Essays on Karamzin: Russian Man-of-Letters, Political Thinker, Historian, 1766-1826 [Reprint 2012 ed.] 9783110887389, 9789027932518

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SLAVISTIC PRINTINGS AND REPRINTINGS 309

ESSAYS ON KARAMZIN: RUSSIAN MAN-OF-LETTERS, POLITICAL THINKER, HISTORIAN, 1766-1826

Edited by

J. L. B L A C K Laurentian University

197 J

MOUTON THE H A G U E · P A R I S

© Copyright 1975 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. Ν. V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

ISBN 90 279 3251 4

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague

To my Parents

PREFACE

The first important collection of essays on Karamzin (Simbirskij Jubilej Nikolaj Mixajlovica Karamzina, 1 Dekabrja 1766-1866 goda) was published at his birthplace, Simbirsk, in 1867 to commemorate his centennial year. The book included essays on Karamzin's life and writings, and an outline of the events which comprised the official celebration of December 1866. The committee which organized the programme for that occasion, and edited the proceedings of it, said that they hoped to remind readers of Karamzin's "irreproachable life" so that the public might imitate his indefatigable service to the state, his patriotism, and his faith in enlightenment and humanity. Karamzin's literary accomplishments, they claimed, were forever a part of Russia's intellectual heritage and his History of the Russian State was a memorial to their country's greatest age. A simultaneous affair was held in Moscow. That meeting was attended by several members of the Romanov family, almost all the leading ministers, and up to one thousand high ranking guests. The enthusiasm for the great writer at that time was perhaps excessive and to a certain extent the consequence of an unease felt by gentry and nobility who longed for more stable times. But their respect for Karamzin's overall contribution to Russia's intellectual advancement was by no means unfounded. It is hoped that this collection of mainly original essays, and some new translations from Karamzin's own works, will reveal more clearly the extent and nature of that contribution. It was deemed unnecessary in most cases to translate titles of Karamzin's writings mentioned in the essays, for a glossary of Russian words and phrases with an English translation and a list of Karamzin's works that have been translated into English can be found at the end of this book. Standard English usage has determined the transliteration for some commonly-used Russian words and names, for example, Rurik and Boyar. The essays, which at times represent conflicting interpretations of Karamzin's writings, have been placed in the volume so that they follow as closely as possible the chronology of bis career.

8

PREFACE

The editor would like to express his appreciation to Professor J. Hendry, Director of the School of Translators and Interpreters at Laurentian University, to Helena Debevc-Moroz, of the same School, and to Professor D. K. Buse of the History Department, who undertook most of the translations for this volume. He would also like to thank the Canada Council for grants awarded him in 1969, 1970 and 1973, which enabled him to complete research for his own contribution to this book. Laurentian University has also made an important financial contribution to this book, and for that too the editor is very grateful. Sudbury, Ontario 1973

J. L. Black

CONTENTS

Preface Introduction

7 11

ROGER Β. ANDERSON

Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveller: An Education in Western Sentimentalism

22

J. G. GARRARD

Poor Erast, or Point of View in Karamzin

40

R. NEUHÄUSER

Karamzin's Spiritual Crisis of 1793 and 1794

56

ANTHONY CROSS

Karamzin's Versions of the Idyll

75

L. G. KISUAGINA

The Question of the Development of Ν. M. Karamzin's Social Political Views in the Nineties of the Eighteenth Century: Ν. M. Karamzin and the Great French Bourgeois Revolution .

91

RICHARD PIPES

Karamzin's Conception of the Monarchy

105

J. L. BLACK

The Primecanija: Karamzin as a "Scientific" Historian of Russia

127

HANS ROTHE

Karamzin and his Heritage: History of a Legend Karamzin's Political Essays "Opinion of a Russian Citizen" (1819) "Thoughts on True Freedom" (1825) History of the Russian State (1818-1826) (extracts)

148 191 193 197 199

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CONTENTS

Karamzin's Works that Have Been Translated into English . . . .

221

Bibliography

223

Index

227

INTRODUCTION

Since the celebration in 1966-67 of the bicentenary of Nicholas Karamzin's birthdate, there has been a flood of major studies devoted to specific aspects of his career. Important books have been written on him by Hans Rothe in German, by F. Kanunova in Russian, and by Henry M. Nebel, Jr. and A. G. Cross in English.1 Along with the monograph by Kanunova, the event was made noteworthy in the Soviet Union by the publication of several important collections of Karamzin's works.2 Soviet scholars had long since undertaken the re-habilitation of Karamzin and now, in striking contrast to their earlier evaluations, he is ranked by them among Russia's greatest writers.3 Karamzin made an immense contribution to almost all phases of 1

Hans Rothe, Ν. Μ. Karamzins europäische Reise: Der Beginn des russischen Romans (Berlin, 1968); F. Kanunova, Iz Istorij russkoj povesti (Istoriko-literaturnoe znaöenie povestej N. M. Karamzina) (Tomsk, 1967); Henry M. Nebel, Jr., Ν. Μ. Karamzin: A Russian Sentimentalist (The Hague, 1967), and Selected Prose of Ν. M. Karamzin (Evanston, Illinois, 1969); A. G. Cross, Ν. M. Karamzin: A Study of his Literary Career (1783-1804) (Carbondale, Illinois, 1971). 2 Ν. M. Karamzin, Izbrannye socinenija, 2 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1964); Polnoe sobranie stixotvorenij, Ju. M. Lotman ed. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1966); Izbrannye proizvedenija (Moscow, 1966) (for high school level students). Soviet periodical publications have contained many articles on Karamzin over the last dozen years; besides Kanunova's book, N. Verxovskaja published the short Karamzin ν Moskve i Podmoskov'e in 1968; the most recent study is collection number eight of the XVIII Vek series, Derzavin i Karamzin ν literaturnom dvizenii XVIII - nacala XIX veka (Leningrad, 1969). 3 For a general survey of research done on Karamzin in the twentieth century, see Rothe, "Die Entwicklung der Karamzinforschung seit ihren Anfängen", Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie XXXIV, 1(1968), 129-148; 2(1969), 385-396. On the changing attitudes of Soviet writers towards Karamzin, see Cross, "Karamzin Studies: For the bicentenary of the birth of Ν. M. Karamzin (1766-1966)", The Slavonic and East European Review XLV, 104 (1967), 1-11, and J. G. Garrard, "Karamzin in Recent Soviet Criticism: A Review Article", The Slavic and East European Journal XI, 4(1967), 464-472. For Soviet opinions of Karamzin as an historian, see J. L. Black, "The Soviets and the Anniversary of Ν. M. Karamzin", The New Review: A Journal of East-European History VIII, 3(1968), 139-147.

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INTRODUCTION

Russian cultural life but the latest additions to Karamziniana have all dealt with him primarily as a man-of-letters and his career as a whole has been granted only secondary attention. The purpose of this collection, then, is to redress the imbalance somewhat by presenting essays that will reveal Karamzin's omnipresence in Russia's literary scene, his central place in the evolution of Russian political thought, and both the ideological and scientific sides of his historical work. Most of the recent analyses of Karamzin have begun with a general introduction to his life and ideas, and Cross's book covers his literary career until 1804. Professor Richard Pipes has written on the background of Karamzin's political notions while Kanunova, Rothe, and Nebel have examined specific characteristics of his writing before he turned to historical studies in 1803. Furthermore, some particulars of his life have been considered separately in essays for periodical literature. Obviously, a further outline of his career would have limited usefulness here, so it will be left to this introduction to demonstrate the many sides of Karamzin's participation in Russian cultural matters and the extent of the reception of his ideas by a wide cross-section of Russian society. As a litterateur, Karamzin (1766-1826) has been described as the leading representative of Russian sentimentalism and of modern Russian prosewriting. He has also been singled out as his country's first literary critic and a founding father of its periodical press. As early as 1803 one of his contemporaries claimed that Karamzin had already made an epoch in the evolution of the Russian language.4 As a political thinker, he has been portrayed as one of the formulators of nineteenth century Russian conservatism. With few exceptions, Karamzin's contemporaries among the literate classes in Russia marked him for greatness; many congratulated themselves for being alive during the "Karamzinian" age and even the social critic, V. G. Belinskij, who was far from enamoured of Karamzin's political beliefs, acknowledged that there was such an era. The assumption that Karamzin was at the forefront of modern Russian literature was rarely challenged during the nineteenth century. To illustrate his prestige, one need only point to comments like that made in 1849 by the important critic and professor of Russian literature, P.A. Pletnev, to the effect that "Karamzin embraces the entire history of Russian literature". Almost twenty years later, Ja. Κ. Grot insisted that knowledge of Karamzin's writing would always be an essential part of 4

