiny are the mores of aristocratic society and such associated factors as 'the women's question' (zhenskiy vopros).11 There are a number of Odoyevsky stories containing features, such as an element of the fantastic, which could qualify them for consider-

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ation in the following section (on 'romantic' or philosophical tales), but in which the society theme would seem to dominate (and, conversely, tales considered in the next section which include a strong society component: The Live Corpse, Segeliel\ even SU'fida); the dividing line is by no means hard and fast, as we shall see shortly in even such an apparently clear-cut society tale as Princess Mimi. This category includes some of the shorter stories later incorporated into Russian Nights. The Brigadier (1833) has clear affinities with the later tales, The Live Corpse and A Woman's Soul (not to mention certain much later stories by Tolstoy - see Chapter Six). A phantom of the dead Brigadier forms before the eyes of the narrator, from his own confused thoughts and feelings; however, this seemingly fantastic event is of minor importance in comparison with the corpse's monologue, the confession of a wasted life through the normal immoral upbringing of his class, followed by years of craven conformity to the social norms; only on his death-bed does he realize all this. In The Ball (1833), a story of some two pages with the intensity of a prose poem, the narrator goes from the horrific scene of a manic ball being engaged 'with voluptuous madness' to a religious vision of love and harmony in a nearby church; again the overriding impression is of the questioning of the values of the very highest society.72 The fantastic and grotesque events of The Mockery ofa Corpse (dramatic coincidence, apocalyptic flood and the corpse revived for vengeance) overshadow the prosaic explanation of a fainting fit; yet the main purpose of the story still comes through: to decry the abandonment by 'prudent Liza' of her beloved for the sake of 'the inevitable basis of family happiness' (meaning, as usual, a parentally arranged marriage) and to condemn the further self-perversion of her true spirit even after her horrifically traumatic, if illusory experience.73 Another society tale with a difference is the short story New Year (first published 1837, but dated 1831) which deals with the idealistic intelligentsia of the 1820s: in reality, a reflection of the Lyubomudry themselves. Based on the deterioration in the idealism of the surviving Lyubomudry during their 'second breath' in St Petersburg during the years 1827-31, 74 the story (which relates three New Year gatherings, some years apart) looks back with nostalgia on the high ideals, the literary and philosophical activities and the bruising literary polemics of the early 1820s. The mark of time (and perhaps, too, of historical events) diverts the lofty aspirations of the regular host of the gatherings Vyacheslav, first to family preoccupations and then to careerism and the accordant cynical exploitation of the beau monde. This poignant

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story of lost ideals, wasted talent and the erosion of camaraderie is one of Odoyevsky's best-executed short works. What might be considered Odoyevsky's society tales proper can be said to begin with the publication in 1834 of Katya, or the Story of a Young Ward {A Fragment from a Novel) and Princess Mimi. Katya deals with what Odoyevsky calls 'the life of our middle-class', the wards (vospitanitsy) from the lower orders, brought up 'charitably' by the more 'benevolent' sections of the aristocracy, who are normally destined 'to spend their whole span in eternal celibacy, or to get married to some clerk of the fourteenth class'; the story contains considerable social detail and an interesting situation develops between Katya and a male ward of artistic proclivities (Vladimir), whereupon the narrative breaks off abruptly.75 Princess Mimi has claims to be considered Odoyevsky's society tale par excellence: it is Odoyevsky's most outspoken attack on the destructive, hypocritical and sterile aspects of svetskaya zhizn' (le beau monde); it includes authorial comments on the literary situation of the day and on the anomalous state of the Russian literary langauge particularly with respect to the fictional presentation of society dialogue, given the real-life use of French in salon conversation; furthermore it constitutes, in the persona of its eponymous protagonist, Odoyevsky's most serious attempt at psychological characterization. Odoyevsky's ire (such is the tone of the story) falls upon the usual social frivolities, such as balls and whist, that evergreen social barbarity - the duel, plus here the virtuous guardians of social mores, 'the moral estate' (nravstvennoye sosloviye, p. 221), epitomized by Mimi ('the soul of society', p. 222), and the situation by which 'the only goal in life for girls in society is to get married' (p. 229). The development of Mimi into a venomous persecutor of those who incur her displeasure (in the name of the preservation of 'moral standards', she causes two needless deaths and blights the lives of many others), through her conscious adoption of a policy of calculated perfidy (obshchestvennoye kovarstvo, p. 223), is sketched in and explained by means of potted biography (by narration); her orchestration of a vicious whispering campaign against the blameless Baroness is shown in action (by demonstration).76 For all the relative realism and social detail contained in this story, it is not so far removed from Odoyevsky's more overtly romantic tales as might be thought: the expression 'the soul of this society', applied to Mimi, is the only remaining suggestion of a discarded prologue in which Mimi is afflicted by devils residing in her cellar.77 In terms of

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structure and narrative technique it is, like many of Odoyevsky's works in various genres, experimental and self-conscious; the 'preface' (coming two-thirds of the way through the story) is given over to authorial digression and there are various narrative quirks of the 'shall I tell you?' and 'by right of the indiscretion permitted to storytellers' variety. Perhaps the main weakness of Princess Mimi to the modern reader is its somewhat abrupt and melodramatic denouement (as though the author had to finish it in a hurry), which seems to be heavily predetermined by its 'instructional' motivation. Princess Zizi (published in 1839, but written by 1836, in time to earn the approbation of Pushkin) is Odoyevsky's longest story (apart from the 'dilogy' Salamandra), amounting to some forty-five pages. Less schematic than Princess Mimi, without the formal sectioning, it is unexpectedly successful 'in combining Byronism with the stock-exchange' (p. 259). As usual, the narrative structure is complicated and contrived: as 'stock-exchange speculation' (p. 259), the authorial figure hazards dinner and some good wine to obtain a love story. The narrative is then conducted by the second narrator; it is mainly epistolary for the first half of the story (this narrator just happening to have the relevant bundle of letters to hand) and subsequently that narrator's own reminiscences, filled out by the assumed reports of a further 'unseen' narrator, Mar'ya Ivanovna (recipient of the above-mentioned letters and a vital background figure in the plot). From what would seem to be an epistolary novel of romantic intrigue, the plot turns into a society thriller hinging upon emotional-sexual deception and a property swindle. Cohesion stems, notwithstanding the predominantly masculine narration, from the dominant theme throughout the tale: that of the social and legal position of women. Once again the apparent 'realism' of the story (the detail of provincial social life, the legal system, social responses) and the consequent impact of the positive heroine Zizi's family, societal and legal podvig (foreshadowed in the epilogue78) are undercut by the deliberate literariness which permeates character and text: Gorodkov the domineering 'classicist' (p. 277) and Radetsky 'our romantic' (p. 286), 'your Childe Harold manque' (p. 281), plus a whole range of allusions to literary polemics of the first third of the nineteenth century, furnish the work with a strong veneer of romantic pastiche. The story A Woman's Soul (Dusha zhenshchiny, 1841) could almost be taken as an epilogue, albeit in dubious taste, to Princess Zizi. This work (with some justice, not reprinted since 1844) presents the confrontation between the soul of a society lady (who has just died) and

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her 'guardian spirit', who takes on the bulk of the narration, relating her past life in the second person. The heroine (or rather, her soul) of this unusual society tale, with its metaphysical setting (shades of the approach discarded from Princess Mimi) and no dream device as an escape clause, is eventually condemned, despite a life of apparently selfless sacrifice (fidelity to a loathesome arranged marriage, the rejection of lovers etc.), for 'the pride of humility'.79 The Black Glove (Chornaya perchatka, 1838) is a didactic society tale directed against English ideas and upbringing (Benthamism, English methods of estate management, etc.). The romantic intrigue (in the form of sinister letters signed 'The Black Glove', in imitation of Scott's Redgauntlet) dissolves into a mere utilitarian ploy, which in any case misfires. In this instance we have authorial digressions but no narratorial persona. As is usual in Odoyevsky's society tales, there is a certain ironic play on the nature of fiction and on the writer-reader relationship: in Princess Mimi the fiction built up by Granitsky and the Countess to mask their real relationship is so convincing that it vanishes into irrelevance in the face of the societal storm which is to dispose of Granitsky and the innocent Baroness Dauertal; 'literary' elements in Princess Zizi have already been mentioned; in The Black Glove we are instructed to read between the lines ('learn to read the white against the black') and told of the Countess: 'she could not read; the novel was in her head - others' [novels] to her were dry and cold' (p. 74).

Also a society tale of sorts is Odoyevsky's only completed play, A Good Salary, A Decent Appartment, Board, Lighting and Heating {Khorosheye zhalovane.. . , 1837). The first act is pure comedy, as a tutor is engaged for the son of an eccentric general; the tutor, Izmov, is enticed by the generous conditions of service, despite his severe doubts about the family and suspicions of moral temptation ahead. In the second act, Izmov is tempted to capitalize further on his already shady activities by a demonic criminal figure, introduced as 'the study guest' (kabinetnyy gosf), later named Serdobolin. In the third act, Izmov has become master of the house (having driven his charge to suicide), his criminal activities have spread far and wide (and include involvement in literary skullduggery); Serdobolin returns to effect retribution. Dramatic coherence is not improved by the extravagant chronology: ten years separate the first two acts and Act Three follows twenty years later!

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One final story to be considered under the category of the society tale is The Witness (Svidetel\ 1839), a short work on the theme of the duel (carried over from Princess Mimi and no doubt re-elevated to prominence by the death of Pushkin), the plot of which may have been elaborated upon by Dostoyevsky for the circumstances surrounding the entry of the young Zosima upon his monastic career.80 Rostislav fails to keep his solemn vow to save his younger brother Vyacheslav from mischief when he takes up a military career in the teeth of strong maternal opposition ('she had fed him, alone of all her children, herself 81 ); Vyacheslav provokes a pointless duel with the supposedly weak-kneed civilian brother of a fellow officer, named Vetsky, and, having wasted his shot through nervousness (merely shattering his opponent's shoulder), is cold-bloodedly slaughtered. Rostislav repairs in remorse to a distant monastery, whence he relates his story, years later, to a former friend in transit. Of interest too is the figure of the brooding Vetsky (supposedly 'prematurely born'); he feels compelled by 'the prejudice of society' to go through with a duel which he would have given much to avoid: his only other alternative would have been suicide, 'but that, you would agree yourself, would not accord with my sense of reasonableness' (blagorazumiye).82 Despite a streak of unnecessary sentimentality (Vyacheslav's relationship with his pet dog) and the uncharacteristic proto-Freudianisms, this story still manages to achieve a certain stark effectiveness. Odoyevsky's society tales contain a considerable store of detail on Russian society of the first third of the nineteenth century (many of them employ a retrospective chronology which stretches back over a number of years, with an occasional hint that 'now' things might have changed slightly). A certain element of ambiguity or uncertainty is accentuated throughout by the employment of irony, eccentric modes of narration, schematic characterization, pastiche and other devices of romantic prose.83 Nevertheless, visible in these and other works (as in the prose and longer poems of Pushkin) are the basic plot lines, dramatic situations, character types and configurations, albeit in a relatively primeval form, that were to recur throughout Russian prose for the rest of the century, from the young Dostoyevsky to Chekhov.84 The Philosophical-Romantic Tales We may begin this section by briefly referring to several stories which, because of their treating of the fantastic or their romantic manner, are

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appropriate to this heading, although their interest and importance may be somewhat restricted in comparison with the main works of this category. The Apparition (Privideniye, 1838) provides a classic instance of embedded narrative; the authorial narrator is riding in a carriage with none other than our old friend Iriney Modestovich Gomozeyko; Gomoseyko tells of a round of supernatural storytelling to which he had been a party; the ensuing story is the narrative of one of the participants of this circle. Antics of mystification which allegedly took place in a nearby castle supposedly led to tragic consequences; however, an alternative version is supplied by another participant, claiming the involvement of an actual apparition, while the original storyteller is apparently afflicted by a curse. However, the reader is left guessing; even Gomozeyko does not reveal everything. The Uninhabited House (Neoboydyonnyy domy 1842) is in the form of a folk legend. An old woman sets out through a wood to a monastery ten versts away; lost in the wood, the old woman is, in a modern phrase, caught in a time-warp: she calls three times within the day at the same house to find that decades have elapsed since her previous call. Imbroglio (1844) is a readable adventure tale, romantic in its manner and Italian setting. Subtitled 'from the notes of a traveller' and dated 1835, this story was designed to be part of a cycle along with The Witness and The Apparition, although it has little in common with those stories and is separated from them in the 1844 works.85 A Russian traveller arriving in Naples is immediately plunged into a complicated series of adventures, eventually revealed to be connected with a serious crime in high society. The presentation of the narrator as a simple traveller is deliberately artless ('one of my friends', 'not an author', p. 81) and he is no more than a helpless pawn in the events in which he becomes embroiled; this is underlined by his final question, with which the text ends: 'What!, I said to the Countess, have I got to get dressed up again? And descend again from the balcony on this dark, rainy night?' (p. 105). The Peasant Girl from Orlach (Orlakhskaya krest'yanka, 1842) is far more 'philosophical-romantic' than the stories discussed above. It opens, following an epigraph from Swedenborg (p. 127), in a societytale setting with the views of Count Valkirin, an adept in the ideas of Saint-Martin and Pordage: we desire diamonds, he tells the gathering, amidst considerable badinage, because they 'remind us of our former radiant clothing' of primeval times (p. 128). He then recounts the story of Anchen, the Orlach peasant girl, within whom is enacted a spectral

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struggle (the dead speaking through the living) to resolve a fourhundred-year-old crime of multiple murder. The story is based on a supposed actual occurrence in Germany in the 1830s and was designed to form part of yet another cycle - a 'Valkirin cycle', or 'The Possessed' (Besnuyuskchiyesya).86 Sakulin is, however, undoubtedly justified in regarding SiVfida, Kosmorama and Salamandra as 'the most significant and most elaborate' of what he terms 'the works of mystical content'.87 SiVfida (1837) is subtitled 'From the Notes of a Reasonable Man'. It begins with seven letters from one Mikhail Platonovich (a kind of older Arist, or younger Gomozeyko figure who has retired to his country estate) to his friend and eventual publisher (the 'reasonable man', who has little grasp of the artistic spirit); bored with provincial life, he discovers the cabbalistic books and folios of his deceased uncle's secret library and immerses himself more and more in these matters, in particular the pursuit of sylphs, until he avows himself ready to 'break off relations with people' (p. 117). There follows a letter of complaint to the 'publisher' from Mikhail Platonovich's neighbouring landlord and prospective father-in-law, named Rezhensky (shades again of the Gomozeyko stories). The reasonable man's account of the 'saving' of his friend (by means largely of 'bouillon baths'), for marriage and a conventional provincial lifestyle, frames the extracts from Mikhail Platonovich's journal, in which the jottings on his relationship with the sylph (involving familiar concepts such as the discarding of human clothing and the 'cold membrane' covering everything living, and the separation of time and space, leading to 'the soul of the soul' where 'poetry is truth', pp. 120-3) gradually descend further into incoherence. The tale concludes with an 'authorial' confession of having understood 'nothing in this story' (p. 126). In SiVfida (as in Salamandra), Odoyevsky makes overt use of the kind of alchemical and cabbalistic writers and ideas referred to in Chapter Two, in particular those of Paracelsus and 'the Count of Gabalis' (Monfaucon de Villars), which were common sources also to Hoffmann.88 The 'fantastic' nature of the story, but also Odoyevsky's ironic treatment of Mikhail Platonovich and the latter's complaints about his 'cure', have led to varying critical views of the story from Pushkin and Belinsky onwards, and especially over the Soviet period; however, N. V. Izmaylov (in 1973) follows Sakulin in considering SiVfida 'Odoyevsky's best, most poetic and structurally accomplished mystical-romantic tale.' 89 A more ambitious work, in terms both of length and setting, but

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involving a somewhat similar theme, is the 'dilogy' Salamandra {The Salamander)?® Recently restored to favour in Soviet criticism (the first modern reprinting of the work took place only in 1977) Salamandra has now been accorded stimulating readings, both as an anthropologicalpsychological tale and as a historical novel.91 Originally envisaged in a West European setting, the work in fact opens on 'The southern shore of Finland at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century' (the title of Part One). From the rugged Finnish setting and the atmosphere of Tinnish Legend' - mythic depiction of the Great Northern War from the standpoint of Finnish folklore, heavily indebted to the Finnish studies of Ya. K. Grot (as acknowledged by Odoyevsky, pp. 141-2) - the action moves to the strange new city of St Petersburg. Yakko, the adopted son of a poor Finnish fishing family caught up in the Russo-Swedish conflict, witnessed the clairvoyant powers of his foster-sister El'sa, who was used by her grandfather to 'see' in the fire the fate of her father at the hands of the Swedes. Brought to Petersburg by Zverev, a young Russian officer, he is educated in Holland ('having caught the attention of Peter', p. 154) in the care of the Zverev family and subsequently returns to Russia to find favoured service with Peter, as 'one of the tools of Russian enlightenment' (p. 156). Ivan Ivanovich Yakko, as he is now called, returns to Finland to seek out the 'almost half-wild' El'sa (p. 159), and takes her back to Petersburg. A conflict of cultures ensues between El'sa and her Russian hosts (the Zverevs) primitivism versus embourgeoisement - with 'sorcery' held to be responsible on both sides; the one bewitched at this stage, however, is Yakko: equally, by the homely charms of the dark-haired Mar'ya Yegorovna, daughter of the family, and by the untrammelled abandon of the blonde El'sa. El'sa, who already had the reputation of a 'sorceress' in Finland (p. 160) and seemed capable of undertaking an 'out of the body' visit to her homeland (p. 166), picks up the threads of sorcery again through jealousy; her 'sister in the fire' tells her that she and Yakko are as one, to be united in 'a single fiery thread' (p. 174), although her time has not yet come. Yakko's dilemma seems resolved when El'sa is rescued by a Finn during the great 1722 Petersburg flood and taken home to Finland; Yakko salves his conscience by delivering a purse of money for El'sa's wedding; 'the last thread is broken', he thinks: it is farewell to Suomi, Russia is now his homeland (p. 183). The story of the Finnish girl and the rich barin from Petersburg dissolves into Finnish folklore. In the first part of Salamandra, historical setting and detail and the

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values of European technology take precedence over the element of the fantastic, which is folklorically based. In Part Two the reverse is the case; as suggested in the Benvenuto Cellini epigraph, the sorcery of old Finnish tales blends into the traditions of European alchemy, the legend of the Finnish treasure (Sampo) with the quest for the philosopher's stone, to overshadow the enlightenment introduced into Peter's Russia. Part One has an impersonal, more or less omniscient narration; Part Two, on the other hand, opens a hundred years later in Moscow with a conversation in which the philosophical lines outlined above are drawn, between an authorial narrator92 and his Gomozeykotype uncle, an adept in occult matters. Following a haunted house visitation, the narration indeed is given over to the uncle (via the author's 'memory'). Yakko's fortunes have taken a sharp turn for the worse after the death of Peter the Great; dismissed from his posts and saddled with a nagging and alcoholic wife (Mar'ya) in Moscow, he regrets his sestritsa El'sa and is reduced to the alchemical search for gold (for 'to a rich man, all is permitted', p. 196) at the behest of a miserly Count. Now Yakko sees and converses with a salamander in the likeness of El'sa in the alchemical fire, and the real El'sa returns, apparently oblivious of her other self. When the two El'sas appear to fuse, at least to Yakko's vision, this heralds the demise of Mar'ya - as a victim of spontaneous human combustion. The salamander assists Yakko in the making of gold whereupon, not wishing to divide the spoils, Yakko takes over the body and identity of the old Count, with the apparent participation of El'sa's long-dead grandfather (Rusi). When the Count/Yakko wants to send El'sa back to Finland and contract a lecherous marriage with a young Russian princess, he is metamorphosed back into his former self and consumed in flames, thus fulfilling the salamander's prophecy in Part One. The haunted house of the opening scene in Part Two had been built on the ruins of Yakko's incinerated dwelling. However, unlike Part One with its straight narrative and absence of irony, Part Two closes with the enigmatic uncle supplying various alternatives to the fantastic version he has just told: Others, perhaps, say that Mr. Yakko was just making counterfeit money and then, in order to cover everything up, burned the house down and ran away with his Finnish accomplice: that's what a lot of people in Moscow supposed; others said that he was a madman; a third idea was that he pretended to be mad. . . . From all these opinions you may choose whichever you like . . . (p. 219)

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The authorial narrator affects a sceptical attitude and appeals to the reader for support. Izmaylov describes Salamandra as a hesitation 'between belief in the possibility and actuality of the mystical-fantastic events described therein and the recognition of their legendary provenance'; this effect is underscored by the contrast in presentation of the two parts of the dilogy which, with its dual themes of history and the psychology of alchemy and sorcery, is by far the most substantial reflection of Odoyevsky's preoccupation in the 1830s with what Sakharov terms 'romantic historicism'.93 Odoyevsky's most overt and uncompromising depiction of the concept of dualism or dvoyemiriye, however, resides in the story Kosmorama, which has never been republished since 1840. This time the story, narrated in the first person by the main protagonist, one Vladimir Andreyevich, is contained in a manuscript bought at an auction, author 'unknown'; the 'publisher's' preface claims the story as printed to be a 'separate work', yet he is preparing a book-length commentary in which all will be explained and is labouring over the continuation of the manuscript which 'is written highly illegibly' and which has 'a certain connection with the pages now being printed, but embraces the other half of the author's life'.94 Vladimir Andreyevich is given as a child, by a mysterious Dr Bin, a kosmorama - a toy 'box', in which he can see scenes of family life not meant for his eyes; this is said to be connected with 'another, or rather extraneous life' (postoronnaya zhizn1), to which, from childhood, a 'mysterious network' links the narrator (p. 35). This 'extraneous' life would seem, from the epigraph (and Sakulin's claims of Pordage's influence upon the story - presumably the concept of 'the inner man', plus his interpretation of the character SoPya in terms of Pordage's 'Sophia') to be an 'inner' life;95 however, it may equally be a 'parallel' life, in that other characters apart from Vladimir (at least, in his conception of events) appear to have some awareness of it. Vladimir rediscovers the kosmorama again in adult life, when he finds that the scope of its vision has increased.96 However, the kosmorama is only of initial importance, as Vladimir's clairvoyant powers, once awakened, need no instrument to sustain them; indeed, once the 'secret door' opens, it is likely never to close. The scope of Vladimir's perception in time and space (there is a parallel here with the powers of Kipriano, the Improvisor, but those of Vladimir are not merely mechanistic), the grotesque phantasmagoria of visions and the ensuing Gothic-like chain of events, interwoven with some skill between 'vision' and 'reality' (involving amorous intrigue even mild eroticism, the walking dead, crime and torture - in 'that' life

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as well as this, supernatural arson and spontaneous human combustion), would tax the abilities of the most experienced practitioner of pereskaz. As the preface implies, many puzzles remain - in particular the enigmatic roles of Dr Bin and the unfortunate Sof ya. The reference in the preface to the illegible handwriting of the continuation of the manuscript (as opposed to the copper-plate standard of the published portion) suggests from the outset the likely degeneration of the narrator into insanity. There is certainly much in the text that would lend support to this view: clairvoyance is said to be 'a sickness which leads to madness' (p. 71) and 'second sight' (Very well known in Scotland') is designated a nervous disease (p. 73); in the realm of parapsychology we also have 'astral life' (zhizn' zvezdnaya, p. 60) and, of parascience, 'magnetism' (p. 71). The concluding lament of the narrator is: The fatal door is opened: I, a denizen of this world, belong to the other one, I am an actor there against my will; there I - dreadful to tell - there I am an instrument oftorturel [orudiye kazni] (p. 81) And yet Vladimir does not entirely avoid irony in his presentation of the narrative: he talks of'the metaphysics of the heart' in relation to his amour with Eliza and ingenuously tells Sof ya that she is 'inclined to mysticism' (p. 50). He also raises the theory of the possible special significance of the thoughts and memories of early childhood (p. 39). Furthermore the nature of madness, in terms of a higher or alternative consciousness, remains a central problem to any firm interpretation; the 'other' Dr Bin, speaking from the kosmorama, tells Vladimir: 'To your world, he who speaks the language there of our world must seem a madman' (p. 43). Why did Odoyevsky write such tales? One is entitled to pose the question whether one enjoys them, as the modern reader tends to do, given a revival of interest in the romantic and the Gothic, or not - as was often the case among Odoyevsky's contemporaries?97 Odoyevsky's interest in the range of ideas discussed in Chapter Two apart, Sakulin supplies the following answer: Odoyevsky wanted above all to exploit poetical moments in the world of the marvellous, the mysterious, and to instil into his readers a deeper understanding of life as a great riddle, largely still unknown to people.98

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A story rather more based in reality, for all its own phantasmagoria, and in which the process of threads and links, the chain of cause and effect, is of vital importance is The Live Corpse (Zhivoy mertvets, 1838, published 1844). This story, for this reason, has recently been termed 'the key to the understanding of Odoyevsky, his literary work and his public career'.99 The idea, which marks the work out clearly as a 'philosophical story', is set out in the (invented) epigraph: I wanted to give expression in letters to that psychological law by which not one word pronounced by a man, not one action, is forgotten, is lost in the world, but without fail produces some kind of action; so that responsibility is connected with each word, with each apparently insignificant action, with each impulse of a man's soul. (p. 216) Like many of Odoyevsky's preoccupations, this concern is close to, and may derive from, the romantic thought of Wackenroder.100 Having strong affinities with stories such as The Brigadier and A Woman's Soul, The Live Corpse features the wasted and corrupt life of the middle-aged clerk Aristidov who, in what turns out to be a dream, covers the whole of his past life, and the disastrous future of his dependents, in an out-of-body, out-of-time experience of what he thinks is death. This story, not unsuccessfully, manages to blend (or perhaps one should say 'synthesize') all the strands of Odoyevsky's work which we have encountered so far: the fantastic element of the romantic tale (life after death, distortion of time and space, and an inner search of a proto-psychoanalytical depth) - although this is ultimately resolved by the revelation of the dream; the satirical-didactic approach of the society tale (barbs directed at the hypocrisy of the complacent functionary, the successful vulgarity of the aspiring bourgeoisie and lower aristocracy, and the consequences of Western-based systems of education); and the short story as a vehicle for philosophical ideas (the attack on the worship of reason, the examination of a behaviour pattern over a whole life, and an underlying pessimism of an existential nature). It is the philosophical side which ultimately predominates, however. This is due to the close weaving of the central idea expressed in the epilogue into the text of the story, which emerges as a chronicle of the consequences, either direct or by chain of cause and effect, of the deeds, example, or even thoughts, of a seemingly inconsequential man; towards the end of his purgatorial Odyssey, Aristidov exclaims:

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Judged from any reasonable point of view, I was no upstart, never tried to appear too clever, didn't exactly work my fingers to the bone, and really did just about nothing- and look at the traces I left behind me! And how oddly all these things are strung together, one after another (!) (p. 236) At the same time, like so many of Odoyevsky's works, it has a strongly experimental quality and, therefore, can appear somewhat disjointed in its structure; an amalgam of styles and devices, written with a number of intentions, to be read at a number of levels, it includes various elements of pastiche and irony, sections written in the form of dramatic dialogue and a conversation in thieves' slang (pp. 224-6). 101 The Live Corpse, best of any single work, indicates the direction of Odoyevsky's fiction in the late 1830s. Finally, in this section, we turn briefly to what must be considered one of Odoyevsky's most ambitious failures, SegelieT. A Don Quixote of the XlXth Century: A Fairy-tale for Old Children, of which one fragment ('from the first part') was published in 1838 (it has been republished once, in 1881); otherwise drafts of certain sections and plans only survive, despite a considerable amount of time and effort being devoted to the project from 1832 (the dating of the one published portion) until at least the late 1830s.102 Even the proposed genre of the work is not clear; the published fragment is in the form of dramatic dialogue and Sakulin tells us that the language elsewhere 'approaches the diction of poetry'; given that Dante (a draft subtitle was 'A Psychological Comedy' and the phrase 'An Earthly Comedy' is also used), Milton, Klopstock and Goethe seem to be the main compositional influences, something in the nature of poetic drama would appear likely, but a mixture of styles was always the most usual result with Odoyevsky. Sakulin has characterized the work as an attempt 'to render the whole mystical conception of human history' and 'to join heaven and earth'. It was to begin with 'a prologue in the heavenly spheres at the time of the fall of the angels'. Segeliel' is characterized by Sakulin as an all-loving Abbadona figure; Odoyevsky later refers to him as 'one of the spirits created by the imagination of the Neoplatonists and cabbalists'.103 Expelled from paradise along with Lucifer, as one of his followers, Segeliel' displeases Lucifer by taking too sympathetic an interest in the fate of people on earth. In the cosmic struggle between good and evil, between Lucifer and the Creator, a secret strength in

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man, presently in the thrall of evil spirits, could tip the balance; accordingly SegelieP is dispatched to earth, but there, undergoing various metamorphoses, he ends up fighting on behalf of the forces of good, despite the frequent intervention of Lucifer (called explicitly in the published fragment 'Milton's Lucifer'), and for the benefit of mankind.104 The existence of the two worlds side by side (dvoyemiriye) may, as in the case of Kosmorama, owe something to Swedenborgian ideas as well as Saint-Martin, Pordage and the alchemists.105 SegelieP's immersion into bureaucratic philanthropy on earth in the published portion introduced a strong autobiographical element into the work and was seen also as an updating of Quixotry (philanthropy as 'the chivalry of our time'). 106 However, Odoyevsky's attempt to insinuate a 'fallen spirit' into Russian society and institutions and to transform him into an ideal bureaucrat did not look likely, from the evidence of the single published fragment, to be accomplished with great artistic felicity; the scale of the setting and subject-matter (Odoyevsky cannot be accused of failing to tackle the big questions!) and the form chosen for the endeavour seemed to lie beyond his powers. It is not surprising that the work was never completed: even Dostoyevsky abandoned his 'Life of a Great Sinner'. The Utopian/Science-fiction Tales Apart from the early Two Days in The Life of the Terrestrial Globe, Odoyevsky wrote three works which come under this category: City Without a Name and The Last Suicide, which form part of Russian Nights, and the unfinished Utopian work, The Year 4338. City Without a Name and The Last Suicide, stories directed polemically at the ideas of Bentham and Malthus respectively, as mentioned elsewhere in this study, may be considered anti-Utopias (or dystopias). The story of the Benthamite colony, City Without a Name (first published 1839), is narrated in a characteristically spirited manner, recounting the triumphant mercantile expansion and ensuring self-destruction through the strife of sectional interests (virtually class warfare). The Last Suicide (1844) is a horrific depiction of over-population extending over the whole planet, until finally the world's inhabitants turn against life itself; escape from life into love, poetry and philosophy is inadequate, according to the 'prophets of despair'; by universal agreement (itself 'the dream of the ancient philosophers'), preparations are made to destroy the planet by a gigantic explosion:

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in one instant, fire blazed out; the crack of the erupting globe shook the solar system; exploded boulders of the Alps and Chimborazo flew into the air, gave out a few groans . . . still more . . . dust returned to the earth . . . and all was quiet.. .and eternal life repented for the first time! (p. 58, R.N., 75) These stories are an early example of the kind of potted histories of a planet, or a civilization with which we are familiar in works such as Dostoyevsky's The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (see Chapter Six) - in itself unusual for its time - and in the twentieth-century science fiction of writers such as Stanislaw Lem. In The Year 4338, however, Odoyevsky envisages the world lasting for at least two and a half millennia beyond his own time.107 This work was originally conceived as the third part of a trilogy which was to have featured also depictions of Russia in the era of Peter the Great and in the contemporary period (the 1830s); the first part was never written and the second and futuristic third parts remained unfinished: fragments were published in 1835 and 1840 and the fullest version of just the Utopian part only in 1926.108 Knowledge of this distant epoch is obtained by the supposed ability of the anonymous donor of the letters which make up the work to time-travel at will through an advanced form of Mesmerism (an early nineteenth-century equivalent to the modern theories of science fiction). The world described is in some ways not unlike the twentieth century (or perhaps the twenty-first?); in other ways it is very different. Many technological advances familiar to us are present: air travel (though it can take eight days by balloon from Pekin to Petersburg), space travel (to the moon - but it is not clear how), the telephone, photocopying. Hallucinogenic and truth drugs (in the form of gaseous drinks and 'magnetic baths') remove all hypocrisy from social life. However, Russia and China are now the centres of world power (Russia covers half the globe and Moscow is a part of Petersburg); China is very much the junior, backward partner (something like Russia in relation to Europe in the nineteenth century). Europe seems to be of no account (the English appear to be privatizing the British Isles, with Russia the purchaser(l), p. 303). There is a marked absence of strife, suffering and misery and various grandiose feats of engineering and climatic control have been accomplished. 'Elastic glass' seems to be a basic, multi-purpose material. The question of the imminent comet seems to be a minor importance. Interest inevitably centres on the social features of Odoyevsky's

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Utopia, though the ironic presentation of this and the other works here discussed should signal a certain caution against any over-serious interpretation. Due mainly to the lack of durability of books and texts, which is emphasized a number of times, knowledge of such distant epochs as the nineteenth century is extremely hazy (historians, for example, cannot agree on the changing names of Petersburg: PetropoP, Petrograd(!) and Piter are conjured with, p. 291). It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that institutions such as the monarchy and the Church appear to have disappeared without trace somewhere along the way. Technology and art are the dominant values and a republic (albeit of an aristocratic nature) seems to constitute the highly stable status quo. Education is highly elitist; poets, historians and philosophers occupy high ministerial positions. An important (and strikingly Odoyevskian, not to say Schellingian) feature of this system (which smacks more of enlightened technocracy than of democracy) is the presence of a 'minister of conciliations' (p. 288), one of whose main duties is the settling of scientific and literary disputes. The lower orders remain essentially outside the civilized scholarly establishment (their literary life appears to have reached that level of factions and squabbles with which Odoyevsky was familiar; the work has topical allusions too, and was intended in part as a riposte to Bulgarin). N. M. Mikhaylovskaya has recently pointed out the similarity between the pleasure-filled, suffering-free Utopia of The Year 4338 and the ideal realm to which the sylph (of SiVfida) wishes to lure her consort (and contrasts Odoyevsky's apparent rejection of suffering with the opposite view taken by Dostoyevsky).109 A recent German study of Odoyevsky's Utopianism emphasizes the prophetic relevance of Odoyevsky's vision to the modern world.110 In any event, there is no denying the achievement of imagination present in The Year 4338, despite its fragmentary nature. Darko Suvin, a leading authority on the history of science fiction, has written that 'Odoyevsky remains one of the more interesting SF writers of the pre-Wellsian age of Europe', while a recent Soviet commentator considers that Odoyevsky's 'cosmic worldview' (the interdependence of everything in the universe and 'the responsibility before the whole of humanity of each for his every action') is 'only now beginning to be adopted by humanity'.111 Russian Nights Russian Nights, when considered as an entity, contrives to combine the forms of drama and novel within a framing device of a very different

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order from, for example, Pushkin's The Tales ofBelkin, Gogol"s Dikan 'ka Tales, or, for that matter, Odoyevsky's own Variegated Tales. In addition, it is, to a considerable extent, also a work of philosophy. Indeed, the most applicable generic description that can be given to Russian Nights is that of the 'philosophical frame-tale'. Formal comparisons have been made between Russian Nights and a number of supposed predecessors: Hoffmann's The Serapion Brothers, The Decameron, the Platonic Dialogues, works from the German romantic period by Goethe, Wieland, Tieck and Heine, and Joseph de Maistre's Les soirees de Saint-Petersbourg. None of these models in isolation is apt; however, while a case can be argued that Russian Nights developed predominantly out of the Russian literary and philosophical traditions of the 1820s and 1830s, the work really demands assessment in the more general context of the poetics of European, and especially German, romanticism. In this light, it can be seen as something of a synthesis of the novella tradition of the frame-tale, stemming from the Eastern tale, notably The Thousand and One Nights, and the philosophical tradition which comes down from Plato. The synthesis, as a concept in itself, embodies one of the fundamental notions of romantic philosophy and provides in this instance a unique Russian illustration of the romantic aesthetic of the mixing of genres. Schelling and various of his antecedents are acknowledged sources for Russian Nights and known influences on Odoyevsky (see Chapter Two), while there is an obvious ideational parallel with Novalis, who also strove to reconcile through symbol, in a process of quest leading to revelation by stages. In the most general terms, Russian Nights consists of some eighteen sections or units, including an authorial introduction (lying outside the framework device, yet in the spirit of the book as a whole and an integral part of the text in as much as it contains and foreshadows a number of motifs and themes of the work which follows) and an Epilogue (if not exactly a conclusion to, at least a part of, the frame). Eleven of the eighteen sections are stories, interpolated or 'embedded' in the overall frame. Between the authorial introduction and the frame Epilogue, the work is divided unequally into nine 'nights' on which the frame-device gatherings purport to take place. Of a total (in the 1975 edition) of some 177 pages, the stories taken together comprise just over half the whole. The frame represents an unusually high proportion in such works of the total text, obviously therefore taking on an importance greater than that of a mere device of convenience; the Epilogue in itself is well over half the length of the total frame and the

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longest section in the book. There is also a considerable introductory frame portion, totalling some twenty pages. The inter-story frame discussions are either short or absent altogether and the overall structure is irregular: the first story does not occur until the Third Night, while the Fourth Night includes six stories (some of which are very short). We consider Russian Nights in Chapter Two from a philosophical viewpoint. In this chapter we have given some individual consideration to the stories which form a part of the whole. Suffice it here to make just a few extra remarks on this pivotal work. No work illustrates more clearly the apparent contradiciton in Odoyevsky's approach to the composition of his fiction, and yet the underlying element of inner unity. The writing of the work occurred, on and off, over a period of at least fifteen years; the connections between each of the parts, we know, were only revealed to the author with hindsight. Odoyevsky wrote later: 'the greater part of my tales came to me in dreams'; he also wrote: 'you start writing with your heart and, unbeknown to you yourself, the charlatanism of the mind is meddling with your words!'112 At the same time, many of his works are highly schematic, sometimes over-schematic (particularly in the case of many of the more grandiose projects, such as SegelieV), and his archive abounds with plans and lists of names - often of works never even begun. In the case of Bruno, SegelieV and other projected 'novels', a project was left unfinished probably because of the over-ambitious design or the author's dissatisfaction with what he did produce. The novel, however widely that genre may be interpreted, was in any case a form which did not come easily to Odoyevsky: 'one of the most difficult tasks in the control (ekonomiya) of a novel', he wrote, 'is the conjunction of characters whose mutual contact would be of interest'.113 His fiction is full of devices and contrivances to bring about such conjunctions - not least, as has been observed, in the case of his longer works. The one grandiose project which did come to fruition and which was accomplished with a surprising degree of artistic success, was Russian Nights, which V. I. Sakharov calls 'a chain of romantic tales, knitted into an integral artistic organism - a "novel of ideas", a poem in prose and without a hero'. 114 Odoyevsky himself anticipated at best a mixed reaction from critics and readers to his unusual work: 'More then anything I expect attacks on the form I have chosen. . . . Will the combination of the parts of my book seem to them the same live organism which it seemed to me?' 115

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Contemporary puzzlement and criticism gave way to many years of neglect. Recent Soviet commentators, however, following the 1975 re-issue of the work, have shown themselves to be more than willing to redress the balance: N. N. Petrunina, in the 1981 History of Russian Literature calls Odoyevsky's Russian Nights 'an original memorial to his friends the Lyubomudry' and 'an encyclopaedia of Russian romanticism'; Sakharov (like V. K. KyukhePbeker in 1845) is prepared to accord the work even wider significance: . . . a universal romantic 'drama in prose', combining in itself the narrative epos, lyricism and dramatic elements, even the musical principle (the idea of counterpoint in prose), was what Rusian Nights became - one of the most original books in world literature.116

Ill The Post-1844 Period One looks in vain for any psychological or spiritual crisis which may have caused the abandonment of Odoyevsky's literary career at the height of his powers. Publication of his fiction virtually ceased in 1844; the writing of it, the finishing touches to the 'frame' sections of Russian Nights apart, probably all but ceased four or five years before that. Almost all of Odoyevsky's stories published from 1840 to 1844 are dated, or are known to have been worked on during, the late 1830s. Even the two stories published in 1845 and 1846, The Little Orphan (Sirotinka) and Martingale, would seem to be scrapings from an earlier period, produced reluctantly to placate demanding editors.117 Both stories are, in any case, far from being among Odoyevsky's better works (although Martingale provides a variant treatment of the theme of cards). The disappointing reception of Russian Nights and the long-awaited collected works was no doubt a contributing factor; the post-1848 political climate, too, would hardly have provided much inducement for a return to a literary career. However, much more decisive were the evolving circumstances of Odoyevsky's life: the ever greater embroilment in public service, educationalism and philanthropy. In particular, work on the publication Rural Reading (SeTskoye chteniye) and the administration of the Society for Visiting the Poor of St Petersburg took up very considerable time and energy - nine years of the latter, Odoyevsky remarked, 'gobbled up all my literary activity and left nothing over'.118 Biographical facts apart, the fragmentary work

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Petersburg Letters (1835) provides literary evidence of the tension that had existed in Odoyevsky's life between literature and 'service' since 1826.119 There may have been no grand gesture involved, therefore, in Odoyevsky's premature literary retirement. Rather it would seem to have been circumstantial, gradual and haphazard. He had intended to prepare a second edition of his collected works as early as 1845, but, from 1846, became bogged down with other activities, principally the Society; also in 1845, he wrote to a correspondent: 'I am playing about with my elementary pedagogy and, in order not to get distracted into thought, I am not getting down to anything literary for the time being.' 120 Certainly his acquaintances did not seem to be aware of any definitive renunciation of literature; in September 1846 Krayevsky was demanding a story from Odoyevsky with some urgency for Otechestvennyye zapiski}21 Much later, in 1858, Shevyryov wrote to Odoyevsky from Moscow: 'I don't know why you have left literature completely and have become indeed Voiceless [Bezglasnyy]?111 When Odoyevsky was released from his toils with the Society (in 1855), he did not find it easy to resume a literary career forsaken a decade and a half earlier; other priorities and activities had come to the fore. Not that he did not take up the pen again; from the late 1850s until his death in 1869, Odoyevsky produced a steady stream of musical, scientific and other articles. In particular, too, he kept a diary which, although disappointing in its failure to resolve the mysteries of Odoyevsky's life or to reveal his real thoughts on many of his contemporaries, nevertheless contains valuable source material for the period (extensive quotation from the published section of it is included in Chapter Five). He also published sketches of Moscow life and the polemical or publicistic pieces Not Good Enough (NedovoVno, in reply to Turgenev's Enough) and Intercepted Letters (Perekhvachonnyye pis'ma, an unfinished satire in which Griboyedov's Famusov returns to Moscow, inevitably recalling the style of both Odoyevsky and Griboyedov of the 1820s). Neither in fact was Odoyevsky totally idle in this late period from a belletristic point of view. Plagiarism from his works led him to prepare a new edition, finally in the early 1860s; full-scale revision was rejected as impossible 17 years later, and in any case a writer's word at a given time was 'historical fact'; nevertheless, minor corrections and alterations were made and some extra items were to have been included.123 It is not known why this new edition never came to be printed; one can only assume that the responsibility lay ultimately with Odoyevsky.

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Although Odoyevsky's later projects were mostly of an encyclopedic and educational nature, he did attempt new literary works. A diary entry for 1867 mentions a plan for a comedy of which little more came. 124 More substantial and more interesting though, is Odoyevsky's work in the 1860s on a realistic novel. His diary entry for 30 July 1863 (his birthday) reads: Today I have lasted 59 years and how much is still unfinished and only thought of: geometry for the peasantry, stenography, polyphony [os'moglasiye], 'The Samaritan' and 'Daily Living' - none of them are yet brought to a conclusion. Perhaps some of it will have to be given up in order to clear up at least something - and there's so much other business!125 This sounds like the story of Odoyevsky's life; the problem here raised was, of course, not resolved. In December 1868, just two months before his death, 'The Samaritan' ('Samaryanin') was obviously still on his mind; he wrote: 'Lazhechnikov [he meant Pisemsky] was telling me that he had finished his 5-part novel, People of the Forties - the idea is quite similar to my "Samaritan".'126 Fortunately we have some idea of what this work might have been like; although Sakulin never got as far as Odoyevsky's work in the 1860s, M. I. Medovoy has tracked down the plans and drafts of'The Samaritan' in the only article so far written on Odoyevsky's late literary efforts.127 Odoyevsky's idea for the novel is said to be original, bold and dramatic; it was to cover a broad canvas of Russian life, in the provinces and the capitals, over the period 1842-61, bringing in historical facts such as the Crimean War and the advent of the Reforms. Certain names familiar from Odoyevsky's earlier period return (Valkirin, the town of Rezhensk) and personal characteristics seem to have been intended to be brought in to the depiction of what was to have been the 'positive hero' (as the title implies), who is seen by Medovoy as being 'to a certain extent the double of Prince Myshkin'; the intention of the novel is seen to have been 'to show the unavoidable catastrophe of a gifted and humane hero in the conditions of harsh reality'.128 The work was to contain vestiges of the old dualism (in the form of a dream and a seance), but also criticism of the Slavophiles, a description of literary life and other elements firmly rooted in reality; Medovoy sees from the drafts a range of comparisons with Dostoyevsky and considers that the work would have been, in the full sense, a novel of the 1860s.

72 IV

Conclusion

The de facto abandonment by Odoyevsky of his literary career from 1844 was a considerable misfortune for Russian literature. His work throughout the 1830s had shown a considerable degree of development; by the end of that decade he was demonstrating a psychological depth (in the fantastic stories), a presentation of realistic detail (in the society tales) and a greater interest in character depiction that would earlier have seemed beyond his range. It is ironic that Odoyevsky's most substantial achievement, Russian Nights, a retrospective work too complex in design and at least a decade too late to satisfy the tastes of the time, was to prove to be, in effect, his literary swan-song. Psychological (or romantic) realism, together with, as a rule, a somewhat less overtly mystical element of the fantastic, was soon to resurface in Russian literature and was strongly in vogue elsewhere; Dostoyevsky and Poe are but two names that spring to mind. 129 It is regrettable that Odoyevsky was to play no further part in this movement. The multi-genre Russian Nights apart, which has a significance in Russian cultural history beyond its belletristic qualities, Odoyevsky's lasting literary achievement rests in his 'fantastic' and philosophical tales. The society tales, even at their best, are of a more transitory quality, lacking the sparkle or the qualities of portraiture of the best examples of that genre. Greater imagination and originality (even if 'originality' be understood as a relatively unusual treatment of existing sources) is to be found in the more romantic stories. Some of these are predominantly fictional illustrations of romantic philosophical positions - well or less well executed artistically, as the case may be. Others have an additional imaginative spark. The main underlying compositional feature of these works is their posing of the question 'what if?'; the question is normally posed early on in the story, the remainder of which considers the likely consequences. What if someone could get out of his body if he thought he was going to freeze to death? What if a mediocre poet could suddenly versify with ease and could see and know everything? What if a man woke up to find he was dead and could go anywhere in time or space to consider the meaning of his life? This imaginative approach links Odoyevsky with the tradition of incredible story-telling and inspired lying in Russian literature: from Gogol' (what if a man suddenly lost his nose and it took on an independent existence?) to Bulgakov (what if Satan and his retinue

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suddenly visited Stalin's Moscow?). But the approach is also very European, as an examination of Odoyevsky's ideas and sources readily indicates: from Hoffmann (what if a cat wrote an autobiography which got mixed up with his master's memoirs?) to Kafka (what if a man woke up one morning to find he had turned into a beede?). It is amid this tradition that Odoyevsky's fiction will be mainly remembered. Certainly no one could have been more wrong (particularly in the case of Odoyevsky) than the emigre historian Ivan Golovine, who wrote in 1846: . . . it is not probable that the Russian authors now read will be read a hundred years hence. They will be thrust aside among historical curiosities, consulted, perchance even relished, for the originality or the substance of their ideas, but assuredly not for the form in which they have been clothed.130

CHAPTER TWO

The Thinker My fate is a strange one; to all of you I am a Western progressive, to Petersburg an inveterate old-believing mystic. This gladdens me, for it shows that I am right on that narrow path which alone leads to truth. V. F. Odoyevsky to A. S. Khomyakov, 1845 Odoyevsky's thought is closely bound up with his artistic, pedagogical and even administative pursuits and it inevitably figures strongly in most, if not all, chapters of this study. Odoyevsky was, however, a significant thinker - some even count him as a genuine philosopher. His philosophical background and development therefore deserve due examination, both as a contribution to Russian thought and in relation to other facets of Odoyevsky's extraordinarily diversified career. Many commentators on Odoyevsky as a thinker base their findings on a reading of Russian Nights, plus perhaps a few early articles of the Mnemozina period and a comment or two extracted from Sakulin. This is understandable in that comparatively little of Odoyevsky's philosophical writing, these works apart, appeared in published form. The situation is gradually improving in this respect with the occasional publication or republication of otherwise unavailable or obscure pieces. Nevertheless, a definitive study of Odoyevsky's philosophy must await the published results of a thorough combing of his extensive archive. The nearest such approach is still, of course, the monumental study by Sakulin, amid the 1000-odd pages and copious notes of which can be found summaries and archival references relating to many otherwise unknown and usually unfinished articles, essays, fragments and philosophical jottings, accompanied by the fruits of meticulous background research. Sakulin remains the only published source for much of this material. However, its prolixity and datedness apart, Sakulin's work is incomplete in that he never finished (or published) his final volume. Neither did he, at the time of working on Odoyevsky, have access to all of Odoyevsky's papers (the fifty-year period under the terms of O. S. Odoyevskaya's will not expiring until

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1919). In the present situation, we can merely sketch the outlines of Odoyevsky's philosophical development as seen by various commentators, and point to particular areas of interest or controversy therein. Elsewhere in this study we look at examples of Odoyevsky's early aesthetic and musical philosophy and his literary works (which, of course, also contain considerable philosophical content); likewise his approach to science and education; we also (in Chapter Five) attempt to assess his political thought, including his attitudes to the phenomena of 'Official Nationality' and Utopian socialism. In the present chapter we are concerned rather with Odoyevsky's 'pure philosophy' (if that is the appropriate expression), the development of this thought into his later career, the philosophical tradition from which he derived the formative ideas of his particular brand of romantic thought, and finally - in a tentative attempt to place him in the context of nine teeth-century Russian philosophy - the relation of Odoyevsky's thought to Slavophilism.

Odoyevsky's Philosophical Development In common with most Russian thinkers of the nineteenth century (the word myslitely has generally been seen as more appropriate to such figures than the word filosof), Odoyevsky did not devise anything approaching a full philosophical system, although certain of his works were obviously intended as preliminary steps towards much more ambitious goals. The philosophical content of Russian Nights apart, few complete works of any great substance have survived, or at any rate have yet come to light in published form. Odoyevsky's philosophical writings can be seen to fall into two main periods. The first, on which his purely philosophical significance is often judged, extends over most of the decade of the 1820s, which is usually assumed to be Odoyevsky's overtly Schellingian period. The main concentration occurs in the half-dozen or so better-known philosophical pieces which Odoyevsky published in Mnemozina (1824-5). There are also a similar number of further pieces (or 'tracts') which have been published (Sakulin's quotations apart) only in recent years, having been reconstructed from the archives into something thought to resemble their original design by the dedicated labours of Soviet scholars.1 There remains ample scope for further work of this kind. However, significant work of this period may have

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been lost when, in the aftermath of the Decembrist revolt, Odoyevsky set fire to the protocols and papers of the Lyubomudry.2 The second period, extending through the 1830s and even up to the mid to late 1840s, which may be described as 'post-Schellingian' (at least to the extent that a considerable variety of subsidiary influences can also be seen being brought to bear), is one in which pure philosophy became more concertedly subordinated in Odoyevsky's work to applied romantic aesthetics; the concentration here is on associated philosophical articles, fragments and dialogues written towards, as a part of, and following upon, the grand artistic design which was finally to appear in 1844 as Russian Nights. Most of Odoyevsky's other writings of a vaguely philosophical nature, during this period and subsequently, shade off into areas of activity more appropriately dealt with in other chapters of this study. Even with regard to the 'pure philosophy' of the 1820s, however, Z. A. Kamensky, the leading Soviet authority on the thought of the Lyubomudry, is probably correct in his view that philosophy per se was only ever Odoyevsky's main preoccupation in so far as it was needed for the elaboration of aesthetics, which is what preoccupied him most of all.3 This helps to account for the strong element of Schellingism which still pertained in Odoyevsky's purportedly 'post-Schellingian' period and is evidenced by the almost inseparable connection between philosophy and art which pervades Odoyevsky's writings in all genres. Odoyevsky's use of romantic form and romantic content go hand in hand. This involved, over a long period, what in effect amounted to a virtual deconstruction and an attempted reassemblage of the philosophical constituents of the romantic tradition - detailed investigations into the roots of romantic thought which were eventually to lead the enquirer beyond romanticism altogether. Odoyevsky's attempts to apply Schellingian theory to art with particular reference to music, dating from the mid 1820s, are summarized in some detail in Chapter Three. An even more ambitious early project was the intended compilation of a 'Dictionary of the History of Philosophy', of which one fragment, 'The Idealist-Eleatic Sect', appeared in print (dealing with Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissos and Zeno). In his introduction to this work, Odoyevsky stresses the prime importance of philosophy in aesthetics, disregard of which has led to the slavish following of Aristotle's aesthetics and mere imitation in result: 'The artist stops at the periphery when he has no guide to the focus, from which all phenomena would appear to him in a harmonic, alive wholeness.'4

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The main purpose of Mnemozina, according to the declaration written by Odoyevsky on behalf of the joint publishers, was 'to disseminate a few new ideas which caused a flash in Germany', and to limit thereby the vogue for French theory.5 This particular philosophical orientation had already been made crystal clear by the publication of Odoyevsky's 'Aphorisms from various writers, in part from contemporary German philosophy'. This article, seen, together with 'The Idealist-Eleatic Sect', by Kamensky as Odoyevsky's most important philosophical works of this time, is, it need scarcely be said, heavily Schellingian. Emphasizing mathematics, as well as philosophy, it is concerned with the identity of the material and the abstract, the finite and the infinite, the particular and the boundless (and their respective relationships to necessity and freedom) which find complete unity in the Absolute (Absolyut); the visible universe is a reflection of 'primary knowledge . . . whose source is the base of eternal power'; also stressed are the particularly Odoyevskian preoccupations of 'science [or knowledge] for science's sake', the necessity for the 'actual and exact grasp of the living link between all the sciences', and a didactic approach to enlightenment as, in all branches of knowledge, an organic part of the All-perfect.6 Most interesting, perhaps, as an example of Odoyevsky's overall design to promote Schellingian transcendental philosophy of identity is the tract 'The Essential or the Existent', sub-titled 'a general plan for a theory of the essential', in which a more original application, however abstruse, of Schellingian principles of cognition is attempted in order to demonstrate philosophically one of the main themes of Odoyevsky's thought which surfaced much later in Russian Nights - that of the utter and inevitable failure of human cognition to be communicated by means of expression.7 Starting from the statement that all human opinions contradict one another, given the antagonism (in nature and in man) between genus and species (rod and vid), Odoyevsky presents his 'plan' in logical, virtually polysyllogistical, form: cognition gives us the I and the Not-I; I equals a person, Not-I all objects; the essential is the common genus of all objects and cognition of the Not-I or the essential is a property of all people; all people accept all cognition, it being truth for all. Cognition being the unity of the cognizable with the cognizer, or the making known of the unknown, perfect cognition comes from a perfect correspondence between the spheres of known and unknown; the cognizer equals idea, the entity, while the cognizable equals objects, the diversity:

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Consequently, the known = the entity (genus). Conversely: the unknown = all objects (diversity, species). For full cognition the following is necessary ( . . . ) : the known = the unknown. Hence: the entity = all objects, genus = all species. If this be so, then conversely: the sphere of the entity is not equal to the sphere of a single object. 6 If the one sphere does not equal the other, then in one of the spheres there must be something which is not present in the other; consequently, this sphere cannot express the other.8 Nevertheless, cognition does exist, in that all the idea, or all objects expressing it, are immersed into it; however, the separate object equals imperfection, or the inadequate expression of the idea, in that cognition equals the entity and expressions the diversity. Perfect expression equals cognition, but imperfect or inadequate expression does not: Terfect expression of cognition is the truth. Inadequate expression of cognition - the lie'.9 Odoyevsky posits a ladder of humanity, on any rung of which a person 'unites the idea with objects, ignorance with expression, i.e. expresses the idea of his rung (sphere)'; disagreement therefore emanates from inequalities in 'sphere' amounting to capacity for self-perfection, which remain inevitable.10 Lying and truth are seen as the two sides of thought (or cognition), comparable to the two poles of a magnet; any thought is neither true nor false, but both together; the same applies to good and evil (of an action) or beauty and ugliness (in a work of art) - evil being 'the inadequate expression of good' and ugliness 'the inadequate expression of beauty': all these existing only 'relative to the idea of each person'.11 Domination is seen as the positive side, subordination the negative; the life of any object is an incessant antagonism between genus and species - it is this antagonism which is the 'essential'. Projections of this 'system' may be seen in the artistic processes and in the make-up of society (by use of Schellingian methods of analogy). A number of these points are of importance in Odoyevsky's later work. Kamensky sees, as Odoyevsky's philosophical point of departure in

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this period, the idea of intellectual intuition and, based thereupon, 'the Platonic objective-idealistic conception of primacy of the Absolute' which, however, as with Schelling, did not mean the rejection of 'the objective-idealist and dialectical conceptions of identity'.12 Odoyevsky's application of Schellingian ontology (the idea of identity), gnoseology (the speculative-intuitive apprehension of the essential) and dialectics (the concept of polarities, the combination of opposites and development, albeit with the main stress on the human spirit and art, in the three-stage movement of the dialectic) are judged by Kamensky to be always weighted on the side of idealism, with a religious dimension, in comparison with other Lyubomudry thinkers (such as Venevitinov).13 As the 1830s approached, Odoyevsky reworked a somewhat less rarefied and more rounded romantic aesthetic, still largely Schellingian, in which the bias towards the idealist-religious, the human spiritual side of the philosophy of identity at the expense of the material, nature and history (of which Kamensky complains), showed occasional signs of diminution. At this period, dwelt upon both in caricature and in complexity (in the story New Year and in Russian Nights respectively) as a great intellectual crisis-point, the time of the dispersal of 'the seekers after truth' (in actuality the Lyubomudry), Odoyevsky adopted with renewed vigour the Schellingian precept of 'activity' as a higher state than 'being'; art ('production directed outwards, so as to reflect the unknown by means of products') could, in Schelling's view, assume a dominance over philosophy ('production directed immediately inwards, so as to reflect it in intellectual intuition') as 'the sole concrete analogue of intellectual intuition'.14 Odoyevsky concentrated on 'activity' in a variety of fields and, as Yuriy Mann has stressed, began to transfer his unsolved problems of philosophical aesthetics into the artistic field.15 Although he could write in 1827 that 'the basis [of art] is not in visible exterior nature - it is in the laws of the human spirit', Odoyevsky was also able to claim in the same year that 'in our time poetry will be dead without the help of history, like physics without mathematics'.16 In 1830 he returns to an earlier theme: 'the soul is equal in everyone, but individual characteristics have developed through which we see it - hence the quarrels and enmity between people'.17 Poetry and philosophy are seen here in a religious context, in the broadest sense. The terminology employed includes the 'treasure' of 'the mysterious sanctum', which the more populist

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poet-prophet ('the guest of time') strives to depict, while the more elitist philosopher fears to reveal it to 'the gaze of the common people'; religion provides a synthesis, bringing to light some of its secrets, concealing others with a veil (zavesa);ls the poet and the philosopher, though, 'as priests of the sanctum' are both 'close to the deity', with the poet acting as the great reconciler. The two will merge 'in the future religious epoch'. At the same time, writings of 1830-1 show Odoyevsky moving much closer to a realist aesthetic, if still with an idealist base, in accordance with Schelling's idea of the reciprocity of idealism and realism.19 Art can imitate nature, not in its completely real multiplicity and detail, but only in a special world of its own, with its own qualities and laws; a theory of the arts, despite earlier Lyubomudry attempts to base criticism on scientific aesthetics, is now considered 'scarcely possible', given the relative ('and never absolute') qualities of human perception.20 In an unfinished tract of the mid 1830s entitled 'Russian Nights, or the Necessity for a New Science and a New Art', first reassembled and published in 1975 (evidently discarded from the eventual Russian Nights proper21), Odoyevsky displays a more developed interest in nations and history, in terms of the individual rather than 'all humanity', concerning himself with the effects of enlightenment on morality. Human life, 'the inner strength of society', is stated to be a continuous struggle with nature, with other people and with oneself; the elements of humanity and the conditions of their development will furnish the reason for the fall and rise of nations. Man needs, besides science, another world apart from this one, the world of art (where he 'not only rules over nature, but creates it in his own image'); to enjoy this triumph he needs 'the agreement of other people' which requires Love ('not limited to a single person, but stretching over the whole of humanity'); however, 'the alpha and the omega' of these three elements of humanity is faith - a providential belief that all this is possible.22 The four 'elements' (science, art, love and faith) are equated with the four elements of the ancients, seen as 'symbols' which they divined. When one of these elements is lacking, society ('like an animal organism') replaces it with another; in Schellingian fashion this process is seen to apply to succeeding epochs of history: before Homer science reigned, from Homer to Christianity it was the turn of poetry, from the age of Christianity to modern times love, and now begins 'the dawn of Faith' from which will be seen 'speculative triumph and a striving towards Christianity'.23 Faith thus appears basically to mean optimism, while Christianity is valued principally for its regard for the individual.

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In 1836 Odoyevsky published Who are the Madmen?, the supposed introduction to his projected 'House of Madmen' which was eventually reworked (with certain alterations and considerable additions but much remained verbatim) into Second Night of Russian Nights.24 While the 1844 version would suggest that Odoyevsky's serious reading of Pordage and Saint-Martin, Hegel and Adam Smith may have taken place largely post-1836, most of the main ideas of the intellectual quest of the two seekers of 1844 are present in this 1836 account of their education and development: the comments on science and society, the lambasting of Malthus, the role of the poet (as 'the first judge of humanity') and, as the title would demand, the speculations on the nature of madness vis-a-vis originality, inspiration and genius. Prominent too is the problem that 'communication between people': . . . the only means whereby people might understand each other and by common effort turn to the conquest of nature, barely exists; crude barriers are placed between people already divided by difference of language!25 The following comment is made on romantic poetics: And Poetry? With a philosophical knife you have exposed its structure, slashed the secret ties which unite its elements, analysed them, deciphered them, put them under the glass; you have ploughed up the Indian and Greek ashes; you have cleaned off the rust on the chain-mail of the Middle Ages, and you wanted to run to earth poetical life in the cemetery of History.26 'The true age of poetry has not yet started!' The period from the early 1840s saw the writing of a number of further pieces connected loosely with Russian Nights. These are written, however, by and large in the manner of aphoristic reflections rather than philosophy per se; closer in style, and often in content, to the notebooks of the later years than to the tracts of the 1820s, they resemble somewhat the 'thoughts at random' genre employed in later times by such writers as Rozanov, Olesha and Sinyavsky. Consequently, these writings vary as much in interest as in content. They are largely characterized by a pseudo-scientific approach to psychological, anthropological and social issues, still recognizably Schellingian in the application of the principles of identity, in the constant use of analogy and the recurrent call for synthesis, but

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displaying a strong penchant, too, for the ideas of K. G. Carus. This is the case both with works remaining in manuscript, in some cases much later reconstructed for publication, such as 'The Science of Instinct: a Reply to Rozhalin', and to published works, such as Psychological Notes (both dating from 1843 and relevant to themes in Russian Nights, as well as - as indicated by the reference to Rozhalin - ideas and debates of an earlier period).27 Prominent in these works is Odoyevsky's theory of 'instinct', regarded by the Polish historian of ideas Andrzej Walicki as 'original' and 'of particular importance' to 'the romantic philosophy of history and the conception of social cohesion'.28 Odoyevsky sees two psychological poles in man - instinct and reason. Instinct is older than reason, as can be seen from 'the fabulous legends of the ancients'; early man knew nature by feeling (chuvstvo), just as animals sense the coming of storms and bees know the advantages of the pentangle.29 Instinct gradually weakened as reason advanced. The balance between the two determines the world view of individuals and, by extension, of nations, which are seen as organic entities, subject to health or decline not only through political happenings but through the state of the inner self: 'to reason, instinct is a fever; to instinct, reason is something material, crude, earthly'.30 This domination of reason over instinct and the reverse is seen as a cyclical process in history; the Christian period saw a renewed upsurge towards instinct and this pattern is seen as repeating itself once more in the nineteenth century, with the onset foreseen of an instinctive, poetic and religious era. Dreams and symbols, somnambulism and magnetism are all relevant to this 'system'; too much imbalance between instinct and reason can lead to insanity or stupidity, while total triumph of instinct is equal to death, 'in which reason is destroyed and there remains only the instinctive power'.31 A 'higher synthesis' of reason and instinct must therefore be striven for, together with a synthesis of empiricism and speculation. The inter-relationship between science, art and religion is thus the key to intellectual, social and historical problems, with the poetic and instinctive elements of knowledge and cognition apparently of particular significance at this period. Many of Odoyevsky's stories of the 1830s were redolent with philosophical ideas. While a certain amount of caution should be exercised before ascribing philosophical concepts extrapolated from works of fiction to a system of beliefs alleged to be held by their author, it is undeniable that conceptual abstractions present in fiction must at

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least be indicative of a writer's philosophical preoccupations. In the case of Odoyevsky, there is much common ground between ideas expressed and explored in his fiction and in his non-fictional, or philosophical, writings. This is particularly so in the case of Russian Nights, which has been widely seen as a summation of the philosophical endeavours of Odoyevsky's career over the previous decades and of the ideas which moved his generation. Odoyevsky himself, in the 1860s, claimed Russian Nights to be a fairly true picture of the intellectual activity in which the Moscow younger generation of the 1820s and 1830s indulged, on which scarcely any other information had been preserved.32 Various philosophical ideas and concepts are of importance throughout the stories which make up the overtly fictional side of Russian Nights, especially in the clearly tendentious stories City Without a Name and The Last Suicide. However, notwithstanding the artistic significance of the whole as an interlinked network of fiction and philosophy, the main ideational thrust of the work is to be found in the discussional sections of the 'frame-tale' device and in the monologues of Faust in particular. Without entering into a detailed discussion of the exact relationship between author and the protagonist commonly assumed to be his alter-ego, we can note Odoyevsky's own later designation of Faust's possible dual role as 'inveterate analyst' and 'mystic'33 and regard his pronouncements as those of: firstly, Odoyevsky's projections of himself at various stages (with the proviso that this may at times pertain to words of the other spokesmen as well) and, secondly, those of a character chosen to play devil's advocate to the prevailing ideas of his time. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The same assumption may be made regarding the two 'seekers' and the Economist, 'B' - important subsidiary spokesmen at further structural removes from the author. As discussion of various aspects of Russian Nights is entered upon at various points of this study, we shall here confine ourselves to a summary of the basic philosophical ideas to be found therein. These, as already indicated, are closely connected to the ideas already outlined in this summary of Odoyevsky's philosophical works. Russian Nights has been summed up by Ralph Matlaw as the imaginative expression of 'the quest for ultimate knowledge and perfect communication'.34 The opening of Odoyevsky's own original 1844 introduction to the work outlines the 'wonderful task' which confronts the human soul in all ages, an enquiry the solution to which 'is concealed in the depths of secret elements forming and uniting spiritual and material life'; in search of explanations:

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The Thinker the natural scientist enquires into the products of the material world, these symbols of material life; the historian into the live symbols inserted in the chronicles of nations; the poet into the live symbols of his own soul.35

A little later, in Second Night, the crux of the philosophy of SaintMartin is purportedly quoted, expressing the same idea: 'the striving of man to understand the cause of causes' as an essential part of the desire for 'a full life' (p. 17). It is in the discussions of Second Night that a number of ideas are broached which are to be important in the following fiction and interlinking deliberations: 'truth cannot be communicated!' (p. 14). This notion was to be largely responsible for the reported dementia and suicide in Fourth Night of the Economist (p. 38); the questioning of the attainments of civilization (medicine, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, the laws of society and poetry, pp. 19-23 - the 'Desiderata' of the two seekers); 'the happiness of all and everyone' (p. 21); the critique of Malthus (pp. 21-2); and the nature of madness (pp. 24—6). The 'philosophers of logic', Bentham and Malthus, are vigorously assailed, too, in anti-Utopian fictional form in the stories City Without a Name and The Last Suicide - powerful parables designed to lay bare the folly of following the ideas of these luminaries to their logical conclusion. City Without a Name, with its description of the Benthamites' economic activities resembling, in Walicki's view, 'an exaggerated version of Weber's "spirit of capitalism"',36 is equally damning in its appraisal of the economic theories of Adam Smith (which Odoyevsky read in the French edition of 1802), seen as delighting from his professorial chair the English shopkeepers and merchants by bestowing on them the divine right to exercise the freemarket economy as they pleased (pp. 75-6). The Last Suicide (the only 'fictional' part of Russian Nights not published earlier) depicts a situation in which drastic overpopulation and misery lead to despair and a final manic mass-suicide in a gigantic (one would now assume nuclear) explosion.37 Ideas then come to the fore again in the concluding sections, Ninth Night and especially the Epilogue. Faust (and, one may assume, Odoyevsky) considers that Schelling 'keenly felt the discord between thought and word' (p. 136); all branches of science are held to be 'isolated, mutilated of a single harmonious organism' (p. 137); and there are further 'mystical' references (p. 138, said in Odoyevsky's footnote appended later to be connected with cabbalistic numerology

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and Saint-Martin). The thought-word opposition is developed by Faust to the extremity (which strikingly anticipates a notion of Roland Barthes, in Writing Degree Zero) of suggesting that the dreams of Rousseau and Voltaire caused the 'rivers of blood', of the French Revolution, introducing the concept of'the victims of words' (p. 145). It is the Epilogue which introduces into Russian Nights one of the most startling ideas to many contemporary readers: the concept of'the dying West' which Russia is poised to, at least spiritually, regenerate.38 This idea is introduced in the conclusion of the manuscript of the two seekers (pp. 145-50), is disputed by the other spokesmen (Victor points to the stability and progress to be seen in Europe, declaring that 'war has become an impossibility', p. 150), and is admitted by Faust to be 'exaggerated' (p. 150), as presented by his two friends. Nevertheless, it has generally been taken to represent Odoyevsky's own view. Given the largely Western orientation of Odoyevsky's cultural background, however, it would seem certain that, for reasons of dramatic effect, he made the two seekers overstate their case. The accompanying idea of the enlightening mission and catalytic role of Russia, however, is close to the historiosophical notions which occur elsewhere in Odoyevsky's writings and are referred to above. Even so, it should perhaps be noted that it is Rostislav rather than Faust who reiterates the slogan 'the nineteenth century belongs to Russia' to conclude Russian Nights (p. 183) and that Odoyevsky's conclusion to the later 'Notes to Russian Nights' may have been intended to provide a slight change of emphasis: 'the history of human work belongs to humanity' (p. 192). Nevertheless, Faust's vigorous indictment of the Western bourgeois capitalistic system is to be found, more or less intact, in Odoyevsky's later writings (see Chapter Five). Focusing on Odoyevsky's particular betes noires of lying and hypocrisy, Faust lays bare the real meaning marked by many a sacred bourgeois cliche: 'the people's will' equals the wishes of a few profiteers; 'the common good' is that of a few merchants or shareholders; 'legislators' are those for whom the most money has been paid (p. 151); imperialist enlightenment is really only 'to get rid of cotton stockings by the few dozen more'; and 'impartial' journalists act on the instructions of shareholders (p. 152). Child labour is fiercely attacked, while free-market industrial 'competition' is a 'trick' invented by Adam Smith to legitimize cut-throat profiteering (p. 156). Further familiar Odoyevsky ideas advanced by Faust in the Epilogue include a stress on the scientific knowledge of the ancients and the

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alchemists (by 'fire, air, water, earth' the ancients really meant 'oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon', p. 160); hostility to empiricism, with philosophy from Francis Bacon to the beginning of the nineteenth century held (despite Leibniz) to have 'slipped' (p. 161); and the shortcomings of specialization. A development, perhaps, is the attention given to history. Denial of the existence of history as a science (p. 168) is followed by a call for a scientific approach to history, though envisaged, predictably enough, as nationally based (p. 175). The 'spirit of the time' is seen to be 'in eternal struggle with the inner feeling of man' (p. 172), while both 'man and human society are a living organism' (p. 177); the four elements in the human organism are the desire for truth, love, reverence and strength or power' (p. 179). Man has the ability to create a special world, that of art or poetry (in which he 'may find symbols' of what does or should take place 'within and around him', p. 180). The human organism suffers - even that of a Beethoven or a Bach - if it has not 'fulfilled the fullness of life'. On a national level, the combinations of elements are frequently so different as to be mutally incomprehensible, a situation which only a Peter the Great is able to transcend. The decline of the West into decadence has reached the point where, 'in its material intoxication, the West is capering on the graveyard of the ideas of its great thinkers' (p. 181), in the absence of its own Peter, 'who would inoculate it with the juices of the Slavonic East!', in which 'there are no destructive elements' (p. 182). Therein lies the path to faith in the possibility of'the happiness of all and everyone', along with this 'amazing' nation, 'whose poets, by means of poetic magic, guessed history before history itself. Therein lies the path to 'the fullness oflife\ to 'one science and one teacher' (p. 183), to general harmony and, presumably, the end of the quest. In an unfinished work dating from 1847 ('Russian Letters', first published in 1975), Odoyevsky put further distance between himself and the figure of Faust ('that mystical sceptic or, if you prefer, sceptical mystic of Russian Nights') by informing his prospective reading public that 'Faust has died' and that he was in any event: an inevitable, transitory phenomenon who has called in upon every thinking organism and, like every transitory phenomenon, having reached the extreme limits of its development, has had to self-destruct and make way for another (p. 236)

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In his 'Foreword' and 'Notes', written in the early 1860s for the proposed second edition, Odoyevsky wrote that, after seventeen years, it was impossible to 'improve' the work, as he had at first thought of doing: 'in such a period of time, much has been re-thought, much has been forgotten' (p. 185); and, in any case, he asks: 'are our thoughts ever really ours, even at the minute of their conception?' (p. 186). Nevertheless, some notes of 'historical significance' were added, some textual changes made, and further explanation provided of the book's original intent and origins, revealing, too, something of the mature reflections of an author looking back upon his main published achievement which, he felt, had never been properly appreciated or understood: My youth slid by in that period when metaphysics enjoyed the same general ambiance that the political sciences do now. We believed in the possibility of an absolute theory by means of which it would be possible to assemble (we used the word konstruirovaf) all the phenomena of nature, just as now they believe in the possibility of a social form which would fully satisfy all human needs (p. 187) Odoyevsky, in this section of his 'Foreword', which has been quoted by many commentators, goes on to describe the growth of interest on the part of himself and his youthful associates in the natural sciences (starting at first just with anatomy) and the necessity, if only to follow certain passages of Schelling, to concern oneself with 'coarse matter'; indeed Schelling is credited with responsibility for creating a 'positivistic tendency' in Germany and Russia, while Schelling and Goethe inspired a degree of tolerance even for French and English science, previously completely rejected 'as coarse empiricism' (p. 187). The subject of Russian Nights had been the problem of life - 'unresolved, it goes without saying' (p. 192) - and itself a remnant of the earlier impossible grandiose scheme for a dramatic philosophical dictionary, which would have put all the world's philosophers ('from the Eleatics to Schelling', p. 191) on the stage. Odoyevsky was anxious to emphasize the relevance and interest of all this to the reader of the 1860s: The questions of a purely philosophical nature, economic, worldly and national which occupy us now: they occupied people then too; and very much of what is articulated now, both directly and obliquely - even recent Slavophilism - all of this was already stirring at that time like a growing embryo (p. 192).

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We shall return to Slavophilism later in this chapter. Echoes, developments and illustrations of many of the ideas to be found in Russian Nights occur, as has already been pointed out, elsewhere in Odoyevsky's writings, both fictional and non-fictional. This applies particularly, of course, to the writings which pre-date the 1844 first publication of Russian Nights in its integral form. After 1844, just as Odoyevsky published very little fiction, he published little or no pure philosophy. The writings which he did publish in the 1850s and 1860s, or which were published posthumously, were mainly of a musical or an educational nature, plus some publicistic works, diaries, notebooks and miscellaneous jottings. Some of these are examined in other chapters of this study. A number of further grandiose projects of an encyclopedic nature were commenced during this period and remain in the archives incomplete and unpublished; yet further projects remained in the planning stage only, or as mere ideas. One of these later projects, to be called 'Daily Living' ('Zhiteyskiy byt', dated 1859), was to include as one of its projected parts the longest known philosophical essay to have been written by Odoyevsky - sixty-four pages, under the title 'Elementary Concepts Concerning the Essence of That Which Is Generally Called Knowledge'.39 An American student of Odoyevsky's thought, J. S. Nanney, considers that, by the 1860s, Odoyevsky had 'decisively adopted the epistemology of British empiricism';40 'Elementary Concepts . . . ' is adjudged to reveal Odoyevsky's contempt for Hegelian thought, his respect for mathematics (and apparent unfamiliarity with the work of Lobachevsky), his lingering faith in the existence of a supreme being and in human immortality and consequent continued opposition to the materialists. Nanney sums up Odoyevsky's philosophical position in the 1860s thus: The predominantly secular and nominalist tenor of Odoevskii's thought in this period, in combination with his continued religious faith, sets him apart from the dominant intellectual trends of the day - aesthetic materialism and Orthodox theology - just as in the 1830s and early 1840s his attachment to Western European mysticism set him apart from the dominant Hegelianism and Orthodox mysticism.41 Certainly something of this new-found positivistic streak is to be detected, too, in his published work of the period. Not Good Enough

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(dated the end of 1866), for example suggests that 'all possible incidences obey general immutable laws which . . . it is worthwhile studying';42 beauty is no longer absolute, but relative, while Odoyevsky's attitude to art is now far from elitist and close to that of the later Tolstoy: Why is art still unable to speak in that language common to everyone - spoken by the sun, the stars and other phenomena of Nature? Why are Raphael, Bach, Homer and Dante comprehensible only to the few? How many centuries of work are still needed for art to start speaking a language accessible to all? This is followed by averitable paean to science.43 As may be evident from various sections of this study it is possible by selective quotation to present Odoyevsky's thinking in a number of different ways, such is the scope afforded by apparent ambiguities, inconsistencies and contradictions. This has indeed been done in terms both of the political complexion of Odoyevsky's thought (see Chapter Five) and of his overall philosophical development. We may here perhaps merely outline the main interpretations of the latter. P. N. Sakulin divides Odoyevsky's career into three periods: the period of Lyubomudriye (coinciding with publication of Mnemozina); the period of 'philosophical-mystical idealism' (culminating in Russian Nights); and (from the second half of the 1840s) that of 'scientific realism' (by which is meant what is usually termed 'positivism').44 Only the first of these three periods is considered to be predominandy Schellingian. V. Gippius regarded Sakulin's resolution of Odoyevsky's ideological evolution as too simple and somewhat revised the three periods thus: the 1820s and 1830s, dominated by the 'unknowable'; the mid 1840s and 1850s, a period of 'differentiation between knowable and unknowable'; and the 1860s, when 'all is knowable, all, even the most mysterious thing in the world, is resolved into laws dependent on reason'.45 Half a century later, Yuriy Mann sees Odoyevsky as breaking from Sakulin's 'phase of mystical idealism' before the completion of Russian Nights, to embrace philosophical universalism and 'an idealist dialectic' involving 'the unification of opposites' as 'the so-called spirit of the time'. 46 Mann was not concerned with Odoyevsky's development beyond Russian Nights. Other variations on periodization suggest a break with the philosophy of Schelling towards the natural sciences, 'even before his move to

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Petersburg' (of 1826), and (what is more difficult to sustain) see a progression in Odoyevsky's fiction in the 1830s 'from philosophicalmystical idealism with its hazy romanticism towards realism', or even divide his fiction of 1824-39 into three etapes: 'didactic-satirical', 'progressive-romantic' and 'realistic'.47 Whereas the proposed literary etapes tend in the main not to fit the compositional chronology of Odoyevsky's fiction, the philosophical stages argued for by Sakulin, Gippius and Mann are much more plausible. While a definitive assessment of this question may have to await further researches among the voluminous Odoyevsky archives (bearing in mind that not everything was available to Sakulin, who never finished his final volume), it is possible to assert that some of the disagreement arises from a varying appreciation of the later development of Schelling. Odoyevsky, who had himself listened and talked to Schelling in 1842, termed (through Faust) the belief that Schelling's thought had really changed - 'an optical illusion' (R.N. (1975), pp. 138-9). Walicki is keen to emphasize that what Sakulin saw as a 'turning point' in Odoyevsky's world view (in the early 1830s) 'did not mark a decisive change, let alone a break with Schellingianism'.48 We have noted already how Odoyevsky, from the perspective of the 1860s, wrote that it was indeed Schelling who had first put him on the path to positivism. Nanney claims that the decisive break, when Odoyevsky's irrationalism and interests in alchemy suddenly gave way to empiricism and the assigning of a lesser role to religion, occurred through Russia's defeat in the Crimean War which, it is implied, may have modified his view of the Russian character and prospects.49 It is not clear why this should have been the case, nor, indeed, that it was. It may in fact be nearer the mark to argue for a dominant element of continuity, rather than change, in Odoyevsky's thought, as Heinrich Stammler has recently done: My intention was to demonstrate that an abrupt change in the Prince's thought from idealism to 'scientific' realism or even positivism cannot be established. Many remnants and relics of his former idealism, so strongly influenced by Schelling, remained intact, especially in his aesthetics and philosophy of music. He ended his days, I believe, as a philosophical eclectic, in a higher sense, as once defined by Goethe. 50

91 II Odoyevsky and the Philosophical Tradition We turn now from Odoyevsky's philosophical works themselves to a consideration of his place in, and response to, the philosophical tradition which stretches from the pre-Socratics to nineteenth-century post-romanticism. This leads us back to our contention, of the beginning of the last section, that Odoyevsky was engaged in, among other things, an investigation into the roots of the romantic thought which so dominated the philosophical climate of his youth. We therefore need to establish his links with the immediately preceding tradition of Russian thought, and, more importantly, with the development of those strands of European thought which led to the philosophy of the German Romantic Movement as represented by Schelling. The importance of Schelling in connection with Odoyevsky's thought has been amply demonstrated, both in this study and elsewhere, and is never denied; as Kamensky has said, everyone agrees that Odoyevsky took his main theoretical views from the early Schelling - the only disagreement is on the extent of this, and the effect.51 Schelling's 'principle of identity' was, in Yuriy Mann's words, 'the formula for the single cosmogonic organism of an ever living and changing "world soul"'; moreover, as Odoyevsky conveyed in his much quoted remark 'that Schelling, like Columbus, opened up a new continent - the human soul - and that many followed him there in search of treasure', Schelling once again provided the formula by which the human soul was regarded as the microcosm to the world soul's macrocosm; it was 'the idea of "the microcosm" which aroused the heightened attention of "the seekers of treasure"', providing the basis for self-analysis, withdrawal within and the cultivation of the most varied subjective experiences, thereby delineating 'the preponderance of the subjective principle in the romantic synthesis'.52 Ivan Kireyevsky, in his essay of 1832 entitled 'The Nineteenth Century', stressed the significance of Schelling for the Lyubomudry (of whom, of course, he had been a member), while Isaiah Berlin, in modern times, writes of German idealism, in the form of Fichte, Hegel and Schelling, as having had an import in Russia 'little short of a new religion'.53 At a European level, Holderlin held: 'There is only one real quarrel in the world: which is more important, the whole or the individual part.' 54 Just as Schelling provided formulae in general philosophical terms which caught the spirit of the times, so he provided formulae which gave influential expression to more specific preoccupations of the

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period, such as the philosophy of art and of history, which were themselves inextricably linked - as, indeed, is everything when expressed dialectically under a system of identity. The importance attached by Schelling to the philosophy of art held obvious appeal for Odoyevsky: 'The objective world is simply the original, as yet unconscious, poetry of the spirit; the universal organon of philosophy - and the keystone of its entire arch - is the philosophy of art'.55 The philosophy of art is the highest philosophy because art is essentially that activity of man which most closely resembles the creative imagination of God (or the Absolute); imagination for Schelling is a mysterious energy (akin to magnetism, electricity or gravity); nature, 'the material side of a grand dialectic' is in any case 'God's artwork', while, just to reinforce the link between art and philosophy, 'all philosophy is productive'5** In detail, too, Schelling's ideas on art were in tune with those of Odoyevsky and certain of his contemporaries. Schelling's designation of architecture as 'frozen music', 'music in space' and 'music perceived with the eye' could not but have struck a chord with Odoyevsky; Schelling looked for rhythm, harmony and melody in architecture (Doric, Ionian and Corinthian respectively).57 Analogous to this, and to the foregoing in this section, is Shevyryov's statement that 'the anatomy of the soul is the science of the time'. 58 Not that such ideas were original to Schelling; they are to be found in the writings of his German romantic contemporaries (in the works of Wackenroder and Novalis and in the theorizing of the Schlegels). As Isaiah Berlin has pointed out, in the tradition of Spinoza 'musical images are frequent in the metaphysics of this time'. 59 Earlier Giordano Bruno, a figure who meant much to Odoyevsky, had emphasized the affinity between philosophers, painters and poets; Renaissance theories of poetry and painting were based on Horace's dictum of ut pictura poesis (related by Bruno to Aristode's dictum 'to think is to speculate with images'); while, Frances Yates also reminds us, according to Plutarch, Simonides of Ceos (c. 556 to 468 BC) 'called painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks'.60 History also has a prominent position in Schelling's philosophy, existing in the same relationship to practical philosophy as does nature to theoretical philosophy.61 In 1800 and 1801, before Hegel, Schelling was writing that history 'should exhibit a union of freedom and necessity', and that the process of the dialectic 'is inwrought in the mechanism of the mind'. 62 The philosophy of history is expressed by Schelling somewhat differently, with varying degrees of clarity, from one work to another. However, to Schelling 'a system is complete

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when it returns to its starting point' and thus history is 'a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the absolute' and at the same time circular, or even cyclical.63 Odoyevsky used Schelling's phrase 'new mythology' and, as we have seen, followed Schelling in concocting, from a starting point of mythology, cyclic or 'progressive' periodizations of history.64 He is likely to have been impressed, for example, by the following passage: Mythology has history begin with the first step out of the domain of instinct into the realm of freedom, with the loss of the Golden Age, or with the Fall, that is with the first expression of choice. In the schemes of the philosophers, history ends with the reign of reason, that is with the Golden Age of law, when all choice shall have vanished from the earth, and man shall have returned through freedom to the same point at which nature originally placed him, and which he forsook when history began;... [which is] the gradual realization, on the part of a whole species of beings, of an ideal that they have never wholly lost.65 This too is, of course, inseparable from art: History is an epic composed in the mind of God. Its two main parts are: first, that which depicts the departure of humanity from its centre up to its furthest point of alienation from this centre; and, secondly, that which depicts the return. The first part is the Iliad, the second the Odyssey of history.66 A. W. Schlegel, too, saw in art 'a faint image of the former perfection of the world, before it was disfigured by ruin and its sublime harmony shattered'.67 'The task of the philosopher', Berlin has written, 'was to discern the march of history'; Ivan Kireyevsky wrote in 1832 of the role of reason and historicity in the philosophy of the Lyubomudry.68 Berdyaev, referring to the influence of de Maistre and Schelling upon, in particular, Chaadayev, wrote: 'To Western Europe these ideas were conservative. To Russia they seemed Revolutionary.'69 Revolutionary or otherwise, their impact was of considerable significance. Moreover the impact was not entirely one way. Several of the Lyubomudry and others, including Odoyevsky, travelled to Germany, meeting, listening and talking to Schelling and other German thinkers; as Walicki has pointed out, both Schelling and Baader, in their later thought, saw the destiny of Russia as significant.70

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In Russia, Kamensky sees 'a school of philosophy linked to dialectical objective idealism', beginning with 'the school of Vellansky, Pavlov and Schelling', stretching through Odoyevsky and Venevitinov, to Stankevich, Galich and Nadezhdin.71 M. P. Pogodin regarded Odoyevsky, in his Lyubomudry days, as a young philosopher of great promise; the most prominent Russian Schellingist of the day, D. M. Vellansky, wrote to Odoyevsky in 1824 (after reading his 'Aphorisms' in Mnemozina): 'of all Russian scholars known to me, you alone have understood the real meaning of philosophy'.72 Sakulin regards Vellansky as the only true follower of Schelling and Oken among those who influenced Odoyevsky (among whom he numbered 1.1. Davydov, M. G. Pavlov and A. I. Galich), while Odoyevsky himself much later accorded Vellansky the title of 'perhaps the only Russian philosopher'.73 N. A. Yelagin, in his 'Materials for a biography of I. V. Kireyevsky', stresses the importance to the future Lyubomudry of Pavlov's lectures, delivered in 1821 at Moscow University and at the Blagorodnyy Pansion.74 The influence of the early Russian interpreters of Schelling upon Odoyevsky is of some importance, given the fact that Odoyevsky took Schellingian ideas first from his Russian teachers and only afterwards direct from Schelling and Oken (Odoyevsky and Venevitinov were both engaged in translating the same piece from Oken); A. I. Koshelev, himself a member of the Lyubomudry, also talks of learning German philosophy from Pavlov and Davydov in the period 1820-2. 75 Vellansky and Pavlov, in Kamensky's periodization, were responsible, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, for enunciating the Naturphilosophie stage of Russian Schellingism (or 'instructive idealism'); in the mid 1820s, the Lyubomudry (particularly Odoyevsky and Venevitinov, their two main philosophical talents) shifted the main focus of interest to the area of 'philosophy of spirit', and this process was continued by Galich, N. V. Stankevich and N. I. Nadezhdin into the 1830s, until the 'school' declined, later in that decade.76 But why was Russia such a fertile ground for the ideas of Schelling? As N. V. Riasanovsky points out, Schelling's 'seductive' vision of the world 'offered splendid opportunities for bizarre analogies of enormous sweep' and a shortcut to knowledge; the aesthetic aspects, the concept of the organic nation and Schelling's views on history all had an appeal for Russians ever susceptible to the irrational, the poetic and the religious.77 But this was not all; many of the same or very similar ideas had already arrived in Russia in the eighteenth century by other routes. As Riasanovsky puts ito related influences paved the

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way for German idealistic philosophy in Russia: Freemasonry and mysticism'; the masons, Novikov and others, were indeed representatives of the Russian enlightenment, 'but Freemasonry also represented a reaction against the dominant belief in reason'.78 Mysticism (in particular the influence of Jacob Bohme and Saint-Martin): gradually disassociated itself from Freemasonry and became an independent intellectual current leading directly to German idealistic philosophy, which it foreshadowed with its metaphysics and its dialectical struggle of good and evil.7 Berdyaev, also noting the influence of Saint-Martin, Bohme and of John Pordage, describes thus the battle-lines for the ensuing conflict in Russian thought: 'During the nineteenth century the struggle between Saint-Martin and Voltaire went on in the Russian soul, inoculated as it had been by Western thought.'80 These eighteenth-century movements in Russian thought, Riasanovsky maintains, were especially good preparation for Schelling's particular tendencies of anthropocentrism and nature philosophy: Mysticism and the doctrine of growth through the struggle of opposites had stronger affinities with the thought of Schelling than with other romantic ideologies.81 There are clear strands connecting these aspects of the Russian tradition, too, with Odoyevsky; the director of the Blagorodnyy Pansion of Moscow University, Prokopovich-Antonsky, whose instruction had a strong impact on the youthful Odoyevsky, had himself been a pupil of the prominent Freemason of the late eighteenth century, J. G. Schwarz (1751-84).82 D. I. Chizhevsky writes of a line joining Schelling and Hegel with Bohme and of the interest of Novikov's circle in Bohme and Pordage, remarking that it is 'not by chance' that Odoyevsky, when studying Schelling and Oken, should have 'procured the manuscript of Pordage'. 83 The antecedents of Russian Schellingism, as of Schellingism itself, go back therefore to the eighteenth century and beyond: indeed, they go back very much further. To demonstrate this we have only to consider briefly the use of the words 'lyubomudriye' and 'Mnemozina'. The former was used by Davydov, by Radishchev and by the masons and

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mystics of the late eighteenth century, though the Lyubomudry themselves claimed to have chosen to use it to mark their distinction from French philosophy of the eighteenth century.84 Mnemosyne, it should be remembered, was the Titaness wife of Zeus who gave birth to the nine Muses, 'the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses', in the words of Plato's Socrates.85 The chronological extent of this tradition was recognized by the young Odoyevsky who, in his Lyubomudry days, planned a 'Dictionary of the History of Philosophy'; in the Eleatic School he saw not only the first efforts at a refined system: The Idealist-Eleatic Sect together with Pythagoras was as though a precursor of the elevated thoughts of the divine Plato himself; it repeated itself in the middle Academy (that is to say Arcesilaus and Carneades), flashed brilliantly among the Alexandrian Neoplatonists, inspired amid the gloom of the sixteenth century that extraordinary phenomenon - Giordano Bruno, gave birth in spirit to the great Spinoza, and finally provided the basis of the theory of many of the newest thinkers.86 The complex breadth of the tradition was assimilated by Odoyevsky over the years which followed. Other historians of ideas readily fill in or underline some of the names: Schelling has been said to present 'a synthesis of Spinoza and Plato'; his theory of Nature is seen as reminiscent of Greek speculation and aspects of Leibniz and to anticipate Bergson; while Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 'opened the door . . . , albeit unwittingly, to the revival of mysticism - especially the Protestant nature-mysticism of Jakob Bohme'. 87 Sakulin has stated that the commanding figures for the Lyubomudry were the German philosophers: Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Oken; nevertheless, the high regard in which the Lyubomudry held Spinoza, attested above, was emphasized by A. I. Koshelev; we have also already noted Odoyevsky's admiration for Leibniz.88 The tradition as a whole on which Odoyevsky draws, both directly through Schelling and indirectly through many other sources, is clearly rooted in the thought of Plato and the pre-Socratics, strongly influenced by Neoplatonism. Among the other strands of thought which feed in, some of them sharing a degree of overlap, are the Hermetic tradition and the mnemonic tradition (as identified by Frances Yates); gnosticism, theosophy, alchemy and the Kabbala. The key intermediate figures, acting as focal points for these various strands, are Bruno and Bohme; the main later

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influences upon Odoyevsky (Schelling apart) have already been named as Saint-Martin and Pordage. All the traditions mentioned above, with the exception of theosophy, have been shown to have contributed to the philosophy of Giordano Bruno. The Hermetic tradition comes from a body of writing thought during the Renaissance period and before to have been written by an Egyptian sage, Hermes Trismegistus, at the dawn of civilization. The Greek manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum was brought to Florence from Macedonia in about 1460 and translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino.89 Ficino, in his own practice of Hermetic philosophy and 'natural magic' managed to reconcile its precepts with those of Christianity, as did his successor, Pico della Mirandola, who instigated a marriage of Hermeticism and cabbalism; as Ficino had used the gnostic-influenced writings of Pseudo-Dionysius (erroneously supposed to be St Dionysius the Areopagite who had met St Paul in Athens) in his synthesis of Neoplatonism with Christianity, so Pico used the same sources to bridge the Jewish Kabbala and Christianity.90 Pico linked the cabbalistic concept of 'three worlds' (terrestrial, celestial and supercelestial, between all of which was a continuity of influences) with Neoplatonism and Christian (Pseudo-Dionysian) mysticism; three worlds (the elemental, the celestial and the intellectual) also figure, in popularized form, in another key work of the period, Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia (1533).91 The same, or very similar, traditions of cabbalism and Platonism, particularly through the Irish scholar John Scotus Erigena, merged with the surviving classical art of memory, revived by Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, in the elaborate and influential art of Ramon Lull (c. 1235-1316). Lull's 'universal art' of'elemental astrology', which he believed, by means of his ladders and 'combinatory wheels', to be capable of applying, by analogy, 'the fundamental patterns of nature . . . to all the arts and sciences', was not in itself magical but based on 'natural reasons'; nevertheless, in the view of Frances Yates, Lull's claims were such as to prefigure the magus: Lullism was to become inextricably bound up with the Hermetic-Cabalist philosophies of the Renaissance. Accepted by Pico della Mirandola, Lullism was the natural accompaniment of the Hermetic-Cabalist philosophy which underlies Renaissance Neoplatonism. In this atmosphere, Lullism took on the magical and occult flavour of that philosophy. The implicit connection of the Lullian emphasis on the elements with alchemy became explicit,

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Apart from Pico, Agrippa and Bruno, Lullism influenced Nicolas of Cusa, John Dee and (with his medical theories) Paracelsus; it was by no means unknown, either, to Francis Bacon and Descartes, and it contributed, too, to the system of Leibniz.93 However, it was in the person of Giordano Bruno that the twin strands of Hermetic and mnemonic tradition most strikingly converge. Bruno, though, in assimilating all these traditions, went much further than had previous exponents. The culmination of one of the most extraordinary careers of his age, Bruno's demise at the stake in 1600 was less that of 'the martyr for modern science', as was long thought, than of the proponent of a new religion - or, rather, of a reversion to an old one: Bruno's real 'mission' all along had been to head a restoration, preferably within the framework of Catholicism, of the magical religion of ancient Egypt, 'of which Judaism, Platonism and Christianity, were but degenerate distillations'.94 He has recently thus been described: He was a soaring poet, an exalted mystic, an ardent pantheist, an instinctive Catholic, a born philosopher, a wizard of mnemotechnics, a vitriolic critic, an amateur scientist, a muddled dreamer, a secretive cabbalist, a dabbler in magic, a flamboyant reformer and an amorous rogue.