P. I. Makarov, in his journal Moskovskij tnerkurij, pt. IV(1803), 163.

INTRODUCTION

13

Russian education, while P. A. Vjazemskij, a poet and one-time prot6ge of Karamzin, accorded his highest praise to other writers when he called them "true students" of his former mentor. A better-known poet and recipient of such an accolade, V. A. 2ukovskij, in turn extolled Karamzin's virtues and ranked him among the "sacred" names in Russian letters.5 Though Karamzin was not held in awe by everyone, such influential literati as 1.1, and M. A. Dmitriev, Κ. N. Batjuskov, V. L. Puskin, A. I. Turgenev, A. P. Voejkov, A. F. Merzljakov, P. I. Makarov, S. S. Uvarov, D. V. DaSkov, D. N. Bludov and dozens of lesser lights numbered themselves among the Karamzinists.6 To be sure, it is often difficult to separate those who admired Karamzin because of his political beliefs from those who respected him solely for his writing skills. Many of Russia's gentry and nobility saw in his works a description and explanation of the kind of Russia they loved and presumed to exist, while many liberals viewed the same body of writings as justification for a system which they loathed. But few of the latter political persuasion suggested that he lacked talent. Ν. I. Turgenev, Belinskij, and even Alexander Herzen, all recognized his enormous abilities as a writer and respected his integrity as a person. Turgenev bitterly assailed Karamzin's image of Russia's past and present, yet admitted that his literary and historical works could have a beneficial effect on the morality and ethics of Russian youth.7 As a matter of fact, a writer for such a distant and unlikely source as the American Atlantic Monthly suggested in 1862 that Karamzin's writings embodied Russia's latent "moral strenth'' .8 There was very little scope for imaginative writing during the repressive years of Paul I's reign and even some of Karamzin's efforts were censured. But Andrei Turgenev was still to complain in 1801 that Karamzin so dominated the field of Russian literature that it had become impossible 8

Perepiska Ja. Κ. Grota s P. A. Pletnevym III (St. Petersburg, 1886), 400; Trudy Ja. Κ. Grota III (1901), 120-126; P. A. Vjazemskij, Polnoe sobranie soiinenij VII (St. Petersburg, 1882), 133; Russkij arxiv (1869), 440. For a general discussion of the relations between Karamzin and Vjazemskij and for the literary cross-currents of the first half of the nineteenth century, see Μ. I. Gillel'son, P. A. Vjazemskij: Zizri i tvoriestvo (Leningrad, 1969) and Peter K. Christoff, The Third Heart: Some Intellectual-Ideological Currents and Cross Currents in Russia 1800-30 (The Hague, 1970). β One could also include V. V. Izmajlov and V. S. PodSivalov, both journalists and prose-writers who tended to imitate Karamzin, the poets A. Illiievskij, N. D. IvanCin Pisarev and P. P. Sumarokov, and a host of archivists and historians like K. F. Kalajdoviö and S. V. Russov. 7 Russkij arxiv (1872), 1202. 8 Atlantic Monthly X(1862), 552.

14

INTRODUCTION

for fledgling writers to attract any recognition unless they stuck to themes and styles popularized by the older man. 9 Whether or not the young Turgenev's resentment was based on fact or envy, or both, the fame gained by Karamzin during the ensuing years, 1802-03, was well-earned. In that short time, he founded, edited and was the leading contributor to one of Russia's most important periodicals, the Messenger of Europe (Vestnik Ewopy), the themes of which were thoroughly discussed in a recent article by A. G. Cross.10 On the accession of Alexander I, the nascent political inclinations which Karamzin had revealed in the previous decade came to the surface and from then on dominated his writing. An increasing urge to use literature for the edification of both tsars and fellow citizens had been demonstrated by Karamzin at the end of the nineties by means of a long ode to Paul I and several shorter poems. Unsuccessful in his hints to Paul and having observed the iniquities of both Jacobin terror and Romanov despotism, his desire to play the elder sage for Alexander resulted in an almost frantic outburst of didactic essays. In short, the Messenger of Europe marked the demise of Karamzin the litterateur and the birth of Karamzin the social commentator and historian. By the time that he relinquished editorship to take up a position as official historian for the Russian Empire, he was easily the most widely read writer in his own country and the leading Russian author for Europeans as well. During the first years of the nineteenth century, his Letters of a Russian Traveller (Pis'ma Russkogo Putesestvennika), 1791-1801, was translated into German twice (1800, 1809), English (1803) and Dutch (1804-1808); most of his tales were translated into French, German and English between 1797 and 1806. This was a trend of some consequence, for no Russian writer before Karamzin had gained a following outside of his own country. 11 Karamzin became a spokesman for a blossoming Russian national consciousness in these years and, though he had no formal training in such matters, he built up enough of a reputation from his historical and nationalistic essays to be offered posts as professor of Russian history at the universities of Dorpat, Moscow, and Xar'kov. He was also 9

Cited in Izbrannye socinenija I, 58; see also Rothe, Ν. Μ. Karamzins europäische Reise..., 412-415. 10 "Ν. Μ. Karamzin's 'Messenger of Europe', (Vestnik Evropy) 1802-3", Forum far Modern Language Studies 1(1969), 1-25. 11 See T. A. Bykova, "Perevody proizvedenij Karamzina na inostrannye jazyki i otkliki na nix ν inostrannoj literature", in Derzavin i Karamzin ν literaturnom dvizenii XVIII - nacala XIX veka, 324-342, and A. G. Cross, "Karamzin in English: A Review Article", Canadian Slavic Studies III, 4(1969), 716-727.

INTRODUCTION

15

asked to teach literature at several institutions, among them the University of Vilna.12 Instead, he preferred his duties as Imperial Historiographer, a position which he had applied for and obtained in 1803. From that time until his death in 1826, Karamzin worked on a history of his homeland. Throughout most of those years he was a friend and confidante of Alexander I, who respected and admired the historian but rarely heeded his advice. He was particularly close to the Empress, with whom he and his wife often dined. It has been suggested that Karamzin might even have been selected for the office of State Secretary before 1812 if he had not voiced a desire for compromise with Napoleon. 13 As the Cassandra of French Revolutionary inroads on Russia, Karamzin's experience went back to 1789 when he toured Europe and observed the initial manifestations of the Revolution at first hand. The most immediate result of that trip was the famous Letters in which he used allegory to pass judgement upon the Revolution. Later the Messenger of Europe was a vehicle for his opinions that there was a pressing need for reform at home, and that the future of the Russian state system would be best served if its leaders remained aloof from European political affairs. Ultimately, Karamzin's plea for moderation and enlightened rule at home met with the same fate as his hopes for Russian passivity in international relations; neither was in keeping with Russia's newly acquired posture as Great Power and defender of the status quo. By 1811, he had become fearful of Napoleonic aggression and wrote that all internal change should be gradual and a matter for the future. These apprehensions, which were expressed in his Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia (Zapiska ο drevnej i novoj Rossii), were confirmed when French armies occupied Moscow in 1812. Thirteen years later Karamzin stood on a balcony with his daughter and observed the Decembrists in action in St. Petersburg. From these events, which he blamed on "nasty insects", or ideas emanating from France, he developed a formula for Russian security and greatness and used it as the framework for his twelve-volume History of the Russian State (Istorija gosudarstva Rossijskago). 12 M. P. Pogodin, Ν. M. Karamzin, po ego socinenijam, pis'mam i otzyvam sovremennikov; Materjaly dlja biografii, Pt. II(Moscow, 1866), 18-19; Soiinenija Karamzina II A. Smirdin (St. Petersburg, 1848), 680; Russkij arxiv (1869), 2019; Russkaja Literatura 2(1967), 116. 18 D. N. Bludov made this assertion in 1854, see Russkij arxiv (1880), 239; so did P. A. Vjazemskij, who added that Karamzin was also in line for the Ministry of Education and for the Presidency of the Academy, only to be kept out by Admiral Siäkov, Polttoe sobranie socinenijX (St. Petersburg, 1886), 195-196.