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Notwithstanding his nevertheless appreciable interest as a figure in the development of science, Bruno saw himself as the religious counterpart of Copernicus, whom he had defended in 1583 in a clash with the English 'pedants' at Oxford; he took the Copernican sun as a portent in the sky, 'the Copernican diagram as a hieroglyph of divine mysteries', portending the imminent return of the magical Hermetic religion; his 'fusion of Pythagoras with Copernicus . . . made the Copernican theory seem to him a mystical truth'. 96 In keeping with the veiled traditions of Hermeticism and the occult and in the spirit of dangerous times, Bruno enveloped his potentially volcanic theories in philosophical and literary forms of a relatively arcane nature. Although his true intent has not been generally recognized until recent years, this did not save Bruno when he unwisely returned to Italy and was betrayed to the Inquisition. Odoyevsky obviously saw in Bruno something of a kindred figure,

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but no doubt one who possessed extraordinary strength of purpose and forthright courage - qualities which he, in the aftermath of the Decembrist debacle, perhaps felt to be lacking in himself. But what did he understand of the real nature of Bruno, by whose true mission to overturn Christendom he would surely have been appalled? At first sight, it would appear, very little. Odoyevsky first knew of Bruno in his student days, through Davydov and Galich; Sakulin assumes Schelling's dialogue Bruno (1802) to have been an influence on Odoyevsky's unfinished and unpublished novel, but this is discounted by at least one modern commentator, on the grounds of dissimilarity.97 Nevertheless, another commentator sees Odoyevsky's Bruno as 'a philosopher, discoursing in the spirit of Schelling's Nature philosophy', although the philosophical disquisitions given to Bruno in the work are said to be very limited.98 One is scarcely surprised that Odoyevsky should have seen Bruno principally as a martyr for the new science: he is referred to as 'the priest of science', whose great task, which he refuses to betray, is the service of science.99 However, matters are complicated by the fact that the work, though realistic in detail, takes considerable chronological liberties; apart from the anachronistic coupling in the work, in a kind of Mozart and Salieri relationship, of Bruno with the poet Pietro Aretino (Aretino in fact died in 1556, when Bruno was eight), other figures appearing in the novel include Pope Leo X, Raphael, Erasmus, Pomponazzi, Martin Luther and, significantly, though distant in time from Bruno by more than two centuries, 'the Catalan mystic and Neoplatonist, Raimondo Lulli' (Ramon Lull). 100 It would appear that Odoyevsky's intention in this novel was to create something of a composite picture of the Renaissance. Whether despite or because of Odoyevsky's somewhat ahistorical approach to this work, signs of the 'real' (or the 'other') Bruno do come through: Odoyevsky's Bruno attacks scholastic pedantry by speculating on whether 'God can make two and two equal five, and not four', he takes sides with Luther, and he proves the idea of the immortality of the soul to Pomponazzi.101 This Bruno believes in spirits (at least according to one draft), is a strong Platonist and indulges in numerological disputes; moreover Bruno relates to Aretino a parable of a symbolic 'treasure, uniting the sacraments of Egypt, the holy places of Jerusalem and the glory of Rome'. 102 Most interestingly, though, Odoyevsky's Bruno is said to particularly esteem the man who 'with his heels tramples the ground, but in spirit soars above the heavens'.103 Such a statement would normally be interpreted purely figuratively,

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but takes on another significance in the light of Bruno's reference to himself ('The Nolan') in The Ash Wednesday Supper: Now here is he who has pierced the air, penetrated the sky, toured the realm of stars, traversed the boundaries of the world, dissipated the fictitious walls of the first, eighth, ninth, tenth spheres, and whatever else might have been attached to these by the devices of vain mathematicians and by the blind vision of popular philosophers.104 This is even more the case if we recall the Hermetic and Agrippan description of 'the ascent of an all-powerful Magus through the three worlds'.105 No evidence appears to have been brought to light that Gdoyevsky had read any of Bruno's works; he worked on his novel before the publication of the first important collected edition of Bruno; apart from the lectures he had attended earlier, his main historical sources are thought to be secondary works written in English and German. 106 Odoyevsky planned * to write a further work, to be called 'The Apotheosis of Bruno', which was to have shown the links between Bruno and his 'ideological successors', involving among others, Spinoza and Descartes.107 However, he seems to have abandoned his work on Bruno from about 1830, and Bruno's name appears to be strangely absent from Odoyevsky's subsequent writings. Irrespective of whether Odoyevsky's knowledge of Bruno was direct or otherwise, he would certainly, not to mention Schelling before him, have been taken with Bruno's views that 'the Poet, the Philosopher, and the Artist are all one', that he himself was 'not innovating (in works such as the Torch of the Thirty Statues)... but reviving something of very great antiquity', and that 'Art is the knowledge of how to become joined to the soul of the world'.108 Bruno's ideas may also have reached Odoyevsky through other channels if Frances Yates is correct in her speculations of a connection between Bruno (through his sojourn in England and lingering influence thereafter) and the origins of Freemasonry (and its religious tolerance, philanthropy and Egyptian symbolism); the same goes for Bruno's connections with Leibniz, to whom, it is said, 'a "Rosicrucian" aura clings'.109 A very different figure from Bruno was Jacob Bohme (1575-1624), the Protestant theosophical mystic, who stemmed from the traditions of John Scotus Erigena and Aquinas, Philo of Alexandria and the Kabbala and (in Germany) of Meister Eckhart; in addition, Paracelsus

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and (Hermetic) alchemy had a strong impact upon Bohme.110 Again it is unclear how much of Bohme's writings Odoyevsky may have read; references to Bohme in Odoyevsky are extremely rare and the impact of his thought is likely to have been felt mainly at second hand, in particular through Baader and Saint-Martin, but also from Pordage and, inevitably, Schelling.111 'Schelling's development went from Spinoza to Jacob Bohme', from whom he derived the idea of a 'dark, negative principle' and to whose writings he was introduced in 1799 by Tieck.112 Saint-Martin called Bohme 'mon second educateur', while 'Pordage's teacher was the same Jacob Bohme, his contemporary'; in recent times, Keith Thomas has termed Bohme's writings 'intolerably obscure'. 113 Schelling's evaluation of Bohme was extremely high: he considered him 'a miracle in the history of humanity' who 'anticipated all scientific systems of modern philosophy in his description of the birth of G o d . . . . What was intuition and the immediate inspiration of nature in Bohme appears in Spinoza . . . as developed rationalism.'114 According to H. L. Martensen, Schelling's turns of phrase in Of Human Freedom (1809) are heavily indebted to Bohme's 'symbolic language'.115 Among the concepts in Bohme's thought which would have seemed particularly striking to subsequent romantic thinkers, we may enumerate the following: the reciprocal influence between 'the microcosm and macrocosm' (which had been a particular preoccupation of Paracelsus); the intention 'to reconcile idealism and realism in the conception of God'; the idea of Chaos as a 'unity which has in it the germ of a plurality'; 'the dark nature principle* and the fundamental necessity for contrasts; 'the principle of Negativity'; 'the doctrine of the necessity of evil for the manifestation of Light'; and the theosophic doctrine 'that the Uncreated Heaven forms the pre-assumption and foundation of the whole Created World'. 116 Influence of the Kabbala, gnosticism and Manichaeism can be seen in Bohme's thought, as well as Hermetic and alchemic strands, and Neoplatonist and older Greek sources.117 Especially appealing to Odoyevsky would have been: the elemental antagonism in Bohme of the 'Natural Properties' of 'Contraction' and 'Expansion'; his sense of 'the insufficiency of human language' (causing him 'to use the metaphors of space and time in reference of the Divine Nature'); and (at least in Martensen's interpretation) the symbolic terminology of recesses and Holy sanctuaries, veiled by 'the material world of the senses' and 'this flesh of ours', and music as the 'best symbol of the Uncreated Heaven and its harmonious unity'.118 The aftermath of the period of Bruno and Bohme saw great changes

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in European philosophy, cosmology and science. The traditions in which they participated contributed to this process and, although neither Hermetic magic nor theosophy were able to compete with other strands of European thought in terms of general acceptance, their influence survived to re-emerge in a more psychological form in the thought of at least certain of the romantics. This fact in itself may require brief amplification. Theosophy has never been more than a sectarian movement, but Hermetic (or alchemical) magic might have been. The latter emerged, however, too late (for all its attraction to such figures, at certain stages of their careers, as Kepler and Newton), at a time when more empirical and methodological modes of thought were already poised to gain the upper hand. Moreover, the magical tradition, long forced, in obvious fear of causing perilous affront to religious dogma, to garb itself in arcane and enigmatic guise, degenerated into the forlorn stage of secret societies.119 Finally, there is, of course, no evidence that any of these forms of magic ever worked (other, perhaps, than within the psyche of the Magus); while this would seem to have been no particular impediment over the preceding centuries, the same could no longer easily hold good in an age of clear technological progress seen to be achieved by less occult means. The Egyptian myth in any case suffered considerably from the redating of the Hermetic writings (in 1614) to post-Christian times, while the deciphering (in 1824) of the hieroglyph provided the final blow - but not before some of the Egyptian mystique had rubbed off on romantic thinkers. Kepler (in 1621) substitued the word 'force' for the word 'soul' in enunciating his 'physics of the skies' and the wind seemed to be blowing in a more materialist direction; but nevertheless, due to the manner in which the proponents of the new thought (notably Descartes and his followers) presented their arguments, a situation arose whereby (paradoxically perhaps), in the words of a recent historian of science: 'the mind-matter dualism inherent in the mechanical philosophy helped underwrite the Christian conception of the human soul'. 120 We have already alluded to the alleged boost to Bohme-type mysticism later given by the philosophy of Kant. Seventeenth-century authors, writes Jung, had inaugurated the downfall of alchemy 'by separating the mystica more and more clearly from the physica\ resulting in a loss of expression of psychic experience which he sees as having had profound consequences for 'the spiritual development of Europe'. 121 Jung speaks of an area where physics touches on the 'untreadable' and psychology on 'impenetrable darkness'; many of the ideas of alchemy and allied traditions of thought are

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bound to resurface: the identity of opposites, for example, 'is a characteristic feature of every psychic event in the unconscious state'. 122 Schelling, commenting that mystical teaching had gone hand in hand with scholasticism up to the Reformation, following upon which a pinnacle was reached in Bohme, continues thus: Up to now Philosophy has been unable to achieve in a scientific way, convincing to reason, what these mystical teachings sought or claimed to achieve, indeed only in unscientific ways. For this very reason these teachings imply the necessity of a Positive Philosophy.123 By a 'Positive Philosophy', Schelling meant his own later brand of theosophy. Thus the second half of the eighteenth century saw, immediately before the commencement of the romantic movement proper, a revival of interest in a type of philosophy now epitomized by Saint-Martin. Masonry and theosophical sects brought these ideas to Russia, where the works of Pordage, too, enjoyed an unexpected flourish. The importance of both Saint-Martin and Pordage in connection with Odoyevsky has been dealt with at some length by Sakulin.124 Many of the works of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), mostly published under the pseudonym 'Le philosophe inconnu', certainly were well known to Odoyevsky - most importantly L 'homme de desiry of which he possessed a well-annotated copy. He would appear to have read Saint-Martin as early as the 1820s,125 although his main interest in him is seen as belonging to the 1830s. As late as 1847, Odoyevsky's interest was rekindled by a chance to examine the originals in Lausanne of a body of Saint-Martin's correspondence, copies of which had been collected by A. I. Turgenev; plans to publish this correspondence, with an introduction to be written either by Schelling, or by Odoyevsky himself, did not reach fruition. Saint-Martin was a pupil of the Portuguese mystic, Don Martinez de Pasqualis126 (the latter's followers, known as 'Martinistes', were subsequently confused with those of Saint-Martin, indeed by no less a personage than Schelling himself- see below); he was also influenced by Swedenborg and, in particular, Bohme. To Saint-Martin, man's soul was the thought of God; he too followed a three-world system: the physical world was a symbol of the world of spirits, which was in itself a symbol of the divine world. All existence was an uninterrupted row of mirrors, reflecting the light of the 'upper principle'; man was at the

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summit of the ladder of creation and, having fallen, had brought nature with him. 'Artificial clothing' was now the lot of man, as opposed to the original pre-Fall 'spiritual clothing': the immaterial body had been replaced by worldy flesh, needing material food and artificial clothing. As Bohme had been obsessed with fire, light, the 'fire-wheel' and the centre, Saint-Martin was greatly preoccupied with light and harmony. 'Inner language' and the need to take up 'forgotten wisdom' were also of importance, as the natural way to the source of life had been lost. Communication with the world of spirits he held to be possible, but did not recommend it. An out-and-out idealist who saw, as might be expected, in earthly beauty a reflection of eternal divine beauty, SaintMartin did not question the existence of the spiritual world; instead he questioned the existence of matter. This world he saw as a transition to the invisible world; as material existence was not life, so, in his view, material destruction was not death. Saint-Martin believed that the moment will come when reborn man will again receive spiritual body, will regain the world of light and harmony, the mystical merging with God, to become Vhomme de desir (le nouvel homme, or Vhomme-esprit in un regnesabbatique). His thought is summed up by Sakulin, not surprisingly, as 'pure theosophical idealism'.127 The interest of a number of these concepts to Odoyevsky scarcely needs further explanation; Sakulin's study includes many illustrations of Odoyevsky's use of such ideas in his fictional works, while Odoyevsky himself later gave open acknowledgement of his use of Saint-Martin's thought. John Pordage (1607-81) is a figure on whom very little accessible material would appear to be available.128 Better known, apparently, in Europe than in his native Britain, Pordage's works achieved, via the Germanic tradition which perpetuated the name of Bohme, a certain vogue in masonic and mystical circles in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Russia. Again, Odoyevsky seems to have read Pordage as early as the 1820s, although the principal impact of such thinkers upon him is usually assigned to the 1830s; Odoyevsky's use of mysterious spirits named 'kardiads' and 'efirids' (or similar) in a draft for 'Bruno' and in other works of 1826-7 (including one story rejected by V. P. Titov on behalf of Moskovskiy vestnik) is ascribed by Sakulin to the influence of Pordage.129 He was also known to be holding on to a Pordage manuscript, which had been lent to him, in the mid 1840s.130 Pordage believed in the existence of 'two men': an 'outer' and an 'inner' man (possessing a mortal and immortal soul respectively). Particularly important in the thought of Pordage was the figure of Sophia, 'the eternal maid of divine wisdom', who could and would

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reveal this wisdom to the inner man (that is to Pordage himself), who represented the microcosm. A distinction was made between 'spirit' and 'soul', while outer man's 'reason' had been 'the child of his Fall'. The Fall, to Pordage, entailed a distortion of the senses, including that of language. 'Blind reason' does not allow men full knowledge of even visible phenomena - hence disagreement between people (and even the same man at different stages of his life); it is therefore pointless to argue over concepts or to persecute people for their thoughts. Man can be reborn, which involves getting through, with the help of Sophia, various 'gates' on the road to the state of'perfect perfection'. Once this is achieved, reborn man can again merge with the macrocosm. Pordage, it is alleged, did manage to reach this state: Sophia opened to Pordage his inner man and his eternal spirit was able to perceive the invisible; the divine secrets of the world were opened before him and he could relate how the universe was constructed with its diverse worlds.131 Pordage's universe included no less than seven worlds descending from the divine down to our world, inhabited by all sorts of'spirits'; he also postulated various gradations of matter, with the four 'eternal elements' existing in various stages of 'coagulation' on various levels and, in addition, three 'eternal principles': wax, mercury and salt. Angels were particularly favoured with adornments of brilliant clothes and precious stones. Once again, clear echoes of Pordage's ideas can be seen in certain of Odoyevsky's stories. In the view of Sakulin, the theosophical moralism of Saint-Martin was more in tune with Odoyevsky's strivings of the 1830s than was the elaborate theosophical cosmography of Pordage, but in any case Odoyevsky's preoccupations were too largely of this world for him ever to have accepted fully the rarefied subtleties of theosophy.132 The same no doubt goes for the ideas of the most prominent of theosophical thinkers, Emanuel Swedenborg, 'an ardent admirer' of whom Odoyevsky has also been claimed to be, and of whose thought traces can be found in certain of Odoyevsky's writings and stories.133 Inward-looking, decadent and obscurantist as this whole tradition, upon which Odoyevsky drew, may seem now in many ways to be, it did have, at various stages of its development, its positive and even radical aspects. Frances Yates has pointed out that an 'ethic of social utility and public service, and the use of learning and invention for the public

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good' pervade the Hermetic Utopias of Bruno and Campanella. This may have been very largely what Odoyevsky saw in Bruno and would have accorded with his own ideas throughout his career; at the same time, the degeneration of such ideals into Saint-Martin's concept of 'admiration' for a political system of theocratic monarchy tinged with philanthropy did certainly not go unheard by Odoyevsky.135 The modes of thinking, however, which had constantly maintained in the whole tradition discussed above were capable of revitalization, to fuel a new radical (at least in the early stages) movement known as romanticism, and retain a permanent significance. In the terms of twentieth-century psychology, Jung equates the alchemical 'soul' with his own conception of the 'unconscious'; Paracelsus (a figure of great interest to Jung) he sees as 'trying to grasp the ungraspable' and snatching at any symbolic hint offered by the subconscious in pursuit of what was not so much a reaching back into the past as a using of the old remnants 'to give new form to a renewed archetypal experience'.136 Odoyevsky, in what amounted to a wide-ranging investigation over many years into the roots of romantic thought, showed himself to be a 'seeker after truth': in the manner in which he illustrated the phrase in Russian Nights, in the spirit of the Lyubomudry (or the 'Society of the Lovers of Wisdom') and in the sense in which Paracelsus had employed the phrase 'lovers of wisdom' - as had many thinkers from the early Greek period onwards.137 Let us now attempt to summarize what we might suggest as three key areas of Odoyevsky's philosophical preoccupations over the quarter of a century from 1820 - the question of language, the concept of reason, and the general category of mysticism - and tentatively suggest a development towards a further branch of thought which he may have sporadically anticipated: existentialism. The question of the inadequacy of human language as a means of communication has been shown to be a consistent theme in Odoyevsky's writing, one which he treated, as we have seen, purely philosophically as well as in more general terms. 138 This can assume a concern of practical exasperation: In human language there is not a word which would fully expresss a thought, nor which would express it exactly... thought slithers under the caprice of word; the thinker thought he had said one thing, to the listener it comes out as something else. The confusion of Babel exists to this day. The thinker chooses the best word for his thought or tries to rivet a word to the meaning of his opinion with

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the threads of other words - the listener thinks that the thinker has changed his thoughts.139 At times a more lofty tenor is adopted: the return of man to 'the original instinctive state' by means of, say, the ecstatic state of the poet, necessitates images for this 'inexpressible state'; 'lacking language (for language is the presentiment of the epoch of reason), it utilizes an approximate language, i.e. symbols'.140 Occasionally the theme is expressed by extended metaphor (as by Faust in Russian Nights): We are all like people who have come to a huge library: someone reads one book, someone else another, a third looks only at the binding . . . they begin to talk, each speaks of his own book - how can they understand one another? Where should they start in order to understand one another? If we had all been reading one and the same book, a conversation would have been possible - each would have understood where to begin and what to discuss. To give you my book to read first is not possible - it is in forty volumes, printed in excruciatingly fine print! Reading it is an unbearable, inexpressible torture, its pages in disorder, ripped out in the torture of despair and, most annoying of all, the book is far from finished much of it has remained incomplete and enigmatic.... No! I cannot give you my book to read - you would throw it aside with impatience; let me begin with one of your books.141 The search for language, or means of expression, is thus both a cause and an effect of the artistic impulse and can therefore determine both form and content. This preoccupation with language, its inadequacies and its imagined antecedents, while one of the most striking themes of Odoyevsky's thought, is by no means original to him; what is unusual is the degree of stress which he places upon it.142 A concentration on the nature of language and its possible symbolic significance was a common feature of romanticism. Wackenroder thought words incapable of conveying the metaphysical intuition which art can communicate and the work of art to be a 'hieroglyph' for the exalted divine reality; Novalis too was concerned with the image of the hieroglyph and considered that 'language is really a small world in signs and sounds'. 143 Man, to Saint-Martin, had 'distorted' the 'inner language' (so that the 'priceless book' containing all past and future enlightenment in the space of ten pages can now be read only with great difficulty); language, according to Pordage, had also been dis-

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torted in the Fall. Swedenborg had been concerned with a 'primitive language of correspondence' and Bohme with his 'signatures' (the inner symbolic essence or internal properties of things, animals, trees and plants).145 Leibniz was interested in universal writing, 'infinitesimal calculus' and an all-purpose universal encyclopedia systematized into images or 'characters' to be used to solve all human problems.146 Further back in time, the cabbalists had written of'a celestial alphabet and physiognomy' ('figures and signs by means of which we may discover the most profound secrets and mysteries').147 Todorov, in his Theories of the Symbol, considers that symbols (which to him epitomize in a single word the romantic aesthetic) arose to convey the inexpressible, due to the inadequacy for the task of language.148 Thus the traditions earlier discussed (theosophical, Hermetic and cabbalistic) can be seen to have concerned themselves with questions of the quality and adequacy of language in a broadly comparable manner. Hand in hand with the Hermetic tradition, as Frances Yates has demonstrated, went the art of memory, and it is at the very roots of the mnemonic tradition that we should search for the origins of Odoyevsky's approach to language. The traditions of oral memory predate the period when writing had come into use; an artificial memory was seen in later times, therefore, with its antique Greek and Egyptian connections, 'as an "inner writing" of mysterious significance'; at the same time, it encouraged suspicion of the apparent power of language which, in a purely mnemonic tradition, induced (as had writing itself, as Socrates relates in Plato'a Phaedrus) merely 'the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom'.149 Inner wisdom was lost when external writing with letters was invented; all knowledge and learning, according to Plato, are an attempt to recollect the realities, 'the Ideas once seen by all souls of which earthly things are confused copies'. 150 This perception of the loss of wisdom and the inadequacy of normal expression to recapture or even describe it was to engender a powerful artistic impulse; the mnemotechnical processes contributed an immense potential for systematic image building.151 Odoyevsky's approach to language reflects an awareness of the antiquity and complexity of this tradition and provides an unusal Russian engagement, in the romantic manner, with a theme that was later to be central to Symbolism, futurism and, indeed, modernism in all its manifestations. Linked to the question of language by a number of thinkers discussed above is the concept of reason. Odoyevsky's attacks on the misplaced worship of reason in a number of his works of the 1830s

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contrast both with the tone of his more didactic 'instructional' works of the 1820s and with many statements in his later writings of the 1850s and 1860s (and occasionally much earlier ones). This may be partly attributable to the influence in the interim of Pordage and SaintMartin; if language was an inadequate distortion, reason in isolation was scarcely likely to furnish reliable answers. In any case, systems supposedly built on reason seemed to promise only disaster. Other qualities of thought were required if real progress was to be made in human affairs. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that Odoyevsky had ever been against reason per se, or denied it any role. Reason on its own would degenerate into a harmful pseudorationalism, but a balance between reason and intuition is another matter, as we have seen from Odoyevsky's 'Science of Instinct'.152 This is fully in accordance with a Schellingian view of reason. Kireyevsky, in his essay 'The Ninteenth Century', stressed the role of reason and historicity in such a philosophy.153 Schelling himself held that reason cannot stand alone as a principle of philosophy: 'the value of rationalism is negative and needs to be supplemented by a positive philosophy' (this fact rendered, for example, the thought of Hegel 'negative'); nevertheless, reason is an essential, even if feeling and spirit have to be united with understanding before fulfilment, even of reason itself, is possible.154 Reason has one vital function, at least: all personality rests on a dark foundation which must, to be sure, also be the foundation of knowledge. But only reason can bring forth what is contained in these depths hidden and merely potential, and elevate it to actuality.155 This property of reason, however, was appropriated rather more by Dostoyevsky than by Odoyevsky. Rational arguments were used by Odoyevsky, even in 1838, in his discussions of spiritual phenomena. The Letters to Countess Ye. P. R.. .y (Rostopchina) set out to provide an explanation of 'apparitions, superstitious fears, sensual deceptions, magic, cabbalism, alchemy and other mysterious sciences'; Odoyevsky's 'system' is 'to seek the reasons for visions and apparitions firstly in ourselves and secondly in the objects surrounding us'. 156 Much has already been explained, and more will become explicable - though not everything.157 References to cabbalistic, Hermetic and alchemical thinkers (most of those mentioned above and many others) abound in Odoyevsky's writings. A distinction has to be made, however, between Odoyevsky's interest in

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such matters (his collection of such writings and even his indulgence in strange-seeming scientific activities are well attested), his use of such ideas and motifs in his fictional works and his actual beliefs. In the Letters to Countess Ye. P. R. . . y he distinguishes between his 'friend' (meaning his nom de plume, Gomozeyko) and himself as author of the Letters and purveyor of advice to Countess Rostopchina. The former had used the notebooks amassed from the reading of alchemical thinkers 'with a different intention', to persuade of their absolute truth; Odoyevsky himself wanted 'to explain all these awful phenomena and bring them under the general laws of nature'. 158 Likewise, Odoyevsky studied, absorbed and utilized the ideas of the theosophical school; however, the appearance of strange spirits in a number of Odoyevsky's works, and demons in Princess Mimi's cellar, does not necessarily mean that Odoyevsky really subscribed to such beliefs.159 According to Jung, even Paracelsus was aware that such creatures as nymphs were really 'projections', 'creatures of the imagination'; the alchemical thinker assumes 'an identity between the behaviour of matter and the events in his own psyche', on the basis of 'what is within is also without'.160 Jung traces the idea of a spherical world-soul via Plato's Timaeus to the Neopythagoreans and Anaxagoras; in any event, cosmogonic principles such as the 'demiurge', 'cosmic matter' and Pythagoras's 'the One' are archetypal images which 'belong to humanity at large and can crop up autochthonously. . . only needing favourable circumstances for their reappearance' - most suitably when 'a particular view of the world is collapsing'.161 In any case, Odoyevsky was more concerned with the psychological potential of modes of thought and their artistic application than in the intrinsic worth of what he recognized as eccentric beliefs. A note written by Odoyevsky in the 1840s would seem to make this plain enough: Bohme, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin were, in relation to their time, what Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue and others are now: talent, imagination, some sort of an unconscious striving, hints seductive to man, inexplicit concepts, beyond which is revealed even an apparently deep and [illegible] love for people - and beyond that phantasmagoria.] 62 If Odoyevsky ever tried to convince himself of the spiritual viability of such beliefs, he did not, it would seem, succeed; in the view of Georgiy Florovsky, Odoyevsky's mysticism 'did not open to him a genuine

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religious outlet', but merely led to 'speculations' and 'sentimental naturalism'.163 The evidence of certain of Odoyevsky's works, both published fiction and unpublished notes, suggest that, rather than embrace any system of theosophy or, for that matter, of pessimistic Manichaean dualism, he was closer to the emergent existentialist tendency which had begun to develop both before and within romanticism.164 Apart from the proto-existentialist precursors of Kierkegaard, such as Pascal and J. G. Hamann, certain aspects of romantic thought surely approached existentialism, at least in its sense of 'asserting the complete autonomy and responsibility of the individual'.165 Schelling wrote: 'He who would place himself at the point of departure of truly free philosophy must leave even God', referring to he 'who has seen all else vanish and beheld himself alone with the Infinite - a tremendous step which Plato compared to death'. 166 An element of alienation comes into play with Schelling's notion of the world (or the universe) as 'God's irony', the finite phenomenal world as man's 'deception'; Jung reminds us that, in the alchemical way of thinking, 'what the soul imagines happens only in the mind . . . , but what God imagines happens in reality'.167 Apart from his stories, such as The Live Corpse, which seem to display existentialist preoccupations, Odoyevsky's notebooks also contain musings in that spirit: An incomprehensible feeling awakens in us on the appearance of night, a church, the clouds which border limitless space, the sea. Investigating this feeling, I discovered it to be no other than a desire for death, the desire to rid oneself of everything earthly - does it last long, this feeling? Soon inexorable, dry, fruitless work makes its attack - farewell, Poetry of death, the prose of life begins. I treat my sick soul as others treat a sick body - with strbng movement; but the body still remains sick. . . this life is sad and hard - oh, to get away from it, to fly away! No good will ever escape punishment.16 The view of the interdependence of good and evil expressed in the last statement (an echo of similar remarks elsewhere in Odoyevsky), which is characteristic of romantic thought and of the whole philosophical tradition which we have been discussing, may be seen to stem from an awareness of tragic elements in human existence. In the view of John

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Macquarrie, a recent historian of existentialist thought, tragedy is already implicit when 'human existence is set against the being of the inanimate world': T h e contrast between these two modes of being may be conceived so sharply that existentialism comes near to assuming the shape of a dualism.'169 Jung pitches a similar conclusion in a lower key, considering good and evil to be essentially associated with the manner in which actions are carried out rather than absolute principles: . . . good and evil are ultimately nothing but extensions and abstractions of doing, and both belong to the chiaroscuro of life. In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good.170 The contrast between Schelling's reputation in Germany and his significance for Russian culture has frequently been pointed out.171 Nevertheless, the links, direct and indirect, between Schelling, his thought and many of the representatives of the Russian educated nobility and emergent intelligentsia over the first half of the nineteenth century would be difficult to exaggerate. Quite apart from his influence on Russian thinkers, singly and in groups, through his writings and the teaching of Russian academics, many individuals visited him over the years in Germany - among them Chaadayev, the Kireyevsky brothers, Rozhalin, Pogodin, Titov, Shevyryov, MeFgunov and Khomyakov; many of these were taken to see Schelling by the poet -diplomat, F. I. Tyutchev.172 Among the personalities who heard Schelling lecture, or met him, in Berlin in the early 1840s were said to be the young Friedrich Engels, the old Alexander Humboldt, Kierkegaard, August Cieszkowski, Bakunin and Ferdinand Lassalle.173 To all these names may be added that of Vladimir Odoyevsky, who visited Schelling in Berlin in 1842 (and again in 1847). It is therefore appropriate that we should conclude this section with a brief account of their meeting, based on Odoyevsky's notes of the occasion. Odoyevsky's travel notes record, under 26 June 1842: 'I was at Schelling's'.174 The conversation, which was held in a mixture of German and French, began, it seems, with both Odoyevsky and Schelling regretting the non-appearance to date of Schelling's (new Tositive') philosophy - not least in order to combat the harmful influence of Hegelian ideas, spreading both in Germany and Russia.

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When the discussion turned to Saint-Martin, Schelling, after admitting a similarity with some of his own ideas, gave the following assessment: 'There is much that is fine and deep but I think that much in him is not original, but borrowed.'175 At this point, Schelling confused the 'Martinistes' with followers of Saint-Martin, was corrected by Odoyevsky, to whom he expressed gratitude for clearing up what had long been a misapprehension. They next discussed Baader (who had died the previous year); Schelling considered Baader to have had 'a few original thoughts' which tended to become repetitive, and proceeded to relate something of Baader's contacts with Russia, which had brought him an 'irregular' pension from Alexander I and an order to turn back at Riga when he had tried to visit Russia. The next day they discussed religion and Odoyevsky was left with the impression that, but for his age, Schelling would have gone over to Orthodoxy. On the question of 'magnetism', Schelling expressed the view that such a phenomenon could not be defined until such time as we know what dreams are (or, 'to put it better, where we go in our sleep, for we go somewhere, whence we bring back fresh strength'). Odoyevsky also attended Schelling's lectures (at which attendance had dropped in a year from 350 to 60); Schelling uttered his words slowly and deliberately, 'unlike in normal conversation... as though dictating', referring to Hegel never by name, merely alluding 'with particular stress to eine Pseudophilosophie\ Despite his ponderous public delivery, Schelling was capable of the occasional blunder: a suggestion that Jacob Bohme had borrowed much from Spinoza provided welcome ammunition for his Hegelian opponents, as did, provoking this time anger rather than mirth, his statement that 'a positive fact defined with precision is more important than the whole philosophy of Hegel'; the wits of Berlin, however, Odoyevsky adds, made fun of both Schellingians and Hegelians. Although Schelling lived on until 1854, his Philosophy of Revelation and Philosophy of Mythology were published only posthumously; it is hard to escape the impression from Odoyevsky's notes that, by 1842, he had long outlived his reputation - a reputation which may, indeed, only now be beginning to recover. Much later, in the 1860s, in his more positivistic frame of mind, Odoyevsky scribbled the following sketch of the development of philosophy: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel - you will find in Plato and Aristotle. Another arrangement of concepts, other expressions, but the inter-

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pretation of all phenomena by the laws of an absolute spirit did not advance. To Schelling alone belongs the honour of introducing positive, natural knowledge into philosophy; Hegel availed himself of this innovation; his explorations of history, physics and theory of aesthetics make a collection of fine researches, but one which could have existed even without an absolute theory and perhaps gained from that in clarity.176

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Odoyevsky and the Slavophiles

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, many commentators on Odoyevsky's thought (particularly, but by no means solely, in Western studies of Russian thought) have tended to assign a place to Odoyevsky on the basis of a very incomplete study. By picking on isolated statements here and there, divorced from his career or even his thought as a whole, he can quite easily be consigned to the 'conservative' or even the 'Slavophile' camp without further explanation. Such verdicts are not so much completely wrong as incomplete and, therefore, misleading. The Polish philosophical historian Andrzej Walicki, for example, quite justifiably sees the Lyubomudry as forebears of the Slavophile movement, but places undue emphasis (without the detailed philosophical arguments supplied by Kamensky) on Odoyevsky as a 'conservative-romantic' spokesman, whose thought stemmed from his over-rosy view of the Russian upper classes; his critique of capitalism in Russian Nights is seen solely as emanating from 'a romantic and conservative point of view', with no attention paid to the humanistic side of Odoyevsky, which would surely have been apparent from a consideration of his career as a whole.177 It seems surprising that Walicki, with his professed Weltanschauung approach, should provide a less balanced account in the case of Odoyevsky than is to be found in the work of V. V. Zenkovsky, who regards philosophy as a subjective attempt at 'rational' analysis of 'spiritual life'.178 Apart from recognizing Odoyevsky's 'genuine humanism', Zenkovsky is surely on firmer ground in implying that Odoyevsky's expressed desire in Mnemozina, of'setting a limit to our partiality for the French theorists', was as much a reaction to the Gallomania in Russian artistic life of the 1820s and 1830s as an anticipation of Slavophilism than is Walicki in seeing in Odoyevsky 'a European who sighed for Europe's past and idealized the universal Christian values that were extolled by the troubadours and served as a justification of the crusades'.179

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V. A. Riasanovsky stressed Odoyevsky's importance as the founder of'the idea of Russia's messianic mission' and considers that, amid the melange of elements of pre-Petrine and post-Petrine development which constitute Russian culture, Odoyevsky stood, back in the 1820s -1840s, 'on the right track'.180 N. V. Riasanovsky likewise sees Odoyevsky as 'the first Russian to give a critical philosophical appraisal of Russian culture and to formulate on this basis the doctrine of Russian Messiahship [sic]'.181 According to Alexandre Koyre, Odoyevsky, 'as from 1834, expressed himself in terms which would not have been disavowed by the most ardent of the Slavophiles', while S. A. Levitsky credits Odoyevsky with being the first to formulate the ideas 'lying at the basis of Slavophile messianism' and to express the thought of 'the Russian idea as a synthetic reconciliation of all ideas', later propaged by Dostoyevsky: he was, therefore, 'the main predecessor of Slavophilism, or, if you like, "a Slavophile before Slavophilism"'.182 Walicki, as we have noted, also sees the Lyubomudry (and particularly Odoyevsky) as 'the direct precursors of the Slavophiles'; he does, however, usefully remind us of the differences between Slavophilism and the ideology of Official Nationality ('Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality', seen by Walicki as 'a conscious antithesis of the revolutionary device of "liberty, equality and fraternity"') which, he says, 'were underestimated by contemporaries', and aptly recalls Berdyaev's distinction between 'missionism' and 'messianism'.183 Chizhevsky is scarcely overstating the case when he maintains that in later life Odoyevsky 'became a confirmed enemy of the "Slavophiles", whose overestimation of "old Russia" he found quite misguided'; like Odoyevsky, he says, the 'Dostoyevsky circle' (or pochvenniki) later believed that 'the Russian idea' ought to be a 'panhuman idea' - that is 'the synthesis of the ideas advanced by the peoples of Europe'. 184 Claude Backvis accords Odoyevsky the ideologue a place in Russian thought 'of the very first importance', while James Billington considers the postulated demise of the West and the claim that 'the nineteenth century belongs to Russia' to be 'the most remarkable and original historical prophecy of the age'. 185 A more authoritatively balanced view is provided by the leading Western scholar of the Slavophile movement, Peter K. Christoff, who sees 'proto-Slavophile ideas' in Russian Nights, but notes the differences between Odoyevsky and the Slavophiles (on narodnost\ over Odoyevsky's 'rather indefinite ideological position in the middle forties', and on religion) and traces the 'decaying' West idea through

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earlier works by Khomyakov and Kireyevsky to its supposed origin in Western romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century; he surmises, very reasonably, as follows: Odoevskij's influence should be sought in his many-sided intellectual, artistic and musical career, but primarily in his selfassigned task as a recorder of ideas during his early life. Consequendy one can find in his works views which he recorded and did not necessarily espouse, or to which he subscribed during only one of the several stages of his intellectual-ideological development, a phenomenon not at all uncommon among the men of the thirties and forties. The fact that some of Russia's greatest writers looked into the storehouse of ideas which Odoevskij used, and to which he in turn contributed, is testimony to the richness of Russia's intellectual life during the period under discussion.186 Elsewhere, Christoff also approaches some recent strands of Soviet scholarship in broadening a definition of the Decembrist movement to include the Lyubomudry, Vyazemsky and others. 187 In Russian criticism of Odoyevsky, Belinsky began a tradition of stressing Odoyevsky's alleged proximity to the Slavophiles; among notable critics to continue this emphasis were Skabichevsky, Ivanov-Razumnik, AykhenvaPd and Zhirmunsky.188 Post-war Soviet criticism has not tended to pursue this line. Earlier commentators who took a different view included Sumtsov, Boborykin, von Shteyn and Rozanov, while Gippius considered Odoyevsky's Slavophilism to be (like his romanticism) 'built on sand'. 189 Sakulin considered it significant that the Slavophiles themselves remained silent on Russian Nights.190

The most useful contribution to date on the question of Odoyevsky and the Slavophiles is that made in 1970 by B. F. Yegorov and M. I. Medovoy; pointing out the lack of a full study of this problem, and finding Sakulin somewhat evasive in this respect, these authors approach the question through a consideration of hitherto unpublished correspondence between Odoyevsky and Khomyakov, dating from 1845. 191 A similar examination of Odoyevsky's relations with Shevyryov and Kireyevsky, so far not fully undertaken, would of course fill in the picture still further, in that these two figures represented direct living links between the Lyubomudry and Slavophilism.192 Odoyevsky and Khomyakov knew each other probably from about 1820 and Venevitinov was a close friend of both; they became particu-

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larly friendly in St Petersburg in the period from late 1826 until 1828, when Khomyakov left for the war with Turkey. As Khomyakov settled in Moscow from 1830, they subsequently seldom met and went their separate ideological ways: Khomyakov from the mid 1830s becoming 'one of the war-lords of incipient Slavophile teaching', while Odoyevsky 'essentially remained a supporter of "Europeanism"'.193 Relations between Odoyevsky and the ever more conservative Moscow group of literati, who had collaborated closely on publishing ventures throughout the 1820s, deteriorated. This was particularly the case as a result of Odoyevsky's association with Belinsky and Krayevsky; this was disliked from the outset and resentment intensified when in 1842 Odoyevsky refused to break with his colleagues on Otechestvennyye zapiski following an attack on Shevyryov made by Belinsky. However, Odoyevsky was greeted affectionately by Khomyakov when he visited Moscow in May of that year: As of old, he wants the very freshest oysters and the most rotten cheese, i.e. the industrial and material present age and the ancient knowledge of Alchemy and the Kabbala.194 In 1843, though, from pre-publication knowledge of Russian Nights, Khomyakov was ready to claim Odoyevsky's Faust as a 'Russo-Slav'.195 In 1844 Russian Nights was published and, from Belinsky's review on, commentators frequently noted the 'Slavophile character' of Odoyevsky's conclusions. Nevertheless, as Yegorov and Medovoy point out: . . . his work, entwined by numerous threads with the questing of the Russian intelligentsia, preserved an unrepeatedly individual countenance. The writer's links with socio-literary life were never simple or straight-forward and frequently assumed . . . a contradictory character.196 Moreover, Odoyevsky's differences with the Slavophiles in the 1840s were not confined to their respective evaluations of Peter the Great and Russian Orthodoxy, but extended to basic conceptions of contemporary problems and attitudes to science and education. Passages and references in Odoyevsky's notebooks and diaries of the 1850s and 1860s make clear his distance from, and indeed hostility to, the Slavophiles in that period, but his basic rejection of most of their ideas

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as early as 1845 can be seen in his letter to Khomyakov of 20 August of that year: The division into foreign Russians and Russian Russians is an absurdity; we are all Russians, we all love Russia, both by inner feeling and because also joined to her is our whole external life, which is also of some account. The whole difference is that some are seeking to build their Russian life on elements of some antediluvian Rus' which have still be to be revealed, and others according to the results which have been achieved up to the present time. Hence the quietism of the former, indistinguishable from submersion in the past, and the action of the latter, perhaps not always correct, but action all the same.197 Odoyevsky claims that only death prevented Peter I from bringing Protestantism to Russia (a prospect which apparently fails to appal him), and he compares Khomyakov's Slavophile preoccupation with the Huns and pre-Slavic history with his own interests in alchemy: the inference being that both are ultimately non-serious sidelines. His educational writings, which he had sent in vain to Khomyakov in hope of approval, arise out of the spirit of the last page of Russian Nights. However, the appreciation of this work among the Russian intelligentsia was not exactly as he might have anticipated: in the mid 1840s Odoyevsky found himself caught in the crossfire between the Moscow Slavophiles, to whom he was a 'European', and the Petersburg Westernizers, to whom he was a medieval mystic. Odoyevsky's relations with the Slavophiles never looked like recovering, although he remained on civil terms with most of them individually. 'He went his own way and got in with various dishonourables', said Khomyakov of him. 198 Turning his back on the Slavophiles in the mid 1840s, Odoyevsky effectively put himself outside all literary groupings. The Slavophiles, for their part, realized the direct link between Odoyevsky's theoretical propositions and his practical activities - neither of which were in accordance with Slavophile doctrine. Odoyevsky was angered by K. S. Aksakov's 1847 criticism of his story The Little Orphan (Sirotinka) for alleged condescending treatment of the narod, and even more so when in 1859 Aksakov lampooned Odoyevsky's publiction Rural Reader (SeVskoye chteniye)}99 Odoyevsky made no reply to the first sally and was prevented from replying to the second by the summary closure of the journal concerned (Parus, 'The Sail') for criticism of the forthcoming

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reforms. However, he did vent his spleen upon Khomyakov, in a letter of January 1859, although admitting his vulnerability as 'a public person' who 'is something of the order of a public wench, and therefore must be ready for any treatment'. 200 It comes, then, as no great surprise that in a diary entry of 1867 Odoyevsky should welcome Samarin's introduction to Khomyakov's theology as 'superb' in its expression of Khomyakov's views, but that these should be views which 'incidentally, I never shared and cannot now share'. 201 However, Yegorov and Medovoy are surely correct to stress Odoyevsky's striving, in Russian Nights, 'to embrace and unite harmoniously and synthetically' the main philosophical currents of the time, while remaining as though 'above the fray' of the more extreme polemics; hence Odoyevsky's works were susceptible to varied interpretations by opposed groupings, each of whom could hope to count on Odoyevsky's continued evolution in their own direction.202 In this way, Faust of Russian Nights has almost invariably been seen as the author's alter ego, but this may be too simplistic and obvious a reading: 'creating his drama of ideas, V. F. Odoyevsky raised himself higher than his protagonist, opening the possibility of transition to anew view of man and nature'. 203 It would be appropriate, perhaps, to give the last word on Odoyevsky and Khomyakov to M. P. Pogodin, a close associate at various stages of his life of both men - in his youth virtually a member of the Lyubomudry, later on a spokesman for what has come to be thought of as the 'official' wing of the Slavophiles. In a late polemical article of 1873, recently exhumed following long neglect, Pogodin refers to the former of his old colleagues as follows: Odoyevsky, while remaining the purest of Westerners in the best meaning of the word, devoted himself on his return to Moscow to the study of national, popular and church music, and developed this aspect of nationality (narodnost').204 Pogodin, in his efforts to refute what he considers to be a distortion of the Slavophile movement by A. N. Pypin, is anxious to oppose crude categorizations. Certain figures generally thought of as 'Westernizers' (such as, we may presume, Odoyevsky) did display or acquire albeit limited Slavophile characteristics. More importantly, leading figures, indeed the initiators, of the Slavophile movement (Ivan Kireyevsky, Shevyryov and Khomyakov) were extremely well versed in Western culture:

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Khomyakov was as much a Westerner, in the true sense of the word, though naturally in his own particular way, as a Slavophile. His was a mind that could encompass everything.205 Pogodin thus makes a certain equation between Odoyevsky and Khomyakov, approaching them from opposite sides, but the wording as applied to Khomyakov requires a greater degree of qualification. That such an equation could have been made at all is not, however, in any way surprising. Odoyevsky, Koshelev and Ivan Kireyevsky were members of the Lyubomudry; Pogodin and Shevyryov had been adherents of the Raich circle and, with Khomyakov, were on the fringe of the Lyubomudry. The Lyubomudry, indeed, can be seen as having spawned, directly or indirectly, the three main subsequent offshoots of Russian thought: through the Stankevich circle in Moscow, Schellingianism and Hegelianism bred the Westernizing tendency; Shevyryov has generally been considered to have recast Lyubomudry ideas in the spirit of 'official nationality';206 Kireyevsky and Koshelev metamorphosed into mainstream Slavophiles. In addition, Lyubomudry ideas gave rise to Chaadayev's Philosophical Letters}01 Interconnections between these tendencies persisted, as the case of Odoyevsky shows; for him, as Walicki has pointed out, Russia and Western Europe were not two opposing poles. 208 The author of a recent Soviet monograph on Schelling, A. Gulyga, refers thus to the appeal for brotherhood between East and West at the end of Russian Nights (R.N. (1975) p. 182 - the recognition of a role for Slavdom in such a process being ascribed by Odoyevsky to Schelling, among other thinkers): Odoyevsky anticipated Slavophilism (he understood this and was proud of it), but he also anticipated its eclipse, its synthesis with Westernism, which was accomplished in Dostoyevsky's remarkable Pushkin speech.209

CHAPTER THREE

The Musician But music is the daughter of mathematics, sharing with it the world of the infinite. V. F. Odoyevsky, 1866 I

T h e Musical Dimension

The name of V. F. Odoyevsky may just about be known to the English student of Russian music. The New Grove carries a 400-word entry on Odoyevsky, while Alfred Swan's book on Russian music even includes a photograph of him.1 Passing references occur in general works and in studies of certain composers with whom Odoyevsky had contacts, such as Glinka, Tchaikovsky and John Field. His name is also to be found in the correspondence of Hector Berlioz and in the autobiography of Richard Wagner. However, the English-speaking reader is unlikely to be aware either of the extent of Odoyevsky's involvement in Russian musical life over a period of nearly half a century, or of his contribution to the history of Russian music, both as its first serious critic and as a leading researcher into Russian folk-song and church music. A considerable amount of work has been done on Odoyevsky's musical activities by Soviet musicologists, who have tended to concentrate on Odoyevsky's role as a music critic and on his championing of the efforts of native Russian composers. An extensive edition of his articles on music was published in 1956, under the editorship of Grigoriy Bernandt.2 Further details of his involvement in musical life can be gleaned from the writings of various nineteenth-century memoirists. A recent Soviet history of Russian music refers to Odoyevsky's circle as 'the visible centre of the literary-musical life of St Petersburg in the 1830s', and dubs Odoyevsky 'the founder of scholarly musical studies in Russia' and 'the first outstanding Russian musicologist', using his criticism as the main yardstick of the success of the most important Russian musical compositions of the period.3 A notable earlier Russian musical historian, B. V. Asaf ev, remarked that

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'having studied music thoroughly [Odoyevsky] could talk of it in the positive terms of the professional critic and analytic explorer'.4 Between 1822 and 1869 Odoyevsky published some 140 items concerned with music: reviews of concerts, articles, encyclopedia entries, musical grammars and scholarly essays.5 In addition, many fragments of musical writings and unfinished studies remain among Odoyevsky's papers; discussions of music and musical themes frequently invaded his philosophical and literary writings; furthermore, almost throughout his life, Odoyevsky composed music. Most of Odoyevsky's musical writings were published under a huge variety of pseudonyms: ranging from an assortment of initials (some recognizable and some not), to pedestrian anonymity in such designations as 'A Lover of Music' and 'Unbiased', to more original or inventive appellations such as 'A. Ekonomichesky', 'Karl Bitterman' (of which more below) and Tlakun Goryunov, retired titular councillor'. The writings themselves review concerts, recitals and operas, discuss the merits of a large variety of Russian and European composers, performers and conductors, and report and encourage the rise of Russian music, frequently paying studious attention to its roots. Half of Odoyevsky's published output on music was written in the 1830s: over fifty articles appearing in the years 1837-9; most of these were concert reviews published in The Literary Supplement to Russkiy invalid {The Russian Veteran, during 1837), the rival Severnaya pchela {The Northern Bee, during 1838) and then Sankt Peterburgskiye vedomosti {Petersburg Recorder, 1839). Odoyevsky had first acquired a reputation as a music critic with Moskovskiy telegrafin 1825. In the last six years of his life he published some thirty-five musical items, many of them in Moskovskiye vedomosti or its Sunday supplement. Between these peaks came periods of total or relative publishing inactivity: between 1825 and 1829 (the aftermath of the Decembrist revolt and the years of self-establishment in government service and St Petersburg society) Odoyevsky published not one musical article and from 1846 to 1856 (years of hectic involvement in the Society for Visiting the Poor of St Petersburg) only four. Rather than attempt any overall analysis of Odoyevsky's musical criticism as such (which would, in any case, overstep the boundaries of authorial competence), we shall look briefly at the early musical development and the first years of Odoyevsky's career as a music critic, and then turn to his underlying ideas on music and their reflection in his literary work. We shall then concentrate on Odoyevsky's views on and relations with the leading Russian and Western composers of his

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day, taking in briefly his idolization of the great composers of the past and his researches into the origins of Russian music. II

Odoyevsky's Early Musical Career

Odoyevsky's love for music, there is no doubt, goes back to his earliest childhood. He told Afanasiy Fet: 'I can remember my first teachers of grammar, but who taught me musical notes I really don't know. As far back as I can remember I was able to read music.'6 While at the Moscow University Pansion for Nobility, Odoyevsky acquired a reputation as a gifted composer and pianist. His instructor there was the Moscow musician and collector of folk melodies, D. I. Shprevits [Shprevich], who first introduced him to the works of Bach - from then on Odoyevsky's favourite composer.7 Yekaterina L'vova's memoirs (written in 1873 and unpublished) have this to say of Odoyevsky at that time (about 1819-20): We both [i.e. she and her sister] saw in Vladimir some sort of an artist-marvel, because he then already played on the piano with an amazing quickness and dexterity the most difficult music, Bach fugues among other things, and himself composed, dedicating to my sister a waltz of his composition.8 Of a later period, Wilhelm von Lenz (author of important studies of Beethoven) was to write: '[he] was a scholarly musician and considerably surpassed me in his playing. Bach's music was to him like his own. He played Field's harmony superbly, sight-reading the music.'9 Others too have testified to Odoyevsky's ability as a pianist. Odoyevsky always took his music very seriously. At the age of fifteen he was the author of a quintet (for piano, violin, viola, cello and double-bass) which was twice successfully performed at public concerts of the Pansion. In his Pansion days he composed a number of other short pieces, including an 'Andante-fantasia' for violin and piano and a polonaise. He performed his own works and Field's first piano concerto at Pansion concerts, receiving favourable notices in Vestnik Yevropy (Herald of Europe).10 John Field, the Irish composer who had settled in Russia in 1802, moved from Petersburg to Moscow in 1821 and was still at the height of his fame. Pushkin is known to have graced one of his performances

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during the 1819-20 Petersburg season and in 1817 the thirteenyear-old Glinka had come to Field as a pupil; Glinka was only able to take three lessons, but they made a lasting impression on him.11 O. Levasheva goes so far as to list Odoyevsky as a pupil of Field's, while Bernandt considers it 'quite possible' that this may have been the case.12 It has also been claimed that Odoyevsky studied theory of composition with Johan-Heinrich Miller (Muller), the 'celebrated contrapuntalist' whom Glinka failed to meet but with whom Field himself may have studied, as may Griboyedov.13 Whatever personal contact or tuition Odoyevsky may or may not have had with Field (or Miller), it is clear that Field was instrumental in Odoyevsky's musical formation. Odoyevsky always rated the art of Field highly and his own early compositions appear to show this. 14 Odoyevsky composed a variety of types of music throughout his life, including instrumental pieces, romances, vaudeville, organ music, settings of Krylov fables, settings of folk-songs and contrapuntal exercises for voices. Many of his later works were deliberate imitations of the style of Bach. Many contemporaries thought reasonably highly of Odoyevsky's musical works. No less a commentator than Tchaikovsky found some of them to be of considerable technical interest, a view shared by Anton Rubinstein, while Balakirev even regarded Odoyevsky as 'an important compositional talent'.15 Apart from his Pansion performances, Odoyevsky began to contribute musical articles to Vestnik Yevropy from 1822, and in January 1825 switched his allegiance to Polevoy's new Moskovskiy telegraf, taking charge of the musical section.16 He soon became well known in the musical circles of Moscow, and a regular visitor at the musical evenings of the Venevitinovs and the Griboyedovs. In his musical criticism he took up the cudgels on two fronts. His first concern, which retained a prime importance in his writing over the next five decades, was to promote the music of Russian composers (particularly, at this early stage, Verstovsky, but also Alyab'ev and Viel'gorsky). He was the first critic to promote a Russian musical art, and in so doing, thanks to his professional standard of technical knowledge, revealed the ignorance and prejudice of musical reviewers of the day. Russian music, even in the early 1820s, was, he argued, no worse than, for example, French comic opera. Secondly, Odoyevsky stood for the better education of Russian audiences and, consistent both with this aim and with that of promoting native composers, joined issue in the polemic between 'the Mozartists and Rossiniists'. Odoyevsky stood strongly against what he

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regarded as the overestimation of Rossini, a composer for whom he had some sympathy (in 1836 he arranged music from Rossini's Otello for a theatrical charity show17), but for whose imitators and the current 'Rossini cult' he had none. 18 This brought him into conflict with Bulgarin and Severnaya pchela, with whom a more erudite brand of musical criticism could never be popular, at the same time as he was involved in similar polemics (with the same opponents) over the literary almanac, Mnemozina. Indeed, the two fronts of this war of words with Bulgarin (which was to last, on and off, until Bulgarin's death in 1859) were not unconnected; each of the four issues of Mnemozina had a musical appendix, which in each case took the form of the publication of a song by a Russian composer. In Mnemozina no. 3 a composition of Odoyevsky's was featured: a setting of the Tatar song from Pushkin's Bakchisarayskiy fontan {The Fountain ofBakchisaray). In 1826 Odoyevsky entered government service, married and moved to St Petersburg. His musical publications ceased for three years. Through his literary and publicistic activity of the first half of the 1820s Odoyevsky had become heavily involved in the cultural and aesthetic debates of the day. This was soon to be the case again in the 1830s. Music was scarcely less an area for irascible argument than literature, the personalities involved were frequently the same and the same problems of press control and censorship applied. The 'progressive versus Philistine' literary clashes between Odoyevsky and Bulgarin were thus re-enacted over and again in the arena of music, leading eventually to the realms of farce and mystification. Odoyevsky wrote occasional musical reviews from 1829 for Bulgarin's paper, Severnaya pchela; this he would have done partly for financial reasons but mainly to obtain the largest available readership for his musical views (he even placed the occasional literary work with the organs of the controlling triumvirate of Bulgarin, Senkovsky and Grech). Bulgarin, for his part, tolerated Odoyevsky as a contributor while it suited him to do so: Odoyevsky was the best available music critic, he generally contributed under pseudonyms, and in any case Bulgarin was able to exploit the toleration extended to such a contributor in order to effect a 'non-party' veneer to his editorial establishment.19 This arrangement lasted until a major issue of cultural disagreement came along, in the form of Glinka's first opera, Ivan Susanin, in December 1836. The proponents of'Official Nationality' distrusted any genuine national talent and Bulgarin's tastes lay in any case with Western light operetta. Odoyevsky's enthusiastic championing of Glinka's breakthrough in terms of the first real

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Russian national opera was too much for Bulgarin. He stopped publication of Odoyevsky's articles and himself entered the lists, undaunted by an ignorance in matters musical which exceeded even the dubiety of his expertise in other fields. Taking strong exception to Odoyevsky's view that 'a new era - the era of Russian music' had opened, Bulgarin retorted that 'in our view . . . [in music] it is impossible to open anything new'. 20 Following this turn of events, Odoyevsky's defence of Glinka was forced to continue in the rival, more liberal, Literary Supplement to Russkiy invalid. However, a year later Odoyevsky was back on the pages of Severnaya pchelay publishing concert and opera reviews under the name of Karl Bitterman (to the dismay of some of his friends who were in the know). Again financial reasons probably played a part, but principally, it seems, Odoyevsky agreed to contribute again in sympathy with Polevoy, who had sunk from his former pinnacle of the editorship of Moskavskiy telegraf to a lowly editorial position under the triumvirate.21 An added inducement, however, was the element of conspiratorial deception required to maintain Bulgarin in a state of ignorance as to the true identity of the new contributor (as Bulgarin would never have countenanced Odoyevsky's re-employment). Polevoy even had to warn Odoyevsky on one occasion to exchange the concert ticket he was just sending him with someone else, in case Bulgarin, who was itching to learn Bitterman's identity, should have noted the numbers on the tickets issued to Polevoy! Odoyevsky's archive contains a letter in an unknown hand, written in the third person and signed 'Retired Kapellmeister Karel Bitterman', reminding Polevoy of a promised fee: the money is all the more essential to him now, now being the most busy time of the musical year, and he being obliged not to miss even one stupid concert and hardly even a single benefit performance, which is expensive enough, and above all for the sake of these articles he has considered it his duty to refuse other work which would have afforded him considerable remuneration.22 Odoyevsky went to considerable lengths in his Bitterman articles to affect a persona distinct from his usual style of musical reviewing, pretending even to be making his debut with the pen and simulating an unfamiliarity with musical terminology. The identity of Bitterman remained, as far as is known, a mystery to Bulgarin, who expressed full satisfaction with these 'fine and honest

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and noble' reviews in a letter to Polevoy of 16 March 1838. It may not be coincidental, however, that that was the date of the appearance of the last of the eleven Bitterman articles published in Severnaya pchela. Odoyevsky, in whose archive Bulgarin's letter is to be found, seems to have thought it wise to let matters rest at that point; soon afterwards Polevoy was removed from the paper. The 'secret' was finally disclosed by Sakulin, in his book of 1913.23

III

Odoyevsky's Ideas on Music

To Odoyevsky the romantic, during his formative years and through the period of his mature literary career, music held an all-important position in the realm of art, which itself virtually occupied the position of religion in the romantic world view. Even in his later more positivistic phase of thought Odoyevsky still regarded music as supreme. Indeed in the 1860s, with his musicological researches and varied activities in musical public life, he gave perhaps more of his time over to music than ever before. The earliest indication of the importance of music to Odoyevsky occurs in his still unpublished Diary of a Student (Dnevnik studenta), written in 1820-1 when Odoyevsky was still a student at the Pansion. Of music the sixteen year-old Odoyevsky writes: This is the divine art with which nothing except poetry can compare. I take the lyre, pluck its golden strings . . . and the sound of arms, the clash of swords, the horrible moans of the wounded and clattering hoofbeats arouse me. A change of tone . . . and the tender pipe, fading in remoteness, the joyful songs of the industrious peasant captivate my ear. . . . But I lower the pitch and . . . my limbs vibrate; I feel the force of an earthquake, I hear the roaring of the turbulent sea, the snap of a breaking mast confused with thunder, the crunch of a vessel breaking up, the howls of the hapless sailors sighting no rescue . . . but suddenly the sea has quietened and the winds abated; the delivered mariners are singing a hymn of thanksgiving to Providence. . . . No, my friend! Music leaves together in the soul deep and joyful impressions which noisy society gatherings are not capable of producing. At the very least, I am obliged to music for the most precious minutes of my life; with [music] I can forget boredom and bitterness and enjoy pleasures which are incomparable! These are the pleasures to which I give

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way in solitude! And so, tell me, why should I abandon this, why should I exchange a true and steadfast happiness for a false and unfaithful one?24 As well as indicating the place of music in the outlook of the youthful Odoyevsky, this passage also presages exactly the mental state of the lyrical protagonist of the early fiction. In the early 1820s, when he was first attracted by the philosophical ideas of Schelling, Odoyevsky attempted to construct a 'philosophy of music'. This involved determining the place of music in his interpretation of Schelling's systems of nature philosophy and transcendental idealism - accessible to Odoyevsky at this stage only through secondary sources - and also expressing his interpretation of Schellingism largely in the form of musical terminology. This application of music, which may well owe something too to the prominence ascribed to music in pre-Socratic philosophy (Odoyevsky wrote on the Eleatic Sect in Mnemozina, no. 4, 1825),25 is most fully elaborated in two early tracts which were first published only in 1974.26 Prefaced by a quote from Schelling (that 'all which is, is an absolute unity; all which is, is in its very self), the essay 'A Trial Theory of the Fine Arts with Special Application of it to Music' (written between 1823 and 1825) sets out to establish 'the definition of a single, true constant theory of art'. Its use of musical analogy effectively promotes the romantic view of music as 'the direct language of the soul'.27 The living and the dead in nature are seen as equivalent to harmony and disharmony; just as any phenomenon in nature is the product of two opposites, so in music any phrase is the produce of 'consonantia' and 'dissonantia' (with regard to the latter, the impossible in the physical world is equated with the unpleasant in the aesthetic). Harmony and discord correspond to two types of consonance - hard and soft - and to the two principles of feeling - the joyful and the sorrowful. Just as the transition or the struggle of consonance and dissonance are essential to the production of a 'musical event' (muzykaVnoye yavleniye), so the transition from hard to soft and vice versa is essential to the arousal of the desired feelings in the soul. The four voices in music correspond to the four ages of man, the four temperaments, the four seasons etc. Bass and treble are seen as two poles in consonance or dissonance, but treble is primary; in treble is contained all consonance (and melody, the basic part of the musical event) and therefore treble may Stand alone, whereas bass cannot.

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From this polarity too can be deduced the disposition of the parts of the musical event - the dominant and the tonic. Painting has a surface influence (having its greatest effect when seen for the first time). Music, on the other hand, has an inner influence (having its greatest effect after being heard several times). The instantaneous impression of painting is most satisfactorily united with the deep continuous effect of music in poetry, in which music takes on the lyric role and painting the epic. But just as melody has a greater effect when joined with consonance than alone, so poetry has greater strength joined with music. Hence an increased emphasis on poetry, leading to drama. Odoyevsky is here stressing the Schellingian ideal of a synthesis of the arts, or, as he puts it, 'indistinguishability' (bezrazlichiye).28 Drama can in the main be thought of as lyrical tragedy or tragedy of the ancients - hence the function of music in antiquity and thus can be expounded the history of music in general. Music itself has three sub-divisions: the 'music of music' (chamber or instrumental music); the 'painting of music' (cantata or oratorio); and the 'poetry of music' (opera). In scenic music (or opera) there is an identity between music and poetry, just as a poet and his subjectmatter combine in the form of the epic. In antiquity the thrust in music was away from the self, and therefore material in essence. 'Our music', on the other hand ('with its base in the Christian religion'), is not sensual in its effect but, like the philosophy of the ancients, aspires to the indeterminate, the inexpressible. In poetry the infinite mixes with the material: the spirituality of the ideal is lost. But music, together with poetry, will communicate its spiritual character and restore the equilibrium of the spiritual and the material (which neither poetry nor music can provide in separation). The philosopher is the centre - the poet a point on the periphery. There is one centre, but there are many peripheral points; one true theory of aesthetics but giving rise to countless forms, all subordinate to the centre. Therefore the rules of aesthetics (poetics) cannot be construed from any poet (as the French and Aristotle thought). Each poet must have his own poetics (as different from the rest as one point from another on the periphery, i.e. infinite) which all the same must border on a single central theory. Conforming with the universal significance of the four voices in music, everything in nature merges into one immeasurable sound (at least, to the common man). The exception to this, heeding the spiritual sound in contemplation and enjoying harmonic serenity, is the philosopher. He is the listener, the judge of divine music - the poet its

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performer. The poet adapts himself to countless changes of tone, the philosopher is subject only to the harmony. What then is aesthetic delight? The ceaseless transition from the world of one's own spirit to the object world and vice versa. The basis of beauty, therefore, is not in nature but in the human soul. The difference in aesthetic taste between peoples of different times and places is analogous to a ladder of the human spirit: the conception of beauty depending on which rung of the ladder a man is standing. The spirit of man is the same and the same vista of perfection is visible from every rung: truth recurs, evil is inseparable from good, there is no lie without some grain of truth in it, no crime without some good in it, no ugliness without some vestige of beauty. The inner quality of a substance is expressed by sound, just as the surface quality is by colour. Sound and colour are therefore the outcome of the same principle - but from opposite sides; hence the identity of sound and colour. Every natural object has a compressive and an expansive side. The same law operates in music; sounds can follow one after the other or, in the opposite case, occur at the same instant; the latter event is called consonance. This is the origin of melody and harmony. They are in the same relation to each other as shape \figura] is to paint in the case of colour. Melody cannot be without harmony any more than shape can be without paint; harmony cannot be without any melody just as paint cannot be without any shape. Thus melody constitutes the expansive side of music and harmony the compressive. So harmony is melody concentrated into one point, and melody is harmony developed into expansion. In antiquity, melody was dominant; in modern times, harmony. There then follows further elaboration on the qualities of compression and expansion within consonance (or harmony). This metaphysical theory of art and music is developed in the direction of a higher overall philosophical system in 'Gnomes of the 19th Century'. Starting from the familiar point of the dichotomy between a phenomenon and its observer (or 'we'), Odoyevsky arrives at the conclusion that 'nature is the incessant pageant of the human spirit'.29 The life of the spirit is constant observation or contemplation. Contemplation is the direction of one's spirit at an object, in order to see oneself in it. Therefore, any phenomenon has two sides: the spirit and the spirit in the object. The duration of the contemplation we call time; the extent of the place - space; therefore spirit conditions time and object conditions space. There thus ensues a triadic sequence of events: time being stopped by space, space becoming identical with

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time and space turning into time. Spirit and object are commensurable, for spirit contemplates objects; in other words there is a harmony between spirit and object. Harmony and commensurability require homogeneity; therefore spirit and object are homogeneous: spirit recurs in object and object in spirit. But spirit is one - objects are many. There can only be harmony, therefore, when the single entity can comprise a multiplicity and the entity break down into a multiplicity. This can only come about by expansion and compression. The first moment (or stage) of the triadic sequence (spirit becomes object and returns to spirit) is the fundamental philosophy; the second (in which object is identical to spirit) is the article of faith or religion; the third (in which object is raised to the state of spirit) is the inspired process of art. The artistic moment when spirit strives to become object is equated with the plastic arts \plastika] - shape, space, the exterior of matter. The moment when object strives to become spirit is expressed as music - time, sound, the interior of matter. The moment when object and spirit are identical is that of poetry - spirit, shape, exterior and expression of matter - the word. Thus when fantasy dominated (during the infancy of mankind), poetry was equivalent to religion, music to philosophy, the plastic arts to art. The religion of the ancients was poetry; their music (held to be a unity of all the sciences) was our philosophy. Music constitutes the true spiritual form of art, just as sound indicates the inner quality of matter (this is basically a recapitulation of material from 'A Trial Theory.. .') In the constitution of the human soul there are, as in all other phenomena, two sides: a drive towards broadening (joy) and compression (sadness). Plastic arts and music follows these two trends: plastic arts and youthful joy were the lot of the ancients, while our lot is music and contemplative sadness. In antiquity, philosophy meant sadness; whereas music now, with its sadness, can even cheer up the common man. But there must be a plastic side, even in music. Joy and sadness, deepening into material form, become the comic and the horrific. The plastic arts, unlike music, depict the sensation which has protruded to the outside. The plastic arts, which extend to the comic and the horrific, are broader than music in their comprehensiveness, but inferior in their interior. Thus music can depict the infinite series of moments of sensation, while plastic arts can depict the various sensations but only at one finite moment (in a time stopped in space).

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A fuller discussion of Odoyevsky's philosophical and aesthetic ideas is conducted elsewhere in this study, but the two essays here summarized provide a flavour of the nature and the method of his thought, particularly in its application to music. These ideas of philosophy, art and music, formed and developed in Odoyevsky's Schellingian period of the 1820s, underlay much of his fictional and non-fictional writing on aesthetic matters for the next twenty years and persisted to some degree to the end of his career. Just as Odoyevsky's articles on literature were generally concerned with the state of Russian letters, however, rather than with any theory of literature, so too were his specifically musical articles mainly concerned with the state of Russian music, rather than more theoretical matters. Musical references occur frequently in Odoyevsky's fiction, as does the predicament of the artist, but these assume a particular prominence in Russian Nights, which was written over the decade and a half preceding its first publication in complete form of 1844. Russian Nights is, as much as anything, a summation of the main strands of philosophical and aesthetic thought which held sway in Russia in the 1820s and early 1830s, and, as such, provides a strong reflection of Odoyevsky's aesthetic thought of the 1820s, familiar to us from the above summaries. It is only necessary to note the use of such a phrase as 'the fiery harmony of love and faith' from the end of The Ball or to consider the imagery of the mystical Utopian hymn to wisdom and art, Cecilia, for this to be immediately apparent.30 The frame-tale dialogues include considerable discussion of art and music in a manner quite in tune with Odoyevsky's earlier ideas, such as the proposition that Beethoven, 'despite his musical genius (perhaps of a higher level than the genius of Haydn), was never in a state to write the spiritual music which would have come near the oratorios of the latter . . . because Beethoven didn't believe what Haydn believed'; or Faust's linking of music and 'the spirit of the age'.31 However, Odoyevsky's musical stories par excellence are, of course, Beethoven's Last Quartet and Sebastian Bach, in which Odoyevsky, as Hoffmann had done before him, doubled in the role of writer and musicologist, to construct his sensitive and much acclaimed 'fictional biographies'. This is not the place for a literary analysis of these stories. Suffice it to say that Odoyevsky, unconcerned with historical facts (which he invents or distorts at will) and holding that the key to the life of a great composer lies in his works (which will be unconsciously driven by inspiration from the Absolute), gives a brief but sympathetic portrait of

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the unappreciated Beethoven in his last hours. In the case of Bach, in a much longer work, realistic domestic details mingle with an account of the birth and fruition of artistic genius: the supreme classical composer raised, ironically it may seem, on the tenets of romantic philosophy. In both cases Odoyevsky wrote these tales as much to promote the as yet little-celebrated reputations of Beethoven and Bach as for any other reason. Finally, in connection with Russian Nights, recent Soviet criticism has begun to see musical features in the overall structural design and composition of this unusual philosophical frame-tale-cum-novel.32 Odoyevsky's aesthetic ideas, poised in an uneasy equilibrium between spirit and matter and tilting hitherto somewhat towards the spiritual, did undergo some revision in the years following the publication of Russian Nights, if this process was not already under way earlier.33 However, for present purposes it may suffice to adduce a small number of quotations from the later Odoyevsky, bearing in mind the implications of these for music. In 1847, after Berlioz's concert in St Petersburg, Odoyevsky wrote: In general the music of Berlioz confirms me all the more in my long-standing idea that 'there is nothing in art which would not be present in nature apart from art itself, the limitless world of which is the limitless soul of man'. Everything which will be planned in the fantasy of a truly inspired artist is possible in performance and all is begun by the human soul.34 The Schellingian theory of identity still appears to be uppermost here. By 1863 we find a view of music which is idealist, Utopian and still romantic: In music we see the dawn, the harbinger of that era of which we sometimes allow ourselves to dream - the era of love, uniting all of humanity without distinction as to nationality, when dissension and hostile passions will die away, and humanity will merge into one general harmonious family.35 In 1864 Odoyevsky wrote to V. S. Serova: 'I consider music to be the most important element not only in man, but, consequently, also in the social organism.'36 A synthesis of the arts must still have been in Odoyevsky's mind in the 1860s, as in 1864 he wrote in his diary a propos of a suite by J. S. Bach: 'It's like walking in a gallery filled with

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Holbein and Diirer.' 37 The same may be said of the philosophical connection between music and mathematics, noted as the epigraph to this chapter.38 Yet in 1867, writing on Russian and Italian opera, he was able to speculate that newly liberated Italy may provide 'a new, more rational and artistic character for its music', seemingly admitting of the possibility at least of political events affecting music (or, perhaps, just Italian music!).39 Odoyevsky did indeed show signs in the 1860s of adopting a realist aesthetic: The point is that an artist's imagination is free but at the same time cannot depart from the conditions existing in nature, just as a mechanic's imagination cannot [actually] construct a machine of perpetual motion, or a mathematician's imagination find a means by which two would be divided by three without a remainder, or an architect place a basement on a roof! . . . Consequently there are conditions, made up by nature herself, from which we cannot depart; consequently these conditions have laws; consequently it is essential for each practitioner to study these laws and generally take account of them in practice.40 However, in a fragment on 'What is the Use of Music?', he vigorously defended music against crude utilitarianism (the idea of a pair of shoes being more useful than an opera).41 Whatever moves in the direction of positivism he may have made, Odoyevsky's romantic view of the mystical nature of music remained, in the last analysis, unchanged, as one of his very last writings on music (published posthumously) clearly reveals: 'Music per se is an unaccountable art, an art to express the inexpressible - that is to say that which can be expressed by no other means, other than by music itself.'42 IV

Odoyevsky and Russian Music

If music was of vital importance to Odoyevsky, then Russian music occupied a special place in his affections. Russian music was virtually an act of faith to Odoyevsky as he witnessed and encouraged its creation and growth within his own lifetime, constantly campaigning to promote the interests of Russian composers and their music and opposing the vulgar popularity and over-performance of those European works which he considered to be second and third rate and all too frequently imitative.

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Never a Slavophile as such (by the late 1840s he had broken with that movement completely), Odoyevsky nevertheless shared a common belief with the Slavophiles in the strength and destiny of Russian culture. He also shared a similar sentimental inclination towards the concept of'national feeling' (narodnosf) in art, particularly in the case of music: lNarodnosty is a great word', he wrote; 'it reverberates just as sweetly in the human soul as words like family, mother, children, relations'.43 As we have seen, Odoyevsky's concern with Russian music manifested itself at an early state of his career: each of the four issues of Mnemozina included the publication of a song by a Russian composer (those thus featured were Verstovsky, Mikhail ViePgorsky, Odoyevsky himself and M. L. Yakovlev). Writing in Moskovskiy telegraf in 1825, long before the advent of Glinka, Odoyevsky was stating the case for Russian musicians as follows: In accordance with their traditional passion for foreigners, these people [the then musical establishment] cannot believe that a Russian can write such a symphony as, for example, Count Viel'gorsky's symphony; they cannot understand to which musical genre Verstovsky's cantatas relate; they do not comprehend that the operas of Alyab'ev are in no way inferior to French comic opera.44 The first Russian composer with whom Odoyevsky developed close relations was A. N. Verstovsky, whom he met in 1823 (when Verstovsky was appointed an inspector of Moscow theatres), probably at a musical evening at the Griboyedovs.45 After Odoyevsky moved to St Petersburg in 1826 he carried on a correspondence with Verstovsky for a number of years, writing briefly to him about his government service, marriage and literary work.46 Odoyevsky employed some of his theoretical ideas on music in his early article on Verstovsky's cantatas, particularly in the original draft for this article, and proceeded to back Verstovsky, along with Alyab'ev, as the leading Russian composers of the day.47 However, the limitations of Verstovsky's talent were such that Odoyevsky's criticism was not always totally favourable and relations between them gradually cooled, particularly following the generally poor reception given Verstovsky's opera Pan Tvardovsky in 1829 and again from 1836, following Odoyevsky's designation of Glinka as the founder of'a new period in art - the period ofRussian music\ which Verstovsky resented as a slight on his own achievement.48 Odoyevsky's friendship with Verstovsky and Alyab'ev led him in the

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mid 1820s into theatrical involvement in the writing of music for comedies and vaudevilles. This aspect of Odoyevsky's musical activity has never really been investigated, but a vaudeville entitled Le menage d'un gargony with music composed by Odoyevsky and N. A. Mel'gunov, was performed in Moscow in November 1825.49 In a somewhat similar vein, Odoyevsky is said to have participated in writing the libretto of an unfinished opera by Viel'gorsky ('The Gypsies'), along with others including Pushkin, Count Sollogub, Vyazemsky and Baron Rozen, and to have jointly composed with Viel'gorsky a 'Canon in honour of M. I. Glinka' to words written jointly by Viel'gorsky, Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky and Pushkin.50 Odoyevsky's most important connection with the rise of Russian music was undoubtedly through his close friendship with Glinka, whom he first met in 1826, soon after his move to St Petersburg. He may well, however, have heard of Glinka already in his Moscow days as Vil'gel'm Kyukhel'beker had been Glinka's 'special tutor' at the St Petersburg Pansion for Nobility (until Kyukhel'beker was dismissed in 1820, for reading verses in honour of the exiled Pushkin); among Glinka's schoolfriends were S. A. Sobolevsky and Mel'gunov (the former became a life-long friend of Odoyevsky's and the latter had been a close Moscow associate).51 Odoyevsky was enormously impressed by Glinka's musical talent, but there was no further contact of any consequence between them until 1834, when Glinka returned to St Petersburg from abroad, to write Ivan Susanin. It was at this time, with Odoyevsky's active encouragement and collaboration on the new opera, that their close association really began. It appears that even before the composition of Ivan Susanin Odoyevsky and Glinka had engaged in discussions on how best to exploit the special qualities of the Russian national musical tradition - the use of folk melody, legends and patriotic tales - and a considerable mutual influence resulted, which contributed to both Glinka's first opera and to Odoyevsky's later musicological researches into Russian song.52 Glinka himself acknowledged his debt to Odoyevsky in the planning and composition of Ivan Susanin and David Brown's biography of Glinka provides some detail.5 However, the most interesting account of this is Odoyevsky's own, to be found in two letters written to the music critic V. V. Stasov in 1857 and 1858, and published for the first time in 1894.54 Odoyevsky briefly describes the technical advice he gave Glinka in structuring the opera, which had originally been envisaged by the composer as a 'scenic oratorio',55 and his own clumsy attempts to versify a libretto. Zhukovsky had little more success when

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he attempted the same task (Zhukovsky and Odoyevsky 'guffawed their heads off at their efforts), and it was he who thought to obtain the services of Baron G. F. Rozen.56 Odoyevsky is most proud, however, to claim the credit for persuading a reluctant Glinka to incorporate a far greater use of the chorus - perhaps the strongest point of the opera.57 The opera, originally entitled Ivan Susanin, was finally performed under the title of A Life for the Tsar on 27 November 1836, in the presence of the imperial family. Nicholas I had attended one of the final rehearsals and seems to have been responsible for the change of tide. 58 Soviet musicologists to a man continue to condemn Rozen's original libretto as sycophantic monarchism (the 1939 Soviet revival of the opera, as well as replacing the imposed title with Glinka's original one, also replaced Rozen's libretto with a fresh one by S. Gorodetsky) which 'distorted Glinka's democratic ideal' and to criticize Odoyevsky's enthusiasm for Rozen's libretto.59 However, there is no complaint with Odoyevsky's overall view of the opera and its significance. Odoyevsky's articles on this opera led, as we have seen already, to another clash with the Philistine and obscurantist faction led by Bulgarin which, despite the opera's patriotic and monarchist spirit, saw little value in any indigenous Russian culture. Odoyevsky later wrote of Bulgarin's entry into the fray of musical criticism: I remember that Mr. Bulgarin, not having the slightest conception of music, probably in the misunderstood words of some savant or other, published for all to see the view that Glinka didn't even know orchestration, for mA Life for the Tsar, the orchestra was pitched too low (?). This absurdity surprised no one. 60 A celebratory dinner was held in honour of Glinka and his new Russian opera on 13 December 1836 (the occasion on which the 'Canon in honour of M. I. Glinka', referred to before, was composed), and those attending the proceedings, in which Odoyevsky played a leading part, included Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, the Viel'gorskys and the main musicians, including the tenor, L. I. Leonov.61 Odoyevsky continued to be associated with Glinka's sudden success by further articles on the opera. Glinka was a regular visitor to Odoyevsky's salon during the 1830s and whenever he was in St Petersburg thereafter; he and his wife, at a time of domestic discord, stayed with the Odoyevskys for some time in 1837.62 Over a period of several years, from 1837, Odoyevsky was involved with Glinka, among

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others, in attempting to set up a musical journal or newspaper. Their requests were turned down by the censorship and, although in 1840 and 1843 there were rumours that such a publication was to be established, the attempts proved abortive.63 Odoyevsky and Glinka also considered artistic collaboration, including in 1852 a projected 'quartet-play' to be called 'Don Ivanovich'.64 Odoyevsky had at last found a Russian composer of real quality and lost no opportunity to promote his works, both in Russia and among foreign musicians (who, as in the cases of Liszt and Berlioz, rose markedly in Odoyevsky's estimation when they genuinely admired the Russian composer). He regarded Ruslan and Lyudmila> despite being less than impressed by the libretto, as a supreme creation of national art, in which there merged the memory of 'our two great national glories' (Pushkin and Glinka).65 He promoted and popularized Glinka's operas and instrumental music in his writings and by organizing concerts. Odoyevsky remained in close touch with Glinka by correspondence during the latter's periods of residence abroad, advising him on details of his compositions, and was one of Glinka's last visitors, ten days before he died, in Berlin in February 1857.66 When Odoyevsky wrote: 'It has been my fate in life to be placed in very close relations with the most remarkable figures of our time', he named several Russian writers (including Pushkin, Griboyedov, Venevitinov, Lermontov), but only one musician: Glinka.67 Second to Glinka among Russian composers, during these formative years of Russian music, Odoyevsky would place A. S. Dargomyzhsky. He left no articles specifically on Dargomyzhsky but promoted his works when he organized the 'Russian Concert' of 1850 (alongside Glinka's Kamarinskaya and Spanish Overture) and in a special concert of Dargomyzhsky's music in 1853 (in aid of the Society for Visiting the Poor), when extracts from three operas (Esmeralda, The Triumph of Bacchus and Rusalka) were performed and his romances were sung for the first time by Pauline Viardot.68 Dargomyzhsky later recalled that 'the brilliant and unexpected success of this concert gave a new impulse to my work', resulting in completion of the opera Rusalka; he wrote to Odoyevsky for encouragement in this task, which he duly received (for the 'Russian spirit' which permeates it) and the opera was a success when performed in 1856.69 Dargomyzhsky had frequented Odoyevsky's salon in the 1830s as a young man but, according to the memoirist and musician Yuriy Arnol'd, was among the 'lower' range of Odoyevsky's friends whom Princess Olga Stepanovna Odoyevskaya discouraged; however, the success of Rusalka

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put a different complexion on things, so much so that she herself invited Dargomyzhsky to reappear at their gatherings in 1856, which he did for the first time since 1840.70 In 1861 Odoyevsky, in charge of the artistic arrangements for the fiftieth anniversary of Vyazemsky's literary career, asked Dargomyzhsky to set some of Vyazemsky's verse to music; it seems, however, that Dargomyzhsky failed to write anything for the occasion, although he had earlier written a duet to words by Vyazemsky.71 The other composer with whom Odoyevsky was closely associated and whose music he vigorously promoted was A. N. Serov, whom he considered to be the true heir of Glinka and on whom he wrote a number of articles which, Bernandt considers, 'undoubtedly belong to the best pages of Odoyevsky's musical journalism', second only to the articles on Glinka. Odoyevsky was, Serov wrote to Liszt in 1859, almost alone in according him such support.72 V. S. Serova recalls how Serov took her in the 1860s to visit the Odoyevskys for a social 'rehearsal', passing her off as his wife in advance of their marriage: The prince fussed over Serov as though he were a newly arrived prima donna; he straightaway gathered a circle of listeners -Judith, if I am not mistaken had taken its first steps in Moscow in the very same salon of V. F. Odoyevsky. Of all the listeners only he grasped the whole essence and meaning of the work.73 At the premiere of Judith in 1863 a press report stated that the first voice raised calling for the composer was that of Odoyevsky.74 Odoyevsky stressed the essential Russianness of Judith, notwithstanding its biblical setting, and lamented the failure of the opera to be performed in Moscow ('if Serov's name only ended in -ini\ he wrote).75 Odoyevsky was also closely associated with the composition of Serov's next opera, Rogneda. However, after the first Moscow performance in the Bol'shoy Theatre in December 1868, Odoyevsky was less enthusiastic about it than he had been in advance, perceiving in it 'a burrowing Italianism'.76 Serov's last opera, A Hostile Force, was performed only after both its author and Odoyevsky were dead, though Odoyevsky was familiar with most of its music, of which he greatly approved.77 In a late piece of 1868, entitled 'Intercepted Letters', Odoyevsky satirizes ignorant attitudes to any form of native Russian culture by adopting the persona of Griboyedov's obscurantist character Pavel Famusov and it is Serov's operas (and Odoyevsky's own articles praising them) which are used as the butt of Famusov's diatribe.78

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Odoyevsky collaborated with Serov on several volumes of Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar' (The Encyclopaedic Dictionary) and admired some of Serov's musical criticism, particularly appreciating an article on Beethoven's ninth symphony (of 1868).79 As Bernandt has pointed out, Odoyevsky may at times have overestimated Serov's artistic and national significance, and he disagreed with 'the view sometimes expressed, that Serov is ostensibly an imitator of Wagner' (a view which Stasov, for one, later expressed forcibly).80 Among other musicians with whom Odoyevsky had associations was the violinist, and imperial Kapellmeister, A. F. L'vov.81 Odoyevsky was 'effectively co-author' with L'vov of a textbook on violin playing, but passed over L'vov's operas (much praised in official circles) 'in almost complete silence'.82 He was on close terms with the Rubinstein family, especially with Anton Rubinstein as pianist, composer and as director of the St Petersburg Conservatory; indeed Rubinstein had dedicated his first piano sonata (opus 12) to Odoyevsky.83 He praised the first compositions of Balakirev, but he intensely disliked the 'howlings of Varlamov', which he regarded as the lowest of the musical low (comparable, seemingly, only to the 'mewing of Verdi'), for which lack of appreciation ('mistaking a genuine quality for "false narodnost"") he has been taken to task by Soviet commentators.84 At the end of his life, Odoyevsky predicted great success for two of the younger generation of composers, whose earliest works had impressed him. In his diary for January 1869, he praised Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic poem Sadko as 'a wonderful thing, full of fantasy, originally orchestrated'.85 Odoyevsky first met Tchaikovsky in 1866, when he was brought as an unexpected extra dinner guest to the Odoyevskys: 'so as not to intimidate any of the guests, my wife sat at a separate table', Odoyevsky noted.86 Tchaikovsky would bring Odoyevsky the scores of some of his compositions (such as the first symphony) and greatly valued Odoyevsky's advice and interest. Tchaikovsky's letters to Odoyevsky have not survived, but his appreciation of Odoyevsky was expressed clearly some years later.87 Some of Odoyevsky's last diary entries (for 1869) mention Tchaikovsky. Following a performance of Tchaikovsky's orchestral fantasy Fatum, only days before his death, Odoyevsky presented Tchaikovsky with a pair of cymbals as 'he thought I had a talent for using this instrument at the right moment, but was unhappy with the instrument itself.88 Odoyevsky greeted Tchaikovsky's first opera, Voyevoda, in which he remarked a dominant Russian character, 'but the gifted Tchaikovsky has also not resisted the desire to treat the public to

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various Italianism'; 'had he, in addition, recognised the strong infusion of French and German ingredients', writes David Brown, 'Odoyevsky's private judgement would have been incontrovertible\89 Before leaving the subject of Odoyevsky and Russian music we should say something more about Odoyevsky's musicological researches into the national and church traditions in Russian music. Referring to this area of scholarship, a slightly later and not always friendly critic, G. A. Larosh, described Odoyevsky as 'a noble enthusiast and learned expert... who expressed a highly original, integral and thorough view on this subject'.90 Odoyevsky's interest in the folkloric origins of Russian music went back, as we have seen, to the early days of his relationship with Glinka and received a tremendous boost from his association with that composer. Even before that, in 1823, Odoyevsky was disputing a view expressed in an article by A. Bestuzhev that Russian folk-songs only went back 300 years.91 In a fragment dated by Bernandt to the beginning of the 1840s, Odoyevsky speculated on the possible existence of a 'Russian epic', or the germs thereof, in musical folkloric terms. 92 This ties in with his romantic philosophical approach to the development of legend, epic and folk poetry in other writings of the same period and earlier.93 He first became interested in chuch music, it appears, through a connection with the 'Sing-Academie', a German choral society in St Petersburg, which sang the music of Handel, Bach and others. 94 Odoyevsky's view of the 'bold' folk-song {udalyye pesni) approached, in Bernandt's view, that of Belinsky, rather than that of 'official narodnosf\ his determination to investigate 'that process by means of which from time immemorial Russian folk-singing has evolved through its anonymous composers' was not in itself new, but he was the first to establish this factor as an important link in the development of the Russian musical school.95 Swan writes: He was one of the first to perceive the polyphonic nature of the Russian folk-song. Even more remarkable was his advocacy of znamennyy chant which he never tired of explaining to Glinka. These two currents he saw in close inter-relation.96 Odoyevsky collected Russian folk-songs over a period of many years, conducting detailed researches into the old Russian forms of melody, harmony, rhythm and scale, which he found to be very different from those of the West. His approach to this music was, of course, emotional and nationalistic as well as academic; of one song which he

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collected in 1863 he wrote: 'this is GogoP's steppe in our singing interminable distance!'97 Acquainted, for example, with the lexicographer and writer Vladimir Dal', Odoyevsky wrote down from him a whole series of Russian folk-songs, some of which they together set to music.98 Although only really seeing the essential human qualities in the folk-songs of the pre-Petrine era, Odoyevsky nevertheless recognized that 'the ould sod' (starinnyy grunt) is perpetually renewed and is subject to outside influence; when a people acquire a foreign song, they rework it in their own way, 'correcting' it, thereby indicating the existence of 'some sort of highly durable theory, not yet expressed in words, but positively applied'.99 Odoyevsky's library contained many collections of folk-songs from numerous countries, and his notebooks were filled with examples collected from many sources, scribbled down, reworked, experimented upon or used as a basis for his own compositions.100 In 1860 and 1861 he was telling people that his book, entitled 'Manual of the Fundamental Laws of Melody and Harmony, adapted principally to the reading of our Old Church Singing', on which he had been engaged 'for fifteen years' was 'finished', or 'nearly finished'; in fact the work in question was never finished, due no doubt to Odoyevsky's lack of professional organization of his extraordinarily varied activities.101 In November 1862, a few months after he had moved back from St Petersburg to Moscow, Odoyevsky was introduced to D. V. Razumovsky, who had been researching all his life into the history of Russian church singing, and a close collaboration ensued for the remaining years of Odoyevsky's life.102 Although the connection was extremely fruitful to both scholars, providing each with another collection of data and analysis on the same subject, it is possible that this may have been a factor in the non-publication of Odoyevsky's main work on the subject. Nevertheless a number of articles by Odoyevsky in this area of his studies did appear during his la,st years and posthumously.