16

INTRODUCTION

The appearance of the History was a great event in the life of Russian society. The fact that the publication of the first eight volumes in January, 1818, was such a success that the entire edition of 3000 rather expensive copies sold out within a month has often been remarked upon, but it is nonetheless significant. Karamzin edited a second edition later in the same year. Puskin's comment that, through Karamzin "ancient Russia has been discovered ... as Columbus discovered America" has been repeated so often that one hesitates to mention it again, but it too is indicative of the study's importance. 14 The History appeared at a time when patriotism was the key to success in Russian politics and in the arts, and so it helped both to reflect and to direct the national consciousness of his readers. Its nationalist tone was important in establishing the fashionableness of the History, but Karamzin's own popularity, his great talent as a writer, and the work's own merit as a historical study also acted to assure its favourable reception. No other historical work has made such a widespread impression on the Russian reading public. Besides serving as the classic text for Russian history until the 1850s, the themes of the History were tapped by Russian writers throughout the century. Prominent literati like Lermontov, Gogol', F. I. Tjutöev and N. A. Nekrasov made extensive use of it for background information and subject matter. 15 Many, including I. S. Turgenev and Dostoevskij, remembered it fondly as part of their childhood, the latter actually boasting at one point that he had read the entire History by the time he had reached the age of ten. The liberally-inclined Dmitrij Miljutin made the same claim and Leo Tolstoj once mused upon the feeling of "well-being" that it evoked in him. 16 The Decembrist poet, K. Ryleev, and the great Puäkin also often took themes from Karamzin. 17 14 A. S. PuSkin, Polnoe sobranie soiinenij VI (Moscow 1963), 133. In his memoirs, K. S. Serbinovii reported that Count F. A. Tolstoj said that owing to the History, "I now know what my Fatherland is", Russkaja starina II (1874), 265. Even the liberal Ν. I. Turgenev, who assailed the History for its praise of autocracy, admitted that it "acquainted us with our ancient land better than any other historical study", Dekabrist Ν. I. Turgenev: Pis'ma k Bratu S. I. Turgenevu (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), 230,254. 16 Besides the collected works of the authors named above, see S. Petrov, Russkij istoriieskij roman XIX veka (Moscow, 1964) and L. V. Cerepnin, Istoriieskie vzgljady klassikov russkoj literatury (Moscow, 1968). 18 F. M. Dostoevskij, Dnevnik pisatelja (1873 g.) (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), 139; Forrest A. Miller, Dmitrii Miliutin and the Reform Era in Russia (New York, 1965), 10; L. N. Tolstoj, Sobranie soiinenij XIX (Moscow - Leningrad, 1965), 120. 17 See below, article by Garrard, and Ju. N. Tynjanov, Puikin i ego sovremenniki (Moscow, 1968).

INTRODUCTION

17

The History was maintained as the official historical reference for schools by Uvarov when he became Minister of Education, and the gospel according to Karamzin became a subtle part of the Minister's Official Nationality creed. For decades after Karamzin's death, governmentsponsored text books were usually mere summaries of the scheme prepared by him and sanctioned by Uvarov. Derivative school texts were written as early as 1829, and succeeding ones by N. G. Ustrjalov, M. P. Pogodin, and S. M. Solov'ev varied little from Karamzin's tenets. Lesser historians, like I. Kajdanov in the thirties and Κ. V. Elpat'evskij at the end of the century, published simpler versions of the same thing.18 Teachers in other disciplines came to rely on it also: one of Pletnev's students later recalled that the History was cited in almost every lecture on Russian literature given by his professor in the 1830s. Even in the eighties, a professor of Greek was known to have his students use the History for their translations. 19 Although N. A. Dobroljubov, a midcentury radical, complained that he and fellow students were "satiated" with Karamzin, most students did not object; D. N. Bludov, for one, recalled that the History had made his school days pleasant and commended one of his former teachers who had "worshipped" Karamzin. 20 According to S. Ponomarev, Karamzin's first bibliographer, entire chapters were lifted from the History and published as separate accounts. He listed books on Ol'ga, Vladimir I, Dmitrij Semjaka, the Tatar invasion, Ivan IV, the Battle of Kulikovo and the conquest of Siberia.21 There were many more, some that he missed and a number of others that were published after 1883, the date Ponomarev's book appeared. 22 One of Karamzin's life-long ambitions had been to write for the instruction of 18

Karamzin's own work was abbreviated in 1819, and had its second edition in 1824; Sokraiienie Rossijskoj istorii Ν. M. Karamzina (St. Petersburg, 1819 and 1824). See also, S. F. Burg, K. F. KalajdoviC, Naiertanie Istorij Gosudarstva Rossijskago (Moscow, 1829); N. G. Ustrjalov, Nacertanie russkoj istorii, dlja sred. zavedenij (St. Petersburg, 1838); M. P. Pogodin, Nacertanie russkoj istorii (Moscow, 1835), and Kratkoe naiertanie russkoj istorii (Moscow, 1838), I. Kajdanov, Kratkoe naiertanie Rossijskoj istorii (St. Petersburg, 1834); S. M. Solov'ev, Ucebnaja kniga russkoj istorii (Moscow, 1859); Κ. V. Elpat'evskij, Ucebnik Russkoj istorii (St. Petersburg, 1909) (12th edition). 19 Russkij arxiv (1869), 7-8; Leningradskij universitet ν vospominanijax sovremennikov I (Leningrad, 1963), 183-184. 20 N. A. Dobroljubov, Sobranie soiinenij II (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962), 53, 97; Russkij arxiv (1872), 1222. 21 N. Ponomarev, Materialy dlja bibliografii literatury ο Ν. Μ. Karamzine: k stoietiju ego literaturnoj dejateVnosti (1783-1883) (St. Petersburg, 1883), 46-51. 22 To cite a few, Zavoevanie Rusi mongolami (St. Petersburg, 1889); NaSestvie Tatar (St. Petersburg, 1897); Razskazy ο russkoj starine. Iz soiinenija Karamzina 'Istorija gosudarstva Rossijskogo' (Moscow, 1903).

18

INTRODUCTION

Russia's youth, so he would have been delighted to learn that, in 1830, I. Bajkov compiled a special collection of extracts from the History for Russian youngsters. Five years later The Reader's Library (Biblioteka dlja Ctenija), a leading Official Nationality periodical, strongly recommended a series of notebooks of Russian history in drawings, the commentary for which was taken directly from Karamzin. The notebooks, said the reviewer, could serve as a "pleasant and useful lesson for children". 23 At mid-century, P. Stroev continued the pattern and put together a sequence of historical tales for children, which were gleaned from Karamzin. Another reviewer, this time for the Contemporary (Sovremennik), praised the project as the ideal medium through which children could learn to be good Russians.24 In the last years of the nineteenth century, the government-approved Society for the Dissemination of Useful Books still regarded Karamzin as one of their best resources, and A. S. Suvorin printed a number of extracts from the History with the expressed intention of popularizing Russian history. As a matter of fact, one-half of the fourteen editions of the History were printed after 1889, the most recent being that by A. A. Petroviö in 1903. The History was immediately and generally favourably reviewed in France, England and Germany. Although it received its greatest attention in France, a writer for one of Russia's better-known periodicals remarked in 1828 that German novelists were already following the example of Russians by taking themes from the History for their own books. Parts of it were translated into French, German and Italian by 1820; before another decade was over, complete translations were available in those languages and in Polish. Almost thirty years later Dobroljubov protested that Europeans still read only Karamzin for information on Russian history. As the century progressed, it was increasingly for the History rather than for his tales that Karamzin was known to Western Europeans. 25 23

Bajkov's book was called Kratkoe izuienie iz Istorij gosudarstva Rossijskogo dlja junosestva (St. Petersburg, 1830). The notebooks were entitled Detskij Karamzin, ili Russkaja Istorija ν kartinkax, edited by A. Prevo (St. Petersburg, 1835); a second edition appeared in 1836 and another again in the same year under a new title, iivopisnyj Karamzin, see Biblioteka dlja Ctenija, Vol. XIV. pt. 6 (1836), 14-15. A similar publication came out in 1837 written by A. Kimov and called Istorija Rossii ν razskazax dlja detej (St. Petersburg, 2 pts.); a reviewer said that it should be called an abridgement of Karamzin. 24 Stroev, Razskazy iz russkoj istorii, dlja detej pervago vozrasta (St. Petersburg, 1851). The reviewer was Uvarov himself, see Sovremennik XXV, pt. 4 (1851), 25-27. 25 See Atenej 14/15 (1828), 156. Dobroljubov, op. cit., Ill (1962), 255, 275. The History was translated into Greek in 1855 and some attempts were made to put it

INTRODUCTION

19

In Russia, the History was more than a piece of literature to be praised or condemned for its scholarly merits. It became a focal point for lasting invective about social and political matters. Karamzin's "proof" that centralization, autocracy and serfdom were the essential pillars of Russian civilization pleased conservatives. His suggestion that the Russian state had been founded by peaceful means in contrast to the violent origins of its western counterparts, and his praise for the ancient Slavic peoples, drew plaudits from both the abstractly inclined Slavophiles and the militant Pan-Slavists. Naturally enough, the same themes earned him the distrust of liberals and some Westernizers, who came to regard the work as government-sponsored fiction. But Karamzin maintained in the History that Russia was an integral and mutually dependent part of Europe and, even in public speeches, he recognized the assimilation of Russian and European societies.26 Likewise, despite charges or praise to the contrary, he did not insist that Russia should always be an autocracy; rather he said that such a political system had sustained Russians during past crises and so was the logical answer to contemporary political problems. He emphasized time and again that the monarch, though rightly unrestricted by constitutional bodies, was duty-bound to rule for the good of his people. For this very reason, his volume on Ivan IV's terror, which appeared at a time of great unrest in Europe (1821), drew condemnation from many conservatives and acclamation from a number of liberals. Specifically, he said that no government could survive unless it earned the respect and love of its subjects.27 Though he insisted that there had been ample justification for serfdom in the past, he abominated the way it was practiced in his lifetime and was one of the first conservatives to recognize that the sorry institution eventually would be eliminated. The essential tenet of all Karamzin's political writings was that change was an inevitable and vital part of any state's life. In this, he sponsored notions which foreshadowed those later held by "State School" historians, into Chinese. The German reactionary August von Kotzebue had translated extracts from the History already in the Spring of 1818 and asked Karamzin if he could translate all of it. The Historiographer, who felt that Kotzebue was misinterpreting his work, denied the request. In 1826, the British Annual Register published a full two-column obituary on Karamzin. The History, said the writer for the Register, "produced the most lively sensation, not only in Russia but throughout all Europe", Chronicle (1826), 253. The History was never translated into English but even Charles Dickens wrote of Karamzin, "the great historian of Russia", Household Words X (1855), 533. 28 Istorija gosudarstva Rossijskago V (St. Petersburg, 1892), 224, 237; VI, 50, 248-249. 230; Izbrannye socinenija II, 238. 27 Istorija gosudarstva Rossijskago II (1892), 88-89,97-98; VIII, 10,43.

20

INTRODUCTION

Solov'ev, Κ. D. Kavelin and Β. N. Ciöerin.28 Furthermore, his general interpretation of Russian historical growth was a model for the subsequent official Historiographers N. G. Ustrjalov and Κ. N. BestufevRjumin, and for Pogodin, the history professor and journalist who exhorted Russian youth to rely upon Karamzin as one of the greatest sources of "pure Russian wisdom". 29 Finally, the similarity between the ideals, if not the detail, of Karamzin's work and that of Solov'ev, who authored the most comprehensive history of Russia written before the twentieth century and whose textbook was heavily used throughout the last third of the century, assured the longevity of Karamzin's ideas about his nation's past, present, and future. 30 Karamzin spent most of the final third of his life labouring on the History, but he took time out to speak at salons, public gatherings and to the Academy, and even to visit and report on Araköeev's military colonies. During that time also, he prepared his best-known political treatise, the Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia and an Album of extracts from European writers for the Emperor's sister, a number of short briefs to Alexander and, in his last year, several papers which were requested of him by Nicholas I. Politics and history dominated Karamzin's publications and his correspondence in those years, but his preeminence in the world of letters declined very little. While serving as editor of the Messenger of Europe, his home had been an important meeting place for a number of Russia's leading writers. G. R. Derzavin, Μ. M. Xeraskov, I. I. Dmitriev, Ju. Neledinskij-Meletskij, and V. L. Puäkin regularly met there and made submissions to the periodical; so did younger men like the Turgenev brothers, Voejkov, 2ukovskij and Vjazemskij. Other of Russia's talented people came to be associated with Karamzin over the ensuing decade, among them the poet Κ. N. Batjuskov and, until they became estranged, A. S. Puäkin. Even when he lived at I. A. Averkiev's home in Niinij-Novgorod during the war crisis of 1812-13, Karamzin was still surrounded by Moscow's best-known men of letters. Many of these became members of the short-lived but influential society known as Arzamas (1815-18),31 which, though its 28 On the "State School", see Klaus-Detlov Grothusen, Die historische Rechtsschule Russlands (Glessen, 1962). 29 Moskvitjanin 2(1842), 7; Russkij arxiv (1866), 1766-1767. 30 The similarity was recognized as early as 1848 by Uvarov, who requested that Solov'ev's historical essays be published in Sovremennik. In 1860, G. Z. Eliseev claimed that Solov'ev's study was a mere continuation of Karamzin's (Sovremennik IV, pt. 3, p. 68); so did K. S. Aksakov, Polnoe sobranie sodinenijI (Moscow, 1861), 253-254. 81 On the Arzamas, see B. Hollingsworth, "Arzamas: Portrait of a Literary Society",

INTRODUCTION

21

membership represented a wide strata of political ideas, spoke for Karamzin in arguments against holders of opposing views on literature. It is hardly surprising, then, that his quarters were spoken of as Moscow's Parnassus. After the French invasion of 1812, Karamzin became less and less active in Russian literary affairs and more exclusively an historian. Yet, even when he moved to St. Petersburg in 1816, his home remained a gathering place where, as before, discussions of contemporary writers ranging from Madame de Stael to Walter Scott held precedence over political subjects. Long after his death, the "Karamzinist" tradition in Russian society was maintained through the agency of a salon presided over by his widow and eldest daughter, Sofja, and attended by literary people, statesmen, diplomats and friends of the late Karamzin. One frequent visitor was the future Slavophile A. S. Xomjakov, another was Pu§kin, who was drawn back to the great man's family and memory.32 The essence of the tradition sustained by Karamzin's admirers is perhaps impossible to define, particularly as Russian society became increasingly polarized between political extremes, but for most it meant simply the spirit of Russian Enlightenment. Vjazemskij compared Karamzin's death in 1826 to the passing of Napoleon from contemporary history and Byron from the world of poetry, and regretted that there would now be a gaping vacuum in Russian life that could never be filled. Belinskij, however, believed that Karamzin's heritage remained, and described it in a vague, but somehow meaningful way when he called the History a "landmark" in Russian literature because it and the rest of Karamzin's writings kept alive for many generations a sense of Russianism, a "spirit". 33

Slavonic and East European Review XLIV, 103 (1966), 306-326. With Karamzin in Niinij-Novgorod were N. Bantyä-Kamenskij, A. Malinovskij, Ju. Neledinskij-Meletskij, V. L. PuSkin, Batjuäkov, and S. Glinka. 33 On this salon and Puäkin's association with it, see Puskin ν pis'max Karamzinyx 1836-1837godov (Moscow, 1960). 33 Polnoe sobranie soiinenij Knjazja P. A. Vjazemskago IX (St. Petersburg, 1884), 89 (in a letter to 2ukovskij, Aug. 6, 1826). V. G. Belinskij, Polnoe sobranie socinenij, IX (Petrograd, 1917), 219; ΧΠΙ, 167.