V

Odoyevsky and Western Music

His keenly felt mission to promote Russian music and his Russian musicological researches notwithstanding, Odoyevsky devoted a great deal of attention to Western music. He was concerned, perhaps above all else, to raise the standards of musical taste in Russia and to educate the Russian public in the best of world music, both of the past and the

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present. He hoped that the future of music, as of culture in general, would lie with Russia, but he fully recognized that the past, and to a large degree the present, lay with the musicians of the West. Odoyevsky's all-time pantheon of composers consisted, by 1863, of the following: Monteverdi, J. S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner.103 So even Glinka did not quite make, as far as Odoyevsky was concerned, the very top bracket; but he does obtain membership in Russian Nights (1844) of 'a triumvirate preserving the sacredness . . . of art' (in other words, the greatest composers of the day), along with Mendelssohn and Berlioz.104 Haydn, as we have seen, must also have been very close to membership of Odoyevsky's pantheon. Of other past composers, Odoyevsky wrote an encyclopedia entry on Vivaldi,105 and went into rhapsodies in his travel notes over the operatic accomplishment of Gluck, whom he heard for the first time only in 1857 in Weimar, which fact reminds us, of course, of how limited opportunities were in those days to see particular works performed (Armida, 'Liszt conducted - and wonderfully.. . Gluck! Gluck, he's still resounding in my ears. What premature infants before him are all our present-day operas' 106 ). Of other contemporary or near contemporary composers (we shall deal with Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner in more detail below), Odoyevsky liked Weber, a performance of whose Oberon by a local German opera troupe he reviewed in 1838 (Weber wrote Oberon while he was dying of consumption - 'but such is the strength of genius!').107 Both Schubert and Schumann found their way into Odoyevsky's listings of great composers.108 Odoyevsky does not, however, appear to have thought much of the music of Chopin or Brahms, referring in his diary to 'Chopin and other such overblown things' and to a 'rubbishy serenade-symphony' by Brahms. 109 He certainly had no time whatever for the operas of Gounod (whom he ranked with Verdi 'and other macaroni'), an Italian production of whose Faust he described as 'inordinate muck'. 110 He met Offenbach in 1858, but appears to have spared him any comment. Odoyevsky's more immoderate brand of criticism was generally reserved, as we have seen, for Italian opera and it is time that we examined his views on this area of music in more detail. It will have been observed that Odoyevsky, with certain exceptions, preferred Germanic and Slavonic music to Italian and French; national and cultural prejudice, temperament, personal taste and his assessment of the relative depths of the products of these traditions all, no doubt, played some part in this. It is likely that Odoyevsky underestimated the

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historical role of Italian opera in the evolution of the European operatic tradition. However, the overriding factor in Odoyevsky's general denigration of Italian opera was his resentment of what he regarded as its unreasonable popularity, throughout the period of his own active musical life, and particularly at the expense of home-produced Russian opera. It is in this context that Odoyevsky's often vitriolic attacks on Italian composers must be seen: There was a time when our public was Bellini-ized; this pathological condition passed. It was replaced by another - they rushed into Verdi-itis. There is no doubt that this unnatural ailment too will subside. What macaroni will take their fancy next there is no knowing.111 Russian opera, on the other hand, was only performed, if at all, on sufferance (and all too often badly): Don't let us forget that Ivan Susanin - Glinka's opera - to this day making the theatre box-offices rich, was allowed on stage only on condition that the composer should never demand the slightest reward for his labours, while, at the same time, tens of thousands were being spent and are being spent on signing up from abroad all kinds of Italian singers. History has already recorded this sad fact.112 In 1850, writing of the Russian concerts of the Society for Visiting the Poor, Odoyevsky wrote: A Russian concert, consisting exclusively of the work of Russian musicians, until now seemed an impossible c a u s e . . . . Because the same old overtures, the same old arias of Verdi, Donizetti and other still less remarkable talents go from concert to concert, as if by order. 113 In the 1860s he would still speak of'the anti-aesthetic repertoire of Bellini and Verdi', but Odoyevsky is at his most vitriolic in his article 'Russian or Italian Opera?' of 1867, referring to the ignorance of most Italian singers ('dolls dancing with their voices on a tightrope') of everything 'except their own so-called music': that is to say their music, half sick, invariably false, depending on acrobatics of the voice and vulgar effects, or, as in the Pope's

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chapel, based on a shameful maiming of people - the pitiful outcome of that leaden oppression which hung over poor Italy, the song of slaves forced through their tears to amuse the company of the Metternichs or King Bomba. What is there in common between these wanton groans and our healthy, virginal, strong musical character?114 However, in the same article he nevertheless makes it clear that he is not against the performing of Italian opera on principle; he merely insists that Italian opera should have no favoured position in Russia, no monopoly. He wants an end to the situation which gives rise to the following rhyme, 'composed by the ladies of St Petersburg to the tune of la donna e mobile': If we don't Then we'll If we don't Then we'll

hear hear hear hear

Trovatore, Traviata, Traviata, Trovatore.115

It wouldn't have been so bad even if some different Italian operas were sometimes performed ('the operas of Cimarosa, Galuppi, Mozart's Cosifan tutte, even some of Rossini's lesser-known operas, such as The Silken Ladder, The Turk in Italy and The Italian Girl in Algiers')}16 Odoyevsky's attitude to Italian opera was, it should be said, by no means unique. Glinka 'took a dislike to Italian "songbirds'" and to fashionable Italian music, largely as a result of an 'incompetent' and 'ignorant' 1843 Italian performance of Don Giovanni and seemed to particularly dislike Verdi's Ernani, while Stasov later wrote of 'our public's ridiculous and utterly incomprehensible enthusiasm for Italian music and singers'.117 Odoyevsky, it need hardly be said, appreciated Wagner's views on the 'decay' of Italian music, which had become 'a pitiful, almost juvenile form of art'. 118 The situation of Russian opera did, however, gradually improve. In 1868 Odoyevsky noted the first 'Western' performance of Glinka's operas in Prague, 'despite all the Jesuitical tricks of the beneficent Austrian police', while Stasov reports a changing attitude towards Russian opera at the end of the 1860s on the part of the Russian public and theatres, with serious performances mounted of Glinka and Dargomyzhsky.119 Of nineteenth-century Italian composers, though, Odoyevsky had most time for Rossini, who suffered, naturally enough, from the forced

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comparisons with Mozart in the musical polemics of the 1820s, but who, nevertheless in Odoyevsky's view, 'is noted for a rare gift, inspired from above, for melody; only in him (especially in William Tell) do you find this luxuriance of motifs which strikes you with its freshness'.120 Of Bellini, however, he wrote: 'who doesn't know that Bellini has a few felicitous motifs, but that he is the worst orchestrator in the world?'; he preferred La Sonnambula to Norma, writing of the latter: Never have I felt more strongly the absurdity, which would drive one to despair, of this composer who seems to be trying to seek out the most banal phrases to express the most tragic situations . . . that unfortunate duet in F-major Si,fino alTore! is the height of banality and in contradiction to the situation on stage. It is worse than Verdi, and that's saying a lot.121 However, it is Odoyevsky's total dismissal of Verdi which is most at variance with the verdict of history. He did not know, of course, Verdi's late operas (Aida, Otello and Falstajf) but he knew well enough, and despised, not only lesser works such as Ernani and The Force of Destiny ('the most worthless of his worthless operas') but also, as we have seen, // Trovatore, La Traviata and Rigoletto (referring, in 1868, to 'that pretentious [manernyy] quartet from Rigoletto by that pretentious Verdi').122 He regarded Verdi's work as 'full of remplissage* and wrote: 'The operas of Verdi and suchlike composers are to me just like music in general is to people with damaged hearing: i.e. a rather unpleasant noise.' 123 He spoke of Verdi as being on a par with Arditi, predicted that the fad for his operas would not last more than a couple of years and expressed absolute amazement that there were still people who would seriously ask: 'Whom do you like better - Verdi or Wagner, Rigoletto or TannhauserV124 When the man himself visited Russia, in 1862, Odoyevsky, having refused one invitation to dine with Verdi, wrote in his diary: 'Tonight they're giving a formal banquet with toasts and banners at L'vov's for this ungifted gentleman. I'm surprised that L'vov didn't invite me[!].' 125 Let us turn now to Odoyevsky's view of the three composers who were the most important to him in the whole of music: Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. As we have already seen, Odoyevsky was actively involved in the polemic between 'the Mozartists' and 'the Rossini-ists' in the mid 1820s; in 1825 he wrote:

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This, I think, dissolves all disputes over Mozart and Rossini: going out of the theatre after a Rossini opera you unwittingly hum the good tunes, as you do after French vaudeville; after Mozart's music you do the same, but beyond that there remains a deep and indelible impression in the soul.126 His admiration above all for Mozart's Don Giovanni dates from the same year, when he expressed the view that there has been 'nothing like it to this day in the world of music'; he subsequently paid Glinka the immense (not to say exaggerated) compliment of saying that the significance of Ivan Susanin could only be compared to that of Don Giovanni.121 In 1859, by which time he claimed to have seen the opera 'at least fifty times, in various countries of Europe', Odoyevsky wrote an article on this opera, focusing on the role of Donna Anna, considering Hoffmann's view 'that Donna Anna would never have married Ottavio because she is in love with Don Juan and cannot love anyone else', and going on to discuss the impact of great figures on a theory of art.128 An idea of the artistic pinnacle on which Odoyevsky placed Mozart can be given by a quotation from Russian Nights: talking of'the idea of beauty, perfection, harmony', the protagonist, Faust, argues that it is impossible for this idea to be tangible, 'for you won't find the full expression of this idea in nature - it is only in the head of Raphael, Mozart and other people of this sort'. 129 Odoyevsky posed the romantic theory of a continuation, an unconscious connection between artists who 'involuntarily understand one another'; thereby Beethoven's symphonies are 'the second generation of Mozart's symphonies'.130 'No one else's music', remarks Faust of Beethoven in Russian Nights, 'produces such an impression.. . through its wonderful harmony there is heard a sort of discordant h o w l . . . as though someone is laughing - from despair'.131 It was this howl of desperation that he sought to portray in Beethoven 's Last Quartet (1831), one of the world's first pieces of Beethoveniana. Entranced by Beethoven from his youth, Odoyevsky was complaining, almost immediately after Beethoven's death, that he could find nothing worth reading on him. 132 Thus Odoyevsky paid homage to what he considered the tortured genius of the late Beethoven by constructing, in Bernandt's words, a 'free romantic fantasy' of 'the spiritual life of the mighty and passionate composer, whose fate it was to struggle for a great revolution in art'. 133 Odoyevsky's own view of the late Beethoven quartets at the time of writing the story is unclear. It is only in 1863 that he is on record as admiring them; the reference in the story to

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musicians throwing down their bows in despair when they tried to play them was apparently paralleled in fact, in Russia at least, in the actions of A. F. L'vov at the ViePgorsky circle.134 Odoyevsky studied much of Beethoven's work over many years and at some stage had been able to consult Beethoven's notebooks, remarking on the meticulous reworkings and repetitions of a single melody.135 His greatest admiration, however, was reserved for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In a letter to Verstovsky of 1834 he referred thus to the score of the Ninth: 'it is a miracle; in it Beethoven was building a new road for music, which no one anticipated'.136 Odoyevsky's part in promoting the music of Beethoven in Russia, and particularly the Ninth Symphony, was considerable. The first public performance in Russia of the Ninth Symphony was given at the seventy-eighth concert of the St Petersburg Philharmonic Society on 7 March 1836 (even in 1847 Stasov was referring to 'Beethoven's little-known Ninth Symphony').137 Odoyevsky appears to have been both prime mover and main organizer of the first Russian performance; he published an article on the work on the eve of this concert and, together with Zhukovsky, undertook the task of translating Schiller's Ode to Joy for the finale.138 Of the task of translation, Odoyevsky later wrote: I remember and will never forget how much trouble the translation of Schiller's yotm An dieFreude cost us; not the printed translation, but the one which is only sung and was then written by me in the copy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony belonging to the St Petersburg Philharmonic Society. This job took us, I think, two or three nights - for during the day neither I nor particularly Zhukovsky could spend time on such a long drawn-out job, except in the evening, which on these occasions extended to four or five o'clock in the morning.139 We have seen already something of the enormous impact - greater than that of any other composer - which Bach had on Odoyevsky's musical sensibility. This lasted throughout his life; a diary entry of 1864, for instance, reads: 'began to transpose a Bach chorale for organ and piano'. 140 Odoyevsky's homemade organ was named 'Sebastianon' in honour of the composer. Odoyevsky had worshipped Bach from his schooldays at the Pansion and was constantly engaged in deep study of his works, which had by and large fallen into almost total neglect in Europe, at least until Mendelssohn's 1829 performance of

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the St Matthew Passion.141 In his 1862 notes to Russian Nights, Odoyevsky appends the following remarks near the beginning of Sebastian Bach (first published as a separate story in 1835): At the time when this was written the name of Sebastian Bach was known only to very few musicians in Moscow. For me Bach was almost my first musical textbook, the greater part of which I knew by heart. Nothing then angered me as much as the naive comments of amateurs who then had not even heard of Bach.142 Bach in fact came to serve Odoyevsky 'as a scale for the evaluation of all musical works'.143 Odoyevsky was particularly drawn by Bach's use of polyphony and fugue, a fact that, in Bernandt's view, was 'in many ways conditioned by the polyphonic-supporting voice nature of Russian folk music'; 'fugue', Odoyevsky wrote, 'as a subject for study is for music what gymnastics is for a healthy man'; at the ^ame time, the fugue was not just mechanical, but 'had to be inspired, like any other music; the melody must consciously produce a corresponding voice, naturally merge with a third and be filled out by a fourth. That's how S. Bach wrote.'144 Perhaps it was in part these technical affinities which Odoyevsky perceived between the composition of Bach and the Russian folkmusical tradition which led him to stress, along with other deliberate historical inaccuracies, the supposed Slavonic origins of the Bach 'tribe'. 145 With regard to the role of the great artist in the creation of art, Odoyevsky, in B. Granovsky's words, 'advances two basic and essentially contradictory propositions': one, in 'the tradition of romantic aesthetics', involves the predominance of intuition over the rational; the other is more peculiarly Odoyevsky's view that 'the great artist cannot exist without active perception of the life which surrounds him and disinterested, selfless service to art'. 146 It is for this reason that Beethoven and Bach, as portrayed in the Odoyevsky stories, although lovingly drawn, are found wanting in the 'judgement' scene at the end of the Ninth Night of Russian Nights: My soul lived in sonourous harmonies of feeling; in it I intended to gather all the forces of nature and reconstitute man's s o u l . . . . I became exhausted from inexpressible feeling. THE COURT: Defendant! Your life belonged to you and not to feeling. BEETHOVEN:

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No! I did not play the hypocrite with my art! In it I wanted to concentrate all my life; I sacrificed to it all the gifts given me by Providence, gave up all family happiness, everything that cheers up the lowest common man . . . THE COURT: Defendant! Your life belonged to you and not to art. SEBASTIAN BACH:

Perhaps Mozart was fortunate in escaping a portrayal in Russian Nightsl

VI

Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner: Personal Contacts

As in effect a continuation of the last section, we now turn to three major European composers with whom Odoyevsky had personal contacts, and on the last two of whom he wrote the first significant articles in Russian musical criticism. Liszt visited Russia in 1842 and 1843 (and the Ukraine in 1847). He had made the acquaintance of notable Russians in Rome in 1839; Rosa Newmarch writes: among the many concerts which he gave in Rome, none was more brilliant than the recital organised by the famous Russian amateur, Count Bielgorsky [sic], at the home of Prince Galitsin, Governor-General of Moscow who was wintering in the Italian Capital.147 The forthcoming year he met the Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna, who 'enjoined him to visit Russia without delay'; according to Liszt's biographer Eleanor Perenyi, however, 'the lure of Russia was, quite frankly, money'.148 Liszt's concerts in St Petersburg were an outstanding success and the eighteen-year-old Stasov's famous description of the first one (of 8 April 1842) has been printed many times.149 Stasov also records that: During his stay in Petersburg, Liszt often played at receptions given by the Empress, the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna . . . [and others, including Count Benkendorfj. But he spent most of his time at the homes of the two brothers, the Counts Viel'gorsky, and Prince Odoyevsky.150 Glinka also remembered Liszt's visit, where he met him at soirees given by Countess Rostopchina, the Viel'gorskys and at Odoyevsky's. At

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Odoyevsky's, Glinka recalls: 'Liszt played a livre ouvert several numbers from Ruslan from an autographed score of mine, not known to anyone before, and to the general astonishment he didn't miss a note.' 151 Glinka met Liszt again in St Petersburg in 1843, in which year Arnol'd also recalls seeing Liszt at Odoyevsky's.152 Herzen met Liszt in Moscow in 1843, on one occasion at 'a wild gypsy concert'.153 Glinka records that Liszt's appearance in the country 'caused a tumult among all the dilettantes, and even the society women' (a situation with which he must have found himself in some sympathy), while Eleanor Perenyi writes of 'the six-foot snow queen, Marie MouchanoffKalergis, the "Cossack" Olga Janina - and innumerable others whose names lie forgotten in the dust of his Russian tours'. 154 Madame Kalergis is of interest to us, as she was evidently acquainted with Odoyevsky, to whom she later gave Wagner an introduction.155 Odoyevsky made Liszt's acquaintance again in Weimar in 1858, where, as we have seen, he was highly impressed by his conducting of Gluck. Little detail of their acquaintanceship appears to be known. Odoyevsky wrote nothing specifically on Liszt; references to Liszt's works in his unpublished travel notes are said to be but 'fleeting comments . . . interesting only as evidence of continued relations'.156 He did refer to him, in the same year, as 'a wonderful organization' (along with Mozart and Glinka); he, of course, marvelled at Liszt as a pianist, with his 'involuntary bursts of feeling . . . in which is the whole secret of incomprehensible action', and described his playing of Beethoven's sonatas as 'surpassing all description'.157 In 1841 Odoyevsky wrote a short piece on Berlioz's Requiem, concentrating on what he found to be its unusual harmonic and orchestral effects, and Berlioz is mentioned in 1844 as one of the genuine hopes of European art. 158 However, it was Berlioz's visit to Russia in 1847 which brought him into personal contact with Odoyevsky, and stimulated two glowing articles from Odoyevsky's pen. Berlioz also went to Russia for the money, being in such a state of financial disarray that he had to borrow far and wide for the journey.159 Berlioz thus travelled third class and in winter (Liszt, five years earlier, had gone first class, in a specially constructed coach, and in the spring160); the famous story of the tribulations of his fortnight's journey from Paris to St Petersburg - the vibrations, the 'snowsickness' and the ruts - is at least as vivid as any account of travel in nineteenth-century Russian literature. Upon arrival in St Petersburg, Berlioz, like any other composer visiting Russia in the first half of the

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nineteenth century (there being at that time no impresarios), had then to get down to the business of finding a concert hall, raising an orchestra, plus in this case soloists and chorus, rehearsing a programme and finally performing concerts, though in the fairly safe expectation of making a fair sum of money. Berlioz was quickly but unexpectedly contacted by Wilhelm von Lenz, 161 on behalf of the ViePgorskys, through whose contacts and influence the principal arrangements were made within hours. Scouring the city for the necessary performers took place the next day, but, Berlioz writes: My orchestra was soon formed. We also soon succeeded in collecting a large and well-formed choir through the good offices of General Lwoff [A. F. L'vov], the Emperor's aide de camp^ conductor of the imperial b a n d . . . . I now only wanted two solo singers, a bass and a tenor, for the first two parts of Faust. Versing, the bass of the German Theatre, undertook the part of Mephistopheles, and Ricciardi, an Italian tenor I had formerly known in Paris, that of Faust; the only drawback was that he had to sing in French and Mephistopheles in German. The Russian public, being equally familiar with both, did not object to this absurd mixture. I had to have all the voice parts recopied in Russian for the benefit of the chorus-singers, who knew no other characters, though they sang in German. 162 There was, however, trouble with the German translation, which, Berlioz recalls, 'was a detestable one, and so unmetrical that it was impossible to sing it'. At this point, if not before, Odoyevsky was involved in the proceedings: to procure a fresh German translation and to promote the forthcoming events with his pen. 163 A new translation was obtained, some weeks later, from 'a Monsieur Minzlaff (Munzlaff). Odoyevsky previewed the concerts, praising Berlioz's magnificent orchestration and gratefully remarking on his perception in promoting the music of Glinka in Paris. Berlioz's chronicler, Adolphe Boschot, writes of this short article:164 'and the Prince Odoi'ewsky, although he knew nothing of Berlioz (apart from the Requiem), explained Berlioz's genius with the most Beriiozian penetration'.165 An English biographer of Berlioz, W.J. Turner, says: 'his champion there, Prince Odoi'ewsky, served him well in the press'. 166 The concerts were a tremendous success; Berlioz himself wrote: 'My first concert was a splendid affair. The orchestra and choir were

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both large and well-trained and I had also a military band, provided by General Lwoff, and chosen from the musicians of the Imperial Guard. ,16? The programme had consisted of the Roman Carnival overture, the first two parts of Faust, the Queen Mab scherzo and the Apotheosis from the Symphonie funebre et triomphale. Stasov wrote of the Berlioz concerts: 'These were the most magnificent, most crowded, most brilliant (in terms of both orchestra and applause), most deafening concerts that were presented this year. Everyone flocked to them.' 168 A breathless Odoyevsky rushed off from the first concert to pen his open letter to Glinka; Boschot says: 'The Prince Wladimir Odoi'esky [sic], on the very evening of the concert, "at midnight" wrote out his article as if he was announcing a meteor to a distant friend.'169 Odoyevsky was amazed at the success of Berlioz with the St Petersburg audience, normally hostile to anything the slightest bit avant-garde, and marvelled at: the boldness of the Berlioz counterpoint, the strict Haydn-type unity, which he carries through the most varied forms, the freshness of the instrumentation, the originality of the rhythms audaciously piled one upon the other. 170 Later nineteenth-century French music criticism, at least according to Soviet musicology, maintained that only in Russia, in the articles of Odoyevsky, was Berlioz's new symphonic form appreciated and explained in the manner it deserved.171 Stasov, for example, in 1847 regarded Berlioz (like Liszt) as predominantly a great performer with 'no gift for musical composition whatsoever'; as in the case of Liszt, he changed his mind and in 1879 Berlioz was 'a composer of genius'. 172 After his St Petersburg concerts, Berlioz went on to further adventures in Moscow, returned again to Petersburg and left Russia in the May of 1847, somewhat the richer financially and having made a considerable impact on Russian musical life; he continued to maintain his Russian contacts.173 Berlioz returned again to Russia, old and sick, in the winter of 1867-8. This time, however, things were organized. An invitation was issued by the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna for Berlioz to conduct six concerts of the Russian Musical Society in St Petersburg, one of them of his own works, on very favourable financial terms, including travelling expenses, free quarters in the Mikhailovsky Palace and a carriage at his disposal, as well as a fee of 15,000 francs.174 He conducted two additional concerts in Moscow to audiences of ten

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thousand people, despite illness and strain which kept him bedridden for most of the time other than rehearsals and performances; Turner writes: 'his success was even greater than before'.175 RimskyKorsakov recalls that he, Moussorgsky and Borodin were not able to meet Berlioz: Hector Berlioz came to us already an old man; although alert at rehearsal, he was bowed down by illness and therefore was utterly indifferent to Russian music and Russian musicians. Most of his leisure time he spent stretched out on his back complaining of illness and seeing only Balakirev and the directors.176 Odoyevsky, who had moved back to Moscow in 1862, attended the Berlioz concerts in the Manege there and he met the composer again after twenty years: 'he had aged cruelly and hardly recognized me'; he noted the 'immense enthusiasm after each part of Childe Harold?}11 Odoyevsky, it was reported in the press, led Berlioz by the arm as he left the Manege; at a special dinner at the Conservatory in honour of Berlioz, at which Berlioz 'seemed to revive', Odoyevsky made the main speech, followed by, among others, Tchaikovsky.178 Berlioz and Odoyevsky became close friends during Berlioz's Moscow stay; in their subsequent correspondence, Berlioz expressed personal gratitude to Odoyevsky and an admiration for his writings on the cultural role of music, on the timeless qualities of wind instruments, and of his belief in the future of the young school of Russian music; in October of 1868 he wrote to Odoyevsky: 'Who frequents your "at homes" now? To whom do you extend your helping hand? How I should like to be carried off for a moment to your working study, to listen to your splendid conversation.'179 Within a few months both men were dead. As we have seen already, Odoyevsky placed Wagner among the very highest musical geniuses, as well as, alongside Liszt and Berlioz, one of'the avant-garde people of our time'. 180 Odoyevsky seems to have first come into contact with Wagner's music in Berlin, at the beginning of 1857, when he twice attended performances of Tannhauser, he remarked in his travel notes that while there was 'great talent and dramatic quality, especially in the third act, the second act was tiresome in the extreme, lasting more than an hour. The melodic quality was greater than I expected, but the system is absurd.' 181 The second performance brought forth the comment that 'the more

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you hear it, the better it gets'. While Odoyevsky's admiration for Wagner grew from then on, he retained certain ultimate reservations. In 1860 he was predicting that within three years Wagner would occupy the same place in Paris as Beethoven had attained with such difficulty; the same year he wrote in his diary: 'watching Wagner's Tristan et Isolda I can't express my admiration for his incessant use of tritone. The chromatic scale is essentially more monotonous than the diatonic.'182 By 1862 Odoyevsky regarded Wagner as 'a genius, without any doubt' (one proof of which, despite his prediction of 1860, was the failure of Tannhaiiser in Paris, where operas by Meyerbeer and Verdi flourished).183 In 1866 he turned to Tristan again, this time more critically: 'however much I respect him [Wagner], the misuse of dissonances leads him to monotony'.184 Wagner's decision to accept an invitation to conduct two concerts in St Petersburg in March 1863 seems to have owed something to the efforts and advice of Madame Kalergis.185 Again financial reasons seemed to be predominant. Wagner was met in St Petersburg by Germans, stayed in a German boarding house on Nevsky Prospekt, and enjoyed the services of Alexander Serov as mentor in St Petersburg. Madame Kalergis had arranged all necessary introductions, such as to the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, and he made the acquaintance of the aged Matvey Viel'gorsky. Wagner also concluded a contract 'with General Lwoff, the manager of the Moscow theatre [sic]' to give three concerts, but the first of these had to be cancelled: On the very morning of the first concert I was obliged to cancel it, and declare myself on the sick list with a bad feverish cold. In the slush and snow which inundated the streets of Moscow it seems to have been impossible to announce this fact to the public, and I heard that angry disturbances resulted when many splendid equipages arrived on a fruitless errand and had to be turned away.186 Wagner expressed himself delighted when the concerts did take place with the brilliant audience, the magnificent reception and the enthusiasm of the orchestra. The Moscow musical public had already been familiar with certain of Wagner's works - choruses from The Flying Dutchman, the Faust Overture, parts of Tannhaiiser, the entr'acte and choruses from Lohengrin and the Rienzi overture having all been performed by the

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Russian Musical Society.187 Odoyevsky, as in the earlier case of the Berlioz visit to Russia, brought out a preview article, a review of the first concert written immediately after it, and then a more substantial article covering Wagner's career.188 These three articles together provide, in Bernandt's view, 'a clear picture of the first attempt of a Russian critic to interpret the work of this German composer'.189 Wagner was the exponent of 'a new art'; again Odoyevsky praised the melodic quality of his music, saying that it cannot be judged by the 'known school rules'; he talked of its 'purity of form and content. . . with a dominant element of poetry' and stressed the inspirational role in Wagner of poetic folk legend.190 Odoyevsky was particularly impressed by the performances of the overture and march from Tannhauser, the prelude and Elsa's aria from Lohengrin and the 'aerial cavalcade from Niebelung*; he also found Wagner 'a remarkable and first-class conductor' of Beethoven's symphonies.191 Odoyevsky's diary of 1863 has a number of references to Wagner from 13 March to 18 March. 192 On 13 March (the date of the first concert, in the Bol'shoy Theatre), Odoyevsky wrote: 'At the Wagner concert! Getting home, I couldn't stop myself writing an article about him'; on the next day: sent article on first Wagner concert to Pavlov. My dinner guests were: Wagner, Princess Ol'ga Obolenskaya, Timiryazeva... Kosheleva, Sobolevsky. After dinner Longinov arrived and sang; Wagner wept with emotion [illegible]. There are further references to an artistes' dinner in Wagner's honour, to the third concert (17 March) being half empty (at least in the dress-circle, because of repetitions in the programme, although 'the stalls shouted wieder kommen*), and finally (18 March) to bidding farewell to Wagner. Wagner's autobiography, perhaps not always the most reliable of documents, gives a somewhat different and confused account of his visit to Odoyevsky (and seems to have been either ignored or overlooked by Soviet musicologists; neither is this visit mentioned by Ernest Newman): In addition to these musical circles I also became acquainted with Prince Odoiewsky, as the result of an introduction and strong recommendation by Mme. Kalergis. She had told me that in the Prince I should meet one of the noblest of men, who would fully

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understand me. After a most arduous drive of many hours, I reached his modest dwelling, and was received with patriarchal simplicity at his family mid-day dinner, but I found it exceedingly difficult to convey to him any particulars as to myself and my plans. With regard to any impressions I might be expected to gather respecting himself, he seemed to rely on the effect produced by the contemplation of a large instrument resembling an organ, which he had had designed and erected in one of his principal rooms. Unluckily there was no one there who could play it; but I could not help thinking it must have been intended for some specially devised form of divine worship, which he held there on Sundays for the benefit of his household, relatives and acquaintances. Ever mindful of my kindly patroness [Kalergis], I attempted to give the genial prince some idea of my position and my aspirations. With apparent emotion he exclaimed, 'jf'ai ce qu HI vousfaut; parlez a Wolffsohn\ On further enquiry I learned that the guardian spirit thus commended to me was not a banker, but a Russian Jew who wrote romances.193 This account, on the face of it, seems scarcely compatible with Odoyevsky's brief diary note of the occasion; the reference to the organ is particularly puzzling in that, on the one hand, it appears to identify Odoyevsky's as the household visited but, on the other, we know from many other sources that Odoyevsky himself played the instrument most proficiently. It may be that Wagner's memory of the occasion was hazy, or that he confused quite separate occasions and personalities; or perhaps Odoyevsky was uncharacteristically overwhelmed by the occasion. In any event, Wagner left Russia without as much money as he had hoped towards his building project at Biebrich, due to forgoing one concert through a muddle over dates, and despite a gift of 1000 roubles from the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna to compensate for loss of receipts and in gratitude for Wagner's nevertheless deigning to give a charity concert 'on behalf of those imprisoned for debt in St Petersburg'. 194

VII

Odoyevsky and Russian Musical Life

It remains now to summarize briefly Odoyevsky's contribution to the musical life of Russia. Apart from his activities as a music critic and champion of Russian composers, Odoyevsky's circles in St Petersburg from the 1830s onwards and in Moscow in the 1860s were a prominent

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meeting-place for musicians and a venue for musical evenings. He was often able to combine his promotion of Russian music with the organization of charity concerts, often using his personal contacts to obtain works and performers. In 1838 he attempted to put on a 'concertmonstre' of 1000 musicians and singers in aid of'houses of shelter' for poor children; in this case the project folded for lack of an available hall.195 During the period of the existence of the St Petersburg Society for Visiting the Poor (1846-55), he was heavily involved, as we have seen, in organizing charity concerts. As well as providing opportunities for Russian composers, the concerts organized by the Society were unique in their resources, compared to private musical entrepreneurial events, the Society being able to lay on a large orchestra which could then afford to be leisurely and thorough in rehearsal ('preparations for the Russian Concert of 1850 lasted for five weeks . . . and the orchestra alone cost the Society over 600 silver roubles').196 Odoyevsky was involved in the Russian Musical Society, in both St Petersburg and later Moscow, which led to the establishment of the St Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories (in 1859 and 1866 respectively). The Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society ran a 'free class of simple choral singing', at Odoyevsky's initiative, and at their popular concerts 9000 places were available at twenty kopecks.197 He wrote a number of works popularizing musical theory and techniques (particularly his 'Musical Grammar, or the Basis of Music for Non-Musicians' of 1868), revised the 'Pocket Musical Dictionary by A. Garras' (which went into twenty editions), as well as lecturing and other educational activities.198 He took a special interest, for example, in the violin, considering Paganini 'the clearest representative of the romantic tendency in the art of violin playing', and frequently wrote on the technique of violin playing.199 One foreign memoirist of the period, writing originally in Scribner's Monthly', wrote of the late Odoyevsky Moscow salon, to which he was introduced by Turgenev and where he met Berlioz and Tolstoy, mentioning the hall, between the dining-room and the study, which would be used if a prominent singer was present, and the collection of instruments: two pianos, an organ and various other pieces, including an invented 'small piano with keys for the low and high sounds, which sounded like a violin (piercing the ears for the rest of the evening)'.200 Afanasiy Fet, referring to the same period, mentions Odoyevsky's improvisations on the organ of fugues based on Russian folk-song.201 Odoyevsky's home-built organ, 'Sebastianon' (sometimes called 'Sebastion' and derogatorily 'Savos'ka') reportedly had to be manually

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'wound-up' (or 'stoked') continuously when playing, which necessitated someone climbing right inside it. This duty fell to the Odoyevskys' kitchen-hand, named Sidor, who at one stage demanded extra pay for the extra work, threatening otherwise to leave. This situation, until amicably resolved, caused a temporary crisis in Odoyevsky's musical life of the 1860s, and occasioned an epigram from the seasoned wit S. A. Sobolevsky, by this time a resident in the same house as the Odoyevskys. In these verses, headed in one manuscript 'Prince O. to his stoker, who winds up his musical machine for him', Sobolevsky, as well as making great sport of the 'dispute', alluded to its possible adverse effects upon the attendance of Odoyevsky's female students of the theory of music!202 To conclude in a more serious vein on Odoyevsky's contribution to Russian musical life, let us quote first Alfred Swan's assessment: The writings of Odoyevsky reflect the general musical activities in Russia for more than forty years. He reviewed concerts in both capitals, contributed articles on musical theory to leading periodicals, and corresponded with the great figures of the world of music, always breaking a lance for the right cause 203 and finally the acknowledgement made by recent Soviet musicology: Odoyevsky's works dedicated to Glinka had an immense and fruitful influence on the further development of musical scholarship. . . . On Odoyevsky's remarkable works contemporary Soviet musical studies, too, depend to a considerable degree. 204

CHAPTER FOUR

The Popular Educator: Odoyevsky's activities as Pedagogue, Philanthropist and Children's Writer In Russia we have everything, but just three things are needed: science, science and science. V. F. Odoyevsky, 1868 Odoyevsky's role as a popular educator, in the widest sense, can be seen in many facets of his life and work. Didactic or 'instructional' (prosvetiteVnyye or nravopisateVnyye) elements were present to some degree in practically all Odoyevsky's fictional works and were particularly strong in the early satirical apologues of the 1820s.1 This tendency was carried over into the 1830s, in, for example, Variegated Tales and the society tales, and is prominent again in Russian Nights, in its Utopian espousal of the destiny of Russia, its critique of the West and its cautionary tales on the ideas of Bentham and Malthus. It continued throughout Odoyevsky's later writing, up to and beyond his article NedavoVno (Not Good Enough) of 1867.2 In the field of music, too, as we have seen, Odoyevsky was concerned with educating public taste in his reviews, and also wrote works on musical education per se. This educative concern, so strong in many of Odoyevsky's endeavours, arose out of his philosophical preoccupations - romantic and idealist in the first place - and out of his obsession with the pursuit of knowledge in all possible spheres, but not least out of his observations of the world around him and its glaring defects. It is thus based, broadly speaking, on what the leading Soviet commentator on this aspect of Odoyevsky's career, V. Ya. Struminsky, has described as a blend of theory and empirical experience: two elements which were to Odoyevsky essential and complementary components of cognition.3 Struminksy, quoting Herzen's assertion that the almanac Mnemozina, published in 1824 and 1825 by Odoyevsky and KyukhePbeker, was reflective of the ideological views of the Decembrists, sees Odoyevsky's activities in the spheres of education and philanthropy as carrying out in practice, years after the Decembrist revolt had been crushed, the pedagogical and cultural ideas of

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Decembrism - in particular those of the 'Union of Welfare' (a secret society proscribed in 1821) as laid down in its directives known as T h e Green Book'.4 Odoyevsky could not, of course, have participated in the original Union but could have been influenced by the ideas which survived the society through his close association with a number of active members of the Decembrist movement; his brother-in-law, it may be said, the future reformist minister S. S. Lanskoy, had been a member of the Union. The complex question of Odoyevsky's relations with Decembrism is examined in a later chapter, but there is little doubt that the more progressive elements of the Nikolaevan government service were, even in the years of darkest reaction, tacitly attempting to carry out policies first propounded by those with whom they could not possibly admit to having sympathized. In the posts which he held as librarian (of foreign literature at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and later as deputy director of the Public Library), Odoyevsky had an unusual degree of access to literature on all subjects, devouring pedagogical literature over many years when official duties or inclination demanded. He wrote reviews of educational books, recommended journals for distribution and imbibed the ideas of European pedagogues such as Pestalozzi and Lambruschini and their Russian counterpart, Ye. O. GugeP.5 The result was that Odoyevsky stood for a flexible approach to education, with no direct borrowing or mechanical imitation of foreign models, Tor a Russian book must spring from Russian daily life'.6 He believed in the 'science' of education: a science as yet in its 'infancy' and, until a definitive methodology should be evolved, a 'batde field' on which the best minds would fight, but 'like any other science', an ever developing, progressive process.7 At the same time, Odoyevsky's pedagogical views were consistent with his overall philosophical ideas. He frequently inveighed against 'scholasticism' - the narrow academic approach to learning which could only result at best in an erudite form of tunnel vision - on the grounds that nothing is isolated in nature: everything is closely bound together and recognition of this state of affairs is the first essential. He therefore favoured the principle of 'encyclopedism'.8 Such an approach is, of course, fully accordant to the basic romantic idea of synthesism, to which Odoyevsky subscribed from the formative years of his own education. On the subject of his early education, Odoyevsky, in an autobiographical note of the mid 1850s, wrote: In my childhood I chanced upon a book telling of some blissful country or other in which all knowledge, rules, laws etc. fitted on to

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a single small slab and by virtue of this that country was completely happy. This discovery brought me unspoken joy: there consequently existed there the possibility of dropping grammar and geography and the history of the Medes and the Assyrians - in a word, all those unbearable books which (like a fever on days of learning) stretched my patience. It would be worth finding this slab - I had already done plenty of learning by heart, but I had not been learning the right thing! Time and again I asked my teacher where to get this precious slab which was to save me from forfeits, from the corner and from a worse fate - I intended not to stint my pocket money for it. My teacher would smile and reply that such a slab really did exist, but that I wasn't able to understand it, and must first study. Such a reply seemed rather strange to my child's logic: if not only grammar, algebra, history, etc. but everything which man needed could be fitted on to a single slab, then why should I be tortured with unbearable books?9 Odoyevsky's life-long pursuit of knowledge in virtually all known fields can be seen, as Struminsky points out, as 'a striving to uncover the content of that small slab', and his pedagogical activity as a striving to impart this content to the consciousness of others.10

I

T h e Pedagogue

Functionary and Theorist A late nineteenth-century historian of Russian education wrote of Odoyevsky as 'the first intellectual worker for the comrnon people', while Struminsky terms him 'one of the few outstanding representatives of Russian pedagogy of his time'. 11 As his creative and official life progressed from the 1820s to the 1830s Odoyevsky's instrucional aims in the broader sense gradually spilled over from his fiction to give rise to outright pedagogical writings, connected with his career as a government functionary. In the 1830s Odoyevsky served on a number of ministerial commissions concerned with scientific matters, technological inventions and advances and such topics as weights and measures and fire precautions, writing reports and publishing articles on various esoteric subjects in the Journal ofthe Ministry ofInternal Affairs and elsewhere. The Ministry of Internal Affairs in which Odoyevsky served for

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most of the 1830s, employed a number of liberal figures of the day: A. P. Zablotsky-Desyatovsky (Odoyevsky's future collaborator on Rural Reading), Dal', Milyutin and Nadezhdin. Odoyevsky served next in the relatively progressive Ministry of State Domains, with ZablotskyDesyatovsky and under P. D. Kiselyov. It was in such areas of public life that pressures for reform were beginning to build up; discussions took place in the salons of DaP and Odoyevsky, and, more importantly, in that of the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, and in connection with liberal-minded associations such as the Russian Geographical Society and the Society for Visiting the Poor of St Petersburg.12 In February 1838 Odoyevsky became a member of the Learned Committee of the Ministry of State Domains, a position he held until 1862, serving as a 'consultative expert' on educational matters to a ministry specially constituted 'to improve the life of the state peasants'.13 It was over the next decade or so that Odoyevsky's pedagogical interests and his official career ran in close proximity, if not in perfect harmony. The main task which the Learned Committee set itself was to bring elementary education to the peasantry, in order to raise in the medium to long term their efficiency in agriculture. In a fifteen-year period from 1840 this ministry opened 2754 elementary schools (prikhodskiye shkoly) in the peasant settlements (a figure which far exceeded that achieved by the Ministry of Education in the whole period from the beginning of the century).14 These schools were to be distinct in character from those of the Ministry of Education and from the ecclesiastical synod schools, thus necessitating a whole range of new guidelines to teachers and class textbooks. As the appointed consultative expert in this field, Odoyevsky was required to research and produce the necessary materials - a task which he approached with considerable thoroughness and which was to consume an appreciable amount of his time throughout the 1840s. It was also to lead to conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities and internal strife within the Committee. In 1844 Odoyevsky began writing a 'Handbook for First-year Teaching in Elementary Schools', a part of which he published privately in 1845; however the work was never completed and put into circulation, as it apparently failed to satisfy the Committee in certain respects, probably as a result of criticism by the religious authorities.15 This was to be the fate of a number of other documents and writings produced by Odoyevsky in this period. Odoyevsky's intended magnum opus on pedagogy, entitled 'Science to Science' was completed in 1847 and passed the censorship in part in 1845 and again in 1848, but was

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nevertheless, apart from one section which appeared in Otechestvennyye zapiski in 1845, not printed (possibly due to the events of 1848).16 A reader specially designed for the new schools by Odoyevsky and Zablotsky-Desyatovsky and eagerly awaited by the Ministry, Stories of God, Nature and Man - a course of study linking for the first time an appreciation of natural surroundings with social life and history - was criticized by Metropolitan Filaret for spreading 'revolutionary-democratic ideas'. The book, backed by the Ministry, was printed and distributed to the schools, but, because of synodal opposition was not reprinted and fell into disuse.17 With a number of his main pedadogical productions being thus blocked from effective use in the organization of rural elementary education, Odoyevsky refused to work on further textbooks after about 1850. Frustrated in his attempts to introduce a realistic form of education in the newly founded elementary schools, the minister (Kiselyov) resigned in 1855. In addition to these writings, Odoyevsky was engaged during this period in looking into the 'inner life' of the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna's Mariinskiy Institute for girls, was constantly reviewing educational textbooks for the ministry, collaborated on Biblioteka dlya vospitaniya (The Library for Education), edited by Shevyryov and involving Granovsky, Khomyakov, Pogodin and others, and started choral singing in village schools to foster aesthetic, artistic and moral upbringing. Odoyevsky's pedagogical writings for the new elementary schools represented the first attempt at a systematic educational course for early school and pre-school age groups. He suggested a new structure of secular schools with teachers to be drawn from the people, who could therefore be understood by village children. He placed the emphasis on developing, rather than repressing, the child, was against overloading and advocated the imparting of 'real knowledge' appropriate to the age, rather than medieval scholasticism, classical studies or religious education.18 He was not opposed to religious instruction as such, but later remarked that its imposition in universities and schools was likely to have a result totally opposite from that intended (citing the instances of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov as examples).19 Education should be geared to the demands of Russian life and thus accord with Odoyevsky's conception of national feeling (narodnosf) in a literal sense as conforming to the real needs and demands of the people; the most urgent demand was for development, which could now be realized through contemporary science and technology.20 Most striking perhaps is the great respect in which the child's mind was held by Odoyevsky; he wrote:

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Children were my best teachers, and for that reason I have to this day preserved for them a deep respect and gratitude. Children showed me the whole poverty of my learning. It was well worth talking with them for a few days at a time, to draw out their questions in order to convince myself that we do not know at all that which it seems to us that we have studied so thoroughly.21 Accordingly children deserve something better than to be stuffed with facts; they require an understanding of them, the establishing of links between the units of fact and their interaction, to be imparted by teachers capable of rising above the limited outlook of separate facts and disciplines.22 Following this kind of thinking, Odoyevsky concerned himself with the pedagogical process as applied to pre-school, school and, as we shall see, adult age-groups. A measure of his success, at least at the theoretical level, is that Struminsky could write, a century later, of Odoyevsky's 'methodological constructs which can still in the present day be instructive for the elaboration of the theory and, practice of the Soviet school'.23 The Passion for Science Children's minds and their educational needs stimulated, Odoyevsky owned, an even greater passion in him for all branches of science than he had earlier possessed.24 Science, indeed, assumed the overriding role in Odoyevsky's theory at all levels of pedagogy. Odoyevsky wrote much later of an interest in anatomy among the Lyubomudry as 'the science of man'; 25 scientific interests were also developed in his study of Oken's particular brand of Schellingian nature philosophy. Pogodin recalled that Odoyevsky's philosophical pursuits in those days led him into a study of medieval mystics, chemics and alchemics, physics and metaphysics; his study then and later is described as being filled with scientific apparatus, instruments musical and otherwise, a skull, a skeleton, and retorts for chemical experiments.26 Odoyevsky's 'passionate interest' extended to 'philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, jurisprudence, natural history, geography, mineralogy, political economy, philosophy...', to quote one, if anything, conservative list.27 To this could be added botany, various forms of alchemy, animal magnetism, the growth of modern technology, phrenology, and later history, as well as numerological pursuits such as the qualities of cubic numbers and theory of probability. In 1844

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Odoyevsky produced a book on galvanism.28 Writing at the turn of the century, I. I. Zamotin explained Odoyevsky's multifarious interests thus in terms of romantic philosophy: In these years [the 1820s] Odoyevsky was taken with alchemy and astrology, the nature of the human voice and microscopic researches on plants, questions of heredity and upbringing, of general pedagogy and children's homes; but he needed all this only to penetrate to the universal secret of living and to grasp the spiritual basis in matter. As a true Schellingist, Odoyevsky sought to pierce nature, studying natural sciences, but nature was to him of interest in as much as it was like 'an undeveloped unconscious intelligence', concealing in itself something spiritual, in as much as it was 'a ladder, by which the spirit rises towards itself.29 Although he later moved much closer to a positivistic view of science, Odoyevsky remained open-minded on the unorthodox approaches which had so fascinated him earlier; in the 1850s he felt still able to write: 'false theory led the alchemists to a far greater number of highly important discoveries than all the cautious and rational researches of present-day chemists'.30 More typical of his late period, however, was his attendance at the public lectures of the physicist Professor N. A. Lyubimov and his publication in 1868 of a pamphlet on them (from the end of which comes the epigraph to the present chapter).31 As another pre-revolutionary commentator pointed out, Odoyevsky's own scientific researches over the years may have yielded little or nothing to science, but they contributed much to his popular pedagogy - for example, his recommendation of the methods of chemistry for historical research.32 The Promotion of Science Much of Odoyevsky's time and energy in the field of pedagogy went into the promotion and popularization of science and general knowledge among the vast uneducated sections of the adult population of Russia, in particular the illiterate peasantry. Just as he advocated, in theory and in practice, an ultimate synthesis of the arts, so Odoyevsky stood for the same approach in the case of the sciences. Furthermore, he was concerned to promote a higher synthesis still of art and science, writing in the late 1820s:

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Science and art are modes of representation of objects in differing forms. All objects embraceable by science can be embraced by art as well. Science and art are elements; the former in the form of the here and now, the latter in the form of the ideal.33 Poetry, philosophy and science should be available to all; the work of science and art together, Odoyevsky believed, was to transform social life in the direction of (the ultimate goal) harmony (a 'quantum of poetry' injected into everyday life would lead to 'the harmony of life').34 The approach to science should be that of encyclopedism: 'he who has studied only one science cannot claim to know it'.35 Through adopting that approach himself, Odoyevsky was able to converse with scientists, doctors and other specialists in their own language: 'it is just as enjoyable to me to be able to speak these languages as travelling is for a man who knows foreign languages: he is at home everywhere'.36 Odoyevsky does not deny that there is an inherent danger in this approach - that of scepticism: 'the habit of studying all sides of any subject involuntarily leads to scepticism, not of an absolute kind, but of a kind which slows down action'; nevertheless this is still infinitely preferable to the alternative of scholasticism ('the extension of a separate fact into a whole system of phenomena'); and, in any case, 'a child is an inveterate encyclopedist'.37 'Our rights and obligations' are embodied in 'the law', Odoyevsky stressed in a 'people's reader'; but, at the same time, he believed that science should submit to no authority 'apart from the authority of facts, arrived at by conscientious observation'.38 Such were the principles on which Odoyevsky launched his promotion and popularization of science. N. M. Mikhaylovskaya, a recent Soviet commentator, writes that all Odoyevsky's activities during the 1850s and the 1860s - as publicist and in belles-lettres and public life went under the badge of the ideas of Enlightenment'.39 This is equally true for most of the 1840s, and to a considerable extent for the preceding decade as well. Odoyevsky wrote articles in his later period on pedagogy, physics, chemistry, medicine, natural science, political economy and music, created projects for the perfection of Russian education, and was still writing fiction. Many projects remained unfinished, many articles were unpublished and his papers are full of notes and fragments on all manner of scientific and learned subjects. Books and enlightenment for the common people were one of his favourite themes. Odoyevsky also planned a number of encyclopedic works. In the mid 1830s he attempted to organize the launching of'a journal of

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encyclopedic character' involving the services of leading academics and scientists and including sections on philosophy, the natural sciences, world history and literary theory (teoriya slovesnosti) and with Krayevsky as joint editor. However, permission was not granted. A slightly more modest programme of this nature was initially envisaged for Otechestvennyye zapiski, but was never fully realized.40 Later Odoyevsky was planning ambitious encyclopedic works of his own, such as 'The Big Table Book' ('Bol'shaya nastoPnaya kniga'), envisaged in 1859 as a popular nature-almanac in the broadest sense, covering natural science, geology, mineralogy, geometry, surveying, mechanics and so on, all explained with examples from everyday peasant life.41 Many archival fragments are headed 'science and life' and something in the nature of an encyclopedia of the ethics appears to have been in preparation, to be called (or with a section entitled) 'Earthly Life' ('Zemnaya zhizn") plus a somewhat similar project called 'Daily Living' ('Zhiteyskiy byt'). Thus Odoyevsky's pedagogical programmes and projects for enlightenment ranged far and wide, taking various paths, including the ethical, the aesthetic and the linguistic - with particular attention being paid to simple and accessible style. His activities in this field were occasionally extended even to the instruction of foreigners (he wrote an 'Etude sur la prononciation russe', which was supposed to be so difficult but was in fact so only because of the dreadful existing grammars for foreigners, plus the 'vicious use made of Latin letters to convey Russian sounds'), or narrowed to pure and simple didacticism (such as the short piece for vodka drinkers, published posthumously in 1870, which anticipated the 'Von, samogonV-type writings of Mayakovsky some half a century later).42 The one project of the popularization of science and knowledge which came to fruition and achieved considerable recognition was the series of publications called SeVskoye chteniye {Rural Reading). The seeds of this project probably go back to 1833 when Odoyevsky wrote to the scientist M. A. Maksimovich that he had been taking chemistry lessons from Academician G. I. Gess with the object of writing a popular chemistry, and proposed that Maksimovich should collaborate on such ventures; nothing came of this but Odoyevsky did publish his article on chemistry which has been described as phenomenal for its day.43 Rural Reading, edited by Odoyevsky and Zablotsky-Desyatovsky, came out in four issues, each of about 100 pages, yearly from 1844 to 1847. Contributors included a number of prominent writers (including

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VePtman, Dal', Zagoskin and Sollogub), as well as scientific figures. These books appeared in large editions by the standards of the time and achieved considerable popularity (Belinsky wrote in 1845 that 9000 had been sold44). Book One ran to an eleventh edition (St Petersburg, 1864), Book Two reaching its seventh edition, Book Three its sixth and Book Four its fourth. A fifth book, prepared for publication in 1848, did not appear.45 Odoyevsky included eighteen articles under his own name in the four books, and probably a number unsigned. The policy in these books was to inculcate a genuine appreciation of the surrounding world before moving on to the facts of science, stemming from such basic ideas as Odoyevsky's statement: 'I don't know what a man can have learned who does not know what is below his own skin', and told in the form of simple stories designed for the peasantry, describing in simple language the various levels of surrounding phenomena.46 This lowering of the mode of explanation to the level of the peasant masses on the part of a writer of aristocratic origins and connections was greeted with displeasure and derision in the realms of high society. The Slavophiles, too, were hostile to this attempt to raise the peasantry to the level of scientific thought, suspecting a lack of respect for traditional peasant wisdom and the intrusion of influences from the 'rotten West'. 47 However, Belinsky gave the venture a warm welcome, though he regarded Book Four as 'the weakest', and noted its popularity with some amazement.48 There had been nothing like Rural Reading before in Russian popular education; 'this experiment in enlightenment', in Struminsky's words, 'was so skilfully constructed' that it achieved a success over a period of years which was remarkable for its time.49 It could also be said that Odoyevsky and his colleagues on Rural Reading anticipated to some extent the Populist movement, in their desire to carry learning to the rural masses - although their aims were, of course, much more moderate and reformist.

II

T h e Philanthropist

Along with Odoyevsky's progressive pedagogy and propaganda for science - both medium- to long-term remedies for the problems of peasant ignorance and illiteracy - went a direct and immediate effort to alleviate the worst of urban poverty, in the form of practical organized philanthropy. Basically a liberal, at least in nineteenth-century Russian terms, with

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reformist, not to say in a spiritual sense Utopian^ aspirations, Odoyevsky seemed to believe, like Dostoyevsky, in the transformation of society through an inner moral rejuvenation, rather than any great external tinkering with the social system, let alone revolution. Hence his stress on education and science. Nevertheless, certain nudges in the right direction might also be necessary from time to time, such as key reforms from above (for example, the abolition of serfdom) and appropriate action from below (if the enlightened section of the upper classes can be termed 'below') in the form of mutual help through organized benevolence. Working together, Odoyevsky felt, was the only means of averting a Malthus-type disaster.50 The three essential ingredients of mutual help, in Odoyevsky's view, were truth (to be supplied through science), the aesthetic (through art) and love (through religion).51 In the 1830s Odoyevsky was energetically involved in setting up 'shelters' for abandoned and homeless children. Olga Stepanovna Odoyevskaya was herself a leading light in St Petersburg charity work and may have been responsible for her husband's initial participation. Shelters in St Petersburg in the early 1830s soon spread to the other main cities, and later throughout Russia. Feeling the need to bring this expanding chain of institutions under its own supervision, the government in 1838 appointed Odoyevsky head of a Committee of Overall Trusteeship for Children's Shelters.52 The scale of his involvement with the children's shelters by 1840 is attested by the accounts, inventories and addresses relating to these affairs among Odoyevsky's papers. 53 Odoyevsky wrote a number of pamphlets and bureaucratic reports connected with the shelters, their organization and their pedagogical requirements.54 The shelters, the first of their kind in Russia, were transformed from mere refuges into educational institutions; this brought forth the first works on pre-school education, elementary teaching aids, alphabets, children's fairy stories and instructions to teachers. In addition to the shelters, the Odoyevskys were involved in the organization and running of a number of other charitable institutions, including hospitals, a maternity home and a children's overnight hostel. The main philanthropic enterprise, however, in which Odoyevsky was heavily involved was the Society for Visiting the Poor of St Petersburg, which was formed in April 1846 and forced to close in April 1855. Contemporary accounts of the rise and fall of the Society were left by N. V. Putyata (a long-time associate of Odoyevsky and earlier of Pushkin) and another leading participant, V. A. Insarsky.55

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The Society was the idea in the first place not of Odoyevsky, but of M. Yu. Viel'gorsky, and in its early days, with 25 members, met at the salons of Odoyevsky and V. A. Sollogub. Putyata saw the Society's foundation as an echo among the Russian intelligentsia of European ideas concerning the industrial proletariat and the working class generally (under the influence of such works as Eugene Sue's LesMysteres de Paris). By 1849 the Society had 300 members, who were expected to devote one day a month to visiting the poor to establish what needed to be done and referring requests to the appropriate quarter; and shelters for needy children and the old were established. The founders and mainstays of the Society were enlightened aristocrats, but the membership extended to many liberal army officers and government functionaries (especially from the Ministries of State Domains and Internal Affairs), many members of the Russian Geographical Society, plus a number of writers, including some from the Belinsky and Sovremennik circles. Odoyevsky, as chairman of the Society, gave a vast amount of time and energy to its organization, being perhaps taken advantage of to a certain extent by the membership (as Insarsky admitted), arranging charity concerts, lotteries and other fund-raising events - just checking the numbers of a giant lottery took days on end. 56 This time and strength-sapping work, which probably more than anything ended his belletristic career, came upon him almost unawares. In September 1847 he wrote to the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna: We intended to organize only a smallish circle to improve the dissemination of alms and I do not know how or why I was elected chairman, how the Society came to take on such huge dimensions, how we gave out 12,000 roubles, how 5000 families came to be on our hands, how three benevolent institutions were organized, how I turned out to be weighed down with most of the affairs of this Society.57 However, in the climate of reaction in Russia which followed the European events of 1848, so extreme as to place the St Petersburg philanthropists under suspicion of'communistic activities', the aims of the Society became more and more frustrated and by 1851 it was in decline. The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 meant that its days were numbered. Suspicion and rumours about the Society began after the February revolution in France. An article by Zablotsky was seized when V. A.

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Milyutin was arrested (over the Petrashevtsy affair) and other members were threatened. In March 1849 it was brought under official control, by being made into an enforced subsidiary of the official imperial charity organization ('Imperatorskoye chelovekolyubimoye obshchesrvo'). This was regarded as a virtual kiss of death ('our society could stand anything but that', wrote Insarsky). Odoyevsky took on the thankless task of organizing the amalgamation, working between the comparatively loosely organized Society and the official, bureaucratic body. In 1852 one of the mainstays, the Duke of Leuchtenberg, died. Although some large bequests helped out and the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich became a trustee, these were not enough to save the Society - the Grand Duke soon lost interest. The final blow, however, was the military personnel decree which stopped all members of the armed forces from participation in the Society. This meant an immediate loss of seventy members; with the Crimean War gaining momentum additional members were leaving the capital or joining the army. In April 1855 Odoyevsky gave up and dissolved the Society. After 1848 the liberals, who had previously been able to attract support from radicals ready to back any anti-serfdom movement, began to backtrack. Apart from the decline of the Society, Dal' cancelled his Thursday salons, burnt his papers and retreated to Nizhniy Novgorod; Odoyevsky cancelled his 'Saturdays' for a time. A curious literary sequel to these events came in the form of Nekrasov's poem Filantrop, written in 1853. Nekrasov had himself been a member of the Society (from March 1851) and had known Odoyevsky from at least 1844 and visited him at his dacha as late as 1856. Odoyevsky's story Martingal {TheMartingale) had even appeared in Nekrasov's Petersburgskiy sbornik in 1846. In January 1860 Odoyevsky heard that Nekrasov intended to read the poem at a public meeting and, feeling himself and the Society to have been lampooned, protested by letter to Nekrasov, who denied that Odoyevsky had been the subject of this work but nevertheless agreed to withdraw the poem from the reading.58 Nekrasov was satirizing those backtracking liberals (with or without Odoyevsky in mind) who counselled patience and literature for the masses based on religious-monarchistic principles. Nekrasov's attitude in Filantrop is an interesting illustration of the growing gulf between the liberals ('the men of the forties') and the radicals, which was to become absolute with the reforms of the sixties. In a diary entry of 1861, Odoyevsky wryly quotes Bakunin's attitude to philanthropists: liberal philanthropists should be hanged on the grounds that they merely spoil the work of the revolutionary

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generation, whose task, 'neither knowing nor wanting to know by what the old must be replaced', is pure destruction.59 Bakunin's attitude is, characteristically, extreme; nevertheless, the objectives of the Society achieved only a limited and temporary success, with its proponents distrusted by both sides. The philanthropy of the Society had no way of overcoming the inevitable contradictions confronting such activity in the prevailing historical circumstances. On the plane of immediate action, many of the Society's activists were unsure of the answer to the fundamental problem of whether depravity came from poverty, or whether it was poverty itself which resulted from depravity.60 On the wider plane, they were attempting to enact a philanthropic programme which was based on recognition of the legality of a system of extreme social inequality.

Ill The Children's Writer Partly as a consequence of his pedagogical and philanthropic labours on behalf of children, and partly as an overspill from the mainstream of his fiction of the 1830s, Odoyevsky also became the author of children's tales which successfully combined an ability to entertain with a strong instructional element. This fusion of artistry with pedagogy was to lead to the creation of stories for children with sufficient appeal to go through several editions in the nineteenth century, and for the best tales to be constantly reprinted in the Soviet Union today.61 In a foreword to a proposed collection of children's tales, Odoyevsky wrote a piece called 'On Child Psychology': Your job is to find that which could bring back [a child's] mind from day-dream to whatever object you wish of the real world; for this it is sometimes necessary to start from his very own day-dreams, in order to subconsciously transfer his mind to something else.62 Hoffmann's Nutcracker is cited as a prime example of this technique. The main task of children's literature Odoyevsky saw as arousing thoughts and dreams in the heads of those children (neprosnuvshiyesya) who are not aware of what is in their own minds.63 V. I. Sakharov (writing in 1972) remarked on Odoyevsky's direct, simple but at the same time expressive language, and skilful use of fairy-tale plots, and the natural bent of children for the fantastic:

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'Odoyevsky was simultaneously a realist and a romantic, a teller of fairy tales and a pedagogue, a fantasist and an encyclopedically educated scholar and popularizer.'64 He drew on the richness of the Russian fairy-tale, together with the best folkloric and fairy-tale traditions of the outside world. Apart from Odoyevsky's declared admiration for Hoffmann's Nutcracker, his debt to that author in this field of his literary work can be seen in the title of one story - 'Letters to My Most Affectionate Uncle, Herr Kater von Murr from his Respectful Nephew Kotovas'ka' - while his nom de plume for children, Grandad Iriney, probably derives from Hoffmann's character (also from Kater Murr) Fiirst Irenaus.65 At the same time, Odoyevsky held that 'we are all children of one mother - science' and many of his stories, for all their magical quality, would explain the construction of the steam engine, the thermometer and the gas lamp; he was able to avoid dry instruction and instead to cloak his didacticism in an entertaining narrative.66 The task of children's literature, then, was to arouse curiosity and 'to bring into play the tool of thought', to impart 'scientific material through the prism of childish dreams'. 67 Odoyevsky's children's stories were published in children's journals in the 1830s and in Odoyevsky's own collections oiA Child's Book for Sundays (for 1833 and 1835) and The Children's Tales of Grandad Iriney (1840); in 1847 Odoyevsky published what has been described as 'a first unsuccessful effort' at writing poetry -A Book of Grandad Iriney's Songs for Children - the reception of which 'made him give up for good the idea of writing verse'.68 The best known today of Odoyevsky's children's tales is Gorodok v tabakerke {The Little Town in the Snuff-Box), which tells of the dreamjourney of a young boy into the town of Din-Din, hidden in a musical snuff-box and populated by the little bell-boys and other participants in the music-making process. In the form of a magic tale it describes the construction of an ordinary musical box, transformed into the magic realm of Princess Spring, who rules the whole process whereby the subordinate population of hammers and bells do nothing but play on demand. The mutual ties and interaction of the phenomena of reality are painlessly demonstrated: the link between mechanics and music as well as some notion of musical theory and perspective in drawing. The story is regarded by commentators of the Soviet period as 'a classic work of Russian children's literature'.69 Moroz Ivanovich (Old Frost Ivanovich), another still widely read tale, mingles fairy-tale content with direct didacticism, in a blend said to combine Russian folkloric motifs with the tradition of the Brothers Grimm. 70 Two

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sisters (named Little Miss Stitcher and Little Miss Lazy-Bones) each wait upon the wise old Moroz Ivanovich in his icy abode, and each is rewarded according to her just deserts, as well as learning something about nature. In addition, Odoyevsky wrote a puppet-theatre play called Tsar'-devitsa {The Tsar-Maiden), a number of moralistic satirical comedies for production in the home, and a number of stories in which the scientific or informational content dominated over the fantasy, often featuring insects, animals or plants. Among these generally less successful didactic stories are nevertheless some with interesting features: Bednyy Gnedko (Poor Gnedko) deals with a coachman who, while carrying a fat rich man in a hurry to a dinner engagement, beats his horse mercilessly (shades of Nekrasov and Dostoyevsky!); Stolyar (The Joiner) depicts the rise in status of a hard-working, ambitious man of the people from lowly joiner to eminent architect. Belinsky was a great admirer of the tales of Grandad Iriney: 'Russian children have in "Grandad Iriney"', he wrote, 'a writer that would be the envy of children of all nations'; the Slavophiles, as usual, took the contrary view.71 One commentator writing in 1927 regarded Odoyevsky's children's stories as fresh and clear, less didactic than most, and with an unusual understanding of child psychology; Sakharov (in 1972) sees his pedagogical works as a whole as still relevant, and showing 'what an original and advanced thinker and scholar V. F. Odoyevsky was for his time'. 72 Whatever the degree of success of Odoyevsky's various projects for general enlightenment, however hopeless or just naive some of them may have been in the historical circumstances of Nikolaevan Russia, it is hard to disagree with Sakharov's verdict on this phase of his career: Odoyevsky was an honourable man, a whole-hearted toiler who battled all his life against poverty, ignorance, hunger and sickness among the people, battling as humanist writer, enlightened pedagogue and public figure.73

PART 2

Odoyevsky and his Age

CHAPTER FIVE

Odoyevsky and Tsarist Society My misfortune lies in the fact that I wish to breathe with a clear conscience in a rotten atmosphere. V. F. Odoyevsky, 1850s The purpose of the second part of this study is to survey Odoyevsky's relationship with the age in which he lived, concentrating here on his attitudes to historical and social issues and in the following chapter on his place in the cultural milieu from the 1820s to the 1860s - the 'Odoyevsky salon', his relations with the main literary figures of the period (from Griboyedov to Tolstoy) and some of his slightly more personal relationships. We look first in this chapter at Odoyevsky's position in Tsarist society, that is society in the reigns of Nicholas I and Alexander II, by considering his involvement in or response to the main historical events of the time (the Decembrist uprising of 1825, the reaction following European revolution in 1848, and the reforms of the 1860s), social questions (serfdom and cultural issues, such as censorship), the establishment (court, society and government service), and the official ideology ('Official Nationality': autocracy, Orthodoxy and narodnosf or national feeling).

I

Decembrism

Odoyevsky's links with Decembrism were close and many: two of his intimate associates (Alexander Odoyevsky and KyukhePbeker) were sentenced for active participation in the uprising which took place in St Petersburg on 14 December 1825; the Moscow Lyubomudry were a secret society; Mnemozina was an organ for presumptuous young intellectuals of the day propagating foreign ideas and could be thought of as not over distant ideologically from Ryleyev and Bestuzhev's Polyarnaya zvezda; Odoyevsky had imbibed many of the Decembrist ideas through acquaintances in the secret societies and (as we have

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seen in Chapter Four) from their forerunners in the Union of Welfare and he was likely to disseminate these ideas in one form or another in his subsequent career; many of his Moscow associates (Lyubomudry and 'archive youths') were held in considerable suspicion. As was the case with a number of other prominent literary figures of the time (Pushkin, Griboyedov, Venevitinov), Odoyevsky was fortunate not to have been in St Petersburg at the crucial moment. Indeed, Odoyevsky's precise activities in Moscow during this period, following publication of the fourth and final issue of Mnemozina, are not by any means clear. In a letter to KyukhePbeker (who was by now installed in St Petersburg) of 25 June 1825, Odoyevsky was annoyed and puzzled that Bulgarin (who was for some reason displaying a close interest in Odoyevsky's work) had evidently seen the final issue in advance of publication; he spoke of going nowhere and was anxious to see Alexander; but what was he doing himself? - 'Many things, many things! Just wait and you'll soon know everything'.1 Alexander (Odoyevsky) and KyukhePbeker by letter and, in the case of the former, by personal visitation too, seem to have attempted to draw Odoyevsky to St Petersburg in the Autumn of 1825 with the presumed intention of involving him in active membership of the Northern Society.2 A. I. Koshelev, one of Odoyevsky's immediate associates, recalls the occasion in February or March of 1825, when at M. M. Naryshkin's Ryleyev read his 'patriotic Dumy> and spoke completely freely of the necessity of "finishing with this government"'; Koshelev discussed this enthusiastically with other Lyubomudry members, but makes no direct mention of Odoyevsky in this connection.3 To Koshelev the year 1789 seemed to have come to Russia; while news was awaited from St Petersburg, and in expectation of the southern army's northern march, he describes the scene thus: 'We, German philosophers, forgot Schelling and company, drove every day to the Manege and fencing hall to learn horse-riding and fencing and, by this means, prepare ourselves for the activity for which we intended ourselves.'4 Again, Odoyevsky is not named as a participant. However, it was thought necessary to terminate the existence of the Lyubomudry society as such; Koshelev writes: These meetings continued until the 14 December 1825, when we considered it essential for them to cease, because we did not want to incur the suspicions of the police and equally because political events were monopolizing all our attention.5

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Yekaterina L'vova left the following account of Odoyevsky's reactions to the news of the Decembrist uprising and the arrests which followed, in Moscow as well as St Petersburg: Prince Vladimir was shaken, as was everyone in Moscow, by the subsequent events; it seemed that neither Alexander nor KyukhePbeker had confided to him anything concerning their Society. Vladimir, as I remember, was gloomy, but calm, and merely said that he had looked himself out a fur coat of bearskin and boots, against the event of a distant journey. However he was not touched.6 One result of all this was that, in Koshelev's words, these alarming events 'strengthened that friendship which bound together the Venevitinovs, Odoyevsky, Kireyevsky, Rozhalin, Titov, Shevyryov and myself'.7 Consequently, Odoyevsky found himself under suspicion by the authorities for his close ties with prominent Decembrists, for his pre-Decembrist activities in both publishing and philosophical circles, and for his continued connections with individuals such as those just mentioned: the Lyubomudry were known to the Third Department as a 'liberal gang' and were denounced as being engaged in political studies, while 'their mode of thought, speech and opinion smacks of manifest carbonarism.... They gather at the apartment of Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky, who among them passes for a philosopher.'8 So much for what is known of Odoyevsky's contacts or involvement with Decembrism. Some commentators have suggested that these may have been closer than would at first sight appear, reading the maximum into Koshelev's reminiscences, suggesting that the testimony of Ye. V. L'vova and others deliberately played down Odoyevsky's fore-knowledge, and adducing particular support from KyukhePbeker's use of the phrase 'you are ourV (ty nash) in his letter to Odoyevsky of 1845.9 Most scholars probably now accept, however, that Odoyevsky was almost certainly sympathetic to many of the ideals and aims of Decembrism, but not to the tactics employed. An interesting near-contemporary reference to Odoyevsky in this regard is his presence in Nekrasov's Russian Women (in line 721 of Princess M. N. Volkonskaya), among those seeing off the Decembrist wife on her long journey east. This, in view of this event having taken place in Moscow in December 1826 and Odoyevsky's having moved to St Petersburg in August of that same year, could not have been the case. Nevertheless, it has still been seen as 'symbolically correct' to

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include Odoyevsky, alongside Vyazemsky, Venevitinov and Pushkin, as one of the best-known representatives of the better side of Moscow culture.10 Odoyevsky left no memoirs or autobiography as such, other than the most fragmentary pieces, many of which remain unpublished. His diaries and notebooks have been only partially published and they provide unclear answers, when any at all, to many of the questions which arise here. Such known references as there are to the Decembrists in his subsequent writings do not, however, provide a great deal of encouragement to those seeking to establish the closest possible links between Odoyevsky and Nicholas Fs 'friends of 14 December'. 'With the passing of many years', as one commentator has put it, 'he not only, like many others, does not recall with satisfaction his youthful political dreams, but calls the Decembrists "madmen" (bezumtsy)\n In his diary, Odoyevsky wrote in 1864: Countess Bludova is very upset by what is being printed now abroad concerning her father - whom they call a member of the Supreme Court in 1825, relating how on Pestel's head there was a weal from an iron ring which was being tightened on his head. The point is that all the acts of the Supreme Court now need to be published so that it could be seen what balderdash [beliberda] the Decembrists perpetrated. Secretiveness is our downfall.12 Another jotting in Odoyevsky's hand, dating seemingly from 1857-8 is perhaps more problematical: Each degree of education, development, even state power demands a cycle of state institutions corresponding to itself. With every step forward there is needed more space, more liberty and so on. Imagine - there is nothing. Whether this plot was timely. In it there participated the representatives of all that was talented, educated, distinguished, noble and brilliant in Russia - it didn't come off, but success was not absolutely impossible. Instead of abuse, wouldn't it be better to direct serious and calm consideration to the events of that time and attempt to grasp their meaning. This paragraph was adduced by critics over many years as evidence of Odoyevsky's true feelings.13 However, in 1976, N. M. Mikhaylovskaya identified the note in question as having been composed from sentences drawn from Herzen's 'Letter to the Emperor Alexander IF,

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written on 10 August 1857 and published in Kolokol {The Belt) on 8 November 1857.14 Herzen's letter was written to counter the distorted treatment of the Decembrists meted out by Baron M. A. Korf's The Accession of Nicholas I of 1857 (published simultaneously in Russia, England, France and Germany). Odoyevsky is likely, through his recently found favour with the court of Alexander II and his connections with Korf, to have had official access to Herzen's response; his reaction to Korf's account is not recorded, but his noting of these comments by Herzen demonstrates that the events of 14 December 1825 still troubled him and must be weighed against his otherwise dismissive references to Herzen as a 'Mse-narodnik' with his 'anarchist theories'.15 It is, in any event, ironical that Odoyevsky should have subsequendy been depicted as the 'son of a Decembrist' in a wildly inaccurate historical novel of 1868, by one Paul Grimm, called Les Mysteres du Palais des Czars.16

II

Reaction and Reform

Odoyevsky remained, throughout his subsequent career, an opponent of revolution. The Petrashevtsy and Bakunin he also assigned to the category oibezumtsy. While on the road from Moscow to Petersburg in the revolutionary year of 1849 he wrote in his notebook: Let us preserve our old, good faith, full of peace-making and poetry, let us preserve our devotion to this Tsar, the sacred pledge of Russian unity and earthly integrity... we shall not take from foreigners either their civil madness, or their disturbances, or their discord - but we shall take and appropriate . . . McAdam's road and Watt's steam-engine.17 By picking selectively from such quotations it is, of course, possible to present a picture of Odoyevsky as virtually a die-hard reactionary, which was indeed done on occasion by Soviet criticism during the Stalin era.18 Nevertheless, the last part of even this statement does convey something of Odoyevsky's enthusiasm for technological progress, particularly in such areas as the railways, which he backed from the outset in the 1830s and in which he was subsequently a shareholder. We have already seen in Chapter Four Odoyevsky's involvement in the educational reforms and connections with liberal reformist movements, such as they were, in the 1840s.

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The period from 1848 to 1855 has been characterized by Isaiah Berlin as 'the darkest hour in the night of Russian obscurantism in the nineteenth century'.19 In 1826, in the aftermath of the Decembrist uprising (and the year in which Odoyevsky entered government service), we are informed by Sidney Monas that 'all officials had been obliged to swear that they no longer belonged to any secret society and to report dutifully (listing names) any such society they might have previously joined\ 20 By the mid 1830s the authorities had resorted to 'a kind of desperation in avoiding reality: the practice of declaring people insane'.21 By the 1850s, even the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich was being surveilled by the Third Department; there was, in Berlin's words, 'between 1849 and the death of Nicholas I . . . not a glimmering of liberal thought'.22 During these years Odoyevsky, in common with most other liberal figures of the time, was caught between his abhorrence of stifling repression and yet horror of any prospect of a Pugachov-type popular uprising. In the spirit of the times too, he remained largely silent even in his personal notebooks. However, the government's distrust of the philanthropic Society for Visiting the Poor of St Petersburg, on the grounds that it was 'inclined towards communism', stung Odoyevsky to write: 'they are ready to suspect the sun itself- it shines on everyone, consequently it's a communist'.23 Nevertheless, Odoyevsky's notebooks and diaries of the 1850s and 1860s, despite their fragmentariness, political reticence and tantalizing lack of candour in certain respects, constitute a revealing social document. As O. Tsekhnovitser has observed: 'In his diaries and notebooks he inserted a huge quantity of facts, which by their persuasiveness, frequently despite Odoyevsky's own intent, represents a condemnation of autocracy.'24 A clue to the nature of his youthful sympathies may perhaps be seen in Odoyevsky's later readiness to refer disparagingly to the name of Arakcheyev; in a note on 'savagery', he wrote: Savagery [dikosf] is expressed primarily by one-sidedness. The savage, not knowing of fire and seeing a candle, inevitably must elevate it to the status of a god. Arakcheyev was also a savage in that he saw, in all human affairs, but a single element: compulsion, activity under a fear of punishment.25 In a diary entry of 1863, Odoyevsky reproduced the following anecdote:

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Once . . . * , going to see Arakcheyev, heard the most strange sounds: groaning and what seemed to be laughter. Going in, he saw the following: a naked man stood in the middle of the room, two men were holding him, a third man was beating him with a stick. In front of this man (with his back to the door) knelt z little fellow in aflanneljersey and in his drawers and, with his hands together, he was imploring: 'if you please, hold out a bit longer, please don't die!'. The one being tortured was Arakcheyev's clerk, whom he had ordered to be punished for some reason, and he had broken loose, so that Arakcheyev, in just his jersey, ran around the streets after him until the unfortunate was caught. The man on his knees was Arakcheyev himself. For this man the torment of another human being was not only a delight, but a necessity.26 Benkendorf, too, was obviously disapproved of, though with a somewhat less graphic illustration: 'Benkendorf told Del'vig, who had started to quote the law, "the law is for subordinates, not for us".' 27 Speransky, on the other hand, received Odoyevsky's glowing admiration in an unpublished article.28 Extreme abuse of serfdom was a favourite theme in Odoyevsky's diary in the period around the emancipation; the examples he noted frequently contain detail of a luridly sadistic nature, which may be typical of the period or may rather reflect a horrified fascination on Odoyevsky's part with that class of subject-matter: In Petersburg a fine lady [barynya] angry with her servant bondsmaid, plonked her on her bare bum on to the hot plate (of her stove), so that the poor thing was taken away to hospital... the police chief, Count Shuvalov . . . confirmed the accident in as much as he himself was present at the investigation. A female landowner from Archangel, jealous of her husband, flogged her servant girl on the genital parts. And there are still anti-emancipators! (January 1859) Zhd[anov] was saying that there are now very few instances of cruel treatment; there used to be up to 200 a year, now there are hardly three or four; the same goes for murders of landlords. However, in Pskov one fine lady not only flogged a servant-girl on the frontal parts from jealousy, but, turning the knout round, shoved it into her in such a way that she lost her capability for childbirth; her husband [illegible] lover was married; meanwhile her case was merely found 'not proven'. (29 November 1859)

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Count Matvey Yur'evich Viel'gorsky was saying that a certain lady has a no-good son (he won't say who); a few days ago, he made his way at night into the room of the maid (a serf), the fiancee of one of the lackeys (also a serf). The next day the lackey went up to the young man to say that if he tried once more to get at his fiancee then it would be the worse for him; the girl went off to the mother, to tell her the same thing. Mummy complained to the police, asking that he be sent to one village and she to another (in other words, that they be separated) by deportation - a preliminary punishment for both . . . which was carried out to the letter. Most curious is not that such a thing should occur on the eve of liberation from the state of serfdom, but that the only commentary on this in the salons is: 'this just shows how insolent the servants have becomeV - Oh Lord, save your people! However, they are not people. (27 February 1861; italicized words originally French) a certain Count von Brin, a lieutenant-general, displeased with his cook, demanded of the police that he be punished: he went to the police chief- the latter quoted the 'Statute' of 19 February 1861; 'but surely still two years remain in which punishment may be carried out', replied the respectable lieutenant-general. Fortunately, it turned out that this cook was not his serf, but belonged to some cousin of his, consequently he lived by his documentation and was able to leave him; otherwise he would have been punished. (16 March 1861)29 Other social and administrative problems also surface. Abuses of human rights were liable to prejudice the investment in Russia of foreign capital, Odoyevsky noted in 1859!30 Of the fiercely pro-serfdom Count Panin, in 1862 it was said: he alone defends corporal punishment and especially for women; for says he, I can tell you, as an expert, that a woman is not a human being; this I see constantly in the legal business: 'poisoned her husband, poisoned her husband, poisoned her husband'. 31 Odoyevsky was shocked that anyone could support corporal punishment in schools and objected to the sort of sexism all too generally to be found in Russian high society, thus maintaining an interest in 'the women's question' present in his fiction since the 1820s. At one ball, he heard the aristocratic host invite the men in to supper with the

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words: 'without the ladies one is more at one's ease to eat!' [original in French]; she regarded such attitudes as a particularly bourgeois trend.32 Odoyevsky's diary is filled with mounting excitement and reported polemics as the day for the proclamation of the abolition of serfdom approached; this is followed by relief that all was quiet, then a champagne celebration. This day (19 February) was marked by Odoyevsky with a celebratory dinner each year thereafter. This 'first day of free labour', in Odoyevsky's view, ended the old period of Russian history and began the new. He was equally enthusiastic about the judicial reforms of 1864 and the prison reforms of 1866. He himself, now a Senator, had a desire to work in the Judicial Chamber and had long been an advocate of'open courts'. 33 The whole tenor of his essay Not Good Enough {NedovoUno), dated 31 December 1866, is of a time of optimism in the wake of the reforms. The last celebratory 'liberation' dinner recorded by Odoyevsky in his diary was that of 19 February 1868. Odoyevsky proposed the toast to the sovereign and the great dates of reform, contrasting the present mood with that of 1847-8, when a toast to 'that most unfortunate of persons, the Russian peasant' had been received in embarrassed silence, followed by a mutual promise not to spread the matter any further; on this occasion he notes: I didn't want any speeches, for the supper was informal, even in frock-coats, entirely intimate. Only Pogodin said a few words; he recalled the words of Karamzin that Russia was always between Scylla and Charybdis - but that now, given the existence of those great reforms which were enacted on the 19 February [1861] and the 20 November [1864], one can be sure that our guide on high will lead us safely into port, past the submerged rocks.34 Odoyevsky obviously fully concurred with these sentiments. In an article called 'The Nineteenth of February', written in 1868 and published posthumously, he waxed enthusiastically - garrulously even - on the significance of the reform: In Russia, slavery is destroyed, in Russia there is independent open justice, a liberated press, local institutions. Russia has gained strength from the enactment of these measures. In the near future she will heal all the wounds inflicted by us on her, her strength will multiply a hundredfold, enlightenment will be spread in her, her natural resources will be exploited, new Pugachovshchina will be-

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come unthinkable, while on her the West has always been able to rely. This wildly optimistic view of the outlook for Russia is concluded by words which convey the relief of a man whose patient faith in the ultimate good will of the autocracy has finally, in his view, been vindicated - some 35 years and more after 14 December 1825: 'Glory, glory to the beneficial reign which has embellished our life with omnipresent contentment and omnipresent non-violent development.' 35 Odoyevsky was, as we have already seen, scathing in his remarks on the obscurantists who opposed the abolition of serfdom and the old wicked ways. In a 'confidential memorandum' for Alexander II, which he was preparing before he died, he wrote: Here there are personages, and there are plenty of them, who will never reconcile themselves to the idea that they cannot drag a servant-girl into their beds and raise a peasant's quit-rent. This one thing they read between the lines in every phrase of their coryphaei, this alone they applaud and nothing else can satisfy them. 36 Normally most reluctant to commit himself politically in public or in print and extremely wary of controversy (when the publication of a selection of his papers in Russkiy arkhiv in 1864 began to attract attention and to be reproduced elsewhere, he wrote: 'It is very desirable, but I am just afraid that this reprinting might lead me into tedious, useless and, what is more, awkward polemics'37), Odoyevsky was, given the changed nature of the times, prepared to make an exception to defend the reforms. N. V. Riasanovsky has written that, on the eve of the abolition of serfdom in Russia, 'virtually no one defended that institution'.38 This may have been true of the 'educated public' as a whole, but there was, as has already been evidenced from Odoyevsky's diaries, still considerable opposition in die-hard landowning circles. A Moscow gentry election meeting in early January 1865, for example, took place in a strong anti-reformist mood, resulting in a petition calling for the virtual restoration of serfdom and purporting to speak for the majority of the Moscow dvoryanstvoy appearing in the newspaper Vesf (News) (no. 4 of 14 January). Odoyevsky, in Petersburg at the time and worried lest 'this absurdity stir the ardour of the landlords of the other provinces - and the whole thing end with them getting a good thrashing from the peasants', wrote

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a protest against the Moscow speeches - 'if there was ever a time to remind the Moscow szlachta that I am a descendant of Rurik, then this is it'. 39 Odoyevsky's protest was refused publication by the censorship (as was usually the case whenever he did take any such action, as with his earlier articles on Pushkin - see the next chapter) and in any case Vest was closed down. However, his admonition of the 'gentry party' for its selfish and destructive response to reform was encapsulated in a fivepoint exhortation to the dvoryanstvo: (1) to get rid of the last vestiges of serfdom, (2) to take part in and work the new local government (zemskiye) and judicial institutions, (3) to give up the goal of the preservation of their own sectional interests and accept equality before the law, for the common good, (4) to use their superior education and advantages to spread knowledge through all layers of the populace, and (5) to enact the reforms instead of trying to sabotage them. 40 This stand resulted in considerable abuse being directed against Odoyevsky by those who considered him a traitor to his class; a couple of months later he was complaining of: absurd rumours circulating about me in Moscow: of my having sent a denunciation naming names to the sovereign. This is all because of my article which I couldn't publish. I must at least get lithographs made of it. Will they allow that?41 They did not. Odoyevsky defended his position further in a letter of 18 March (and subseqendy in detail in his memorandum to Alexander II); to refute the charge of opportunism, he wrote: My convictions do not date from yesterday; from my early years I expressed them by all the means available to me: with the pen - in as far as that was allowed in those days in print, and equally in governmental dealings; by word of mouth - not only in private conversation but in official committees; everywhere and always I affirmed the necessity of the abolition of serfdom and pointed out the ruinous influence of oligarchy in Russia; more than 30 years of public life have brought me only new arguments in confirmation of my convictions... . The status of a Russian dvoryanin, my long, honest, back-breaking life, unsullied by scheming or intrigues or even thoughts of ambition, and if you like my historic name, not only give me the right but impose upon me the obligation not to remain in timid silence, which could be taken as a sign ofagreement, in the matter which I consider the highest human principle and which

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I daily put into practice in my judicial duty - namely the absolute equality before the courts and the law, without distinction of status and estate.42 These events merely served to underline the attitude to this section of the dvoryanstvo expressed in his diary over the previous years - as when he wrote in November 1862: Among the landowners a rumour is circulating that the sovereign has come to Moscow to make his peace with the gentry, as if he feels himself to be guilty before them! What asses! Really it is they who should be required to ask forgiveness of God and of the Tsar and of the people for their past iniquities and for their present incomprehension of all the greatness of our epoch, all the essential good for them themselves in both the liberation of the serfs and the judicial reform.43 Odoyevsky emerges, then, as a strong supporter of both the monarchy and of reform. In this position he apparently saw no contradiction particularly during the reign of an 'enlightened' monarch. The status of the Russian dvoryanstvo, though, was a different matter; his views are most fully elaborated and most succinctly summarized in his memorandum to Alexander II. 44 Russia would remain strong and peaceful for as long as what in the West is called an 'aristocracy' is not set up (the origins of the Russian nobility, which he has explored in some detail, are seen as completely different from their Western counterparts); Tsarist origin should not be confused by the people with that of the dvoryanstvo (for the people, the Tsar is a being of a special breed, and not a dvotyanin); the only privileged estate in Russia is the Tsarist family (and even the members of this family are subjects); the autocracy together with the principal reforms will see Russia through for a long time - even centuries - provided that the ties of this whole are not broken. Odoyevsky, then, ardently embraced an alliance between an enlightened monarch and the rest of the people - over the heads of the nobility; the government of Nicholas I had never been willing to enter into any such compact, fearing the dvoryanstvo as a whole ever after as a consequence of the Decembrist uprising and being particularly distrustful of its more progressive elements, even within the government service. It should, perhaps, not be forgotten that Odoyevsky was himself of boyar origin, tracing his descent right back to Rurik - which birthright

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he was on a number of occasions moved to evoke - and therefore feeling himself not superior to, but neither a part of, the general run of the Russian dvoryanstvo, which owed its origins to the creation of a 'serving nobility' from the time of Ivan the Terrible. It was this class of nobility which formed the general ruling caste in Tsarist Russia. Neither was Odoyevsky himself a landowner in any meaningful sense of the word. However, we are less concerned here to determine the whys and wherefores of Odoyevsky's political position - let alone tenability - than to illustrate its expression and outline certain of its corollaries. On an international level, Odoyevsky welcomed the victories of Garibaldi, seeing the Italian situation as analogous to that of Russia in 1612.45 Not surprisingly, given this comparison, he had no such sympathy for the predicament of Poland. Following the example of Pushkin in 1830, Odoyevsky (whose political views would appear to bear no slight similarity to those of the mature Pushkin) during the Polish troubles of the 1860s wrote an unfinished article, which he called 'Defenders of the Polish Panstvo\ linked to his polemics with the pro-serfdom supporters of the newspaper Vest, and in March 1861 has this to say in his diary: The Polish events are disturbing. Here one can clearly see the hand of Louis Napoleon. And with us there is a lack of the right people. We are too late. Now the Poles will demand a full constitution; if they are given it, they will demand separation; when they get that, they will insist on separation up to Smolensk. The only salvation is a Slav alliance under the protection of the Russian Tsar. Poland must be isolated?** [Italicized words originally in French]. The Sicilians and the Neapolitans, Odoyevsky felt, ought to be able to live under a single king, provided that it was one who would preserve the narodnosf of each of them; the same would even go for the Germans, Czechs, Hungarians and Croats under Austria - if the Austrian sceptre were not 'under the power of the Scholastic concepts of uniformity according to which, a la Metternich: one's native land is only a geographical expression' (original in French), which has rebounded on the Austrian empire.47 He expressed consistent opposition to Catholicism on the slightest pretext. Hearing that a Jesuit boarding-school was to be set up in St Petersburg 'to combat nihilism', he retorted: 'surely nihilism is the offspring of Jesuits'; he was disappointed at the banning of a Jesuit

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book in 1864 as there would be no chance to reply to 'this clever and cunning trash'; while in 1866 he expressed horror at the rumoured 'defection' of the Patriarch of Constantinople (to Catholicism).48 Odoyevsky was highly critical too in his various writings at various times of England (particularly in his unfinished article 'Anglomania'), France, Spain and the United States.49 A strongish element of Russian chauvinism enters into Odoyevsky's diary from time to time: for example, the idea of digging up the road from Balaclava to Sebastopol because it was built by the English during the Crimean War, and the terms in which he expresses his hostility to Strakhov's famous article in Vremya {Time) in 1863 which caused the closure of that journal and which Odoyevsky considered to have been 'obviously written by a Pole'. 50 Odoyevsky considered (in 1854) that a parliament in Russia would be unworkable for at least a hundred years; neither (in 1857) did Russia need 'the metaphysical and thereby dead and backward socialism of some Herzen'. 51 By 'socialism', Odoyevsky understood Utopian socialism; the Utopian element he saw as a mystical, poetic, unobtainable ideal, its proponents split into irreconcilable factions (Saint-Simonists, Fourierists, Owenists). He had criticized the idea of free competition in Russian Nights and favoured the principle of 'the happiness of each and everyone'; socialism was largely right in its criticisms; however, Odoyevsky disliked conspiratorial societies as degrading, regarded socialist ideas, as he understood them, as unscientifically based and their perpetrators as unreasonably impatient and presumptuous. In an unfinished article of 1862 ('A Leaflet on the History of So-Called Socialism', written under the impact of a series of Moscow fires, presumed arson), he concluded that sectarianism within socialism was such as to render the word a 'collective word', a 'phantom', which incited fanatics to violence; to Odoyevsky, the antidote to such false concepts lay in the spread of science and education, not in unnatural 'jumps'. 52 Odoyevsky's stress on gradualism and the value of individuals (who must not be sacrificed for 'society'), together with his envisaging of some sort of worldwide reform of social life though not by 'socialism' - would appear to put him, in certain respects at least, closer than either of them would have cared to admit to the later Herzen: at least the Herzen seen by Isaiah Berlin.53 Odoyevsky in any case wanted a Russian solution to the social problems of Russia; he agreed with the Slavophiles in so far as he regarded foreign (or Western) concepts as irrelevant - even untranslatable:

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Western philanthropy is not the same as our good deed-doing [blagotvoriteVnosf], even our landless peasant [bobyV] is not the same as the Western proletarian; not to speak of words: communism, Saint-Simonism, and I don't know what other -isms, which have not and cannot have any sense at all here, for precisely the same reason that 'simoom' and 'sirocco' are impossible words in Siberia, and purga is an impossible word in Arabia or Italy.54 What Sakulin terms Odoyevsky's 'fetishism for words' 55 can be seen as partly deriving from his Russo-centric worldview, but also as a survival - or indeed a consistent preoccupation - from the romantic theme of the inadequacy of language and breakdown of communication, so prominent in Russian Nights. This political and philosophical wordquibbling could also be reinforced by his constant awareness of an allpervading social hyprocrisy or just by his own sense of wryness: I noticed that in Petersburg they term 'liberals' those who do not take bribes and do not incessantly pester the Tsar, having squandered their resources on frivolities, with requests for assistance. Yes - that is liberalism, at a time of general immorality and shameless effrontery.56 There are people who consider it 'democratic' that Prince Shcherbatov lit a gas-lamp.57 So much for our conservatives. They tell me that Madame Kalergi said 'I hear from all sides that we should be conservatives, but at the same time they say that our roads are dreadful, justice is nonexistent, the administration will rob you as soon as look at you - do they really want to preserve [conserver] all this?' She then said: 'they tell me from all sides that we should be moderates, but all the moderates are enraged to extremity'.58 His comments on nihilism were inclined to be rather more basic; following the arrest of some Moscow nihilists in April 1866, he was told: that the arrested Obolenskaya is a princess who doesn't use this tide on principle and that one of the rules of the nihilists is not to be well-groomed. How abominable, especially if they live with men in carnal union; they must stink unbearably.59

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Much of the foregoing discussion is encapsulated in a conversation related by Odoyevsky which took place on 2 February 1861: Sollogub, with his eternal lack of forethought, started up between some ladies - Verigina and I don't know who else - a conversation about the emancipation. 'Everything is accomplished today - we are expropriated - exasperation is at its peak? The Baryatinskys, Orlov-Davydov and so on are really down in the dumps, etc. 'There was still greater exasperation when a university degree was required of the nobles\ I said. 'You, please don't say anything', exclaimed Sollogub (turning to Verigina) - 'Imagine, madam, here is a gentleman of the oldest lineage, a descendent ofRurik, who is a red democrat - but it's the world upside down.' - 'I am neither red nor democrat, but I recognize a single sovereign and not twenty thousand? . . . 'Do you want a democratic monarchy, thenV 'I don't understand these words in Russian - translate, please be so good.'. . . 'You don't understand what aristocracy is? 'Please be so good as to translate this word into Russian'. 'Dvoryanstvo,' said Verigina.... 'The dvoryane were men at arms [druzhinniki] living at the court [dvor] of the great princes - nothing more'. . . - But what can you explain to women of such a matter.. . . Sollogub was talking nonsense, and talking it loudly... these ladies heard me in horror. That's all there is to it.60 [italicized phrases originally in French]. In the mid 1860s, however, Odoyevsky had to weigh the rival propaganda of nihilists and reactionaries in an attempt to arrive at a balanced interpretation of events: Nihilists on the Kremlin Square - in the manner of schismatic debates. They preach to the peasants on the insufficiency of present liberty. Some youth or other (so the story goes) tied a peasant's hands and asked: 'are you free?' - 'No', replied the peasant; he loosened the rope a bit: 'and now are you free?' 'No'; he loosened it further, but still so that the hands remained tied. 'Well, now?' 'Still not'. - 'Now then, I'll make you completely free', and with these words he untied the hands altogether. 'So, now you are free you can wave your arms on both sides and give anyone you like a smack in the teeth.' But that's nothing; they started to talk about faith - the peasant stood by his faith. 'All right,' said the nihilist, 'with faith you think that all is possible - push the Kremlin into the

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river, then'. - 'That's impossible,' replied the peasant. 'But I can do it - I'll put a barrel of gunpowder under its four corners - and the Kremlin will topple.' What is curious here is whether this really happened or whether it is a clever invention of the pro-serfdom landlords. They would like to frighten the government and at the same time provoke minor revolts to strengthen their homilies.61 Odoyevsky's consciousness of words led him, finally in a late letter intended for Alexander II, to formulate a definition of 'true' conservatism (with which concept he would not object, it would seem, to being associated) and to pronounce more decisively than ever on the total unsuitability of imported political terms (and concepts) for Russia: By a play on words, German feudal lords are appropriating to themselves the honourable name of conservatives, without saying that they are conservatives of only their rights, attached to their castles on cliffs. Our conservatives do not have even this pretence in the German way; the genuine Russian conservative preserves the single-state, autocratic power and the electoral principle, and that under Tsarist power and solely for municipal, rural, judicial and police positions. There are no other principles in Russian history and to seek a translation into the Russian language of the words aristocracy, democracy, socialism and communism is the same as to look for surf in Italy and the sirocco in Siberia. It is impossible to imagine what confusion of ideas is occurring from the use of these foreign words for expressing the phenomena of Russian life, which have absolutely nothing in common with them and which have come into being along a historical path of their own.62 Whatever may have been the inconsistencies of Odoyevsky's position regarding the compatibility of autocracy and reform or the realistic possibility of insulating Russia from radical (or even reactionary) Western concepts, he nevertheless realized that there was a momentum of events and a feeling of change gaining ground in Europe and in Russia, caused perhaps by eternal dissatisfaction and leading who could tell where. His consciousness of the real forces at work may have been limited, but his language when giving rein to this realization is curiously reminiscent at times of Marx, whose works (at least first hand) he does not appear to have known and the applicability of whose ideas to Russia he would also certainly have contested:

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We are like a patient whom the doctors pump full with opium; the attacks are concealed but the disease takes its course, a minute later, the slightest imprudence, a chill, a breach of diet - and the disease will appear with all its death-throes. It is sad. [c. 1848]63 'Some sort of important reform' of a social nature seemed to be on the way, whether speeded by awakened nationalism or general re-arming: A spirit is abroad everywhere, in the vicinity of all Europe, of China, of America. Louis-Napoleon and the Crimean War, the Italian War, Poland etc. are eruptions of this subterranean spirit. In Russia, a valve has been opened for it - the liberation of the serfs; the Americans are striving to open a similar one, but how much blood has been spilt by them already!64

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On a number of occasions in the 1860s, Odoyevsky called for the combating of what he considered to be harmful (for example, socialist) ideas in print rather than by secrecy and suppression.65 This brings us to a consideration of Odoyevsky's long association, in one form or another, with the censorship and the development of journalistic publication in Russia. As a writer and a working editor (associated, in particular, with Mnemozina, Sovremennik and Otechestvennyye zapiski), Odoyevsky had dealings with the censorship throughout his public career - even, as we have seen in the last section, in the 1860s - and, like many of his contemporaries, was frequently on the receiving end of its capricious judgements. However, he was at various times and in various respects more closely involved with more aspects of the censorship than perhaps any other writer of his age. Goncharov, it is well known, was a leading writer who also worked as a censor; Nikitenko was a leading censor who was a literary critic and also a diarist. Odoyevsky, as well as being at some stage of his career, all of these things, was surely unique among literary figures in also having helped to draft a censorship statute (that of 1828). According to Odoyevsky's own account, in a series of posthumously published articles on 'The History of the Russian Censorship' ('written after 1857'), a committee was set up in 1827 under the Ministry of Internal Affairs to devise a statute to cover the censorship

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provisions for foreign books, which had not been included in the socalled 'iron statute' of 1826; a decision was then very quickly taken to revise the disastrously severe latter statute itself.66 Odoyevsky served on this committee as secretary-assistant to the Committee's 'editor-inchief, D. V. Dashkov; others involved included Shishkov (who having been largely responsible for the 1826 statute, proved a difficult customer when it came to its revision) and Benkendorf.67 The 'iron statute' (as the censor S. N. Glinka termed it) arose out of the influence of the notorious Magnitsky and Runich and meant (or would have meant, had it continued in force for long) the virtual banishment of literature from the state; no discussion at all of governmental questions was allowed. Apart from the penalty incurred by a censor who let any such discussion through, the author was also liable, even for rejected manuscripts, on the basis that 'the code of censorship must be known to him'; in addition, 'the purity of the Russian language' (in Shishkov's terms) had not to be breached; overall, according to Glinka, going by this code, 'even Our Father could be interpreted along Jacobinist lines'.68 Apart from the usual range of restrictions, the 1826 statute banned outright whole categories of knowledge: philosophy, political science and even geology, as well as biography and memoirs. The 1828 statute, on the other hand, was generally considered, by comparison with that of 1826, to be a remarkably liberal document. Ivan Kireyevsky considered that 'its fruitful significance was more important than our then conquests in Turkey'; the trouble was that its intentions were subsequently 'totally distorted'.69 The main criterion of the 1828 law, at least when it was originally drawn up, was the protection against infringement in print of four main principles: 'the faith, the throne, morality and personal honour'; however, these principles were often forgotten, Odoyevsky tells us, by those wishing to ban any work which disagreed with their own opinions.70 The committee's original recommendations for 'future development' of the censorship were never subsequently enacted, due to pretexts provided by the international circumstances of 1830 and 1848; instead the administration complicated matters with extra useless and harmful (even to the censorship itself) formalities, which remained permanent fixtures even after the pretexts for their introduction had passed into history.71 Administrative difficulties and rivalries were also created, apparently by the encroachment of the 1828 censorship changes on the prerogatives of the Ministry of Public Education; this Minister's

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permission was required before works of drama could be printed, but even then they couldn't be performed without the sanction of the Third Department.72 The result of all this was a degree of unpredictability on the part of the censorship, coupled with a growing intolerance of the written word more in keeping with the spirit of the 1826 statute, which gradually drove moderate writers and censors alike to desperation; A. F. Orlov, for example (Benkendorf 's successor as Chief of Gendarmes), is reported to have stated bluntly: 'every writer is a born conspirator'.73 Monas writes of this period that 'the difficulties of censorship sometimes called for nothing less than heroism on the part of men of goodwill somehow saddled with the unhappy burden' (for example, Nikitenko).74 It is scarcely surprising that by 1857-8, when writing his articles on the subject, Odoyevsky should have somewhat revised his position as an apologist for the censorship, at least within the guidelines envisaged in 1828, and have declared that now 'conceptions regarding the censorship have clarified'.75 Odoyevsky's support for the 1828 'ideals' of censorship is less surprising than one might now think if viewed in the general climate of opinion of the day, when censorship as such was largely accepted as a rule of conduct and not regarded with anything like the opprobrium that it later acquired. Monas writes in respect of this period: Many writers and many censors felt very strongly about the 'protective' aspects of the censorship and approved it. Very few were against censorship on principle . . . many censors were on the staffs of newspapers and magazines; many were themselves writers or scholars. Even Pushkin did not object to censorship on principle.76 From 1828 Odoyevsky served as Librarian to the Committee of Censorship of Foreign Works and from time to time was called upon himself to take up the 'unhappy burden' of acting as censor. In 1834 he exercised this function upon two volumes of a French edition of the works of Heine. The Russian censorship generally saw in Heine 'a strong and dangerous enemy' and openly expressed its misgivings accordingly; Odoyevsky took a much milder line in his comments, but the end result was still the same - prohibition.77 Heine's 'jokes', Odoyevsky wrote in his report, could not be considered positively 'harmful', but they were 'indecent to the highest degree'; these were in the main ironical remarks about religion, strongly tinged with democratic sympathies. Odoyevsky cited expressions and 'contradictions'

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rather than actual ideas, with nothing from some anti-clerical chapters except the page numbers. The next main crisis point in the censorship question came in 1836, with the furore aroused by the publication of Chaadayev's 'Philosophical Letter' in Nadezhdin's Moscow journal, Teleskop. Odoyevsky's comments on this in letters to Shevyryov reveal a considerable exasperation with the peculiarities and practicalities of the censorship, as well as with Chaadayev's ideas (to which he found himself at that time 'diametrically opposed') and Nadezhdin's iack of caution': What you write about the perplexities of the Moscow censorship had to be expected and it cannot be helped: Ch.'s stupid article is closing the mouth of anyone who would want to intervene on behalf of literature. (17 November 1836) What has Nadezhdin done? How can one not know one's own business to such a degree? One man is guilty and it naturally falls on everyone; wherever you look, lack of caution is easily confused with malicious intent. There's such a noise about it here in the drawingrooms, that it's terrible; and what is most annoying is that you can't intervene: there's manifest stupidity in the article itself and even more so in the publication of it. I can clearly see, though I don't understand why, that it's impossible to publish a journal in Moscow: your Muscovites are so ignorant about what is happening in Russia! Such ignorance of the strings which mustn't be touched! Your censors reject nonsense and ponder over the most innocent phrase, and suddenly it is blurted out solemnly that we should be subjects of the Pope! . . . if there wasn't a single journal in Moscow, then at least we shouldn't have to tremble for you every time we receive one of your issues. (30 December 1836)78 The ways in which the censorship impinged upon the publication of Odoyevsky's own writings, and of the journals and other projects in which he was involved, are mentioned at various points of this study and do not need to be recatalogued here. By and large, however, Odoyevsky was luckier in this respect than some other writers and publishers and there is evidence that, on occasions at least, the journals for which he worked benefited in terms of what was allowed through the censorship thanks to his influence or contacts.79 As has already been remarked, Odoyevsky eventually arrived (by

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1857-8) at a position from which he was prepared to argue cautiously, on the grounds as he saw it of the government's own self-interest, for abolition, or at least considerable relaxation, of the system of censorship. The reasons for this are not hard to see; the factors involved include his own personal experience, the increased interference of the Third Department in the censorship process and in the field of literature as the reign of Nicholas I drew towards a close, and the more reformist climate of opinion which followed. The whole question of censorship, Odoyevsky now concedes, is a difficult one; 'success' depends not so much on the written code, nor on the choosing of its executors, as on 'the mood of literature in a given epoch' and 'public opinion': 'optical illusions' arising out of this problem lead to 'continual delusion'.80 The same phrase can appear innocent one day and reprehensible the next; even then the degree of harm done is questionable and depends less on the author or the censor than on how the public comprehends what has been written. The way questions can be discussed may change quite dramatically, as happened in the case of serfdom, while questionable satire will become acceptable with time (see Kantemir, Fonvizin, Kapnist, Krylov, etc. right up to Ostrovsky). On the other hand, a work may prove to be an unpredictably harmful influence (such as Mickiewicz's poem Wallenrod which, with its scene in which the Moors embraced the Spaniards to give them the plague, subsequently proved to be a subversive inspiration to the Poles). The extent of the influence which reading material has, can in any case be questioned in a situation where the literate population amounts to only 100,000 out of a total 75 million, and of these 90 per cent read only the Church Calendar and the Senate News. The 'illusion' is further distended by the ignorance of individual censors and the tendency to measure educational and scientific material against fundamentalist biblical principles, which had particularly disastrous effects on the development of geology in Russia (thus hindering the progress not just of 100,000 people, but of all 75 million!). There are, nevertheless, arguments both for and against the practice of censorship, with all turning ultimately on the degree of strictness and how this is applied. Odoyevsky's years of experience on this matter, however, lead him to stress three main points: 1 The censor is powerless against the idea itself. The widely held belief that ideas flow from books into society is 'a highly dangerous optical illusion'. Almost all books are just 'a thermometer of ideas' already present in society: 'breaking the thermometer does not

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mean that you change the weather; you merely destroy the means of monitoring its changes'.81 The nature of language and the skills of authors are such, furthermore, as to render it beyond the capability of any authorities to prevent the further transmission of ideas in published form. 2 Police are virtually powerless against ideas from outside. However, the influence of, for example, Kolokol (Herzen's The Bell), in Odoyevsky's view, lessened when social questipns were opened more freely to discussion; were it to be sold in Russia, he felt, it would get less subscribers than the existing journals. 3 A repressive policy towards publishing was likely to prove in the event dangerous and counterproductive. With regard to the foreign Russian press, Odoyevsky advocated the end of absolute prohibition, which merely served to excite public curiosity (as the Inquisition had found), and lead to the situation in which Russia-based writers were prevented from responding to the 'distortions' of foreign-produced or Western histories. Absolute prohibition may have worked when all European governments were of one (monarchist) mind. Now, however, the Russian government should adopt the methods of its opponents: publish biographies of its principal adversaries (e.g. Herzen and Ogaryov), thereby reducing the impact of their publications; publish booklets in reply to Jesuitical progaganda, selling them abroad cheaply in large editions (as the Protestants already do); and take legal proceedings abroad against calumniators. Some of these proposals have about them a distinct ring of twentieth-century propaganda and are somewhat less liberal in intent than in practice. Odoyevsky's overall continued equivocation over the censorship question is underlined by a late backtracking (towards the end of the third of this series of articles on the subject) from a position of apparent abolition to the advocacy of selective permissiveness: 'it would be sufficient to revive the previously existing right of academicians, professors, members of learned societies - writers generally who enjoy wide respect - to order foreign books free from censorship'.82 Odoyevsky himself, when abroad in 1857, wrote a number of articles in French and Italian, to 'correct' false Western impressions of Russia; at least one pamphlet was published in Nice and one article, on music in Russia and signed 'Un abbonato Russo', appeared in // Nizzardo; drafts survive with titles such as 'L'economie rurale des Steppes', 'Les jesuites - deviendront ils Chretiens?' and 'Le soldat en conge de retour dans ses foyers'.83 Nevertheless, he certainly, in the late 1850s, wished

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to avoid assuming any further censorship duties; at that time, after he had written the articles summarized above, Odoyevsky was involved in discussions and correspondence with Baron Korf and Alexander II on the question of censorship. Korf evidently wanted him to join the committee of a proposed new central board of censorship; Odoyevsky steeled himself to refuse, noting in his diary: Thanks be to all-merciful God! I have got out of that censorship business which was threatening me! And how wisely the good lord has fixed things - for my salvation and my conscience. But what will come of it? (6 December 1859) The decision was obviously a difficult one, as a few days later he wrote: That matter with Baron Korf proves that there are occasions in the world, arising by dint of circumstance (by that movement of vital juices which forces a plant to lean in a favourable atmosphere to one side or the other), when despite the general will and without blame on someone's side, an utterly loyal man is compelled to back off, to decline to do one's job. The free will of man, whatever they may say, does have its limits. (20 December 1859)84 Three months later, Odoyevsky turned down Baron Korf s offer of a recommendation for a decoration. The two things may or may not have been linked. Welcoming the easing of censorship regulations in 1865, Odoyevsky came out strongly against the system of 'cautions' copied from Napoleonic France and advocated a repeal of the absolute prohibition of the import into Russia of 'harmful' books.85 Odoyevsky's participation in the development of Russian journalism is referred to at various points of this study - particularly in the sections dealing with KyukhePbeker, Pushkin and Belinsky in the next chapter. It will perhaps here suffice to mention some of his comments concerning the main period of this aspect of his activity - the 1830s. Throughout his literary and publicistic career, Odoyevsky stood up for what he considered the 'great business' of publication: 'honest literature is like a guardship, a military outpost in the midst of societal treachery'.86 It was in the 1830s that the slogan 'I want the censorship to be just a life-guard' (un garde fou) was interpreted in the worst way: one dignitary of the time remarked 'better a monopoly than [more] journals' - one journal easily controlled was regarded as the optimum,

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'such was the spirit of the time'. 87 This was the period, as we have seen elsewhere, of the domination in the field of Russian journalism of the 'triumvirate' of Bulgarin, Grech and Senkovsky. A contemporary authority, P. V. Annenkov, referred to this trio as 'government concessionaries' of literature, while Isaiah Berlin has written of the 'steady stream of secret denunciation which issued from Bulgarin and Grech'. 88 Odoyevsky's own brushes with these gentlemen have already been alluded to, but, in his later years, he made no bones about his views as to the effects of this 'system' on Russian letters: Is it really possible to brag or to be silent about the evil done for example in Russian literature by the Bulgarins and the Senkovskys, or, for example, by the Arakcheyevs to the whole of Russia?89 He had compared the journalists of the 1820s with his old uncle who: although he understands nothing and doesn't read anything, he still likes to give his verdict on everything and considers himself highly learned because in his day he has cut many pages in other people's books.90 This brand of curmudgeonly ignorance, however, took on more sinister and preposterous tones with the ascendency of the triumvirate. From the days of Mnemozina to the launch of Otechestvennyye zapiski, in his musical reviews and in his literary criticism, Odoyevsky was constantly involved in polemics with what he considered to be the repressive views and philistine tastes propagated by the members of the triumvirate in their own works and through the organs at their command. A number of his pieces of the 1830s did not attain publication purely because of the dictates of Senkovsky or Bulgarin. Odoyevsky's feud with Bulgarin cannot have been in the slightest eased by an incident in 1838, when Odoyevsky was largely responsible for refusing Bulgarin and Grech admittance to Krylov's jubilee dinner, which had been arranged expressly on an 'all ticket' basis; Bulgarin, returning home, fell foul of 'students from Derpt [Dorpat] University' who beat him up so severely that he remained in bed for two weeks.91 Odoyevsky's most outspoken comments on the topic came only in 1864 in the annotations to his 1836 article, 'On the Attacks of the Petersburg Journals on the Russian Poet Pushkin', which he was only then able to publish for the first time (see next chapter). He attacked (correctly, as the bulk of subsequent scholarship has judged) as vastly

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over-blown the literary reputations of Senkovsky and Bulgarin - and particularly the claims they made for each other (Grech, however, stood slighdy higher in Odoyevsky's estimation for distancing himself from 'the boastful arrogance of the Poles') - deplored the 'unimaginable' extent of intrigue which they used to destroy Moskovskiy telegrafy and concluded with the following blistering comments: In general this period of ignorant and harmful Polish dictatorship in our literature and journalism, now scarcely comprehensible, is highly curious and instructive. It awaits its historians, on a level with the period of Magnitsky, Runich and [archimandrite] Photius. In fact, for the Polish journal period the materials are all ready - in the journals of the time, starting with the appearance of Polevoy's Telegraf and the storm it raised in the Polish nest.92 Elsewhere on the manuscript to the Pushkin article, Odoyevsky wrote: 'Much of what seems inexplicable in our later literature can be traced from the journalistic publications of that period. The further we get from it, the more incomprehensible it becomes.'93 One of the first historians of this topic was to be A. P. Pyatkovsky (author, too, of a biographical essay on Odoyevsky) who used a great deal of information supplied by Odoyevsky during their personal acquaintance in his subsequent two-volume study of the subject.94 Subsequent historians have generally accepted this interpretation of the development of the periodical press during the reign of Nicholas I, and the figures of Bulgarin, Grech and Senkovsky are held in considerable odium and ridicule by most Soviet and Western commentators. A notable exception to this line, however, is the study of Senkovsky by the Soviet novelist Veniamin Kaverin, who seeks to divorce the reputation of his chosen subject as far as possible from those of Bulgarin and Grech; he denies that the 'triumvirate' (which term he attributes to Pyatkovsky, whose work he regards as 'one-sided and unscholarly'), plus the Polevoy brothers, were a political grouping - rather they were 'a professional-production group', whose friendship was 'a myth'.95 Kaverin is particularly virulent in his remarks on Odoyevsky, whom he saw as the most ardent of 'the enemies of mercantilism in literature': A convinced aristocrat, a supporter of'literature at the service of the state', a furious opponent of the new bourgeoisie and new industry. . . . He considered himself called in the name of literature to

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do batde with 'the noxious breath of the industrial-utilitarian tendency of life' which was making a profession out of literature.96 That virtually none of the above remarks stands up to scrutiny scarcely needs demonstrating here. Regardless of any qualitative difference between the attitude of Senkovsky and his fellow controllers of Russian periodical life (and, for that matter, the part played by Odoyevsky's anti-Polish sentiments in his judgement of this group), the verdict of contemporary and subsequent opinions on their harmful effects upon Russian letters has been near unanimous. Odoyevsky's own approach to many of his publishing activities (though perhaps not to the publication of his own fiction) was almost 'professional'; and if 'professionalism' had been his objection (as opposed to real aesthetic and ideological differences) to the advancement of Bulgarin and the others, he would hardly have collaborated so closely with Krayevsky and Belinsky. Furthermore, we have the contemporary testimony of I. I. Panayev that Odoyevsky, almost alone of the literary aristocrats, did not disdain the calling of 'literator'.97 One can only suppose that Kaverin's approach was coloured by over-partisan feelings of solidarity towards Senkovsky as a fellow orientalist!

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According to the 'official list' of his record in government service, dated December 1868, Odoyevsky ended his career as 'Senior Senator of the Eighth Department of the Government Senate, Hofmeister and Privy Councillor', the possessor of various decorations.98 Although he served continuously in the government service from 1826, he was not, as we have seen, by any means always held in quite such official favour. Nicholas I never trusted Odoyevsky, whose relations with the imperial court, and for that matter the government, were somewhat estranged during the whole of Nicholas's reign. Odoyevsky served and occupied a number of reasonably high posts; however, his connections with 1825, his literary and philanthropic activities and his moderately progressive ideas ensured that he should remain, certain personal contacts notwithstanding, something of an outsider. Nevertheless, Odoyevsky was astonished to discover, apparently only belatedly, the extent of Nicholas I's hostility to him, writing in his diary in 1862:

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I accidentally found out what had not entered my head, that the emperor Nikolay Pavlovich considered me to be the most fervent demagogue, highly dangerous and supposed me to be mixed up in every political affair going (e.g. the Petrashevsky thing). Who gave me such a zealous reputation? And how is it that I wasn't made to knuckle under?" Odoyevsky seems to have kept himself at something of a distance from the court, especially during the later years of the reign of Nicholas. Having been a 'senior chinovni)? of the Second Department of the Emperor's Own Chancellery from 1840, Odoyevsky seems to have been particularly anxious to retreat to the relative backwater of library administration in 1846, in his manoeuvrings to obtain the post of Deputy Director to the Public Library: his papers reveal that he advanced the pretext of 'the deplorable state of my health', but he wanted the way to be sounded out carefully, 'for there are in the world people who wish me harm and do it when the opportunity presents itself [original in French]'. 100 Odoyevsky always preferred to distance himself from such people whenever possible. However, in the mid 1840s, something in the nature of a rival 'liberal' court came into being, organized by the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, the German-born wife of the brutish Mikhail Pavlovich (Nicholas I's younger brother), in the Mikhaylovskiy Palace; this grew in importance as a circle for the discussion of reformist ideas, particularly after the death of the Grand Duke Mikhail in 1849. A cultural lady of ideas, who had been 'an ardent admirer' of Gogol' and a follower of the Slavophile-Westernizer debates of the 1840s,101 Yelena Pavlovna was, as we have seen in Chapter Four, herself involved in certain of Odoyevsky's educational and philanthropic activities. Odoyevsky thus became an habitue of this court, concentrating on wielding such influence as he could over measures affecting education, literature and the arts; according to Pyatkovsky, Odoyevsky could, with his name and contacts, have (after Nicholas I's death, one presumes) obtained almost any post he wished, but the 'learned fool' [uchonnyy durak] as he was known in high places, was content with secondary positions through which he could do some good in his spheres of interest.102 Later on he took the appointment of Senator - again, to escape to a quieter life, this time by returning to Moscow. The accession of Alexander II saw a rapprochement between Odoyevsky and the imperial court; references to the imperial family

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became common in Odoyevsky's diaries and, as we have seen, he engaged in writing reports of an advisory nature to the new Tsar, enthusiastically backed the reforms and was actively considering, over the last decade of his life, becoming Alexander IPs 'official historian'. At the same time, the actual business of court etiquette remained uncongenial to Odoyevsky; Panayev relates how 'having no courtly qualities', Odoyevsky 'became a courtier, and this cost him the most fearful efforts': surprising him on one occasion in uniform, white ties, decorations and holding a sugar lump, on to which drops of something were being dripped with a blackening effect, Panayev was informed, by way of an explanation: 'I always take a few drops of opium - it makes me more lively. I have to go to the Grand Duchess's for the evening.' Panayev continues: During the coronation [of Alexander II] in the capacity of gentleman-in-waiting, Odoyevsky had to present dishes to the Emperor and Empress and then move backwards with his face remaining turned towards these most august personages. It is no easy caper and Odoyevsky was very seriously occupied by it for several days studying the backward walk.103 Odoyevsky's attitude to such matters is well brought out by a diary entry for 3 May 1867: I can't comprehend what makes people concern themselves with my person.... At the Court Ball of 30 April, one of the masters of ceremonies, I think it was Prince Lieven, came up to me and looking at some list said: 'Prince, stay nearer the door towards the end of the mazurka, because you are to be seated at the imperial table.' 'You must mean my wife\ I replied - 'No, it is your 'Impossible, I'm only a third class [holder of the order] but my wife is an order holder [kavalerstvennaya dama] and is always seated at the Imperial table.' 'No,' objected the master of ceremonies, 'it is you, and not the Princess.' I realized that this was simply a mistake and in order to clear it up, I went off to the dining-room and examined the inscriptions on the chairs of the imperial table - and, of course, found my wife's name but not my own. So that was that. I told several people of this incident, remarking in what an unpleasant position I should have been placed had I, without checking, gone to the imperial table and been obliged to withdraw, adding that such incidents are common at court - and that this sort of thing was the

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reason, incidentally, for my not being enamoured of Petersburg. These words of mine were twisted to my having been seated at the imperial table, but not going, saying that this was precisely why I had tried to get out of Petersburg.. . . Well, just imagine such maliciously stupid people. 104 [italicized phrases in French] As his earlier literary works showed, Odoyevsky's sympathies with high society were, to say the least, limited. When the Russian Musical Society opened with a concert, he wrote: high society glittered by its absence; as at all patriotic enterprises. Of all the aristocratic names at all these things, mine sticks out like a sore thumb - also, I have no children.105 [italicized phrases in French] About Petersburg society, Odoyevsky has this to say: Petersburg society persecutes people who are remarkable for the strangeness of dress or carriage or occupation, in a word anyone who is noticeable, like a mound on a rotten marsh - but dress decendy, give balls, and you may profane your wife, betray your friend, not pay your debts, do someone out of their inheritance, be as mean as you like - all this is ordinary, human weakness. Petersburg society is like the Petersburg sun: not for warming - but warping furniture, book-covers turning glass green, fading wallpaper - in a word, any vileness - it's good at that. 106 It is not clear to exactly which stratum of Moscow society Odoyevsky was referring when he wrote: Oh Moscow! You can't fart without them instantly inferring some scandal. It's a marvellous town, Moscow. As before, everyone there was occupied with other people's business. I see few people, nevertheless. I can't sneeze without there being rumours about it - and I'm lucky if they don't add that sneezing, I broke into a Cossack dance. People whose names I don't even know, know everything I do, when I get up, what I have for dinner, where everything is in my study - it's

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With regard to the government service, in which he spent so much of his time, as one turn-of-the-century commentator put it, Odoyevsky appears to have really believed in the institution of chinovnichestvo (bureaucracy) - provided it was worked efficiently - an attitude which, of course, appealed to his superiors but was scorned by his equals and lessers, who saw him as a Quixotic eccentric; another critic of the same period stressed Odoyevsky's belief, arising from romantic philosophy, that an element of artistic creation was essential even in the field of public service.108 Conversely, as Panayev put it: In pursuit of vulgar bureaucratic formalism, he introduced it as president into the Society for Visiting the Poor and at the same time insisted that he wanted to write a novel in which he would ridicule this formalism.109 However, the government service was very largely, of course, run by no means efficiently, as Odoyevsky was only too well aware when he wrote in December 1855: 'lying, verbosity and bribery - these are the three leeches which suck at Russia'.110 It was, no doubt, at least partly this general feeling of disaffection which prompted Odoyevsky to refuse the offer of promotion to Privy Councillor from the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich following the closure of the Society for Visiting the Poor in 1855 (on the grounds that 'I have always declined any reward relating to philanthropic institutions'), and on another occasion to turn down the 'insulting' offer of membership of the city duma.nx

V The Official Ideology The government ideology, known as 'Official Nationality' and consisting of the triple prongs of autocracy, nationality (narodnosf) and Orthodoxy, was first propounded by the new Minister of Education, S. Uvarov, in April 1833. We have already seen sufficient evidence in this chapter not to dwell any further on Odoyevsky's attitude to the autocracy; if it came to the point, he supported this institution as the principal instrument of government - but his support was much more positive when the autocrat was an enlightened one. Nevertheless, it may hardly be considered appropriate that a report in a French newspaper of 1861 should have indicated that certain Russians would favour the candidacy of Prince 'Odoefski' (as a ryurikovich, and there-

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fore having more right to the throne than the Romanovs) in the event of the Romanov dynasty being overthrown (which evidently Mazzini for one believed to be an imminent possibility); as Odoyevsky noted in his diary, 'in the old days, one could have landed in the fortress through a thing like that'. 112 However, Odoyevsky's attitude to the other two elements of official ideology was rather more problematical. Narodnost\ as N. V. Riasanovsky has pointed out, 'possessed no single, generally accepted meaning'.113 It has most commonly been seen as 'an appendage to "autocracy"', as by one recent Soviet commentator in terms of'a combination of the qualities of patriarchalism, meekness, easiness to satisfy, submissiveness to the authorities, allegedly immutably inherent in the Russian peasantry'; yet it also had an additional connotation of 'a supreme metaphysical and even mystical' importance of 'the Russian people'.114 Despite his distance from the position of the Slavophiles, Odoyevsky, nevertheless, had a certain measure of sympathy with the latter ingredient of narodnosf) we have already noted his tendencies towards Russian chauvinism, and he was not infrequently given to statements such as: 'there is no one more capable than the Russian in all of Europe'.115 However, he had no patience with what might be considered the primary significance which was generally attached to this term: Narodnosf - is a great word, the sense of which, being exaggerated, can lead to nonsense, that is to slavish, blind repetition of what was done by forebears, not because this was done sensibly, but precisely because it was done in such a way.116 As usual, Odoyevsky was interested in the word itself, which he described as 'a word, rather unintelligible in its vagueness and which much more modestly and exactly can be replaced by the words: national custom or disposition.'117 Odoyevsky's interest in the concept at this stage (these writings date apparently from around 1860) shows a combination of this negative understanding and a more traditional (for Odoyevsky) romantic gloss: In our nation [narod\ there are two extremes: mysticism, often beyond the clouds (the raskoVnikt), and sensuality run riot. Between these two extremes poetry has crept in - the reconciler of these two elements. Narodnosf is one of those hereditary diseases from which a nation dies, if it does not renew its blood by spiritual and physical intimacy with other nations.118

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Odoyevsky had earlier taken a romantic view of what came to be known as narodnosf, stressing such processes as the origination and handing down of legends, poetry and songs. While not abandoning this approach altogether, he became rather more concerned with a concept of narodnosf which entailed a concentration on the people and its real interests, as he understood them: 'National character is developed by education [prosvesheheniyem] - that, probably, is the idea which Peter the Great held - without education there is no character.'119 Departing from the Westernizers in his critique of Western civilization and from the Slavophiles in his rejection of the past and support for Peter the Great, Odoyevsky proposed instead a study of the Russian people in order to understand its needs and to find a rational way of satisfying these needs 'in accordance with the laws of its life'; an injection of education into the Russian people would yield, Odoyevsky believed, very considerable results in art, science and technology - the supreme example of this potential residing in the figure of Lomonosov.120 Just as Odoyevsky's attitude to narodnosf divided him from the Slavophiles, and indeed from official ideology, so also did his attitude to Orthodoxy. It was Odoyevsky's lifelong friend, A. I. Koshelev, in later life a prominent Slavophile, who pointed to the centrality of the position of Orthodoxy in Russian life as marking the most fundamental difference between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers.121 Odoyevsky's various statements on religion in general are somewhat contradictory and, with regard to the Orthodox establishment in particular, often critical and at best lukewarm. As a thinker he was certainly an idealist, inbued with romantic pantheism and other Schellingian elements, inclined at times to mystical influences which may not have been contrary to Christianity in its broadest sense, and later leaning more towards positivism and back towards the rationalism of an earlier stage. He was certainly never a Christian, still less an Orthodox, philosopher in the manner of Khomyakov. He appeared to hover for much of his life between belief in a deity, and even at times in prayer, and periods of doubt, scepticism and pessimism. Orthodoxy, therefore, far from assuming a central position in his social ideology, was one of the traditional trappings of Russian society which on the whole, as far as he was concerned, it was better to be with than without, but which, if accorded undue prominence, could do more harm than good. Although religion was accorded a central place in the youthful Odoyevsky's graduation speech from the Blagorodnyy Pansion in 1822,

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this state of mind does not seem to have been permanent; Koshelev himself testifies that, to the Lyubomudry, philosophy was all important: Christian teaching was good only for the peasantry and Spinoza held in higher esteem than the gospels.122 The centrality of religion was retained by Odoyevsky, even in his most mystical period of the 1830s, only in its most general sense. The ingredients of religion (itself a constituent of the vital triad of art, religion and science) were then named by him as: 'poetical religion' (the asceticism of the ancient Indians), 'Greek mythology - Cabbalism and Alchemy' and 'Religious -Poetical Science' or 'Scientific-Poetical Religion' - 'Love' (Christian religion).123 Science, religion and poetry were seen as interlocking elements: there was no central place here for Russian Orthodoxy. Gippius writes of Odoyevsky's view of religion as a (beneficial) cultural influence, not as a living spiritual thing, reading into this a 'dualistic pessimism' (involving the persona and the power of Lucifer) and drawing a comparison with Hoffman's indifference to religion.124 A more recent Soviet commentator suggests that what Odoyevsky meant by religion was 'love for humanity' and 'the spiritual tie of the individual to society' and notes that in Odoyevsky's Utopian-futuristic tale The Year 4338 there appears to be no place for any 'religious cult'.125 We have already noted his long-standing hostility to Catholicism (one binder of his papers includes items on de Maistre, 'Papism's falsity', attempts to foist its influence on Russia etc.), but the representatives of Orthodoxy do not necessarily fare much better: Odoyevsky's dispute with the Metropolitan Filaret over educational policies (referred to in Chapter Four) led him to remark in his diary, upon Filaret's death in November 1867, on the lack of grief in the crowd at his funeral, to convey epigrams that were circulating as 'epitaphs' and (shades of Dostoyevsky's Zosima) the reported intelligence that 'those who were by the body say that the sniell was strong'. 126 Odoyevsky appears to have seen the virtues of the Russian national character as existing despite, rather than because of, the outward activities of the Orthodox Church. The superiority of Russians in natural gifts and in 'the feeling of love' has been preserved 'despite lack of education, despite the wrong \prevratnoye] teaching of religious principles, directed only towards ritual and not at inner improvement' (c. 1860); in the same period, he wrote: 'Religious accessories, like sucker-branches, always kill the tree which bears them' [original in French]. 127 In almost one of his last diary entries, Odoyevsky agreed strongly with the proposition that university lectures in theology were 'the best way to make atheists', warning that excessive religious

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education was sure to be counterproductive, 'for the government's best ideas in our society obtain atrocious execution'; to the suggestion that religious instruction should be increased to combat nihilism, he warned that it should not be forgotten that Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pomyalovsky and others had been products of 'seminaries and spiritual academies'!128 The effects of this sort of thing could be socially (and personally) pernicious, as well as in a political context: In the Christian aspiration for God's blessing, for His mercy for our sins - voluntary and involuntary - there is nothing in common with that haughty, worldly-wise foolish hope which we meet in those hypocrites who maintain that, for their virtues, for the carrying out of some sort of external rite, God will work a miracle for them, will divert lightning from them, will keep fire away from their homes and so on. 129 Inner piety, however, was a different thing, but even this might be in some danger, not least from the usual presentation of religion: FAITH. The greatest evil, greater than Voltaire and Bolingbroke, was done to religion by he who dared come out with: credo, quia absurdum.130

Odoyevsky admired the fervour of St Paul and the early Christians, the days when: had to arouse persecution and general indignation; it entered into contradiction with the basic element of the ancient world: inequality among people. CHRISTIANITY

He was even sufficiently ingenious as to enunciate a view of the rationality of religion: Religious feeling is not an appurtenance of imbecility; children are not at all religious. The religious demand of the soul grows together with its development. That is why religion is rational.131 Nevertheless, Odoyevsky wished to see the survival of religion in some form: in his diary in 1868 he spoke of having to defend religion (in the company of Tyutchev at the English Club) 'as a state force against

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various gentlemen who had got no further than Voltaire'; while a few years earlier he had written: RELIGION. Great harm is done by those who would like to destroy it altogether. On the fringes of science, positive knowledge and the most acute induction, man finds a cold abyss in the gloom of which burn the fiery words: 'I don't know!!' Some look coolly into this abyss - we shall leave them; but for others in this abyss are lost all moral laws and man is left with purely bestial impulses. Here to the assistance comes religion. With a comforting radiance it obscures the ominous place, the words unendurable to man and extends a hand to the unfortunate who has arrived at despair. Man is reassured, takes fright at his bestial impulses and hand in hand with religion sees out his time, not giving way to despair, not repudiating moral laws.132

The idea of the infinite, which dominates Russian Nights, clashes, it has been remarked, with its author's banal surroundings and the interests of the nobility as a class.133 Many of Odoyevsky's ideas on social and political matters clash too - with his position as 'premier nobleman of Russia' and, on occasion, with each other. This helps make Odoyevsky no easy subject to place in the spectrum of Russian social thought - his varying attitudes to and participation in Russian official life for a period of over half a century, as outlined above, may indicate why he was distrusted by both radicals and conservatives and probably rightly so, from the viewpoint of each. Herzen, writing of the Odoyevsky salon in My Past and Thoughts included in his list of habitues: 'semi-gendarmes and semi-literati, total gendarmes and completely non-literati. . . some Saxon envoy, not understanding a word of Russian, and some Third Department bureaucrat, understanding even those words which were not spoken'.134 One 'suspicious' character who was certainly close to Odoyevsky's immediate circle was B. A. Vrasky, who worked as a clerk in the Third Department, was married to Odoyevsky's wife's sister and apparently owned the printing press on which Sovremennik was printed.135 In fact the most likely source of Herzen's hostility to Odoyevsky, remarked on several times in this study, is the fact that Odoyevsky may have been used as a go-between in the Third Department's dealings with the future exile and editor of Kolokol: a letter from Vrasky to Odoyevsky of the early 1840s asks: 'Do you by any

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chance know where Herzen lives - ask him to come in to the Third Department - it is necessary to tell him something. If you don't know then Krayevsky will know.'136 There would appear to be no record as to whether Odoyevsky fulfilled this particular task, but, if he did, Herzen would certainly have not forgotten it. Either way, Odoyevsky remained associated in Herzen's eye with the milieu of the 'sky blue' uniforms. We see elsewhere that Odoyevsky's connections were frequently beneficial with regard to the furtherance of various publications and indeed that he himself suffered from much worse treatment at the hands of Bulgarin. There is certainly no evidence that Odoyevsky ever denounced anyone, while, like censorship, even the Third Department was not held at that time to be quite as odious an institution as it subsequently came to be considered. Apart from the possibly unsavoury minor figure of Vrasky, Odoyevsky was also connected with a number of highly placed personages: S. S. Lanskoy (later a minister) was his brother-in-law; M. A. Korf (Nicholas I's 'personal friend', tutor to his sons and one of the prime movers of the post-1848 reaction) was his superior at the Public Library from 1846;137 Zhukovsky (tutor to the future Alexander II and a close friend of Odoyevsky's) was very much an establishment figure, as was the court composer A. F. L'vov. An example of Odoyevsky's ambivalent and ineffectual position, and indeed, political irrelevance in the 1860s is provided by his attitude to Chernyshevsky. Reading What Is To Be Done} at the beginning of 1864, he finds it 'absurd' and 'contradictory' - 'but how la promiscuite des femmes must seduce the young'. The following day, completing his reading of this 'twaddle' and 'tautology' he remarks: Yesterday I heard that Chernyshevsky is in the fortress - what for I don't know yet - it's a pity from all points of view - especially because it won't be possible to have a good go at What Is To Be Done}, this almost nihilist prayer-book, which is seductive to the young - and at the same time the same kind of poison as the Jesuit theory, so similar to the nihilist one. 138 A Soviet commentator of the 1930s was thus able to describe Odoyevsky as 'ideologically alien and in essence hostile to democracy', pointing out that he didn't even hear of Chernyshevsky's arrest until 18 months after it happened.139 In 1865 Odoyevsky wrote the following unpublished fragment:

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We have a half-party directing the government to half-measures - this half-party bans Parus, Vest - and thereby puts a stop to all those objections and gibes which were being prepared against them. It leaves Chernyshevsky to freely disseminate his absurd phrasings, and, when he had lost all significance in society and made himself the object of indignation and ridicule, prosecutes him and holds in secret the hearing of the case (which would have cleared up the public's perplexity) even upon conclusion of the trial; it does not hold in secret all the hearings of the cases of Moscow students - thereby revealing so clearly all their absurdity but even their lack of understanding of themselves. And absurd people, thanks to official secrecy, contrary to the aims of punishment, become in the eyes of the public some sort of victims, almost saints. This same half-party inveighed against the reforms of the legal proceedings, especially against the public trial system; it is still hearing in secret the Orlov-Davydov case - thus does it distort the government's best measures.140 Odoyevsky had, in fact, displayed considerable sympathy for student movements of the day, as in his account of the disturbances surrounding the closure of St Petersburg University in 1861, which is said to be more or less accurate, except that Odoyevsky over readily accepts the official figure of only one injured.141 The following year, in his capacity as Senator, Odoyevsky listened to the case involving the group around Pyotr Zaichnevsky (one of the first 'Russian Blanquists' and described by Odoyevsky as 'a remarkable personality'), arraigned for protesting about the deaths in Warsaw and for spreading propaganda among the peasantry; this trial made a considerable impression upon Odoyevsky, who attempted some intercessions and gave 25 roubles to the mother of one of the accused.142 Pyatkovsky informs us that in 1866, despite his horror at such an event, Odoyevsky bailed out one of the suspects of 'the assassination attempt of 4 April', while M. D. Sverbeyev recalls Odoyevsky collecting money anonymously to help a priest in trouble in 1868, and, shortly before he died, surreptitiously writing down the names of university students who could not afford to pay for their lectures, in order to pay for some of them himself.143 Odoyevsky was even, on occasion, known to take up more proletarian causes: attributing the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War to lack of railway development, he entered the lists in 1860 on behalf of the exploited workers on the construction site of the Volga-Don railway, publishing a short article in a cause which had been vigorously backed by Dobrolyubov.144

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These sort of Quixotic attitudes, and a general tendency towards relatively progressive thought over the greater period of his career, caused Odoyevsky to be regarded as a somewhat suspect figure, as we have seen, not only in court circles, but even more so in the reactionary camp as a whole. A considerable part in this state of affairs may have been played over a long period of time by Bulgarin: an example of this is a denunciation of March 1846, entitled 'Socialism, Communism and Pantheism in Russia Over the Last Quarter of a Century'; Otechestvennyye zapiski was depicted as a hotbed of the most harmful ideas, and Odoyevsky and Krayevsky were credited with views identical to those of Belinsky.145 Perhaps the most vivid example of the personal, cultural and political spleen which Odoyevsky could arouse in his opponents can be found within the output of the razor-sharp and reactionary pen of F. F. Vigel'. In his letter to a friend in Simbirsk' of 1853 he looked back across three decades of resentment to the period of the break-up of the Lyubomudry: On the quiet, Moscow made her way to Petersburg. One of her countless little princes (knyaz'kav], wrapped up in the poppycock of Hoffmann and the musical metaphysics of Bach and Beethoven, arrived there to seek his fortune - and found it. He is not of those who have convictions - with him it's calculation every time. What then, he asked himself, if I reveal all, if I appear in a state of natural nakedness, then I shall have no weight. Thus apparently he alone remained uncured of Muscovite Germanism. Time favoured him with success.... The strange scholarly attire with which he draped himself, the contrast between his bold opinions and the quiet, almost supplicating, voice with which he pronounced them, were bound to arouse surprise, and he passed for, not a crank, as could have happened a little earlier, but an unusual man among men. Spirit of negation, spirit of doubt (in Pushkin's words) it seems had flown over his cradle; even in adolescence he did not believe in the existence of the invisible Creator of the universe, and later it fell to me myself to hear him deny the reality of a Russia visible to all. Thus, the very model of the originality of a little prince! On the heels of the gloomy youth from Moscow there stretched a whole string of people, grovelling in obscurity. The example of his insignificance and success aroused their hopes. But for the most part they were some sort of an illegitimate lot, oblivious of their kin, scholarly vagrants, almost all of lowly status. From them there

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formed around him a modest princely court, a retinue, a party. But their number increased, their mass became more dense; they were ashamed of such pitiful Maecenas-playing, they realized that one reclines not on hard stone but on rotted sapling, recoiled from him and began to live their own lives, to live by their own wits.146 Seeming to be almost as impenetrably poised between Westernizers and Slavophiles as between radicals and reactionaries, Odoyevsky was essentially a humanitarian who opposed oppression but who yet was appalled bv revolution, a strong advocate of reform who was at the same time cautious as to what he felt could be achieved by political means, believing that the real impulse for reform had to come from within. He is perhaps a personification of what N. V. Riasanovsky has called the 'split' between government and educated public, particularly in the post-1848 era of Nicholas I's reign, when Russia acquired 'a certain nightmarish quality'.147 Always aiming for a rapprochement between the two sides, he was derogatorily termed a 'conciliator' by Belinsky; even a sympathetic Western student of Odoyevsky has recently referred to the 'ambivalence and inconsistency' of his thought and 'the indecisiveness that marked his character' in choosing between ideologies.148 Those who wished to attack Odoyevsky had little difficulty in doing so by the use of selective quotation; those who choose to defend him tend to place the blame for what they see as his shortcomings on 'the historical limitations' of the times in which he lived.149 In coming to any such conclusions, however, one should not lose sight of the fact that Odoyevsky retained to the end in his thinking a strong element of German romanticism, one of the principal strands of which was that continual striving towards syncretism which underlay so much of his theorizing.

CHAPTER SIX

Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu: His Circle and Relationships Thus we shouted, clamoured, argued and gabbled all sorts of nonsense on New Year's E v e . . . . Oh happy times! Where are you? V. F. Odoyevsky, New. Year The best-known circles or salons in the experience of the average reader of nineteenth-century Russian literature are probably the circle of the poverty-stricken Pokorsky in Turgenev's Rudin (modelled on the Moscow grouping around Stankevich of the 1830s) and Anna Scherer's high-society salon of Tolstoy's War and Peace. The meetings of the Lyubomudry (or Society of Wisdom-Lovers) of the years 1823-5, in which Odoyevsky was a dominant force, were in many ways a forerunner of Stankevich's circle, of which Granovsky, Bakunin, K. Aksakov, Belinsky (and later in Berlin Turgenev) were the best-known adherents. Odoyevsky's circle in St Petersburg, and subsequently again in Moscow, however, fell somewhere between the tortuous and passionate philosophical debating forum of Stankevich and the much earlier high-class gossip-shop depicted in War and Peace; elements of both were certainly present but the main emphasis was artistic rather than philosophical or purely social, concentrating on literature and music. Odoyevsky's circle (and somewhat similar ones, such as those of Zinaida Volkonskaya, the Karamzins, the Viel'gorskys and V. A. Sollogub) exercised both a social and a cultural function. Waging 'the campaign against card games and for literature and the arts', 1 they were a meeting place for figures of different branches of the arts and (in the case of Odoyevsky's circle at least) of different social classes. At the same time, even Odoyevsky's heterogeneous gatherings retained a dominant aristocratic veneer. They served, however, as a means, at a time of undeveloped modes of literary production, for literature to find its reader. The exchanges between representatives of various arts and disciplines contributed, for example, to the dissemination of such movements as romanticism (and later realism) through literature,

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philosophy, music and art. However, with the gradual development of the book trade, the growth of journalism, and, from the middle decades of the century, the advent of literary professionalism, with aristocratic and diletiaiite predominance yielding to the 'commercial tendency', the circles and salons were to assume a place of lesser importance.2 Apart from the meetings of the Lyubomudry, which were in any case kept secret, Odoyevsky, in his Moscow days up to 1826, attended somewhat similar gatherings (the 'Thursdays') of the circle of S. Ye. Raich, as well as meetings of the 'archive youths' ('Tuesdays' at the Venevitinovs), the salon of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, the 'literary conversations' of A. F. Merzlyakov, and the 'evenings' of N. A. Polevoy - . not to mention musical and purely social evenings at the Griboyedovs, the Venevitinovs and other prominent houses. Odoyevsky's own circle or salon, however, dates from the later 1820s, following his move to St Petersburg, his marriage and establishment there in both government service and the social and cultural life of the northern capital. The heyday of the Odoyevsky circle, to judge by most memoir accounts, was the 1830s; in the 1840s it would appear to have been in decline. In 1850 Odoyevsky closed his salon, at least temporarily. The reason he gave for this action was one of thrift; it has also been suggested that the social antagonisms of a salon (and indeed a system) in decline, in the form of increased tensions between the diverse elements of the salon's clientele, the aristocratic social 'drawing-room' and the more plebeian literary 'study' as represented indeed by hostess and host respectively - may also have played a part.3 The real reason, however, as we have already seen in Chapter Four, had probably more to do with the repressive climate following 1848 which led to the eventual demise of the Society for Visiting the Poor of St Petersburg (largely conceived in and centred upon Odoyevsky's salon) and may have, in the wake of the Petrashevtsy arrests, caused cautious liberals such as Odoyevsky to lower their social profile. It was only in the 1860s, in the era of'the great reforms' that Odoyevsky's salon underwent any real revival - when, to enjoy a kind of Moscow Indian Summer, Odoyevsky had returned to his native city. The Odoyevsky salon thus spanned five decades. Odoyevsky's Saturdays in St Petersburg (and Fridays later in Moscow) are known to have been attended over the years by more than fifty of the best-known figures of Russian cultural life, as well as many lesser names.4 Apart from the leading personalities whose relations with Odoyevsky are

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discussed in some detail below, memoirists mention the frequent presence of Vyazemsky, Baratynsky, Pletnyov, the ViePgorskys, Krayevsky and later Nekrasov; of the composers (discussed in Chapter Three) Glinka, Dargomyzhsky and Serov and of occasional distinguished foreign visitors such as Liszt and Berlioz, in addition of course to the memoirists themselves (who include Pogodin, Koshelev, Panayev, Sollogub, Grigorovich and Fet).5 A further number of distinguished figures either graced the Odoyevsky circle with some regularity or had such dealings with Odoyevsky as to merit mention in his notes and diaries. Tyutchev was a member of the Raich circle in Moscow in the early 1820s6 and therefore must have known Odoyevsky for most of his life. Perhaps largely due to prolonged absences abroad, Tyutchev's name does not figure in memoirs of the Odoyevsky circle; however, in a letter of 1855, he himself mentions attending a 'Saturday' at Odoyevsky's, while Odoyevsky's diaries of the 1860s mention dinners with Tyutchev at the English Club. 7 In the 1830s the stout and elderly Krylov would appear from time to time at Odoyevsky's, to be served each time with a sucking-pig in sour cream and a bottle of kvass.8 Herzen and Odoyevsky had little enough time for each other, as we have seen in the last chapter. Nevertheless, Herzen obviously at least knew a considerable amount about Odoyevsky's circle, as he left (in My Past and Thoughts) & lively account of it; in the absence of direct testimony it is not clear whether he was ever himself a visitor there, but it would seem likely that at some stage he was.9 The peasant poet KoPtsov visited Odoyevsky when in St Petersburg and wrote to him in 1839: 'if there have ever been beautiful minutes in my life, which have remained ever memorable, then they have all been given to me by you, Prince Vyazemsky and Zhukovsky'.10 Odoyevsky and Zhukovsky have been described as the main protectors and defenders of KoPtsov.11 The writer and lexicographer V. I. Dal' was a friend of Odoyevsky's for many years. His daughter (O. V. Demidova) tells of Odoyevsky's direction (in the Dal' household) of a 'children's symphony' involving piano, drum, trumpet and a watering-pot into which the player had to gurgle; she herself had great difficulty in getting her lips to the mouth-piece for laughing.12 Odoyevsky's diary entries for 1862, just before he moved back to Moscow, show that he was on friendly terms with Leskov.13 Afanasiy Fet was introduced to the Odoyevsky circle by Turgenev; he left his own brief account of the circle in its later Moscow days, while in 1863 Odoyevsky, in his capacity as a Senator, sorted out a legal case of complaint concerning a windmill owned by Fet.14

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In December 1860 Odoyevsky had a visit from the critic and poet Apollon Grigor'ev, who had fallen on hard times, and noted in his diary: The literator (I don't know what he has written) Apollon Aleksandrovich Grigor'ev came to see me - in such a state of poverty that is pitiful to behold. Unfortunately I only had 30 roubles until the first of the month; I gave him half of it; how I'll get by for these two weeks I don't know, the more so as various gentlemen are plaguing me. 15 Odoyevsky was asked, and after checking with Pletnyov, despite being told by Grigorovich that Grigor'ev 'was touching everyone for money and going from one journal to another', agreed to intercede with General Putyata (an old friend) to advance Grigor'ev salary and travelling expenses, to enable him to take up a position as a teacher with the Cadet Corps at Orenburg. 16 Grigor'ev told Odoyevsky that he had partaken of a nine-day drinking bout, having been dismissed from the journal Russkoye slovo] Odoyevsky was quite impressed by what he could read of a scribbled article which Grigor'ev had thrust in front of him (on narodnosf), but it is surprising that he did not appear to know Grigor'ev's work at all, particularly in view of the fact that Grigor'ev had (as he himself pointed out) written favourably of Odoyevsky's literary works.17 At Odoyevsky's salon, indeed, there was a place for virtually the whole literary community, except for those whom Odoyevsky regarded as cultural philistines and repressors of Russian literature - such as the publicists Bulgarin, Grech and Senkovsky. Even the ultra-reactionary memoirist F. F. VigeP, who was rarely other than acerbic in his comments on Odoyevsky, and himself suffered under the pen of Sobolevsky, is known to have been seen there. 18 Odoyevsky's old Moscow friends remained in touch, after his move to St Petersburg, by correspondence, occasional visits (Ivan Kireyevsky, Shevyryov, Khomyakov and others) and journalistic collaboration. Some went their separate ways (such as Titov) or died early (such as Rozhalin). With those who turned to Slavophilism, as we have seen in Chapter Two, Odoyevsky's relations subsequently soured, particularly from the mid 1840s. Odoyevsky's surviving friends held a formal dinner to welcome him back to Moscow in 1862, at which Pogodin made the main speech; Katkov refused to attend and Dal' was not invited.19 Philosophy continued to play some part in the discussions at

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Odoyevsky's circle; there can be no doubt that the philosophical frame-tale sections of Russian Nights grew out of the disputations of many years, both from the Lyubomudry days and subsequently the St Petersburg salon (from occasions such as one mentioned by Koshelev, when he, Khomyakov and Odoyevsky argued well into the night).20 Nevertheless, the general run of Odoyevsky's gatherings was rather literary and musical, with more than a sprinkling of purely social and frequently somewhat eccentric visitors. Some flavour of these meetings over the years can be gleaned from the pages of the memoirists. Looking back from 1869, Pogodin wrote: From the time that Odoyevsky set up house in Petersburg he established his weekly 'evenings', when his friends and acquaintances would gather - literati, scientists, musicians, government officials. It was an original assemblage of people who were heterogeneous, often even hostile among themselves, but in some way or another remarkable. All of them, on neutral ground, felt completely free and treated each other without any inhibitions.21 As well as writers such as Pushkin, Gogol' and Lermontov, Pogodin mentions 'Father Iakinf with his Chinese slit-eyes', 'the stout traveller and heavy German, Baron Schilling, back from Siberia', 'the chemistry professor, Hess' and 'the clumsy but knowledgeable archeologist, Sakharov'.22 The musician and writer Wilhelm Lenz refers back to 1833, when Odoyevsky's gatherings began not earlier than eleven, on Saturday evenings after the theatre.23 Despite the modest dimensions of the accommodation, the occasions remained imposing; the gatherings took place in two small rooms, moving later to 'the lion's cave' upstairs - the Odoyevsky library. Princess Odoyevskaya magisterially poured the tea herself. Lenz names the dramatist Shakhovskoy, ministers (or future ministers) Bludov and Zamyatin, the handsome Italian singing teacher Ciabatta and Pushkin's wife among those he saw at Odoyevsky's. He also mentions the presence of D'Anthes (some years, it would seem, before the fatal duel with Pushkin.) One particularly colourful adherent noted by Lenz is the Princess Golitsyna: Princess Nocturne, as she was called, because she turned night into day and rose no earlier than midnight. She always wore garish dresses, had a reputation for learning and, they say, conducted

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correspondence with Parisian academicians on mathematical questions. To me she seemed simply a boring blue-stocking. During Balzac's stay in Petersburg in 1845, without having ever met him, she sent a carriage for him at midnight with an invitation to her apartment. I happened by chance to be with Balzac at the time, and he took great offence at this, while I tried all I could to calm him, bringing to his attention all the old lady's eccentricities. Balzac wrote to her: 'Where I come from, my dearest lady, one sends only for doctors, and even then only for those with whom one is acquainted. I am not a doctor.' Signature and nothing more. Balzac banged his fist on the table with indignation and exclaimed: 'What may I expect after this!' 24 Panayev refers to the aristocratic salon of S. N. Karamzina as the literary salon par excellence of the time (the 1830s), 'where diplomas in literary talent were given out', and at which it was essential to appear if one wished to obtain any literary recognition in the realms of high society; the only writers that this circle were aware of were Zhukovsky, Krylov, Pushkin, Prince Odoyevsky, Prince Vyazemsky and Count Sollogub.25 Odoyevsky himself, on the other hand, wanted through his circle: to show his society acquaintances that, apart from the chosen ones who visit Karamzina's salon, there exists in Russia another whole class of people engaged in literature... . Society people at Odoyevsky's evenings usually surrounded the lady of the house, while the literati were crammed into the host's cramped study, which was obstructed by tables of various sorts and heaped with books, fearing to glance into the salon.... A whole chasm divided this salon from the study.26 Those wishing to reach the sanctuary of the study had to run a gauntlet of lorgnettes, stares and smirks in crossing the dreaded salon. One who made no bones about brazening his way through was 'the publisher of Legends of the Russian People, I. P. Sakharov, who always appeared at Odoyevsky's evenings in a long-tailed pea-green frockcoat' and on the strength of this book buttered up all the literati and journalists.27 Reminiscences of another eccentric figure, mentioned also by Pogodin, are given by Panayev in rather more lurid detail: Father Iakinf, who, 'so sinologized on account of his prolonged sojourn in that country that even his exterior began to resemble that of

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a Chinaman', would strip to his cassock in Odoyevsky's study and 'orate on China, extolling to the heavens everything Chinese'. 28 When this happened, society figures gathered in the Princess's salon would flock to hear him, despite (or perhaps because of) his uninhibited turns of phrase. Panayev reports: Some society dandy or other interrupted him once with the question - 'And what about the women in China, are they good?' Iakinf looked him up and down with curiosity from head to toe, and then, turning aside, replied coolly - 'No, the boys are better'. Preaching the advances made by Chinese medicine, Iakinf claimed on one occasion that many serious diseases with which European doctors could get nowhere were cured in China easily and quickly: '"Which, for example?" enquired Princess Odoyevskaya. "Well, let's say bleeding diarrhoea." he replied.' Fun and games were sometimes the order of the day. Yuriy Arnol'd records the presence on one occasion of an improvizator of Italian poetry (seemingly in 1841, and therefore too late to have been the inspiration for Odoyevsky's story, first published in 1833); he also witnessed the cacophonous performance of a one-man band.29 The Odoyevsky circle would also, it would appear, occasionally organize amateur dramatic masquerades: the programme for one such event, to be held at the Palais Michel in January 1842, with Odoyevsky and Sollogub taking part in a scene from Fonvizin's The Minor is to be found among Odoyevsky's papers.30 As already mentioned, a period of decline in the Odoyevsky circle seems to have set in during the 1840s. As we have seen from Panayev's comments, by no means all commentators would have quite agreed with the rosy and harmonious picture of the equality in the salon painted by Pogodin or by F. Timiryazev.31 Arnol'd places the blame for the changing composition of the gatherings squarely on the shoulders of Princess Odoyevskaya, who, in his view, had always looked askance at writers and musicians of other than blue-blooded stock (unless, of course, they were sufficiently famous): The Princess managed little by little to transform the physiognomy of her evenings, in which process she was greatly assisted by the spirit, or it would be truer to say the fad, which chanced to be making itself felt at the time in the 'highest' society, of posing as a lover of and expert on literature, the sciences and the arts . . . more

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and more there began to beam the faces of the pure-blooded breed, just as there began to disappear those faces, the fruits of whose labours could often be found on the printed page, but whose names would not be encountered on the pages of 'the golden book'.32 Just as Arnol'd attended much less after 1847, so Turgenev, we are informed by Avdot'ya Panayeva, stopped going to Odoyevsky's 'Saturdays' in the same year, as he would say to Nekrasov and Panayev: because I am simply ashamed at the extent of misbehaviour of the new literati [of whom the principle offender seems to have been Dostoyevsky - see below]. . . . I understand why the Princess does not allow Odoyevsky to bring all his Saturday guests into her salon. . . . Yes, gentlemen, how low our literati have sunk - society people avoid them like the plague . . . previously the literati were true gentlemen, and those who didn't belong to the top drawer knew their place - in their own milieu. And now, full of arrogance and pretensions, they say we can spit on all social proprieties.33 The closure of Odoyevsky's salon in 1850 seems to have been, contrary to the view of Aronson and Reyser, only a temporary measure. It may have operated on a smaller scale during the 1850s, and was indubitably past its prime, but Saturday gatherings certainly took place: Arnol'd refers to his attendance at Odoyevsky's in the early 1850s and in 1856, as does Tyutchev in 1855.34 Grigorovich, who also refers to the lack of success of Odoyevsky's attempts to intermix high society with literati and scientists, and the inevitable separation of the men from the women, visited Odoyevsky's circle from the later 1840s to the 1860s, but his description of the apartment at the Rumyantsev Museum would seem most likely to refer to the 1850s: [Odoyevsky's] ability to complicate everything was reflected even in the layout of his apartment: in the middle of the large drawingroom of the Rumyantsev Museum, when he was director there, was placed a grand piano; against it on one side there were placed screens, their reverse side leaned against a divan, encircled by tables and chairs of varying styles; one side of the divan was enclosed by a tall jardiniere; slightly beyond this was placed a large round table, covered by a carpet and surrounded by easy chairs and dining chairs. From the entrance there ran more screens, partitioning off the corner with the divan with bookcases and

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shelves on the walls. The drawing room was a total labyrinth - there was no possibility of going from one end to the other in a straight line; one had to keep zig-zagging and making turns to get through to the exit.35 When Odoyevsky restarted his 'literary evenings', after moving back to Moscow in 1862, 'on the basis of the time-honoured principles of the 30s and 40s', they, according to ArnoPd, 'achieved anew their former brilliance and their former significance'.36 Another observer enthused: Who didn't go to [Odoyevsky's]! There were the young ladies to whom he gave his 'every-Friday' lectures on music, and his greyhaired senator colleagues, there were Turgenev, Fet and Grigorovich, and Slavophiles and Westerners . . . 37 The most varied elements of society could still be encountered at Odoyevsky's: society beauties dressed to the nines, down-at-heel students from the Conservatory and overdressed German barons (introduced there by Von der Hoven, a Senate colleague of Odoyevsky's, and occasioning thereby a smarting epigram from the irritated Sobolevsky).38 The old patterns, however, evidently still prevailed and an American visitor, Eugene Schuyler, reports: On the Friday evenings the ladies usually gathered in one of the two drawing-rooms, with the Princess, who poured the tea .. . the men, meanwhile . . . went off to the Prince's study to smoke and talk.39 Mixing would only take place in the event of the visit of a celebrated singer, or some such exciting event. 'Fridays' were said to be evenings of a mainly musical nature and 'Wednesdays' were more literary, although Odoyevsky wrote in a letter of 1864: 'there's uproar at my place on Saturdays'.40 Schuyler, who was introduced to Odoyevsky's salon by Turgenev as late as Autumn 1867, met there Berlioz, Serov and Tolstoy. The 'avant-garde' writers of the day were, of course, no longer likely to grace such a salon as that of Odoyevsky; nevertheless, the evidence of these memoir accounts suggests that the verdict of Aronson and Reyser, that 'in the 60s Odoyevsky's salon was by now living on its memories', was not totally accurate.41

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We shall now examine Odoyevsky's relations with a number of the main literary figures of the period who were regular visitors to his salon, or were otherwise closely associated with him at one stage or another. I

A. I. Odoyevsky

Vladimir Odoyevsky's first contact with a future literary personality of note was probably that with his first cousin, Alexander Ivanovich Odoyevsky (1802-39), later a Decembrist and a poet. There seems to be no record of whatever childhood meetings took place between the two cousins, but they certainly developed, albeit only temporarily, close relations in the period 1820-1. The relationship appears to have been particularly close, and indeed emotional, on the side of the younger Vladimir* This is strongly reflected in the earliest surviving prose work of the aspiring author, 'The Diary of a Student' (Dnevnik studenta), which remains unpublished and depicts, according to a recent commentator, 'a spiritual crisis, called forth by the impossibility of free self-exposure'.42 Critics have never doubted the autobiographical nature of 'The Diary' nor that the 'Alexander' mentioned is indeed the author's cousin: Alexander was an epoch in my life. To him I owe the best moments of it. In his company I found that which I had been seeking everywhere and had nowhere found. What can replace that moment when the heart, completely free from all bounds, reveals itself before another heart [and] as if merges with it[!]. At that moment a human being achieves human status - he is not inhibited by the belittling fetters of all those social stupidities! - State of bliss! Why are you so shortlived?43 The author even wanted his future sweetheart 'to resemble explicitly Alexander'.44 How much of this represents the youthful Vladimir's true emotional (and even sexual?) feelings towards his cousin and how much is pure literary exaggeration in the sentimentalist-early romantic vogue of the time it is now impossible to say. Sakulin speaks of tiffs (razmolvki) between the cousins even in the period 1820-1 and this section of 'The Diary' may well have been written following one of these, the more so as the work purports to

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have been written, in the words of its (presumed to be autobiographical) literary hero, 'in order that Alexander should . . . find out later, when [he] intersects with the thread of this to me distressing life'.45 The lives of the two cousins did continue to intersect - at least until 14 December 1825, after which date they took very different directions. If is not known whether Alexander ever saw Vladimir's manuscript of 'The Diary', but it would seem to be unlikely that he did. Alexander corresponded regularly with his cousin and twenty of his letters survive from the period from August 1821 to June 1825.46 The first of these indicates that by August 1821 the relationship was already close on both sides, but that there had even then been some misunderstandings (or the razmolvki of which Sakulin speaks), and that Alexander had suspected his cousin of a certain 'froideur'.47 In subsequent letters Alexander, no doubt quite justifiably, ridiculed verses written by Vladimir and in contrast proclaimed himself 'a genius', writing 'only for posterity' (indeed he took no active steps to publish his own poetry, then or ever);48 he then expended considerable epistolary effort in teasing or chiding Vladimir over supposed romantic or even wanton pursuits, referring in these regards to one 'Varin'ka' Nikitishna and to 'our amiable cousin Princess Shcherbatova', accusing his 'amiable Volodya' in 1822 of being 'too sensual to ever be in love'.49 A little later Alexander was expressing impatience both with Vladimir's Schellingism and with the polemical aspects of his journalistic activity. Squabbles over these matters evidently caused bad feeling. However, in 1824 he was assisting Vladimir in raising subscriptions to Mnemozina, as his 'bailiff for journal-commercial turnover',50 and at about this time became very friendly with Vil'gel'm Kyukhel'beker, Vladimir's publishing partner, with whom he shared an apartment in the weeks leading up to the Decembrist uprising. There is some speculation, based on letters from Alexander and Kyukhel'beker to Vladimir, that attempts were made to pull Vladimir out of his 'Moscow bog' and his 'philosophical trance' (Vladimir at this time still lived in Moscow, while the army officer Alexander spent much time in St Petersburg) into, presumably, active Petersburg participation in the secret societies during the months before the Decembrist revolt.51 Alexander apparently went to Moscow in November 1825, perhaps with such a purpose in mind, but evidently met with no success.52 Sakulin describes the two cousins as 'people of a different spiritual cast'.53 Yekaterina L'vova, a relative of the Odoyevskys, in her un-

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published memoir wrote of Alexander, 'a poet in his souP, being a 'diametrical opposite' to Vladimir, who, having 'the nature of a thinker', was always old for his years.54 It would thus appear that the relationship between the two cousins blossomed briefly in 1820-1, at a time of teenage infatuation on the part of Vladimir in particular, but then gradually declined under the pressure of misunderstandings, disagreements and fundamentally divergent temperaments. It is certainly in doubt as to how well the two Odoyevskys ever knew each other; in the words of Griboyedov, who knew both cousins well: 'they were too young when they lived together or saw each other regularly and were not able to form a firm opinion of one another'.55 This would seem to be borne out by Alexander's own letters to his cousin, and in particular by an entry in Vladimir's diary for 1862; having been asked, nearly forty years later, for information on Alexander and on Kyukhel'beker by someone collecting material for an anthology of the poetry of the Decembrists, he wrote: 'I have little enough to tell - for the latter I knew for only one year, and the former at different times only for a few months.' 56 In the opinion of Sakulin, Alexander was 'a sincere but accidental Decembrist' but this view is not exactly that of most Soviet commentators.57 Alexander himself, in a letter to his father of 1834, blamed his ruinous misdemeanour on 'trois mois de jeunesse, ou plutot d'enfance!' and on 'une education feminine'.58 In any event, after the events of December 1825 the cousins were not to meet again. If any correspondence took place between them from then on, until Alexander's premature death from 'Caucasian fever' on the Black Sea coast in August 1839, it has not survived. Vladimir certainly corresponded with his uncle (and Alexander's father), Ivan Sergeyevich Odoyevsky, and, according to Sakulin at least, was involved in the petitioning which led to the transfer of Alexander from Siberian to Caucasian exile in 1837.59 In the only reference to Vladimir in Alexander's surviving letters from exile to his father, Alexander is concerned mainly to berate his cousin for alleged mangling of the French language (a topic which had given rise to some rivalry between them in their correspondence of the early 1820s): I am quite surprised that my Cousin Woldemar [a variation, of Scandinavian origin, on 'Vladimir' and occasional nick-name of Odoyevsky] should amuse himself by writing such absurd notes and in such bad French.. . . The good society of Petersburg has not

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made my poor Woldemar make great progress: he has still retained the manner of a Moscow schoolboy from the University boarding-school. I do not love him any the less for it, however; and I desire, with all my heart, that one day he should bring honour to our family.60 [Original in French] It is not known to which 'notes' Alexander refers; neither is it by any means clear that Alexander had even an inkling of his cousin's growing literary reputation; however, he did request and receive literary journals, to some of which Vladimir was an occasional contributor, but it is at least possible that the various pseudonyms under which Vladimir's work appeared were not widely recognized in Siberia. There is no record, it would seem, of how Vladimir received the news of his cousin's sudden death in the Caucasus - a fate which had already befallen Marlinsky and was soon to rob Russian literature of Lermontov. II

D . V. Venevitinov

Odoyevsky's closest friend of the 1820s was perhaps the talented young poet Dmitriy Venevitinov, who, something of an infant prodigy (almost) in Russian letters of the day and dubbed by Pogodin 'the marvellous youth' (yunosha divnyy),61 died at the age of only twentyone in 1827. Venevitinov, with his deep interests in music and German philosophy, as well as poetry, was probably nearest in spirit to Odoyevsky of all the adherents of the Moscow Lyubomudry and other philosophical and literary circles. As Pogodin has testified, Venevitinov was also the most loved of the whole group: 'Dmitriy Venevitinov was the favourite, the treasure of our whole circle. We all loved him ardently, each one of us more than the next.'62 Odoyevsky and Venevitinov first met in 1822, apparently in the Griboyedovs' house. 63 They became the mainstays of the Lyubomudry (the Society of Wisdom Lovers), which formed in secret in 1823; the principal members were five only: Odoyevsky (as President), Venevitinov (as Secretary), Ivan Kireyevsky, N. M. Rozhalin and A. I. Koshelev - 'he [Odoyevsky] presided, but D. Venevitinov spoke the most and frequently brought us to a state of delight with his speeches'.64 Venevitinov read his philosophical articles and dialogues to the Lyubomudry and to the gatherings ('Tuesdays' at the Venevitinovs) of the 'archive youths', whom he joined in 1824 when he

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began government service at the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (in addition to some of the Lyubomudry and its 'fringe' members - V. P. Titov, V. P. Shevyryov and N. A. MeFgunov - this category also embraced S. A. Sobolevsky, S. MaPtsev and the Meshchersky brothers). Over and above these groupings, Venevitinov, along with Odoyevsky and most of the others, was an habitue of the salon of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya (a society lady, some sixteen years his senior, for whom he developed an unrequited passion). The cohesion and security of this small literate and social world suffered a rude shock in the shape of the events of December 1825; however, the arrests following 14 December, and the temporary expectations of arrest, served only to cement more tightly together the central core of these Moscow groups, at which stood the original members of the Lyubomudry.65 This strong feeling of intellectual camaraderie which developed into the bonds of enduring friendship can be seen reflected in Venevitinov's poems To My Friends (K druz'yam) and To My Friends at New Year (K druz yam na novyy god) and, in wistful retrospect, in Odoyevsky's later story New Year (Novyy god). The Society of the Lyubomudry was formally dissolved when, shortly after news of the failed Decembrist uprising had been received: 'Prince Odoyevsky called us together and with particular solemnity committed to the fire in his hearth the statutes and the proceedings of our society of wisdom-loving.'66 This dissolution, however, was only nominal; the interests and ideals of the Lyubomudry continued to exist for some while, both amid the group which remained in Moscow, which was centred around the journal Moskovskiy vestnik, and among those members who transferred their activities and careers in 1826 to St Petersburg. In November 1826 Venevitinov travelled to St Petersburg, to which city he had arranged to transfer his government service, following the example already set by Odoyevsky and Koshelev. The move was, in his case, soon to prove a disastrous one. He was immediately arrested and questioned over Decembrist connections and, apparently held in damp quarters, suffered the recurrence of a previous illness, from which whole experience he seemingly never, either mentally or physically, fully recovered.67 'We all saw each other often and gathered for the most part at Prince Odoyevsky's,' wrote Koshelev of this period, but the main topic of discussion was 'no longer philosophy, but our government service.... However, we sometimes remembered the past, plunged into philosophical debates and by this means cheered ourselves up

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somewhat5. However, close contact was still maintained with the remaining Moscow group of friends; Venevitinov wrote to Sobolevsky of Odoyevsky's married life in December 1826, and in the same month Venevitinov and Odoyevsky dispatched a joint epistle - to Pogodin, Rozhalin, Sobolevsky, Titov and Shevyryov - in which, apart from making a number of possibly forced jocularities, they offered to take on responsibility for the critical section of Moskovskiy vestnik.69 However, all this was cut tragically short when in March of 1827 the now delicate Venevitinov literally caught his death of cold - by running lightly clad across the courtyard from a ball at the Lanskoys' house to his quarters in a wing of the same house. Within a week he was dead. During this last illness the Khomyakov brothers, Koshelev and Odoyevsky were in close and constant attendance and they were deeply shocked by its unexpectedly fatal end; Odoyevsky wrote to Titov: 'My soul is breaking apart. I am crying like a child.'70 The shock at Venevitinov's sudden death spread considerably beyond his immediate circle and family. Venevitinov's friends soon determined, however, to ensure the survival of his memory in the history of Russian letters. Within a month of his death, Titov was writing to Odoyevsky that it was time 'to think about the works of the deceased', for 'the memory of Venevitinov must unite us still more'. 71 A couple of weeks later, Odoyevsky wrote to Pogodin on the subject: You will find herewith verses by Dmitriy. You know he often felt in himself the necessity to express himself in verses or, rather, to turn every minute of his life into poetry. That is why there are so many of his short poems. The verses enclosed are possessed by no one, apart from myself. Some he wrote celebrating New Year at my place, the others in my music book, in which Skaryatin had sketched a goddess and five stars. I can also supply musical compositions of Dmitriy's. I should like to see them published together with my friend's works which would wonderfully combine all three arts.72 The eventual result of the attentions of Venevitinov's friends to his literary legacy was the two volumes of his verse and prose, of 1829 and 1831 respectively, which were prepared for publication by the poet's brother, together with Odoyevsky, Pogodin, Rozhalin and Titov; these would comprise the most authoritative edition of Venevitinov's works for more than a century to come.73 Later in his life Odoyevsky

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provided A. P. Pyatkovsky with personal reminiscences and other information on Venevitinov.74 Ill

A. S. Griboyedov

When Odoyevsky published his early society tales in Vestnik Yevropy (Herald of Europe) under pseudonyms in 1822-3, he quickly struck a chord with the dramatist Alexander Griboyedov, who, according to Odoyevsky, 'tried to find out who was their author. This gave occasion for a very close acquaintance, and subsequently to a friendship . . . which never faltered'.75 They probably met at the house of S. N. Begichev (a close friend of Griboyedov), whose musical evenings Odoyevsky frequented. Begichev's niece, Ye. P. Sokovnina, relates that Odoyevsky visited her uncle's house 'almost daily' in 1823, when Griboyedov was staying there: 'Prince V. F. Odoyevsky, still very young then, almost a youth, and his comrade in the publication of the almanac Mnemozina, KyukhePbeker, who gave me lessons in the Russian and German languages'.76 Other guests included Verstovsky and Denis Davydov. Musical evenings also took place at the Griboyedov house, featuring Griboyedov himself, who was 'an excellent pianist', and his sister Mariya Sergeyevna, who excelled on the harp as well as enjoying the reputation of being John Field's best pupil - and indeed 'the best female musician in Moscow'.77 Odoyevsky and Griboyedov shared, what is more, a scholarly interest, comparatively rare at that time, in musical theory, which would occasion the following taunt from their friends: 'Once Griboyedov and Odeyevsky start talking about music, you might just as well give up. You won't understand a word.' 78 Odoyevsky also greatly esteemed Griboyedov's knowledge of old Russia.79 A modicum of literary collaboration soon followed, with the appearance of Griboyedov's poem David in Part I of Mnemozina. It would also appear that Griboyedov was in close contact with Odoyevsky during the composition of his great verse comedy, Woefrom Wit (Gore ot uma); at least, Odoyevsky was subsequently able to say this about Griboyedov's method of composition: he would put pen to paper only when he had already decided that nothing more would be changed. He recited to me almost all of Woe from Wit when not a verse of it had been written on paper - as he was still dissatisfied with some scenes.80

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Close as the friendship was between Odoyevsky and Griboyedov, it never reached the intensity of the bond between Griboyedov and Alexander Odoyevsky. In addition to this three-way relationship, KyukhePbeker, who of course had close connections with both the Odoyevskys, had known Griboyedov since 1817, and been on intimate terms with him since 1821. The binding significance to KyukhePbeker of the personal and intellectual ties of this group as representatives of their generation will be evidenced below. The Odoyevsky cousins were, in fact, distant relations of Griboyedov, though not blood relations.81 Alexandra Sergeyevna Odoyevskaya, an aunt of both Vladimir and Alexander, had been the first wife of Groboyedov's uncle (Aleksey Fyodorovich Griboyedov), by whom she had a daughter, 'cousin Eliza', who married I. F. Paskevich (Nicholas Fs general, subsequently created 'Count of Yerevan' and 'Prince of Warsaw' as a result of military conquests).82 Thus Griboyedov and the Odoyevskys shared a first cousin with influential connections. Griboyedov appears to have known Alexander as a boy; they became particularly close, however, in the summer of 1824, when Griboyedov stayed with Alexander for a period of time in St Petersburg.83 According to A. A. Zhandr, himself an intimate of Griboyedov, Alexander Odoyevsky acted as 'guardian angel' to Griboyedov in this period; there being at the time a fierce regime in force to prevent the molesting of actresses (apparently under the control of the Governor-General of St Petersburg, Count Miloradovich): 'He never left Griboyedov alone in the theatre, he simply didn't leave him, like a nurse-maid, and often dragged him away forcibly from some tempting doorway.'84 Rather more lethal in its effects than Miloradovich's Special Theatre Committee, though, was the great St Petersburg flood of November 1824. On this occasion Alexander Odoyevsky may have been responsible for preserving the very life of his friend and mentor for in a letter of 1828 Griboyedov reminds Alexander: 'You remember, my friend, a't the time of the flood, how you were swimming and went under, in order to get to me and save me.' 85 No wonder Griboyedov referred, in a letter to Vladimir Odoyevsky of June 1825, to 'brother Alexander, my charge, Venfant de mon choix\S6 When Alexander was himself in dire straits, sentenced for his participation in the events of 14 December, Griboyedov, in his turn, interceded as far as he himself was able and then urged their common influential relation, Paskevich, to intervene on behalf of his wife's first cousin.87 Griboyedov wrote a poem to Alexander Odoyevsky, in response to his desperate plight; and

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yet Alexander was fated to outlive Griboyedov, to whose memory he wrote his own poetic tribute in 1829 from a Siberian gaol.88 To return to Vladimir Odoyevsky and Griboyedov, a number of pre-revolutionary critics drew comparisons between the early Odoyevsky works, such as Days of Vexation (Dni dosad), and Griboyedov's Woe from Wit - particularly between Odoyevsky's protagonist Arist and Griboyedov's Chatsky.89 A suggestion identifying Odoyevsky himself with Chatsky, made by N. F. Sumtsov in 1884, was restated by P. Mizinov in 1900: 'Chatsky is the young Odoyevsky'.90 B. A. Lezin, a few years later, agreeing with Sumtsov, found Days of Vexation interesting as a 'commentary' to Woe from Wit (despite its having been written independently of, and probably even before, the play), and Arist reminiscent of Chatsky; this was so 'because Odoyevsky himself is Chatsky', Arist was also the young Odoyevsky and a prototype of Faust of Russian Nights.91 I. I. Zamotin saw Odoyevsky in his Moscow period as 'one of the spokesmen of Russian romantic Sturm-und-Drang, closely resembling in mood the "Chatsky -Griboyedov" type', while Sakulin regarded Arist, Chatsky and the Decembrists all as representative of the younger generation of the 1820s.92 Modern criticism has not chosen to pursue probably spurious questions of identity (although a degree of empathy would be perfectly admissible); however, in contrast to V. Rozanov, who in 1913 claimed that there were 'many lines' in Griboyedov (and in Pushkin) 'pertaining personally to Prince Odoyevsky'93 [Rozanov's italics], the work of a recent commentator indicates that the boot may rather have been on the other foot, in that Odoyevsky drew what seems to have been a veiled portrait of Griboyedov in the person of Ippolit Dvinsky, the 'positive hero' of a 'fragment from a novel' entitled 'The Consequence of a Satirical Article' of 1824.94 Odoyevsky showed his admiration for Griboyedov's play by rushing to defend it in articles published in 1825 in Mnemozina (Part IV) and Moskovskiy telegraf95 Odoyevsky's polemics on Griboyedov's behalf seem even to have embarrassed somewhat their intended beneficiary at least, judging by Griboyedov's letters.96 Contacts between Odoyevsky and Griboyedov after 1825 would appear to have been few and far between. In September 1826 Odoyevsky wrote from St Petersburg to Sobolevsky, enquiring anxiously as to Griboyedov's whereabouts, having just missed him upon his arrival in St Petersburg, and wishing to impart the news of his recent marriage.97 In the spring of 1828 Koshelev reports meeting Griboyedov at Odoyevsky's, while in May of that year Vyazemsky

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heard Pushkin read Boris Godunov at Lavalle's house along with (among others) 'Odoyevskaya-Lanskaya, Griboyedov, Mickiewicz . . .\ 98 There is no record as to how Odoyevsky received the news of Griboyedov's violent and horrific death. Nevertheless, the impact of Griboyedov and his comedy never left Odoyevsky and can be felt in a number of fictional writings of the 1830s, and in his society tales in particular." In Princess Mimi, for instance, Odoyevsky refers in the 'Introduction' (which comes over halfway through the story) to Griboyedov as 'almost the only writer, in my opinion, who has grasped the secret of putting our colloquial language on to paper', while in Princess Zizi the narrator is reminded, as thereby are his readers, of 'the inimitable Griboyedov' at the first mention of the name of the title character.100 In 1838 Odoyevsky was involved in the preparation of a biographical article on Griboyedov for Plyushar's Encyclopaedic Lexicon^ a first draft of which was submitted to S. N. Begichev and hence to A. A. Zhandr for correction.101 Twenty years later D. A. Smirnov, a distant relative of Griboyedov who was researching on the life and work of his 'uncle', approached Odoyevsky for material and reminiscence, which he was duly accorded.102 Finally, in 1868, Odoyevsky used, as we have already remarked in Chapter Three, the persona of Pavel Famusov to deliver a late satirical diatribe on the local reception to Russian culture, in his 'Intercepted Letters'. 103

IV

V. K. Kyukhel'beker

In July 1823 ViPgePm Kyukhel'beker arrived in Moscow and soon met Odoyevsky, whose cousin Alexander he had known earlier; together they planned the publication of an almanac, hopefully later to become a journal, to be called Mnemozina.104 Pogodin records that one journal being planned by adherents of the Raich circle and the Lyubomudry came to nothing, while: Polevoy, encouraged by Prince Vyazemsky, had already thought of the [Moskovskiy] Telegraf, and Prince Odoyevsky, having got to know Kyukhel'beker, announced the publication of Mnemozina for the following year - an almanac in four volumes.105 Kyukhel'beker, seven years older than his co-editor, was everything that Odoyevsky was not: impetuous, politically committed to liberal

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republicanism, fiery (he had once almost literally been inflamed by his own rhetoric at a meeting in Paris106), he had been a close friend of Pushkin and Del'vig at the St Petersburg Pansion for Nobility, had experience of St Petersburg journalism, had travelled extensively in Europe and served in the Caucasus. At the same time, he strongly shared Odoyevsky's belief in art, philosophy and romantic idealism. He was able to contribute travel notes, poetry and criticism to Mnemozina, supplementing Odoyevsky's prose and philosophy, in addition to outside contributions, which could be guaranteed to be plentiful given Kyukhel'beker's St Petersburg literary connections and Odoyevsky's ready-made Moscow associations. Indeed, Mnemozina became virtually an organ of Lyubomudry ideas. KyukhePbeker never joined the Lyubomudry and some differences over aesthetics between himself and Odoyevsky soon became apparent, as in the comments which Odoyevsky appended to KyukhePbeker's piece on Flemish painting in Part I, but, as Sakulin has remarked, 'there was something common between them, principally in their conception of the tasks of contemporary Russian literature'.107 Following the considerable success of Part I, Mnemozina involved itself rather heavily in literary polemics and, subjected to delays for various reasons, was in financial difficulty by the time Part IV (supposedly of 1824) finally appeared in October 1825. The idea of extending the almanac into a regular journal was abandoned.108 Due principally to his financial fragility, KyukhePbeker returned to St Petersburg in June 1825, where he resorted to entering the service of his recent adversaries, Grech and Bulgarin (whom he had known in his earlier St Petersburg days, and who in any case had not yet assumed their role of fully blown tools of reaction which was later to incur such odium), working for a time on Syn otechestva (Son of the Fatherland). During this period he became an intimate of a number of the leading figures in the budding conspiracy that was to culminate in the December uprising, including in particular Alexander Odoyevsky, with whom he shared an apartment from October until 14 December. In a letter dated September-October 1825, to be delivered by Alexander, he wrote to Vladimir Odoyevsky imploringly: tear yourself for God's sake from that rotten, stinking Moscow, where you will go as soft as dough, in soul and body! Is it your function to serve as an object of amazement for Polevoy and such predators?... I should like to be a magician, to tear you away with a wave from the circle in which you find yourself, and worse than

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which I cannot imagine for you; remember what your true friends expect from you.109 Odoyevsky's 'true friends' were KyukhePbeker himself, of course, and his courier, cousin Alexander, of whom he writes: Trust him: he is a man who will do anything for you. He will better tell you what I cannot express, try as I might: I should like at one and the same time to give you a good shake but not to upset you - a difficult task.110 Relations between KyukhePbeker and Odoyevsky had become slightly strained during the winding up of the affairs of Mnemozinay and KyukhePbeker had become particularly impatient with Odoyevsky's Moscow cronies, of whom he was prepared to send greetings 'only to Titov'. 111 At the same time, there would appear to be something deeper behind this letter, given its timing and wording, and it has been widely interpreted as an attempt to woo, through a forthcoming personal contact with Alexander, Vladimir Odoyevsky for the Decembrist movement. As we have already remarked, if such it was it did not meet with any great success. The tragi-farcical streak which seemed to attend much of KyukhePbeker's active life (Grech was later to refer, perhaps uncharitably, to Kyukhel'beker at this time as a 'madman' and a 'fool'), struck again on 14 December with the incidents of the misfiring pistol, following his upturning in the snow from an over-driven sledge, and in the circumstances of his eventual capture in Warsaw.112 Fortunate, as the would-be assassin of both the Grand Duke Michael and General Voinov, to escape the death penalty, KyukhePbeker nonetheless served ten years' solitary confinement in various fortresses, before being sent to permanent exile in Siberia. In 1831 Kyukhel'beker began a diary which he continued to keep until late in 1845; among the comments on former associates and on current literary developments, in so far as he was able to keep abreast of such matters, are a number of references to Odoyevsky and his works.113 Kyukhel'beker took a close interest in Odoyevsky's personal and literary affairs, although information was clearly hard to come by in Sveaborg prison; in an entry of 1833 he writes of Odoyevsky: 'I would like to know - what is he up to now?', and two years later in a letter to his nephew, B. G. Glinka, he wonders whether Odoyevsky is still studying the sciences.114 Commenting rather cryptically on one

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Odoyevsky piece ('the work of a man not writing his own work') which he had been able to read in Biblioteka dlya chteniya (The Library for Reading) for 1834, KyukhePbeker reacted much more favourably a few weeks later to Princess Mimi: his Princess Mimi is very good. If my opinion is worth anything to him, then let him know that this is the first of his works which has completely satisfied me - it's way above his variegated tales.115 Perhaps surprisingly, given his own past dabbling in the genre, Kyukhel'beker thought little of Odoyevsky's futurological tale, The Year 4338.ll6 However, his reception of Russian Nights was little short of ecstatic: Odoyevsky's book Russian Nights is one of the most ingenious books in the Russian language. There is, even in it, of course what I would call the particular manneredness of Odoyevsky, of which I shall say more one day, but still it is one of our most ingenious [umneyshikh] books. The number of questions he raises! Of course hardly any of them are resolved, but let us give thanks for their being raised - and in a Russian book! He brings us to the threshold; the sanctum is locked; the sacrament is shut away; we are perplexed and ask: has he himself been in the sanctum? Was the sacrament exposed in front of him? Was the enigma solved for him? However, all thanks to him: he has understood that there is an enigma, and a sacrament and a sanctum.117 Kyukhel'beker was moved also to write expansively to Odoyevsky - the only direct communication, it would appear, between the two after 1825 - giving high praise to a number of his literary works and adding: 'But the important thing is that you desire what is good everywhere, that you are ever a thinking and noble man, and a Russian at that.' 118 In KyukhePbeker's view, Odoyevsky had written a book 'which we can boldly place against the most serious in Europe' and thereby at last justified his position, perhaps, as the one vital surviving representative of the brilliant literary generation of 1825: You are ours; Griboyedov and Pushkin and I bequeathed to you all that was best in us; you are the representative of our time before posterity and our country, the representative of our disinterested

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striving for artistic beauty and for absolute truth. Be happier than we. 119 [the italics in all these quotes are KyukhePbeker's] It may be added that KyukhePbeker dedicated to Odoyevsky his Hoffmannian epistolary 'novel in two parts', dated 1832 and 1843, The Last Colonna (Posledniy Kolonna). B. G. Glinka acted as an intermediary between KyukhePbeker and his 'literary friends' (Del'vig - until his death in 1831, Pushkin and Odoyevsky) and in 1833 KyukhePbeker wrote to him of books being supplied by Odoyevsky; the following year, though, the prisoner noted in his diary that hopes of a consignment of books from Odoyevsky 'have collapsed'.120 In addition to the question of books, Odoyevsky, according to a letter of KyukhePbeker's sister of 1840, made some attempt to intercede on his old friend's behalf.121 He was also involved in the correction at least of the anonymous publication in 1835 of KyukhePbeker's 'mystery' Izhorskyy printed (strange at times were the ways of nineteenth-century Russian literature!) by special permission of Nicholas I in the printing-house of the Third Department, following submissions made by Pushkin through Benkendorf.122 Odoyevsky and Pushkin were also responsible for getting verse by KyukhePbeker into Biblioteka dlya chteniya, under the assumed name 'V. Garpenko'. 123 One question perhaps remains to be asked. Did Odoyevsky do all he could for his cousin Alexander and for his former co-editor KyukhePbeker - particularly bearing in mind his apparently somewhat distanced diary comment on them of 1862 (already referred to in the section on Alexander Odoyevsky above)? We can give no definite answer to this. We can only emphasize the existing evidence that Odoyevsky did do something, and add that, given the suspicion in which he himself had always been held by Nicholas I and most of his government, his influence in high places was in actual fact probably somewhat less than KyukhePbeker, for instance, might have supposed.124 V

A.S.Pushkin

'I saw here the tormented Pushkin at the time of his bloody drama', wrote Sollogub of the Odoyevsky salon.125 By this time Pushkin had indeed been a regular visitor to Odoyevsky's for probably at least four or five years. In 1833, according to the German memoirist Lenz, Pushkin referred sarcastically there to Odoyevsky's tales of the fantas-

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tic; Lenz responded with: 'unfortunately, his vision lacks sex', whereupon Pushkin 'unexpectedly showed me the entire array of his fine teeth: such was his manner of smiling'.126 'Jolly Pushkin', as Pogodin terms him, had Odoyevsky's Variegated Tales in mind when he dubbed him 'Hoffmann drop'. 127 A rich and ignorant Russian aristocrat, very much a visitor to the Odoyevskaya salon (as opposed to the Odoyevsky study) once approached Pushkin himself with the following question: I keep hearing talk of a Russian literature and I would really like to know who is the Russian poet currently enjoying the least disputed reputation? 'It's Count Khvostov, without a doubt', replied Pushkin without hesitation. 'Ah! Count Khvostov - I'll make a note of that - I'm very grateful to you', replied his grateful interlocutor; Pushkin's reply was greeted with general but stifled mirth. 128 As part of what has been described as a defamatory attack on Odoyevsky, in one of his emigre publications, Prince P. V. Dolgorukov (long thought to be the author of the anonymous letters which led to Pushkin's fatal duel) in 1860 reports the following exchange between Pushkin and Odoyevsky which he alleges took place after the publication of Variegated Tales: The famous Pushkin asked him - 'when is the second volume of your tales coming out?' 'Not for a while,' replied Odoyevsky, 'writing is no easy matter!' 'If it's so difficult, why do you bother writing?' retorted Pushkin.129 Odoyevsky, who quickly scribbled a retort to this attack, which he was irksomely unable to publish due to the censorship, maintained that such a conversation would not have been 'in the character of my relations with Pushkin'.130 However, some support for Dolgorukov's 'libel' may be adduced from Sollogub's description of a similar encounter of that time between Odoyevsky and Pushkin, following which Pushkin is said to have told Sollugub: 'If it's so difficult, why does he write them? Who forces him? Fantastic tales are only any good when they are easy to write.' 131 Odoyevsky, in his turn, writing later in particular of Pushkin's poetic composition, said:

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Pushkin was constantly under the yoke of his poetic doubts; 'my trouble is', he told me once, 'that every verse of mine trebles'. The countless corrections in Pushkin's manuscripts may stand as proof of the sustained labour through which he attained his light, semiairy verses.