KARAMZIN'S LETTERS OF A RUSSIAN TRAVELLER: EDUCATION IN WESTERN SENTIMENTALISM

AN

ROGER B. ANDERSON

Karamzin's publication of his Letters of a Russian Traveller (the first parts appeared serially during 1791-92) was a literary and cultural event of the first magnitude in Russia. For the first time 1 a Russian prepared a thorough and engaging presentation of life in the Western countries that held so much fascination for his educated countrymen. The chief reason for Karamzin's success was his adroit intertwining of reliable facts about the West, and his refined personal feelings about what he saw. The combination carried all before it and the Letters long served as the model for numerous imitations.2 The two layers that make up this hybrid example of the travel notes genre can be discussed separately. In one respect the work represents a highly authentic cultural presentation of life and manners in the major Western countries. It contains well organized descriptions of European architecture, art treasures, legislative practices, theatres, national monuments and nature's interesting phenomena. 3 Karamzin also went into the specifics of eating habits, street scenes, and types of homes that typified each country he visited. His well-wrought profile of customs, cultural artifacts and precise physical detail provided an immense service to the reading public of Russia and greatly widened the window 1 S. I. Porfir'ev, in his Istorija russkoj slovesnosti II, 3 (Kazan, 1891), 35, emphasizes Karamzin's pioneering role in opening the Russian mind to the development of Western thought and customs when he says: "Through his letters from abroad Karamzin was the first to introduce reliable information about European civilization into our literature". 2 See T. Roboli, "Literatura putesestvij", Russkaja proza, B. ßjxenbaum and Ju. Tynjanov eds. (The Hague, 1963), 57, for a short list of travel notes inspired by Karamzin in Russia. 3 Many of Karamzin's nature descriptions, for example, are scrupulously objective, smacking of the textbook, and are devoid of all lyrical connotation. For a fuller discussion of such objective descriptions see my article, "The 'Split Personality' of the Narrator in Ν. M. Karamzin's Pis'ma russkogo putesestvennika: a Textual Analysis", Slavic and East-European Studies XIII (1968), 20-31.

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23

onto the West that Peter the Great first forcibly opened almost a century earlier.4 V. V. Sipovskij, the most thorough critic of the Letters, goes so far as to say that the work's greatest value lay in its educative effect on the Russian's burgeoning interest in the West.5 On the second level, the Letters carry the stamp of a lyrically sensitive narrator who is prone to dwell on his own emotional reactions to places and events. Here Karamzin's intellectual curiosity and penchant for impersonal description give way to an intricate system of personal digressions. External reality comes to function as a catalyst for the expression of his innermost feelings and private thoughts and much of the work serves as the "mirror of his soul". 6 Karamzin was, indeed, a Russian pioneer in the exploration of his own subjective reactions.7 The double vision of the Letters is readily apparent. Critics have long viewed the work as virtually two different documents that co-exist, each following its own goal. Soviet critics are prone to commend one document (the cultural profile) as "realistic" and look askance at the other (Karamzin's exploration of his own subjectivity) as self indulgent in its introversion and, therefore, "unrealistic". 8 Each document has sustained critical interest in its hermetic isolation, yet the work as a whole suffers from such dismemberment. But, there is a unity of design in the Letters that joins the two separate documents and accomplishes a single overall effect as each is based on an educative principle. Each document chronicles a flow of information and values that were then moving from the West into Russia. While virtually all critics note the educative value of the physical facts 4

For example, G. A. Gukovskij, in his Istorija russkoj literatury XVIII veka (Moscow, 1939), 513, maintains that the cultural profile dominates the Letters. 5 See V. V. Sipovskij, Ν. M. Karamzin, avtor 'Pisem russkogo putesestvennika' (St. Petersburg, 1899), 375. 6 N. M. Karamzin - izbrannye socinenija I (Moscow, 1964), 601. All references to the text of the Letters are from this edition. Further references will be made in the text with appropriate pagination. 7 D. D. Blagoj, in his Istorija russkoj literatury XVIII v. (Moscow, 1951), 538, makes the remark that Karamzin was the first Russian writer to present "a landscape ... in an inextricable union with the corresponding mood of the viewer". 8 L. N. Timofeev is typical of the many Soviet scholars who persist in neatly juxtaposing Karamzin's psychological, "introverted" narrator and Radiäcev's "realistic" narrator who avoids psychological self-analysis in favor of describing actual social conditions. See L. N. Timofeev, "Realizm ν russkoj literature XVIII veka", Problemy realizma ν russkoj literature, Ν. K. Gudzij ed. (Moscow, 1940), 65. See V. V. Vinogradov, Problema avtorstva i teorija stilej (Moscow, 1961), 232-238, for a rejoinder to this entrenched Soviet tendency to polarize Radisdev and Karamzin. Ensuing Soviet scholarship has tended to support Vinogradov's position.

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in Karamzin's objective descriptions, we are not accustomed to thinking of the subjective or interpretative side as governed by an educative design. Yet such a design emerges. Beneath the emotional exhibitionism in the Letters lies a thorough elucidation of the concepts that formed the base of sentimentalism as a movement. The seemingly random and meandering account of the author's feelings and thoughts houses a polished primer of sentimentalism's central canons. Plying his readers with the time-honored teaching (rhetorical) program of repeating important ideas in a number of varied forms, he develops a surprisingly coherent and highly effective apology for the new sensibility. A brief look at the stage of Russia's cultural development at the close of the eighteenth century shows how such a doubly educative design fit the spirit of the time. Everywhere we are reminded of Russia's infatuation with Western cultural taste. Catherine II's short-lived veneer of liberalization, complete with her correspondence with French philosophers of the Enlightenment, her passing flirtation with the possibilities of implementing the "Nakaz" which owed much to Western liberalism, the copying of Western bureaucratic forms, the gentry's dependence on the French language, all testify to Russia's fascination with the more sophisticated and enlightened institutions of the West. And yet, most educated Russians had never really seen much of the Western life they had taken as their model. In literature, Russia's aping of foreign forms was even more pronounced. The wave of sentimentalism that had been naturally maturing in the West since the 1730s broke over Russia full-blown, while neo-classicism was still viable as the standard of literary taste. In Russia, the new questions of man's exploration of his extra-rational faculties, self-analysis, visions of strong emotion, contemplation of our brief life, the measurement of a man's worth by how easily he could shed tears, all bombarded the reader at once. Translations of popular sentimental novelists like Richardson and Pr6vost became available in limited quantity from around 1760.® As crude as they were (Richardson's novels usually found their way into Russian by way of uninspired French translations), such translations touched off a flurry of ambitious but pale imitations. Some examples are F. A. Emin's Letters of Ernest and Doravra (1764) and The Game of Fate (1784) or P. Ju. L'vov's A Russian Pamela (1789). Sipovskij summarizes such works, along with their numerous contemporaries, 9 See I. Ζ. Serman, "Zarozdenie romana ν russkoj literature XVIII veka", Istorija russkogo romana I (Ak. Nauk, 1962), 50.