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Odoyevsky's note on the Dolgorukov attack includes a short summary of his relations with Pushkin, in which he says that he had not known Pushkin in his youth ('we lived in different cities'), was never on familiar terms of address with him (unlike the wording reported by Dolgorukov, using ty) and only got to know Pushkin at all in the period leading up to the publication of Savremennik (The Contemporary, founded in 1836).133 However, Odoyevsky himself was not the most reliable of sources concerning matters of chronology, and there is clear evidence that he was mistaken in making this statement. Odoyevsky must, of course, have known Pushkin for many years by reputation and would have enjoyed vicarious contact with him, even in his Moscow days, through several friendships with people close to the Pushkin circle, particularly Sobolevsky and Kyukhel'beker. Indeed the latter was presumably responsible for obtaining contributions from Pushkin to Mnemozina.134 Pushkin obviously knew of Odoyevsky, too, at least from the time of Mnemozina, if not before. However, Pushkin was in exile during these years; when he was finally able to return to Moscow, in the autumn of 1826, Odoyevsky had just moved to St Petersburg.135 Sobolevsky wrote to Odoyevsky from Moscow at the end of 1826, saying 'Pushkin is here . . . Alexander, from whom I have become inseparable.. .'. 136 In April 1827, Odoyevsky wrote to Pogodin, expressing a strong wish to read Boris Godunov: 'I should like to write to Pushkin about it, but I do not know him and I do not know how he would take it.' 137 Sakulin dates their acquaintance only from the 1830s, citing Odoyevsky's invitation to Pushkin to attend a reading of a translation of The Merchant of Venice in 1833. 138 Bernandt produces evidence that they met in January 1830.139 It would seem, however, that their first meeting might well have been as early as 1827, but was almost certainly before 1830.140 Nevertheless, their closer relations would seem to date only from about 1833. Sakulin considers that Odoyevsky didn't fully appreciate the stature of Pushkin in the 1820s, although Pushkin's poem Moy demon (Mnemozina, Part III) was an acknowledged inspiration for Odoyevsky's apologue New Demon (Mnemozina, Part IV); whether or not this was the case, Odoyevsky was, as we have seen, eager to read

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Boris Godunov in 1827, and the following year was annoyed by a bad review given to Chapters Four and Five of Yevgeniy Onegin.141 From then on there is no shortage either of references to Pushkin in Odoyevsky's writings or of incidences of Odoyevsky's fictional characters reading Pushkin. It is scarcely surprising that in 1834 Odoyevsky should refer to Pushkin as 'one of the few Russian writers who actually know the Russian language'.142 It may seem more surprising now than at the time (such, it would appear, was Odoyevsky's reputation among the reading public then - indeed, there is no evidence that he was given to wilful over-estimation of his literary talent) that Odoyevsky felt able, following the appearance of his Variegated Tales in 1833, to propose to Pushkin a three-way collaboration between himself, Pushkin and Gogol', in the purported form of an almanac featuring their respective well-known fictional narrators: Tell me, my dear Alexander Sergeyevich, what is our estimable Mr Belkin doing? His collaborators, Gomozeyko and Rudyy Pan'ko, by strange confluence of circumstances, have depicted the drawingroom and the attic respectively; would it be impossible for Mr Belkin to take upon himself responsibility for - the cellar} There would then be an entire three-storeyed house, and a vignette could be done for the 'three-in-one' [Troychatka] representing a cross-section of a three-storeyed house, with different scenes in each. Rudyy Pan'ko even suggested calling the almanac itself thus: 'Troychatka, or an almanac in three tiers', by . . . etc. What does Mr Belkin say about all this? His decision needs to be known straight away, for the vignette has to be ordered now or it will not be ready in time and the 'Troychatka' will not be out by the New Year, which would be essential.143 Pushkin replied a month later from Boldino, pleading headaches, estate business and landownerly laziness: Don't expect Belkin; it's no trifling matter, of course, that he's deceased; it's not for him to be frequenting house-warmings either in Gomozeyko's drawing-room or in Pan'ko's attic. He is evidently not worthy to be in their company.... Though it wouldn't be bad to get the cellar.144 The wording of Odoyevsky's letter and the fact that Pushkin felt the need to make excuses suggest that something like tentative agreement

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to collective involvement in such a project may have already existed. Following Pushkin's withdrawal, Odoyevsky hoped still to proceed with just Gogol', but in the end nothing materialized from the idea. At the end of 1836, Odoyevsky wrote to Pushkin, expressing his appreciation of The Captain ys Daughter (Kapitanskaya dochka), which was appearing in Sovremennik, no. 4, and which he had just read straight through twice. 'Compliments to your face I will not pay,' he wrote, 'you know everything that I think of you and feel towards you', but he proceeds to make a number of points, minor criticisms and comments of praise, not from an artist's but from 'a reader's' viewpoint.145 Notwithstanding some of his comments and alleged comments reported above, Pushkin's attitude to Odoyevsky's literary works was by no means wholly negative. He may have been dubious about the fantastic elements in Variegated Tales. Similarly he later reacted equivocally at best to SegelieV and The Sylph (SiVfida), both of which were largely developments of the philosophical and romantic sides of Odoyevsky's writing.146 In 1827 Pushkin appears to have actually censored a review of Odoyevsky's prior to publication in Moskovskiy vestnik, for not referring respectfully enough to Derzhavin and Karamzin, but particularly the former - to which action Odoyevsky later expressed his consent.147 Later the same year, however, an 'Indian tale' published in the same journal caught Pushkin's eye, although he appeared to be under the impression that the author was Pogodin; the work was later mistaken for a German translation by Titov, whereas, as Sakulin points out, Pogodin in his memoir makes it plain that the author of the tale was Odoyevsky.148 There was much less confusion, however, as to the authorship of Beethoven's Last Quartet, despite another idiosyncratic signature; Koshelev wrote from Moscow to tell Odoyevsky of Pushkin's enthusiasm for the story: He says that not only is it the best of your published pieces (which would mean something), but that we have scarcely ever read in the Russian language an article so remarkable, both in thought and in style. He is furious that little attention is being paid to it. He finds that in this piece you have demonstrated a highly joyful truth for Russia; namely that there are rising from our midst writers with the promise of one day being on a par with the other Europeans who express the thoughts of our century.149 Of Odoyevsky's subsequent stories, Pushkin expressed particular admiration for Princess Ziziy which he described as 'a marvellous

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A number of critics have drawn attention to literary parallels and possible mutual influence in works by Pushkin and Odoyevsky. Odoyevsky may have had some impact upon Mozart and Salieri, while Pushkin's Egyptian Nights and Odoyevsky's Improvizator may have had a common source; Odoyevsky's interest in The Captain's Daughter has already been noted, while links (and possible influence) have been made between Odoyevsky's 'dilogical' historical tale The Salamander and Pushkin's The Arab of Peter the Great, The Bronze Horseman and The Queen of Spades.151 Odoyevsky subsequently admitted that form in his fiction: 'changed under Pushkin's reproach that in my previous works my personality is too visible; I try to be more plastic'.152 The history of Odoyevsky's journalistic collaboration with Pushkin is complicated and the full details, which lie beyond the scope of this study, have received considerable coverage in Soviet scholarship since the 1920s; indeed, this question gave rise in the 1950s to a considerable polemic over the motivation behind and the nature of Odoyevsky's publishing associations with Pushkin, which has been convincingly settled in favour of a more positive interpretation of Odoyevsky's role. 153 Pushkin and Odoyevsky had both contributed to the same journal or almanac, as we have seen, on a number of occasions in the 1820s and early 1830s. In addition, there were a number of publishing ventures involving both, most of which never came to fruition. In 1828 an anonymous denunciation warned of a 'secret newspaper' to be called 'Utrenniy listok' ('The Morning Sheet') which was about to emanate from suspicious liberals: Vyazemsky, Pushkin, Titov, Shevyryov, Odoyevsky, the Kireyevsky brothers and other 'desperate youths'; the publication in question was in fact planned from a rather more 'respectable' source, but was banned nevertheless.154 Baron Del'vig's Severnyye tsvety {Northern Flowers) might have been continued, after his death, by both Pushkin and Odoyevsky, but in the end lapsed.155 Both were involved in discussions over Plyushar's Encyclopaedic Lexicon in 1834; the following year Odoyevsky approached Pushkin with a plan for an ambitious 'Contemporary Chronicler of Politics, Science and Literature'. 156 This too did not materialize, but Pushkin finally managed to get permission to launch a 'quarterly collection' (of the journal type, but officially not a journal), Sovremennik, with Odoyevsky as 'the most informed and active editorial collaborator', who indeed took full charge of the enterprise whenever Pushkin was absent from St Petersburg: 'without you, Sovremennik would be lost', Pushkin wrote to him, fully recognizing Odoyevsky's support as collaborator and as the contributor of articles and stories.157

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Still intent on establishing a journal of a more encyclopedic nature, similar to the proposed 'Contemporary Chronicler' of 1835, stemming probably from still earlier plans involving Pushkin and Sobolevsky, Odoyevsky, following various machinations with other possible titles and projects ('Russkiy sbornik' or 'Severnyy zritel"), finally succeeded in 1839 in refurbishing Otechestvennyye zapiski, with Krayevsky as editor and Belinsky as principal critic.158 However, by this time Pushkin was dead. Odoyevsky, by now among the close adherents to the Pushkin circle, had been one of those attending upon the mortally wounded poet, sending out notes on his progress; in the days leading up to the duel the Odoyevsky salon had been one of the centres of discussion of the Pushkin affair.159 Odoyevsky was one of the 'literary executors' of Pushkin, and one of those named to continue the editorship of Sovremennik (with Zhukovsky and Vyazemsky, plus Pletnyov and Krayevsky); he himself edited no. 7 of Sovremennik, in 1837.160 In addition to his work on the continuation of Sovremennik, Odoyevsky was involved in securing the immediate survival of Pushkin's literary heritage and in the propagation of Pushkin's name as Russian literature's greatest figure. This was no simple matter, given the political nature of the times and the circumstances surrounding Pushkin's death; for a time, indeed, Pushkin's name was barely mentionable - Zhukovsky was in trouble for merely airing it in 1838 at Krylov's jubilee celebration.161 Odoyevsky worked on the ordering of Pushkin's manuscripts for publication, becoming thoroughly familiar with Pushkin's archive and consequently, as we have seen, achieving some insight into the way Pushkin worked; he participated in the preparation of the posthumous edition of the collected works and at one stage was supposed to engage in the writing of the biographical introduction.162 Verse XXXVIII of Chapter Six of Yevgeniy Onegin, unknown in rough or copied manuscript, came to light 'only thanks to V. F. Odoyevsky's copy'.163 Odoyevsky's main efforts, however, on behalf of Pushkin were largely frustrated. It has been established that Odoyevsky was the author of a short but emotional notice which appeared in the Russian press on 30 January 1837: The sun of our poetry has set! Pushkin has died, died in the flower of his years, in the middle of his great life's work! . . . We have not the strength to say more on this, and indeed there is no need; every Russian heart knows the whole price of this irrecoverable loss, and every Russian heart will be torn to shreds. Pushkin! Our poet! Our

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joy, our national joy!... Can it really be that Pushkin is no longer with u s ? . . . It is impossible to get used to this thought! 29 January, 2.45 in the afternoon.164 S. N. Karamzina wrote a few days later: Odoyevsky is touching in his love for Pushkin; he cried like a child and there is nothing more moving than those few lines with which he announced the death of Pushkin in his journal.165 However, his main writings of the period on Pushkin went unpublished. His article 'On the Attacks of the Petersburg Journals on the Russian Poet Pushkin', written even while Pushkin was still alive in 1836, protesting at the growing campaign against him through the organs of the triumvirate, could not be published until 1864, for, as Odoyevsky noted then: 'at that time there was nowhere to publish it, because in Petersburg there were no literary publications other than those against whom it was directed.'166 In an untitled article written in 1837 or shortly thereafter, which Odoyevsky again could not have hoped to see printed, such was the publishing situation of the time - Odoyevsky had also been unable to publish Lermontov's poem Smert* poeta (Death of a Poet) - he wrote, in recognition of Pushkin's significance as a national poet: Pushkin! - pronounce this name in a circle of artists, who comprehend all the greatness of art, in a crowd of common men, in a crowd of people who have never read him themselves, but have heard his verses from others - and this name will everywhere produce some kind of electric shock.167 VI

N. V. Gogol'

His immense enthusiasm for Pushkin apart, Odoyevsky nevertheless wrote in 1836 (while Pushkin was still alive) of Gogol' as 'the best talent in Russia' and was highly indignant that such a writer should have been compared to Paul de Kock; subsequently he referred to 'our literature from Kantemir to Gogol". 168 According to Pogodin, Gogol' first appeared on the St Petersburg literary and social scene at Odoyevsky's; their association seems to

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have begun in the period 1831-2. 169 They became close friends; Gogol' became a regular visitor to Odoyevsky's and they took a keen... interest in each other's literary work. Odoyevsky would read his stories to Gogol', who, like Pushkin, much admired Beethoven ys Last Quartet; this procedure was evidently reciprocated, as a note from Gogol' to Odoyevsky, dating probably from 1833-4, reads simply: 'Here I was, carrying an awful great note-book under my arm; and you were not at home.' 170 Odoyevsky is said to have been one of the first to recognize GogoP's genius and, on the publication of GogoP's first collection of stories, wrote to Koshelev in September 1831: a few days ago Evenings on a Farm came out.. . . They were written, they say, by a young man by the name of GogoV, in whom I see a great talent: you cannot imagine how much better his stories are in invention, in narration and in style than everything which up until now has been published in the name of Russian literature.171 Towards the end of 1832 Gogol' wrote to one correspondent: Prince Odoyevsky will soon delight us with a collection of his stories of the type of Beethoven ys Quartet, which appeared in Northern Flowers for 1831. There will be about ten of them and those which he is writing now are even better than the earlier ones. Imagination and intellect - heaps! It's a series of psychological phenomena incomprehensible in man! They are coming out under the one tide - ' H o u s e of Madmen'. 172 This collection, as we have seen in Chapter One, never materialized and was eventually incorporated into Russian Nights. Only a couple of months later Gogol' was equally excited at the more real prospect of the imminent appearance of a different Odoyevsky collection: In a day or two he is publishing [his] fantastic scenes under the title of Variegated Tales. I recommend them; it will be a very ingenious edition, because it is being produced under my supervision.173 Gogol' may well, therefore, it can be assumed, have been at least partly responsible for the de luxe and unusual, avant-garde even, cover design and typography of the text, as well as taking a keen interest in the content of the stories, which have been described by several

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commentators as in various respects Gogolian. 4 Later in 1833, as we have seen, Odoyevsky was trying to organize an almanac under the triple authorship of himself, Pushkin and GogoP; after Pushkin's withdrawal he still had hopes of a joint project with Gogol', writing to one acquaintance: 'I am publishing - something shattering [uzhas chto\] - a 'Dvoychatka' with Gogol', a book made up of our two new tales.' 175 It has not come to light which tales may have been intended for such a publication. Apart from Variegated Tales, Gogolian affinities and possible influences have been suggested with relation to a number of Odoyevsky's fictional works of the 1830s.176 In addition, Sakulin remarks that not only did Odoyevsky enlarge Gogol' 's gallery of negative bureaucratic types, but, in the shape of his character SegelieP (in his unfinished novel Segeliel\ or a Don Quixote of the Nineteenth Century), 'he provided the literary type of the ideal bureaucrat', whom Gogol' was to outline in Part II of Dead Souls, and who then appears in the literature of the 1860s. Sakulin also sees a common viewpoint between journalistic articles published in 1836 by Odoyevsky and Gogol'.177 Other common journalistic involvements of the period concerned Moskovskiy nablyudateV (The Moscow Observer), to which Odoyevsky and Gogol' were listed among the probable regular contributors, and Odoyevsky's Otechestvennyye zapiski, to which Gogol' at one stage promised to contribute.178 In 1835 Odoyevsky was going to review GogoP's Arabesques for Moskovskiy nablyudateV, but Gogol' wrote to Shevyryov requesting that he should do it instead, 'because I can hear [Odoyevsky's] opinion any time and from his own lips; yours I can hear only in printed form'; presumably it is in connection with this task that a fragmentary article by Odoyevsky praises the renditions of lowerclass speech in the work of'the author of Shpon'ka\ citing an example from How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich.179 The closeness of GogoP's relationship with Odoyevsky is indicated by his letter from Rome of 1838, although due allowance must, no doubt, be made for GogoP's natural affectionate and emotional style and for the loneliness of self-imposed exile: Does Prince Odoyevsky love me as before? Does he think about me? I love him and think about him. My recollection of him is interned in a talisman which I wear on my breast; a talisman made up of the few names dear to my heart, names brought out from my native land; but my migrants do not breathe there like flowers transplanted to a greenhouse - no, there they live more alive than

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they lived before, and this talisman preserves me from adversities, and when the unclean likeness of melancholia or boredom comes upon me I retire to my talisman, and in the circle of those absent who are dear to me, together with friends present, I find my anchorage and my refuge.180 At the end of 1841 Gogol' met Belinsky in Moscow and, having experienced difficulties with the Moscow censorship, gave him the manuscript of Dead Souls, which was to be handed to Odoyevsky in St Petersburg, where the censorship was said to be slightly more easygoing, for onward transmission to, if necessary, the Tsar himself. In an accompanying letter he wrote: Belinsky is leaving right away. I have no time to take a breath, I am very sick and I force myself to stir. My manuscript has been banned. The trickery and the reason for the ban are the stuff of laughter and comedy. But they are wresting from me my last shred of property. You must use the power at your disposal to get the manuscript to the sovereign. It will be handed to you with this letter. Read it through, together with Pletnyov and Alexandra Osipovna [Smirnova] and consider how best to arrange the matter. Don't speak to anyone about all this for the time being. What anguish, what vexation that I cannot be personally in Petersburg! But I am too sick. I couldn't stand the journey. Use all your powers! Your exploit will be a noble one. I swear, nothing could be more noble! For the sake of the holy truth, for Jesus' sake use all your powers!181 A couple of weeks later, having received no news, an alarmed Gogol' wrote again to enquire of the situation, adding that he had now been informed that the manuscript would be publishable in Moscow after all; within about three days an answer had come from Smirnova, and Gogol' once more wrote to Odoyevsky, this time expressing his gratitude and requesting that St Petersburg publication should go ahead, as: 'I am informed that they want to let it through here, but seemingly, this is only words, and cannot be relied upon.' 182 From Odoyevsky the manuscript eventually reached the censor Nikitenko, via Count Viel'gorsky. There would appear to be only one further recorded contact between Gogol' and Odoyevsky after 1842 and that dates from 1847 when, amid the furore following the publication of his Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, an aggrieved Gogol' wrote from

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Naples to protest to an old friend about his silence at such a (to him) vital juncture. The letter, which is highly indicative of GogoP's frame of mind at this time, is worth quoting in full: Naples, 16 March [1847] Formerly I would have been angry with you, despite the fact that I always loved your good soul and knew that you had not hitherto inflicted any unpleasantness on anyone in your life. But I would be angry with you for your silence at the very time when it has been more distressing than anything for me to receive from my friends silence. I thought that, on the occasion of the publication of my book, my friends would place themselves under the unfailing obligation to communicate their feelings to me, to point out to me my delusions, mistakes or slips, to bring to my notice the remarks of intelligent people, in a word, to give me an occasion to look back at myself and to scrutinize myself more strictly. And if only there were some word or other from someone or other in Petersburg! I can only speculate that there is too much unfavourable talk about me to which I myself gave cause by the obscurity, the vagueness of word and expression (for which I suffered long and the traces of which remained only too perceptible in my book), the inadequate development of those truths which ought to have been given in a form accessible to the reader. But what talk in particular I do not know. Whereas I ought to know, because perhaps I have fallen into mistakes such as I would not even think to suspect in myself. For the sake of Christ himself, pass on to me at least the most important ones. You see many intelligent people; besides, they gather at your place every week. What would it cost you to pass on to me the opinions of all of them and to add your own in conclusion? Don't be afraid, I won't wash any dirty linen in public and won't get angry with anyone, even should he have pronounced upon me as upon the most despicable of men. It will be a sin if you do not fulfil this, because it is a matter of my soul and my soul demands censure for its own salvation. Convey my heartfelt regards to the Princess. Tell her that I am too ashamed that I should have had the effrontery to impose upon her with a troublesome matter. I afterwards realized myself that it was not very sensible; but she, the dear soul, despite everything, has declared her generous willingness to fulfil my request. May God reward her for that and you too, if you also generously fulfil my present request. All yours, G. 183

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Sakulin considers that there may earlier have been a certain rapport between Gogol' and Odoyevsky regarding things mystical, which may have led Gogol' to expect a sympathetic reception of this book from Odoyevsky.184 Whatever may be the truth of that supposition, Odoyevsky's views by 1847 had moved, as we have seen, a long way from Moscow Slavophilism, and his associations with liberalism and philanthropic activities make it unlikely that he would have viewed GogoP's book with anything other than embarrassment; his attitude to it does not, however, appear to have come to light. Neither does there seem to be any record of Odoyevsky's reaction to GogoP's death. In 1861, however, a somewhat scurrilous attack on Gogol' was made in a book by one N. G. Gersevanov, a retired general; Odoyevsky scribbled his impressions on the cover of the book, to the effect that the author must have been in: a rather curious pathological state; his general irritation has been concentrated on a single subject, which had come to his notice by chance.... In the sick mind of the author there must lurk the idea of his having some sort of vocation - to be a Nemesis for the Russia which Gogol' insulted. From another angle, there is reflected here one of the nastiest elements of our national character: the irresistible desire to take down a peg or two whoever it may be, even a dead man, for no particular reason, but simply so that he (the dead man) shouldn't give himself airs.185

VII

M . Yu. L e r m o n t o v

In the autumn of 1837, the temporarily exiled Lermontov met the permanently exiled Alexander Odoyevsky in the Caucasus and they developed a brief but deep friendship.186 Curious threads of coincidence, it seems, so often linked together prominent members of the Russian literary and artistic world; thus was established a link between Lermontov - the rightful heir of Pushkin to the throne of Russian poetry - and the generation of 1825 (including Kyukhel'beker and Griboyedov), as well as those intimately or emotionally connected with this generation (Vladimir Odoyevsky and, for that matter, Countess Rostopchina). Rostopchina, indeed, was later struck by the 'strange closeness' in the following chain of poetic obituaries: Alexander Odoyevsky's on the death of Griboyedov, Lermontov's on the death of Alexander Odoyevsky, and her own on the death of

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Lermontov. By the end of 1839, Lermontov's poem In Memory of A. L Odoyevsky had appeared in Otechestvennyye zapiski, edited by Krayevsky and Vladimir Odoyevsky. Odoyevsky first heard of Lermontov probably in the early days of February 1837, when Lermontov's outspoken Death of a Poet reached the Pushkin circle via S. A. Rayevsky and Krayevsky.188 Lermontov's poem made a considerable impression on the author of the deathnotice on Pushkin which had recently been published in 'The Literary Supplement to Russkiy invalid\ edited by Krayevsky, who had himself opened literary doors to Lermontov the preceding year. However, following the reprimand visited upon Krayevsky for the Pushkin notice, publication ofDeath ofa Poet would have been an impossibility; it was the poem's fate to be passed round in manuscript, while the only surviving fair copy in Lermontov's hand went into the Odoyevsky archive bearing the inscription 'Poem by Lermontov which could not be published'.189 Odoyevsky may not, however, have met Lermontov until early 1838 and their personal contacts were conditioned throughout, of course, by Lermontov's changing legal status. In the autumn of that year Lermontov was visiting Odoyevsky's salon and, referring to the winter of 1838-9, he has been described as a 'constant visitor to V. F. Odoyevsky's evenings'; only at Odoyevsky's and at the Karamzins', we are informed, did Lermontov willingly read his new verses and chapters from A Hero of Our Time.190 In August 1839 Odoyevsky called on Lermontov and, finding him out, left a note along with two volumes for his perusal, one of which appears to have been a rare edition of the Gospels; the note concludes: 'my wife was with me and leaves her regards, regretting that we missed you'.191 On the eve of the New Year of 1840 Lermontov, along with Belinsky and others, attended a gathering at Odoyevsky's - an occasion to which we shall return in the next section; two weeks later, A. I. Turgenev reports, Lermontov heard Odoyevsky read 'his mystical tale' (presumed to have been Kosmorama) at the Karamzins' salon.192 Just as the storm which gathered around Pushkin had been discussed in the Odoyevsky salon, so was the case of the exiled Lermontov, and it would appear that the same highly placed personages were behind the campaign against both poets. 193 On Lermontov's last sojourn in St Petersburg, beginning in early February 1841, he visited Odoyevsky almost immediately upon his arrival; their relations over the next weeks were especially close and Countess Rostopchina, who had a particularly warm relationship of her own with Lermontov

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at the time, wrote in 1858 to Alexandre Dumas pere: '[Lermontov] would compose beautiful verses in the morning and bring them to us [that is to Rostopchina, V. F. Odoyevsky and the Karamzins] to read in i

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the evening. What has been described as 'the great friendship linking the poet w i t h . . . Odoyevsky' reached at least its symbolic height on 13 April 1841 when, on the eve of his enforced and final departure from St Petersburg, Lermontov visited Odoyevsky and gave him his landscape, 'A View over Krestovaya Mountain'; this picture was fortuitously rediscovered by a Parisian collector in Helsinki in the 1960s, bearing the following slightly inaccurate inscription on the back: This picture was painted by the Poet Lermontov and presented by him to me on the occasion of his last departure for the Caucasus. It depicts the Krestovaya Mountain - the place of his death. Pr. V. Odoyevsky195 In return for the picture, Odoyevsky presented Lermontov with a notebook (zapisnaya knizhka)y described as 'an unmarked album, in the format of a small book, in brown morocco binding', on the first page of which he wrote: 'The Poet Lermontov is given this my old and favourite book with [the wish] that he should return it to me himself, completely filled with writing.'196 Lermontov did not have time to fulfil Odoyevsky's wish; when the notebook was eventually returned to Odoyevsky, over two years after Lermontov's death, it contained a total of fourteen poems, including the most famous of his last works, plus drafts for the fantastic story Shtoss. Odoyevsky also wrote into the notebook evangelical passages from the epistles of John and Paul, to which he later, before donating the book to the Public Library, added the following explanation: 'These extracts were related to religious arguments which frequently arose between Lermontov and myself. 1857. Pr. V. Od.' 197 These 'religious arguments' have been the subject of some speculation in Soviet scholarship, but there is little factual information to go on. Some of Lermontov's poems written in the notebook may represent in part a response to these 'arguments', which may have arisen from what appears to have been a temporary phase of religious fervour on Odoyevsky's part during this period; in general it is possible to concur with the following view of M. T. Yefimova: His religious admonitions in the notebook given to Lermontov

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possibly reflect the desire of Odoyevsky to first of all convince himself of that which he himself deeply doubted.198 There was no further contact between Odoyevsky and Lermontov after 13 April 1841, although there may have been some lost correspondence.199 As soon as he heard of Lermontov's death, the ever alert Krayevsky wrote to Odoyevsky: Yes! Lermontov has been killed stone dead. It's terrible! Terrible! This news struck me like thunder. For Lord's sake, do you not know to whom to turn in order to save the manuscripts which he left? He was fripndly with Sofya Karamzina: doesn't she have anything; doesn't she know to whom to turn? Be so good as to do what you can. 200 In fact Odoyevsky and Krayevsky had been connected with the publication of the greater part of Lermontov's works to reach print within his lifetime, including Borodino in Sovremennik (1837) and Belay Taman' and The Fatalist in Otechestvennyye zapiski; it is also likely that Odoyevsky helped facilitate the passage of the first edition ofA Hero of Our Time through the censorship; the poems written in Odoyevsky's notebook were published in Otechestvennyye zapiski in 1843—4 and efforts were made to publish The Demon in the same journal in 1842.201 Odoyevsky took the task of promoting Lermontov's works sufficiently seriously to dabble in translation into French: among his drafts for a Russian grammar for foreigners, on which he worked in 1856, is a literal translation of the poem The Airship (Vozdushnyy korabl), with the following note: Lermontoff - a remarkable poet who was destined perhaps to rival Pouschkine, but unfortunately died very young (in a duel in the Caucasus) about fifteen years ago. In this item (which I chose because of its subject) there is a reminiscence (in stanza 12) of a piece of German poetry, but, all patriotism apart, I consider that Lermontoff s gift is wider, there is more fantastic reality and more heart. This item may bear witness that in Russia we know how to respect great men, even when they are our enemies. The execution of the verse is magnificent, the rhythm requires to be strongly stressed. 202 [Odoyevsky's italics; original in French]

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151

In addition to Odoyevsky's part in the history of Lermontov publication, a number of literary parallels have been drawn between the two writers. Sakulin saw affinities between Odoyevsky and the 'duality' (avoyemiriye) of The Demon, and indeed the psychology of A Hero of Our Time; other commentators have expanded on this to bring in Russian Nights and SegelieV and to see Odoyevsky's early sketch The Strange Man (Strannyy chelovek, 1822) as a forerunner of later models developed by Pushkin and Lermontov.203 Lermontov's late and unfinished story Shtoss, given what is known of its genesis, the circumstances of its first 'reading' and the fact that drafts for its continuation were written in the famous Odoyevsky notebook, has been seen as particularly linked thematically and philosophically with works by Odoyevsky: either as a polemic with the brand of romanticism practised by Odoyevsky in, for example, SiVfida, or, more elaborately, as Lermontov's contribution to a lengthy disputation on the nature of the fantastic and the supersensory which had been taking place within the circle of Odoyevsky and Countess Rostopchina over the period 1838-41. 204

VIII

V. G. Belinsky

In November 1839, soon after transferring his residence from Moscow to St Petersburg, Belinsky wrote to V. P. Botkin: Despite my resolution to avoid all kinds of social contacts, I have struck up a vast number of t h e m . . . . Prince Odoyevsky received me and treated me in the best possible fashion. He is a kind and simple man, but worn down by the cares of life and therefore colourless [bestsveten] like a worn-out handkerchief. Nowadays he is mostly interested in mysticism and magnetism.205 The following month Belinsky wrote to Botkin of meeting foreign envoys at Odoyevsky's Saturday salon and engaging with them in fivehanded whist.206 Belinsky and Odoyevsky first met in St Petersburg in November 1839, although they had both been acquainted for some time with each other's work. Men from totally different social backgrounds and of ultimately conflicting ideas, they were drawn together by their respective literary activities. Their paths intersected when Belinsky arrived in St Petersburg to become chief critic of Otechestvennyye

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zapiski (edited by Krayevsky and Odoyevsky). Their careers ran parallel, but never too close, for a few years and then somewhat diverged as Odoyevsky devoted more and more time to non-literary activities from the mid 1840s, while Belinsky left Otechestvennyye zapiski in 1846 to write for Savremennik. For both social and intellectual reasons they were never really at ease with one another. Panayev wrote to Konstantin Aksakov in December 1839: 'Belinsky is in full flow here. Krayevsky is in ecstasies over him, Prince Odoyevsky waits on him hand and foot.... I am taking him round and showing him off to everyone.'207 Odoyevsky had entertained Belinsky to dinner, together with Gogol' and Panayev.208 Belinsky's dread of social intercourse, and full vindication of this dread, may be seen in Panayev's account of the disastrous outcome of Belinsky's reluctant appearance at Odoyevsky's gathering to celebrate the New Year of 1840; Belinsky, after making many excuses, finally arrived with Panayev at Odoyevsky's: It was after eleven when we appeared in the salon. Walking through the door, Belinsky paled and bit his lip, but the absence of ladies, the cordiality and affability of the host calmed h i m . . . . Present at this 'evening' were all the literary celebrities and authorities, old and young, whom he was seeing close up for the first time in his life: Krylov, Zhukovsky, Prince Vyazemsky, Lermontov and others... .After supper Krylov and Zhukovsky settled down on the divan, and several others beside them, forming a separate circle.... We sat behind this circle. None of them paid any attention to Belinsky and several of them hardly even knew of his existence.... He was listening to their conversation. Beside him stood a small one-legged table with several bottles of wine on it. Absent-mindedly he leant on the table, the table tipped over, the bottles smashed, wine poured over the feet of the celebrities and during all this Belinsky lost his balance and fell on the floor.... The sound of this fall, the streams of wine, produced a great commotion.... Everyone leaped from their chairs, looking round.... Belinsky got up with difficulty. All his blood surged to his head, for about a minute he was as if unconscious; the frightened host rushed over to him with great concern, led him into his study, offering him water and various spirits to sniff.... Belinsky little by little came to, smiled and said: 'There you are, you see, I warned you that I would commit some impropriety here, and that's what happened. Don't blame me, blame yourself.'... Belinsky's fall from his chair became the pretext for his name to be spread by many a mouth.209

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Among the mouths involved in spreading this story (to which Panayev himself appears to have made considerable embellishments, for example claiming - wrongly - that this was Belinsky's first, longawaited visit to Odoyevsky's) was that of Herzen who, although not even present on the occasion, includes the following report in Chapter XXV of My Life and Thoughts: One Saturday, on New Year's Eve, the host took it into his head to mull hot punch en petite comite, when the main guests had departed. Belinsky would have left without fail, but a barricade of furniture prevented him, he somehow hid in a corner, and in front of him was stood a small table with wine and glasses. Zhukovsky, in white uniform trousers with gold braid, sat down obliquely opposite him. Belinsky endured this for some time, but foreseeing no improvement in his fate he began to move the table a little; the table at first yielded, but then lurched and crashed to the floor and a bottle of claret began rather dramatically to pour over Zhukovsky. He jumped up, red wine streamed down his trousers; uproar broke out, a servant with a napkin rushed to stain the remaining parts of the trousers with wine, another picked up the broken wine-glasses.... During this kerfuffle Belinsky disappeared and, near to demise, ran home on foot.210 Nevertheless, 'despite such an unsuccessful debut in high society and literary circles', Panayev tells us, this did not stop Belinsky from continuing to frequent the same salon, 'in order to give pleasure to the cordial host, and he was convinced that by this he really was giving him pleasure'. Indeed it appears that Belinsky was still a fairly frequent visitor to Odoyevsky's salon, at least over the next couple of years. It seems therefore that Herzen was being as usual just hostile to Odoyevsky (or basing his general observation on Belinsky's reaction to that one occasion) when he claims: '[Belinsky] was usually taken ill then [after visits to Odoyevsky's] for two or three days and would curse whoever had persuaded him to go.' 211 Belinsky tells Botkin, in February 1840, of his soul being 'stricken with longing and joy' at Odoyevsky's playing of Langer's song 'S bogom v dal'nyuyu dorogu'; and in April of Odoyevsky's contacts with the censorship being an asset in the production of Otechestvennyye zapiski, although complaining of the interfering attentions of one Vrasky, a chinavnik and a relation of Odoyevsky's and 'a ferocious shareholder' who demands money.212 He even tried his luck again at Odoyevsky's to greet the New Year of

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1841! It was at Odoyevsky's that Belinsky was able to renew his acquaintance with Lermontov during the poet's last visit to St Petersburg in 1841, though not on the intimate terms he would have wished.213 At the end of 1841, as we have seen, Belinsky brought GogoP's manuscript of Dead Souls to Odoyevsky in St Petersburg. In 1842 Odoyevsky was indirecdy responsible, ironically as it may seem, for one of Belinsky's first contacts with the works of the founding fathers of communism: Odoyevsky it was who brought back from his visit to Germany Engels' pamphlet 'Schelling and Revelation', which duly appeared in shortened form (and without reference to the source) as an article entided 'Germanskaya literatura' under the authorship of Botkin in an 1843 issue of Otechestvennyye zapiski.2U From about 1842, however, the name of Odoyevsky is mentioned much more rarely in Belinsky's correspondence and in literature on Belinsky. We may suppose that social contact between Belinsky and Odoyevsky decreased as Belinsky's^ own St Petersburg circle became established. Belinsky's literary relations with Odoyevsky - his criticism of Odoyevsky's works, Odoyevsky's response to this in the form of a litde-known polemic on artistic freedom, the possible impact of Belinsky on Odoyevsky's later thought and Odoyevsky's later notes towards a Belinsky memoir - I have written on elsewhere.215

IX

F. M. Dostoyevsky

Towards the end of 1845 Odoyevsky asked Nekrasov, to whose Peterburgskiy sbornik {A Petersburg Collection) he was contributing the story Martingale (Martingal), to arrange an introduction to Dostoyevsky, whose own first novel Poor Folk was to appear shordy in the same volume. On 16 November Dostoyevsky wrote excitedly to his brother of having made the acquaintance of Odoyevsky, Sollogub and Turgenev. 216 Later the same month a note from Krayevsky to Odoyevsky said: Here is Poor Folk, which I have only just now received. I am letting you have it only overnight and I would ask you to show it to no-one; 217

tomorrow morning, return it to me.

On 1 February 1846 Dostoyevsky, following publication to wide acclaim of his novel in the Petersburgskiy sbornik, wrote to his brother

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that 'Odoyevsky is writing a separate article on Poor Folk. So is my friend Sollogub.'218 These articles seem never to have materialized. Odoyevsky must have been flattered to find that Poor Folk, the first work of the new writer whose name was on everyone's lips, used as an epigraph a passage from his own story, The Live Corpse. A witness to the enthusiastic reception of Poor Folk, the German russophile V. VoPfson [Wolfsohn], reports hearing from Panayev that Odoyevsky and Sollogub were in ecstasies over Poor Folk, maintaining that 'the bounds of possibility for the beginner Dostoyevsky were wider than for Gogol", and that he himself first heard impressions of Poor Folk at Odoyevsky's circle.219 Dostoyevsky would appear to have visited Odoyevsky's salon with some regularity in the years before his arrest; to go by one report at least his attentions may not always have been entirely welcome according to Panayeva, as we have seen, Turgenev began to stay away from Odoyevsky's in 1847, finding himself unable to bear the behaviour of the 'new literati'; in the supposed words of Turgenev: What a funny man Odoyevsky is; every Saturday it's as though he gives himself a good scourging - as if he were in school. I can see how shocked he is by the manners and the literary pimple's general bad form whenever he turns up. Dearly must Odoyevsky pay for his desire to. earn popularity among the literati!220 Dostoyevsky had been dubbed 'the pimple glowing on the nose of literature' by Nekrasov and Turgenev. There may or may not be an element of exaggeration in this account. Nevertheless it appears that relations between Dostoyevsky and Odoyevsky were somewhat closer than a purely literary acquaintance and that Dostoyevsky, even when in exile in Siberia, looked sufficiently to Odoyevsky to write to him requesting his future assistance 'when I shall petition for permission to publish'.221 It has also been suggested that this long-standing relationship contributed to the decision of the Dostoyevsky brothers to assist Apollon Grigor'ev by publishing work by him in Vretnya (Time), following the appeal to Mikhail Dostoyevsky on Grigor'ev's behalf made by Odoyevsky at the end of 1860; Odoyevsky's diary reads: 'Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky came to see me and we talked about how to help Grigor'ev.'222 It would seem likely that further meetings between Odoyevsky and Fyodor Dostoyevsky would have occurred between Dostoyevsky's return to St Petersburg in 1859 and Odoyevsky's departure for Moscow in 1862.223

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Personal meetings in the 1860s apart, Dostoyevsky's notebooks reveal that he had certainly not forgotten the name of Odoyevsky in the 1860s or the 1870s; it occurs twice in contexts of no apparent significance and again with a note referring to 'insincerity at society gatherings', which could be a reference to either Odoyevsky's salon or to his works.224 Strangely enough, Odoyevsky's diary of the 1860s contains no comments on the novels of Dostoyevsky. In the cases of Pushkin and Gogol' we have been talking almost entirely in terms of their literary influence on Odoyevsky. With Lermontov an element of influence can be seen to have cut both ways. In the instance of Dostoyevsky, however, the impact is all the other way: Odoyevsky had, to all intents and purposes, concluded his active literary career before he had even heard of Dostoyevsky. The task of placing the significance of Odoyevsky's works and thought among the many sources from which Dostoyevsky drew and amid the many influences which were exerted upon him is one which has still to be accomplished, although several commentators have recently begun to scratch the surface. We have already mentioned the epigraph to Poor Folk. Odoyevsky may himself have been the prototype for Prince X of Netochka Nezvanova.225 However, slight influences upon the early works apart, it is in the works of the mature Dostoyevsky that the most interesting possibilities of the influence of Odoyevsky have been seen to lie. Speculation on the implications of the equation 2 x 2 = 4 crop up in various of Odoyevsky's jottings of the 1840s and 1850s; among papers seeming to date from the year 1852, for example, is the following: I know, my dear fellow, that 2 and 2 make four; but I believe that 2 and 2 make 5; it can't be helped, can it? It is my conviction; you have to respect the convictions or beliefs which haunt the world.226 Such a notion is consistent with the philosophy of Odoyevsky's anti-Utopian stories and other attacks on the worship of reason, which have been seen by the American critic Simon Karlinsky as 'the first shot' in the Dostoyevsky-Chernyshevsky debate of the 1860s.227 Elsewhere I have argued the impact of Odoyevsky's The Live Corpse on two of Dostoyevsky's late trio of'fantastic stories' written in the 1870s (Bobok and in particular The Dream of a Ridiculous Man); a leading Soviet critic has since come to a similar conclusion - at least in the case of Bobok.228 Another commentator sees a parallel between this 'fantastic' trio of stories and Odoyevsky's projected trilogy, of which the only

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part to come to any kind of fruition was The Year 4338, while Odoyevsky's epigraph to The Live Corpse, on the unfailing responsibility which lies with each word pronounced, each action committed and 'each impulse of the soul', has been variously seen as a constant 'law' throughout Odoyevsky's work, and a major theme in that of Dostoyevsky, with relevance particularly to his final work, The Brothers Karamazov.229 It may well be that the culminating novel of Dostoyevsky's career will yet prove the most fruitful hunting ground for those in search of the influence of Odoyevsky.

X I. S. Turgenev At the beginning of 1837, he writes in his Literary Reminiscences of 1869 (in fact the occasion seems to have occurred in May 1838), while still a student at St Petersburg University, Turgenev was invited to attend a literary evening at the home of P. A. Pletnyov; among the guests was 'our most warm-hearted and unforgettable Prince Odoevsky'.230 Turgenev's educative years - the late 1830s - brought him under the influence of the Stankevich circle, which had originally been based on Schellingianism and has been frequently seen as a natural successor to the Lyubomudry.231 Turgenev's literary career began in Otechestvennyye zapiski circles in the 1840s and he appears to have been a frequent visitor to the Odoyevsky salon, at least, as we have seen, until 1847. He maintained contact with Odoyevsky through the 1850s and, to judge by Odoyevsky's diary, they resumed a somewhat closer relationship in the 1860s. According to Ya. P. Polonsky, Turgenev rated Odoyevsky highly; he also seems to include Turgenev among those who made fun of Odoyevsky behind his back - at least, he was prone to recite Sobolevsky's humorous verses on Odoyevsky 'not without pleasure'. 232 Odoyevsky, for his part, admired Turgenev as a writer, though not without some reservations. In a letter of 1850, he described Turgenev as: 'a man of great talent, although it is unsuited to the times, which are not at all suitable for literature but suitable rather for roast beef. 233 In a diary note of 1864 he writes: 'Krayevsky, Vrasky, Turgenev, whose leg ached while he was here. His daughter is in Paris - she has a fiance - and Turgenev only thinks about his nest in Baden.' 234 Direct literary links between Odoyevsky and Turgenev would seem at first glance to be slender, and have generally been seen to centre on

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Turgenev's most untypical story, The Phantoms. Philosophical links, though, stemming right back from the 1830s, are a different matter. Odoyevsky's long-standing interest in the natural sciences, which developed out of his study of Schelling and Oken in the 1820s, and his increasing belief in the positive mission of science in human affairs led him to take more than a passing interest in the figure of Bazarov. During the time that he was occupied with penning a riposte to Turgenev's supposedly valedictory article Enough (DovoVno), Odoyevsky also turned his attention (from memory, it would seem) to Bazarov and to Turgenev's most recent novel, Smoke.236 On 24June 1865, Odoyevsky's diary reads: Sushkova, Catherine Tyutcheva, Sukhotin, having read Turgenev's 'Enough' - their argument with Novikova on the adoration of superiorities - 'one does not prostrate oneself, other than before God*, said K. Tyutcheva. I read the beginning of my reply 'Not Good Enough'. 237 [italicized phrases in French] The final version of Not Good Enough {NedorvoVno) is dated 31 December 1866 and Odoyevsky's diary for 9 March 1867 reads: I didn't receive guests because I wasn't well, but Turgenev arrived I told him to come to dinner today - he came, although having already dined - and had to rest his leg on a chair because of the gout. I read him my article - he was very pleased with it, although he didn't entirely agree with me. 238 Turgenev's Enough displeased a number of writers, including Tolstoy and, of course, Dostoyevsky who, perhaps taking the opportunity to settle an old score going back to 'literary pimple' days, savagely parodied it in The Devils. However, as a recent commentator has pointed out, 'only Odoyevsky gave Turgenev a decisive and argued reply on all "points" of his inconsolably melancholy lyrical study'.239 Odoyevsky attacked Turgenev's disillusioned and pessimistic tones in terms not totally dissimilar to Belinsky's 1844 attack on his own alleged scepticism: an artist had no right to take such a view at a time when so much was to be done in Russia - an artist had a duty to society. The characterization of Fathers and Sons Odoyevsky saw, in general, as 'the work of great talent... we see [these characters] alive in front of us; the same thing cannot be said of Bazarov'. Bazarov, he sees as a somehow ultimately psychologically unconvincing and contradictory gel of negation, cynicism, hatred, fatalism and self-reverence:

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By what means all these mutually exclusive elements could unite in one and the same character is an unexplained authorial secret. We see here, as with an insufficiendy studied fact, phenomena, following one upon another, but the law of their conjugation is unknown to us. The idea springs to mind: is Bazorov having us on? 240 Odoyevsky saw in Bazarov, it is suggested, despite his deficiencies and despite his nihilism, a successor to his own protagonist Faust, of Russian Nights, as a seeker after truth and a further development of his own theme of the distinction between scepticism and negation as a means of seeking this truth. 241 Feeling himself to have so much philosophically in common with Turgenev, Odoyevsky was particularly disappointed to observe the pessimistic developments in Turgenev's Enough (which he took to be 'a momentary lapse' from which he should be cajoled into a more positive frame of mind) and in his novel Smoke; his comments on the latter work he scribbled on the back of one of the sheets of his Bazarov article: 1867. Turgenev's Smoke, his talent apart, is a very sad phenomenon, by the fact that, with the exclusion of its conclusions, 9/10 of its content is true; but most sad of all is that a man of talent didn't find another conclusion. Much is unfinished among the Russians, but he should have sought in the book of Russian life that which is written in it between the lines.... There are 4 lines proving that Turgenev is not yet the Messiah of despair and hopelessness: 'The great idea came true little by little; it turned into blood and flesh; a shoot has sprouted from a cast away seed, and it is not now going to be trampled by its enemies - either overt or secret.' The point is that it hasn't been trampled.242

XI

L.N.Tolstoy

One of the most prominent visitors to the Odoyevsky salon in the last years of its existence was Lev Tolstoy. Exactly at what stage in the 1860s he began to frequent Odoyevsky's evenings is not clear, but he is described as a regular attender in 1867—8; Eugene Schuyler, the American diplomat, translator (of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and Tolstoy's The Cossacks) and the author of memoirs of Tolstoy, first met the author of War and Peace at Odoyevsky's late in 1867, when he was appointed consul in Moscow:

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Here one evening I met Count Lev Tolstoy, who was an old acquaintance of the prince and who, above all, was on friendly terms with many Moscow society ladies, who were good friends of the princess and who at that time were supplying him with material for his novel, War and Peace, which he was then slowly writing... . Princess Odoyevskaya told me that several ladies and especially the spinster P., a distant relation of Tolstoy and a friend common to us all, were very useful in seeking out old Muscovite ladies and writing down their life-histories and anecdotes.243 Something of an odd man out in this largely aged salon of old-time literati and society personages of a bygone era, Tolstoy struck Princess Odoyevskaya as 'uncivilized and unsociable'.244 Nevertheless, his visits to this salon, the memories of some of whose adherents stretched back even to 1812, aided him considerably in his researches: not least Odoyevsky himself and Sobolevsky, each a mine of bibliographical knowledge, contributed valuable information and references; another useful adherent was the historian, Pogodin.245 Tolstoy wrote to P. I. Bartenev on 14 May 1868: I asked Pr. Odoyevsky and Sobolevsky to let me have an extract from Dante about unhappy love. I don't feel like writing to Sobolevsky and Pm afraid that he won't reply, while I've forgotten Pr. Odoyevsky's names. If you should see either of them, convey my request and send me [the answer] if they give you one. 246 Tolstoy's absent-mindedness in forgetting Odoyevsky's name and patronymic may seem surprising, particularly given the apparent mastery of the Odoyevsky family revealed in his researches into prominent Russian families in preparation for never-to-be-completed historical novels, begun before War and Peace and taken up again later, spanning the period from Peter the Great to the Decembrists, in which latter project Alexander Odoyevsky was singled out for particular prominence.247 Odoyevsky's reaction to Tolstoy's early prose is not recorded, but his reception of the early works of Dostoyevsky and Turgenev suggests that the emergence of another new writer of outstanding talent would scarcely have escaped his notice. They met first at a dinner held at the St Petersburg Chess Club at the end of 1855, an occasion also

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attended, according to the diary of A. V. Druzhinin, by Tanayev, Goncharov, Polonsky, Turgenev, Dolgoruky and Yazykov.. .\ 2 4 8 Tolstoy's meeting with Odoyevsky, we are informed by V. I. Sakharov, who has recendy researched the relations between the two, made Tolstoy start thinking about the phenomenon of 'the Russian romantic-encyclopedist and about the epoch which produced him'. 249 At first Tolstoy was rather arrogantly dismissive, writing in his notebook in 1858: The semi-educated Russian type, but with a passion for science. Odoyevsky... Magnetism, electricity, the most unexpected conclusions from the simplest of phenomena and no thought of their application to life.250 In the 1860s, though, it appears that Tolstoy must have become much more familiar with the more practical side of Odoyevsky's activities in science, music, pedagogy and children's literature, many of which interests he himself shared, and perhaps came to recognize Odoyevsky as something of a precursor of some of his own educational and even aesthetic preoccupations. In 1862 he listed Odoyevsky and Zablotsky's Rural Reading in his programme for 'home reading', while the previous year he had been sufficiently taken with Odoyevsky's anonymously published April-fool's feuilleton 'Zefiroty', purporting to be concerned with strange happenings in North America, to adopt that word as a nickname for his nieces.251 By the time of the later stages of Tolstoy's work on War and Peace, Odoyevsky was discussing the novel with its author, assisting with the collection of material and with the reading of the proofs; his diary of 16 January 1868 reads: 'I read the proofs and finished War and Peace. The main interest of the book, as a novel, begins from the third volume. The denouement is intriguing.'252 On 7 April he wrote: Olga Fyodorovna Kosheleva, Count Lev Nikol. Tolstoy (War and Peace), Serg. Andr. Yur'ev (the mathematician) to dinner. At nine-thirty I had a slight attack. I wrote for Count Tolstoy (for the killing off of Helene) a description of my angina pectoris attacks.253 Discussion of the literary impact of Odoyevsky on Tolstoy has usually centred on parallels between Odoyevsky's story The Brigadier (from Russian Nights) and Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan ITich, though the

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virtually synonymous works also on the theme of the 'living corpse' or 'spiritually dead' - Odoyevsky's Zhivoy mertvets and Tolstoy's Zhivoy trup - and the latter's The False Coupon have also been brought in; Sakharov, however, prefers to stress the continuity of a tradition, rather than to insist necessarily on direct influence.254 XII

Ye. P. Rostopchina and S. A. Sobolevsky

We turn finally to Odoyevsky's relations with two figures who, half remembered now as minor writers and peripheral inhabitants of the Russian literary scene, were, in their day, nonpareils of many of the foremost social and literary circles. The linking of these two personalities is not entirely coincidental, as it was Rostopchina who dubbed Sobolevsky 'the unknown composer of those epigrams well known to all'. 255 Countess Yevdokiya ('Dodo') Petrovna Rostopchina, nee Sushkova (1811-58), was one of the great society beauties and socialites of her day, as well as being a poetess of some repute and gaining, somewhat less recognition as one of the first women prose writers in Russia.256 In 1833 she was married off to Count A. F. Rostopchin (son of the famous Governor of Moscow of the days of 1812), who turned out to be, to the consternation of the twenty-two-year-old Dodo and others, and despite his advanced baldness, three years her junior. The marriage seems to have been, it is generally agreed, an unhappy one and the vivacious but unfulfilled Dodo threw herself into the whirl of high society again, and into literature. Her name was linked with those of various men, including the princes Alexander Golitsyn and Platon Meshchersky, and later with Lermontov, but, in keeping with the usual reticence of Russian memoirists and biographers, the exact nature of her relations with them is not clear. Her poetry of the late 1830s and early 1840s is said to have imitated Lermontov, minus the element of protest, and it attained a certain popularity among the small upperclass readership of the period; even Belinsky quite liked it, though he exhorted her without avail to improve upon the superficial quality of her verse.257 Rostopchina encountered Odoyevsky when she moved to St Petersburg in 1836 and they met at each other's salons, as well as at the other main salons of the day. Apart from her social and literary concerns, the Countess was interested in occult matters and Odoyevsky became her close confidant. A number of his letters to her

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on ghosts, supernatural fears, mages, alchemy etc. were subsequently published.258 A further substantial letter on religion, mysticism and prayer remains unpublished.259 In addition, a quantity of lighter correspondence survives and Odoyevsky dedicated the fantastic stories The Live Corpse and Kosmorama to Rostopchina.260 Of the latter story, one of Odoyevsky's other female correspondents commented cryptically: 'one could well say that the piece is worthy of her to whom it is dedicated!' [original in French]. 261 Rostopchina in her letters mentions Odoyevsky's homemade musical instrument (of the organ variety), known as 'Savos'ka', calls Odoyevsky 'Hoffmann IF, 'Grandad Iriney', 'Albert le grand', 'Captain Miauli' and 'His alchemic-musical-philosophic-fantastic Excellency'.262 In May 1839 She wrote to Odoyevsky from Pyatigorsk of her eager hopes of a meeting with the exiled Alexander Odoyevsky, but adds: 'He would have his work cut out to efface you from my heart and I defy him to do so, in your name and in mine [original in French].' 263 There would seem to be no record of such an encounter taking place; Alexander was on active service at the time and was to die of fever in August of that year. Dodo Rostopchina's remarks of endearment addressed to Odoyevsky in French, Italian and Russian in a number of letters of different years inevitably pose the question: could she have had a romance or an affair with Odoyevsky, as she perhaps did with Lermontov? Dushen'ka-blagodeteP i dobrozhelateF; Addio, caro amabilissimo, siate per me sempre qual che siate adesso ed io non posso e non voglio cambiare mai; (1839) nevidimka, neuslyshka i nechitanka; milyy moy Odoyenka;

(1848)

In the same letter, she refers to Odoyevsky's wife (while asking that the letter be read to her too) as: 'the dear adorably good princess, just as the prince is adorably fickle [volage] [original in French]'. In 1858 she yearns for another of Odoyevsky's letters of old times: 'if not in love and semi-mystical, semi-fantastical, like in the old days, then at least brotherly and friendly'.264 There is, of course, no real evidence one way or the other; but the answer is, unfortunately, probably no. The use of the adjective volage, so reminiscent of Alexander Odoyevsky's earlier designation of the young Vladimir as vetrennyy and sladostrasten, may arouse the inquisitive, but the general picture which comes down

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to us of Odoyevsky is such that it is not easy to envisage a great degree of impropriety in his personal relationships, at any rate in his postmarital years. Certainly no known memoirist has wished to even hint at any such misdemeanour, although this in itself, as already remarked, is, particularly in the Russian context, by no means conclusive. The balance of probability, however, would seem to suggest that the liaison, if such it may be termed, was flirtatious but platonic. Sergey Aleksandrovich Sobolevsky (1803-70) was the illegitimate son of a rich nobleman named A. N. Soymonov. A colourful character with a number of fascinating and mysterious angles to his biography, Sobolevsky was a close friend of Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Prosper Merimee and Stendhal, as well as of Odoyevsky, and is remembered now as a society wit, the author of many a tart epigram, and one of the leading bibliophiles and bibliographers of the period.265 Sobolevsky studied at the Pansion for the Nobility in St Petersburg, together with Lev Pushkin (the poet's brother), Mikhail Glinka, N. A. Mel'gunov and A. A. Krayevsky, and under the tutorship for a while of Vil'gel'm KyukhePbeker. This list of names clarifies already his subsequent entree into the circles of Pushkin and Odoyevsky (Alexander Pushkin he met as early as 1818). After completing his education in 1821, he worked in the Moscow archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until he was persuaded to resign, apparently for lack of diligence, in 1828, when he embarked upon the first of a number of extensive sojourns in Europe. As one of the celebrated 'archive youths', with the coining of which phrase he is credited by Pushkin himself,266 Sobolevsky was on the fringes, though never an enthusiast, of the philosophical circles of Raich and the Lyubomudry, through which he would soon have made the acquaintance of Odoyevsky. In 1825 Sobolevsky and Odoyevsky appear to have been the co-authors of a projected pamphlet, 'A Course in Braggartry, or the Tribulations of a Dandyological Society, Comprising: (1) Necktieology, (2) The Art of Securing Money and Not Repaying It, (3) The Science of Not Eating at Home. By Maintenance of a Dandyological Society. Moscow 1825\ 267 In December of that year, according to Koshelev, Sobolevsky distinguished himself by singing the 'Marseillaise' as the 'archive youths' marched into church to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas I. 268 During his younger days Sobolevsky enjoyed a considerable reputation as a carouser, a gourmand and a rake. His bacchanalian revels in the company of Pushkin led one Third Section agent to report:

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'Sobolevsky has been nicknamed Pushkin's belly', while a later commentator refers to him as 'the poet's boozing-partner'.269 Gogol' once addressed him as 'the tall and appetizing to women Sobolevsky', while a less well-disposed contemporary preferred to stress his wearing of'a certain eternally malicious smirk'.270 Some two or three decades after the event at least two contemporaries, plus some later commentators, are on record as believing that Sobolevsky was the one man who, had he been in St Petersburg at the time, would and could have prevented Pushkin's fatal duel.271 Sobolevsky's long friendship with Odoyevsky is also associated with various appellations. 'Belly' and 'monster' can be dated back at least as far as 1826; Sobolevsky is said to have played Caliban to Odoyevsky's Prospero, while Odoyevsky called his friend 'my demon'. 272 Their relationship, in fact, while close and affectionate, and involving a number of serious mutual interests, seems to have thrived throughout on a steady stream of good-natured banter. This can be ascertained from surviving fragments of correspondence, as well as from the accounts of contemporary memoirists. Sobolevsky wrote to Odoyevsky from Italy in 1829, perhaps in a tone as much of sentimentality as of banter: 'Sobolevsky is a stupid beast \glupaya skotina], because he can't forget you'; Odoyevsky wrote to Sobolevsky in 1837: 'Urodissimel When will you cease tormenting me - even from over the seas you don't give me any peace.' 273 Later on, when strange rumours were circulating in Russia concerning Sobolevsky's adventures (he had been rumoured to have been mortally wounded on the barricades of Paris in July 1830, and in 1849 was said to have proposed to the future Empress Eugenie of France and to have become a friend of Queen Isabella II of Spain),274 Odoyevsky wrote to one of his correspondents: There is the most contradictory news of Sobolevsky: some say he is in Madrid, some - in Pekin, some - on the Moon; the last is I think the most likely.275 Sakulin considers that Odoyevsky's depiction of the old bibliophile in Piranesi may well have been at Sobolevsky's expense.276 A regular attender at Odoyevsky's circle throughout its existence (excepting, of course, his years abroad), Sobolevsky crops up in the recollections of a number of observers, often in a humorous or semiscandalous context. Pushkin's diary of 1834, for instance, notes:

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3 March. I was at Prince Odoyevsky's in the evening. Sobolevsky, flirting with Lanskaya (formerly Poletika), said to her sonorously: 'Le ciel n'est pas plus pur que le fond de mon - cuP ['the sky is not more pure than the bottom of my - arse']. He was terribly embarrassed, the witnesses (including Lanskaya) couldn't stop themselves from laughing. Princess Odoyevskaya turned to him, green with fury - Sobolevsky ran away.277 I. I. Panayev relates that Odoyevsky, in his entertaining, insisted on constant culinary innovation - himself conducting fantastic experiments involving sauces boiled in chemical retorts, with other ingredients boiled, fried or marinated scientifically. At one New Year's Eve gathering special sausages were served which proved upon chewing, to the consternation of all the guests, to be revoltingly permeated with lard: [Sobolevsky] spat his out unceremoniously and, solemnly holding out the plate, addressed the host at the top of his voice 'Odoyevsky! Donate this dish to those children's shelters which come under the stewardship of the Princess.' 278 V. A. Sollogub, who suffered from heartburn at the mere remembrance, some forty years later, of Odoyevsky's sauces, informs us that Sobolevsky, to whom Odoyevsky had presented a copy of his Variegated Tales inscribed 'to the belly' (zhivotu - in view of his gastronomic proclivities), endorsed it 'for onward transmission' and placed it in 'the shameful place wherein stood all our works'. 279 This same copy of Odoyevsky's Variegated Tales should now be held, along with many of the Russian books from Sobolevsky's huge collection and his Pushkin manuscripts, in the British Library. Unfortunately the copy of this work possessed by the British Library does not appear to bear these inscriptions and was presented to Sobolevsky as late as 1864, having been in another collection before that. Perhaps Sobolevsky's original copy, therefore, enjoyed a different fate. If Sobolevsky effected a posture of holding in little esteem the works of his friends and contemporaries he, probably quite genuinely, had scant respect for his own modest efforts; as an epigraph to a collection (in manuscript) of his verses, he wrote: 'my verses, they are not [intended] for posterity, but rather for posteriors' [original in French]. 280 Sobolevsky's epigrams circulated only privately during his lifetime, as indeed was their author's intention, apart from the

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occasioinal quotation which crept into journals and memoirs; over a hundred of them were collected in a slim volume in 1912, but the editor admitted to leaving many more unpublished due to their 'boldness'.281 The author of a recent Soviet study dealing with Sobolevsky, which concentrates in any case rather on his more academic and bibliophilic pursuits, informs us that in Sobolevsky's archive there is preserved a poem called '[With Pushkin] Around Moscow', 'not one verse of which can be imparted to the reader because of its most thoroughgoing indecency'.282 Nevertheless, the five published epigrammatic short poems relating to the person of Odoyevsky are all almost completely decent, and, unlike many dedicated to other figures of the day, amiably devoid of malice.283 When Odoyevsky moved from St Petersburg to Moscow in 1862, taking up residence on the second floor of an address on the Smolenskiy Bul'var, Sobolevsky rented a ten-roomed apartment on the first floor. The two old friends thus spent the last years of their lives in close proximity. Sobolevsky was constantly in attendance, therefore, at Odoyevsky's dinner-parties and other gatherings of the Odoyevsky Moscow circle. Many times a day, we are informed, the respective man servants of Sobolevsky and Odoyevsky would run up from the first floor to the second and down again, carrying notes in verse or in prose. 284 After Odoyevsky's death, at the end of February 1869, Sobolevsky is said to have remarked: 'for forty years I tried to infuriate this man and never once did I succeed'.285 To a bookselling acquaintance Sobolevsky wrote: 'You know about my grief: my oldest and best friend Odoyevsky passed away right above my head. I still had a long way to go with his bibliography.'286 Sobolevsky, in fact, was largely responsible for preserving Odoyevsky's library for the Rumyantsev Museum and, together with Princess Odoyevskaya, put some measure of order into the huge Odoyevsky manuscript archive, which was dispatched to the Public Library in St Petersburg; Odoyevsky's was, fittingly enough, the last collection to be thus ordered and assigned by Sobolevsky.287 The following year, after the news of the demise of his French railways stock, due to the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian War, Sobolevsky succumbed to a stroke. We may conclude with a later echo, almost as if a deliberate riposte, to the rhetorical question posed in the epigraph to this chapter. Perhaps even intentionally in the spirit aroused by Odoyevsky's story New Year

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(dated 1831, and therefore referring to a period before that to which she herself looks back with such ardent nostalgia), Countess Rostopchina in 1858, the year of her death, sent to Odoyevsky a twovolumed edition of her poetry, with the words: Your name appears openly and in print once only - but how often it is suggested on various pages, imprinted by my tender confessions! . . . If you will as much as begin perusing these two volumes they will revive in you all the strength of youth and imagination, they will intoxicate you with your own memories, which so often go hand in hand with mine! . . . Our mutual friends will rise again before your eyes; your Saturdays, my banquets . . . your confidences concerning your personal secrets, everything, everything is here, all will come to life, will begin to speak, will begin to sing before you the wonderful, passionate, reanimating song of times gone by. Friendship is good for something. May it serve you and me as a kind of magic fountain of youth, [italicized words in French]. 288

Postscript: In Conclusion Come, therefore, you Lovers of Mankind and encyclopedists, into the pacific lodge and receive the fraternal kiss, cast off the grey net, and with youthful love behold the wondrous splendour of Nature, of History, and of Mankind. I shall lead you to a brother, and he shall speak with you so that your hearts shall leap up and so that you shall clothe your dead, beloved intuition with a new body and so that you shall embrace again and recognize what hovered before you and what the sluggish earthly intelligence could not grasp for you. Novalis, Christendom or Europe Of Odoyevsky's diverse contributions to Russian culture and society, it is likely that his legacy to Russian literature will prove the most enduring. This would seem to be an appropriate state of affairs: A. P. Pyatkovsky, who knew Odoyevsky well from 1860, states that he saw himself to the end as 'above all, a Russian litterateur'} His historical importance to Russian thought, music and education may well be amplified by further research. In the case of his literary contribution, however, not only do we have the prospect of further unravellings of the threads of a literary influence which stretched considerably beyond the variable effects of its immediate impact, but his literary productions themselves, in the small flurry of recent editions, have shown a renewed capacity for survival as living works of literature. V. I. Sakharov is able to claim that now 'the contemporary reader is undoubtedly listening with due attention and interest to the living, evergreen truths of the sincere, emotive voice of this writer from the last century' and (in 1982) that recent editions have had 'no small success with the readership'.2 This is certainly the case with one at least of Odoyevsky's children's stories: Novyye knigi (Soviet New Books) in 1983 announced an edition of 2,500,000 copies ofMoroz Ivanovich, in the series 'My First Books'. Musically, too, Odoyevsky's works and career have been featured on Soviet radio and television; he features,

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also, as a character in The Life of Berlioz (1984), a big Franco-Soviet television spectacular. All this, to some degree at least, vindicates the position of the few, such as P. A. Pletnyov and V. K. KyukhePbeker, who in 1844-5 argued for consideration of Odoyevsky as a leading writer of the time.3 However, the main interest of the present study focuses rather on Odoyevsky's life and personality. Odoyevsky has frequently been called an 'imitator' of Hoffmann. Even if this accusation has, to a greater or lesser extent, now been dispelled, he is still widely held to have had strong literary and ideational affinities with Hoffmann. These certainly exist; it may, however, be more worthwhile to look for a comparison between the lives and varied careers of Odoyevsky and Hoffmann (Hoffmann was a writer, composer and lawyer; Odoyevsky, a writer, music critic and government functionary). This particular type of comparison does not appear to have been made, although O. Tsekhnovitser (in 1929) compared Odoyevsky with Friedrich Schlegel.4 The other tendency has been to draw comparisons between Odoyevsky and the literary figures Don Quixote and, particularly, Faust. The juxtaposition of Odoyevsky and Quixote is suggested in the first place by the sub-title of SegelieV: Lezin informs us that Odoyevsky's attitude to government service (the concepts of sluzhba and chinovnichestvo) caused him to be sneered at by colleagues, who saw him as an eccentric 'nineteenth-century Quixote'.5 That of Odoyevsky and Faust is even more obviously suggested by the name of the main spokesman of Russian Nights; fuel is added by reports of Odoyevsky's eccentric attire, the contents of his study and his apparent pursuit of ultimate knowledge. Lezin (1907), for instance, made much of this; more recendy a whole American thesis has been based on this approach.6 In Soviet scholarship, Sakharov concludes his introduction to the 1981 2-volume edition of Odoyevsky's works by referring to him as 'this Russian Faust', while VI. Murav'yov entitles his introduction to a 1982 edition 'Russkiy Faust'. 7 However, although Odoyevsky can clearly be seen to have had certain Faustian and, for that matter, Quixotic qualities, such analogies should not be pushed too far. The costume, the folios and the retorts were, if not a pose, an eccentricity; they represent only one side of Odoyevsky. The pursuit of knowledge was not only genuine, but widespread; and it was serious and altruistic in intent. As we have seen, Odoyevsky himself said that his own Faust, who in any case bears little enough resemblance to the protagonist of Goethe, was only a transitional persona. Of Goethe's leading character, he wrote:

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They say that Goethe in Faust depicted the suffering of an omniscient man, who has perceived all the powers of nature. But knowledge of nature, which, it may be said in passing, can never perceive the extreme limits, will never produce the feeling of suffering; sadness arises only from the fact that the limits are not perceived.8 Odoyevsky in the 1840s claimed Lomonosov as his ideal: a literary figure, a scientist - like himself, a man of many parts - and, above all, a Russian. Odoyevsky saw Lomonosov as 'the type of Slavonic allembracing spirit who could be fated to introduce the harmony lost in the Western scholarly world' and spoke of 'the secret link which enclosed all his diverse concepts'.9 A rounded historical figure would appear to be a far closer model for Odoyevsky's career than a onesided fictional character. Indeed, what more rounded figure was there in that era than Goethe? Those who have written on Odoyevsky and Goethe have skirted such questions, concentrating on Odoyevsky's Lyubomudry period and their respective literary works.10 Sakulin notes that Odoyevsky valued 'the harmonious fullness and perfection in the expression of artistic truth' inherent in the 'German element', represented at its best by Goethe, from whom alone Odoyevsky admits an influence.11 However, despite Odoyevsky's supreme opinion of Goethe as an artist and his admiration for works such as Wilhelm Meister, no one has found any real similarities between Goethe's work and those of Odoyevsky, nor has Odoyevsky been accused of imitating Goethe (least of all Wilhelm Meister). The parallel, and certainly the inspiration, surely lie rather in the aspiration to universalism and in the pattern of life. Stephen Spender terms Goethe the statesman, administrator, scholar and scientist: 'the last man to have the qualities of a Renaissance genius'; 'on the verge of specialization,' he continues, 'Goethe saw the importance of synthesizing and not specializing' and aimed at 'a synthesis of all the forces in his own life, which would be realized in his poetry'.12 Ronald Gray writes of Goethe: He is not only the German in the world pantheon, but also the one whom Carlyle called 'the universal man': a lyric poet, a draughtsman, a playwright, a novelist, a translator, an actor, a theatre manager, a minister of state, an anatomist, a student of chromatics, a philosopher, a critic, a mystic, and a lover.13

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Many similar things could and have been said about Odoyevsky. If we place rather more emphasis on the aims, and pay slightly less attention to the respective achievements and world standing, of Goethe and Odoyevsky, the model is clear. Even in terms of fictional characters, there remains a pattern; Gray remarks that 'both Wilhelm Meister and Faust begin as questers; they end their lives as social beings'. 14 What Odoyevsky was striving towards was a synthesis, in the Russian context, of'the German element': the quotidian universality of the public life of Goethe, tinged with the more private vision of Novalis.

Appendices I The Odoyevsky family tree: 18th-19th centuries II S. A. Sobolevsky's epigrams III Glossary ofOdoyevsky Js contemporaries Notes Bibliography Selective index of works by Odoyevsky Index

280

Appendix I: The Odoyevsky family tree: 18th - 19th centuries

Pyotr Ivanovich Odoyevsky (1740-1826)

Ivan Ivanovich Odoyevsky (?-?)

Fyodor Sergeyevich Odoyevsky (1771-1808

I Ivan Ivanovich Odoyevsky (d. 1814)

I I Varvara Ivanovna m Sergey Stepanovich Odoyevskaya Lanskoy (1800-45?) (1787-1862)

Ye. A. Fillipova (?-185?)

1

Zinaida Stepanovna Lanskaya m. B. A. Vrasky

OPga Stepanovna m. Vladimir Fyodorovich Lanskaya Odoyevsky (1804-1869) (1797-1872)

281

Ivan Vasil'evich Odoyevsky (president of the Votchinnaya kollegiya) (1710-58)

Sergey Ivanovich Odoyevsky (1743-1811)

Alexander Ivanovich Odoyevsky (1738-97)

tn. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna L'vova (1743-1800)

tn. Mar'ya Fyodorovna Vadkovskaya (1751-86)

I

1

Aleksandra Sergeyevna Odoyevskaya tn. Aleksey Fyodorovich Griboyedov (1769-1830)

Praskov'ya Sergeyevna Odoyevskaya (1773-1851) tn. kn. Aleksey Alekseyevich Shcherbatov (1776-1834)

Ivan Sergeyevich Odoyevsky (17691839)

Praskov'ya Aleksandrovna Odoyevskaya (1770-1820)

Natal'ya Alekseyevna Shcherbatova (+ 3 more daughters) Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Griboyedova (1795-1856) ('cousin Eliza') tn. (1817) . F. Paskevich (1782-1856) (later 'Prince Of Warsaw')

Alexander Ivanovich Odoyevsky (1802-39)

Varvara Aleksandrovna Odoyevskaya (d. 1845) tn. Dmitriy Sergeyevich Lanskoy (1767-1833)

282

Appendix II S. A. Sobolevsky 's epigrams on V. F. Odoyevsky

Cny^HJiocb pa3 BO BpeMH OHO MTO C AepeBa ynan KOMap: 3anHCKOft B KOMHTeT y^eHbiH Te6n 30Byr, KHH3b BoJibfleMap.

It happened once that, from a tree, A mosquito fell, though not too far: For learned memorandum in committee They called on you, Prince Woldemar.

IIPHHHB B coo6paoKeHbe Ka3yc, Tw, pMBnmcb B KHHrax, pa3cyflHJi,

After giving the case due consideration, You, rummaging through books, did then aver That in Rotterdam lived the sage Erasmus Who often a fine periwig would wear.

HTO B PoTepA^Me ECHJI 3pa3Myc, KoTOpbtfi B napHKe •XOAHJI. OflyraeBJieH ero npHMepoM, Tw cSpHJi BJiacu, Haflen napHK H cBoftCTBeHHHM Te6e MaHepoM TaHHCTBeHHO TJiaBOH nOHHK.

Much taken by that great man's tone, A wig you donned, head shaven not a pang And in that manner all your own Your head mysteriously would hang.

'The mosquito, beyond all question, Is God's creature' - you did tell Tw npoBeman, - "ecTb EoacbH TBapb; 'Let him musically infest one Among insects, he rings the bell! HO B My3bIKaJIbHOM OTHOmeHbH Mex HaceKOMbK OH - 3BOHapb! Since merely in the fields he did fall H TaK KaK OH nafleHbeM B To forests not a shred of harm he He npH^HHHJi JiecaM Bpeaa, sought npefla-rb cefi crry^aH BombeH Bone, 'Twas a signal of God's will, after all: A TBapb H36aBHTb OT cy«a!" (p.36) So, spare this creature from the court!' "KOMap, 6 e 3 BCHKOrO COMHeHbfl" -

'To Prince Odoyevsky, occupied with a note to the Learned Committee concerning the appearance somewhere of an insect, harmful to fields. Od. was then a member of the Learned Committee to the Ministry of State Domains and for some reason temporarily wore a wig' (p. 119). (Sobolevsky's MSS collection) Odoyevsky, as a member of the Committee, engaged on a list of harmful insects. Carried away by the project, he read many books, many of which had little relevance to the question, forgot what he was doing and became absorbed in Erasmus. For some reason he then shaved his head and wore a wig. 1830s (see pp. 117-19).

Sobolevsky's epigrams KH.OH!

C e r o MM OHaM BceM CTaBHjiH B npHMep; IIPHTOM OH 6bin 6apoHOM: To 6bin 6apoH 4>oH-Bep.

From Von to Von he has no match, By him we set great store A Baron to boot - what a catch Indeed, it's Baron von Baer.

H KTO ace eMy poBeH! OoH-Ponn HJIH (J)OH-PeKK, XOTH npO HHX (J)OH-XoBeH npeSjiarocKjioHHo peK?

T o whom more could we be beholden! T o von Ropp, or perhaps von Reck, Though, even of them, von Hoven Most favourably did speak?

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Sobolevsky's epigrams

Ho JiHmb Opeji-OmMHHijeB HBJIHeTCH B CaJIOH, To BCeX 3CT-JIH-KypjlHIjeB TOHH MeTJIOH XOTb BOH.

0 poce, CHM 6yfli> yTeuieH! A HeMitaM BOT ypojc, CKOJIB Ham, POCCHHCKH& (j»emeH

Upefl 3anaAHbiM BMCOK.

(p.48)

Yet Oryol-Oshmyantsev needs only To set foot in this salon, And all the Baits and these Estonians Instantaneously are gone. Oh, Russian, be you yet consoled! To these Germans, here's a lesson: How highly in the West, all told, They esteem our Russian fashion!

Von der Haven: a senatorial colleague of Odoyevsky's who brought a crowd of young (Germanic) visitors to Odoyevsky's Moscow 'evenings' (1860s), to Sobolevsky's annoyance. Oryol-Oshmyantsev: Slavic philologist and memoirist, who shocked the ostzeyskiye.

Ha ocTaHOBJieHe KH. OA-CKHM

flOJTKHOCTH AHpeKTOpa PyMHHijeBCKoro My3en

K H H 3 b - TBOe O T p O A t e , PwpHK,

Mepe3 ABaAASTb riHTb KoneH; KHH3b - He T O , *ITO KHH3b~Ma3ypHK H3 apMHH HJ1H TypKMeHJ KHH3b - He T O , MT06bI KHH3b HeKHH

PyccKHx cTapnuiHa KHH3eft, YnycTHJi H3-noA oneKH

CBOH PyMHHAeBCKHH My3eH! PoT03eH T W , poT03eHf. (p.78)

On Pr. Od-sky leaving his post as Director of the Rumyantsev Museum Prince - of Rurikovian pedigree, Some twenty-five generations back; Prince - not of some robber-barony, Or some mere Caucasian hack; Prince - by no means just a petty one, But, of Russian princes, the doyen, He has come of age to jettison His Rumyantsev Museum: What a truant, and a bum!

Page numbers of verses and notes above refer to S. A. Sobolevsky, Epigrammy i eksprompty, edited by V. V. Kallash, Moscow, 1912. Some of these verses, plus others by Sobolevsky, are to be found in V. V. Kunin, Bibliofily pushkinskoy pory, Moscow, 1979. Further Sobolevsky epigrams are included in Epigramma i satira, Moscow-Leningrad, 1931-32, 2 vols, (reprinted Oxford, 1975). Many more are said to remain unpublished. The above translations into English are my own, rather free and ragged versions, which endeavour to convey something of the style and tone of the original.

Appendix III Glossary of Odoyevsky ys contemporaries This list is restricted to Russian contemporaries of Odoyevsky, whose names tend to recur in the pages of this study. Omitted are: those personalities whose relations with Odoyevsky are treated in separate sections of Chapter Six (or noted elsewhere), those figures whose appearance in this book is only of fleeting importance (their names will be found in the index) and certain other minor characters of whom little is known. AKSAKOV, Konstantin Sergeyevich (1817-60). Son of the writer S. T. Aksakov; was, together with his brother, I. S. Aksakov, a leading Slavophile. Theorist, critic and minor writer. ALYAB'EV, Alexander Aleksandrovich (1802-52). Minor composer of vaudevilles, operettas and romances. ARNOL'D, Yuriy Karlovich (1811-98). Musical scholar, teacher and critic, memoirist. Also a minor composer. BARATYNSKY (BORATYNSKY), Yevgeniy Abramovich (1800-44). A leading poet of the Tushkin Pleiad'. BENKENDORF, (Count) Alexander Khristoforovidi (c. 1781-1844). Chief of the Corps of Gendarmes and head of the Third Department. Feared by many writers. BULGARIN, Faddey Venediktovich (1789-1859). Writer and journalist of Polish origin, editor of Severnaya pchela (The Northern Bee) and a pillar of government support. Now generally remembered as a notorious police informer. CHAADAYEV, Pyotr Yakovlevich .(1794-1856). A leading Russian thinker and Christian mystic of Westernist and pro-Catholic leanings, famous for his 'Philosophical Letters'. Declared 'insane' by the government. CHERNYSHEVSKY, Nikolay Gavrilovich (1828-89). Leading radical thinker and critic, the author of the novel What Is To Be Done} (1863), written in prison. Exiled to Siberia from 1863. DAL', Vladimir Ivanovich (1801-72). Minor writer, now mainly remembered as a lexicographer, for his monumental dictionary, the Tolkovyy slovar' zhivogo velikorusskogo yazyka (1861-8). DARGOMYZHSKY, Alexander Sergeyevich (1813-69). A leading composer of the middle of the century, known mainly for the operas Rusalka (1856) and The Stone Guest (1872; produced posthumously, and completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Cui). DAVYDOV, Denis Vasil'evich (1781-1839). Army officer and partisan leader of the 1812 period. Poet. DAVYDOV, Ivan Ivanovich (1794-1863). Academic, Schellingian philosopher and pedagogue at the Blagorodnyy Pansion. DEL'VIG, (Baron) Anton Antonovich (1798-1831). Lyric poet, associate of Pushkin and editor of Severnyye tsvety (Northern Flowers). FET, Afanasiy Afanas'evich (1820-92). Leading lyric poet of a Parnassian vein and translator.

286

Odoyevsky's contemporaries

GALICH, Alexander Ivanovich (1783-1848). Schellingian philosopher and theorist of aesthetics. GLINKA, Mikhail Ivanovich (1804-57). The leading Russian composer of his time, renowned for his operas Ivan Susanin and Ruslan and Lyudmila, his orchestral music and songs. GRECH, Nikolay Ivanovich (1787-1867). Journalist, editor and minor writer. Principal ally of Bulgarin. GRIGOR'EV, Apollon Aleksandrovich (1822-64). Prominent literary critic, minor poet, memoirist. Spokesman for an 'organic' and intuitive approach to art. GRIGOROVICH, Dmitriy Vasil'evich (1822-99). Story-writer and novelist specializing in peasant themes. Memoirist. GROT, Yakov Karlovich (1812-93). Philologist, prolific correspondent and expert on Scandinavia. Professor of Russian at Helsinki University from 1840 to 1857. HERZEN (GERTSEN), Alexander Ivanovich (1812-70). Prominent thinker of revolutionary inclinations, writer and memoirist. Lived abroad from 1847, from where he edited Kolokol {The Bell). IAKINF (Father Iakinf Bichurin). See n. 28 to Chapter 6. KALERGIS (KALERGI) Marie Mouchanoff-(MUKHANOFF-). See n. 155 to Chapter 3. KHOMYAKOV, Aleksey Stepanovich (1804-60). Prominent Slavophile thinker, theologian and poet. KHVOSTOV (CHWOSTOW) (Count) Dmitriy Ivanovich. See n. 128 to Chapter 6. KIREYEVSKY, Ivan Vasil'evich (1806-56). Thinker, critic and journalist, who became a leading Slavophile. KOL'TSOV, Aleksey Vasil'evich (1809-42). Self-educated peasant poet and 'country-boy in town'. Occasionally compared to Burns. KORF (Baron and subsequently Count), Modest Andreyevich (1800-76). State functionary, director of the Public Library, later Head of the Second Department, and court historian. KOSHELEV, Alexander Ivanovich (1806-83). Publicist, memoirist and functionary of Slavophile leanings. Close friend of V. F. Odoyevsky. KRAYEVSKY, Andrey Aleksandrovich (1810-89). Prominent journalist and editor, associated with many leading journals from the 1830s. KRYLOV, Ivan Andreyevich (1769-1844). Dramatist and famous fabulist. Renowned also for his appetite. LANSKOY (subsequently Count) Sergey Stepanovich (1787-1862). Reforming Minister of Internal Affairs from 1855 to 1861. Brother-in-law of V. F. Odoyevsky. L'VOV, Aleksey Fyodorovich (1798-1870). Violinist, minor composer and imperial Kappellmeister. See also n. 81 to Chapter 3. MARLINSKY, A. (pseud, of Alexander Aleksandrovich Bestuzhev) (1797-1837). Romantic poet and novelist, publishing his post-1825 works as 'Marlinsky' while in exile for the Decembrist conspiracy. Killed in batde in the Caucasus. MEL'GUNOV, Nikolay Aleksandrovich (1804-67). Minor writer, translator and critic. Ghosted Konig's Literarische Bilder aus Russland (1837). Attempted a reconciliation between Slavophiles and Westernizers.

Odoyevsky's contemporaries

287

MERZLYAKOV, Aleksey Fyodorovich (1778-1830). Minor poet, translator and critic. Professor of Russian literature at Moscow University (1804-30). Theoretician of neoclassicist leanings. NADEZHDIN, Nikolay Ivanovich (1804-56). Journalist and critic. Professor of aesthetics at Moscow University (1831-5). Editor of Teleskop (The Telescope, 1831-6), closed for its publication of Chaadayev's 'Philosophical Letter\ NEKRASOV, Nikolay Alekseyevich (1821-78). Leading exponent of 'civic' poetry and a prominent radical journalist, who edited Sovremennik (The Contemporary) from 1847 to 1866, and Otechestvennyye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) from 1868. NIKITENKO, Alexander Vasil'evich (1804-77). Literary critic, journalist, censor and diarist. OGARYOV, Nikolay Platonovich (1813-77). Poet, publicist and close associate of Herzen, whom he followed to London in 1856. OSTROVSKY, Alexander Nikolayevich (1823-86). A prolific dramatist - the leading Russian playwright before Chekhov. PANAYEV, Ivan Ivanovich (1812-62). Minor writer, parodist and memoirist. PANAYEVA, Avdot'ya Yakovlevna (pseud.: N. Stanitsky) (c. 1819-1893). Authoress (and co-author) of tales and novels on social and women's questions. Married to 1.1. Panayev and mistress of Nekrasov. She published her memoirs in 1889. PAVLOV, Mikhail Grigor'evich (1793-1840). Schellingian philosopher, pedagogue and strong proponent of the natural sciences. PLETNYOV, Pyotr Aleksandrovich (1792-1865). Critic, correspondent and minor poet. A close friend of Pushkin, subsequently professor of Russian literature and Rector of St Petersburg University. POGODIN, Mikhail Petrovich (1800-75). Historian, publisher and minor writer. Professor of history at Moscow University and usually seen as the defender of 'official ideology'. POLEVOY, Nikolay Alekseyevich (1796-1846). Journalist, historian, critic, minor writer and dramatist. Founded Moskovskiy telegraf (The Moscow Telegraph) (1825-34). PROKOPOVICH-ANTONSKY, Anton Antonovich (1762-1848). Prominent educationalist, director of the Blagorodnyy Pansion of Moscow University. PUTYATA, Nikolay Vasil'evich (1802-77). Soldier, functionary and historian. Close friend of V. F. Odoyevsky. PYATKOVSKY, Alexander Petrovich (1840-1902). Critic, journalist and historian of Russian literary journalism. RAICH, Semyon Yegorovich (pseud, of S. Ye. Amfiteatrov) (1792-1855). Translator, pedagogue, journalist and minor poet, around whom gathered 'the Raich Circle' in the early 1820s. RAZUMOVSKY, (Father) Dmitriy Vasil'evich (1818-89). Leading expert on Orthodox Church music. The author of Tserkovnoye peniye v Rossii (3 vols., 1867-9). RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, Nikolay Andreyevich (1844-1908). Leading composer of the late nineteenth century, whose early tone poem Sadko was admired by Odoyevsky.

288

Odoyevsky ys contemporaries

ROZHALIN, Nikolay Matveyevich (1805-34). Writer, translator (of Goethe's Werther) and Lyubomudr ('wisdom-lover'). Many of his works were lost in a fire. RUBINSTEIN, Anton Grigor'evich (1829-94). Pianist, prolific minor composer and prominent musical dignitary. Wrote the opera The Demon. RYLEYEV, Kondratiy Fyodorovich (1795-1826). Poet and co-editor of Polyarnaya zvezda {The Polar Star), hanged as a ringleader of the Decembrist uprising. SAKHAROV, Ivan Petrovich (1807-63). Archeologist, folklorist, medic and specialist on old Russia. SENKOVSKY, Osip Ivanovich (alias 'Baron Brambeus') (1800-58). Journalist, critic, orientalist (Professor of Arabian and Turkish literature at St Petersburg University) and minor writer. Together with Bulgarin and Grech, he completed the so-called 'triumvirate' of reactionary publishers. SEROV, Alexander Nikolayevich (1820-71). Operatic composer of a Wagnerian bent, best known forJudith (1863) and Rogneda (1865). SHEVYRYOV, Stepan Petrovich (1806-64). Literary historian and publicist, professor of literature at Moscow University. An associate of the Slavophiles and proponent of'official ideology'. SOLLOGUB, (Count) Vladimir Aleksandrovich (1813-82). Writer of romantic and society tales, playwright and memoirist. Mainly remembered for his satire Tarantas, he is now beginning to undergo a modest revival. STASOV, Vladimir Vasil'evich (1824-1906). Outstanding music critic and commentator on the arts. TCHAIKOVSKY (CHAYKOVSKY), Pyotr Il'ich (1840-93). An outstanding composer of the second half of the nineteenth century, whose early works were greeted with some enthusiasm by V. F. Odoyevsky. TITOV, Vladimir Pavlovich (pseud.: Tit Kosmokratov) (1807-91). Minor writer and intimate of the Odoyevsky circles of the 1820s. Later envoy to Constantinople and a state functionary. TURGENEV, Alexander Ivanovich (1785-1846). A state functionary who was sent into virtual exile in the West after 1825 (being the brother of the Decembrist N. I. Turgenev). An intimate (and prolific correspondent) of many personalities of the time. TYUTCHEV, Fyodor Ivanovich (1803-73). An outstanding lyric poet, he was also a diplomat and subsequently a censor. VARLAMOV, A. Ye. (1801-48). Minor composer of songs and romances. VELLANSKY, Daniil Mikhaylovich (1774-1847). Philosopher, medic and strong proponent of Schelling's 'nature philosophy'. VERSTOVSKY, Aleksey Nikolayevich (1799-1862). Most prominent Russian composer, until eclipsed by Glinka, known for his operas and ballads. VIEL'GORSKY, (Count) Matvey Yur'evich (1787-1863). Outstanding cellist and musical host (brother of the composer, Mikhail Yur'evich). VIEL'GORSKY, (Count) Mikhail Yur'evich (1788-1856). Minor composer, musical host and philanthropist. VIGEL', Fillip Fillippovich (1786-1856). Memoirist and critic. Earlier an adherent of Arzamas, but subsequently an extreme reactionary. VOLKONSKAYA, (Princess) Zinaida Aleksandrovna (1792-1862). Minor writer and composer, well-known socialite.

Odoyevsky's contemporaries

289

VRASKY, Boris Alekseyevich. See n. 135 to Chapter 5. VYAZEMSKY, (Prince) Pyotr Andreyevich (1792-1878). Poet of the Pushkin Pleiad, critic and prolific correspondent. ZABLOTSKY-DESYATOVSKY, Andrey Parfenovich (1809-81). State functionary of reformist tendencies and writer on social and educational themes. ZAGOSKIN, Mikhail Nikolayevich (1789-1852). Historical novelist, remembered mainly for Yuriy Miloslavsky (1829). ZHUKOVSKY, Vasiliy Andreyevich (1783-1852). A leading romantic poet and translator.

Notes Abbreviations used in the Notes (for further details, see the Bibliography)

Works of Odoyevsky Soch. (1844)

Sochineniya knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo (St Petersburg, 1844) 3 vols.

'Iz bumag . ..'

'Iz bumag knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv (1874) I and II.

'Dnevnik'

'"Tekushchaya khronika i osobyye proisshestviya": dnevnik V. F. Odoyevskogo 1859-1869 gg', in Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 22-4 (1935).

Izh. ped. soch.

Izbrannyyepedagogicheskiye sochineniya (Moscow, 1955).

Muz. -lit. naslediye

Muzykal'no- lituraturnoye naslediye (Moscow, 1956).

'Traktaty' (1974)

Russkiye esfeticheskiye traktaty pervoy treti XIX veka, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1974).

R. N. (1975) Soch.(1981)

Russkiye nochi ('Russian Nights') (Leningrad, 1975). Sochineniya v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1981).

Works on Odoyevsky

Vpamyat'. . .

Vpamyat' o knyaze Vladimire Fyodoroviche Odoyevskom (Moscow, 1869).

'Siluet'

O. Tsekhnovitser, 'Siluet; vstupitel'naya stat'ya', in VFO, Romanticheskiye povesti (Leningrad, 1929; Oxford, 1975).

Sakulin I (1 or 2). . .

P. N. Sakulin, Iz istorii russkogo idealizma. Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky, vol. I, Parts 1 and 2 (Moscow, 1913); (vol. II neither completed nor published).

The Introduction 1 N. Putyata, 'Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky', Russkiy arkhiv (1874) I, p. 257. 2 VFO, Russkiye nochi (Leningrad, 1975) (hereafter lR. N., 1975') p. 105. 3 P. N. Sakulin, Iz istorii russkogo idealizma. Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky. MysliteV-pisatel', vol. I, Parts 1 and 2 (Moscow, 1913) (vol. II was never completed or published; hereafter 'Sakulin I, part no. and page no.'). 4 Quoted from B. A. Lezin, Ocherki iz zhizni i literaturnoy deyateVnosti kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo (Khar'kov, 1907) p. 2. 5 In at least two autobiographical fragments, the year is given as 1804 and the date as 'from 31 July to 1 August' or '30 July': 'Moi zapiski', quoted from I. I. Zamotin, Romantizm dvadtsatykh godov XIX stoletiya v russkoy literature, vol. II (St Petersburg, 1913) p. 381 (hereafter cited as 'Zamotin (1913)'); and [Avtobiografiya], in VFO, Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (Moscow, 1982) p. 320. Elsewhere, however, he wrote 'with what a bitter smile I noticed that I was born in the same year that S. M. died!' (Saint-Martin, the French philosopher, died in 1803) (quoted from [Zapisnaya knizhka], Orest Tskehnovitser, 'Siluet: V. F. Odoyevsky', in VFO, Romanticheskiye povesti (Leningrad, 1929) p. 64 (reprinted Oxford, 1975). In 1863, though, he claimed to be 59 years old on 30 July ('"Tekushchaya khronika i osobyye proisshestviya": dnevnik V. F. Odoyevskogo 1859-1869 gg.\ Literaturnoye nasledstvo, vol. 22-4 (Moscow, 1935) p. 172 - hereafter 'Dnevnik'). 6 Russkoy a starina, 2 (1904) p. 371, n. 2. A. I. Odoyevsky's date of birth is normally given as 1802, but the BoVshaya entsiklopediya, vol. 14 (St Petersburg, 1904), p. 333 gives '1802 or 1803'. 7 An article signed 'D. Ya. -sh.', in Moskovskiye vedomosti (1903) no. 207. Press cuttings of this and other 'centenary' items of 1903 are to be found collected in the Leningrad Public Library archive of N. F. Findeyzen (fond 816, Opis 1, no. 822). 8 [W. Lenz], 'Priklyucheniya liflyandtsa v Peterburge', Russkiy arkhiv, I, (1878) p. 445 (i.e. the old French family - de Montmorency). 9 Leningrad Public Library, V. F. Odoyevsky archive, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101, 2; 39 sheets cover the family lineage up to the 17th century. 10 Donald W. Treadgold, The West in Russia and China, vol. I: Russia 1472-1917 (Cambridge, 1973) p. 70. The careers of these and other Odoyevskys can be traced in detail in S. M. Solov'yov, Istoriya Rossii s drevneyshikh vremyon v pyatnadtsati knigakh (Moscow, 1959-66). 11 Prince M. M. Shcherbatov, On the Corruption ofMorals in Russia, trans. A. Lentin (Cambridge, 1969) p. 145 (see also Lentin's n. 30, p. 267). 12 Ibid., p. 267; his 'dubious character', however, did not prevent him from becoming a senator and a Privy Councillor. He was also president of the Votchinnaya kollegiya. 13 M. P. Pogodin wrote of P. I. Odoyevsky: 'This Prince Odoyevsky sacrificed more than 1000 souls for the establishment of an almshouse in the environs of Moscow and established the Dariinsky shelter in Moscow, in memory of his daughter' (Countess Kensona) - M. P.

292

14

15 16

17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Notes pogodin, 'Vospominaniye o knyaze Vladimire Fyodoroviche Odoyevskom', in VFO, Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (Moscow, 1982) p. 323,n.l. Quoted from 'Moi zapiski', in Zamotin (1913) p. 381. On Fyodor Odoyevsky, and Vladimir's early years, see Vsevolod Sakharov, 'Mal'chik iz griboyedovskoy Moskvy', Literaturnaya Rossiya (3 Dec. 1982), pp. 1819; this account purports to be from a forthcoming biography of Odoyevsky in the series 'Zhizn' zamechatel 'nykh lyudey'. These notes by V. P. Titov are held in Odoyevsky's archive, fond 539, Opisl,no.l01,15. Sakulin quotes letters from Odoyevsky's mother, giving her views on various of his fictional works (e.g. on Pyostryye skazki, Sakulin, I, 2, p. 36, n. 3; on SiTfida, ibid., p. 74, n. 1; on Knyazhna Mimi, ibid., p. 108, n. 3; and on Zapiski grobovshchika, ibid., p. 144, n. 1). Sakulin considers, on the basis of her letters, that she was 'a very intelligent person' of literary talent; in the last letter mentioned (of 1838), she comments that the story Sirota 'bears great resemblance to a novel I once started myself... I have chanced upon novels worse written than my own - it is not finished and will remain so', ibid. Smert' Kushulina: poema iz Ossiana, Perevyol s frantsuzskogo Kn. I. I. Odoyevskim (Moscow, 1807) 23 pp. The Young Muscovite; or the Poles in Russia, originally written by Michael Zakosken, paraphrased, enlarged and illustrated by Frederick Chamier, Capt. RN, author of The Wife ofa Sailor and by the author of A Key to Both Houses of Parliament, 3 vols. (London, 1833). (A second edition of 1834 was marked 'improved and with new incidents added', 'edited by Captain Frederick Chamier'.) Lanskaya's name does not appear, but the Preface mentions: 'A Russian Lady and her daughters, the translators of this work'; she is identified by M. P. Alekseyev, in his essay 'Val'ter Skott i yego russkiye znakomstva', Literaturnoyenasledstvo,\o\. 91 (Moscow, 1982) (see pp. 356-8). Sakulin, 1,1, p. 94, n . l . VFO,fond539,Opisl,no.l01,15. This would seem to be confirmed by his mother's reaction to the early fiction; she wrote to Odoyevsky: 'I shouldri't think there was a drawing room which didn't stifle you' (quoted from N. M. Mikhaylovskaya, 'Nravopisatel'nyye povesti V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Voprosy istorii i teorii literatury, vyp. VI (Chelyabinsk, 1970) pp. 3-16). 'Moi zapiski', in Zamotin (1913) p. 381; Titov, in VFO, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101,15. 'Moi zapiski', Zamotin (1913) pp. 381-2. Ibid., p. 382; at this point Odoyevsky's autobiographical 'notes' break off. Letopis' zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena 1812-1850 (Moscow, 1974) p. 29. See B. A. Lezin, op. cit., pp. 4-11; Lermontavskaya entsiklopediya (Moscow, 1981) pp. 289-90 (which cites a short bibliography on the Pansion). Zamotin (1913) p. 383. See Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 90-1 for Odoyevsky's later recollection of his appreciation of Zhukovsky at this time (and I, 2, pp. 319-20, on Zhukovsky's influence).