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as frankly plagiaristic of the sentimental novel in narrative method (usually based on an exchange of letters), setting, and themes.10 The Russian intelligentsia was literally carried away by an esthetic standard it could barely imitate. 11 Karamzin's Letters performed a profound educational service to Russia during this period of emulated Western taste. Just as the ordinary Russian was largely uninformed about the museums, legislatures and waterfalls of Western Europe, so was he but vaguely aware of what constituted the sentimental movement. Yet, both factual information from the West and its intellectual movements and tastes virtually dictated the direction of his own Russian culture. The Letters went far in clarifying and organizing both bodies of information; herein lies their unity. Describing the social and physical landscape of the West, and the sentimental values the West was exporting to Russia, the work integrates both kinds of information. The tutorial effect of Karamzin's cultural profile of the West is easily discernible. Much less obvious is the educative basis of his personal outpourings, the instructional value of his lyricism. The purpose of this article is to examine and clarify how Karamzin builds his outline of Western sentimentalism for Russian readers. Much of Karamzin's journalistic effort accentuates his prolonged interest in educative aspects of sentimental prose. To the aspiring Russian practitioner of literature he openly declares the need to acquire the "historical information, mental pursuits educated by logic, a subtle taste and a knowledge of the world" to be found in the West.12 As Karamzin phrases it, the Russian author has the duty to "help his countrymen to think and speak better".13 The models for achieving such a guiding role for literature are, for Karamzin, ready made and available only in the West. He never gives up his idea that Russian authors should serve their apprenticeship and then enter the established literary circles of Europe as an equal partner: "If it is distasteful for us to follow behind others, 10

See V. V. Sipovskij, Zapiski istoriko-filologiieskago fakulteta XCVIII (St. Petersburg, 1910), 636. 11 For example V. V. Vinogradov, in his Oierki po istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka (Leiden, 1950), 152-157, discusses the common practice among Russian writers during the eighteenth century of relying heavily on barbarisms, caiques and literal translations from foreign languages to convey concepts and feelings for which no Russian equivalents existed. 12 N. M. Karamzin, "Ot&go ν Rossii malo avtorskix talantov?", Ν. M. Karamzinizbrannye solinenija II, 184. 13 Ibid., 187. The italics, and all others included in citations from the Letters, are Karamzin's.

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then we can walk beside them towards the universal goal of humanity... ." 14 It is in keeping with his didactic view of belles-lettres that he congratulates his fellow writers in Russia for catching up with their more advanced Western teachers by practicing the formal techniques and themes they made so popular. 15 Karamzin frankly looked to imitation as a method of advancing the cause of good sentimental literature in Russia at a time when Russia had none of its own. Critics have traditionally acknowledged that Karamzin's special talent as a writer lay in his ability to imitate extant Western sentimental themes and ideals. His genius was not the kind required to develop new contributions to that movement. Indeed, when we approach the subjective level of the Letters as a rounded attempt to educate the reader in an authentic appreciation and understanding of Western sentimentalism, the author's imaginative adherence to hallowed sentimental principles becomes clear.18 For example, the pronounced genre and style variation within the work reveals a remarkable cohesiveness. T. Roboli has noted the work's inner variation, discerning such widely differing elements as philosophical discourse, lyrical outpourings, short tales, correspondence and reported conversations, historical anecdotes, theatrical reviews, translations of foreign literature, biographies, etc.17 Roboli also provides clues in tracing each separate genre and corresponding style back to various important sentimental figures in the West (e.g. the short narratives are often reminiscent of those by Gessner and Rousseau, nature description are often patterned after those of de Lille).18 Not only does such a reference system exist, it assumes two distinct forms that complement one another, ultimately reinforcing the same 14

"Red' proiznesennaja na torzestvennom sobranii imperatorskoj rossijskoj akademii", Ν. M. Karamzin - izbrannye soiinenij II, 238. 15 Ibid., 239. 1β Ε. J. Simmons is typical of the many scholars who have traced major themes in the Letters back to the luminaries of recent Western literature. See his English Literature and Culture in Russia (1553-1840) (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), 161-203. Sipovskij makes the point that, although many of the names and themes of Western sentimentalism were sporadically present in Russia before Karamzin, the latter had the effect of greatly clarifying those influences and fanning the spark of sentimentalism into full flame. See Ν. M. Karamzin, avtor..., 453,456, 550. See also N. D. Kodetkova, "Idejnoliteraturnye pozicii masonov 80-90-x godov XVIII v. i Ν. M. Karamzin", XV111 vek, Sbornik 6 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1964), 197-223; A. N. Veselovskij, Zukovski], poizija iuvstva iserdecnago voobrazenija (St. Petersburg, 1904), 42. 17 T. Roboli, "Literatura puteSestvij", Russkajaproza, 50. 18 Ibid., 50. Henry Nebel, in his helpful book on Karamzin, casts light on a fuller understanding of how the Russian harmonizes such varieties. See Ν. M, Karamzin, A Russian Sentimentalist (The Hague, 1967), 169-170.

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sentimental values. On the one hand, Karamzin addresses us in a number of genres that demand our understanding, our thoughtful judgement. These include intellectual digressions (what Roboli calls authorial discourse), synopses of prominent Western philosophical systems of the day, and analyses of critical theories of the drama. On the other hand, Karamzin often calls upon his reader's emotional response in a number of other genres such as the lyrical digression, cameo-like short narrations, and in his literary quotes and references. The co-existence of the two reference systems result in an alternating rhetorical appeal to the reader's understanding and feelings.19 The object of each form of appeal is consistently that of inspiring agreement with sentimentalism's central values. Moving with great facility between his intellectual and emotional roles, Karamzin develops a most potent program for instructing his Russian leadership in the new sensibility. On the level of Karamzin's intellectual appeals, we find that the authorial intellectual digression plays an important role. It is here that Karamzin directly calls for contemplation of an agreement with sentimental principles. In this regard, the following passage provides a basis for discussion: Our life is divided into two epochs: the first we pass in the future and the second in the past. Up to a certain age, man, in the pride of his hopes, looks always forward with the thought: "There, there, awaits me a fate worthy of my heart!" Losses grieve him but little, the future seems to him to be an inexhaustible coffer, prepared for his pleasure. But when the fever of youth passes, when self-respect, insulted for the hundredth time, unwillingly learns acquiesence, when, deluded by hope for the hundredth time, we finally cease to believe in it; then, with sorrow relinquishing the future, we turn our eyes to the past and wish to exchange the lost happiness of seductive expectations for pleasant memories, saying to ourselves: "And we, and we were in Arcadia!" (p. 554)

Prominently displayed here is the theme of false hopes held by the young, and of eventual melancholy among the old. The theme is common to such poets as Gray, Thomson, and Ossian. It is important, however, to observe how Karamzin treats the idea of betrayed hope in life. He appeals to the conceptual faculties of his reader, maintaining a generalized tone. The personality of the narrator, the first person "I", yields to the more abstract "we" form. The principle of melancholy is reduced to an aphorism at the beginning: "Our life is divided into two 19

Bishop Richard Whately, one of the most prominent Western students of classical rhetoric, discusses direct (intellectual) and indirect (emotional) persuasion in his book Elements of Rhetoric (Boston and Cambridge, 1854), esp. 219.

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epochs: the first we conduct in the future and the second in the past." The passage's syntax emphasizes the logician's statement of a proposition with its incremental series of balanced clauses beginning with "when", followed by the answering clauses beginning with "then". In another of his intellectual digressions Karamzin emphasizes the important sentimental concept of man's multi-sided, complex personality and its result — individuality and variation: Temperament is the basis for our moral being, while character is its chance form. We are born with a temperament, but without character which is formed little by little from external stimuli. The character depends, of course, on the temperament, but only in part, depending, among other things, on the kind of objects that act on us. The unique ability to accept impressions is the temperament; the form which these impressions give to the moral being is character. A single object produces various responses in people — why? From the variety of temperaments or from the property of the moral mass which is a child, (pp. 282-283) Again, Karamzin matches the abstract and generalized quality of his idea with a style that demands the reader's investment of his intellectual attention. He drops any intimate references to his own feelings and, again, adopts the generalized "we" form. His lexical choice is devoid of specific detail and subjectivity, qualities that would have limited the application of the principle to himself alone. He structures the passage as a reasoned explanation, a definition of the principle of individualism rather than an example of it. 20 Any terms that might dilute the compact expression of the principle he is espousing are scrupulously avoided. Another vital sentimental tenet that Karamzin treats in an intellectual digression is a comparison between the inferior values of contemporary society and those of a better past: All true pleasures — those in which the heart participates and which make us genuinely happy — were enjoyed by people then, and what is more, they enjoyed love more than now for then nothing forbade them to say to one another: "I love you". And then they preferred the gifts of nature to the gifts of blind chance, which give man nothing of real worth. They enjoyed friendship, the beauties of nature more. Now our place of habitation and our clothing are more comfortable — but are our hearts more at peace? Oh no! Thousands of worries, thousands of troubles which man did not know in the past now tear at our inner selves, and every convenience in life entails a host of inconveniences, (p. 263) 20 Norman Friedman, in his article "Point of View in Fiction; the Development of a Critical Concept", Approaches to the Novel, R. Scholes ed. (San Francisco, 1961), 126, terms such thought-provoking intrusions as typical of the writer whose primary purpose is to instruct the reader in general truths held by the author.

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Again, the idea and its phrasing demand a mental response from the reader, rewarding the thoughtful with a nugget of sentimental theory that can be added to the others that Karamzin scatters throughout the work. Sentimentalism's concern with individual morality and its enemy — the shallow glitter of pleasure-oriented society — finds its way into another of Karamzin's didactic digressions: The first concern of true philosophy is to turn man to the immutable pleasures of nature. When the head and heart are pleasantly occupied at home, when there is a book in your hand, a dear wife by your side, fine children around you, can you wish to go to a ball or a banquet? (pp. 570-571)

Nature's superiority over man's prideful production of art, so prominent in Rousseau, is reserved for a separate digression: What do all our vaults mean before the vault of heaven? How much of our mental and physical labors are required to make such a lowly production. Is not art the most shameless ape in creation when it seeks to compete with nature in grandeur! (p. 542)

The sentimental principle that nature has the power to influence man's thought processes, also goes back to Rousseau. Karamzin picks up the idea (attributing it to its originator) and digresses on the affective power of nature (p. 258). Karamzin's intellectual digressions serve as key reference points in the tetters, both by their introduction of crucial sentimental principles, and by their compressed intellectual expression. At the same time he varies the work's instructive design by introducing synopses of the thoughts of important contemporary philosophers who are sympathetic to sentimental ideals (e.g. Kant, Baumgarten, Lavater, Herder, Geliert and others). Their condensed thoughts are generally complementary to the values found in Karamzin's own digressions. For example, Karamzin's digressions about individualism and variability among people finds support in Lavater's discussion of the same value. The well-known thinker presented a compact apology for each person searching out his own means of drawing close to eternal laws of self-awareness (which Lavater associates with the development of a growing moral sense): Being is the goal of being. Feeling and the happiness of being (Daseynsfrohheit) is the goal of everything that we can seek. The wise and the weak-minded seek only the means of enjoying their own being or feeling it. They seek that through which they can be aware of their own existence. Each feeling and each thing perceived by any of our feelings is an addition (Beyträge) to our self-consciousness (Selbstgefühl). The more self-consciousness, the more pleasure. Just as our

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constitutions and educations are different, so different also are our needs in means and objects which allow us to feel anew our being, our strengths, our life. The wise man differs from the weak-minded man only in their methods of self-consciousness, (p. 240)

The similarity of scholarly tone between Lavater's and Karamzin's remarks is striking. In both cases the condensed thought stands apart from surrounding passages of description. Each is abstract and seeks to emphasize the general applicability of its dominant idea. Both rely on syntactic repetitions to enhance their message. In short, both resort to an intellectual approach to teach value standards to the reader. Karamzin's introduction of sentimental philosophers and synopses of their key ideas is extensive. He refers to Baumgarten to emphasize the arch-sentimental association between esthetics and the feelings of the viewer. A number of philosophers are discussed who raise the question of overcoming death by adhering to the eternal strength of morality. Kant ruminates on man's frustrations and lack of fulfillment in this life, projecting that fulfillment into the better existence that lies beyond the grave. The great thinker's moral acts, prompted by his conscience, form his sole comfort as he looks back over his life on earth. His moral sensitivity helps him recognize and look forward to the better life to come (p. 101). Herder is quoted as reinforcing the same optimism in his meditation on nature's perennial triumph of spring over winter. He compares that hopeful event with man's own struggle to find meaning in death: And so there is no death in creation; or death is nothing else but the removal of that which can no longer be, that is the activity of a perpetually young, tireless power which, by its properties, cannot be wasteful or rest for a single moment. In accordance with the exalted law of wisdom and grace, everything strives toward the new strength of youth and beauty — it strives and changes at each moment, (p. 173)

Again, the passage Karamzin chooses is characterized by an analytical, declarative tone, often resorting to definitions (also common to Karamzin's own digressions). Gellert's inclusion comes by way of his anonymous biographer whose words echo the same association of immortality and morality, so important in sentimentalism's hierarchy of values (p. 160). Karamzin is careful to select the weighty pronouncements of philosophers from within or close to sensibility. Their reputations, the fact that their words appear in quoted form, the scholarly phrasing of their ideas, all lend an aura of authority to his catalog of sentimental principles in the Letters. It is ironically apt that Descartes, the neo-classical idol of

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rationalism, be mentioned only in passing, and then as a negative example. Karamzin refers to the great materialist as being so bound to a mechanistic view of the world that something as spiritual and totally esthetic as a nightingale's song threatened his entire rational scheme (p. 543). Karamzin's familiarity with specific pieces of contemporary Western literature plays an important role in the educative program of the Letters. His quotes from significant literary works, his synopses of whole plays and the myriad literary references, all fit into the educative network of the Letters and will be discussed in some detail in a later section of this article. Of particular concern in the present discussion is Karamzin's comparison of French neo-classical drama and the new, emotioncentered taste that favored Shakespeare. By juxtaposing the two esthetic theories of the drama and explaining his preference for Shakespearian principles, Karamzin continues to expand the reader's intellectual grasp of the new Western taste of sentimentalism. He flatly rejects the neoclassical principles of verbally conveying important events and psychological states of mind by means of long monologs. He explains that such an approach vitiates the emotional involvement of the audience (p. 353). Expanding his objection to French tragedy in a later entry he demands a pathetic emphasis in the theatre, the presentation of feeling "...to deeply stir our hearts or horrify the soul" (p. 390). To complete his explanation of what makes for great drama he gives a short analysis of Shakespeare's King Lear, emphasizing the presence of exactly what French tragedy lacks — the exhibition of strong emotion on stage, freed from any rational symmetry of elegant phrasing. Shakespeare's verses "lacerate the soul; they rumble like the thunder which is described in them and which shake the reader's soul" (p. 391). Much of Karamzin's educative effect in the Letters draws upon the intellectual, explanatory faculties of the reader. Whether it be his own pronouncements, supportive of key sentimental values, his introduction of carefully chosen quotes from philosophers sympathetic to those same or related values, or his clear explanation of what comprises good drama, Karamzin builds a persuasive, essentially conceptual presentation of the new sensibility. Such digressive moments form a single system of their own within the Letters, distinct from the description process that surrounds each of them. The digressions are stylistically united in their vigorous appeal to the reader's powers of abstract thinking, their avoidance of emotional coloration, and the fact that the narrator exchanges his intimate "I" at such moments for the more generalized "we". These