The Introduction 28

29 30

31 32 33

34 35 36

37 38 39

293

'Obshchestvo lyubiteley rossiyskoy slovesnosti': a scholarly-literary association, based on Moscow University. Founded in 1811, it ceased to function in 1837, was revived in 1858 and lasted until 1930. The main writers of the day addressed its meetings and over the years it published various scholarly works and collections of papers (including the DaP dictionary, 1863-6; Odoyevsky's NedovoVno, 1866; and the in memoriam Vpamyaf oknyaze V. F. Odoyevskom); members during Odoyevsky's time included himself from 1833, (not including his student visits), I. Aksakov, VePtman, Katkov, A. N. Ostrovsky, Tyutchev, L. N. and A. K. Tolstoy, Turgenev, Botkin, Fet, DaP, M. Ye. Saltykov, A. N. and A. A. Maykov and V. A. Sollogub (honorary members included Pogodin, Vyazemsky, Glinka and Karolina Pavlova). P. N. Sakulin wrote an article on the Obshchestvo (inPechafi revolyutsiya (1927) kn. 7). Pogodin, 'Vospominaniye . . . ' , p. 321. Odoyevsky's early 'encyclopedism' can be gauged from Zamotin's summary (Zamotin (1913) pp. 397-8, n. 1) of the contents of his student notebooks of 1818-21. The memoirist Yu. ArnoPd (Vospominaniya, vyp. II (Moscow, 1892) p. 200) later wrote that Odoyevsky not only read, but spoke and wrote fluently: French, German, Italian, English and Spanish and knew Old Slavonic, Latin and Greek. P. A. Pletnyov is on record as disputing Odoyevsky's knowledge of Latin (Perepiska Ya. K. Grota s P. A. Pletnyovym, 3 vols. (St Petersburg, 1896) vol. I, p. 224). Zamotin (1913) p. 384. SeeSakulin,I,l,pp.301and245. On Odoyevsky-Chatsky see, for example, Lezin, op. tit., p. 55 and Zamotin (1913) pp. 391-2; also N. F. Sumtsov, Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky (Khar'kov, 1884) p. 7; and P. Mizinov, in his book Istoriya i poeziya (Moscow, 1900) pp. 490-1 ('Chatsky - that's Odoyevsky in his younger years'). See also Sakulin's comments (I, 1, pp. 244-5). We deal with the respective writing of Gore ot uma and Odoyevsky's Dni dosad in the Griboyedov section of Chapter Six. V. K. Kyukhel'beker, however, in 1833 (Puteshestviye, dnevnik, stat'i, Leningrad, 1979), wondered whether Odoyevsky had 'transformed' (p. 221)'. Semyon Yegorovich Raich (1792-1855) was a member of the Union of Welfare until 1821, a poet and a specialist in classical and Italian poetry (the translator ofVirgil and Tasso). A. I. Koshelev, 'Zapiski', quoted from VFO, Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (Moscow, 1982) p. 327. Ibid., p. 326; Koshelev continues: 'Our main work consisted of the classification, reading and inventory of ancient newspaper columns. Clearly we did not find such an occupation particularly alluring. However, the bosses were very reasonable: they didn't demand too much work from us.' Ibid:, p. 327; Sakulin, 1,1, p. 104. Pogodin, 'Vospominaniye .. .', p. 323. See also K. A. Polevoy, Zapiski (St Petersburg, 1888) pp. 100-1. D. Yazykov, Knyaz' VladimirFyodorovich Odoyevsky (Moscow, 1903) p. 11; see also A. P. Pyatkovsky, Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky (St Petersburg, 1880) p. 20.

294 40

41 42

43

44 45 46. 47 48

49

50 51 52

Notes P. A. Mukhanov, attempting to intercede with Bulgarin to smooth matters over, wrote to him of Odoyevsky in February 1825: 'Odoyevsky (Prince VI. Fyod.) is a young man who loves scholarship of all types indiscriminately - philosophy, literature, medicine and figured-bass; he got an itchy hand early on - something possessed him - and he started to write and that's why you often find a skull and veins in his stories ['chasto v yego povestyakh govoritsya o cherepe i zhilakh']: Russkaya starina, IV, 2 (1888) p. 591. I. I. Panayev, Literaturnyye vospominaniya (Leningrad, 1950) p. 93. This relationship is not to be confused with the fact that another aunt of Odoyevsky's, Varvara Aleksandrovna Odoyevskaya, had earlier married another Lanskoy (Dmitriy Sergeyevich, 1767-1833, a prominent political figure in the reign of Alexander I and the early Nikolaevan era); further confusion may be created by the fact that both women appear to have died in 1844 or 1845 (although Alekseyev, op. tit., p. 356, puts the death of Varvara Ivanovna as 1848). See Appendix I. In the Odoyevsky archive (fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101, 17) is a note written by Varvara Ivanovna Lanskaya, dated 27 March 1826, stating that Ol'ga Stepanovna announces that she will marry Vladimir Odoyevsky. VFO, fond 539, Opis 2, no. 1473. A. S. Griboyedov v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (Moscow, 1980) p. 365. D. V. Venevitinov, Stikhotvofeniya. Proza (Moscow, 1980) pp. 371-2. The Odoyevskys lived for some years in a wing of the Lanskoy residence in St Petersburg. 'Deti prosyat kashi, zhena - ne skazhu', quoted from ibid., p. 378. Russkaya starina (1904) p. 202. Odoyevsky wrote to Verstovsky in December 1826 expressing his strong desire to become a father, his avoidance of literati and journals (in the case of the latter: 'blagodarya zhene . . . , ibo ona izvodit ikh na zavivki'); in 1831 he was still hoping for children ('eto yeshcho budet s vremenem') - VFO,Muz.-lit. naslediye (Moscow, 1956) pp. 489, 493. A. L. Vaynshteyn and V. P. Pavlova, 'Dekabristy i salon Laval' ', in Literaturnoye naslediye dekabristov (Leningrad, 1975) pp. 190-1. Aleksandra Grigor'evna Laval' was the wife of Count Jean-Franqois Lavalle, a Frenchman in the Tsarist service. Their salon was one of the high spots of Petersburg society. Their elder daughter, Yekaterina Ivanovna, was the famous Decembrist wife, Trubetskaya. Quoted from S. Ye. Tsypin, 'Odoyevsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich', in Materialypo istorii russkoy detskoy literatuty {1750-1855), vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1927) p. 158. See Sakulin, I, 2, p. 27. French original: Considerant que la vie est trop courte pour souffrir, que d'ailleurs, les devoirs de service et de position sociale nous imposent des obligations qui exigent pour leur accomplissement le calme pendant le jour et le repos pendant la nuit; que de plus des alterations domestiques

The Introduction

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parvenues de l'etat d'une simple question de la vie interieure jusqu'a l'etat de scenes bruyantes, ne peuvent a un certain age que jeter sur nous un ridicule ineffaceable, je me suis donne la parole d'honneur, que si encore une fois tous mes efforts pour prevenir des scenes pareilles seront infructueux, et que ma femme se permettra encore une fois cette espece de monomanie qui la fait courir une moitie de la nuit par toute la maison pieds nus et en chemise et reveiller tous les gens de la maison ainsi que les voisins par ses cris et imprecations en m'empechant de travailler le jour et de me reposer la nuit apres les fatigues de la journee - je me suis, dis-je, donne la parole d'honneur, sur que je suis de la justice de mes pretentions au calme et a la tranquillite domestique, - de decamper de la maison dans le courant de 24 heures apres une scene pareille, laissant ma femme pleine maitresse de logis, et de me transporter dans quelque endroit que cela soit ou je pouvrais vaquer tranquillement aux occupations qui me sont imposes par mon etat social, en abjurant la faiblesse impardonnable qui jusqu'a present me faisait sacrifier mes devoirs a la monomanie de ma femme, qui ne fait qu'empirer a raison de cette meme faiblesse. - Une fois sorti de la maison, cela sera pour n'y rentier jamais. Ce 5 Octobre 1840. SPb. Kn. W. Odoewsky

53

54 55 56 57 58 59

VFO, fond 539, Opis 2, no. 138. In another letter in the same file, replying to an undated letter from Ol'ga Stepanovna, Odoyevsky tells her that to have written what she wrote, 'il faut que tu sois reellement malade. La raillerie est dans la nature des choses'. He goes on to speak of her 'chagrin', and to complain of her making common cause with 'ce vieillard-ci haut place' who intrigues against Odoyevsky: 'tu rejettes mon pardon.. . . Je ne le reprends pas, mais je le porterai devant le trone de l'Eternel, ou j'arriverai plutot que tu ne le pense, chere amie, et ou je t'attendrai, pour te le remettre. Ton ami!' In pencil is added 'tes dedains et ta raillerie - j'en ai assez'. Full details of Odoyevsky's career and posts held are contained in his Formulyarnyy spisok - the official record - held in the archive: VFO, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101,3; this also includes a record of leave granted from 1832 to 1868. See also Zamotin (1913), pp. 589-90. Further details of Odoyevsky's work on the scientific and technical commitees may be found in V. S. Virginsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky. Yestestvennonauchnyye vzglyady, 1804-1869 (Moscow, 1975). Russkaya starina, 5 (1901) p. 406. Odoyevsky to Verstovsky, in VFO, Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 492. Kossakovskaya: quoted from Vaynshteyn and Pavlova, 'Dekabristy i salon Laval' ', p. 192. Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1878) p. 56. Perepiska Ya. K. Grota. . ., vol. I, pp. 27, 146-7. Russkaya starina, 1 (1904) p. 160. French original: Quelquefois on me demande: pourquoi je travaille d'une maniere si assidue, puisque enfin on s'est persuade que je ne suis pas ambitieux:

296

Notes Messieurs et Mesdames, je le fais: 1° a cause d'une chose qui vous est parfaitement inconnue et qui s'appelle conscience et 2° pour n'avoir besoin de personne de vous. (VFO, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 95, p. 30)

60 Quoted from 'Siluet', p. 62. 61 N. P. Barsukov, Zhizn* i trudy M. P. Pogodina, 11 vols. (St Petersburg, 1888-1910) vol. Ill, pp. 328-9 (also quoted in Yu. D. Levin, Trizhiznennaya slava VaPtera Skotta v Rossii', in Epokha romantizma (Leningrad, 1975) p. 21). 62 'Siluet', p. 81. 63 See Kireyevsky's letter to Odoyevsky, January 1832 (Russkaya starina, 4 (1904) pp. 215-16). Details of the application for 'Severnyy zriteP ' are in VFO, fond 539, Opis 2, no. 50. 64 Pushkin is linked with a curious incident involving Odoyevsky's stepfather, Pavel Sechenov (at that time police chief in Saransk). Sechenov helped a young lady named Varvara Ivanovna Kravkova to run away from home, following her parents' rejection of a proposal from a Georgian prince, with the intention of entering a nunnery; the parents brought kidnapping charges against him. Sechenov brought Odoyevsky's name (much to his annoyance) into the affair, when petitioning in Simbirsk. The other main participant, the then governor of Simbirsk (one A. M. Zagryazhsky), happened to be a relative of Natal'ya Pushkina. As Pushkin was to visit Simbirsk, Odoyevsky asked him to check what was going on; Pushkin duly reported, in his letter to Odoyevsky of 30 October 1833, from Boldino: I now report to Your Highness that, having been in Simbirsk, I have seen the modest anchoress [skromnuyu otsheVnitsu] of whom we spoke before my departure. She's not bad [Nedurna]. It seems that the Governor protects her much more zealously than does the Governor's wife. That was all that I was able to note. Her case; seemingly, is finished. (PerepiskaA. S. Pushkina v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1982) p. 429) Things had looked ominous for Sechenov for some time, but were eventually straightened out. For an account of this affair, see the section 'Videl ya skromnuyu otshePnitsu' (pp. 183-91) of M. A. Tur'yan's article, 'Iz istorii vzaimootnosheniy Pushkina i V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, vol. XI (Leningrad, 1983) pp. 174-91. 65 Hippolyte Auger, Memoires dAuger (1810-1859) (Paris, 1891) p. 503. 66 Perepiska Ya. K. Grota . . . , vol. I, p. 547. Odoyevsky took treatment in 1842 from a famous German doctor, Professor Schenlein (Sakulin, I, 1, p. 448, n. 2). 67 'Zapisnaya knizhka', in 'Siluet', pp. 64-5. The passage is, of course, more effective in full; chelovecheskaya odezhda is a favourite phrase of Odoyevsky's, the significance of which will be more apparent in subsequent chapters. V. Gippius took these notes as the starting point for his article '"Uzkiy put'". Kn. V. F. Odoyevsky i romantizm', Russkaya mysl\ 12 (1914) pp. 1-26.

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68 The contract for the publication of Odoyevsky's 1844 Sochineniya, in a tirazh of 1200 copies, is in VFO, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101, 5. 69 V. A. Sollogub, Vospominaniya (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931) p. 307. Panayev, in his Literaturnyye vospominaniya (pp. 92-3) describes a disastrous supper consisting only of home-made sosiski (see the Sobolevsky section to Chapter Six of the present study). 70 Quoted from S. Engel, 'V. F. Odoyevsky - "doktor kukhnologii"', Obshchestvennoye pitaniye, 2 (1959) pp. 62-3. 71 See Krayevsky's letters to Odoyevsky, 1844 and 1846, Russkaya starina, 6 (1904) pp. 583-4. On the subject of Odoyevsky's eccentricities, the following note appears in 'Iz zapisnoy knizhki "Russkogo arkhiva"', Russkiy arkhiv III (1903) pp. 671-2: Tor example he searched for a whole gamut of smells, on the supposition that fresh air consists of a confluence of seven different stinks; instead of a barometer he kept frogs in a jar with a short ladder; in the Rumyantsev Museum he bred special worms which ate the so-called book-worm; he fed his friends on chemically prepared edibles/ 72 This Baltic country residence (myza) was bought for 4000 roubles from the Burgomaster of Vyborg; Grot considered this far too much 'za dryannuyu myzu'; according to Pletnyov, Odoyevsky thought it cheap by Russian standards (Perepiska Ya. K. Grota. . . , vol. II, pp. 824—7; they further discuss this purchase on p. 767; and in vol. Ill, pp. 58 and 94). 73 'Pis'mo knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo k priyatelyu-pomeshchiku', Russkiy arkhiv 1 (1879) pp. 525-6. This letter is particularly revealing of Odoyevsky's frame of mind at this period on a number of issues. 74 Perepiska Ya. K. Grota... , vol. I, p. 245. 75 Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 420. 76 Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 139. 77 See 'Zapisnaya knizhka', in 'Siluet', pp. 66-8. 78 P. A. Pletnyov, Sochineniya i perepiska, 3 vols. (St Petersburg, 1885) vol. III. pp. 640-1. 79 Pogodin, Vpamyat' o knyaze Vladimire Fyodoroviche Odoyevskom (Moscow, 1869); this passage is omitted from the shortened version reprinted in Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena. 80 Sollogub, Vospominaniya, p. 623. 81 Kireyevsky to Odoyevsky, 10 Apr. 1854, Russkaya starina, 4 (1904) p. 217. 82 Lenz, Triklyucheniya liflyandtsa v Peterburge', I, p. 441. 83 ArnoPd, Vospominaniya, vyp. 2, pp. 220, 223-4. As Arnol'd appears to think the Odoyevskys were married in '1835 (or 1834?)', he may not be the most reliable of witnesses; he also placed Odoyevsky's gatherings on 'Mondays' (p. 198) - whereas others refer to 'Saturdays'. For a hostile, perhaps scurrilous, look at the Lanksoys, see Pyotr Dolgorukov's article 'Ministr S. S. Lanskoy', in his emigre Paris newspaper, Budushchnost' {UAvenir), no. 1 (15 Sept. 1860) pp. 6-8 (in which he attacks V. F. Odoyevsky too, see Chapter Six, and claims that Varvara Ivanovna Odoyevskaya - Lanskoy's wife - was a bogataya nevesta, p. 6). 84 Perepiska Ya. K. Grota... , vol. Ill, p. 476. 85 Ibid., vol. I, p. 108.

298

Notes

86 Serovy, Aleksandr Nikolayevich i Valentin Aleksandrovich: Vospominaniy a V S. Serovoy (St Petersburg, 1914) p. 42. Serova's comment on Odoyevskaya's size would appear to be born out by the cartoon on p. 149 ofLiteratumoyenasledstvo, 22-4 (1935). 87 Auger, Memoires d'Auger, p. 502. 88 V. S. Aksakova wrote to K. S. Aksakov beginning of December 1839 Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 56 (Moscow, 1950) p. 136: 'Kak-to Belinkskogo predstavlyali knyagine Adoyevskoy [sic] - ty mozhesh> sebe voobrazif yego na rautakh u Adoyev[skikh]\ We deal with Belinsky at the Odoyevskys in Chapter Six. 'Zachem ty pisal k etoy babe?' (N. A. Nekrasov, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy ipisem, vol. X (Moscow, 1952) p. 281). 89 V. I. Sakharov, 'O zhizni i tvoreniyakh V. F. Odoyevskogo', in VFO, Sochineniya, vol. I (Moscow, 1981) p. 13. 90 I. I. Sreznevsky, Putevyye pis'ma Izmaila Ivanovicha Sreznevskogo iz slavyanskikh zemeV 1839-1842 (St Petersburg, 1895) pp. 28-9. 91 Panayev, Literatumyye vospominaniy a, p. 91. Descriptions of Odoyevsky's study, at various periods and places of residence, its contents of books, folios, scientific and medical equipment etc. can be found in reminiscences by Pogodin, Panayev and Pyatkovsky (see, for example, VFO, Posledniy kvartetBetkhovena, pp. 323-4,335 and 373). 92 Pyatkovsky (1880) p. 39 (excerpts from a number of the memoirs quoted here are also to be found in Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena, and/or in 'Siluet', pp. 25-35). 93 Panayev, Literatumyye vospominaniy a, pp. 90-1; Odoyevsky also inspired great awe in Panayev's friend, S. N. Dirin (1814-39), who 'carried his adolescent, servile fear of Odoyevsky to the greave' (p. 91) - Panayev managed to overcome the feeling. 94 ArnoPd, Vospominaniy a, p. 199 (and 'Siluet', pp. 27-8). 95 Quoted by Lezin, op.tit.,p. 21 (also 'Siluet', p. 25). 96 V. P. Titov, Russkiy arkhiv II, 5 (1895) p. 37; Timiryazev, quoted by Pyatkovsky (1880) p. 54; Betsky, quoted in Barsukov, op. cit.,\o\. VI, p. 273. 97 A. Ya. Panayeva, Vospominaniya (Moscow, 1956) p. 85; Pyatkovsky (1880), p. 27. 98 Titov, in Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1895) pp. 36-7 (not a surprising tone - in a letter to the Tsar enclosing Odoyevsky's 'Grazhdanskiye zavety'); Pogodin and Sollogub, in their commemorative speeches (published in V pamyat} oknyaze V F. Odoyevskom - see, for example, Sollogub in Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena, p. 343). Also, however, Pyatkovsky in his 1880 study (p. 59); and Lezin (in 1907) p. 54. Similarly, V. A. Insarsky, 'Obshchestvo poseshcheniya bednykh', Russkiy arkhiv (1869) pp. 1000-46, wrote of Odoyevsky's hard work, 'krotost' i dobrota' and 'angePskaya lichnost' \ 99 Sollogub, Vospominaniya, p. 307. 100 Pyatkovsky (1880) p. 28; Grigorovich, quoted from Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena, p. 370; Panayev, Literatumyye vospominanya, p. 91. On gullibility, Pletnyov informs Grot: 'Odoyevsky's learned guests only really know in which box the Prince keeps which sort of cigars' (Perepiska Ya. K. Grota. .. , vol. I, p. 252). 101 See Ya P. Polonsky, 'Iz vospominaniy (otryvok)', in Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena, pp. 371-2.

The Introduction

299

102 Panayev, Literaturnyye vospominaniya, p. 89. 103 ArnoPd, Vospominaniya, p. 200 (his memoirs are also to be found excerpted in N. L. Brodsky (ed.), Literaturnyye salony i kruzhki: pervaya polovina XIX veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930) pp. 447-65); see also Panayev, Literaturnyye vospominaniya, especially pp. 93-4. 104 Arnol'd, Vospominaniya, p. 219; Panayeva, Vospominaniya, p. 85; Panayev, Literaturnnye vospominaniya, pp. 94-5. It should be noted, however, that Odoyevsky was still on sufficiently good terms with Panayev to give 'permission', in 1861, for publication of the memoirs concerning himself ('Dnevnik', 1 Feb. 1861, p. 126). 105 ArnoPd Vospominaniya, p. 219. 106 Quoted from commentary to Panayev, Literaturnyye vospominaniya, p. 377. 107 A. I. Gertsen, Sobraniye sochineniy v tridtsati tomakh, vol. XXII, p. 99. Herzen had, however, commented enthusiastically on Odoyevsky's Sebastiyan Bakh in 1835 {ibid., vol. XXI pp. 59-60; Letopis' zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena 1812-1850, p. 84). 108 Golitsyn: quoted from Sakharov, 'O zhizni i tvoreniyakh . . .', p. 27; K. A. Polevoy, Zapiski, p. 92. 109 Aleksandr Nikitenko, The Diary ofa Russian Censor (Amherst, 1975) pp. 310-11. 110 A. Fet, Mot vospominaniya, 1848-1889, 2 parts (Moscow, 1890) pp. 427-9. 111 Pyatkovsky (1880) p. 42. 112 'Iz bumag . . . ' , Russkiy arkhiv, I (1874) p. 333. 113 Putyata, in Russkiy arkhiv I (1874) p. 258; Sakulin (I, 1, p. 223, n. 1) writes that Odoyevsky frequently had recourse to moneylenders in the 1820s and 1830s. According to the Formulyarnyy spisok (dated Dec. 1868) Odoyevsky's eventual salary amounted to 6000 roubles (half of which was salary and half accommodation allowance); detail of the Odoyevsky estates is also given (VFO, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101, 3; no. 95 also includes details of Odoyevsky's loss of 5000 silver roubles in a Fire Insurance Company). Tur'yan (1983) p. 187 provides details of Odoyevsky's financial affairs in the 1830s, his business relations with his stepfather, the mortgaging of estates and the pawning of OPga Stepanovna's diamonds and silver. 114 See, for example, 'Dnevnik' for 12 Mar. 1861, p. 131 (expressing an intention to sell his literary works again 'for whatever I can get'); and 19 Dec. 1866, p. 204 (living expenses are calculated by his wife to be 280 roubles a month, 'and I can give her only 200 for this'). 115 Quoted by Sakharov, 'O zhizni i tvoreniyakh . . . ' , p. 27. 116 These travel notes are to be found in VFO, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 47. 117 'Dnevnik', 22 June 1861, p. 136; ibid., 19 Nov. 1861, p. 142. A detailed account of Odoyevsky's 25 years of work as an 'undeservedly forgotten' librarian has recently been published: O. D. Golubyova's essay (pp. 137-227), in O. D. Golubyova and A. L. Gol'dberg, V. I SoboVshchikov. V. F. Odoyevsky (Moscow, 1983). 118 'Dnevnik', 11 Aug. 1866, p. 216 (and ibid., 28 Aug., pp. 218-19). See also K. P. Pobedonostsev, in V pamyaf. . . , pp. 80—1. He wrote un-

300

119 120 121 122 123 124

Notes published legal articles, interested himself in prison reform and left over 40 thick books of notes on senatorial cases (A. I. Koshelev, Zapiski (1812-1883 gody) (Berlin, 1884) pp. 194-5, n.). V. I. Sakharov, 'Evolyutsiya tvorcheskogo oblika V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Vremya i sud'by russkikh pisateley (Moscow, 1981) p. 44. Pyatkovsky (1880) p. 51. 'Siluet', pp. 94-5. Koshelev, Zapiski (1812-1883 gody), p. 195. 'Grazhdanskiye zavety knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1895) pp. 37-9. 'Dnevnik', pp. 252-3.

Chapter One, The Writer 1 V. F. Odoyevsky archive, fond 539, Opis 2, no. 18. 2 See the Bibliography for these details. On Jean de La Bruyere (1639-96) and his Les Caracteres ou les moeurs de ce siecle (1687) as an early influence on Odoyevsky, see Sakulin I, 1, pp. 80-3. The contents of Odoyevsky's student notebooks of 1818-21 are summarized by I. I. Zamotin in his Romantizm dvadtsatykh godov XIX stoletiya v russkoy literature, vol. II (St Petersburg, 1913) pp. 397-8, n. 3 The manuscript oVDnevnik student^ is in fond 539, Opis 1, no. 95, pp. 56-71; see Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 93-8 for the most extensive summary; also Zamotin (1913) pp. 384-8. Sakulin intended to publish the work in an appendix, but his project was never completed. 4 Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 95. See also the following passage (quoted from Zamotin (1913) pp. 384-5): Abandoned morally to myself, I renounced the material world and created for myself another beautiful world in which I surrounded myself with everything that my imagination could conceive of that was most precious - all this I conceived of somewhere, I don't know, it seemed to me that it awaited me, I strove spiritually towards this ideal and dreamed blissfully - but the morose essence of things (ugryumaya sushchestvennosf) destroyed my enchantment and I became more unhappy than before, for the beautiful ideal of bliss had become as though of the past, irretrievable . . . 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

M. S. Shtern, '"Dnevnik studenta" V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Khudozhestvennyy metod i tvorcheskaya indwiduaVnosf (Tomsk, 1978) p. 19. Ibid., pp. 17-18. Ibid.,pA9. Quoted from Zamotin (1913) p. 385. See V. G. Belinsky, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy, vol. VIII (Moscow, 1955) pp. 300-4; reprinted in Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (Moscow, 1982) pp. 348-54. Belinsky, by embedding these two apologues in his review, is thus responsible for the only subsequent reprintings of any of Odoyevsky's six Mnemozina apologues. 'Yeshcho dva apologa: I. Novyy demon', Mnemozina, IV (Moscow, 1825) pp. 35-41. Ibid., p. 35. 'Yeshcho dva apologa: II. Moya upravitel'nitsa', ibid., pp. 42-8. See Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 190-2. Belinsky, Pol. sob. sock., vol. VIII, p. 300 (the work was spelt 'Yelladiy' in the original publication; modern references tend to use 'Elladiy'). The story was in Mnemozina, II (1824) pp. 94-135. Belinsky, Pol. sob. soch., vol. VIII, p. 300. The 'Luzhnitskiy starets' was M. T. Kachenovsky, professor of aesthetic theory and archeology, in whose journal (Vestnik Yevropy), Odoyevsky published his stories (see Bibliography I: F, 1822-3).

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Notes

15 B. T. Udodov refers to Lermontov's early dramatic work Strannyy chelovek of 1831 (quoting Eykhenbaum's view of its similarities with Odoyevsky's story as 'not a coincidence'); he sees Griboyedov's Chatsky as the last of the 'strange' men, but not quite a 'superfluous' one, with a key intermediary being the protagonist of Venevitinov's unfinished Vladimir Parensky\ Pushkin had seen Onegin as 'above all, of the "strange man" type' (B. T. Udodov, M. Yu. Lermontov: khudozhestvennaya individuaVnosf i tvorcheskiye protsessy (Voronezh, 1973) pp. 519-25). 16 Vestnik Yevropy, 17 (1823) p. 48. 17 Ibid., 18 (1823) p. 118. 18 Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 208, 200 (he surveys the 'Arist' works on pp. 194-209). 19 On Bobok, see note 228 to Chapter Six; also the notes to vol. 21 of Dostoyevsky, Pol. sob. sock. (Leningrad, 1980) p. 408. Odoyevsky's works of this period are briefly described by Sakulin (see I, 1). Many of them, including some already discussed above and others mentioned below, are surveyed in two articles by N. M. Mikhaylovskaya: 'Nravopisatel'nyye povesti V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Voprosy istorii i teorii literatury, vyp. VI (Chelyabinsk, 1970) pp. 3-16, and 'Prosvetitel'skiy realizm V. F. Odoyevskogo 20-kh godov XIX veka (o proze pisatelya)', in Problemy metoda i stilya (Chelyabinsk, 1976) pp. 117-31. 20 For a bibliographical checklist (no doubt incomplete) of pseudonyms (and initials) employed by Odoyevsky, see I. F. Masanov's Slovak psevdonimov russkikh pisateley . . ., 4 vols (Moscow, 1956-60). 21 Yevgeniya Khin, 'V. F. Odoyevsky', in VFO, Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1959) p. 14. 22 Zamotin (1913), p. 410 (Tieck-Wackenroder's Phantasien ilber die Kunst, Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen and Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen are mentioned). 23 See B. A. Lezin, Ocherki iz zhizni i literaturnoy deyateVnosti kn. V F. Odoyevskogo (Khar'kov, 1907) pp. 52-3. 24 A scene of a play entitled 'Stanislav, ili den' bedstviya i blazhenstva' was written in the first half of the 1820s (i.e. before 'Bruno'); see M. I. Medovoy, 'Knyazhninskiye motivy v neizvestnoy p'ese V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Problemy izucheniya russkoy literatury XVIII veka, vyp. 2 (Leningrad, 1976) pp. 85-92. 25 This story has been reprinted in Vzglyad skvoz' stoletiya: russkaya fantastika XVIII i pervoy poloviny XIX veka (Moscow, 1977) pp. 217-22. Comets were topical in Europe in the mid 1820s, with the expected arrival of a comet in 1832 (Sakulin, I, 1, p. 187; on p. 189, n.l, Sakulin compares the ending of this story to Venevitinov's dialogue Anaksagor, in which Plato speaks of an ancient Egyptian prophecy of the sun swallowing the earth, thus achieving harmony in the universe). 26 R. V. lezuitova, 'Svetskaya povest'', in Russkaya povest'XIX veka: istoriya i problematika zhanra (Leningrad, 1973) p. 170. 27 The full contents of Pyostryye skazki are given in Bibliography I:E (i), together with reprintings of such stories from this cycle as have been reprinted. Full contents of Russkiye nochi are given in Bibliography I:E (ii). Stories which were given separate prior publication are listed chronologically along with other works, in Bibliography I:F,

Chapter One, The Writer 28 29 30

31 32 33 34

35

36 37 38 39

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O. Mandelstam, The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, ed. Jane Gary Harris (Ann Arbor, 1979)p. 131 ('On the Nature of the Word'). Quoted from V. I. Sakharov, 'Evolyutsiya tvorcheskogo oblika V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Vremya isud'by russkikhpisateley (Moscow, 1981) p. 26. (Moskovskiy telegraf, 8 (1833) pp. 572-82; Severnayapchela (1833) no. 104) quoted by Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 32-4 and 34-5; Sakulin gives an account of press and other comments (including those of Odoyevsky's mother) on Pyostryye skazki on pp. 3 2-7. P. A. Vyazemsky, 'Iz pisem knyazya Vyazemskogo k Zhukovskomu', Russkiy arkhiv, 3 (1900) p. 373. Sakulin, 1,2, pp. 36-7. Sakharov, 'Evolyutsiya tvorcheskogo oblika . ..', p. 26. Pyostryye skazki s krasnym slovtsom, sobrannyye Irineyem Modestovichem Gomozeykoyu... (St Petersburg, 1833); Odoyevsky's name does not appear in the book. Page references in the text are to this (the only) edition. I have chosen to use the spelling 'Gomozeyko'. The dictionary (consisting of words in the raw) seems to represent an invigorating quality here. Words in print, on the other hand, represent, according to the author of Kto sumasshedshiye} (purportedly Bezglasnyy) a 'sorrowful cemetery of all Russian thoughts' (Biblioteka dlya chteniya, vol. XIV (1836) p. 64). Cf. Odoyevsky's statement elsewhere: 'the library is the magnificent cemetery of Russian thoughts. . . . One grave people approach in a frenzy; from others there issues a light unbearable to the eye even in the day; but how many forgotten graves there are, how many truths are kept dark' (quoted from V. I. Sakharov, 'O zhizni i tvoreniyakh V. F. Odoyevskogo', Sochineniya,\o\. I (1981) p. 5). R. V. Iezuitova, 'Puti razvitiya romanticheskoy povesti', in Russkaya povest' XIX veka (Leningrad, 1973) p. 95, no. 57 {Pyostryye skazki are discussed on pp. 95-8). Ibid., p. 96. Norman W. Ingham, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Reception in Russia (Wiirzburg, 1974) p. 188. Sakulin informs us (I, 2, p. 30, n. 1) of a reference here to Swift in Odoyevsky's drafts. See Sakulin, I, 2, p. 370, n.2: the name 'Jocko' derives from a story by Charles Pougens of 1824 (jfocko, episode detache des Lettres inedites surVinstinct des animaux), of a female ape mistreated by the human she loved. Its vogue was such that it was turned into a two-act play in 1825 by Rochefort and Gabriel, called jfocko le Singe de Bresil. M. I. Medovoy adds further detail: this play, translated by R. Zotov, was a great success in Moscow running from 1827 to the mid 1830s; the real target of Odoyevsky's parodic sally, however, is likely to have been Petrus Borel (1809-59), the most extreme member of the bousingos and self-styled lycanthrope; cf. Odoyevsky's criticism oiVecole frenetique in O vrazhde k prosveshcheniyu (1836) and his attack on the Hobbesian view of man in his natural habitat as a wolf (M. I. Medovoy, 'Puti razvitiya filosofskoy prozy V. F. Odoyevskogo v seredine 1820-1840-kh godov', kandidatskaya dissertatsiya (Leningrad, 1971) pp. 108-11). PogorePsky's Puteshestviye v dilizhanse (1828) is also seen as an imitation of Jocko (see Sakulin, I, 2, p. 370, n. 2, and Charles E. Passage, The Russian Hoffmannists (The Hague, 1963) p. 56, n. 7).

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Notes Belinsky, Pol. sob. sock., vol. VIII, p. 314; M. A. Tur'yan, '"Igosha" V. F. Odoyevskogo (k probleme fol'klorizma)', Russkaya literatura, 1 (1977) pp. 132-6 (the only article thus far devoted to a single tale from Pyostryye skazki). Soch. (1844) vol. Ill, p. 56 (see Tur'yan, op. cit.). 'Mne vyso kazhetsya, chto ya pred yashchikom s kuklami; glyazhu kak dvizhutsya peredo mnoyu chelovechki i loshadki; chasto sprashivayu sebya, ne obman li eto opticheskiy; igrayu s nimi, ili, luchshe skazat', mnoyu igrayut, kak kukloyu; inogda zabyvshis' skhvachu soseda za derevyannuyu ruku i tut opomnyus' s uzhasom' (Rozhalin's translation). This passage can be found on p. 74 of Catherine Flutter's English translation: Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings (New York: Signet Classics, 1962). The epigraphs of Odoyevsky and no doubt of other romantic writers, however, are not infrequently misquotations, half-remembered attributions, and even inventions in the supposed spirit of the original. Indeed, the better-annotated editions confirm this; in some instances (e.g. epigraphs to Silfida and to Zhivoy mertvets) they are complete invention. The repetition of the epigraph as epilogue in the given instance (Pyostryye skazki, p. 156) is effected with a slight inversion of the first phrase: 'Mne vsyo kazhetsya . ..' becomes " . . . I vzyo mne kazhetsya', thus rubbing in the repetition ('and it still seems to me . . . ' ) . This effect is increased in the 1844 version (Soch., vol. Ill, p. 221), in which the repetition takes the form of a final paragraph (without quotation marks), rather than an epilogue. Medovoy, Tuti razvitiya . . .', p. 10. A. B. Botnikova (E. 71 A. Gofman i russkaya literatura, Voronezh, 1977) sees 'Retorta' as grotesque used for moral allegorical reasons (p. 79) and the cycle as rationalistic moralizing (p. 82). Yevgeniya Khin (in VFO, Povesti i rasskazy, 1959) stresses the use of Aesopian language to make 'sharp and true observations' in protest against the 'stagnation and immobility in social life' (p. 16). lezuitova (Tuti razvitiya romanticheskoy povesti') sees the fantastic in Pyostryye skazki as a device put to social purposes, 'one of the clearest displays of satirical tendencies in the development of romantic prose' (p. 95). A. N. Nikolyukin, 'K tipologii romanticheskoy povesti', in K istorii russkogo romantizma (Moscow, 1973) p. 275. lezuitova, 'Puti razvitiya romanticheskoy povesti', pp. 97-8 (such ambiguity is seen as the standard effect of the employment of romantic irony - ibid., p. 86); cf. Lilian R. Furst's essay 'Romantic Irony and Narrative Stance', in her book The Contours of European Romanticism (London, 1979). Sakulin, I, 2, p. 37; he points out Odoyevsky's fondness for the name 'Iriney' (cf. Dyadya Iriney ofSeTskoye chteniye, and the children's tales of Dedushka Iriney) - ibid., p. 23, n. 3. Walter R. Bliss Jr reads the name as 'Irony, son of Modesty, Man': 'Toward a Definition of National Culture: Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1804-1869)' (senior thesis, Princeton University, 1966, p. 34).

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48 V. I. Skaharov, 'E. T. A. Gofman i V. F. Odoyevsky', in the collection Khudozhestvennyy mir E. T. A. Gofmana (Moscow, 1982) p. 175. 49 Sakharov, 'Evolyutsiya tvorcheskogo oblika . . .', pp. 27-8. 50 'Otryvki iz Pyostrykh skazok', Soch. (1844) vol. Ill, pp. 169-70. I am currently preparing an edition (the first since 1833) of Pyostryye skazki for the Durham Modern Languages Series. 51 Sakulin, I, 2, p. 22 (on Gomozeyko, pp. 22ff.). 52 Sakulin (ibid., pp. 38-47) quotes from and summarizes this projected work. 53 First published in 1834 as 'Otryvok iz zapisok Irineya Modestovicha Gomozeyki', signed 'V. Bezglasnyy'; it was retitled for the 1844 Sochineniya (Gomozeyko and Bezglasnyy being dropped), dedicated to D. V. Putyata, who had helped Odoyevsky locate the story (Odoyevsky frequently forgot stories once they were published, as is evidenced from omissions in the 1844 works), with the erroneous date of 1835 added. 54 See Sakulin, I, 2, p. 43, n. 1: Rezhensk must allude to Ryazan' province, where the maternal estate was located; the second husband, Pavel Sechenov, was police chief in Saransk (Penzensk province) and town governor of Simbirsk. See also note 64 (above) to Introduction. 55 Ibid., p. 48. 56 Ibid., p. 50. 57 On this, see ibid., pp. 202-14. Dom sumasshedshikh was the title of a verse pamphlet by A. F. Voyeykov (1814, revised and expanded 1838); this work was 'continued' by Ye. P. Rostopchina's Dom sumasshedshikh v Moskve v 1858g. Both these works are included in the collection Epigramma i satira: iz istorii literaturnoy bor'by XlXveka (1800-1880), 2 vols., compiled by V. Orlov (Moscow-Lenningrad, 1931-2; reprinted Oxford, 1975). 58 VFO, O literature i iskusstve (Moscow, 1982) pp. 166-7 (this edition claims to reprint the original 1830 text of Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena). 59 'Sebastiyan Bakh', in ibid., pp. 169-70. 60 Ibid., p. 170. Further page references in the text are to this edition of the artistic stories, unless otherwise stated. 61 Wackenroder's Phantasien uber die Kunst was translated into Russian (attributed to Tieck) by Titov, MePgunov and Shevyryov and published in Moscow in 1826 (Sakulin I, 1, p. 156, n. 2; see also pp. 535-44). Mary Hurst Schubert considers that Wackenroder was not interested in the 'lives' of artists, but in 'the process of artistic creativity'; 'he sifted through the factual material available to him and selected one event or psychological moment, generally a period of crisis in the artist's creative life. He then examined and elaborated upon this crisis as a new and interesting element in his ever-widening collection of exempla concerning the creative process': see W. H. Wackenroder, Confessions and Fantasies (University Park, Penn., and London, 1971) p. 41. Comparisons between Wackenroder's and Odoyevsky's 'lives' have been touched on by Passage, Russian Hoffmannists, p. 98. 62 See Wackenroder, Confessions and Fantasies, pp. 131-5. 63 G. Bernandt, V. F. Odoyevsky i Betkhoven (Moscow, 1971) p. 18, n. 1. 64 The text of this story printed in VFO, O literature i iskusstve is not (as it

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Notes purports to be on p. 218) the original version; this may be found in Severnyye tstvety na 1832 god, the 'Literaturnyye pamyatniki' edition (Moscow, 1980) pp. 26-33 (to which page numbers refer). The original version included an epigraph from Roscoe's The Life and Pontificate of Leo X, a dedication to Khomyakov, and a much shorter introductory section, with the action of the story taking place in a Petersburg setting. On this story and Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (which appeared in the previous year's Severnyye tsvety), see also John Mersereau Jr, Baron Delvig's Northern Flowers 1825-1832 (Carbondale, 1967) pp. 172-7; Mersereau considers that these stories 'represent a somewhat unusual type of prose narrative for that period' (p. 172). Piranesi (1720-78) has commonly been seen as a forerunner of romanticism; Horace Walpole wrote of him: 'the sublime dreams of Piranesi, who seems to have conceived visions of Rome beyond what it boasted even in the meridian of its splendour. Savage as Salvator Rosa, fierce as Michael Angelo and exuberant as Rubens, he has imagined scenes that would startle geometry and exhaust the Indies to realise. He piles palaces on bridges and temples on palaces, and scales Heaven with mountains of edifices' i/inecdotes of Painting in England, vol. 4 (1765); quoted from Miranda Harvey, Piranesi: The Imaginary Views (New York, 1979) p. 7). Given that Piranesi was a student of Roman archeology, it is tempting to see in a number of his imaginary projects (following on from our discussion in Chapter Two arising from Frances Yates's The Art of Memory) grandiose mnemonic designs; Miranda Harvey (p. 9) writes of his fascination with 'the superstructures of ancient civilizations, a dream world peopled by the memories and artifacts of the longdead and the mocking spirits of paganism'. On the question of Italian improvisors, see Chapter Six, note 29. For more detail on this theme, including the identification of one Langenschwarz (a German poet-improvisor who performed in St Petersburg in 1832) as Odoyevsky's prototype, and other literary sources, see N. N. Petrunina, '"Yegipetskiye nochi" i russkaya povest' 1830-kh godov', in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, vol. VIII (Leningrad, 1978) pp. 38-41. For further comment, see L. A. Stepanov, 'Ob istochnikakh obraza improvizatora v "Yegipetskikh nochakh"', in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, vol. X (Leningrad, 1982) pp. 168-75 (quoting also P. N. Medvedev, Vlaboratoriipisatelya (Leningrad, 1971) pp. 105-6). The number 8, an 'Arabic aleph' and a Greek delta, followed by other letters, jump out and cavort (p. 149); cf. the collection of letters for 'censorship' in the prologue of Sinyavsky's Sud idyot {Fantasticheskiy mir AbramaTertsa (New York, 1967) p. 199). See Passage, RussianHoffmannists, pp. 101-2. See Sakulin, I, 2, p. 257, n. 1 (there are hints of a reflection in the story of his domestic situation, but too little is known of this for any profitable comment). Contemporary readers of 'Piranesi' apparently saw something of Khomyakov (to whom the story was originally dedicated) in Piranesi or in the storyteller (see the notes to VFO, O literature i iskusstve, p. 218, and to R. N (1975) p. 283). Odoyevsky himself drew attention to a link between 'Piranesi' and 'Betkhoven' in a note on the first page of the 1831 printing of'Piranesi'.

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70 Apart from 'Zhivopisets', these were 'Sirota' (1838) and 'Martingal' (1845). The cycle 'Zapiski grobovshchika' was designed to broaden the depiction of the various strata of Petersburg society. The idea appears to stem from Pushkin's Grobovshchik and the medical stories of one Doctor Harrison; Odoyevsky's undertaker, or coffinmaker, is, like Pushkin's, a German, is a former theology student and a failed sculptor (see the introduction to the cycle, reprinted in Soch. (1981) vol. II, pp. 361-2; also Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 135-46). 71 The svetskaya pavesf has not, as such, been accorded a great deal of attention in Western criticism (other than in the case of its supreme manifestation - Lermontov's Knyazhna Men). Other prominent examples of the genre (works by Odoyevsky apart) could be said to include Marlinsky's Ispytaniye, Sollogub's BoVshoy svet and perhaps Pushkin's Vystrel (or even Pikavaya dama)\ among further exponents of this type of story were A. Vel'tman, N. F. Pavlov, I. Panayev and O. Somov, plus a number of women writers - in particular Ye. P. Rostopchina and Karolina Pavlova. See on this topic R. V. Iezuitova, 'Svetskaya povest'', in Russkaya povest' XIX veka (Leningrad, 1973); and Barbara Heldt Monter's introduction to Karolina Pavlova, A Double Life (Ann Arbor, 1978) pp. i-xxii. John Mersereau Jr gives the genre some consideration in his recent study, Russian Romantic Fiction (Ann Arbor, 1983). 72 R. N. (1975) p. 45; this is particularly so in the reworked version of the text (1862; R. N. (1975) indicates the passages added in square brackets), when an introductory paragraph emphasizing the celebration of military victory was inserted. This story has been related to A. I. Odoyevsky's poem, Bal, published in Severnyye tstvety (Petersburg, 1830) along with Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena: see Ye. Khin's notes to VFO, Povesti i rasskazy (1959) p. 463; and Yu. G. Ushakov, 'Rasskazy-pamflety V. F. Odoyevskogo (problematika i ideynaya napravlennost')', in Voprosy russkoy literatury (Moscow, 1959) pp. 191-210. 73 R. N. (1975) pp. 48-53. This story was originally published (1834) as Nasmeshka myortvogo, in which version the girl's name was Mariya. 74 V. I. Sakharov's notes to Soch. (1981) vol. II, p. 347; see also Sakulin, I, 2, p. 102 (and I, 1, pp. 309-10). 75 Katya, Hi istoriya vospitannitsy (otryvok iz romana), Soch. (1981) vol. II, p. 46. Drafts for the continuation, however, suggest that Odoyevsky intended to turn Katya not into a victim, but into a ruthless otkupshchitsa-milionersha (see ibid., p. 348; and Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 133-5). 76 Iezuitova ('Svetskaya povest' ', p. 191) writes that 'in the romantic society tale we do not find a single work in which a character like Mimi becomes the main figure'; representatives of 'society' in the romantic tale, she claims, are usually 'characterised summarily, given in the mass'. Cf. Alan Menhennet's comment that, in the romantic novel generally, 'even the central hero or heroine usually lacks a distinct personality and is outwardly passive' (Menhennet, The Romantic Movement (London, 1981) pp. 153-4). 77 See Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 103-4, and Soch. (1981) vol. II, pp. 355-6. 78 'The domestic circle - for a woman is the terrain of honour and of sacred exploits' (Soch. (1981) vol. II, p. 258). A perceptive recent

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Notes analysis of this story reveals Odoyevsky's use of the word strannyy as a leitmotif for the ironic function of 'masking' and 'unmasking' in a complex narrative structure, self-consciously poised at a transitional point in the development of Russian fiction: Lewis Bagby, 'V. F. Odoevskij's "Knjazna Zizi"', Russian Literature, XVII-III (1 Apr. 1985), pp. 221-42. Soch. (1844) vol. Ill, p. 97 (gordost' smireniya! ) . See n. 229 to Chapter Six. Svidetel', in VFO, Pavesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1959) p. 333. Ibid., pp. 335 ('he had been physically some sort of premature infant and therefore was of very weak health'); p. 339. Oleg P. Ilyinsky ('Some Fundamental Problems of Russian Romanticism (based on V. F. Odoevskij's Prose)', Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1970) maintains (p. 143) that Odoyevsky in his society tales is primarily concerned not with psychological portraits but with material and detail corresponding to a definite system of thought (in his view, this comprises 'parallelisms', a single centre, hierarchy, secret power etc.). By 'parallelism', he means the development and repetition of plot lines, the interchanging of characters and names and the introduction of 'doubles' (ibid., p. iii). A number of examples of this type are quoted in Chapter Six. Ilyinsky (ibid., pp. 174-5) quotes that of Princess Zizi and Tolstoy's Princess Mary and claims that female portraits in nineteenth-century Russian literature all derive from the romantics. Sakulin, I, 2, p. 125. Ibid., pp. 91—4; no other stories of this cycle were completed, but one unfinished work 'Yantina' is summarized by Sakulin on pp. 94-8. These stories were to have explored various aspects of the phenomenon of 'possession' (oderzhimost'); this emanation, incidentally, is the opposite of that depicted in Skazka o myortvom tele, neizvestno komu prinadlezhashchemu. Ibid., p. 90. See Sakharov, 'E. T. A. Gofman i V. F. Odoyevsky', pp. 179-80, who claims this as an explanation for the 'influence' of Hoffmann upon Odoyevsky alleged by a number of critics; he then outlines differences which he perceives in their respective approaches to the fantastic (pp. 18Iff.). The passage on sylphs quoted in 'Letter IIP of SiVfida (p. 112) is reasonably close to the following excerpt from The Count ofGabalis: [the Sylphs, the Gnomes and the Nymphs] living a less time, have more need of us: and so their familiarity is more easie to obtain. You need but shut up a glass fill'd with Conglobated Air, Water, or Earth, and expose it to the sun for a month; Then separate the Element according to art, which is very easie to do, if it be Earth or Water. 'Tis a marvellous thing to see, what a virtue every one of these purified Elements have to attract the Nymphs, Sylphs and Gnomes. In taking but never so little, everyday, for about a month together, one shall see in the Air the volant Republique of the Sylphs; . . . Thus venerable Nature teaches her Children how to repair the Elements by the Elements. Thus is Harmony re-

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established. Thus man recovers his natural Empire, and can do all things in the Elements, without Daemon, or unlawful art. Thus you see, my Son, that the Sages are more innocent than you thought.

89 90

91

92 93

94

(Sub-Mundanes, reprinted from the text of the Abbe de Villars (Bath, 1886) p. 40), originally dating from 1670. The 'key' Paracelsus text on these matters, Liber de nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis, et salamandris, et de caeteris spiritibus would appear not to have been translated into English; however, the other writings of Paracelsus are liberally sprinkled with reference to such creatures. N. V. Izmaylov, 'Fantasticheskaya povest' ', in Russkaya povest'XIX veka (Leningrad, 1973) p. 166; see also Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 73-4. In Russian, dilogiya (from Greek dilogia), cf. 'trilogy': 3) 'two novels or dramatic works linked by a unity of theme' (Slovak inostrannykh slov, 6th edn (Moscow, 1964) p. 214). The two parts of this work were published separately, both in 1841, as 'Yuzhnyy bereg Finlyandii v nachale XVIII stoletiya' and 'Salamandra'; in 1844 the second part was renamed 'El'sa' and Salamandra became the overall title. M. A. Tur'yan, 'Evolyutsiya romanticheskikh motivov v povesti V. F. Odoyevskogo "Salamandra" ', in Russkiy romantizm (Leningrad, 1978) pp. 187-206; V. I. Sakharov, 'Yeshcho o Pushkine i V. F. Odoyevskom', in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, vol. IX (Leningrad, 1979) pp. 224-30. 'Authorial' in the sense that his approach to the supernatural is akin to that of Odoyevsky in Pis 'ma grafine Ye. P. R... . y (1839) - see Chapter Two of this study. Izmaylov, 'Fantasticheskaya povest' ', p. 167; Sakharov, 'Dvizhushchayasya estetika V. F. Odoyevskogo', in VFO, O literature i iskusstve (Moscow, 1982) p. 13. In Salamandra (p. 194) the uncle commences his narrative by referring to the alternative, 'truer' view of history chronicled by drugiye istoriki. Kosmorama, Otechestvennyye zapiski, 1, VIII, 3 (1840) p. 34 (page numbers in the text refer to this, the only edition). One would be prepared to dismiss the intentions expressed in this preface as mere authorial whimsy but for the evidence produced by Sakulin (I, 2, pp. 89-90, n. 1) of Odoyevsky's plans for a continuation, in which spirits were to play a prominent part: good spirits act through the medium of people, helping 'one and the same soul to vitalize two different bodies, to live two lives'. . . human language often turns out powerless in the transmission of knowledge, which then has recourse to symbols which in the course of time are transformed into 'empty formulae, incomprehensible to posterity' (from Odoyevsky's jottings on the continuation, Sakulin, I, 2, p. 90).

95

The epigraph (p. 34) is 'Quidquid est in externo est etiam in interno', attributed to 'The Neoplatonists'. See Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 83-5 (the story is discussed on pp. 82-90). 96 The construction of a kosmorama occurs in Odoyevsky's Detskaya knizhka dlya voskresnykh dney (1833); furthermore it appears that

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Notes Odoyevsky must himself have possessed some such 'toy', as he records in his travel notes (Mainz, 1847): 'In the steamship cabin an Englishman and a Belgian did not know how to work my travelling kosmorama; each time they wanted to see by looking into the magnifying lens, instead of the frosted glass' (Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 85-6, n. 3). There is a striking similarity between the concept of Odoyevsky's kosmorama and Borges's 'Aleph'; the latter is stated to be 'one of the points in space containing all points' and 'the microcosm of alchemists and cabalists'; there is a similarity between the visual possibilities of the Aleph and the extravagant visions of Vladimir (in fact, without his kosmorama); moreover Borges's comments on language may be compared to Odoyevsky's remarks - in note 94 above and elsewhere: 'All language is an alphabet of symbols whose use presupposes a past shared by all the other interlocutors . . . the central problem is unsolvable: the enumeration, even if only partial, of an infinite complex' (see 'The Aleph', in Jorge Luis Borges, A Personal Anthology (London, 1972) pp. 119, 121). Apart from Belinsky's well-documented dislike of the fantastic, I. Panayev wrote the following of Odoyevsky to K. S. Aksakov in 1839: 'Knyaz' sovsem iz uma vyzhivayet i pishet takuyu gadost', shto chitat' toshno' ('The Prince is going completely off his head and writing such muck that it is sickening to read it') (Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 56 (Moscow, 1950) p. 135). Sakulin, I, 2, p. 100. VI. Murav'yov, 'Russkiy Faust', in VFO, Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (1982) p. 3. Page references in the text to Zhivoy mertvets are taken from this collection; it was also printed in VFO, Povesti i rasskazy (1959); see also my translation of the story, in Russian Romantic Prose: An Anthology (Ann Arbor, 1979). Cf. 'But who is able to detect all the fine threads between causes and effects in the history of the development of a person's mind, when the individual himself is not even always aware of this interconnection during the course of his actions?' (Wackenroder, Confessions and Fantasies, p. 98). For a detailed examination of this story, from which the above comments are extracted, see my article 'V. F. Odoyevsky's Ridiculous Dream About That?', Quinquereme: New Studies in Modern Languages, vol. 2 (1979) pp. 75-86 (the continuation, on pp. 246-55, takes the discussion on to a comparison with works by Dostoyevsky and Mayakovsky). What remains in the archives of the project has been summarized at some length by Sakulin (I, 2, pp. 51-68); a brief summary (based on Sakulin) in English is to be found in L. B. Turkevich, Cervantes in Russia (New York, 1975) pp. 30-3 (a reprint of the Princeton 1950 edn). Sakulin, I, 2, p. 56; 'Iz bumag. . .', Russkiy arkhiv (1864; 2nd edn, p. 1012, n. 4). SegelieV. Don-kikhotXIXstoletiya. Skazka dlya starykh detey (otryvok iz 1-y chasti), Russkiy arkhiv (1881) 2, p. 479; synopsis otherwise from Sakulin. These metamorphoses were to include historical figures; in the published part (p. 477), there is also a reference by Segeliel' to his 'first

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112

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life' and to Kipriano; however, this would appear to be for the benefit of readers who remembered Improvizator rather than evidence of any real artistic link between the works (the earlier Doctor Segelier being, it would seem, a more uncompromisingly diabolical figure). An anonymous contemporary reviewer suggested 'the Swedenborgians' as a source (Sakulin, I, 2, p. 67); this is echoed by M. I. Medovoy ('Puti razvitiya . . .', pp. 11-12), who suggests that the 'Skazka dlya starykh detey' in part 'called into question the metaphysical approach of Saint-Martin to the solution of the problem of good and evil'. Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 64 (parallels are seen between the thoughts and aspirations of SegelieP and those expressed in autobiographical fragments by Odoyevsky) and 67; SegelieP 's conjuring with the ethics of philanthropy (p. 59, n. 2) was certainly something close to Odoyevsky's heart. Odoyevsky's spiky contemporary, F. F. VigeP, wrote to him in 1838 that in SegelieP: 'I recognized a man who wants to pose as a bon diable, whereas only the adjectival part becomes him' {Russkaya starina, 1 (1904) p. 156). The year 4338 is chosen as the year before 4339, when, it was computed in 1826 (this then had provided Odoyevsky with the impetus for his earlier story, Dva dni v zhizni zemnogo shard), Biela's comet would collide with the Earth; in fact the comet in question, which had an orbital period of 6.6 years, burned up later in the century (the notes to 4338-y god in VFO, Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (Moscow, 1982) p. 386; page numbers to this story are from this edition). The 'contemporary' fragment was published as Teterburgskiye pis'ma' (Moskovskiy nablyudateV, I (1835) pp. 55-69). Teterburgskiye pis'ma' seems to have been intended as the overall title. Then came the futuristic fragment, '4338. Peterburgskiye pis'ma' (Utrenyaya zarya na 1840god (St Petersburg, 1840) pp. 307-52). For O. Tsekhnovitser's 1926 edition and reprintings see Bibliography (1:B and 1:F). Leland Fetzer's English translation, Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology (Ann Arbor, 1982), omits the first letter and the end 'fragments'. N. K. Mikhaylovskaya, 'Utopicheskiye povesti V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkaya literatura, 4 (1980) pp. 135-40; she also points to the similarity between the endings of Posledneye samoubiystvo and SaltykovShchedrin's Istoriya odnogo goroda, and makes comparisons with other Utopian works contemporary to Odoyevsky, especially Kyukhel'beker's Yevropeyskiyepis'ma (1820). Winfried Baumann, Die Zukunftsperspektiven des Fursten V. F. Odoevskij (Frankfurt and Bern, 1980). Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History ofa Literary Genre (New Haven and London, 1979) p. 247 (he discusses 4338-y god on pp. 245-7); VI. Murav'yov, 'Russkiy Faust', p. 4. For an expanded version of this section, see my article 'Utopia and Dystopia in Russian Fiction: the Contribution of V. F. Odoyevsky', Renaissance and Modern Studies, vol. 28 (1984) pp. 59-71. Also on this topic, see Marina Rossi Varese's introduction to Utopisti russi del primo ottocento (Naples, 1982) pp. 7-41. See Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 289-90.

312 113 114 115

116

117 118

119 120

121 122 123

124 125 126 127

Notes Quoted from Sakharov, 'Dvizhushchayasya estetika V. F. Odoyevskogo', p.21. Ibid.yp.2l. Quoted from Sakharov, 'O zhizni i tvoreniyakh V. F. Odoyevskogo', p. 20. Thomas McFarland (Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin (Princeton, 1981) p. 35) notes the prevalence in the romantic movement of 'a widespread conviction that the form of a work of art was or should be analogous to the structure of an organism'. Istoriya russkoy literatury, vol. 2 (Leningrad, 1981) p. 519; Sakharov, 'O zhizni i tvoreniyakh...' A. Gulyga {Shelling (Moscow, 1982) p. 290) refers to Russian Nights as 'zhemchuzhina nashey razmyshlyayushchey prozy' ('the pearl of our meditative prose'). For a detailed examination of the formal and generic qualities of R. N. and a summary of criticial reaction to it, see my article 'V. F. Odoyevsky's Russian Nights: Genre, Reception and Romantic Poetics', Essays in Poetics, vol. 8, no. 2 (1983) pp. 19-55. For more on romantic poetics, see essays by Robert Reid and Neil Cornwell in Robert Reid (ed.), Problems of Russian Romanticism (Avebury, London, 1986). On Soviet critical attitudes to romanticism, see also Lauren G. Leighton, 'The Great Soviet Debate over Romanticism: 1957-1964', Essays in Romanticism, vol. 22 (Spring 1983) pp. 41-64. Martingal, at least, was supposed to belong to the 'Zapiski grobovshchika' cycle, as its sub-title reveals; as such it is likely to have been penned, or at least planned, back in the 1830s (Sakulin, 1,2, p. 146). He continued: 'I admit, I do not complain about this' (see Tredisloviye' to the proposed second edition, R. N. (1975) pp. 184-5). A. Potebnya suggested that Odoyevsky had taken the judgement on Piranesi to heart (Lezin, op. cit., p. 104). Teterburgskiye pis'ma\Moskovskiy nablyudateP, I (1835) pp. 55-69. Odoyevsky to M. P. Rozberg, 18 Nov. 1845, Russkaya starina, 8 (1904) p. 421. Aleksey Veselyovsky writes of the 'transformation of the littleesteemed, by the epoch contemporary to him, belletrist of the Pushkin-Gogol' period, V. Odoyevsky,. . . into a writer for the people', as 'narodnyy zhurnalist', 'editor of SeVskoye chteniye\ etc. (in his book Zapadnoyevliyaniyev novoy russkoy literature (Moscow, 1910) p. 249). Russkaya starina, 6 (1904) pp. 584-5. 'Bezglasnyy' being one of Odoyevsky's favourite pseudonyms in his active period as a writer; Russkay a starina, 5 (1904) p. 375. See Tredisloviye', R. N. (1975) pp. 184-6. In the Odoyevsky archive (fond 539, Opis I, nos 67-9) is a printer's copy of the 3-volume 1844 Sochineniya with corrections and alterations for this edition; contracts drawn up for the new edition, covering a 3-year period from Nov. 1862, are also there (fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101,5). 'Dnevnik', 7 Mar. 1867, p. 229 (see also note to 'Dnevnik', p. 302); this play was to be called 'Sudy i peresudy'. Ibid., 30 July 1863, p. 172; 'Daily Living' ('Zhiteyskiy byt') was one of Odoyevsky's later encyclopedic projects. Ibid., 14 Dec. 1868, p. 248 (Pisemsky's Lyudi sorokovykh godov was first published in Zarya in 1869). M. I. Medovoy, 'Neosushchesrvlyonnyy zamysel V. F. Odoyevskogo', in

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Uchonyye zapiski LGPI, t. 414 (Leningrad, 1971) pp. 156-67 (the plan of the novel is reproduced on pp. 157-8). 128 Ibid,, pp. 161, 162. 129 A. N. Nikolyukin in his articles (e.g. 'K tipologii romanticheskoy povestf, op. cit., pp. 259-82) sees affinities between GogoP, Odoyevsky and Poe (comparing, for example, Nasmeshka mertvetsa and Bal with The Mask of the Red Death). Odoyevsky's diary for 1865 ('Dnevnik', 30 Mar, p. 196) has the following remark: 'There is much similarity between Edgar Poe and my youthful works - the fantastic and the analysis. It's sad.' Struminsky sees the 'split' between Odoyevsky as author/essayist and Gomozeyko as fantast, played on inPis'ma kgrafine Ye. P. R. . . .y as 'only a characteristic literary-didactic device' to make the reader think (Struminsky, in VFO, Izb. ped. soch., pp. 12-13). It would seem, however, that Odoyevsky was quite willing to see himself in something like the terms ofJulian Symons's bifurcation of Poe, into 'Visionary Poe' and 'Logical Poe' (Julian Symons, The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Harmondsworth, 1981) pp. 177-9 and passim). 130 Ivan Golovine, Russia under the Autocrat, Nicholas the First, 2 vols (London, 1846) vol. II, p. 235 (reprinted New York, 1970).

Chapter Two, The Thinker 1

2

3 4 5 6

1

8 9 10

11 12 13

See in particular 'Traktaty' (1974) vol. 2, pp. 156-92 (compilation by Z. A. Kamensky, Odoyevsky texts prepared by M. I. Medovoy). One commentator (in 1915) expressed the view that Odoyevsky's more eccentric musings were best left undisturbed in the archives (M. Kovalevsky, 'Shellingianstvo i gegel'yanstvo v Rossii', Vestnik Yevropy, 11 (1915) p. 170). A recent American study considers that Odoyevsky's surviving writings on philosophy up to 1825 'in no way suggest that he was a prolific and original philosopher in his own right. Unfortunately most of the evidence about his work as a Schellingist philosopher undoubtedly went up in smoke in December 1825': see James Stanford Nanney, 'Prince Vladimir F. Odoevskii: his Contribution to Russian Nationalism and Russian Philosophy' (Ph.D. thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1975, p. 56). Z. A. Kamensky, Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov (Moscow, 1980) p. 16. Quoted from the brief excerpt printed in 'Traktaty' (1974) p. 188; the full text ('Sekta idealistiko-eleaticheskaya') appeared in Mnemozina IV (1825) pp. 160-92. Traktaty' (1974) p. 188 (full text Mnemozina, IV, pp. 230-5). 'Aforizmy iz razlichnykh pisateley, po chasti sovremennogo germanskogo Lyubomudriya', Mnemozina, II (1824) pp. 73-84 (omitted from 'Traktaty', 1974). As well as 'Absolyut', Odoyevsky also invokes 'dukh Tselogo', 'dobryy Geniy' and 'Yedinoye Lyubomudriye'; this may be compared to Schelling's progression through such terms as 'absolute-One', 'unconscious Productivity', 'World-Soul', 'Absolute' and 'Archetypal Mind', before settling on 'God' (see Rowland GraySmith, 'God in the Philosophy of Schelling', Ph.D. dissertation, Philadelphia, 1933). One may wonder, therefore, how near the mark was the spritely wit S. A. Sobolevsky when he exhorted his Lyubomudry friends to do things 'for Schelling's sake' (radi Shellinga). 'Sushcheye ili sushchestvuyushcheye: obshchiy plan teorii sushchego', in 'Traktaty' (1974) pp. 168-71, from which the ensuing summary is taken. Sakulin (I, 1, p. 146, n.2) points out that the inadequacy of language was an idea aired from time to time in the early 1820s. 'Traktaty' (1974) p. 169. Ibid. Ibid., p. 170. Kamensky sees the 'inevitability' of inequality between 'scientists' and 'rich men' as opposed to 'artisans' and 'beggars' as evidence of the essentially conservative nature of Odoyevsky's thought at this stage (Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov, p. 37); Sakulin (I, 1, p. 147) stresses rather Odoyevsky's commitment to the idea of individuality. 'Traktaty'(1974) p. 171. Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov, p. 17. See ibid., pp. 11, 53-4 and passim. Kamensky does, however, base this view purely on an interpretation of Odoyevsky's early works; he admits that there was later development and (p. 41) that certain 'democratic sympathies' were present from even the early fiction.

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14 F. W. J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) (Charlottesville, 1978) p. 14, and Michael Vater's introduction, p. xxiv. 15 See Mann's explanation of the genesis of Russkiye nochi: Yuriy V. Mann, Russkaya filosofskaya estetika (1820-30ye gody) (Moscow, 1969) pp. 104-48 and especially 295-303. 16 'Traktaty' (1974) p. 193; 'Paradoksy', in O literature i iskusstve (Moscow, 1982) p. 30. 17 [Poeziya i filosofiya], 'Traktaty' (1974) pp. 177-8. 18 Ibid. The manuscript of this piece was marked 'R. N.' (see ibid., p. 604, n. 18) and the vocabulary is in the vein of the later Russkiye nochi. 19 Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, p. 41. 20 'Iskusstvo', in 'Traktaty' (1974) pp. 178-9; [O teorii izyashchnogo, 1831], ibid., pp. 179-80. 21 R. N., (1975) p. 305; the tract ('Russkiye nochi, ili o neobkhodimosti novoy nauki i novogo iskusstva') is included therein (pp. 192-8). 22 Ibid., p. 194. 23 Ibid., p. 195. 24 'Kto sumasshedshiye?', Biblioteka dlya chteniya, XIV (1836) pp. 50-64. 25 Ibid., p. 54. 26 Ibid., p. 57 (cf. R. N. (1975) p. 22, which has an enlarged continuation). 27 Rozhalin had died in 1834. See R. N., (1975) for texts and commentaries thereto. 28 Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy (Oxford, 1975) pp. 73ff., drawn from Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 469-95. 29 Sakulin, I, 1, p. 470. 30 'Psikhologicheskiye zametki', R. N. (1975) p. 210. 31 Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 480-1. Schelling held that full intellectual intuition was equivalent to a 'condition of death': see Alan White, Schelling: An Introduction to the System ofFreedom (New Haven and London, 1983) p. 31. 32 R. N. (1975) p. 192. The 1844 original edition of Russkiye nochi bore the dedication 'Druz'yam zhivym i pamyati druzey umershikh', as did the edition of 1913; this has been omitted from the editions of 1975 and 1981. 33 'Russkiye pis'ma' (of 1847), first published in R. N. (1975) p. 237. 34 Introduction to Russian Nights (New York, 1965) p. 20. 35 R. N. (1975) p. 7. Page numbers from this edition will hereafter be given in the text. 36 Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, p. 77. 37 Nanney discusses Odoyevsky's 'misrepresentations' of Malthus and Bentham (op. cit., pp. 125-32) and suggests that there may have been a tongue-in-cheek element in these distortions (p. 133). 38 The concept of the 'dying West' was not original to Odoyevsky (although the Epilogue appears to have been written by 1836); Shevyryov wrote on the 'rotten West' mMoskvityanin in 1841 and the idea had been present for some time in Western writing. For a detailed discussion of this, see P. B. Struve, 'S. P. Shevyryov i zapadnyye vnusheniya i istochniki teorii-aforizma o "gnilom", ili "gniyushchem" zapade', in Zapiski russkogo nauchnogo instituta v Belgrade (1940) pp. 201-63.

316 39

40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51

52

Notes 'Elementarnyye ponyatiya o sushchestve togo, chto voobshche nazyvayetsya znaniyem', cited by J. S. Nanney as comprising pp. 229-93 of no. 89 of Fond 539, Opis 1. Nanney discusses Odoyevsky's late thought, and this work in particular, on pp. 365-78 of his thesis (op. cit), to which the following comments are indebted. Nanney, op. cit., p. 361; Nanney goes as far as to entitle Chapter VII of his thesis 'The Russian John Locke'. He compares 'Elementarnyye ponyatiya . . .' to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (p. 370), but points out that it contains no mention of Locke, Hume or Berkeley. Previous references to these thinkers in Odoyevsky's earlier writings were, of course, usually less than favourable. Ibid., p. 380. A recent Soviet article examines 'Zhiteyskiy byt', presenting a number of quotations from archival material and confirming Odoyevsky's renewed interest, in the late 1850s, in problems of cognition. The tentative conclusion reached is that Odoyevsky had arrived at a position of 'elemental-materialist sensualism', but 'a sensualism of a contemplative temper'; the limit of knowledge is seen by Odoyevsky, however, as being relative and infinite - * a temporary station on the open highway along which passes the human mind' (I. F. Khudushina, 'Nekotoryye aspekty filosofskoy kontseptsii V. F. Odoyevskogo', Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, Ser. 7, Filosofiya, 4 (1982) pp. 60-8. 'Nedovol'no', Soch. (1981) vol. I. p. 320. Nanney (op. cit., p. 358) claims too that 'Zhiteyskiy byt' 'even posits the existence of universal historical laws'. Soch. (1981) vol. I, pp. 324 and 325ff. (section XVI). Sakulin, 1,1, p. 7 (a useful summary of Sakulin's ideas on Odoyevsky is to be found in his entry to Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar" (Moscow, 1916) pp. 504-9). Vasiliy Gippius, '"Uzkiy put'". Kn. V. F. Odoyevsky i romantizm', RusskayamysV, 12 (1914) p. 26. See Mann (1969) op. cit., pp. 113 and 142-3. See (respectively) V. Ya. Struminsky's introduction to Odoyevsky's Izb. ped. soch., p. 16; Ye. Khin's introduction to Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1959) p. 32; and N. M. Mikhaylovskaya (1970). Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, p. 71. Nanney, op. cit., pp. 390-1; referring to Odoyevsky's previous devotion to Russian literature, music and science and immersion in German culture, Nanney states that 'after the Crimean war all this changed' (p. 390). Heinrich Stammler, private letter of 14 July 1982. His ideas are elaborated in his essay 'Von Idealismus zum Positivismus?', in Zapiski russkoy akademicheskoy gruppy v S. Sh. A., vol. XII (New York, 1979) pp. 138-61. Kamensky, Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov, p. 58. Perhaps the nearest to a contrary view is Alexandre Koyre's remark that Odoyevsky was more a disciple of Victor Cousin than of Schelling (Koyre, La philosophic et le probleme national en Russie au debut du XIXe siecle (Paris, 1976) p. 223, n. 35); Cousin (1792-1867), although influenced by Schelling, was essentially an eclectic. Yu. Mann, 'Russkaya filosofskaya estetika i zapadnyye issledovateli', in

Chapter Two, The Thinker

53 54 55 56

57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70

317

the collection Russkaya literatura i yeyo zarubezhnyye kritiki (Moscow, 1974) p. 71. Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy I. V. Kireyevskogo v dvukh tomakh, vol. I (Moscow, 1911) pp. 91-2 (reprinted Farnborough, 1970); Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (London, 1978) p. 127. Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Modalities of Fragmentation (Princeton, 1981) p. 26, n. 16. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, p. 12. James Engell, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge, Mass., 1981) pp. 305, 313 and 317 (this work, on pp. 301-27, contains a most useful account of Schelling's aesthetic thought); when this chapter was in a late stage of preparation, there appeared the first full-length book on Schelling in English, Alan White's study, op. cit. While providing a valuable perspective over Schelling's career, however, this work does not concern itself either with the 'Philosophy of Art' or with the implications for, and influence upon, romanticism of Schelling's thought. The System of Transcendental Idealism is summarized on pp. 56-70. Arseniy Gulyga, Shelling (Moscow, 1982) p. 157 (pp. 149-61 comprise a summary of the 'Philosophy of Art'). Schelling's 'Philosophy of Art' was posthumously published, but many of its ideas were widely disseminated in Europe as a result of his original lectures (see Hugh Honour, Romanticism (Harmondsworth, 1981) pp. 340-1, n. 3). Quoted from G. N. Venevitinov, Nekotoryye prohlemy rannego russkogo romantizma (Moscow, 1972) p. 4. Berlin, Russian Thinkers, p. 143. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Harmondsworth, 1978) pp. 248-9 and 42. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, p. 201. Ibid., p. 203; Gray-Smith, op. cit., p. 40. Gray-Smith, ibid., p. 109; Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, pp. 199-214; and, on the process of creation and history, Schelling: Of Human Freedom (Chicago, 1936) pp. 49-58. See Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 18ff.; Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, pp. 232-3. Ibid, p. 200. Frederick Copleston, S},A History ofPhilosophy, vol. VII, Part I (Garden City, NY, 1965), p. 161; this passage is also quoted in James Gutmann's introduction to Of Human Freedom, p. xlii. The extremes of complete determinism and 'absolute lawlessness' are supposedly avoided by the presence of 'that absolute which is the common ground of the harmony between freedom and intelligence . . . the system of providence, that is religion in the only true sense of the word' (Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, p. 209). McFarland, op. cit., p. 18, n. 10. Berlin, Russian Thinkers, p. 121; Kireyevsky, op. cit., pp. 92-3. Nicolas Berdyaev, The Russian Idea (London, 1947), p. 35. Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism (Oxford, 1980) p. 79. For more detail on this, see V. I.

318

71 72 73

74 75

76

77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Notes Sakharov, 'O bytovanii shellingianskikh idey v russkoy literature', in Kontekst 1977 (Moscow, 1978) pp. 210-26, and his 'Vstrechi s Shellingom,, in PisateV i zhizrt (Moscow, 1978) pp. 167-80 (and see below). Z. A. Kamensky, Russkayafilosofiyanachala XlXveka i Shelling (Moscow, 1980) p. 269 (and pp. 269-90). Kamensky's Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov is in effect a second volume of the one study. M. P. Pogodin, 'Vospominaniye o knyaze Vladimire Fyodoroviche Odoyevskom', reprinted in Posh kv. Betkhovena (1982) p. 323; Vellansky to Odoyevsky, Russkiy arkhiv (1864, 2nd edn p. 995). Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 127, 131. On these figures and the intellectual climate of the time, based on slightly different sources, see Chapter I, 'The Context' (esp. pp. 19-29) of Sarah Pratt's study, Russian Metaphysical Romanticism: the poetry ofTiutchev and Boratynskii, Stanford, Cal. 1984. See Kireyevsky, op. cit., pp. 3-82 (and especially p. 7). See Kamensky, Russkayafilosofiya nachala XlXveka i Shelling, pp. 257-8 (on Pavlov, Odoyevsky and Venevitinov) and pp. 139-40, plus pp. 295— 6, n. 32 (on Vellansky and Odoyevsky); Kamensky, Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov, pp. 13-14 (and Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 73-7, on Odoyevsky's early philosophical interests); A. I. Koshelev, Zapiski (1812-1883 gody) (Berlin, 1884) p. 7 (see Ye. A. Maymin, Russkayafilosofskayapoeziya (Moscow, 1976) p. 7). Kamensky, Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov, p. 7; Russkaya ftlosofiya nachala XIX veka i Shelling contains detailed accounts of the philosophy of Vellansky and Pavlov. Kamensky has since followed these studies with a further volume: N. I. Nadezhdin: ocherk filosofskikh i esfeticheskikh vzglyadov (1828-1836) (Moscow, 1984). Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles (Cambridge, Mass., 1952) p. 16. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. Berdyaev, The Russian Idea, p. 20. For fuller accounts of this formative period of Russian thought see, for example, Georgiy Florovsky, Puti russkogo bogosloviya (Paris, 1937); Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, Chs. I and IV; and Peter K. Christoff, The Third Heart (The Hague, 1970) Ch. Ill: 'Freemasonry, Mysticism and Medievalism', pp. 65-89; and especially Sakulin, I, 1, passim. Riasanovsky, Russia and the West, p. 16. V. V. Zenkovsky,y4 History of Russian Philosophy, vol. I (London and New York, 1953) p. 136. D. I. Chizhevsky, GegeV v Rossii, (Paris, 1939) p. 9. See Kamensky, Moskovskiy kruzhok lyubomudrov, p. 9; and Sakulin, I, 1, p. 105. Theaetetus (quoted from Yates, The Art ofMemory, pp. 11 and 50). Quoted from Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 141-2. Gray-Smith, op. cit., p. 41; Copleston, op. cit., p. 142; Honour, op. cit., p. 281. Alan White sees Schelling's philosophical career as essentially a persistent attempt to provide an antithesis to Spinoza's deterministic Ethics, through a reconciliation of Newton and Leibniz (op. cit., pp. 5-6, 48).

Chapter Two, The Thinker 88

89 90

91 92

93 94

95 96 97

98

99 100

319

Sakulin, I. 1, pp. 138-9; Koshelev, op. cit., p. 12. Odoyevsky had a rare 1802 Jena edition of Spinoza (Sakulin, I, 1, p. 139, n. 2); Sakulin (ibid., pp. 150—1) also states that 'Odoyevsky knew the history of philosophy too well, esteemed Leibniz, Kant, Spinoza and Oken too highly, to give his sympathies to Schelling alone'. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964) p. 12; the main Hermetic writings are summarized on pp. 22-40. Ibid., pp. 86, 117 and 121. The main point of Neoplatonic theory, at least to Ficino, was 'the reflection of the Ideas in the divine intellect in their images or forms in the soul of the world, whence they are again reflected (through the intermediaries in the soul of the world) in material forms'; magic links or spells and the ordering of celestial images were supposed to have enabled the ancient sages to draw down influences from a higher level (ibid., p. 65). Ibid., pp. 121, 131. Frances A. Yates, Lull and Bruno (London, 1982) p. 7; see also pp. 3-7 and passim and her The Art of Memory, passim (and Ch. 8 on Lullism, pp. 175-96). Lull, who is mentioned several times in Odoyevsky's writings, was the author of the Liber Contemplationis in Deum, 'an encyclopaedia covering the whole creation - both macrocosm and microcosm' (Lull and Bruno, pp. 31-2). Ibid., pp. 7, 67; The Art ofMemory, pp. 365-73. Stanley L. Jaki's introduction to his English translation of La Cena de la Ceneri: Giordano Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper (The Hague, 1975) p. 16. The case for this now accepted view of Bruno is made at considerable length in the studies of Frances Yates, cited above. Jaki, ibid., p. 9. See Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 155 and her Lull and Bruno, p. 173. Greater attention to the scientific side of Bruno is given in Jaki's essay. Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 5-6; M. I. Medovoy, 'Roman V. F. Odoyevskogo iz epokhi ital'yanskogo vozrozhdeniya', Uchonyye zapiski LGPI, t. 460 (Leningrad, 1970) pp. 46-64 (pp. 51-2); this article represents the fullest treatment to date of this work. I was informed in 1979 that it is intended that what remains of this novel will be published in a forthcoming volume of Literaturnoye nasledstvo, to be devoted to RussoItalian literary ties; such a publication has not yet appeared. N. M, Mikhaylovskaya, '"Dzhordano Bruno" - roman VI. F. Odoyevskogo', Voprosy istorii i teorii literatury, vyp. IV (Chelyabinsk, 1968) pp. 40-59 (see pp. 53, 55). White, op. cit., p. 96, confirms that Bruno represents Schelling (in Schelling's dialogue Bruno). Medovoy, op. cit., p. 57; Mikhaylovskaya, op cit., p. 48. The latter (pp. 47-8) provides a plot summary from what was written (and planned) of the novel (or what has survived thereof). See also Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 5-12. So termed by Marina F. Rossi Varese, in her article (the only Western one on this topic), 'Riflesso della cultura Italiana in un manoscritto inedito di V. Odoevskij', in Studi in onore di Ettore Lo Gatto, (Rome, 1980) pp. 264-71 (p. 267). Varese's article, however, suffers from her apparent ignorance of the pieces by Medovoy and Mikhaylovskaya and is also disappointing in its lack of discussion of Bruno's thought.

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101 Sakulin, I, 2, p. 9 (Odoyevsky's airing here of the question of 2 x 2 = 5 precedes considerably his own later musings on the subject, not to mention those of Dostoyevsky). Kyukhel'beker, too, uses this formulation in a work of 1824, Zemlya bezglavtsev). 102 Sakulin, 1,2, pp. 10-11; Medovoy, op. cit., pp. 62,57-8. 103 Medovoy, ibid., p. 58. 104 Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, p. 61 (and Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 237). 105 Ibid.,p.M. 106 Opere di Giordano Bruno Nolano, ora per la prima volta raccolte e publicate da Adolfo Wagner (Leipzig, 1830) 2 vols. Odoyevsky is thought to have used William Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth (Liverpool, 1805) (Varese, op. cit., p. 266), and Geschichte derneuern Philosophic seit derEpoche der Wiederherstellung der Wissenschaften. Von jfohann Gottlib Buhle, vol. II (Gottingen, 1800) which contains a lengthy account of Bruno's thought (Medovoy, op. cit., p. 52). 107 Sakulin, 1,2, pp. 11-12; Medovoy, op. cit., p. 53. 108 Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 282; Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 272. Odoyevsky would have particularly relished Bruno's addition of music to poetry, painting and philosophy: 'True philosophy is music, poetry or painting; true painting is poetry, music and philosophy; true poetry or music is divine sophia and painting' (quoted from Yates, Giordano Bruno p. 336). 109 Yates, TheArt of Memory, p. 372, see also pp. 294 and 372-3 (suggesting a possible link between Bruno and the Rosicrucians); and her Giordano Bruno, pp. 274,415-16 and 407-14. 110 See Hans L. M a r t e n s e n , ^ ^ Boehme (1575-1624): Studies in his Life and Teaching (London, 1949) pp. 20-4. According to McFarland (op. cit., p. 324, n. 91), 'behind Boehme . . . lies Paracelsus'. Jung claims that 'Paracelsus and Bohme between them split alchemy into natural science and Protestant mysticism' (C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (London, 1980) p. 430). 111 Sakulin (I, 1, 569) has traced an Odoyevsky manuscript quotation to Bohme's La triple vie, in the French translation of Saint-Martin. Odoyevsky had several volumes of Baader in his library (Sakulin, I, 1, 391); see also Odoyevsky's 1842 discussions with Schelling (below). 112 Sakulin, 1,1, p. 332; Gutmann, op. cit., p. xlv. Schelling regarded Bohme, among theosophists, as 'the original inspiration', of which Saint-Martin was'only the cadaver' (Gutmann, ibid., pp. xlvi-vii). 113 Sakulin, 1,1, pp. 3 99,423; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1973) p. 446. 114 Quoted from Gutmann, op. cit., p. xlvii. 115 Martensen, op. cit.,p. 35. This is confirmed by White, op. cit., p. 119. 116 Martensen, pp. 24,31,75 n. 4,78,79,81 and 109. 117 Martensen points out, for example, that 'Boehme's doctrine of the Ungrund is closely related to that of the Kabbala, which also commences with "God in indifference", Ensoph (not anything). It also reminds us of the Gnostic Bythos, the groundless Abyss which is wedded to silence . . . a theosophic theory which is of pagan origin' (ibid., p. 77). See also Adolphe Franck, The Kabbalah (New York, n.d.) p. 114.

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118 Martensen, op. cit., pp. 47,92 (Hobhouse's 'Appendix') and 108-10. The Kabbah is full of references to body clothing, veils, tents etc. (see Franck, ^.a/.,pp.l23,136,139,171). 119 Jung contends that 'the whole raison d'etre of a secret society is to guard a secret that has lost its vitality and can only be kept alive as an outward form' (Psychology andAlchemy, p. 431). 120 Brian Easlea, Witch Hunting, Magic and the New Philosophy: An Introduction to the Debates ofthe ScientificRevolution 1450-1750 (Sussex, 1980) pp. 73, 150. This book provides a stimulating account of the period - in many ways complementary to the studies of Frances Yates. 121 Jung, Psychology andAlchemy, pp. 423-4. 122 Ibid., pp. 279,282. 123 Quoted from the notes to Schelling: On Human Freedom, pp. 117-18. 124 Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 395-422, 422-36 and passim, from whom the ensuing detail is taken. 125 One of Odoyevsky's 'Bruno' manuscripts is annotated with a quote from Saint-Martin (Sakulin, 1,2,10). 126 He was also known as 'Don Martines de Pasqualles de la Tour', who repaired to the West Indies, where he died in 1774 (Colin Wilson, The Occult (London, 1973) pp. 416-17; an account of Saint-Martin is given on pp. 415-19). 127 Sakulin, 1,1, p. 421. Wilson (op. cit., p. 418) emphasizes the importance in Saint-Martin of the potential of man in 'the repair of the disorders of the universe', man's godlike faculties and, in particular, his imagination (in the Paracelsian sense). 128 Sakulin uses obscure nineteenth-century (or earlier) German and Russian sources for his account of Pordage, plus unpublished manuscripts of a number of Russian translations of his works from Russian archives. One work at least, translated from a German edition, appears to have been published: Bozhestvennaya i istinnaya metafizika, Hi drvnoye i opytom priobretyonnoye vedeniye nevidimykh ivechnykh veshchey, in two parts, in 1786. His works were mostly published in Latin in Holland. There appear to be no modern English editions; the only example I have been able to find of Pordage's writing in a remotely modern edition is a letter to Jane Leade, apparently originally written in English but here retranslated from German into modern English (no trace of the English manuscript having been found) in vol. 16 of The Collected Works ofC. G. Jung (London, 1954) pp. 295-9. Secondary material on Pordage would appear to be almost equally scarce (he receives no mention in the studies of Frances Yates, or in that of Brian Easlea; Keith Thomas includes a passing mention); see, however, The Compact Edition ofthe Dictionary of National Biography vol. II (Oxford, 1975) pp. 1691-2. Matlaw and Olienikov, when translating Russian Nights (New York, 1965) p. 42, plainly did not know who Pordage was, merely transliterating his name from the Cyrillic (as 'Pordetsch'). 129 Sakulin, 1,2, p. 20. 130 Requests were made to Odoyevsky in 1844 and 1846 to return a Pordage manuscript entitled 'Bozhestvennaya filosofiya' to Yu. N. Bartenev (Sakulin, I, 1, p. 392, n. 2). The following details of Pordage's ideas are taken from Sakulin, 1,1, pp. 422-36.

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131 Ibid., p. 432. 132 Ibid., pp. 604-5. 133 D. M. Sharypkin, in his book Skandinavskaya literatura v Rossii (Moscow, 1980) p. 185, uses this phrase and claims that Odoyevsky knew Heaven and Hell in a French translation. 134 Lo Spaccio della bestia trionfante and La Citta del Sole respectively (Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 233). 135 Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 417-18; Saint-Martin saw society as 'a theatrical scene', from which one could only withdraw and await the curtain (ibid., p. 421). These elements within Odoyevsky's thought are discussed in Chapter Five of this study. 136 Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 280; see also his 'Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon', in The Collected Works, vol. 13, p. 186. 137 Ibid., p. 168. For another attempt to show the Hermetic tradition as a vital constituent of romanticism, see Ernest Lee Tuveson, The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes: An Approach to Romanticism (Lewisburg, 1982). Interestingly enough, in view of my concluding suggestions to the present study, Tuveson (p. 40) links Goethe with Pico della Mirandola - as the latter's belated 'ideal scientist'; Pico is thus considered the 'ancestor of romanticism'. 138 This theme is encapsulated in the short piece 'O sposobakh vyrazheniya idei' (1832) in 'Traktaty' (1974) p. 181, quoted here in full: Our ancestors really loved the fairy tales about some Tsar Kascheye or other. Bored with their huge book depository, they ordered a strong extract to be made which would be, in its entirety, placed on a palm leaf. Wonderful! I can understand that a man may encompass in a few thoughts the whole spiritual and corporeal universe, but I should like to know in which language this palm leaf was written. In which language the scribes discovered sufficiently exact expressions to convey what all the words in all languages have been insufficient to say, and towards which man's every thought and question has been turned: the essence of existence. Meanwhile we understand this essence, we feel it - we want to express it - and one word demands another, this word a third, and so on to infinity. And not only with this one idea, but with all others - explain to me in words the feeling of reverence, explain to me the feeling of joy ->you understand them, you want to express them in words, and their vital part flies off like life under the anatomical knife; you see a row of words like an infinite geometrical progression the last term of which you cannot determine. But, as you understand it, it is the feeling of entering a temple, listening attentively to music, reading verses the content of which does not at all concern either joy or reverence. Consequently, must there be some other language whose parts of speech are concealed in architecture, in poetry, in music? What language is this? Its characteristic is indeterminacy; this characteristic we notice in versification, even more so in painting, more so still in architecture and yet more so in music. Therefore, the language of music is the closest approach to that inner language in which there is expression for ideas, and thus music is the highest science and art. There will come a time when perhaps all

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means of expression merge into music. The ancients seemed to have a vague presentiment of this, uniting all sciences under the general title of music, or else this was a recollection of the first expression at the time of the infancy of the human race.

139 140 141 142

143

144 145 146 147 148 149

In Tsikhologicheskiye zametki', R.N. (1975) p. 227, ancient music is termed a relic of 'the original, natural human language\ 'Traktaty' (1974) p. 184. 'Nauka instinkta', R.N. (1975) p. 199. Cf. Tzvetan Todorov, Theories of the Symbol (quoted below). R.N. (1975) p. 174. The only possible claim for 'originality' would be in the sense in which Valery uses the term: 'We say that an author is original when we cannot trace the hidden transformations that others underwent in his mind; we mean to say that the dependence of what he does on what others have done is excessively complex and irregular' (quoted from Harold Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism (New York, 1975) pp. 93-4). W. H. Wackenroder, Confessions and Fantasies (University Park, Penn., and London, 1971) p. 72; Engell, op. cit., p. 240. Engell (p. 357) states that Coleridge, Keats, Goethe and Schelling used 'hieroglyph' as an image for the concrete power of imagination carried into a symbolic world where man and nature are united in poetic language. Yates sees Bruno's philosophical concepts 'of the infinite universe and the innumerable worlds' as 'in the nature of hieroglyphs of the divine, attempts to figure the infigurable, to be imprinted on memory through imaginative effort to become one with the universe' (Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 336-7). Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 403, 430. See Wilson Van Dusen, The Presence of Other Worlds: The Psychological/Spiritual Findings of Emanuel Swedenborg (London, 1975) pp. 162-5; Martensen, op. cit., p. 143; Wilson, op. cit., p. 242. See Yates, The Art ofMemory, pp. 365-70. Quoted from Franck, op. cit., p. 115. Tzvetan Todorov, Theories of the Symbol (Oxford, 1982) p. 193 (see pp. 189-98). Yates, The Art ofMemory, pp. 52-3 (the rules of the art of memory, as from the Ad Herennium, are given on pp. 22-6: 'Those who know the letters of the alphabet can write down what is dictated to them and read out what they have written. Likewise those who have learned mnemonics can set in places what they have heard and deliver it from memory', p. 22); Phaedrus, 274C-275B (quoted from Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 52). Odoyevsky, who was well versed in Plato, alludes to this very idea in Tsikhologicheskiye zametki': 'Perhaps the invention of letters is indeed a harmful invention for mankind, or, as one ancient writer thought, mankind began to forget ideas ever since he believed in their signs' (R.N. (1975) p. 215). In his later philosophical writing, Odoyevsky uses the phrases 'mnemotechnical signs' and 'mnemotechnical process' in connection with a 'so-called theory of innate concepts' which he links to Plato (Khudushina, op. cit., p. 67).

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150 Yates, The Art ofMemory, p. 51 (based on Phaedrus, 249E-250D). 151 Yates considers that 'the art of memory was a creator of imagery which must surely have flowed out into creative works of art and literature' (ibid., p. 100); she cites as probable examples Dante (pp. 104-5), 'the vast inner memory cathedrals of the Middle Ages' (p. 109), and the grotesque, with its 'classical rules for making memorable images' (p. 112). It has recently been pointed out that theoretically based analysis of narration and communication in Dostoyevsky has served to highlight that author's 'exposure of the contingency of man's understanding'; this function of Dostoyevsky's literature is described as 'pre-eminently modern' (Christopher R. Pike, 'Formalist and Structuralist Approaches to Dostoyevsky', in New Essays on Dostoyevsky, ed. M. V. Jones and G. M. Terry (Cambridge, 1983) p. 207). 152 See above. Struminsky, op. cit., p. 13, sees reason as an important constituent within Odoyevsky's gnoseology (comprising a blend of theory, plus empirical experience). 153 Kireyevsky, Pol. sob. soch., vol. I, pp. 92-3. 154 Gray-Smith, op. cit., p. 77; Schelling expounds on reason in Of Human Freedom, pp. 95-6. 155 Ibid., pp. 95-6. On man in relation to the abyss and heaven, good and evil in Schelling, see also White, op. cit., pp. 126-7. 156 Pis'ma k grafine Ye. P. R. . . y o privideniyakh, suyevernykh strakhakh, chuvsto, magii, kabalistike, alkhimii i drugikh tainstvennykh naukakh, quoted from Soch. (1844) vol. Ill, p. 310. 157 Ibid., pp. 336-7. Later writings, as might be expected, take a rational approach to such phenomena: on ghosts ('Iz bumag . ..', Russkiy arkhiv (1874) I, p. 293); on natural phenomena seeming supernatural at night (an anecdote of Dal' as a student, 'Iz bumag . ..', Russkiy arkhiv (1874) II, p. 52); and on spiritualism (the simple entry: 'We twisted the table following the book Tables tournantes par Ag. Gasparin, but nothing happened', 'Dnevnik' (13 June 1865) p. 197). 158 Soch. (1844) vol. Ill, p. 308. 159 On the unused prologue to KnyazhnaMimi, see Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 103-4. Demons, as intermediaries between gods and men, figure in the versions of Egyptian religion advocated by Hermes Trismegistos and by Apuleius (Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 10); their invocation 'was to become a practice associated with neoplatonic cosmology' (Easlea, op. cit., p. 56); demons (or 'angels' to Moses) 'are the souls that float in the air' to Philo of Alexandria and devils reproducing wholesale were a feature of the Persian ZendAvesta (and hence of the Kabbala - Franck, op. cit., pp. 175, 208). They later feature strongly in writers such as Paracelsus. On the attitudes to such questions from the 15th—18th centuries, see Easlea, op. cit., passim. 160 Jung, 'Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon', pp. 158-9; Psychology and Alchemy, pp. 299-301. 161 Ibid., pp. 84n., 325 (by 'Neopythagoreans', Jung here means Archytas and Philolaos);Jung, 'Paracelsus', in The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature (London, 1966) p. 8. 162 Quoted by Medovoy, op. cit., 1970, p. 50, n. 4. Caution should be

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163 164

165

166

167 168 169 170 171

172 173 174 175

325

exercised in the attribution of Odoyevsky's unpublished notes (as witnessed elsewhere in this study); they occasionally turn out to be quotations from other writers; nevertheless one can assume that even such passages at least made some impression on Odoyevsky; this particular quote is certainly in keeping with his later thought. Florovsky, op. cit., p. 256. John Macquarrie, however, contends that 'one cannot link existentialism to Romanticism, except in the sense that they were both opposed to what they took to be a narrow intellectualism' (Macquarrie, Existentialism (Harmondsworth, 1973) p. 53). Berdyaev considered that 'Russian philosophy, having developed outside an academic framework, has always been existential in its themes and in its approach, whereas the social theme among us was but the giving of concrete form to the theme of man' (Berdyaev, op. cit., p. 97). Macquarrie, op. cit., p. 21 (as Sartre and Camus were said later to do). He sees existentialism as 'a style of philosophizing rather than a body of philosophical doctrines' (p. 16); its prominent themes are not only 'freedom, decision and responsibility', plus Tinitude, guilt, alienation, despair, death', but also 'the problems of language, of history, of society, even the problem of being' (pp. 16-18). In his recent study, The Romantic Movement (London, 1981) Alan Menhennet states: 'There were more things in the romantic universe than had been dreamed of in the rationalistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, but for all their belief in a transcendent reality, the Romantics placed the greatest emphasis on man' (p. 28). It is but a small step from 'man' to Existenz. See the notes to Schelling, Of Human Freedom, pp. 111-12. Cf. the dictum of Novalis that suicide 'is the beginning of all philosophy' (see McFarland, op. cit., p. 15, n. 8). White is unequivocal in placing Schelling as a precursor to both existentialism and Marxism (op. cit., especially pp. 1-3, 122 and 189); to the question 'why is there anything at all, why is there not nothing?' (p. 172), Schelling supplied the answer 'for the sake of man' (p. 183). Gray-Smith, op. cit., p. 109; Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 280. Quoted from 'Zapisnaya knizhka', in 'Siluet', pp. 66, 70. Macquarrie, op. cit., p. 17. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 31. P. V. Kireyevsky commented in some surprise after his 1829 conversations with Schelling: 'he is no more a noise here than any old Merzlyakov at home in Moscow' (Sakharov, 'Vstrechi s SheUingom', p. 168). N. V. Riasanovsky thinks that 'Schelling's role in the romantic movement did not justify his majestic position in Russian intellectual history' (N. V. Riasanovsky, Russia and the West, p. 15). Schelling's stock may now, however, be beginning to rise again. Sakharov, 'O bytovanii shellingianskikh idey . . .', pp. 215-16. Gulyga, op. cit., p. 274. 'V. F. Odoyevsky. Beseda s SheUingom', publication by M. I. Medovoy, notes by Medovoy and Sakharov, PisateV i zhizn' (Moscow, 1978) pp. 176-80, from which the following account is taken. This may be compared with Schelling's remarks cited in n. 112 above.

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176 Notes to 'Beseda s Shellingom', p. 178, n. 3. Medovoy and Sakharov produce here (pp. 178-9) snippets from the later Odoyevsky to demonstrate the subsequent mellowing of his strong dislike for Hegel (in 1842 he had told Schelling: 'Hegelian philosophy brings many to the abyss of negation and satisfied no one', ibid., p. 176). 177 Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, pp. 64, 72-3, 79; attention should, however, be paid to Walicki's particular definition of 'conservatism' (see pp. 7-9). Walicki is also misleading with regard to historical detail in claiming the Lyubomudry to have been 'organized' by the 'archival youths', in describing Kyukhel'beker as 'one of the contributors' to Mnemozina (pp. 64-5), and in assigning Odoyevsky's meeting with Schelling to 1848 (p. 75). Less excusable than these slips, however, is Walicki's statement (p. 74) that 'In his enthusiasm for. . . an organic whole transcending its individual parts, Odoyevsky even defended the death penalty as the organism's right to remove its sick cells'. This is based on Odoyevsky's unpublished papers, as quoted by Sakulin (I, 1, p. 559). However, in his very next paragraph, Sakulin, who mentions that Saint-Martin and Zhukovsky were supporters of this form of punishment, goes on to say that, far from being consistent in this, Odoyevsky 'in other notes of the same period speaks of the inhumanity and inexpediency of capital punishment, and in criminal acts sees a product of the imperfections in the organization of society' (p. 560); a quotation to this effect follows. Walicki conveys not a word of this. As already mentioned, Odoyevsky was given to copying passages from many writers without necessarily indicating his source in his notes. The metaphor of 'cutting off an infected member from the body of the state' was by no means unusual; for example, Campanella used it two hundred years earlier (The City of the Sun (London, 1981) p. 50) in a work which Odoyevsky is likely to have read. 178 Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, pp. 1-5 (on Weltanschauung)', Zenkovsky, op. cit., vol. I, p. 4 (for Odoyevsky, see pp. 134—48). 179 Zenkovsky, ibid., pp. 144-7 and 136; Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, pp. 81-2. 180 V. A. Riasanovsky Obzor russkoy kuVtury, vol. II (New York, 1947-8) pp. 304,310. 181 N. V. Riasanovsky, Russia and the West p. 20. 182 Alexandre Koyre, Etudes sur Vhistoire de la pensee philosophique en Russie (Paris, 1950) p. 29; S. A. Levitsky, Ocherki po istorii russkoyfilosofskoyi obshchestvennoy mysli (Frankfurt, 1968) p. 42. 183 Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, pp. 64, 56ff, 46, 62, 81, n. 1. Berdyaev himself seems to include Odoyevsky among the Slavophiles (The Russian Idea, p. 40). On 'Official Nationality' see also, however, '"The Slavophiles" by Michael Pogodin', The New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1982) pp. 78-80 (and below). 184 Dmitrij Tschizewski [Chizhevsky], Russian Intellectual History (Ann Arbor, 1978) pp. 189, 219. 185 Claude Backvis, 'Trois notes sur l'oeuvre litteraire du prince Vladimir Odot\s\d)\AIPS, vol. XIX (1968) p. 517; James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe (New York, 1970) p. 318.

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186 Peter K. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism: Study in Ideas, vol. I: A. S. Khomyakov (The Hague, 1961) p. 39 (see pp. 36-40). On 'the decaying West', see note 38 above; also Pogodin, T h e Slavophiles'. 187 Christoff, The Third Heart, pp. 30-1. 188 See V. G. Belinsky, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy, vol. VIII (MoscowLeningrad, 1953-9) p. 316. For the other critics, see works cited in the bibliography. 189 Gippius, op. cit., p. 22. For the others, see works cited in bibliography. 190 Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 432-3. Long before the publication of Russkiye nochi, however, Odoyevsky's virtual adulation of Peter would have offended any aspiring Slavophile: see, for example, 'Peterburgskiye pis'ma', in which the protagonist Vecheslav 'very nearly knelt before the majestic monument to Peter the giant' (Moskovskiy nablyudateV (1835) Part I, p. 60). 191 B. F. Yegorov and M. I. Medovoy, 'Perepiska kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo s A. S. Khomyakovym', Uchonyye zapiski Tartuskogo universiteta, vyp. 251, trudy po russkoy i slavyanskoy filologii, 15 (Tartu, 1970) pp. 335-49 (including the publication of five letters). 192 The second volume of Christoff s Introduction . . ., vol. II: /. V. Kireevskij (The Hague, 1972) is in this respect disappointing; his statement that 'Prince Odoevskij seems not to have been particularly close to Kireevskij, or indeed to any members of the society [of Lyubomudry], except Venevitinov, and a few years after the society was disbanded the friendships became casual' (p. 9) is open to question. He describes Odoyevsky as, of the Lyubomudry, the person 'about whom we know the least' (p. 25); he also thinks that Odoyevsky worked in the Archives with the 'arkhivnyye yunoshi' and describes S. A. Sobolevsky as an 'industrialist and a prominent official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' (p. 8) - none of these remarks can be considered very accurate. 193 Yegorov and Medovoy, op. cit., p. 335. 194 Quoted from ibid., p. 336 (Khomyakov to A. V. Venevitinov). 195 Quoted from ibid., p. 336 ('Faust u nego sdelalsya slavyano-russom'). 196 Quoted from ibid., p. 336. 197 Quoted from ibid., p. 342 (this letter is on pp. 341-4). 198 Quoted from Gippius, op. cit., p. 25. 199 The 1847 review may now be found in K. S. Aksakov and I. S. Aksakov, Literaturnaya kritika (Moscow, 1981) pp. 167-71. The second piece was in Parus, no. 1 (1859). 200 For this letter, see Yegorov and Medovoy, op. cit., pp. 344-5. 201 'Dnevnik', p. 228. 202 Yegorov and Medovoy, op. cit., p. 335. 203 Ibid., p. 337. 204 Pogodin, 'The Slavophiles', pp. 61-2. 205 Ibid., p. 64. 206 Walicki (The Slavophile Controversy, p. 64) writes of Shevyryov's contribution as 'a reinterpretation of the ideas of the Moscow Lovers of Wisdom in the spirit of Uvarov's "triune formula"'. For quotes of other similar views, see Irene Zohrab's introduction to Pogodin's 'The

328

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Slavophiles', cited above; Pogodin is concerned to play down Uvarov's formula as insignificant and to deny real differences between himself and Shevyryov on the one side, and 'Slavophilism proper' on the other; the concept of 'Official Nationality' (perpetuated by all subsequent historians down to Riasanovsky and Walieki - see Zohrab's introduction) is claimed by Pogodin to be substantially a fantasy of the critic A. N. Pypin. 207 Walieki, A History of Russian Thought, p. 79. 208 Ibid. Elsewhere (The Slavophile Controversy, p. 398) Walieki comments: 'the fact that Belinksy's "immediacy" can almost be identified with Odoyevsky's "instinct", Chaadayev's "history" and the Slavophiles' "elemental force of history" is hardly surprising, since these quotations date from the period of "reconciliation with reality"'. 209 Gulyga, op. cit., pp. 294^5.

Chapter Three, The Musician 1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10

11

12 13

14

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians•, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980) vol. 13, pp. 504-5 (the fifty-line entry by Geoffrey Norris is slightly misleading, however, on Odoyevsky's literary career, in that it describes Russkiye nochi as 'a collection of philosophical studies'); Alfred J. Swan, Russian Music and its Sources in Chant and Folk-Song (London, 1973). The first work in English to attempt to treat even a portion of Odoyevsky's musical career has recently appeared: David Lowe, 'Vladimir Odoevskii as Opera Critic', Slavic Review•, Summer 1982, pp. 306-15. VFO, Muz. -lit. naslediye; Gr. Bernandt's seventy-page introductory essay is to be found in revised form in his book Start i ocherki (Moscow, 1978) pp. 11-107. O. Levasheva, Yu. Keldysh and A. Kandinsky, Istoriya russkoy muzyki, vol. I (Moscow, 1980) pp. 232,235-9,428 andpassim. B. V. Asaf ev [Igor Glebov], Russian Music from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, translated by Alfred J. Swan (Ann Arbor, 1953) p. 269. This work has been reprinted under the title Russkaya muzyka: XIX i nachaloXXveka, 2nd edn (Leningrad, 1979). A full bibliography of Odoyevsky's published musical writings is contained inMuz. -lit. naslediye, pp. 688-95. A. ¥tt,Moivospominaniya, 1848-1889, Part I (Moscow, 1890) p. 428. Gr. Bernandt, V. F. Odoyevsky iBetkhoven (Moscow, 1971) p. 10. Bernandt, Stat V i ocherki, p. 41. [W. Lenz], Triklyucheniya Liflyandtsa v Peterburge' Russkiy arkhiv, I, 4 (1878) p. 445. Bernandt, Start i ocherki, pp. 40-1; B. Granovsky, 'Nachalo muzykaPno-kriticheskoy deyatel'nosti V. F. Odoyevskogo', Uchonyye zapiski gos. nauchno-issled. in-ta teatra, muzyki i kinematografii, Sektor muzyki (Leningrad, 1958) t. II, pp. 255-82 (esp. p. 259). Granovsky's is the best account of Odoyevsky's early musical career. Patrick Piggott, The Life and Music ofJohn Field 1782-1837 (London, 1973) pp. 47-9; Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, Memoirs, trans. Richard G. Mudge (Norman, 1963) p. 16 (another Irish composer, Michael Balfe, worked in St Petersburg in the 1850s, but there is no evidence that he knew Odoyevsky). Levashevaetal.,op. cit.,vo\.I,p. 282;Bernandt,Startiocherki,p.41. Glinka, op. cit., p. 29 (and n. 9); Piggott, op. cit., p. 157 (Piggott, therefore, like Bqrnandt, in Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 642, appears to be wrong in stating that 'Miller . . . numbered Glinka among his pupils'). On Griboyedov see also Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 642. In 1825 Odoyevsky wrote: 'under the fingers of Field, pianos become completely different instruments' (Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 100). Very little of Odoyevsky's music has been published but some of it is said to be occasionally aired on Soviet radio. I have not myself heard any of it, but his early pieces have been described to me as sounding 'like something

330

15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32

33

34 35

Notes between Mozart and Chopin' in style. This sounds to be not far removed from the style of Field. For a list of Tchaikovsky's comments on particular compositions of Odoyevsky, see Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 686-7; for the sources of the views of Rubinstein and Balakirev, see Bernandt, Start i ocherki, p. 42. Bernandt, in Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 34. Ibid., p. 36. Granovsky, op. tit., pp. 266-7 and 275-6. David Lowe, op. cit., draws attention to the link between aesthetics and ethics in Odoyevsky's opera criticism and hostility to the beau monde expressed through musical taste in the early story Dni dosad (1823). For a more detailed outline of Odoyevsky's role in the 'Mozart-Rossini dispute', see T. N. Livanova and V. V. Protopopov, Opernaya kritika v Rossii, vol. 1, vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1966) pp. 104-16. See Bernandt's notes to Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 553. Ibid., p. 553 (from Severnaya pchela, 19 Dec 1836). Ibid., pp. 564-6, on which the ensuing details are based. Ibid., p. 565. Sakulin, I, 2, p. 412. Quoted from Sakulin, I, 1, p. 92. The use of the lyre (above) is one indication of this. Also relevant, given the great romantic, Schellingian (and Odoyevskian) drive for synthesis, is the fact that 'the Pythagoreans described concord in music Qiarmonia) as a "coordination of opposites, a unification of the many, a reconciliation of dissentients'" (George Thomson, The First Philosophers (London, 1972) p. 265, and pp. 259-60 and 264-5 on the lyre). 'Opyt teorii izyashchnykh iskusstv s osobennym primeneniyem onoy k muzyke' and 'Gnomy XIX stoletiya', in 'Traktaty' (1974) vol. II, pp. 156-71 and 171-6 respectively, from which the ensuing summary is taken. These fragmentary tracts, reconstructed as far as was possible for that publication, were almost certainly originally intended as part of a single work, which was also to have included a detailed tract on music (see M. I. Medovoy's commentary, p. 600). Ibid., p. 601. Ibid., p. 159. Ibid., p. 172. R.N. (1975) pp. 47 and 59-60. Ibid., pp. 85 and 172. See Ye. A. Maymin's article in ibid., p. 263; and M. S. Shtern, 'Filosofsko-khudozhestvennoye svoyeobraziye prozy V. F. Odoyevskogo (ot apologov k "Russkim nocham")', Avtoreferat (Leningradskiy G.P.I., 1979) pp. 8-9. VI. Protopopov, for example, believes that 'the nationalist-realist principles' of Glinka helped Odoyevsky to break away from his idealist aesthetics in the direction of realism (see his introduction to V. F. Odoyevsky, Izbrannyye muzykaVno-kriticheskiye start (MoscowLeningrad, 1951) pp. 3-18). Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 224-5. Ibid., p. 111.

Chapter Three, The Musician 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58

331

Ibid., p. 525. 'Dnevnik', p. 188. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 485. Ibid., p. 314. Ibid., pp. 458-9. 'Kakaya pol'za ot muzyki', ibid., pp. 459-63. Ibid., p. 375. Bernandt, in Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 47. For Odoyevsky's views on narodnosf otherwise, see Chapter Five of the present study. Ibid., p. 34. For recent essays on these and other Russian musical figures of the period, see A. Skonechnaya, Moskovskiy Parnas (Moscow, 1983) on Alyab'ev, Verstovsky, Varlamov, ViePgorsky, Odoyevsky, etc. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 532. Ibid., p. 489ff. Bernandt, in ibid., pp. 32-4. Ibid., p. 33. Bernandt, StatH i ocherki, pp. 47 and 198. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 593; Levasheva et al, op. cit., vol. I, p. 425. David Brown, Mikhail Glinka: A Biographical and Critical Study (Oxford, 1974) pp. 89 and 328, reports that the musical setting was by Glinka and Odoyevsky. Brown, ibid., pp. 17-19 and 57; Bernandt, StatH i ocherki, p. 48. Bernandt, ibid., pp. 55-7. Glinka, op. cit., pp. 101 and 105; Brown, Mikhail Glinka, Ch. 5. Trilozheniya k biografii M. I. Glinki (1857) (Pis'mo V. V. Stasovu)' and 'Pis'mo k V. V. Stasovu o Ruslane i Lyudmile Glinki', Muz. -lit. naslediye, pp. 229-33 and 233-7. One witness of the first production, the memoirist F. F. VigeP, saw the finished product as rather 'an oratorio, with decor and costume' (Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 554). Brown (Mikhail Glinka, pp. 96-8) provides a somewhat different account and reports the later claim of Rozen's daughter that Nicholas I had proposed Rozen as librettist. Brown (ibid., pp. 95-6), while not discounting Odoyevsky's evidence completely, suggests that he 'was probably anxious that his own role in Glinka's creative evolution should appear as great as possible'. Apart from the fact that such a purpose would seem out of character, it should also be said that Odoyevsky's letters to Stasov were never actually sent and Stasov himelf (a most exacting critic) regarded their testimony as 'priceless' (Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 593-4). Furthermore, when Odoyevsky alluded to these events in an article of 1867, the article was published anonymously and the 'friend' of Glinka (himself) unnamed 'from fear of insulting his modesty' (ibid., p. 41). See Glinka, op. cit., p. 107; Brown, Mikhail Glinka, p. 85 (see also n. 56 above). The opera reverted to its original title, also for political reasons, when revived in 1939 with a fresh libretto. Ivan Susanin is the title used throughout post-193 9 Soviet musicology (except sometimes, but not always, when earlier reviews and documents are quoted). However, most Russians, perhaps perversely, prefer to refer to the opera as Zhizn'

332

59

60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70

Notes za Tsarya (as does Western musicology). Perhaps equally perversely, I have chosen to use the original title. See, for example, Bernandt in Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 39, and Stat'i i ocherki, p. 52. However, it seems that Glinka himself was far from impressed with the quality of (the German) Rozen's Russian poetry (Glinka, op. cit., pp. 96-7), while the ultra-conservative VigeP regarded it as 'no use for anything* {Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 554). However, a recent Western commentator argues that the opera is imbued with the 'joint spirit of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality*, for which she sees Glinka as almost totally responsible: 'the words of Rosen, Sollogub and Kukol'nik [the two latter figures were also involved in the libretto at one stage] may make up the verses; but Glinka's ideas, expressed in musical and dramatic terms, are the essence of the opera' as 'all the evidence points to Glinka's overall control of the libretto from the original project' (Jennifer Baker, 'Glinka's A Life for the Tsar and "Official Nationality"', Renaissance and Modern Studies, vol. XXIV (1980) pp. 94, 107-8). Bulgarin in fact wrote: 'the music for the opera is written too low, that is in low notes' (quoted from Bernandt, Stat'i i ocherki, p. 131). Bernandt, Stat'i i ocherki, p. 130. Leonov provides an interesting instance of the close world of Russian artistic life: the illegitimate son of John Field (with whom Glinka and Odoyevsky had early connections), Leonov was born Leon Charpentier, made his first public appearance as an infant prodigy of the piano in 1823 (a concert which, according to Piggott, op. cit., p. 57, Odoyevsky may have reviewed), later developed a tenor voice, singing the lead in the first production oilvan Susanin, and in 1847, during Berlioz's visit to Russia (an event - see below - with which Odoyevsky and Glinka were both connected), sang the title role in the first Moscow performance of The Damnation ofFaust (Piggott, ibid., p. 95). * Glinka, op. cit., p. 118. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 596-7. Bernandt, Stat'i i ocherki, p. 57. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 233-4. Livanova and Protopopov, op. cit., p. 188, regard Odoyevsky's articles on Glinka as the best of the 1830s and 1840s (see Ch. Ill and V of their study). Brown, Mikhail Glinka, pp. 247-8 and 298. Bernandt, in Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 41. Ibid., p. 42. Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910), leading mezzo-soprano, close friend and almost certainly mistress of Turgenev, at one time studied with Liszt and frequented the musical salons of St Petersburg and Moscow (such as that of Mikhail ViePgorsky): Odoyevsky wrote of her in 1842: '[the French] glorify to the skies their Garcia-Viardot, who is hardly as good as our Stepanova' (ibid., p. 202). However, by 1844 and 1845 she had become for him 'the inimitable Viardot' and 'the incomparable Viardot-Garcia' (ibid., pp. 212 and 220). Subsequendy he even wrote a 'Fantasia for organ and two pianos on a theme of P. Viardot' (ibid., p. 587). Bernandt, Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 42. Yuriy Arnol'd, Vospominaniya, vyp. II (Moscow, 1892) pp. 220-1.

Chapter Three, The Musician 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92 93

333

Letter to Dargomyzhsky, 24 Feb 1861 {Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 503 and 673). Bernandt,Stat'ii ocherki, p. 59. V. S. Serova, Serovy: Aleksandr Nikolayevich i Valentin Aleksandrovich. Vospominaniya V. S. Serovoy (St Petersburg, 1914) p. 42. Russkaya stsena, (1865) no. 1, p. 126 (quoted by Bernandt, Stat V i ocherki, p. 60). Muz. -lit. naslediye, pp. 286,287,340. Bernandt, Stat 7 i ocherki, p. 61. Ibid.,p. 62. 'Perekhvachonnyye pis'ma', V. F. Odoyevsky, Soch. (1981) vol. I, pp. 334-40. 'Dnevnik', p. 111; Bernandt, Stat 7 i ocherki', p. 63. Stat'i i ocherki, pp. 59, 61 and 92 (the original is in Muz. -lit. naslediye, pp. 329-30); Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov, Selected Essays on Music, trans. Florence Jones (London, 1968) pp. 85-7. Swan (op. cit., p. 90) speaks of the historical, but not artistic, importance of Serov's operas and 'some effective if blatant pages of writing which Serov had transposed from his hero, Wagner'. Son of Kapellmeister F. P. LVov, A. F. LVov (1798-1870) wrote the national anthem ('Bozhe tsarya khrani', to a text by Zhukovsky) in 1833 'on commission* (Stasov, op. cit., p. 66) and was presumably the 'dilettante-musician, Prince Lvov' [sic] whom Monas refers to as a frontman for the Third Section (Sidney Monas, The Third Section: Police and Society in Russia under Nicholas I (Cambridge, Mass., 1961) p. 112). LVov is also alleged to have had an uneasy, or even a vindictive, relationship with Glinka during their duties together in the Imperial Chapel (Brown, Mikhail Glinka, pp. 137-8; cf. Levasheva et. al, op. cit., vol. I, p. 426). Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 676; Bernandt, Stat 7 i ocherki, p. 106. Muz. - lit. naslediye, p. 67 8. Bernandt, ibid., p. 63; Levasheva et al, op. cit., vol. I, p. 238; Protopopov, op. cit. For Odoyevsky's comments stzMuz.-lit. naslediye, p. 236; similar sentiments are expressed elsewhere in his work. 'Dnevnik', p. 250. Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 685. Ibid., pp. 685-6; see also Modeste Tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, ed. Rosa Newmarch (London, 1906) pp. 78-9. Muz. -lit. naslediye, pp. 685-6; Tchaikovsky, op. cit., pp. 78-9. 'Dnevnik', p. 251 (Tchaikovsky was so nervous at the premiere, however, that he refused Odoyevsky's invitation to watch the opera from his box, ibid., p. 251); David Brown, Tchaikovsky: A Biographical and Critical Study, vol.I(London,1978)p.l39. [G.] Larosh, 'Russkaya muzykal'naya literatura', Russkiy vestnik, vol. 83 (1869) pp. 773-83 (esp. p. 776). Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 655. 'Opyt bezymyannoy poemy', ibid., pp. 439-42,655. See the present author's study 'Perspectives on the Romanticism of V. F. Odoyevsky', in Robert Reid (ed.), Problems of Russian Romanticism (Avebury, London, 1986).

334 94

95 96 97 98 99

100 101 102

103 104 105 106 107 108

109 110 111

112 113 114 115 116 117 118

Notes Letter to Verstovsky, 6 Nov. 1831, Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 495; it seems to have been through this singing activity that Odoyevsky met S. S. Uvarov, Minister of Public Education from 1833, whom he describes as 'a fine basso profundo'. Bernandt, Stat'i i ocherki, pp. 68, 69. Swan, op. tit., p. 71. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 482. Ibid., pp. 252-3, 603. Bernandt, Stat'i i ocherki, pp. 71, 73. This is not inconsistent with Odoyevsky's earlier romantic ideas of the nature of language, particularly the existence of some lost natural language, now only surviving in art forms. For example Tetite sonate russe pour piano et violon' (1855) - ibid., pp. 75-6. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 514-15 and 678-9; Swan, op', cit, p. 71; Protopopov, op. cit., pp. 3-18; S. O. Dolgov, 'K biografii kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkoye obozreniye (1894) no. 3, pp. 431-4. B. B. Granovsky, 'D. V. Razumovsky. Kratkiy ocherk zhizni i deyatel'nosti', in Sobraniya D. V. Razumovskogo i V. F. Odoyevskogo. Opisaniya (Moscow, 1960) pp. 23-35 (esp. pp. 24—6); this publication contains details of Odoyevsky's musical archives plus an article by M. B. Brazhnikov (pp. 6-22) on the chant manuscripts of the RazumovskyOdoyevsky collection. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 257 and 273. R. N. (1975) p. 182. Odoyevsky thought particularly highly of Mendelssohn's oratorio St Paul (Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 575). K. V. O., 'VivaPdi', Entsiklopedicheskiy Leksikon, ed. A. Plyushar, vol. 10 (St Petersburg, 1837) p. 68. Bernandt, Stat'i i ocherki, p. 81. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 150-3. Robert and Clara Schumann visited Russia in 1844, Clara giving acclaimed recitals, playing Scarlatti and Bach; Clara returned again in 1863-4 (Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 213, 585). There appears to be no record of Odoyevsky having met the Schumanns. 'Dnevnik', pp. 239 and 179. The Brahms work referred to is presumably either the D major Serenade (Opus 11) or the A major one (Opus 16). Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 334, 335; 'Dnevnik', p. 242. (1864), Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 286. David Lowe, op. cit., sees 'a philosophical rationalization' grafted on to Odoyevsky's animosity towards Italian music (p. 307), which he equated (Lowe claims) with 'an unnamed vice, presumably Onanism' and 'a sexual threat' (pp. 311-12). Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 288. Ibid., p. 226. Ibid., p. 511; 'Russkaya ili ital'yanskaya opera', ibid., pp. 309-15 (esp. pp. 314-15). Ibid., p. 287 (cf. p. 315, using Rigoletto). Ibid., p. 315. Glinka, op. cit., pp. 179-80 and 198; Stasov, op. cit., p. 131. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 256.

Chapter Three, The Musician 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

129 130 131 132 133 134

135 136 137

138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145

335

Ibid., p. 334; Stasov, op. cit., pp. 76-7. Mus.-lit. naslediye, p. 209. Ibid., pp. 138, 149 and 510-11. Ibid., pp. 257-8, 341; 'Dnevnik', p. 246. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 232, 243. Ibid., pp. 257-8. 'Dnevnik', p. 159. See Granovsky, 'Nachalo muzykal'no - kriticheskoy,, pp. 275-6; Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 98. Bernandt, Start i ocherki, p. 82. 'Lagrua v roli Donny Anny', first published in Sovetskaya muzyka (1955) no. 10, pp. 71-9 (also m Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 240-9). Odoyevsky had known Hoffmann's Don Juan at least from 1833 {Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 111). '[Hoffmann's] text has so often been misread as a serious, nonfictional discussion of Mozart's Don Giovanni framed by a fiction which has no intrinsic significance', due to failure to take account of the fact, for example, that 'the narrator writes of events that, as anyone familiar with the Mozart/Da Ponte Don Giovanni knows, cannot be inferred from the opera' (David E. Wellberg, 'E. T. A. Hoffmann and Romantic Hermeneutics: an Interpretation of Hoffmann's Don jfuan\ Studies in Romanticism, vol. 19 (Winter 1980) p. 458). Odoyevsky appears to have had some inkling of this (see 1955 version, p. 75). R.N. (1975) p. 141. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid., p. 85. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 646. Bernandt, Start i ocherki, pp. 83-4. O. O. O., 'Interesnoye muzykal'noye izvestiye', Nashe vremya (1863) no. 51,8 Mar.; N. Ya. Afanas'ev, 'Vospominaniya', Istoricheskiy vestnik (July 1890) p. 35 (both quoted from Bernandt, V. F. Odoyevsky i Betkhoven (Moscow, 1971) p. 20). Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 374. Ibid., p. 497. Ibid., p. 594; Stasov, op. cit., p. 28. For a summary of Russian writings on Beethoven contemporary to Odoyevsky, and references to various comments in the writings of Odoyevsky, see Bernandt, Odoyevsky i Betkhoven, p. 37ff. Bernandt, ibid., pp. 40-2. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 230-1. 'Dnevnik', p. 182. See also B. Granovsky, 'Zametki o V. Odoyevskom', Sovetskaya muzyka, no. 9 (1952) pp. 44-50. Bernandt, Start i ocherki, pp. 78-9. R. N. (1975) p. 104. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 650. Bernandt, Start i ocherki, pp. 80-1. R. N. (1975) p. 106 and n. 12, p. 292; on this see Granovsky, 'Zametki o V. Odoyevskom', pp. 46-7. Odoyevsky may have genuinely believed in a Slavonic origin for the Bachs or it may have been (Slavonic) wishful thinking. The nearest basis for such a belief appears to be the supposed

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146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

156 157 158 159

Notes Hungarian origin of Veit (in Odoyevsky 'Fokht') Bach, which was in fact, it seems, limited to an interim sojourn; 'the stock was pure German': Ernest Newman in The International Cyclopedia ofMusic and Musicians, 10th edn (New York and London, 1975) p. 102; see also Karl Geiringer, The Bach Family (London, 1954) pp. 6-12. Similarly, in the case of Haydn (ft. N. (1975) pp. 106 and 292), theories of a Slavonic (e.g. Croatian) origin have been refuted: Karl Geiringer in The International Cyclopedia, p. 937. Granovsky 'Zametki o V. Odoyevskom', pp. 47-8. Mrs Newmarch, 'Liszt in Russia', The Monthly Musical Record (1 Apr. 1902) p. 64. Ibid., p. 64; Eleanor Perenyi, Liszt (London, 1974) p. 221. Newmarch (op. cit., pp. 64-5) is mostly taken verbatim from Stasov; see also Perenyi, op. cit., pp. 223-4; and Stasov, op. cit., pp. 120-2, for the full account. Ibid., p. 129. Glinka, op. cit., p. 163. Ibid., pp. 175-6; ArnoPd, op. cit., p. 221 (ArnoPd on Liszt is also quoted by Stasov, op. cit., p. 137). Stasov, ibid., p. 135; Bernandt, StatH i ocherki, p. 298. Glinka, op. cit., p. 163; Perenyi, op. cit., p. 225. She is mentioned in his diary of 1861 ('Dnevnik', p. 127); Richard Wagner, My Life, vol. II (London, 1911) p. 861. Marie Kalergis [Kalergi] was the niece of Count Nesselrode (Nicholas I's foreign minister), and married at an early age in 1839 a Greek diplomat, Johann Kalergis, from whom she soon separated. She much later married Count Mukhanov, a minister of the next Tsar. Sometimes referred to as a gifted pianist, sometimes as a courtesan - a kind of aristocratic nineteenth-century groupie - or even as a spy, she is reputed to have been a pupil of Chopin, the sometime mistress of Liszt, Alfred de Musset, Gautier (who wrote Symphonie en blanc majeur to her) and Heine. She later became a benefactress of Wagner, was close to Napoleon III, had a famous salon at Baden, and also knew Berlioz. See Perenyi, op. cit., passim; Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, vol. I (London, 1933) p. 428; Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century (London, 1951) vol. II, p. 157; on the 'spying' aspect, see Bertita Paillard and Emile Haraszti, 'Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner in the Franco German War of 1870', The Musical Quarterly, vol. XXXV (1949) pp. 386-411 (esp. pp. 390-2). Paillard and Haraszti call Kalergis 'one of the strangest adventuresses of the period' (p. 390); no doubt more could be gleaned from the two sources to which they refer: La Mara, Marie von Mukhanojf Kalergis in Briefen an ihre Tochter (Leipzig, 1909) and Constantin Photiades, Marie Kalergis (Paris, 1924). Bernandt, Stat'i i ocherki, p. 89. It was, in any case, not uncommon for Liszt to be dismissed as a composer in his earlier career (see, for example, Stasov, op. cit., pp. 32-3, and then his 1869 view, p. 46). Bernandt, StatH i ocherki, p. 89; Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 156. Bernandt, in Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 61; RM (1975) p. 182. Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, trans. Rachel (Scott Russell) and Eleanor

Chapter Three, The Musician

160 161 162 163

164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179

180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188

337

Holmes, annotated and revised by Ernest Newman (New York, 1966) p. 421; his account of his Russian journey follows on pp. 422-43, from which much of the following detail is taken. Perenyi, op. cit., p. 221. Lenz was a half-Russian, half-German musician, memoirist (see n. 9 above) and author of an 1852 book on Beethoven. Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 427. Letter (between 1 Mar and 10 Mar 1847) 'au Prince Wladimir Odojewsky', Hector Berlioz, Correspondance Generate, ed. Pierre Citron, vol. Ill: 1842-1850 (Paris, 1978) pp. 407-8; the wording makes it plain that Odoyevsky had requested details of Berlioz's forthcoming activities for journalistic purposes. 'Berlioz v Peterburge', Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 220-2. Glinka had met Berlioz in Paris in 1844-5 (Glinka, op. cit., pp. 191, 194). Adolphe Boschot, Le Crepuscule d'un Romantique: Hector Berlioz 1842-1869, 4th edn (Paris, 1912) p. 152. W. J. Turner, Berlioz: The Man and his Work (London, 1934) p. 249. Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 427. Stasov, op. cit., p. 23. Boschot, op. cit., p. 153. 'Kontsert Berlioza v Peterburge (Pis'mo k M. I. Glinke), 3 marta 1847, 12 chasov popolunochi', Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 222-5. Bernandt, ibid., pp. 61-2. Stasov, op. cit., pp. 24 and 57. For a discussion of the impact of Berlioz on Russian music, particularly on 'The Five', see Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century (London, 1951) pp. 282-5; see also Stasov, op. cit., pp. 161-9. Ibid., pp. 163-4. Editor's coda to Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 532; Turner, op. cit., p. 344. Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, My Musical Life, trans. Judah A. Joffe (London, 1974) p. 82. 'Dnevnik', pp. 238, 239. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 330-2 and 628-9; 'Dnevnik', p.239. Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 629. The Odoyevsky writings concerned have not been identified; neither do Odoyevsky's letters appear to have survived (unless subsequent volumes of Berlioz's Correspondance Generale shed any further light). Russian translations of Berlioz's letters to Odoyevsky are to be found in Sovetskoye iskusstvo (1937) no. 45; and Sovetskaya muzyka (1969) no. 8, pp. 62-8. Bernandt, Start i ocherki, p. 75. Ibid., p. 90. Ibid., p. 91; 'Dnevnik', p. 116. S e e * . N. (1975) p. 189. 'Dnevnik', p. 221. Wagner, op. cit., vol. II, p. 851 (from which work subsequent details are drawn). On Kalergis, see n. 155 above. Ibid., p. 860. Bernandt, 'Vagner i Odoyevsky', Sovetskaya muzyka (1953) no. 6, p. 72. 'Vagner v Moskve', 'Pervyy kontsert Vagnera v Moskve, 13 marta' and

338

189 190 191 192 193

194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204

Notes 'Rikhard Vagner i yego muzyka', reprinted in Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 254-7, 257-60 and 260-74 respectively. Bernandt, StatH i ocherki, p. 90. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 257, 269-70; no doubt it was this quality, admired by Odoyevsky, that caused Stasov to term Wagner 'the German equivalent of a Slavophile' (Stasov, op. tit., p. 45). Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 271. 'Dnevnik', pp. 165-6. Wagner, op. tit., vol. II, pp. 861-2. 'Wolffsohn' - probably Vil'gel'm VoPfson [Wolfsohn], pseud, of Karl Maien (1820-65), a German Russophile writer, scholar and publisher, known to have been acquainted with Odoyevsky. Ibid., pp. 862-3. Letters to Verstovsky [1838] and 2 Jan. 1839, Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 498-9. 'O russkikh kontsertakh Obshchestva poseshcheniya bednykh v muzykaPnom otnoshenii', ibid., pp. 225-9 (esp. pp. 226-7). Ibid., p. 291ff.; 'Dnevnik', p. 188. See Bernandt, StatH i ocherki, pp. 104-5; the Karmannyy muzykaVnyy slovar\ 2nd edn (Moscow, 1866) underwent its final (21st) edition in Moscow in 1930. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 570, 144, 338ff. Quoted from Ye. Skayler [Eugene Schuyler], 'Graf Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy', Russkaya starina, vol. 67 (1890) pp. 631-4. Fet, op. tit., Part I, pp. 427-9. 'Kn. F. Odoyevsky Sidoru': See Appendix II. Swan, op. tit., pp. 73-4. Levasheva et. al., op. tit., vol. I, p. 237.

Chapter Four, The Popular Educator 1

2

3 4 5

6 7 8

9

10 11 12

13

This part of Odoyevsky's career is examined in detail by P. N. Sakulin, in vol. I, part I of his monumental study. For a recent discussion see the following articles by N. M. Mikhaylovskaya: 'Nravopisatel'nyye povesti V. F. Odoyevskogo' in Voprosy istorii i teorii literatury, vyp. VI (Chelyabinsk, 1970) pp. 3-16, and Trosvetiterskiy realizm V. F. Odoyevskogo 20-kh. godov XIX veka (o proze pisatelya)' in Problemy metoda i stilya (Chelyabinsk, 1976) pp. 117-31. On Utopianism in Odoyevsky, see nn. 109-11 to Chapter 1. On the later Odoyevsky see N. M. Mikhaylovskaya, 'Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky - predstaviteP russkogo prosveshcheniya', Russkaya literatura, no. 1 (1979) pp. 14-25; and, on NedovoVno, V. S. Virginsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky: yestestvennonauchnyye vzglyady 1804-1869 (Moscow, 1975) pp. 94-8. V. Ya. Struminsky's introduction (and notes) to VFO, Izb. ped. sock., are on pp. 5-58 (and pp. 337-61); see pp. 13-14. Hereafter cited as 'Struminsky\ Struminsky, pp. 18-23. Ibid., pp. 31-2; see also D. F. Tarasov, 'V. F. Odoyevsky o pervonachaPnom prepodavanii v sel'skikh prikhodskikh uchilishchakh' in Uchonyye zapiski Mariyskogo ped. in-ta (1958) vol. XIX, vyp.3, pp. 398-423. See also Golubyova and GoPdberg, V. I SoboVshchikov, V. F. Odoyevsky (Moscow, 1983). Quoted from Struminsky, p. 33. See ibid., pp. 34 and 39. Ibid., pp. 44-5. Odoyevsky's detractors frequently used this term to brand him a superficial dilettante; however, the academic thoroughness with which he tackled each of so many branches of learning belies any such accusation. Quoted from ibid., pp. 46-7. This anecdote may be compared with Borges's idea of'The Library of BabeP containing somewhere within it perhaps a single book which would provide the key to all knowledge the 'total book'. Ibid., pp. 46-7. Ye. Nekrasova, 'Pisateli dlya naroda iz intelligentsii. Ocherk pervyy. Knyaz' Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky (1803-1869)', Severnyy vestnik no. 2 (1892) pp. 155-82 (esp. p. 182); Struminsky, p. 32. For an interesting account of the background to the reformist movement in this period, see B. Ya. Bukshtab, 'Nekrasov i peterburgskiye filantropy (k istorii stikhotvoreniya N. A. Nekrasova "Filantrop")', in Uchonyye zapiski Gor'kovskogo gos. un-ta, seriya istoriko-filosoficheskaya, vyp.72, t. 1-yy (Gor'ky, 1964) pp. 297-343; on the salon of Yelena Pavlovna see W. Bruce Lincoln, 'The Circle of the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, 1847-1861', The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. XLVIII (1970) pp. 373-87. See Struminsky, pp. 346-7.

340

Notes

14 Ibid., pp. 6 and 346ff. 15 'Rukovodstvo dlya pervonachaPnogo prepodavaniya ili nauka do naukf, Biblioteka dlya vospitaniya, otd. 2, ch. II (Moscow, 1845); see Struminsky, pp. 349-51 and Tarasov, op. cit., pp. 416ff.; this and most of the works mentioned here are to be found in Struminsky's 1955 edition of Odoyevsky's Izb. ped. soch. 16 'Opyt o pedagogicheskikh sposobakh pri pervonachaPnom obrazovanii detey', Otechestvennyye zapiski, no. 12 (1845). 'Nauka do nauki: knizhka dedushki Irineya' remained in Odoyevsky's archive and was eventually published in Struminsky's edition of 1955; on this work see Struminsky, pp. 340-2. 17 Rasskazy o boge, prirode i cheloveke: kniga dlya chteniya, Sostavili V. F. Odoyevsky i A. P. Zablotsky (St Petersburg, 1849). On this see Struminsky, pp. 352-4. A proposed text book by Metropolitan Filaret, submitted to the Ministry of State Domains for use in their new schools in 1846, had never been printed - following a critical report on it from Odoyevsky: see Struminsky, p. 348, and Mikhaylovskaya (1979), op. cit., p. 20. 18 See Struminsky, p. 42ff. 19 Diary entry for 29 Dec. 1868 - see 'Dnevnik', p. 250. 20 Struminsky, p. 40. 21 R. N. (1975) p. 187, 22 Struminsky, p. 46. 23 Ibid., p. 55. 24 Ibid., pp. 44-5. 25 R. N. (1975) p. 187. 26 See M. P. Pogodin, in V pamyaf. . .; Iv. Kubasov, 'Odoyevsky, kn. VI. Fyod.', in Russkiy biograficheskiy slovar\ vol. 12 (St Petersburg, 1905) pp. 124-52. 27 Mikhaylovskaya (1979), p. 15. The most detailed account of Odoyevsky's scientific interests and activities is that by Virginsky, op. cit., see also M. P. Alekseyev, 'Pushkin i nauka ego vremeni' in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, vol. I (Moscow-Leningrad, 1956) pp. 9-125 (now reprinted in M. P. Alekseyev, Pushkin: sravniteVno-istoricheskiye issledovaniya (Leningrad, 1984) pp. 22-173). 28 Galvanizm v tekhnicheskom primenenii. . ., ch. I—II (St Petersburg, 1844). For an account of this book and Odoyevsky's other work in this field see Virginsky, op. cit., pp. 72-83. 29 I. I. Zamotin, Romantizm dvadtsatykh godov XIX stol. v russkoy literature, vol. II (St Petersburg, 1907) p. 379. 30 'Iz b u m a g . . . ' I, pp. 335-60 (quoted from Virginsky, p. 76). 31 Publichnyye lektsii professora Lyubimova (Moscow, 1868); on this see Virginsky, op. cit., pp. 89-90. 32 Kubasov, op. cit. 33 Quoted from Lezin, p. 33. 34 Zamotin, op. cit., pp. 409, 412. 35 Quoted from Kubasov, op. cit. 36 Russkiy arkhiv, I, 2 (1894) p. 327. 37 'Iz bumag...', I, pp. 358 and 352; Struminsky, p. 45.

Chapter Four, The Popular Educator 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

56 57 58

341

'Iz bumag . . . ' , I, p. 282; Ch. Vetrinsky, V sorokovykh godakh (Moscow, 1899) p. 321. Mikhaylovskaya (1979), p. 17. Virginsky, op. cit., pp. 33-5. Mikhaylovskaya (1979), p. 19. V. F. Odoyevsky, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 94; Literatumoye nasledstvo, 22-4 (Moscow, 1935) pp. 247 and 306. 'Kratkoye ponyatiye o khimii, neobkhodimoye dlya svechnykh masterov', Zhurnal obshchepoleznykh svedeniy (1833) kn.2, pp. 1-9 (Nekrasova, op. cit., p. 161). On this see Virginsky, op. cit., p. 73; N. F. Sumtsov, Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky (Kharkov, 1884) p. 21-2. V. G. Belinsky, Pol. sob. sock. vol. VIII (Moscow, 1953-9) p. 139. Struminsky, p. 356. Ibid., pp. 48-9, 54-5. Ibid., p. 356; Sumtsov, op. cit., p. 23. Belinsky's initial welcome oiSeVskoye chteniye is to be found in Pol. sob. soch., vol. VI, p. 571. His reviews of the four books are in vol. VI, pp. 681-90; vol. VIII, pp. 153-8; vol. IX, pp. 301-5; and vol. X, pp. 365-72. Struminsky, p. 55. Zamotin, op. cit., p. 414; Lezin, op. cit., pp. 24-5. 'Iz bumag . . . ' , kn II, p. 54. Although, as we have seen above, Odoyevsky did not necessarily see eye to eye with the Orthodox Church, he still proclaimed religion to be one of the essential bases of moral behaviour; for a further discussion of his views on religion see Chapter Five. Struminsky, p. 337. VFO, fond 539, Opis 2, no. 1224. Struminsky, pp. 337-40. N. V. Putyata, in V pamyaf.. ., and his 'Knyaz' Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky i Obshchestvo poseshcheniya bednykh prositeley v Peterburge', Russkiy arkhiv (1874) I, pp. 264-77; V. A. Insarsky, 'Obshchestvo poseshcheniya bednykh', Russkiy arkhiv (1869) pp. 1006-46. For details from reports of the Society, facts and figures, see V. Botsyanovsky, 'Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky i Obshchestvo poseshcheniya bednykh v S-Peterburge', Trudovayapomoshch' (Apr.-May 1899), held in the British Library as a separate volume. For further information on membership etc., see Bukshtab, op. cit. My account of the Society is indebted to these sources. Odoyevsky's letter to M. I. Glinka, 21 Oct. 1851 - sttMuz.-lit. naslediye p. 504 (also in M. Glinka, Literaturnyye proizvedeniya i perepiska, vol. II (B) (Moscow, 1977) pp. 317-18). Quoted from Botsyanovsky, op. cit., p. 14. Diary entry for 10 Jan. 1860, 'Dnevnik' p. 103. The letters exchanged between Odoyevsky and Nekrasov are to be found in 'Iz perepiski k. V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkaya starina (1904) no. 8, pp. 438-41. Bukshtab, op. cit., who goes into this matter in considerable detail, doubts Nekrasov's explanation that Dal' was the intended target and finds that Nekrasov, in trying to bring out a type, depicted all too clearly a prototype (i.e. Odoyevsky), who was not guilty of all the faults of the type.

342 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73

Notes Entry for 3 Mar. 1861, 'Dnevnik', p. 130. Insarsky, op. cit., posed the question in just these terms, while Odoyevsky was involved in philanthropy ultimately, in Bukshtab's view, 'chto by lyudi ne buntovali' ('to prevent uprisings'). One recent edition, V. F. Odoyevsky, Iz skazok dedushki Irineya, 'Detskaya literatura' (Moscow, 1978), contains just two stories (Moroz Ivanovich and Gorodok v tabakerke), but was published in a print-run of 2 million at a price of 10 copecks. As with the rest of Odoyevsky's works, however, there has never been a complete edition of his children's tales; see Struminsky pp. 343-4. 'Iz bumag. ..', II, pp. 50-2 (reprinted in Izb. ped. soch., pp. 166-7); Struminsky (p. 345) dates this to the late 1840s. From the same source; see V. Sakharov, 'V. F. Odoyevsky - pisatel' i pedagog, 1804-1869', NachaVnaya shkola, no. 12 (1972) pp. 65-9 (esp. p. 66) - hereafter 'Sakharov (1972)'. Sakharov (1972). Suggested by S. Ye. Tsypin, 'Odoyevsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich', in Materialy po istorii russkoy detskoy literatury (1750-1855), vyp. I (Moscow, 1927) pp. 157-66 (esp. p. 162). There is speculation that Odoyevsky may have been the translator of Podarok na nowy god. Dve skazki Gofmana dlya boVshikh i malen'kikh detey (St Petersburg, 1840), see Norman W. Ingham, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Reception in Russia (Wurzburg, 1974) pp. 179-80; based on Yu. Arnol'd, Vospominaniya, vyp. II (Moscow, 1892) p. 210. 'Iz bumag. . .', II, p. 46; see Sakharov (1972), pp. 66, 68. See A. P. Babushkina, Istoriya russkoy detskoy literatury (Moscow, 1948) pp. 187 and 188. Detskaya knizhka dlya voskresnykh dney (St Petersburg, 1833 and 1835); Detskiye skazki dedushki Irineya, Dve chasti (St Petersburg, 1840); Sbornik detskikh pesen dedushki Irineya (St Petersburg, 1847). On the latter see Kubasov, op. cit., Sumtsov, op. cit., pp. 20-1 and Belinsky's review, Pol. sob. soch., vol. X, pp. 147-53; in fact among Odoyevsky's papers there are to be found a number of perhaps at least equally unsuccessful verse attempts of various periods. Sakharov (1972), p. 67; Babushkina, op. cit., p. 196. Sakharov (1972), p. 67. Belinsky, Pol. sob. soch., vol. IV, p. 107; Sumtsov, op. cit., p. 20. Tsypin, op. cit., p. 163; Sakharov (1972), p. 66. Ibid., p. 69.

Chapter Five, Odoyevsky and Tsarist society 1 Russkaya starina, 12 (1888) pp. 594-5. 2 See the sections on Alexander Odoyevsky and KyukhePbeker in the following chapter. 3 A. I. Koshelev, Zapiski (1812-1883 gody) (Berlin, 1884) p. 13. J. S. Nanney (Trince Vladimir F. Odoevsky: his contribution to nationalism and Russian philosophy', Ph.D. thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1975) argues that Odoyevsky was in fact more conservative (i.e. less egalitarian) by 1825 than he had been around 1823 (see pp. 86-8). On Ryleyev, see the first study in English: Patrick O'Meara, K. F. Ryleev, a political biography (Princeton, 1984). 4 Koshelev, op. cit., p. 13. 5 Ibid., p. 12. 6 Quoted from Sakulin, I, 1, p. 307; on Odoyevsky and the Decembrists generally, see ibid, pp. 295-308. 7 Koshelev, op. cit., pp. 16-17. 8 Quoted from 'Siluet', p. 44. 9 See the KyukhePbeker section in the next chapter. See, for example, Ye. Yu. Khin's Introduction in VFO, Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1959) p. 13; M. Nechkina, Griboyedov i dekabristy, 3rd edn (Moscow, 1977) p. 499. 10 B. Granovsky (1958) (see note 10, Chapter Three), p. 278. However, the notes to N. A. Nekrasov, Polnoye sobraniye stikhotvoreniy v tryokh tomakh, vol. II (Leningrad, 1967) p. 672, assume the 'Odoyevsky' in line 721 (p. 353) to be A. I. Odoyevsky. This assumption would appear to be unjustifiable, not least due to the fact that by December 1826 A. I. Odoyevsky had himself been in custody for a year. 11 'Siluet', p. 43. 12 'Dnevnik' (12 Oct. 1864), p. 186. It should be remembered, however, that bezumets is not necessarily a negative term in Odoyevsky's vocabulary, at least not in the period of Russkiye nochi. 13 For example, Sakulin, I, 1, p. 308; Khin, in Povesti i rasskazy, p. 13; Maymin, in R. N. (1975) pp. 249-50. 14 N. M. Mikhaylovskaya, 'K istorii odnoy zapisi VI. F. Odoyevskogo (iz arkhivnykh materialov)', Russkaya literatura, 4 (1976) pp. 150-4. Hereafter cited as 'Mikhaylovskaya (1976)'. See A. I. Gertsen, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v tridtsati tomakh, vol. XIII (Moscow 1958) pp. 3 5 46. 15 'Dnevnik' (19 Aug. 1862) p. 857; 'Iz bumag.. .', II, p. 34. Mikhaylovskaya (1976) op. cit., argues for a certain amount of common ground between Odoyevsky's thinking and that of Herzen. 16 See commentary to 'Dnevnik', p. 306; Odoyevsky commented that this novel was 'tak poshlo, chto ne mog dochitat' ' ('so banal that I couldn't finish it'). 17 'Siluet', pp. 38-9. See also n. 12 above. 18 See, for example, B. Koz'min's introduction to 'Dnevnik', especially pp.

344

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Notes 81-2; and D. Blagoy and Yu. Oksman in Lit. nasledstvo, 58 (Moscow, 1952) pp. 23 and 289-96. Nanney's in many ways excellent study also tends to overstress Odoyevsky's alleged conservatism (e.g. on the issue of serfdom) in the period up to the 1850s. Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (London, 1978) p. 13: the atmosphere at this time is described graphically in Berlin's essay 'Russia and 1848'. Sidney Monas, The Third Section (Cambridge, Mass., 1961) p. 100. Ibid.,p.9l. W. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I (London, 1978) pp. 89 and 173; Berlin, op. cit.,p. 18. 'Siluet', pp. 44-5. See also P. N. Sakulin, Russkaya literatura i sotsializm (Moscow, 1922) p. 455, n. 2. 'Siluet\p.42. 'Izbumag...', I, p. 354. 'Dnevnik' [28 Feb.-2 Mar. 1863], p. 165. Ibid., p. 107. Slighting reference was also made to Magnitsky and Shishkov(p.221). See Mikhaylovskaya (1976), p. 153. Odoyevsky revealed his adulatory view of Speransky in his review of M. A. Korf s Zhizn' grafa Speranskogo (S-Peterburgskiyevedomosti, 25 Oct. 1861) - see Nanney, op. cit., pp. 2457. 'Dnevnik', pp. 92,100,116,130 and 131. Ibid.,p. 103. Ibid.,p.H4. Ibid.,p. 145. See ibid., p. 206; 'Siluet', p. 42. 'Dnevnik', p. 241. 'Izbumag . . .', II, pp. 40 and 42. Russkiy arkhiv(\S95)ll,p A3. 'Dnevnik' [17 Sept. 1864] pp. 184-5 (referringto 'Izbumag . . .', 1864). Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A Parting of Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia 1801-1855 (Oxford, 1976)p. 262. 'Dnevnik', pp. 189,190 (see also commentary, pp. 292-3). T o povodu adresa Moskovskogo dvoryanstva 1864 goda', Russkiy arkhiv, II (1881) pp. 491-2. 'Dnevnik'(17 Mar. 1865), p. 194. 'Pis'mo k dame po povodu slukhov, rasprostranyaemykh po Moskve', Russkiy arkhiv, II (1881) p. 493. See also A. F. Koni, Sobraniye sochineniy v vos 'mi tomakh, vol. VI (Moscow, 1968), pp. 100-1. 'Dnevnik' (27 Nov. 1862), p. 161. 'Grazhdanskiye zavety knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1895) pp. 36-54 (esp. pp. 50—1); and 'Zapiska ob uvol'nenii krepostnykh krest'yan', Russkiy arkhiv, II (1881) pp. 486-90. 'Dnevnik'(5 Sept. 1860), p. 112. Ibid., pp. 131-2 (see also 21 Sept. 1864, p. 185, and commentary, p. 290). 'Izbumag...', I, pp. 283-4. 'Dnevnik', pp. 180 (25 Mar. 1864), 182 (27 Jul. 1864) and 221 (15 Oct. 1866). On Odoyevsky's attacks on the Jesuits, and by extension Austria and Poland, see Nanney, op. cit., pp. 307-10.

Chapter Five, Odoyevsky and Tsarist society 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

345

See Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 574-6 (France), pp. 576-82 (England), pp. 582-3 (USA), and pp. 583-4 (Spain); France was 'a political volcano', England 'a total commercial bureau' and America 'the country of slavery and mercantilism, (p. 584). Odoyevsky even passed a comment on Ireland: the cause of the disturbances there, he considered, was 'poverty and ignorance' (noted by Golubyova and Gol'dberg, op. cit., p. 159). 'Dnevnik', pp. 156 (3 Aug. 1862) and 168 (29 May 1863). On the strongly pro-Russian line taken in Odoyevsky's writings on the Crimean War, see Nanney, op. cit., pp. 302-7. 'Siluet', p. 40. Sakulin, Russkaya literatura i sotsializm (Moscow, 1922) pp. 455-6 (he deals with Odoyevsky and socialism on pp. 449-58, to which the foregoing discussion is indebted). See the essay 'Alexander Herzen' in Berlin's Russian Thinkers. See also n. 15 above. Quoted from Sakulin, Russkaya literatura i sotsializm, p. 454. Ibid., p. 453. 'Siluet', p. 71. 'Dnevnik' (9 Feb. 1867), p. 228. Ibid. (5 Feb. 1861), p. 127. Ibid. (28 Apr. 1866), p. 211. Ibid., pp. 126-7. Ibid. (18 Apr. 1865), p. 196. Russkiy arkhiv, II (1881) p. 487. 'Siluet', pp. 42-3. Nanney (op.tit.,p. 359) considers that Odoyevsky had 'a superficial acquaintance with the most advanced social thinkers in Western Europe'. 'Iz bumag . . . ' , II, pp. 47-8. See, for example, 'Dnevnik' (12 Oct. 1864), p. 186; Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1895) pp. 42-3. 'K istorii russkoy tsenzury', 'Yeshcho o tsenzure' and 'O merakh protiv zagranichnoy russkoy pechati', appear in 'Iz bumag . . .', II, pp. 11-24, 24-30 and 30-9 (see p. 11). Ibid., pp. 12-13. A. P. Pyatovsky, Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky (St Petersburg, 1880) pp. 23-4. Also 'Iz bumag. . .', II, pp. 12ff., to which the following discussion is indebted. See Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1878) p. 58, n. 13. 'Iz bumag...', II, p. 19. Ibid, pp. 14-15. P. S. Squire, The Third Department (Cambridge, 1968) p. 181. Ibid, p. 170. Monas, op. cit., p. 173. 'Iz bumag . . . ' , II, p. 15. Monas, op. cit., pp. 145-6. See A. Fyodorov, 'Genrikh Geyne v tsarskoy tsenzure', Literatumoye nasledstvo, 22-4 (Moscow, 1935) pp. 635-78; his reports, referred to below, appear on pp. 643-4. Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1878) pp. 57-8.

346 79

80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87

88

89 90 91

92 93 94

95

Notes See, for example, with reference to Otechestvennyye zapiski, A. N. Pypin, Belinsky:yego zhizn' i perepiska, 2nd edn (St Petersburg, 1908) p. 299. See the Gogol' section in Chapter Six for Odoyevsky's part in the publication oi Myortvyye dushi. 'Iz bumag . . .', II, p. 17; ensuing reference is made to this text (pp. 1739). 'Opticheskiy obman', a favourite expression of Odoyevsky's, occurs several times in this text. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 38. UAvenir de Nice of 28 May 1857 carried an 'anti-Russian' article; this prompted Odoyevsky's pamphlet, Lettre et plaidoyer enfaveur de Vabonne russe (reponse a M. Alphonse Karr) (Nice, 1857) 42 pp.; II Nizzardo, no. 916 (1857); drafts of articles here mentioned are to be found in the Odoyevsky archives, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 61 and in nos 64, 65 and 66. For a summary of the Nice pamphlet, see Nanney, op. cit., pp. 352-7. 'Dnevnik', pp. 102 and 103. A. F. Koni, op. cit., p. 100. Ibid., p. 100. Comments from the manuscript of the 1863 publication of Odoyevsky's 1836 Pushkin article, I. Bychkov, 'Bumagi kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo', Otchot imperatorskoy Publichnoy biblioteki za 1884g (St Petersburg, 1887) prilozheniye 2-oye, pp. 46-9. See P. V. Annenkov, The Extraordinary Decade: Literary Memoirs, ed. Arthur P. Mendel, trans. Irwin R. Titunik (Ann Arbor, 1968) pp. 7-11 for a discussion of these figures; Berlin, op. cit., p. 12. See also Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855 (Berkeley, 1959) passim. Bulgarin's denunciations dating from the mid 1820s are cited by Nanney as one reason for Odoyevsky's devotion to government service - in 'a desire to clear his name' (see op. cit., pp. 102-4). 'Iz bumag . . . ' , I, p. 360. Quoted from Pyatkovsky, Knyaz* V. F. Odoyevsky, p. 21. Gogol's letter to A. S. Danilevsky, 13 May 1838, N. V. Gogol', Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy, vol. XI (Moscow-Leningrad, 1937-52) p. 149. See also, for example, Odoyevsky's sarcastic 'Stat'ya ob "Rossii", izdannoy g. Bulgarinym, pomeshchonnaya v No. 70 i 71-m "Severnoy pchely" 1837-go goda', Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58 (Moscow, 1952) pp. 364-5. V. F. Odoyevsky, Soch. (1981) vol. I, p. 254, n. 1. Bychkov, op. cit., A. P. Pyatkovsky, Iz istorii nashego literatumogo i obshchestvennogo razvitiya (monografii i kriticheskiye stat'i) v dvukh chastyakh, 2nd rev. ed. (St Petersburg, 1889-1888); this includes a chapter on 'ZhurnaPnyy triumvir at (ocherk iz istorii russkoy zhurnalistiki tridtsatykh godov)' Part II, pp. 206-35. In English, on this subject, see N. V. Riasanovsky,^ Parting of Ways, pp. 276-86. Baratynsky, in a letter to I. I. Kozlov of 1825, referred to Bulgarin, Grech and Kachenovsky as comprising 'the triumvirate who govern Parnassus' (Ye. A. Boratynsky, Razuma velikolepnyy pir: o literature i iskusstve (Moscow, 1981) p. 67). V. Kaverin, Baron Brambeus (Moscow, 1966) pp. 81-2. Annenkov also

Chapter Five, Odoyevsky and Tsarist society

96 97 98 99 100 101 102

103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

347

used the word 'triumvirat' in his 'ZamachatePnaya desyatiletka', first published 1880 (see P. V. Annenkov, Literaturnyye vospominaniya (Moscow 1960) p. 141). There is one English-language study of Senkovsky: Louis Fedrotti, jfosef-Julian Sekowski: the Genesis ofa Literary Alien (Berkeley, 1965). Kaverin, op. tit., p. 68. 1.1. Panayev, Literaturnyye vospominaniya (Leningrad, 1950) pp. 89, 131. Fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101, 3. 'Dnevnik' (9 Mar. 1862), p. 146. Fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101, 10. W. Bruce Lincoln, T h e Circle of the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, 1847-1861', The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. XLVIII (1970) pp. 373-87 (esp. p. 374). Pyatkovsky, Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky, pp. 24-5. For example, Odoyevsky was able to assist in the founding of the Russian Musical Society in 1859 which grew out of musical activity at the court of Yelena Pavlovna (see notes to 'Dnevnik', p. 258). Panayev, op. tit., p. 94. Indeed, Odoyevsky was called upon to officiate at a court function in January 1856 'for the first time in 20 years' (see Nanney, op. tit., p. 164). 'Dnevnik', pp. 230-1. Ibid., p. 100. 'Siluet', p. 71. Ibid., p. 76. Lezin, op. tit., p. 93; Zamotin (1913), p. 436. Panayev, op. tit., pp. 93-4; Panayev may here be referring to Segeliel'. Odoyevsky would, no doubt, not have accepted every single remark by Panayev, but he did generally approve Panayev's references to himself when they were read to him in 1861 ('Dnevnik' (1 Feb. 1861), p. 126). 'Iz bumag...', I, p. 308. For the correspondence relating to a 'reward' for services with the Society, see 'Cherta v kharaktere knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv (1870) pp. 927-31 (see p. 929); Lezin, op. tit., p. 28. 'Dnevnik' (1 Jan. 1862), p. 144 (and pp. 277-8). N. V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality, p.T 24. This is the fullest account of the subject in English; see especially Ch. Ill: 'The Ideas', and section IV of that chapter (pp. 124-67) on 'Nationality'. Ibid., pp. 124-67; V. S. Virginsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky: yestestvennonauchnyye vzglyady 1804-1869 (Moscow, 1975) p. 33. 'Iz bumag...', I, p. 285. Ibid., p. 279. Ibid., p. 280. Ibid., p. 282. Quoted from Mikhaylovskaya (1976), p. 152. Struminsky, pp. 26-7. Cited by N. V. Riasanovsky, A Parting of Ways, p. 225. The reck9 of 1822 is summarized by Nanney, op. tit., pp. 29-31; Koshelev, op. tit., p. 12. See Sakulin, I, 1, p. 442.

348

Notes

124 Gippius, 'Uzkiy put'. Kn V. F. Odoyevsky i romantizm', Russkaya mysV (1914) 12, pp. 19-20; he further points to the suspicion of Odoyevsky's 'bezveriye, entertained by S. Burachok in relation to Russkiye nochi and A. Grigor'ev's view of Odoyevsky's 'striving towards an indeterminate ideal' (pp. 21-2). 125 Virginsky, op. cit., pp. 26, 52. 126 (According to Bychkov), fond 539, Opis 1, no. 63; 'Dnevnik' (19 and 23 Nov. 1867), pp. 236-7 (and p. 304). 127 'Iz bumag...', I, pp. 287 and 342. 128 'Dnevnik' ([29 Dec] 1868), p. 250. 129 'Iz bumag . . . ' , Russkiy arkhiv, 1874,1, p. 338. 130 Ibid., p. 342. 131 Ibid., pp. 301 and 355. 132 'Dnevnik', p. 245; 'Iz bumag . . . ' , II, p. 49. 133 Lezin, op. tit., p. 108. 134 Gertsen, Sobraniye sochineniy v tridtsati tomakh, vol. IX, pp. 30-1. 135 Boris Alekseyevich Vrasky (1795-1880), filing clerk [ekspeditor] in the Third Department, married to Zinaida Stepanovna Lanskaya (Russkaya starina, 4 (1904) p. 196, n. 4). 136 Quoted from Letopis' zhizni i tvorchestva A. I. Gertsena 1812-1850 (Moscow, 1974) p. 242. It has also been suggested, though without any supporting evidence, that Odoyevsky may have been exploited by the government as an impressive host to prestigious foreign visitors George F. Kennan, The Marquis de Custine and his Russia in 1839 (London, 1972) p. 37 (there is no record that Custine ever met Odoyevsky). 137 On Korf, see Lincoln, Nicholas I, pp. 55, 57 and passim, and his 'The Last Years of the Nicholas "System,,: the Unpublished Diaries and Memoirs of Baron Korf and General Tsimmerman', Oxford Slavonic Papers, n.s., vol. VI (1973) pp. 12-27. Little is known of the personal relations between Odoyevsky and Korf, though hints may have emerged from time to time that their relationship may not have been totally smooth and close; it is difficult to imagine Odoyevsky co-existing with a man who, even in 1848, violently attacked Sovremennik and Otechestvennyye zapiski, regarding 'the men who wrote for them as a peculiar species of evil genius' and Belinsky in particular as 'a wrathful demon' (Lincoln, 'The Last Years...', pp. 24—6). See, however, Golubyova and Gol'dberg, op. cit., passim. 138 'Dnevnik' (1 and 2 Jan. 1864), pp. 176-8. 139 M. Briskman, 'V. F. Odoyevsky: dve zametki o Gogole', in N. V. Gogol': materialy i issledovaniya, I (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936) p. 226. 140 Fond 539, Opis 2, no. 1, p. 8. 141 See 'Dnevnik' [12 Oct. 1861], pp. 138-9 (and p. 276). 142 See 'Dnevnik', pp. 153, 157, 159 (and p. 281). 143 Pyatkovsky, Knyaz * V. F. Odoyevsky, pp. 47-8; Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1895) pp. 53-4. 144 'Yeshcho neskol'ko slov o Volzhsko-Donskoy doroge', S-Peterburgskiye vedomosti, 4 Dec. 1860 (signed 'Prokhozhiy') - see Virginsky, op. cit., pp. 92-4.

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145 Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 421-2 (quoted by Virginsky, op. cit.y p. 100). 146 F. F. VigeP, 'Moskva i Peterburg. Pis'mo k priyatelyu v Simbirsk' (Moscow, Sept. 1853), Russkiy arkhiv, II (1893) pp. 580-1. 147 N. V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality, p. 270 and A Parting of Ways (see Ch. 5: T h e Split between the Government and the Educated Public', pp. 248-90). 148 V. G. Belinsky, Pol. sob. soch., vol. XII, p. 353: Belinsky says of N. A. MePgunov, 'on primiritel'; moskovskiy Odoyevsky'. Nanney, op. cit., pp. 378, 392. 149 For example, Struminsky, p. 28.

Chapter Six, Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15

M. Aronson, 'Kruzhki i salony', in M. Aronson and S. Reyser, Literaturnyye kruzhki i salony (Leningrad, 1929) p. 78 (hereafter cited as 'Aronson and Reyser'), to which the ensuing discussion is indebted. Ibid., p. 81. See also the contemporary comments of V. A. Sollogub (quoted ibid., p. 78). Ibid., pp. 282-3 (the plea of'thrift' is made in a letter of 1850: see Russkiy arkhiv I (1879) pp. 525-6). /to/., p. 281. See ibid., esp. pp. 171-82; and N. L. Brodsky (ed.), Literaturnyye salony i kruzhki: pervaya polovina XIX veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930) pp. 441-65 (hereafter cited as 'Brodsky'). The main memoir sources, selections from most of which are included in the above two compilations, are: I. I. Panayev, Literaturnyye vospominaniya (Leningrad, 1950); M. P. Pogodin, in Vpamyat'. . . and unpublished diaries, as noted by various commentators; A. I. Koshelev, Zapiski (1812-1883 gody) (Berlin, 1884): see also Brodsky, pp. 141-50; V. A. Sollogub, in V pamyat'. . .; and Sollogub's Vospominaniya (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931); [W. Lenz], 'Priklyucheniya Liflyandtsa v Peterburge', Russkiy arkhiv, I, 4 (1878) pp. 436-68 (and Brodsky, pp. 443-7); and Yuriy Arnol'd, Vospominaniya (Moscow, 1892) vyp II (and Brodsky, pp. 447-65). Other memoirists leaving briefer accounts are quoted from time to time. See also Orest Tsekhnovitser's compilation: 'Siluet'pp. 25-99. See Aronson and Reyser, p. 123. F. I. Tyutchev, Sochineniya v dvukh tomakh, vol. II (Moscow, 1980) p. 169; Odoyevsky, 'Dnevnik', pp. 200, 208 and 245. Tyutchev was also sighted at Odoyevsky's in 1844: Perepiska Ya. K. Grota s P. A. Pletnyovym, vol. II, p. 327. Panayev, op. cit., p. 87. Odoyevsky published an article on Krylov in the second volume oiSeVskoye chteniye and made a speech at the celebrations to mark the fabulist's fifty years in literature (1838), the text of which can be found in the commentary to V. F. Odoyevsky, MuzykaVno literaturnoye naslediye (Moscow, 1956) p. 641. A. I. Gertsen, Sobraniye sochineniy v tridtsati tomakh, vol. IX, pp. 30-1; see M. PerkaP, Gertsenv Peterburge (Leningrad, 1971) p. 141. Russkiy arkhiv (1864) p. 1024. In 1840 Kol'tsov dedicated to Odoyevsky the poem Noch\ Odoyevsky regarded Kol'tsov as 'a man of the highest degree of genius' and, despite his semi-literacy and lack of reading, absolutely inimitable as a folk poet (Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 372). A. P. Pyatkovsky, Knyaz' V F. Odoyevsky (St Petersburg, 1880) p. 50. S. Ye. Tsypin, 'Odoyevsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich' in Materialy po istorii russkoy detskoy literatury (1750-1855), vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1927) p. 162. 'Dnevnik',pp.l47,149. A. Fet, Moi vospominaniya, 1848-1889, 2 parts (Moscow, 1890) pp. 108 and 427-9; Pyatkovsky, Knyaz' V F. Odoyevsky, p. 43. 'Dnevnik', pp. 119-20. See also Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 86 (Moscow, 1973) pp. 574-7.

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16 'Dnevnik', p. 120 and (commentary) pp. 268-9, where texts of some of the relevant correspondence can be found. 17 Ibid., pp. 121 and 268. 18 Reported by Pogodin - N. P. Barsukov, Zhizn3 i trudy M. P. Pogodina, 22 vols (St Petersburg, 1888-1910) vol. Ill, p. 345. Sobolevsky (S. A. Sobolevsky, Epigrammy i eksprompty (Moscow, 1912) p. 24) wrote of Vigel': Akh, Fillip Fillipich Vigel'! Tyazhela sud'ba tvoya: Po-nemetskiy ty - Schweinwigel, A po-russkiy ty - svin'ya! 19 Barsukov, op. tit., vol. XIX, pp. 378-9 (Pogodin's speech is printed on pp. 379-81); according to Tsekhnovitser ('Siluet', pp. 93, 398), the original text of Odoyevsky's diary gives those attending as Sobolevsky, Longinov, Pogodin, I. I. Maslov and Putyata. 20 Lezin, op. tit., pp. 62-3. 21 Pogodin, V pamyaf. . ., (quoted from Brodsky, p. 441). 22 Ibid., pp. 441-2. 23 (Lenz), 'Priklyucheniya . . .', Russkiy arkhiv, I, 4 (1878) pp. 440-2 (to which the following details and characterizations are indebted); also in Brodsky (pp. 442-5). According to Golubyova (Golubyova and Gol'dberg, op. tit., p. 154), open house on a Saturday at Odoyevsky's was between 9.00 p.m. and 2.00 a.m. 24 (Lenz), op. tit., p. 441. There is no record, it would seem, of any meeting between Odoyevsky and Balzac. 25 Panayev, op. tit., p. 88. 26 Ibid., p. 89. 27 Ibid., pp. 89-90. 28 Ibid., p. 90 (and ensuing quotation). Iakinf Bichurin (1777-1853) was the author of many works on China. 29 Arnol'd, op. tit., p. 216 (and Brodsky, pp. 455-6). The improvizator may be presumed to have been one Giovanni Giustiniani, whose services were recommended to Odoyevsky in 1840 in a letter from Shevyryov (Russkaya starina, 5 (1904) pp. 372-3); Zhukovsky declined to attend his performance (in 1841) on the pretext of a cold (ibid., 7 (1904) p. 153). 30 Fond 539, Opis 1, no. 101, 52. 31 Pogodin - quoted above; Timiryazev - see Aronson and Reyser, p. 175. 32 Arnol'd, pp. 221-2 (see also Aronson and Reyser, pp. 179-80). 33 Avdot'ya Panayeva, Vospominaniya 1824-1870 (Leningrad, 1928) p. 254. 34 Arnol'd, op. tit., pp. 222 and 223-4; Tyutchev, op. tit. 35 D. V. Grigorovich, Literaturnyye vospominaniya (Moscow, 1961) p. 111. 36 Arnol'd, quoted in Aronson and Reyser, p. 180. 37 0 : 0 [Oryol-Oshmentsov], quoted in Aronson and Reyser, p. 181. 38 See 'Siluet', pp. 92-3; Sobolevsky, Epigrammy i eksprompty, pp. 48 and 126. 39 Ye. Skayler [Eugene Schuyler, originally in Scribner's Monthly], 'Graf Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy', Russkaya starina, vol. LXVII (1890) p. 632 (and Aronson and Reyser, p. 181).

352 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

Notes T o subbotam u menya byvayet sodomno', see commentary to 'Dnevnik', p. 288. Aronson and Reyser, p. 283. M. S. Shtern, '"Dnevnik studenta" V. F. Odoyevskogo (o svoyeobrazii tvorcheskogo samoopredeleniya pisatelya)', in Khudozhestvennyy metod i tvorcheskaya individuaVnosf (Tomsk, 1978) pp. 15-20 (17). For the fullest available account oiDnevnik studenta, see Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 94-6. Quoted from Sakulin, I, 1, p. 95. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 95. See A. I. Odoyevsky, Polnoye sobraniye stikhotvoreniy i pisem (MoscowLeningrad, 1934); hereafter cited as 'Pol. sob. stikh. i pisem". Ibid., pp. 255-6. This letter is in French; subsequent ones are in Russian. Ibid., p. 256. Ibid., pp. 262 and 264; p. 269 and p. 267. Natal'ya Shcherbatova was certainly a temporary interest of Vladimir's - see Sakulin I, 1, p. 96. Ibid., p. 272. Alexander, however, failed to produce any verses for Mnemozina. Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 304-5. No reliable record of their meeting, if indeed it took place, seems to exist. Vladimir Yagunin, in his 'biography', Aleksandr Odoyevsky (Moscow, 1980) pp. 85-6, depicts a stiff encounter between the two cousins while a Lyubomudry meeting is in progress; this study, however, contains no information as to sources, and is largely written in the manner of a historical novel. Sakulin, I, 1, p. 299. Quoted from/W., pp. 299, 301. Quoted from I. A. Kubasov, 'A. I. Odoyevsky (biograficheskiy ocherk)', in A. I. Odoyevsky, Pol. sob. stikh. i pisem, p. 49. 'Dnevnik', p. 145. Sakulin, I, 1, p. 299; cf. the pictures given by Kubasov, op. tit., and Yagunin, op. tit. A. I. Odoyevsky, Pol. sob. stikh. i pisem, p. 303. Sakulin, I, 1, p. 307. A. I. Odoyevsky, Pol. sob. stikh. i pisem, p. 327 (original in French). Brodsky, p. 171. See. D. V. Venevitinov, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934) p. 366. Ibid., p. 363 (according to unpublished material of Pogodin). Koshelev, Zapiski, p. 12. See ibid., pp. 16-17. Ibid., p. 12. According to Koshelev (ibid., p. 22), following his interrogation 'chto-to tyazhyoloye lezhalo u nego na dushe'. For further details and background to this, see the notes by various contemporaries collected in Venevitinov, Pol. sob. soch. (1934), especially the version of P. N. Lavrent'eva (pp. 403-6), claiming that Venevitinov was a known member of a Decembrist society.

Chapter Six, Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85

86 87 88

353

Koshelev, Zapiski, p. 21. D. V. Venevitinov, Stikhotvoreniya. Proza (Moscow, 1980) pp. 371-2 and 377-9. Sakulin I, 1, pp. 311-12; A. P. Pyatkovsky, Knyaz'V. F. Odoyevsky iD. V. Venevitinov (St Petersburg, 1901) p. 134. The latter work is rather misleadingly titled, in that it in fact comprises two separate essays, both already published before, on the two writers concerned. Quoted by Ye. A. Maymin, 'Dmitriy Venevitinov i yego literaturnoye naslediye', in Venevitinov, Stikhotvoreniya. Proza (1980) p. 456. Quoted by Maymin, ibid., pp. 457 (from Barsukov, op. tit., vol. II (1889) p. 91). Maymin, ibid., pp. 456-7 and 459 (this 1980 'Literaturnyye pamyatniki' edition is basically a reprint of those of 1829 and 1831). See Pyatkovsky (1901), pp. 105ff. and 133. See Odoyevsky's note to the publication of Griboyedov's letters to himself, Russkiy arkhiv (1864) pp. 998-9. Ye. P. Sokovnina, in A. S. Griboyedov v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (Moscow, 1980) p. 95. A. I. Kolechitskaya, in ibid., p. 39; see also Muz. -lit. naslediye, p. 642; Jean Bonamour, A. S. Griboedov et la vie litteraire de son temps (Paris, 1965) p. 49. Russkiy arkhiv (1864) p. 1000 (and Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 642). See commentary to Griboyedov v vosp. sov., p. 365. Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 373-4; however, S. N. Begichev's version of the timing of the composition of the play may seem somewhat at variance see commentary to Griboyedov v vosp. sov., p. 334. Yagunin, op. tit., p. 14 and passim, is in error in referring to Griboyedov and Alexander Odoyevsky as dvoyurodnyye brat y a (first cousins). Bonamour, op. tit., p. 49. Griboyedov v vosp. sov., p. 380. On their relations, see the chapter 'A. I. Odoyevsky', in V. P. Meshcheryakov, A. S. Griboyedov: literaturnoye okruzheniye i vospriyatiye (XlX-nachalo XX v.) (Leningrad, 1983) pp. 124-39. D. A. Smirnov (from 'Rasskazy ob A. S. Griboyedove, zapisannyye so slov yego druzey'), Griboyedov v vosp. sov., p. 235. A. S. Griboyedov, Sochineniya (Moscow, 1953) p. 577. Griboyedov wrote an eye-witness account of the flood - 'Chastnyye sluchai Peterburgskogo navodneniya', ibid., pp. 383-8. See also A. Lebedev, Griboyedov: fakty i gipotezy (Moscow, 1980) p. 84; and Yagunin, op. tit., pp. 62-3. Griboyedov, Sochineniya, p. 533, Ibid., pp. 551, 596-7, 605-6 and 721; see also Lebedev, op. tit., pp. 297-8. Griboyedov,^. 0[doyevskomu]\ A. I. Odoyevsky, Elegiya na smert'A. S. Griboyedova. The fact that Lermontov knew Alexander Odoyevsky in the Caucasus and dedicated a poem to him after his death (Pamyati A. I. Odoyevskogo), plus certain literary and biographical parallels, leads A. Lebedev (op. tit., p. 301) to term A. I. Odoyevsky 'that half-lost link which joins Griboyedov to Lermontov'.

354

Notes

89 See Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 244-6. 90 Sumtsov, op. tit., p. 7; Mizinov, op. tit., p. 491. 91 Lezin, op. tit., p. 55. 92 Zamotin (1913), p. 391; Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 245-6. 93 V. Rozanov, 'Chaadayev i kn. Odoyevsky', Novoye vremya (10 Apr. 1913) p. 4. The example quoted by Rozanov, lines 530-5 of Act III of Gore ot uma (concluding 'On khimik, on botanik / Knyaz' Fyodor, moy plemyannik') could be taken to refer to Odoyevsky, although (unlike Knyaz' Fyodor), Odoyevsky was educated in Moscow, of which fact Griboyedov must presumably have been aware. 94 'Sledstviye satiricheskoy stat'i (otryvok iz romana)', Mnemozina, Part III (Moscow, 1824). See V. P. Meshcheryakov, 'A. S. Griboyedov i polemika "Mnemoziny" s "Literaturnymi listkami" ', Russkaya literatura, 3 (1980) pp. 163-72. 95 The most substantial of these, 'Zamechaniya na suzhdeniya Mikh. Dmitriyeva o komedii "Gore ot uma"', has been reprinted in A. S. Griboyedov v russkoy kritike (Moscow, 1958) pp. 28-36. On Odoyevsky's efforts on behalf of Gore ot uma, see Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 270-5. M. Nechkina, in her book Griboyedov i dekabristy, 3rd edn (Moscow, 1977) p. 281, sees Odoyevsky's defence of Gore ot uma as in the progressive camp, which included on this issue Bestuzhev, Polevoy and Somov. 96 See Griboyedov, Sochineniya, pp. 534, 536 (Griboyedov admits, however, to not having had the opportunity of reading all the material at the time of writing). Meshcheryakov, op. tit., (1980) provides considerable background on the polemics between Odoyevsky and Bulgarin and suggests (p. 171), that Griboyedov may have attempted to reconcile the two - hence his counselling of moderation upon Odoyevsky. See also on this topic Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 276-92. 97 Griboyedov v vosp. sov., pp. 364-5. 98 See S. A. Fomichev, 'Lichnost' Griboyedova', in ibid., pp. 19-20; P. A. Vyazemsky, in ibid., p. 91. 99 See Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 332-3; Meshcheryakov (1983) op. tit., pp. 120-1. 100 Knyazhna Mimi (1834) - V. F. Odoyevsky, Sochineniya v dvukh tomakh, vol. II (Moscow, 1981) p. 245; Knyazhna Zizi (1839) - ibid., p. 260. Princesses Zizi and Mimi are indeed two of the daughters of Prince and Princess Tugoukhovsky, introduced in Act III, Scene 7 of Gore ot uma. Both these stories abound with echoes of the theatrical world of Griboyedov. 101 See Griboyedov v vosp. sov., p. 334. The piece in question may, however, originally have been written by Senkovsky (see Meshcheryakov (1983) op. tit., p. 85). 102 Smirnov's letter to Odoyevsky, Russkaya starina, 8 (1904) pp. 425-8. Some of the reminiscences collected by Smirnov are republished in Griboyedov v vosp. sov., pp. 206-56 (and commentary, pp. 390-400). 103 Terekhvachonnyye pis'ma' (see n. 78 to Chapter Three). 104 For details of Kyukhel'beker's career, see N. V. Koroleva and V. D. Rak, 'Lichnost' i literaturnaya pozitsiya KyukhePbekera', in V. K. Kyukhel'beker, Puteshestviye, dnevnik, stat'i (Leningrad, 1979) pp. 571-645 (see esp. p. 576). See also Yu. Tynyanov's historical novel

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105 106

107 108

109 110 111 112

113

114 115

116 117 118

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Kyukhlya (1925), which is factually based and uses historical sources; strangely enough, however, Tynyanov's novel makes no mention of V. F. Odoyevsky and includes but a single passing reference to Mnemozina. Pogodin, in Vpamyaf . . ., p. 49 (quoted by Sakulin, 1,1, p. 108). We are informed by P. F. Gakkel': 'During his speech he was in the habit of taking a drink from time to time; in his ecstasy he grabbed the lamp standing in front of him instead of the glass, covered himself with oil, and burned his hands on the lamp-glass. He lost his nerve, took fright and finally fell down the steps of the rostrum!' (Literatumoye nasledstvo, 59 (Moscow, 1954) p. 346). Sakulin, 1,1, p. 254 (on this topic see ibid., pp. 158-9,164 and 253-7). Odoyevsky and Kyukhel'beker did for a time conceive of a 'Supplement to Mnemozina?, to be called The Comet, designed to be a repository of replies to outrageous attacks, and an objective chronicle of literary polemics - see A. Glasse, 'Kriticheskiy zhurnal "Kometa" V. K. Kyukhel'bekera i V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Literatumoye naslediye dekabristov (Leningrad, 1975) pp. 280-5. Four letters from Kyukhel'beker to Odoyevsky of 1825 were published in Russkaya starina, 2 (1904) pp. 378-84 (see esp. p. 382). Ibid., p. 383. Ibid.,p.3S4. N. I. Grech, Zapiski o moyey zhizni (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930) pp. 46270 (with a corrective to inaccuracies supplied on pp. 784-5); on the pistol, see Koroleva and Rak, op. cit., pp. 579-80; on the Warsaw arrest, see Tynyanov's Kyukhlya. The diary was published in full only in 1979 - in Kyukhel'beker, Puteshestviye, dnevnik, stat'i, op. cit. Kyukhel'beker's difficulty in keeping up with literary trends can be seen in his frequent references to the obtaining of books and journals, and particularly in his mistaking of Krayevsky for Belinsky as author of many unsigned reviews in Otechestvennyyezapiski: 'Krayevsky, without any doubt, is our best critic' (1 May 1845, ibid., pp. 426 and 741). 11 Jan. 1833, ibid., p. 221; letter to B. G. Glinka, May 1835, Literatumoye nasledstvo, 59, p. 458. On 'Otryvok iz zapisok Gomozeyki' - diary, 19 Oct. 1834, Puteshestviye. . ., pp. 335-6; on Knyazhna Mimi - letter to B. G. and N. G. Glinka, 31 Dec. 1834, Literatumoye nasledstvo, 59, p. 452 (see also diary, 20 Dec. 1834, Puteshestviye...., p. 342). Kyukhel'beker did manage to receive Biblioteka dlya chteniya on subscription (see Puteshestviye . .., p. 730). Diary,26Jan. 1841,Puteshestviye . . .,p.394. Diary, 9 Apr. 1845, ibid., p. 423. Kyukhel'beker did not seemingly have time to enlarge further on Odoyevsky's manemosf (he died in 1846). Quoted from ibid., p. 730. Kyukhel'beker's letter to Odoyevsky of 3 May 1845 (sometimes erroneously given as 1843) was published in Otchot Gos. publ. biblioteki za 1893g (St Petersburg, 1896) prilozheniye, pp. 69-73, and has not been republished; it was omitted, for example, from 'Pis'ma Kyukhel'bekera iz kreposti i ssylki (1829-1846)', in Literatumoye nasledstvo, 59, op. cit. Further quotation from it can be found in Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 439-40; and in Koroleva and Rak, op. cit., p. 593.

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119 Quoted from Sakulin, I, 2, p. 440. 120 Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 59, pp. 400 and 418; diary, 23 Mar. 1834, Puteshestviye..., p. 298. 121 See Sakulin, I, 2, p. 308. In a letter of 2 Mar. 1845 to Zhukovsky, P. A. Pletnyov refers to Odoyevsky's 'secret relations and support' for the 'sheer and overt renegade, K-iy' (Russkiy arkhiv (1870) pp. 1280-1); in a later edition of Pletnyov's works, the villain in question is referred to by just the letter 'K-' (P. A. Pletnyov, Sochineniya i perepiska, vol. Ill (St Petersburg, 1885) p. 545). If the later formulation were taken as a correction, the man referred to could be Kyukherbeker; against this possibility may be adduced the facts that Pletnyov had been an old friend and, along with Odoyevsky, was named as a minor literary executor to KyukhePbeker, charged with selecting for publication extracts from his diary (letter to Zhukovsky, 20 Dec. 1845, quoted from Puteshestviye. .., p. 649). 122 See Puteshestviye..., p. 728, n. 19. In his diary, 12 May 1835, KyukhePbeker expresses his satisfaction upon receiving a copy, except that: 'It is a pity only that there is a mass of typographical errors. A bad proof-reader is Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky. But still, I am grateful to him for his labour' (ibid., p. 362). 123 Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 59, p. 449, n. 3. 124 Kyukhel'beker noted, 3 May 1845, letters he had written to Count Orlov (commander of the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery), to Odoyevsky and to P. N. Svistunov (Puteshestviye..., p. 426), hoping on humanitarian grounds to be allowed to move - 'can they really refuse?'. The commentary to Puteshestviye..., p. 741, n. 20, remarks that 'Odoyevsky served in 1845 in that Chancellery, by which fact Kyukhel'beker counted on his personal intercession with Count Orlov' (see also Koroleva and Rak, in ibid., p. 593). In fact Odoyevsky was employed in this Chancellery from 1840, but in the Second Department (and not the notorious Third Department). Whether or not connected with any efforts that Odoyevsky may have made, Kyukhel'beker was permitted to move to the town of Tobol'sk some months later. 125 Sollogub, in V pamyaf ..., p. 96 (and Aronson and Reyser, p. 171). 126 ('Sa pensee malheureusement n'a pas de sexe') (Lenz), op. cit., Russkiy arkhiv, 4 (1878) p. 442 (and Brodsky, p. 446). 127 ('Vesyolyy Pushkin') Pogodin, in Vpamyaf .. ., p. 56 (andAronson and Reyser, p. 171); ('gofmanskaya kaplya') Sollogub, Vospominaniya, op. cit., p. 569, note. 128 ('J'entends toujours parler de la litterature russe, et je voudrais bien savoir quel est actuellement le poete russe, qui jouit de la reputation la moins contestee? - 'C'est le comte Chwostow - sans contredit'... 'Ah! le comte Chwostow - j'en prendrai note - je vous suis tres reconnaissant') - quoted from 'Siluet', pp. 33-4. Count D. I. Khvostov (1757-1835) was a minor poet, chiefly remembered for buying up editions of his own work, and a favourite butt of Pushkin's humour. 129 P. V. Dolgorukov, 'Ministr S. S. Lanskoy', in Budushchnosf (L'Avenir) (Paris) no. 1 (15 Sept. 1860) p. 6, note; the note (attacking Odoyevsky) is

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reproduced with Odoyevsky's replies in 'Siluet', pp. 87-9, and in 'Dnevnik' (for 24 Nov. 1860), p. 117. On this episode see Sakulin, I, 2, p. 322; and particularly P. Ye. Shchyogolev, DueV i smert' Pushkina: issledavaniye i materialy, 3rd edn (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928) pp. 504-9. Dolgorukov's authorship of the Pushkin letters (asserted by Odoyevsky) was established by Sobolevsky and subsequently scientifically varified; however, there appears to remain some doubt about this - see S. L. Abramovich, Pushkin v 1836 godu (predystoriya posledney dueli) (Leningrad, 1984) pp. 67-87. 130 'Dnevnik', p. 117; to console himself, Odoyevsky replied to Dolgorukov in his diary with the following epigram: Stikhov ne pisal, Muzykoy ne nadoyedal, Spiny ne sgibal, Chestno zhil, rabotal, Podletsov v rozhu bival. Thus Odoyevsky refuted a number of Dolgorukov's accusations. 131 Sollogub, Vospominaniya, pp. 567-8. 132 Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 373 (cf. his comments in 'Dnevnik', p. 117: 'Pushkin himself wrote with great difficulty, as he himself admitted and as his verse manuscripts prove'). 133 'Dnevnik', p. 117 (and 'Siluet', p. 88). 134 Three poems by Pushkin (Vecher, May demon and K moryu) appeared in Mnemozina (Parts II, III and IV respectively). 135 Gl. Glebov ('Pushkin i Gete', in Zvenya, II (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933) p. 62) is therefore in error in including Odoyevsky among the kruzhok with whom Pushkin became friendly in Moscow in 1826. 136 'Alexander' - as opposed to his brother Lev, with whom Sobolevsky had attended the St Petersburg Blagorodnyy Pansion; Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58 (Moscow, 1952) p. 52 (Sobolevsky's letter dated 27 Dec. 1826). 137 29 Apr. 1827, Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 16-18 (Moscow, 1934) p. 691. 138 Sakulin, I, 2, p. 323; Odoyevsky to Pushkin, 27 Mar. [1833], Russkiy arkhiv (1864) pp. 1004-5. 139 Muz.-lit. naslediye, p. 647, quoting three letters of I. V. Kireyevsky, plus the diary of K. S. Serbinovich, naming Odoyevsky and Pushkin among those attending an evening at Zhukovsky's on 16 Jan. 1830. 140 A joint letter from Odoyevsky, I. S. Mal'tsev and Sobolevsky, addressed to Moskovskiy vestnik and dated as 25 Oct.-7 Nov. 1827, written in V. P. Titov's hand, announces that 'Pushkin has arrived in Peter . ..'; there is nothing in it, however, to indicate whether Odoyevsky himself had met Pushkin - see Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58, pp. 68-70. The OdoyevskayaLanskaya named by Vyazemsky as present at Pushkin's reading of Boris Godunov at Lavalle's in 1828 is considered to be Olga Stepanovna (as opposed to Varvara Ivanovna Lanskaya, nee Odoyevskaya, second cousin of Odoyevsky and sister-in-law of Olga Stepanovna) - ibid., pp. 79, 80 - proving that Odoyevsky's wife, at least, knew Pushkin by 1828. A. M. Karatygina's memoir states that she first met Pushkin in 1827 and that her husband and Pushkin first became friendly at Odoyevsky's; it is

358

141 142 143 144 145 146 147

148

149

150 151

152

Notes not clear whether the second statement also relates to 1827, but it would seem to refer to the period before the 1830s - see Pushkin v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (Leningrad, 1950) p. 163. N. M. Izmaylov, Ocherki tvorchestva Pushkina (Leningrad, 1975) p. 306, puts the first meeting at 1829-30. Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 321-2 (also I, 1, pp. 240-1, n. 2); and I, 2, p. 325 (referring to Pavlov's review of Onegin in Ateney). Knyazhna Mimi, 1981 edn (see n. 100 above), p. 244. (28 Sept. 1833) Russkiy arkhiv (1864) pp. 1004-5. (30 Oct. 1833) A. S. Pushkin, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v desyati tomakh, vol. X (Moscow-Leningrad, 1949) p. 455. (26 Dec. 1836) Russkiy arkhiv (1864) pp. 1008-9; see also A. S. Pushkin, Kapitanskaya dochka, 'Literaturnyye pamyatniki' (Moscow, 1964) p. 214. (Beginning of April 1836) Pushkin, Pol sob. sock, vol. X, p. 570; (end of Nov.-Dec. 1836), ibid., p. 613. A critique of Pamyatnik otechestvennykh muz, signed 'I. K.', in Moskovskiy vestnik (1827) 5, pp. 78-81; see Pogodin to Odoyevsky, 2 Mar. 1827, Russkaya starina, 3 (1904) pp. 705-6; and Odoyevsky to Pogodin, 29 Apr. 1827, Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 16-18, p. 692. Terekhod cherez reku, priklyucheniye Bramina Paramarty. Indiyskaya skazka', Moskovskiy vestnik, 4 (1827) pp. 231-45, signed 'K\ See Pushkin to Pogodin, 31 Aug. 1827, Pushkin, Pol sob. soch., vol. X, p. 235; Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 189-90, n. 2; and Pogodin, in Vpamyat'. .., p. 54: Odoyevsky 'sent in in 1827 an eastern tale which attracted the attention of Pushkin'. The misattribution to Titov appears to be still continued in the notes to Pushkin editions - see, for example, A. S. Pushkin - kritik (Moscow, 1978) p. 614. Odoyevsky's own confirmation of his authorship is to be found in his (never fully published) letter to Pogodin of 29 Apr. 1827 - see V. I. Sakharov, 'Yeshcho o Pushkine i V. F. Odoyevskom', in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, vol. IX (Leningrad, 1979) p. 224. (21 Feb. 1831) Russkaya starina, 4 (1904) p. 206. Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena was published in Del'vig's Severnyye tsvety na 1831 god (St Petersburg, 1830) signed 'b-tw.'. Pushkin collaborated on this publication and may have been responsible for the appearance therein of Odoyevsky's story. Pushkin to Odoyevsky, end of Feb.-first half of Mar. 1836, Pushkin, Pol. sob. soch., vol. X, p. 566. See Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 329-30; on Motsart i SaVeri see Bernandt in Muz.-lit. naslediye, pp. 646-8 (and on Pushkin's conversations on music with Odoyevsky - ZapiskiA. O. Smirnovoy (St Petersburg, 1895) pp. 57, 273, quoted in 'Siluet', pp. 34, 393); on Improvizator see Ye. Kazanovich, 'K istochnikam "Yegipetskikh nochey"', Zven'ya, III—IV (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934) pp. 187-204; on Salamandra and other matters see Sakharov, 'Yescho o Pushkine ' (1979), pp. 224-30; in general see Izmaylov, 'Pushkin i V. F. Odoyevsky', in his 1975 book (see n. 140 above); also Backvis, op. cit., pp. 517-50. [Pis'mo A. A. Krayevskomu], in R. N. (1975), p. 235.

Chapter Six, Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu 153

154 155 156 157

158

159 160

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The original version of Izmaylov's 1975 essay (quoted above) appeared in Pushkin v mirovoy literature: sbornik statey (Leningrad, 1926) pp. 289308 and 394-9. The polemic arose in 1952 when D. Blagoy and Yu. Oksman claimed that Odoyevsky, abetted by Krayevsky, planned to wrest political control of Sovremennik from Pushkin and turn it into a virtual mouthpiece of the Third Department (Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58, pp. 23 and 289-96). This interpretation, based mainly on a misrepresentation of one short letter from Odoyevsky and Krayevsky to Pushkin and couched in the excessive invective of Stalinist criticism, was refuted by R. B. Zaborova, 'Neizdannyye stat'i V. F. Odoyevskogo o Pushkine', in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, I (Moscow-Leningrad, 1956) pp. 313-42. M. Yeryomin, in his book Pushkin - publitsist (Moscow, 1963) (esp. pp. 401-4) revived the attack. However, interventions by M. I. Medovoy ('Neizvestnaya zametka V. F. Odoyevskogo ob A. S. Pushkine', Russkaya literature 4 (1969) pp. 186-7), Sakharov ('Yescho o Pushkine . . .', 1979) and the updated Izmaylov (1975) would appear to have settled the matter. Most recently Tur'yan (1983, pp. 174-83), has returned to a plausible reinterpretation of the letter in question. On Krayevsky in this period, see VI. Orlov, 'Molodoy Krayevsky', in his book Puti i sud'by (Leningrad, 1971) pp. 449-504. V. E. Vatsuro and M. I. Gillel'son, Skvoz' "umstvennyye plotiny". Iz istorii knigi i pressy pushkinskoy pory (Moscow, 1972) p. 115. V. E. Vatsuro, "Severnyye tsvety". Istoriya aVmanakha DeVviga-Pushkina (Moscow, 1978) p. 252. Pushkin to Odoyevsky (15-16 and 16 Mar. 1834), Pushkin, Pol sob. soch., vol. X, p. 465; Odoyevsky to Pushkin [Apr. 1835], Russkiy arkhiv (1864) pp. 1007-8. Pushkin, Pol. sob. soch., vol. X, p. 613 (Nov.-Dec. 1836); see V. G. Berezina, 'Iz istorii "Sovremennika" Pushkina', in Pushkin: issledovaniya i materialy, vol I, pp. 278-312 (esp. p. 304); Izmaylov (1975) p. 307; Abramovich, pp. 31-2, 34; and Tur'yan (1983). For the history of this process, see A. P. Mogilyansky, 'A. S. Pushkin i V. F. Odoyevsky kak sozdateli obnovlyonnykh "Otechestvennykh zapisok"', IzvestiyaAkademii naukSSSR. Seriya istorii ifilosofii, vol. VI, no. 3 (1949) pp. 209-26. See Shchyogolev, DueV i smerf Pushkina, pp. 504-9; Zaborova (1956), pp. 322-3. See N. I. Lyubimov's letters to Pogodin, 22 Feb. and 9 Mar. 1837, confirming that Sovremennik 'must continue without fail' and asking for contributions to be sent to Odoyevsky - Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 16-18, pp. 717-18, 720; Sakulin, I, 2, p. 324 on the existence of over forty unpublished notes between Odoyevsky and Vyazemsky on Sovremennik business of the immediate post-Pushkin period; one such letter (15 Aug. 1837) on proofreading etc. is in Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58, p. 150. The four issues of 1837 came out as Sovremennik, literaturnyy zhurnal A. S. Pushkina, izdannyy po smerti yego Kn. P. A. Vyazemskim, V. A. Zhukovskim, A. A. Krayevskim, Kn. V. F. Odoyevskim i P. A. Pletnyovym. A note written by Zhukovsky declared 'the volumes are to be got out in turn: 1st. by Pletnyov, 2nd. by Krayevsky, 3rd. by Odoyevsky, 4th. by

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163 164

165 166

167 168 169 170 171

172 173 174 175 176

Notes Vyazemsky' - see Ye. I. Ryskin, Zhurnal A. S. Pushkina "Sovremennik" 1836-1837: ukazateV soderzhaniya (Moscow, 1967) pp. 63 and 72. Sakulin, I, 2, p. 328, n. 2. Such an essay was not written by Odoyevsky, but preliminary notes, presumably intended for this purpose, do exist - see Sakharov, 'Yeshcho o Pushkine . . . ' , p. 226. See also Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 328-9 on Odoyevsky's efforts for Pushkin's reputation. T. G. Tsyavlovskaya, 'Otkliki na sud'by dekabristov v tvorchestve Pushkina', in Literaturnoye naslediye dekabristov, pp. 195-218 (esp. p. 208). Literaturnyye pribavleniya k Russkomu invalidu, 5 (1837) 30 Jan. (quoted from Zaborova (1956) p. 320, with authorship established pp. 320-4). For a note of the official reaction to this notice, see A. V. Nikitenko, Zapiski i dnevnik, vol. I, p. 284. S. N. Karamzina to A. K. Karamzin, 10 Feb. 1837 (I. Andronikov, 'Tagil'skaya nakhodka', Novyy mir, 1 (1956) p. 195). 'O napadeniyakh peterburgskikh zhurnalov na russkogo poeta Pushkina', first published in Russkiy arkhiv (1864) pp. 1015-1022; now in Soch. (1981) vol. I, pp. 249-55 (Odoyevsky's note is on p. 249). A version of this essay reworked into an article to launch the second year of Pushkin's now posthumous Sovremennik was also considered unpunishable - such, it appears, was Bulgarin's grip over editors; the text is given by Zaborova (1956) pp. 313-20. [Pushkin], Soch. (1981) vol. I, pp. 256-9 (first published in Zaborova (1956) pp. 333-6, with comments pp. 336-8). For more on Odoyevsky and Pushkin, see n. 64 to Introduction (above). 'O vrazhde k prosveshcheniyu' (originally in Sovremennik, no. 2, 1836), Soch. (1844) Part III, p. 368; ibid., p. 45. Pogodin, Vpamyaf ..., p. 57 (and Brodsky, pp. 441-2); on Gogol' and Odoyevsky see Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 333-40. N. V. Gogol', Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy, vol. XII (Moscow-Leningrad, 1937-52) p. 68; see also Vlad. Shenrok, 'N. V. Gogol", Russkaya starina, 2 (1902) pp. 264-5. A. V. Chicherin, 'Neizvestnoye vyskazyvaniye V. F. Odoyevskogo o Gogole', in Trudy Lvovskogo universiteta, kafedry russkoy literatury filologicheskogo fakul'teta, vyp. 2 (L'vov, 1958) pp. 66-72 (also quoted in notes to S. T. Aksakov, Istoriya moyego znakomstva s Gogolem (Moscow, 1960) p. 256. Gogol' to 1.1. Dmitriyev [30 Nov. 18321, Pol. sob. soch., vol. X, pp. 2478. Gogol' to A. S. Danilevsky, 8 Feb. 1833, ibid., p. 260. See, for example, Sakulin, I, 2, p. 339; Ye. Yu. Khin in Povesti i rasskazy, p. 17; and V. I. Sakharov in Soch. (1981), vol. II, pp. 345-6. Odoyevsky to M. A. Maksimovich, the end of 1833, quoted from Sakulin, I, 2, p. 334. On affinities between various works, including Starosvetskiye pomeshchiki and Istoriya o petukhe, koshka i lyagushke; Portret and Improvizator; Ivan Fyodorovich Shpon'ka iyego tyotushka and SiVfida\ and the likely impetus of Revizor to Odoyevsky's renewed attempts at drama, see ibid., pp.

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177

178

179

180 181 182 183 184

185

186

361

336-9. On possible links between Shinel' and Zhivoy mertvets, see Neil Cornwell, 'A Note on Aristidov's Mistresses in "The Live Corpse'", Quinquereme: New Studies in Modern Languages, vol. Ill, no. 1 (1980) pp. 118-20. See also Backvis, op. cit., pp. 550-63. Sakulin, 1,2, p. 309 (on SegelieP); ibid., p. 335 (Odoyevsky's 'O vrazhde k prosveshcheniyu' and 'Kak pishutsya u nas romany' were published in Sovremennik, nos 2 and 3; GogoP 's 'O dvizhenii zhurnaPnoy literature 1834 i 1835gg' appeared in Sovremennik, no. 1). Nils Ake Nilsson, in his 'On the Origins of GogoP's "Overcoat"' (originally in Scando-Slavica, II, 1954), relates Odoyevsky's Brigadir to Shine? (Gogol's 'Overcoat': An Anthology of Critical Essays, ed. Elizabeth Trahan (Ann Arbor, 1982) pp. 69-70). The most recent discussion of Odoyevsky's relations with GogoP is to be found in Vsevolod Sakharov, 'Romantiki i realisty', Pod"yom, 6 (1984), pp. 119-23. See N. V. Mordovchenko, 'GogoP i zhurnalistika 1835-36gg', in N. V. GogoV: materialy i issledovaniya, vol. II (Moscow, 1936) pp. 106-50; Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58, pp. 546-7, 562 and 582-3. In 1839-40 I. I Panayev wrote to S. T. Aksakov on behalf of himself, Odoyevsky, Pletnyov, Vrasky and Krayevsky, imploring GogoP not to sell the rights of all his previous works to the publisher A. F. Smirdin for 5000 roubles, and offering 6000 from Vrasky with the right to print a 'new comedy' in Otechestvennyyezapiski; 'neither sale took place' - S. T. Aksakov, op. cit., p. 35. Gogol' to Shevyryov, 10 Mar. [1835], Pol. sob. soch., vol. X, p. 354; V. F. Odoyevsky, [Dve zametki o Gogole], in N. V. GogoV: materialy i issledovaniya, vol. I (Moscow, 1936) pp. 223-6 (esp. p. 223); Sakulin, 1,2, p. 338 (and, for further remarks by Odoyevsky on colloquial speech, p. 385). Gogol' to Odoyevsky, Rome, 15 Mar. 1838, Pol. sob. soch., vol. XI, pp. 130-1. Gogol' to Odoyevsky [between 1 and 7 Jan. 1842], Pol. sob. soch., vol. XII, p. 27. Gogol' to Odoyevsky, 27 Jan. [1842], and [about 24 Jan. 1842], ibid., pp. 32 and 30-1. On this episode see Belinsky's letter to Shchepkin, 14 Apr. 1842,V.G.Belinsky,^/.5^.5^.,vol.XII,p. 103. Gogol', Pol. sob. soch., vol. XIII, pp. 258-9. The 'request' involving O. S. Odoyevskaya concerned responsibility for the distribution of assistance to the poor from the proceeds of a new edition ofRevizor. Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 335-6. Apollon Grigor'ev, however, saw a connection between the conception of evil in Gogol' 's Vybrannyye mesta . . . and in Odoyevsky's works - Sobraniye sochineniy Apollona Grigor'eva, vyp. 8 (Moscow, 1916) pp. 10-14. N.V. GogoV: materialy i issledovaniya, vol. I, p. 224; the book in question was N. Gersevanov, GogoV pred sudom oblichiteVnoy literatury (Odessa, 1861) which, according to M. Briskman's notes (to this jotting, p. 225), argued that 'Gogol' 's fame was not deserved' and sought to prove that he was 'a beggar, a lackey, a hater of the Russian woman, her slanderer, and the slanderer of Russia'. For a (possibly slightly fanciful) account of this, see Irakliy Andronikov, Lermontov: issledovaniya i nakhodki, 4th edn (Moscow, 1977,) pp. 346-51.

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Notes

187 Note written in the album in 1852 - quoted by V. E. Vatsuro, 'Poslednyaya povest' Lermontova', in M. Yu. Lermontov: issledovaniya i materialy (Leningrad, 1979) p. 226. 188 On this and Lermontov's relations with Odoyevsky generally, see R. B. Zaborova, 'Materialy o M. Yu. Lermontove v fonde V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Trudy Gosudarstvennoy Publichnoy Biblioteki im. M. Ye. SaltykovaShchedrina, torn V (8) (Leningrad, 1958) pp. 185-90; see also Zaborova's entry 'Odoyevsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich' in the Lermontavskaya entsiklopediya (Moscow, 1981) pp. 352—3. 189 Zaborova (1958), p. 187. This manuscript is supposed to be held in the main V. F. Odoyevsky archive, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 95; however, when I looked in 1979 it was not there, having presumably been moved to Lermontovian preserves. On this manuscript see also I. S. Chistova, 'Smert' poeta', Lermontavskaya entsiklopediya, p. 513. 190 Zaborova (1981), p. 352; V. Manuylov, Letopis'zhizni i tvorchestvaM. Yu. Lermontova (Leningrad, 1964) p. 97; M. Yu. Lermontov: seminariy (Leningrad, 1960) p. 12; V. A. Manuylov, Lermontov v Peterburge (Leningrad, 1964) p. 245. 191 Manuylov, Letopis 'zhizni i tvorchestva .. ., p. 105 - the note reveals that the two were on ty terms; Lermontov subsequently gave an inscribed copy of Geroy nashego vremeni to O. S. Odoyevskaya (Zaborova, 1981). Once, according to A. A. Krayevsky, Lermontov took Odoyevskaya's mask and domino at a ball, in order himself to cavort in them: M. Yu. Lermontov v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (Moscow, 1972) p. 240. 192 Lermontavskaya entsiklopediya, p. 649 (from the shortened and revised 'Letopis'...' by Manuylov and S. B. Latyshev, pp. 644-54). The ball at the Dvoryanskoye sobraniye, thought to have taken place on or shortly before this date, and assumed to have inspired the poem 'Kak chasto pyostroyu tolpoyu okruzhon' (dated '1st January'), is now known to have been wrongly dated (by I. S. Turgenev and P. Viskovaty) and probably took place about a year earlier (Lermontavskaya entsiklopediya, p. 215). If the epigraph to this poem is to be taken literally, therefore, it may actually have been written immediately following the New Year's Eve gathering at Odoyevsky's, although there appears to be little obvious thematic connection. A. I. Turgenev's unpublished diary is quoted by Emma Gershteyn, 'Duel' Lermontova s Barantom', Literatumoye nasledstvo, 45-6 (Moscow, 1948) p. 399. 193 Gershteyn, ibid., pp. 424-6 (quoting from Yu. Arnol'd's recollections of the Odoyevsky salon in Dec. 1840, Arnol'd, op. cit., II, p. 216). 194 E. Naydich, 'Neizvestnyye epigrammy Lermontova', Literatumoye nasledstvo, 58, p. 360; Manuylov, Lermontov v Peterburge, p. 304. Lermontov's return to St Petersburg has been variously estimated at 5 Feb., 5-6 Feb. and 8 Feb. (cf. Manuylov, Letopis'zhizni i tvorchestva . . ., p. 146; Manuylov and Latyshev in Lermontavskaya entsiklopediya, p. 652; and Zaborova in ibid., p. 352). Rostopchina's letter to Dumas (or that part concerning Lermontov) is also in Lermontov v vosp. sov., pp. 280-6. 195 On the history of this picture, see I. S. Zil'bershteyn, 'Luchshaya zarubezhnaya kollektsiya relikviy russkoy kul'tury', Ogonyok, 5 (1970) pp. 16-21(esp.p.l8).

Chapter Six, Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu 196 197 198

199 200

201

202 203

204

205 206 207 208 209

210

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Irakliy Andronikov, 'Chetyre goda', Yunosf, 10 (1964) pp. 46-51 (esp. p. 50). A facsimile of the page containing Odoyevsky's inscription is to be found in Literatumoye nasledstvo, 43-4 (1941) p. 679. Zaborova (1981), p. 352. M. T. Yefimova, 'K voprosu ob eticheskikh problemakh v tvorchestve Lermontova (M. Yu. Lermontov i V. F. Odoyevsky)' Uchonyye zapiski L GPI, torn 309, Ocherki po istorii russkoy literatury (Leningrad, 1966) p. 130; see also Zaborova (1958). For a discussion of Odoyevsky and religion, see Chapter Five. V. Manuylov, 'Utrachennyye pis'ma Lermontova', Literatumoye nasledstvo, 45-6, pp. 33 and 49. Krayevsky to Odoyevsky, 4 Aug. 1841, Russkoy a starina, 6 (1904) p. 582. On 15 Feb. 1837 he had written to Odoyevsky, asking him to intercede with the Pushkin trustees, in the absence of Pushkin's widow, to obtain for him Pushkin's 'yellow cane walking stick, the knob of which is an inset button from Peter the Great's uniform' (ibid., p. 570). Zaborova (1981), p. 352; Manuylov, Lermontov v Peterburge, pp. 249-50 and 329. A conversation between Odoyevsky and Lermontov on the latter's eponymous protagonist, the Demon, which allegedly formed the basis for an autobiographical interpretation of the poem, is reported by D. A. Stolypin (via P. K. Mart'yanov) in Lermontov v vosp. sov., p. 166. Quoted from Zaborova (1958), p. 190; the theme of the poem (subtitled 'from Zedlitz') is a ghostly journey back to France by Napoleon. See Sakulin, I, 2, p. 341; Yefimova, op. cit.; and B. T. Udodov, M. Yu. Lermontov: khudozhestvennaya individual'nosf i tvorcheskiye protsessy (Voronezh, 1973) pp. 519-36. Helena Goscilo has suggested recently that Lermontov may have plagiarized from Odoyevsky's Knyazhna Ntimi in the composition of Knyazhna Ligovskaya: 'The First Pecorin en route to A Hero: Lermontov's Princess Ligovskaya\ Russian Literature, XI (1982) pp. 129-62 (esp. p. 158, n. 18). See Udodov, op. cit., p. 642; Vatsuro, 'Poslednyaya povest' Lermontova', op. cit., pp. 223-52 (Vatsuro sees, pp. 238-9, 'almost hidden quotes' in Shtoss from Odoyevsky's Pis 'ma k grafine Ye. P. Rfostopchinojy o privideniyakh. . .). V. G. Belinsky, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy in 13 vols (MoscowLeningrad, 1953-9) vol. XI, p. 418. Ibid., vol. XI, p. 428. This could be literally true, or Belinsky could be indulging in Gogolian parody - see V. A. Manuylov and G. P. Semyonova, Belinsky v Peterburge (Leningrad, 1979) p. 33. Quoted from V. S. Nechayeva, V. G. Belinsky: zhizn' i tvorchestvo 1836-1841 (Moscow, 1961) p. 270. Literatumoye nasledstvo, 56 (Moscow, 1950) pp. 135-6; Yuriy Oksman, Letopis' zhizni i tvorchestva V. G. Belinskogo (Moscow, 1958) p. 216. Quoted from V. G. Belinsky v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (Moscow, 1977) pp. 208-10. For a discussion of the dating of this incident, see Neil Cornwell, 'Belinsky and V. F. Odoyevsky', Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 62, no. 1 (1984) pp. 6-24 (esp. p. 7, n. 7); and references in the preceding Lermontov section (above). Belinsky v vosp. sov., p. 149 (also in A. I. Gertsen, Sobraniye sochineniy v-

364

211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219

220

221 222 223

224 225 226

227 228

Notes tridtsati tomakh, vol. IX, pp. 30-1). Herzen was not in St Petersburg over the New Year of 1840. Ibid. On Belinsky's visits to Odoyevsky's, see also Manuylov and Semyonova, op. cit., pp. 39 and 46. Belinsky, Pol. sob. soch., vol. XI, pp. 446 and 504-5. On Vrasky, see Chapter Five above (and n. 135 to it). Manuylov and Semyonova, op. cit., p. 96; Oksman (1958), p. 284. See Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 56, pp. 78-80; and V. S. Nechayeva, V. G. Belinsky: zhizn' i tvorchestvo 1842-1848 (Moscow, 1967) p. 57. Cornwell, 'Belinsky and V. F. Odoyevsky', op. cit. F. M. Dostoyevsky, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v tridtsati tomakh vol. I (Leningrad, 1972) p. 470. Krayevsky to Odoyevsky, 27 Nov. [1845], Russkaya starina, 6 (1904) p. 584. Dostoyevsky, Pol. sob. soch., vol. I, p. 472. See V. V. Dudkin and K. M. Azadovsky, 'Dostoyevsky v Germanii (1846—1921)', in Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 86 (Moscow, 1973) pp. 659-60. On Vol'fson see n. 193 to Chapter Three above; and M. P. Alekseyev's comments in Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 56, p. 461. Panayeva, op. cit., p. 254; the expression 'literaturnyy pryshch' derives from Nekrasov and Turgenev's epigram entitled 'Rytsar' gorestnoy figury' (ibid., p. 253, n. 1) - see Ya. P. Polonsky, in /. S. Turgenev v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1967) vol. II, p. 400. See I. S. ZiPbershteyn, 'Apollon Grigor'ev i popytka vozrodit' "Moskvityanin" (nakanune sotrudnichestvo v zhurnale "Vremya"), Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 86, p. 576. Ibid., p. 576; see 'Dnevnik' (28 Dec. 1860), p. 123. On Grigor'ev and Odoyevsky see the introductory section to this chapter. While there would appear to be no record of such meetings, and Tsekhnovitser ('Siluet', p. 92) may be mistaken in including Dostoyevsky in a list of Odoyevsky's Moscow guests in the post-1862 period, it is apparently known that Dostoyevsky in the 1860s possessed a note of Odoyevsky's Moscow address (V. I. Sakharov, 'Evolyutsiya tvorcheskogo oblika V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Vremya i sud'by russkikh pisateley (Moscow, 1981) p. 41). See Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 83 (Moscow, 1971) pp. 180, 571, 466 and 514. Suggested by Leonid Grossman, Dostoevsky, trans. Mary Mackler (London, 1974) p. 131. 'Je sais mon cher, que 2 et 2 font quatre; mais je crois que 2 et 2 font 5; que voulez-vous? C'est ma conviction; il faut respecter les convictions ou croyances qui courent le monde' (V. F. Odoyevsky, fond 539, Opis 1, no. 59; this sheet is not dated, but is among papers dated 1852). See also the fragments first published in R. N. (1975), pp. 236-41. Simon Karlinksy, 'A Hollow Shape: the Philosophical Tales of Prince Vladimir Odoevsky', Studies in Romanticism, V, no. 3 (1966) p. 181. Karlinsky suggests various parallels between the two writers. Neil Cornwell, 'V. F. Odoyevsky's Ridiculous Dream About That?:

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230 231

232 233 234 235

236

237 238 239 240 241 242 243

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Themes and Ideas in Works by V. F. Odoyevsky, Dostoyevsky and Mayakovsky,, Quinquereme: New Studies in Modern Languages, vol. 2 (1979) pp. 75-86 and 246-55; G. M. Fridlender, 'O nekotorykh ocherednykh zadachakh i problemakh izucheniya Dostoyevskogo', in Dostoyevsky: materialy i issledovaniya, vol. 4 (Leningrad, 1980) pp. 15-18. See (respectively) V. Guminsky's commentary to Vzglyad skvoz' stoletiya: russkaya fantastika XVIII i pervoy poloviny XIX veka (Moscow, 1977) pp. 315-16; Sakulin, I, 2, p. 156; R. G. Nazirov, 'Vladimir Odoyevsky i Dostoyevsky', Russkaya literatura, 3 (1974) p. 206; Fridlender, op. cit., pp. 17-18. Backvis op. cit., (pp. 549-50) has spotted the similarity between Odoyevsky's story SvideteP and the story of the young Zosima in Brat'ya Karamazovy. Ivan Turgenev, Literary Reminiscences and Autobiographical Fragments, trans. David Magarshack (New York, 1958) p. 109 (and, on the dating, Magarshack's introduction, p. 78). On Turgenev and the philosophical currents of the 1830s, see Chapter 3 ('Les Annees Trentes') of Henri Granjard's study, Ivan Tourguenev et les courants politiques et sociaux de son temps, 2nd edn (Paris, 1966), in which Odoyevsky is referred to as 'V. T. Odoevski'. Ya. P. Polonsky, 'I. S. Turgenev u sebya v yego posledniy priyezd na rodinu (iz vospominaniy),, in /. S. Turgenev v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov v dvukh tomakh, vol. II (Moscow, 1969) p. 398. 'Pis'mo knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo k priyatelyu-pomeshchiku,, Vyborg, 20 Aug. 1850, Russkiy arkhiv, 1 (1879) p. 525. 'Dnevnik', p. 178. Comments on this have been made by A. S. Orlov, 'Prizraki Turgeneva (Odoyevsky-Gogol'-Turgenev)', Rodnoy yazyk v shkole, 1 (1927), pp. 46-75; Karlinsky, op. cit., p. 177, n. 21; and R. G. Nazirov, 'Chekhov protiv romanticheskoy traditsii (k istorii odnogo syuzheta)', in Russkaya literatura 1870-1890 godov, sbornik 8 (Sverdlovsk, 1975) pp. 96-111. A recent article, though, deals with Odoyevsky's influence on Turgenev's Faust: M. A. Tur'yan, 'K probleme tvorcheskikh vzaimootnosheniy V. F. Odoyevskogo i I. S. Turgeneva ("Faust")', in /. S. Turgenev: voprosy biografii i tvorchestva (Leningrad, 1982) pp. 44-55. See M. A. Tur'yan, 'V. F. Odoyevsky v polemike s I. S. Turgenevym (po neopublikovannym materialam)', Russkaya literatura, 1 (1972) pp. 95-102; this includes the first publication of Odoyevsky's short article (pp. 99-100) 'Bazarov - (Turgeneva "Ottsy i deti")', dating probably from 1867. 'Dnevnik', p. 198. Ibid., p. 229. V. I. Sakharov's commentary to the first republication of NedovoVno since 1867, in Soch. (1981) vol. I, p. 361. Quoted from Tur'yan (1972) op. cit., p. 100. Ibid., pp. 100-1. Ibid., p. 101. Ye. Skayler, op. cit., pp. 634, 650 (quoted from V. I. Sakharov, 'Lev Tolstoy i V. F. Odoyevsky', in Tolstoy i literatura narodov Sovetskogo Soyuza (Yerevan, 1978) pp. 107-8.

366 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251

252 253 254

255

256

257 258

259 260 261 262

Notes 'On ochen' dik i nelyudim', see Skayler, ibid., p. 634 (Sakharov, ibid., p. 108). See V. V. Kunin, Bibliofily push kins koypory (Moscow, 1979) p. 192. L. N. Tolstoy, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy, 90 vols (Moscow, 1935-64) vol. 61, p. 202. See ibid., vol. 17, pp. 442-3,450,455,492-4 and 543-4. Sakharov, 'Lev Tolstoy i V. F. Odoyevsky', p. 104; I am indebted to this essay for much of the information contained in this section. Ibid.,p.\05. Tolstoy, Pol. sob. soch.,vo\. 48, p. 74. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 263; and vol. 61, pp. 52-3; on the latter see S. Ankeria, 'Zefiroty L'va Tolstogo', Studia SlavicaAcademiae Scientarium Hungaricae, vol. 26 (1980) pp. 155-61. Dostoyevsky also took an interest in 'Zefiroty' (in an article in Vremya, 8, 1861) as he had done in SeVskoye chteniye: see Dostoyevsky,^/. sob. sock., vol. 19 (1979)pp. 50,236-7,251. 'Dnevnik',p.240. Ibid.,p. 242. Sakharov, 'Lev Tolstoy i V. F. Odoyevsky', pp. 110-15, discusses this theme in some detail, quoting earlier remarks by A. F. Koni and N. Ya. Berkovsky. See also Karlinsky, op. tit., p. 179; and Cornwell, 'V. F. Odoyevsky's Ridiculous Dream . . .', pp. 76 and 83, n. 6. Ye. P. Rostopchina, Dom sumasshedshikh vMoskve v 1858g, in Epigramma i satira: iz istorii literaturnoy bor'by XlXveka (1800-1880), compiled by V. Orlov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931-2) vol. II, p. 57 (reprinted Oxford, 1975). 'What a woman that Countess is!', wrote the poet Kol'tsov to Odoyevsky of Rostopchina (Russkiy arkhiv (1864) p. 1024). There appears to have been no satisfactory study of Rostopchina's life and work; see however N. Lerner, 'Rostopchina, grafinya Yevdokiya Petrovna', in Russkiy biograficheskiy slovar': Romanova-Ryasovsky (Petrograd, 1918) pp. 220-9; and VI. Khodasevich, Stat'i o russkoy poezii (Petrograd, 1922) pp. 7-42 (reprinted Letchworth, 1971). For a note on Rostopchina's salon, see Aronson and Reyser, pp. 287-9.) On Rostopchina's prose, see Mersereau (1983), op.tit.,pp. 279-82. See Lerner, op. tit. 'Pis'ma k Grafine Ye. P. R-y, o privideniyakh, suyevernykh strakhakh, obmanakh chuvstv, magii, kabalistike, alkhimii i drugikh tainstvennykh naukakh', originally in Otechestvennyye zapiski in 1839, subsequently in Soch. (1844), Part III, pp. 307-59. It is summarized in Sakulin, 1,1, pp. 453-8. For a discussion of the genre of the fantastic story in relation to the views and practice of Odoyevsky, Rostopchina and Lermontov, see Vatsuro, 'Poslednyaya povest' Lermontova', op. tit. (N. N. Lanskaya) - see Sakulin, 1,2, p. 90, n. 1. Rostopchina's letters to Odoyevsky, Russkiy arkhiv (1864) pp. 1037-41 (esp. pp. 1038-9). 'Dedushka Iriney' was Odoyevsky's pen-name as a children's author; 'Albert le Grand' - the alchemist Albertus Magnus; and 'Kapitan Miauli' - presumably a private nickname connected with Odoyevsky's cat, Katter Murr, named after Hoffmann's novel.

Chapter Six, Odoyevsky and the Cultural Milieu 263 264

265

266 267

268 269 270 271

272

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Further correspondence of Rostopchina to Odoyevsky was published forty years later, in Russkaya starina, 7 (1904) pp. 160-5 (esp. p. 161). Ibid., pp. 162, 163 and 164-5; in the 1839 letter (p. 162) she tells Odoyevsky to address any letters to her in Pyatigorsk until 10 August, 'and thereafter to Anna, as always'; the 'Anna' in question, however, is not a faithful confidante, but a village in the Voronezh guberniya {Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58, p. 485); Russkiy arkhiv (1864) p. 1040; this last letter was, of course, published by Odoyevsky during his own lifetime, which would seem to argue for its innocence. In her later years, Rostopchina was considered rather passee as a literary figure; Aleksandr Nikitenko, on 19 Nov. 1855, noted: 'Soiree at Countess Rostopchina's. She read her new drama. Rather a bore. . . . Prince Vyazemsky, Tyutchev, Pletnyov and Prince Odoyevsky were present. . . . The Countess was very haughty, attacked the lower classes and praised the higher nobility. Tyutchev [not normally known for his radical views] came back at her very cleverly.' (The Diary of a Russian Censor, abridged, ed. and trans. Helen Saltz Jacobson (Amherst, 1975) p. 151). For recent accounts of Sobolevsky's life and activities, see Donald Binford Pruitt, 'The Life and Literary Activities of Sergej Aleksandrovic Sobolevskij: the Discovery of a Missing Link' (Ph.D thesis, Ohio State University, 1975); and in particular Kunin, op. cit. See also Kunin's essay (pp. 276-318) in Druzya Pushkina: perepiska, vospominaniya, dnevniki v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1984). The arkhivnyye yunoshi achieved mention in Yevgeniy Onegin; see Kunin (1979), op. cit., pp. 42-3. 'Kurs fanfaronstva ili zatrudneniya frantosoficheskogo obshchestva: soderzhashchiy v sebe: (1) Galstukologiyu, (2) Iskusstvo zanimat' den'gi i ne platit' ikh, (3) Nauka ne doma obedat'. Izhdiveniyem frantosoficheskogo obshchestva. Moscow 1825' - see Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 319-20, n. 1. See Brodsky, p. 145. 'Sobolevskogo prozvali bryukhom Pushkina', see Kunin (1979), op. cit., p. 48; 'etot vesyolyy drug i sobutyl'nik poeta' (N. O. Lerner) - see ibid., p. 91. Gogol', Pol. sob. soch., vol. XI, p. 37 (quoted from Kunin (1979), op. cit., pp. 50 and 323); N. V. Berg, quoted by Pruitt, op. cit., p. 50. V. A. Sollogub, who had no particular regard for Sobolevsky (and is believed to have satirized him in the figure of Saf 'ev in BoVshoy svet), was the first, in 1865, followed by P. A. Mukhanov - on this question see Kunin (1979), op. cit., pp. 17-20. Zhivot and urod - (see Odoyevsky's joint letter (with Venevitinov) to Sobolevsky and others, in Venevitinov, Stikhotvoreniya. Proza, pp. 378-9; Tatevskiy sbornik S. A. Rachinskogo (St Petersburg, 1899) p. 120; and Kunin (1979), op. cit., p. 190; Sakulin, I, 1, pp. 191, n. 3 and 319 (Sakulin's source was Ksenofont A. Polevoy). The sobriquet 'moy demon' presumably goes back to the period of the publication in Mnemozina of Puskhin's poem Moy demon and Odoyevsky's apologue Novyy demon (1824-5).

368 273 274 275 276

277 278

279 280 281 282 283 284 285

286 287 288

Notes Kunin (1979), op. cit., p. 73; Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 16-18 (Moscow, 1934) p. 752. See Pruitt, op. cit.y pp. 31, 48; Kunin (1979), op. cit., p. 130; and Rostopchina's verses in Epigramma i satira, vol. II, p. 58. Russkiy arkhiv, (1879) 1, p. 526; see also Kunin (1979), op. cit., p. 130. Sakulin I, 1, p. 319. There could equally well have been an element of self-parody; Odoyevsky wrote, on the subject of books: 'Our predilection for old and rare books is not an empty whim, an unconscious mania, the luxury of scholarship; it is based on a consciousness of that uninterrupted link which exists between the manifestations of human activity of all ages and all peoples.' (quoted from Golubyova and Gol'dberg, op. cit., pp. 156-7). Pushkin, Pol. sob. soch., vol. VIII, pp. 37-8. Sobolevsky was distorting a line from Racine's Phedre, Act IV, scene II: 'Le jour n'est pas plus pur que le fond de mon coeur.' Panayev, op. cit., pp. 92-3 (Panayev, op. cit., p. 92, gives an interesting thumbnail sketch of Sobolevsky). Princess Olga Stepanovna Odoyevskaya, and later Odoyevsky himself, was heavily involved in the founding and administration of shelters for children (see Chapter Four). Later, in their Moscow days, Sobolevsky sent Odoyevsky a 'musical acrostic' in reply to an invitation to dine on a special duck dish: see Appendix II. Sollogub, Vospominaniya, op. cit., pp. 307 and 567-8. 'Mes vers - ils ne sont pas pour la posterite; mais plutot pour les posterieurs': Kallash's introductory note to Sobolevsky, Epigrammy i eksprompty, p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Kunin, (1979), op. cit., pp. 47-8. See Sobolevsky, Epigrammy i eksprompty, pp. 36, 37, 48, 73 and 78. Kunin (1979), op. cit., pp. 190-1. Examples of this process can be seen in Appendix II. Sollogub, Vospominaniya, p. 556. The probable source for this, or perhaps another variation, is Sobolevsky's letter of 28 Mar. 1869 to Baron Korf, in which he says: 'In the course of a 48-year friendship I didn't spend a single hour with him other than to provoke him - and never, not for a second, did I succeed in doing this by any means!' (quoted from 'Siluet', p. 99). This is obviously something of an exaggeration; Sobolevsky seemingly succeeded in upsetting Odoyevsky by making fun of his philanthropic activity (see 'Siluet', pp. 82-3). Kunin (1979), op. cit., p. 193. Ibid., pp. 158 and 193-4. Russkiy arkhiv (1864) p. 1040 (this letter is reproduced in 'Siluet', pp. 77-9).

The Postcript 1 Pyatkovsky, Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky (1880), p. 51. 2 Sakharov, in his 'O zhizni i tvoreniyakh . . . ' , in VFO, Soch. (1981) vol. I, p. 28, and his 'Evolyutsiya tvorcheskogo oblika...' (1982) p. 48. 3 Pletnyov wrote (in 1844): 'Prince V. F. Odoyevsky is the most versatile and varied writer of our day in Russia . . . [Russkiye nochi] expresses the contemporary striving of the spirit to resolve satisfactorily questions in natural and in civic life', praising the knowledge of philosophy, natural sciences and political economy which he displayed and of various epochs and personalities (P. A. Pletnyov, Sochineniya i perepiska, vol. II, pp. 461-3). V. K. Kyukhel'beker, in 1845, told Odoyevsky: 'ty stal chut' li ne luchshim prozaikom nashego otechestva' ('You have become very nearly the best prose writer of our country') - 'Pis'mo . . . ' , in Otchot.. . za 1893, p. 69. 4 'Siluet', p. 58. The question of Hoffmann and Odoyevsky, aired early on by Polevoy and Belinsky, was discussed at some length by Sakulin (I, 2, pp. 342-61); as we have seen in previous chapters, Passage and Ingham in the West and Botnikova and Sakharov in the Soviet Union, have returned to it in recent years (see the Bibliography for details). 5 Lezin, Ocherki iz zhizni (1907) p. 93. Like Lezin, Mikhaylovskaya (1979, p. 25) makes the comparison of Odoyevsky with both Faust and Quixote. See also L. B. Turkevich, Cervantes in Russia, op. cit. 6 Lezin (1907), see pp. 70-4; Jo Ann Hopkins Linburn entitled her Ph.D thesis on Odoyevsky 'A Would-be Faust' (Columbia University, 1970). 7 Sakharov, in Soch. (1981) vol. 1, p. 28; Murav'yov in VFO, Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (1982). 8 Quoted from Sakharov, Soch. (1981) vol. 1, p. 28. 9 Odoyevsky's letter to A. O. Ishimova (published in Perepiska Ya. K. Grota..., vol. 3, pp. 774-5). 10 V. Zhirmunsky, Gete v russkoy literature (1937) pp. 191-4; A. von Gronicka, The Russian Image of Goethe (Philadelphia, 1968) pp. 119-24. Von Gronicka does, however, note (p. 120) Odoyevsky's admission of the influence upon himself of Goethe (from Sakulin, I, 2, p. 367). 11 For Sakulin's discussion of Goethe and Odoyevsky see Sakulin, I, 2, pp. 365-7. 12 Stephen Spender, introduction to Great Writings of Goethe (New York, 1958) pp. vii, ix. 13 Ronald Gray, Goethe: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 1967) p. 3. 14 Ibid., p. 6.

Bibliography No even remotely full bibliography of Odoyevsky's works, published and/or unpublished, has yet appeared in print. Sakulin's bibliography, which should have been included, along with various appendices of unpublished works, in the second and concluding volume to the study which he published in 1913 ('Volume I, Parts 1 and 2'), like the second volume itself, never appeared. The main source for a bibliography of the published works of Odoyevsky is, therefore, Sakulin's annotations to Volume I of his study (see section I:F below). These have been checked as far as possible against more recent sources or against the original publications; this has not, however, been possible in every case and certain dubia remain. Many of these works were published under an immense variety of pseudonyms and initials, and some anonymously. Section I of this Bibliography deals with Odoyevsky's works. In its various sub-sections it aims, as far as possible (and other than for the exceptions noted under category I:H below), to give a complete list of Odoyevsky's published works as known at present. Section II (sub-sections A to C) lists works on Odoyevsky. An element of selection enters here, as not all contemporary reviews of Odoyevsky's writings have been cited; neither have reviews of subsequent editions of his works, or of the main secondary works, been systematically sought out. Furthermore, by no means all the many Russian and Soviet 'Histories of Russian Literature' have been combed for sections on, or references to, Odoyevsky. No doubt still further general studies of Russian culture remain unquarried. This apart, however, the intention has been to provide as complete a list of secondary material directly on Odoyevsky as possible. Section III is much more selective, listing further sources which make significant reference to Odoyevsky. The same reservation (as with Section II) with regard to general studies applies here too. Furthermore, many sources have been excluded as too brief, or of insufficient interest. Many yet further sources (both referring to Odoyevsky and otherwise) are cited in the Notes but do not appear in this Bibliography. A full list of sources consulted on nineteenth-century Russian culture and of general sources used appears in the Bibliography to the longer (and earlier) thesis version of this study, cited in Section II:B (ii) below.

I

The Works of V. F. Odoyevsky

A Archival holdings The bulk of Odoyevsky's manuscripts are held in Leningrad at the Gosudarstvennaya Publichnaya Biblioteka imeni Saltykova-Shchedrina. All archival references given in this study refer to those holdings. The contents of the one hundred or so bound volumes of Odoyevsky's papers, which were incompletely ordered by S. A. Sobolevsky and dispatched from Moscow following Odoyevsky's death, were catalogued by I. A. Bychkov and published

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371

as the second supplement to the Report of the Imperial Public Library for 1884 (see Bychkov, 1887, below). This supplement now forms 'Opis 1' of the main Odoyevsky archive. The same archive includes an 'Opis 2', catalogued on index cards, comprising further papers which Odoyevsky's widow subsequently left to the Library. In the course of a term's research in Leningrad in 1979 I consulted a selection of the papers in Opis 1 and Opis 2. I was refused access to certain further binders of Opis 1. Checks between Bychkov's cataloguing of Opis 1 and the contents of the binders revealed a number of discrepancies. It may, therefore, be concluded that Bychkov's catalogue, as well as being incomplete, is also to some degree unreliable. Therefore, any reliable listing of Odoyevsky's unpublished works would entail a complete reexamination of all the archival materials. Consequently, I make no attempt to list the unpublished works here; certain of these works are, of course, mentioned in the text and any material drawn by me from archival sources is referenced appropriately in the Notes. Many more Odoyevsky manuscripts are located in a number of other Soviet repositories, including Pushkinskiy Dom, the Lenin Library and TsGALI.

B Main editions of Odoyevsky's works in book or pamphlet form (in chronological order) Chetyre apologa (Moscow, 1824). Pyostryye skazki s krasnym slovtsom, sobrannyye Irineyem Modestovichem Gomozeykoyu, magistrom filosofii i chlenom raznykh uchonykh obshchestv, izdannyye V. Bezglasnym (St Petersburg, 1833). Detskaya knizhka dlya voskresnykh dney (St Petersburg, 1833). Gorodok v tabakerke. Detskaya skazka dedushki Irineya (St Petersburg, 1834; reprinted 1847). Detskaya knizhka dlya voskresnykh dney (St Petersburg, 1835). Knyazhna Mimi; domashniye razgovoty (St Petersburg, n.d.) 'Russkaya slovesnost', t.vii, otd. 1', 72 pp. Skazki i povesti dlya detey Dedushki Irineya (St Petersburg, 1841). Sochineniya knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo (St Petersburg, 1844) 3 vols (Chast' 1aya, 2-aya, 3-'ya). Hereafter 'Soch. (1844)'. Sbornik detskikh pesen Dedushki Irineya (St Petersburg, 1847). Lettre et plaidoyer en faveur de Vabonne russe (response to M. Alphonse Karr) (Nice, 1857) (42pp.). NedovoVno (Moscow, 1867). Publichnyye lektsii professora Lyubimova (Moscow, 1868). Dedushki Irineya skazki i sochineniya dlya detey, 'Biblioteka detey i yunoshestva', vol. Ill (Moscow, 1871; reprinted 1885). Skazki i rasskazy dedushki Irineya (St Petersburg, 1889; 2nd edn 1891). Povesti, 3 vols, A. S. Suvorin's 'Deshovaya biblioteka' (St Petersburg, 1890). Russkiye nochi (Moscow, 1913; reprinted Munich, 1967). 4338-yy god: fantasticheskiy roman, 'Ogonyok' (Moscow, 1926). Edited by O. Tsekhnovitser. Romanticheskiye povesti, 'Priboy' (Leningrad, 1929; reprinted Oxford, 1975). Edited by Orest Tsekhnovitser. For contents, see below: '1929'. Izbrannyye muzykaVno-kriticheskiye stafi (Moscow-Leningrad, 1951).

372

Bibliography

StatHoM. I. Glinke (Moscow, 1953). Devyat'pavestey (New York, 1954). Izbrannyye pedagogicheskiye sochineniya (Moscow, 1955). Edited by V. Ya. Struminsky. Hereafter 'Izb. Fed. sock' MuzykaVno-literaturnoye naslediye (Moscow, 1956). Edited by G. Bernandt. Hereafter 'Muz.-lit. naslediye\ Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1959), 'Khudozhestvennaya literatura\ Edited by Ye. Yu. Khin. See below: '1959'. Russkiy e nochi, 'Literaturnyye pamyatniki', Nauka (Leningrad, 1975). Prepared by B. F. Yegorov, Ye. A. Maymin and M. I. Medovoy. Hereafter 'R.N. (1975)'. Povesti, 'Sovetskaya Rossiya' (Moscow, 1977). Edited by V. I. Sakharov. See below: '1977'. Sochineniya v dvukh tomakh, 'Khudozhestvennaya literature' (Moscow, 1981). Edited by V. I. Sakharov. Hereafter 'Soch. (1981)'. 0 literature i iskusstve, 'Sovremennik' (Moscow, 1982). Edited by V. I. Sakharov. Hereafter '1982A'. Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena: povesti, rasskazy, ocherki, Odoyevsky v zhizni, 'Moskovskiy rabochiy' (Moscow, 1982). Edited by V. I. Murav'yov. Hereafter '1982B'.

C Publications which involved Odoyevsky as editor or compiler Mnemozina, nos 1-4 (Moscow, 1824-5). Edited by V. F. Odoyevsky and V. K. KyukhePbeker. SeVskoye chtentye, 4 books (1844-7). Edited by V. F. Odoyevsky and A. P. Zablotsky. Collected edition, 1863. Book I: 11th edn, 1864 (Book II went to 7 editions, Book III to 6 and Book IV to 4). Rasskazy o bogef prirode i cheloveke: kniga dlya chteniya. Compiled by V. F. Odoyevsky and A. P. Zablotsky (St Petersburg, 1849). 'Iz bumag knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv nos. 7-8 (1864), pp. 804-49; and 2nd edn, pp. 994-1041.

D Anthologies which include works by Odoyevsky Russkiye povesti XIX veka vol. II (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950). Edited by B. S. Meylakh. Includes nine stories by VFO (see below: 4 950'). Russkiye esteticheskiye traktaty pervoy treti XIX veka v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2 (1974) pp. 156-92. Hereafter Traktaty' (1974). Vzglyad skvoz' stoletiya: russkaya fantastika XVIII i pervoy poloviny XIX veka (Moscow, 1977). Includes three stories by VFO: 'Dva dni v zhizni zemnogo shara'; 'Gorod bez imeni'; '4339-yy god\ Russkaya romanticheskaya povesf (Moscow, 1980). Edited by V. I. Sakharov. Includes four stories by VFO: 'Improvizator'; 'Opere del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi'; 'Gorod bez imeni'; 'Sil'fida'. Russkaya romanticheskaya povest' konets, XVIII-nachalo XIX veka (Moscow 1981). Edited by V. A. Grikhin. Includes two stories by V.F.O.: 'Imbroglio'; 'Privideniye'. Ocharovannyye knigoy: russkiye pisateli o knigakh, chtenii, bibliofilakh (Moscow,

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373

1982). Edited by A. V. Blyum. Includes three stories by VFO: 'Zavetnaya kniga'; 'Opere del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi'; and (excerpts) '4338-y god: peterburgskiye pis'ma'. Russkaya romanticheskayapavesf (pervaya tret'XlXveka) (Moscow 1983). Edited by V. A. Grikhin. Includes seven stories by VFO: Tosledniy kvartet Betkhovena'; 'BaP; 'Mstitel"; 'Improvizator'; 'Nasmeshka mertvetsa,; 'Knyazhna MimP; 'SiPfida'.

(i) The contents of Variegated Tales {Pyostryye skazkt) 1833 page no. Predisloviye Izdatelya i Predisloviye Sochinitelya vii I Retorta 1 Glava 1-aya, Vvedeniye 3 Glava 2-aya, Kakim obrazom 13 SochiniteP uznal ot chego v gostinykh byvayet dushno Glava 3 -aya, Chto proiskhodilo s 17 Sochinitelem, kogda on popalsya v Retortu Glava 4-aya, Kakim obrazom 20 SochiniteP popalsya v Latinskiy Slovar' i chto on v nyom uvidel II

Skazka o myortvom tele neizvestno komu prinadlezhashchem

29 Reprinted 1844,1950, 1959,1977,1981,1982.

III

Zhizn' i pokhozhdeniya odnogo iz 53 zdeshnikh obyvateley v steklyannoy banke, ili Novyy Zhoko

IV

Skazka o torn, po kakomu sluchayu Kollezhskomu Sovetniku Ivanu Bogdanovichu Otnosheniyu ne udalos' v Svetloye Voskreseniye pozdravit' svoikh nachaPnikov s prazdnikom

75 Reprinted 1844,1950, 1959,1977,1981,1982.

V

Igosha

89 Reprinted 1844.

VI

Prosto skazka

103

VII

Skazka, o torn, kak opasno devushkam 113 Reprinted 1844,1950, khodit' tolpoyu po Nevskomu 1959. prospektu

374 VIII

Bibliography Ta zhe skazka, torko na izvorot Derevyannyy Gost', ili Skazka ob ochnuvsheysa kukle i Gospodin Kivakel' Epilog

135 Reprinted 1844. 144 Reprinted 1844. 156

(ii) Contents of Russian Nights (Russkiye nochi) (1844) page numbers 1981 1844 1913/1967 1975 1 iii 23 31 [Vvedeniye] 31 33 9 Noch' pervaya 1 40 38 13 Noch' vtoraya 10 71 55 27 Noch' tret'ya (Rukopis') 41 71 55 27 Opere del Cavaliere 41 Giambattista Piranesi 37 67 93 Noch' chetvyortaya 63 69 97 39 Brigadir 67 76 110 45 Bal 80 47 79 115 85 Mstitel' 117 80 48 Nasmeshka mertvetsa 87 54 87 130 Posledneye samoubiystvo 100 94 142 59 Tsetsiliya 112 96 147 61 Noch' pyataya 117 96 147 61 Gorod bez imeni 117 115 181 76 151 Noch' shestaya 118 187 79 Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena 157 203 173 86 Noch' sed'maya 126 203 86 Improvizator 173 126 241 211 Noch' vos'maya (Prodolzheniye 147 103 rukopisi) 147 241 103 Sebastiyan Bakh 211 182 305 132 Noch' devyataya 274 140-183 192- -246 295- 390 326-423 Epilog The 1844 and 1913 editions only bear the dedication 'Druz'yam zhivym i pamyati druzey umershikh'. See 1975 edition for notes of textual variations; the 1981 edition follows the 1975 text.

F Stories, articles etc., published by Odoyevsky other than in, or separately from, the cycles under E (with Notes of republication, if applicable), other than those covered under H below) Khimikant Vil'gel'm (iz perepiski dvukh priyateley)', Blagonamerennyy (1820), 20, pp. 118-25 (believed by Sakulin (I, 1, p. 93, n. 1) to belong to the young VFO). 'Otryvok iz Labryuyera', Kalliopa. Trudy Blagorodnykh vospitannikov Universitetskogo pansiona, IV (1820) pp. 226-30. Reprinted in Vestnik Yevropy, 17 (Sept. 1822) pp. 61-5.

Bibliography

375

1821 'Otryvok iz matematiki' (translation from Chateaubriand), Vestnik Yevropy, 116 (1821) pp. 283-7; 117 (1821) pp. 51-5. 'Premudrost' i blagost' Bozhiya v otnoshenii k cheloveku' (translation from John Chrysostom), Vestnik Yevropy, 117, 7-8 (1821) pp. 277-81. 'Razgovor o torn, kak opasno byt' tshcheslavnym,, Vestnik Yevropy (Apr. 1821) 7-8, pp. 161-9. Also in Reck \ razgovor i stikhi proiznesyonnyye na publichnom akte Universitetskogo blagorodnogo pansiona (Moscow, 1821) pp. 18-22. Reprinted in Izbrannyye sochineniya i perevody v proze i stikhakh. Trudy Blagorodnykh vospitannikov Universitetskogo pansiona, Chast' II (Moscow, 1825) pp. 160-6. 1822 'Pis'mo k luzhnitskomu startsu\ Vestnik Yevropy, 9-10 (May 1822) pp. 302-10; and 11-12 (June 1822) pp. 305-12. 'Pokhvarnoye slovo nevezhestvu (pis'mo k luzhnitskomu startsu)', Vestnik Yevropy, 20 (Oct. 1822) pp. 280-98. 'Rech' o torn, chto vse znaniya i nauka togda torko dostavlyayut nam istinnuyu pol'zu, kogda oni soyedinyony s chistoyu nravstvennost'yu i blagochestiyem', in Rech \ razgovor i stikhi, proiznesyonnyye na publichnom akte Universitetskogo blagorodnogo pansiona (Moscow, 1822) pp. 3-14. 'Strannyy chelovek (pis'mo k luzhnitskomu startsu)', Vestnik Yevropy, 13-14 (July-Aug. 1822) pp. 140-6. 1823 'Dni dosad (pis'mo k luzhnitskomu startsu)', Vestnik Yevropy, 9 (May 1823) pp. 34-45; 11 (June 1823) pp. 206-16; 15 (Aug. 1823) pp. 219-26; 16 (Aug. 1823) pp. 299-311; 17 (Sept. 1823) pp. 24-48; and 18 (Sept. 1823) pp. 104-25. The episode in V Ye. 16 (Aug. 1823) pp. 299-311, was reprinted as an appendix to T. N. Livanova and V. V. Protopopov, Opernaya kritika v Rossii, torn pervyy, vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1966) pp. 310-13. 'K redaktoru Vestnika Yevropy (za Damskiy zhurnal)\ Vestnik Yevropy, 6 (Mar. 1823) pp. 146-50. 'Ot chitatelya zhurnalov', Vestnik Yevropy, 5 (Mar. 1823) pp. 69-74; and 7 (Apr. 1823) pp. 215-29. 'Pis'mo k izdatelyu Syna otechestva\ Syn otechestva, CXXV, 15, (1823) pp. 25-32. 1824 'Aforizmy iz razlichnykh pisateley, po chasti sovremennogo germanskogo Lyubomudriya', Mnemozina, II (1824) pp. 73-84. 'Chetyre apologa' ('Dervish', 'Solntse i mladenets', 'Dva maga', 'Alogiy i Yepimenid'), Mnemozina, III (1824) pp. 1-10. ('Alogiy i Yepimenid' reprinted in V. G. Belinsky, Pol sob. soch., vol. VIII (Moscow, 1955) p. 304; and in VFO, Posl. kv. Bet. (1982) p. 354.) 'Glavnyye osnovaniya zoologii, Hi nauka o zhivotnykh M. A. Maksimovicha' (review), Syn otechestva, XCV, 31 (1824) pp. 227-30. 'Kharakter (otryvok)', Mnemozina, HI (1824) pp. 75-83. 'Listki vyrvannyye iz parnasskikh vedomostey', Mnemozina, I (1824) pp. 177-82.

376

Bibliography

'Nechto v rode opechatki, ili otvet izdatelyuDamskogozhurnala\ Mnemozina, II (1824) p. 186. 'Pis'mo v Moskvu k V. K. Kyukhel'bekeru', Mnemozina, II (1824) pp. 165-85. 'Pribavleniye k predidushchemu razgovoru, ili zamechaniya na stat'yu napechatannuyu v No. 38 Syna otechestva, pod nazvaniyem: Zhurnal'nyye stat'i', Mnemozina, III (1824) pp. 178-89. [Primechaniye k stat'e Kyukhel'bekera "Pis'mo XIX. Drezden 14/2 noyabrya 1820 (otryvok iz puteshestviya)"], Mnemozina, I (1824) pp. 62-7. Reprinted Traktaty' (1974). 'Raduga - tsvety - inoskazaniya (Indiyskoye predaniye)', Mnemozina, III (1824) pp. 88-92. 'Sledstviya satiricheskoy stat'i (otryvok iz romana)', Mnemozina, III (1824) pp. 125-46. 'Smert' Bayrona', Mnemozina, III (1824) pp. 189-91. 'Stariki, ili Ostrov Pankhai', Mnemozina, I (1824) pp. 1-12. Reprinted in Belinsky's 1844 review of VFO's Sochineniya and in subsequent reprintings thereof (including V. G. Belinsky, Pol sob. sock., vol. VIII (Moscow, 1955) pp. 300-4 and in VFO, Posl. kv. Bet. (1982) pp. 348-54). 'Yelladiy (kartina iz svetskoy zhizni)', Mnemozina, II (1824) pp. 94-135. 1825 'Besstrunnaya lyutnya (Persidskoye predaniye)', Moskovskiy telegraf VI, 22 (1825) pp. 151-2. 'Korotkiy otchot kn. Odoyevskogo k g-nu Bulgarinu', Mnemozina, IV (1825) pp. 227-8. 'Moskovskiye novostT, Moskovskiy telegraf, 3 (1825) pp. 43-50. 'NeskoPko slov o "Mnemozine" samykh izdateley', Mnemozina, TV (1825) pp. 230-5. Extract reprinted in Traktaty' (1974). 'Nevesty', Moskovskiy telegraf, I, 4, Pribavleniye (1825) pp. 59-62. 'Odisseyev kon' ', Mnemozina, IV (1825) pp. 235-6. 'Otzyv g-nu Grechu', Moskovskiy telegraf, 3 (1825) pp. 14-15. 'Pervyy vy"ezd na bal', Moskovskiy telegraf, II, 6, Pribavleniye (1825) pp. 93-7. 'Rasgovor dvukh pokoynikov', Moskovskiy telegraf, 3 (1825) pp. 210-14. 'Razgovor dvukh priyateley', Moskovskiy telegraf, II, 5, Pribavleniye (1825) pp. 75-82. 'Rasgovor pod Novinskim', Moskovskiy telegraf, III, 10, Pribavleniye (1825) pp. 157-62. 'Sbory na bal', Moskovskiy telegraf, I, 2, Pribavleniye (1825) pp. 17-23. 'Sekta idealistiko-eleaticheskaya (otryvok iz "Slovarya istorii filosofii")', Mnemozina, IV (1825) pp. 160—92. Short extract reprinted in Traktaty' (1974). 'Sovremennyye nravy', Moskovskiy telegraf, I, Pribavleniye (1825). 'Uli', Moskovskiy telegraf, V, 17, Pribavleniye (1825) pp. 344-7. Teshcho dva apologa', Mnemozina, TV (1825) pp. 35—48 ('Novyy demon' pp. 35-41; 'Moya upravitel'nitsa', pp. 42-8): *Zamechaniya na suzhdeniya Mikh. Dmitriyeva o komedii Gore ot uma\ Moskovskiy telegraf, III, 10 (1825) pp. 1-12. Reprinted i n ^ . S. Griboyedov v russkoy kritike: sbornik statey (Moscow, 1958) pp., 28-36; and 1982A. 'Zhenskiye slyozy', Moskovskiy telegraf, I, 3, Pribavleniye (1825) pp. 39-43.

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1826 'Zavetnaya kniga. Drevneye predaniye', in Uraniya (Moscow, 1826). Reprinted 1982. 1827 'Den' rozhdeniya Vanichki (otryvok)', Moskovskiy vestnik, V, 18 (1827) pp. 21522. 'Minuta SYidaniya\Moskovskiy vestnik, II (1827) pp. 145-6. 'Mir zvukov', Moskovskiy vestnik, IV (1827) pp. 43-6. "'Ob iskusstve smotret' na khudozhestva po pravilam ZuPtsera i Mengsa", soch. F. Militsii, perevod s itaPyanskogo Valeriana Langera, Peterburg, 1827', Moskovskiy vestnik, IV, 16 (1827) pp. 408-19. Shortened reprint in Traktaty' (1974). 'Pamyatnik otechestvennyykh muz',Moskovskiy vestnik, II, 5 (1827) pp. 78-81. 'Varz&oksy'^oskovskiy vestnik, II, 6 (1827). Reprinted 1982A. Terekhod cherez reku, priklyucheniye Bramina Paramarty. Indiyskaya skazka', Moskovskiy vestnik, 4 (1827) pp. 231-45. 'The Last Man. Posledniy chelovek, soch. avtora Frankenshteyna, London 1826' (review),Moskovskiy vestnik, III (1827) pp. 179-81. 'Smeit' i zhizn', Severnaya lira na 1827 god (Moscow, 1827) pp. 105-8. Reprinted in Literaturnyyepribavleniya kRusskomu invalidu, no. 95 (1836). 'Tsar, Devindra i Golub' \ Moskovskiy vestnik, II, 5 (1827) pp. 102-4. 1828 'Dva dni [sic] v zhizni zemnogo shara', Moskovskiy vestnik, 10 (1828) pp. 120-8. Reprinted in Vzglyadskvoz ystoletiya (1977). 1829 'Utro rostovshchika (otryvok iz rommay,Moskovskiy vestnik, II (1829) pp. 147- 59. 1830 'Che tyre perioda poznaniya', Literaturnayagazeta, 46 (1830) pp. 78-9. 'Glukhiye (Indiyskaya skazka iz knigi: Pancha-tantra)', Literaturnayagazeta, no. 13(1830). 'Klyazma, mePnik i dva yego apologa', Ateney, TV (1830) pp. 114—26. 'OtryvkiizzhurnalaDoktora', Literaturnayagazeta, 17 (1830) pp. 131-3. 'Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena', Severnyye tsvety na 1831 god (St Petersburg, 1830) pp. 101-19. Reprinted 1890,1929,1956,1959,1977,1982 twice and 1983, as well as in R. N. (for textual differences, cf. R. N. (1844) on and 1982A, which reprintes the original version). 'Teni praottsev', Literaturnayagazeta, no. 13 (1830). Reprinted in Soch. (1844) vol. Ill (see under 'Sanskritskiye predaniya', 1844). 1831 'Opere del Cavaliere Giambattista PiranesP, Severnyye tsvety na 1832 god (St Petersburg, 1831) pp. 47-65. Reprinted 1929, 1959, 1977, 1980 and 1982 twice, as well as in R. N. (for textual differences cf. R. N. (1844) on and the 1980 reprint of the original version in the 'Lit. pamyatnikP, Severnyye tsvety na 1832god).

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'Stsena iz yezhednevnoy zhizni', Literatumyye pribavleniya k Russkomu invalidu, 17 (1837). Reprinted 1844, as 'Stsena iz domashnoy zhizni'. 1838 'Chornaya perchatka', Literatumyye pribavleniya k Russkomu invalidu, 1 (1838) pp. 1-5 and 2, pp. 21-6. Dated 1835. Reprinted 1844, 1950, 1959 and 1981. 'Chudnyy son (pis'mo k redaktoru Literatumykh pribavleniy k Russkomy invalidu)\ Literatumyye pribavleniya k Russkomu invalidu (1838) 43. 'Literatumyye izvestiya i zamechaniya', Literatumyye pribavleniya k Russkomu invalidu, 41 (1838) pp. 813-14; anonymous, but 'undoubtedly' by VFO, according to Sakulin (I, 2, p. 411, n. 1). 'Privetstviya, govoryonnyye Ivanu Andreyevichu Krylovu v den' yego rozhdeniya i sovershivshegosya pyatidesyatiletiya yego literaturnoy deyatel'nosti na obede 2 fevralya 1838 g. v zale Blagorodnogo sobraniya', Zhumal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniya, 17 (1838) pp. 213-23; and as separate pamphlet (St Petersburg, 1838). 'Privideniye (iz putevykh zametok)', Literatumyye pribavleniya k Russkomu invalidu, 40 (1838) pp. 781-5. Reprinted 1844, 1929, 1959, 1977 and 1981 twice. 'Segeliel'. Don-kikhot XIX stoletiya. Skazka dlya starikh detey (otryvok iz 1-y chasti)', Sbomik na 1838, A. F. Voyeykova i V. A. Vladislavleva (St Petersburg, 1838) pp. 89-104. Dated 1832. Reprinted in Russkiy arkhiv, XIX, II, (1881) pp. 477-85. 'Sirotn', Al'manakh na 1838 god (St Petersburg, 1838) pp. 237-88. 'Zapiski grobovshchika', AVmanakh na 1838 god (St Petersburg, 1838) pp. 221-36. Extracts reprinted 1981 {Sock., II, pp. 361-2). 1839 'Gorod bez imeni', Sovremennik (1839) kn. 1, pp. 97-120. Reprinted 1959, 1977 twice, 1980, 1981 and 1982B (as well as in R. N). 'Knyazhna Zizi', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 1 , 1 3 , (1839) pp. 3-70. Reprinted 1844, 1890, 1929, 1950, 1959, 1981 and 1982B. 'Pis'ma k grafine Ye. P. R-y, o privideniyakh, suyevernykh strakhakh, obmanakh chuvstv, magii, kabalistike, alkhimii i drugikh tainstvennykh naukakh', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 2, II, 8 (1839) pp. 1-16 (pis'ma 1-2); II, 8, pp. 1-17 (pis'ma 3-4); 8, V, 8, pp. 12-26 ('"Koldovstvo XIX stoletiya", Pis'mo 5-oye k grafine R-oy'). Reprinted 1844. 'Svidetel', Syn otechestva, VII (1839) pp. 77-90. Reprinted 1844 and 1959. 'Utro zhurnalista (iz zapisok lenivtsa)', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 12, VII, 3 (1839) pp. 179-208 (signed 'S. Razmotkin'; considered by Sakulin (I, 2, p. 409, n. 1) to be 'indisputably' by VFO). 'Zhivopisets', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 10, VI, 3 (1839) pp. 31-42. Reprinted 1950, 1959, 1977, 1981 and 1982B. 1840 '4388 god. Peterburgskiye pis'ma', Utrennyaya zarya na 1840 god (St Petersburg, 1840) pp. 307-52 (extract). Separate 'complete' edition 1926; reprinted 1929, 1977, 1959, 1980 and 1982B.

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'Chteniya o russkom yazyke Nikolaya Grecha', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 9, XII, 6 (1840) pp. 7-29. 'Kosmorama,, Otechestvennyyezapiski, 1, VIII, 3 (1840) pp. 34-81. Dated 1839. 'Nechto o deklaratsii g. Grecha protiv Otechestvennykh zapisok\ Otechestvennyye zapiski, 12, VIII, 2 prilozheniye (1840) pp. i-xiv (signed 'Audrey Krayevsy'; however, Sakulin (1,2, p. 399, n. 3) considers the article to be mainly the work of VFO). 'Zapiski dlya moyego prapravnuka o russkoy literature', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 11, XIII, 3 (1840) pp. 5-12. Reprinted 1981 and 1982A. 1841 'Dusha zhenshchiny', Russkaya beseda, vol. II (St Petersburg, 1841). Reprinted 1844. 'Salamandra', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 1, XIV, 3 (1841) pp. 3-38. Reprinted as 'El'sa' (second part of the 'dilogy' Salamandra) 1844,1890,1977 and 1981. See also 'Yuzhnyy bereg Finlyandii v nachale XVIII stoletiya'. 'Yuzhnyy bereg Finlyandii v nachale XVIII stoletiya', Utrenyaya zarya na 1841 god (St Petersburg, 1841) pp. 15-128. Reprinted (first part of the 'dilogy' Salamandra) 1844,1890,1977 and 1981. See also 'Salamandra'. 1842 'Neoboydyonnyy dom', AVmanakh v pamyaf dvukhsotletnego yubileya imp. Aleksandrovskogo universiteta (Gel'singfors, 1842) pp. 215-34. Reprinted 1844 and 1981. 'Orlakhskaya krest'yanka', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 2, XX, 1 (1842) pp. 240-53, dated 1838. Reprinted 1977 and 1981. 'Zapiski Plakuna Goryunova', Otechestvennyye zapiski, XX (1842) pp. 94-7. 1843 'Psikhologicheskiye zametki', Sovremennik, XXXII (1843) pp. 71-89, 113-28, 309-31. Reprinted 1975,1981 and 1982A. 'Zapiski dlya moyego prapravnuka o literature nashego vremeni i o prochem', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 2, XXVI, 8 (1843) pp. 94-100. 1844 'Imbroglio (iz zapisok puteshestvennika)', in Soch. (1844) vol. II, pp. 59-103. Reprinted 1929,1959,1977 and 1981 twice. 'Istoriya o petukhe, koshke i lyagushke (rasskaz provintsiala)' (dated 1835) in Soch. (1844) vol. Ill, pp. 141-66. Reprinted 1950,1959,1977,1981 and 1982B. See also under 'Otryvok iz zapisok Irineya Modestovicha Gomozeyki' (1834). 'Osnovaniya kranioskopii K. G. Karusa. Perevyol s nemetskogo A. Kashin' (review), Otechestvennyye zapiski, 6, XXXIV, 6, bibl. khronika (1844) pp. 7982. [Predisloviye k "Opytam rasskaza o drevnikh i novykh predaniyakh], Soch. (1844) vol. Ill, pp. 43-6. Reprinted 1981 (Soch., II, pp. 359-60) and 1982A. 'Sanskritskiye predaniya' ('Smertnaya pesn'' and 'Teni praottsev'), Sochineniya, vol. Ill (1844) pp. 77-80. Dated 1824. See also under 'Teni praottsev' (1830). 'Zhivoy mertvets', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 2, XXXII, 1 (1844) pp. 305-32. Dated 1838. Reprinted 1844,1950,1959 and 1982B.

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1845 'Sirotinka', in Vchera i segodnya (St Petersburg, 1845) pp. 3-16. 1846 'Domostroiterstvo i domovodstvo. Vecher pervyy. Razgovor ob iziskanii promyshlennostey i vozdelyvanii fabrichnostey voobshche, i o solyonykh ogurtsakh v osobennosti. Yego zhe [Doktora Pufa]', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 2, XLIV, 4 (1846) pp. 17-28. 'Martingal', Peterburgskiy sbornik (St Petersburg, 1846) pp. 377-90. Reprinted 1977 and 1981. 'Teoriya domostroiterstva v yego nravstvennom, fizicheskom, umozriternom i prakticheskom otnoshenii, izlozhennaya doktorom Pufom', Otechestvennyye zapiski, 1, XLIV, 4 (1846) pp. 12-16. Post 1846 'O zefirotakh', Severnaya pchela, 73 (1 Apr. 1861). Reprinted in S. Ankeria, 'Zefiroty LVa Tolstogo,, Studia Slavica Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae, vol. XXVI (1980) pp. 155-60. (Review of M. A. Korfs Zhizny grafa Speranskogo), Sankt-Petersburgskiye vedomosti (25 Oct. 1861). 'Iz bumag knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv (1864) 7-8, pp. 803-49 (and 2nd edn, pp. 994-1041). Correspondence etc. (plus 'O napadeniyakh . . . ' see below). 'O napadeniyakh peterburgskikh zhurnalov na russkogo poeta Pushkina', Russkiy arkhiv (1864) 7-8, pp. 824-31 (and 2nd edn, pp. 1015-22). Reprinted 1981 and 1982A. 'Yezda po moskovskim ulitsam', Golos (1866) no. 101. Reprinted 1982B. 'NedovoPno (posvyashchayetsya I. S. Turgenevu)', Besedy Obshchestva lyubiteley rossiyskoy slovesnosti pri Imperatorskom moskovskom universitete, vyp. I (Moscow, 1867) pp. 65-84. And as a separate pamphlet (Moscow, 1867). Reprinted 1981 and 1982 A. 'Vospominaniya pomoshchnika direktora V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Baronu Modestu Andreyevichu Korfu v deny pyatidesyatiletiya yego sluzhby, 9 iyunya 1867g. (St Petersburg, 1867) pp. 159-67 (printed in an edition of only two copies). 'Glasnost' i poluglasnost' - raznitsa\ Moskovskiye vedomosti, 186, (28 Aug. 1868). Terekhvachonnyye pis'ma', Sovremennyye izvestiya (13 Apr. 1868). Reprinted 1956 and 1981. 'Vorozhei i gadaPshchiki', Illyustrirovannaya gazeta (St Petersburg, 1868) nos 48 and 49. Reprinted in Ocherki moskovskoy zhizni (Moscow, 1962) pp. 300-10; and 1982B.

G Works by Odoyevsky published posthumously 'Cherta v kharaktere knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo,, Russkiy arkhiv (1870) pp. 927-31. Includes C^s letter to Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich (pp. 929-31). 'Iz bumag knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv, I (1874) pp. 278-360.

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Includes extracts, aphorisms etc., plus 'Otryvki iz zapisok 1855-1856' (pp. 306-11), Tredisloviye knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo k predpolozhennomu im novomu izdaniyuyego sochineniy' (pp. 311-20). Tredisloviye' reprinted/?. N. 19U;R.N. 1975; 1981 and 1982A. 'Iz bumag knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv, II (1874) pp. 11-54. Contains: 'Iz istorii russkoy tzenzury' (pp. 11-24); 'Yeshcho o tsenzure' (pp. 24-30); 'O mere protiv zagranichnoy russkoy pechati' (pp. 30-9); 'Devyatnadtsatoye fevralya' (pp. 39-42); 'Nabroski i zametki' (pp. 42-54). [Letter from VFO to V. K. Kyukhel'beker, Moscow, 9 June, 1823], Russkaya starina, 1 (1875) p. 369. 'Iz bumag S. P. Shevyryova', Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1878) pp. 55-8. Letters from VFO to Shevyryov (1836). Tis'mo knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo k priyatelyu-pomeshchiku', Russkiy arkhiv, I (1879) pp. 525-6. 'Zapiska ob uvol'nenii krepostnykh krest'yan. Podannaya Gosudaryu Aleksandru Nikolayevichu', Russkiy arkhiv, XIX, II (1881) pp. 486-90. To povodu adresa Moskovskogo dvoryanstva 1864 godu', Russkiy arkhiv, XIX, II (1881) pp. 491-2. Tis'mo k dame po povodu slukhov rasprostranyayemykh po Moskve', Russkiy arkhiv, XIX, II (1881) pp. 492-3. Tis'mo kn. V. F. Odoyeskogo k M. A. Maksimovichu', Kiyevskaya starina, V (Apr. 1883) pp. 841-6. 'Avtobiografiya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Otchot Imperaiorskoy publichnoy bibliotekiza 1884g. (St Petersburg, 1887) 2-oye prilozheniye, pp. 2-3 (and Russkiy arkhiv, (1897) 6, pp. 283-4). [Letter from VFO to V. K. Kyukhel'beker, Moscow, 25 June 1825], Russkaya starina, IV, 12 (1888) pp. 594-5. 'Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky o sebe samom', Russkiy arkhiv, I, 2 (1894) p. 327. 'Vzglyad V. F. Odoyevskogo na avtobiografiyu', Russkoye obozreniye, 3 (1894) pp. 423-4. 'Grazhdanskiye zavety knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkiy arkhiv, II, 5 (1895) pp. 36-54. [Pis'mo S. S. Uvarovu], OtchotImperatorskoy publichnoy bibliotekiza 1892g. (St Petersburg, 1895) pp. 53-5 (prilozheniye). Reprinted R. N. (1975). [Letter from VFO to Ya. K. Grot, 10 Dec. 1840], Perepiska Ya. K. Grota s P. A. Pletnyovym, vol. I (St Petersburg, 1896) p. 676. [Letter from VFO to A. O. Ishimova], in Dopolneniya i popravki to Perepiska Ya. K. Grota s P. A. Pletnyovym, vol. Ill (St Petersburg, 1896) pp. 774-5. [Avtobiografiya] in Ch. Vetrinsky, V sorokovykh godakh, (Moscow, 1899) pp. 294-5. Reprinted in Posh kv. Bet. (1982) pp. 320-1. 'Zhit' - deystvovat'. Stat'ya kn. V. F. O-ogo' in Tatevskiy sbornik S. A. Rachinskogo (St Petersburg, 1899) pp. 114-20. 'Iz perepiski N. A. Polevogo', Russkaya starina, 5 (1901) pp. 405-6. Letter from VFO to Polevoy (1828). 'Iz perepiski knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Russkaya starina (1904) 2, pp. 3 7 1 85; 3, pp. 705-16; 4, pp. 193-217; 5, pp. 367-78; 6, pp. 569-90; 7, pp. 151-66; 8, pp. 413-42. Almost entirely letters to VFO from various correspondents. [Pis'mo A. A. Krayevskomu], in Sakulin (1913), see below, I, 2, pp. 450-3.

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383

Reprinted in R.N. 1975,1981 and 1982A. 'Primechaniye k "Russkim nocham" ' in R. Ny 1913, pp. 13-22. Reprinted R. N. 1975 and 1982A (partially published earlier in Lezin, 1907, see below). [Zapisnaya knizhka], ch 3 of O. Tsekhnovitser, 'Siluet', in VFO, Romanticheskiye povesti (Leningrad, 1929) (reprinted Oxford, 1975), pp. 61-76. Extracts from O's papers; includes autobiographical fragment, pp. 66-8. [Iz pis'ma kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo], Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 16-18 (Moscow, 1934) pp. 691-2. Extracts from O's letter to Pogodin, 29 Apr. 1827. [Iz pis'ma V. F. Odoyevskogo], Literaturnoye nasledstoo, 16-18 (Moscow, 1934) p. 752. Extracts from O's letter to S. A. Sobolevsky, 10 Jan. 1837. "Tekushchaya khronika i osobyye proisshestviya". Dnevnik V. F. Odoyevskogo 1859-1869 gg.\ in Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 22-4 (Moscow, 1935) pp. 79-308. [Dve zametki o Gogole], in N V. GogoV. Issledovaniya i materialyy vol. I (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936) pp. 223-6. Reprinted 1982A. 'Zapiska po delam Sovremennika, 1836', Literaturnyy arkhiv, I (MoscowLeningrad, 1938) pp. 27-8. 'Stat'ya ob "Rossii", izdannoy g. Bulgarinym pomeshchonnaya v No. 70 i 71-m "Severnoy pchely" 1837-go goda', Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 58 (Moscow, 1952) pp. 364-5. [Sovremennik], in Zaborova (1956) (see below), pp. 313-20. [Pushkin], in Zaborova (1956) pp. 333-6. Reprinted 1981 and 1982A. 'Opyt bezymyannoy poemy', Muz.-lit. naslediye (1956) pp. 439-42. Reprinted 1982A. Terepiska kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo s A. S. Khomyakovym', Uchonyye zapiski Tartuskogo un-ta, vyp. 251, Trudy po russkoy i slavyanskoy fllologii, 515 (1970) pp. 339-47. Letters from VFO to Khomyakov (1845-59). [Dve zametki ob I. S. Turgeneve], in Tur'yan (1972) (see below), pp. 99-101. Reprinted 1982A. 'Opyt teorii izyashchnykh iskusstv s osobennym primeneniyem onoy k muzyke', Traktaty'' (1974) pp. 156-68. Partially in Sakulin (1913). 'Sushcheye, ili sushchestvuyushcheye', Traktaty' (1974) pp. 168-71. 'Gnomy XIX stoletiya', Traktaty' (1974) pp. 171-6. [Iz zapisnoy knizhki], Traktaty' (1974) pp. 177-86. Partially reprinted in 1982A. 'Russkiye nochi, ili o neobkhodimosti novoy nauki i novogo iskusstva', in R. N. (1975) pp. 192-8. 'Nauka instinkta. Otvet Rozhalinu [Fragmenty]' mR. N (1975) pp. 198-203. [Otvet na kritiku], in R. N. (1975) pp. 231-4. 'Russkiye pis'ma', in R.N. (1975) pp. 236-41. 'Elementy narodnyye', inR. N. (1975) p. 242. 'Organizm', inR. N. (1975)pp. 242-3. 'Neobkhodimosti i vozmozhnosti novoy nauki i novogo iskusstva', in R. N (1975) pp. 306-7, n. 6. [Beseda V. F. Odoyevskogo s Shellingom], publication with commentary by M. I. Medovoy and V. I. SakharovinP/^^/'/^^w' (Moscow, 1978) pp. 176-81. Reprinted 1982A. Partial publication earlier in Sakulin (1913); and Kovalevsky (1915) (see below). Perepiska A. S. Pushkina v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1982).

384

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Correspondence between VFO and Pushkin, pp. 425-51. [Letter from V. F. Odoyevsky to P. D. Sechenov, 16 Jan. 1833], in Tur'yan (1983) (see below) pp. 186-7. [Pis'ma k A. S. Pushkinu], Yezhegodnik rukopisnogo otdela Pushkinskogo doma na 1980god: sbornik nauchnykh trudov, Leningrad, 1984, pp. 149-56. Definitive publication, with commentary by R. Ye. Terebenina, of 4 letters, first in 'Iz bumag . . . ' , 1864, from rediscovered originals.

H For bibliographies of Odoyevsky's educational, musical and scientific writings (some of which are referred to in this study but not included in this bibliography) see cIzb. ped. soch.f (1955); 'Muz.-lit. naslediye' (1956); and Virginsky (1975) (see below), respectively.

I Translations of Works by Odoyevsky 'Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena', Der Russische Merkur (St Petersburg), 16 Oct. 1831, no. 42, pp. 45-8; and 23 Oct. 1831, no. 43, pp. 49-53. Another translation in Blatter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslandes (Stuttgart, 1838). Plus a translation by Friedrich Tiets in Russische historische und romantische ErzahlungenBegebenheitenundSkizzen (Berlin, 1838) pp. 151-63. 'Knyazhna Mimi', Russisches Hundert und Eins, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1836) pp. 181-294. 'Sil'fida', translated by K. A. Farnhagen von Ense in Der Freihafen (1839) 1, pp. 73-109. ReprintedmEleganteBibliotekmodernenNovellen (Berlin, 1844). 'Nasmeshka mertvetsa', Nordisches Novellenbuch, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1846) pp. 249-66. LeDuel: nouvelle, translated by P. Douhaire (1854) 10pp. ['Svidetel' ']. Le decameron russe: histoires et nouvelles, translated by Pierre-Paul Douhaire (Paris, 1855). Contains: Le dernier quatuor de Beethoven; L'architecte ('Piranesi'); Valchimiste ('Sirfida'); Une apparition ('Privideniye'); Le duel ('SvideteP'); Lesjoueurs ('Skazka, o torn po kakomu . . . ' ) ; L Hmprovisateur. Magische Novellen, translated by Johannes von Guenther (Munich, 1924). Contains: Improviser; Elsa; Salamander; Das Hohnlachen des Toten; Sebastian Bach;DerBalL 'The Improviser', translated by Jeannette Eyre, The Slavonic and East European Review, XXII (1944). Originally a separate pamphlet (Cambridge, 1940), marked 'for the use of Slavic I students and may not be reproduced'. Sebastian Bach: Novelle, translated by Johannes von Guenther (Heidelberg, 1947) 63pp. Russian Nights, translated by Olga Koshansky-Olienikov and Ralph E. Matlaw (New York, 1965). Russische Nachte, translated by Heinrich A. Stammler and Johannes von Guenther (Munich, 1970). 'A Tale of Why It Is Dangerous for Young Girls To Go Walking in a Group along Nevsky Prospect', translated by Samuel Cioran, Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 3 (1972).

Bibliography

385

'The Sylph', translated by Joel Stern, Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 8 (1974). 'Princess Mimi', translated by David Lowe, Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 9 (1974). Das Gespenst und andere Spukgeschichten, translated by Werner Crentziger, Charlotte Kossuth and Dieter Pommerenke (Berlin, 1974). Contains: Das Hohnlachen des Toten; Imbroglio; Die Sylphide; Das Gespenst; Der lebende Leichnam. Russian Romantic Prose: An Anthology, edited by Carl R. Proffer (Ann Arbor, 1979). Includes: 'The Sylph', translated by Joel Stern; Trincess Mimi', translated by David Lowe; 'The Live Corpse', translated by Neil Cornwell. Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology (Seven Utopias and a Dream), edited and translated by Leland Fetzer (Ann Arbor, 1982). Includes: 'The year 4338. Letters from Petersburg'. Utopisti russi delprimo ottocento, edited by Marina Rossi Varese (Naples, 1982). Includes: 'La citta senza nome'; 'L'anno 4338'; 'L'ultimo suicidio'. Notti russe, edited and translated by Luciana Montagnani (Turin, 1983). The Ardis Anthology of Russian Romanticism, edited by Christine Rydel (Ann Arbor, 1984). Includes: 'A Tale of Why It Is Dangerous for Young Girls To Go Walking in a Group along Nevsky Prospect', translated by Samuel Cioran; 'Princess Mimi', translated by David Lowe. Russian 19th Century Gothic Tales, compiled by Valentin Korovin (Moscow, 1984) Includes: '4338 A.D'; 'The Sylphide'; 'The Ghost ['Privideniye']; 'The City Without a Name'; 'The Living Corpse' (all translated by Alex Miller).

II Works on V. F. Odoyevsky A Books or Pamphlets on Odoyevsky (Including avtoreferaty Cited) Vpamyaf oknyaze Vladimire Fyodoroviche Odoyevskom (Moscow, 1869). Contains memoirs by: A. I. Koshelev (pp. 1-10); N. V. Putyata (pp. 12-41); M. P. Pogodin (pp. 43-68); F. I. Timiryazev (pp. 71-7); K. P. Pobedonostsev (pp. 79-87); V. A. Sollogub (pp. 89-102). Pyatkovsky, A. P., Knyaz1 V. F. Odoyevsky. Literaturno - biograficheskiy ocherk v svyazi s lichnymi vospominaniyami (St Petersburg, 1880) 59 pp. Extract reprinted mPosledniy kvartet Betkhovena (1982) pp. 372-6. Sumtsov, N. F., Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky (Khar'kov, 1884) 68 pp. Botsyanovsky, V., Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky i Obshchestvo Poseshcheniya Bednykh v S-Peterburge (from Trudovaya pomoshch\ Apr.-May 1899) (St Petersburg, 1899) 35 pp. Pyatkovsky, A. P., Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky i D. V. Venevitinov (St Petersburg, 1901). The first half is a reprint of Pyatkovsky (1880) 167 pp. Kubasov, I. A., Kn. V. F. Odoyevsky. Biograficheskiy ocherk (St Petersburg, 1903). Yazykov, Dmitriy, Knyaz' Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky (yego zhizn' i deyateVnost) (Moscow, 1903) 49pp. Lezin, B. A., Ocherki iz zhizni i literaturnoy deyateVnosti kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo (Khar'kov, 1907) 131 pp.

386

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Sakulin, P. N., Iz istorii russkogo idealizma. Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky. MysliteVpisatel ', vol. I, Parts 1 & 2 (Moscow, 1913) 616 + 479 pp. Sobraniya D. V. Razumovskogo i V. F. Odoyevskogo i arkhiv D. V. Razumovskogo. Opisaniya (Moscow, 1960). Gushchenko, G. S., V. F. Odoyevsky i russkaya narodnayapesnya (Minsk, 1966). Bernandt, G., V. F. Odoyevsky i Betkhoven (Moscow, 1971) 51 pp. Medovoy, M. I., Tuti razvitiya filosofskoy prozy V. F. Odoyevskogo v seredine 1820-1840-kh godov', Avtoreferat, kandidatskoy dissertatsii (Leningrad, 1971) 18 pp. Virginsky, V. S., VladimirFyodorovich Odoyevsky. Yestestvennonauchnyye vzglyady. 1804-1869 (Moscow, 1975) 110 pp. Shtern, M. S., Tilosofsko-khudozhestvennoye svoyeobraziye prozy V. F. Odoyevskogo (ot apologov k "Russkim nocham")', Avtoreferat, kandidatskoy dissertatsii (Leningrad, 1979) 14 pp. Baumann, Winfried, Die Zukunftsperspektiven des Fursten V. F. Odoevskij: Literatur, Futurologie und Utopie (Frankfurt and Bern, 1980) 181 pp. Golubyova, O. D. and GoPdberg, A. L., V. I. SoboVshchikov, V. F. Odoyevsky^ 'Deyateli knigi' (Moscow, 1983) 232 pp. (pp. 137-227 are on Odoyevsky).

B Dissertations on Odoyevsky (i) Soviet Granovsky, B. B., 'Odoyevsky - muzykal'nyy kritik', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya (Moscow, 1952). Ushakov, Yu. G., 'Satirichesko-oblichitel'nyye proizvedeniya V. F. Odoyevskogo 30-kh godov XIX veka', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Moscow, 1960). Tarasov, D. F., 'Vydayushchiysya prosvetiteP i pedagog doreformennoy Rossif, Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, pedagogicheskikh nauk (Moscow, 1963). Chkhatarashvili, Ye. D., * "Russkiye nochi" V. F. Odoyevskogo', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Tbilisi, 1966). Popa, P. V., 'Romantizm i realizm v literaturnom tvorchestve V. F. Odoyevskogo', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Moscow, 1967). Medovoy, M. I., Tuti razvitiya filosofskoy prozy V. F. Odoyevskogo v seredine 1820-1840-kh godov', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Leningrad, 1971). Leemets, Kh. D., 'Metafora v russkoy romanticheskoy proze 30-kh godov XIX veka (na materiale proizvedeniy A. A. Bestuzheva-Marlinskogo, N. A. Polevogo i V. F. Odoyevskogo)', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Tartu, 1974). Sakharov, V. I., 'Romanticheskiye povesti V. F. Odoyevskogo i evolyutsiya russkoy romanticheskoy prozy', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Moscow, 1976). Khodanen, L. A., Toetika vremeni v russkom filosofskom romane kontsa 30kh-nach. 40-kh godov. XIX v. ("Geroy nashego vremeni" M. Yu. Lermontova, "Russkiye nochi" V. F. Odoyevskogo)', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Moscow, 1978).

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Shtern, M. S., 'Filosofsko-khudozhestvennoye svoyeobraziye prozy V. F. Odoyevskogo (ot apologov k "Russkim nocham")', Kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, filologicheskikh nauk (Leningrad, 1979). (ii) Western Bliss, Walter R. Jr, 'Toward a Definition of National Culture: Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky (1804-1869)', Senior thesis, Princeton University, 1966. Ilyinsky, Oleg P., 'Some Fundamental Problems of Russian Romanticism (based on V. F. Odoyevskij's Prose)' [Nekotoryye osnovnyye problemy russkogo romantizma (opyt issledovaniya na materiale V. F. Odoyevskogo)'], Ph.D thesis, New York University, 1970. Linburn, Jo Ann Hopkins, 'A Would-be Faust: Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky and his Prose Fiction, 1830-1845', Ph.D thesis, Columbia University, 1970. Neuenschwander, Dennis Bramwell, 'Themes in Russian Utopian Fiction: a Study of the Utopian work of M. M. Shcherbatov, A. Ulybyshev, F. V. Bulgarin and V. F. Odoevskij', Ph.D. thesis, Syracuse University, 1974. Nanney, James Stanford, 'Prince Vladimir F. Odoevskii: his Contribution to Russian Nationalism and Russian Philosophy', Ph.D thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1975. Cornwell, Neil John, 'The Life and Works of V. F. Odoyevsky (1804-1869)', Ph.D thesis, Queen's University of Belfast, 1983.

C Articles, essays, etc., on Odoyevsky (in journals and Sborniki, including books etc. containing chapters and sections on Odoyevsky) Ankeria, S., 'Zefiroty L'va Tolstogo', Studia Slavica Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae, vol. XXVI (1980) pp. 155-61. Anon, 'Odoyevsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich', BoVshaya entsiklopediya, 3rd edn, vol. 14 (St Petersburg, 1904) pp. 333-7. Anon., 'Bezsiliye chelovecheskogo slova ("Russkiye nochi" kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo)', Byulleteni literatury i zhizni, no. 20 (June 1913) pp. 902-5. Asaf'ev, B. V., 'Iz dialogov o muzyke: Glinka-Odoyevsky', Sovetskaya muzyka, 11 (1946), Aykhenval'd, Yu., 'V. F. Odoyevsky ("Russkiye nochi")', in his book Slova o slovakh. Kriticheskiye statH (Petrograd, 1916) pp. 73-6. Babushkina, A. P., Istoriya russkoy detskoy literatury (Moscow, 1948) pp. 185-96. Backvis, Claude, 'Trois notes sur l'oeuvre litteraire du prince Vladimir Odoevski',^/PS (Brussels), vol. XIX (1968) pp. 517-97. Bagby, Lewis, 'V. F. Odoevskij's "Knjazna Zizi"', Russian Literature, XVII -XVIII (1 Apr. 1985), pp. 221-42 Belinsky, V. G., 'Sochineniya knyazya V. F. Odoyevskogo', Polnoye sohraniye sochineniy, vol. VIII (Moscow, 1955) pp. 297-323. Reprinted, with cuts, in Posledniy kvartet Betkhovena (1982) pp. 344-69.

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Berlioz, Gektor (Hektor), 'Pis'ma drugu', Sovetskaya muzyka (1969) 8, pp. 62-8. (4 letters to VFO of 1868, translated from the French by M. Baranovskaya.) Bernandt, G., 'V. F. Odoyevsky - muzykaPnyy pisateP ', Sovetskaya muzyka (1939)8. , 'Ideya narodnosti v rabotakh V. F. Odoyevskogo', Sovetskaya muzyka, no. 3 (1948) pp. 44-52. , 'Wagner i Odoyevsky', Sovetskaya muzyka, no. 6 (1953) pp. 70-4. , 'V. F. Odoyevsky-muzykant', in VFO, Muz.-lit. maslediye, pp. 5-75. ,'V.F. Odoyevsky', in his book Stat Hiocherki (Moscow, 1978) pp. 11-107. Best, Robert, 'Note sur Putopie chez V. F. Odoevskij', Revue des etudes slaves, 56 (1984) fasc.l, pp. 33-7. Botnikova, A. B., 'Gofman i V. F. Odoyevsky (kontakty i tipologicheskaya svyaz')', in her book E. T A. Gofinan i russkaya literatura (pervaya polovina XIX veka): k probleme russko-nemetskikh literaturnykh svyazey (Voronezh, 1977) pp. 77-88. Brazhnikov, M. B., 'Pevcheskiye rukopisi sobraniy D. V. Razumovskogo i V. F. Odoyevskogo', in Sobraniy a D. V. Razumovskogo i V. F. Odoyevskogo iarkhivD. V. Razumovskogo. Opisaniya (Moscow, 1960) pp. 6-22. Briskman, M., 'Odoyevsky i yego dnevnik', Literatumoye nasledstvo, 22-4 (Moscow, 1935) pp. 89-91. , 'V. F. Odoyevsky: dve zametki o Gogole', in N. V. GogoV. Issledovaniya i materialy, vol. I (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936) pp. 223-6. Bychkov, I., 'Bumagi kn. V. F. Odoyevskogo', Otchot Imperatorskoy publichnoy bibliotekizal884g. (St Petersburg, 1887)prilozheniye2-oye,pp. 1-65. Bykov, Pyotr, 'Knyaz' V. F. Odoyevsky (k sotoy godovshchine yego rozhdeniya)', Zvezda, no. 63 (1903) pp. 1024-5. Chaadayev, P. Ya., letter to Kn. V. F. Odoyevsky, 5 Jan. 1850, Sochineniya i pis'ma P. Ya. Chaadayeva, edited by M. Gershenzon (Moscow, 1913-14; reprinted Oxford, 1972) pp. 290-1. Chertkov, L. N., 'Odoyevsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich', Kratkaya literaturnaya entsiklopediya, vol. V (Moscow, 1968) pp. 396-8. Chicherin, A. V., 'Neizvestnoye vyskazyvaniye V. F. Odoyevskogo o Gogole', Trudy Lvovskogo universiteta, kafedry russkoy literatury filologicheskogo fakul'teta, vyp. 2 (L'vov, 1958) pp. 66-72. Chkatarashvili, Ye. D., 'Biograficheskaya novella V. F. Odoyevskogo "SebastiyanBakh"', Trudy Tbiliskogogos. pedogogicheskogo instituta,t 18 (1964) pp. 119-26. , '"Russkiye nochi" V. F. Odoyevskogo (novelty muzykal'nogo tsikla)', Trudy Tbilisskogo gos. pedagogicheskogo instituta, 1.19 (1966). Cornwell, Neil, introduction to VFO, Romanticheskiye povesti (Oxford, 1975) (reprint of Leningrad, 1929 edition) pp. i-xiv. , 'V. F. Odoyevsky's Ridiculous Dream About That?: Themes and Ideas in works by V. F. Odoyevsky, Dostoyevsky and Mayakovsky', Quinquereme: New Studies in Modern Languages, vol. 2 (1979) pp. 75-86 and 246-55. , 'A Note on Aristidov's Mistresses in "The Live Corpse"', Quinquereme: New Studies in Modern Languages, vol. 3, no. 1 (1980) pp. 118-20. , 'V. F. Odoyevsky's Russian Nights: Genre, Reception and Romantic Poetics', Essays in Poetics, vol. 8, no. 2 (1983) pp. 1.9-55. , 'Belinsky and V. F. Odoyevsky', The Slavonic and East European Review, 62, no. 1(1984) pp. 6-24.

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