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factors, so homogeneously present in Karamzin's philosophical digressions, represent a continuous intellectual lesson in sentimentalism. Karamzin's presentation of a hard core of directly-stated ideals of sentimentalism functions in unison with an equally well-integrated system of indirect, emotional supports for those same ideals. These include his numerous lyrical digressions, his use of secondary narrations, and his introduction of literary quotes and references from important sentimental pieces of literature. In approaching Karamzin's lyrical digressions, for example, we are struck by how thoroughly he restates, in emotional terms, what he clearly reasons out in his intellectual digressions. For instance, the central sentimental idea of melancholy contemplation of this life, which finds expression in Karamzin's objectively reasoned digression in one place (p.554), appears in a highly emotional form elsewhere: Why does my heart sometimes suffer without any clear reason? Why does the light darken in my eyes when the bright sun shines in the sky? How can I explain these cruel melancholy attacks during which my whole soul contracts and grows cold? Can this sorrow be a portent of distant calamities? Can this sorrow be none other than an advance of those heartaches which fate is intending to visit upon me in the future? (p. 401)

The vague expectations of sorrow, frustration and eventual calamity, all point to the same lesson that Karamzin reasons out — that man must put aside false optimism and recognize life's unfulfilled hopes that await him in old age. Moving to a related sentimental preoccupation — optimism toward life after the grave as a means of overcoming the melancholy frustration of this life — we find that Karamzin again provides complementary intellectual and lyrical expressions of the same theme. As we have seen, he relies heavily on the ideas of Kant, Herder, and especially Lavater to emphasize such a hopeful vision. In a lyrical rephrasing of the same idea, he ecstatically professes his own personal faith in that better existence to come: Ach! If I were called upon to die this very minute I would drop into the allembracing lap of nature with a tear of love, with full assurance that it will call me to a new joy, that the transformation of my being is a heightening of beauty, an exchange of the beautiful for something better. And always, my dear friends, always when in spirit I return to the pristine simplicity of human nature, when my heart opens out toward the beauties of nature, I feel the same and find nothing fearsome in death, (p.215)

Karamzin also proposes the Rousseauan principle that nature has the

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power to stimulate thoughts and feelings in man. He typically strengthens the idea with a great number of complementary lyrical moments. For example, we read that the quick paling of color in nature at sundown reminds him of life's transitoriness: "So passes the glory of the world! So wilts the rose of youth! So dies the candle of life!" (p. 251). The lyrical comparison of the seasons of nature with the stages of man's life is especially common to sentimentalist writers (e.g. Thomson's The Seasons). Karamzin draws heavily on the convention throughout the Letters·. "Autumn makes me a melancholiac.... sadness mixes in my heart with a kind of sweet contentment. Ach! I had never before felt so vigorously that the flow of nature is the image of our own life's flow! Where are you, spring of my life? Quickly, quickly passes the summer — and at that moment my heart felt autumn's chill!" (pp. 296-297). Likewise, the prominence of piety within the family as a means of insulating man from the falsity of society finds expression in an intellectual digression. His penchant for restating the principle in emotional terms is quick to appear as an effective follow-up: "Oh dear ties of family! You are the sturdiest support of good morals; and if there is anything I envy in our forefathers it is certainly their affection for their loved ones" (p. 571). Commenting on Voltaire's last words in Candide, he gives his personal solution to the vicissitudes of society: "Let us resolve to love our own, our relatives and friends, and leave all others to the will of fate!" (p. 571). Understanding the role of the numerous short narratives he includes in the Letters is most important for a comprehension of Karamzin's overall design of a full emotional program. Like his first-person singular digressions, the cameo-like narrative inserts resonate to the sentimental messages within the cooly rational sections of the book. Just as Karamzin freely incorporates the thoughts of others (influential thinkers) as support for many of his own ideas, so does he introduce the powerful emotional events of other people's lives to reinforce many of his own lyrical peaks. The use of such short narrations has a potent effect in eliciting sympathy for the persons Karamzin describes, and with whom he clearly identifies. Karamzin accentuates the impact of his short tales by enriching them with belles-lettres devices that appeal to his reader's emotions. These include direct quotation of their speech, the use of metaphor, nature descriptions to enhance a mood, exhibition of a character's feelings during moments of emotional stress and excitation, rudimentary symbolism, etc. Karamzin also often provides his own lyrical reaction to the events he describes and thereby heightens the emotional impact of the tale.

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One of Karamzin's last entries (p. 599) provides a simple case in point. A Maria V. has to leave a secret suitor in London to follow her father to America. After she has lived obediently with him in the New World for five years, her father dies. Having fulfilled her duty as a daughter, she can return home to her waiting betrothed. During the ocean passage she falls ill and despairs of ever seeing her lover again. Death, pathetically described, comes to her while she is hallucinating that she is in England, happy in her lover's arms. Her body is then callously thrown overboard. This little story illustrates the conventional theme of disappointed hope and fits into the life attitude of tearful melancholy and pessimism associated with temporal life. It also corresponds to several of the author's pronouncements, both in his intellectual and his lyrical digressions. Its effect is given added weight by Karamzin's accumulation of literary devices, all of which contribute to a heightened emotional impact within the scene. Maria is described as an innocent, a "sacrifice to her father's stubbornness"; she "sincerely" laments his death; she is filled with "love and sweet hope" as she sets out to rejoin her lover. Her quoted speech also accentuates her virtue. Even though very ill during her sea voyage she says: "I wish to die or be in England". During her hallucination she sees her lover: "Now I am happy, ... now I can quietly die in your arms." The vision of her body being unfeelingly thrown into the sea calls forth Karamzin's indignation and he inserts his own sorrowful reaction to the tale: "Earth! Earth! Prepare a little place for my dust in your quiet, secluded depths!" As brief and simple as the narrative piece is, it is carefully designed to arouse emotions (fear, pity, admiration, anger). Reinforced by these emotions, the short tale serves the function of restating, in a varied form, the familiar attitude of melancholy pessimism that we have seen taking so many different shapes within the work. Karamzin dwells on the key sentimental point of fate's destruction of hope in this life in a number of tales. In one instance, he describes the pathetic deaths of two lovers. An ideal, virtuous couple, they await their marriage among a group of happy friends. In an excess of excitement, the bride ventures too close to a precipice and falls to her death. Suffering terribly from his shock, the groom cannot bear his loss and falls dead on the spot. The parents of the lovers grieve until their own deaths. Karamzin saturates the narrative with emotional appeals. The laudable character of each lover is emphasized by epithets ("gentle Jean" and "dear Lizaveta"). Their dialog is rendered as direct speech to make the characters come to life and evoke the reader's sympathy for

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them. Their cries of lament and their shock of seeing sudden death are shown in their immediacy. Karamzin heightens the scene's emotional impact by introducing a jarring succession of paratactic clauses that carry each stage of Lizaveta's fall and death: "she gasped — tried to grab onto something but had no time — the moutain shook — everything was already tumbling — the unfortunate girl plunged into the abyss and perished!" The same syntactic ordering carries the hero's equally pathetic end: "Jean wanted to throw himself after her — his legs failed him — he fell senseless to the ground." Our emotional shock at discovering Jean's death is heightened by a series of syntactic bursts: "...they laid a hand to his heart — it was not beating — Jean had died!" As in the tale mentioned above, Karamzin is not adverse to heightening the incident's traumatic value by exposing his own feelings about the incident by adding "my heart shudders" (p. 335). It is characteristic of Karamzin's use of these narratives that their personae appear only in terms of their strong emotion (e.g. the quick movement from happy optimism about the future to unanswerable shock and sorrow in the lovers, helpless pathos in their friends, lingering grief in the parents). No character has any dimension to his personality outside these emotions. The personae, then, serve as vehicles for enhancing the overall emotional effect of crushed hope and its melancholy aftermath, thereby complementing and repeating Karamzin's own discussions of pessimism and melancholy in his digressions. The prominence of fate's destruction of noble lovers appears in yet another tale. Star-crossed lovers, along with their happy guests, set out to row on a beautifully placid lake (symbolic of their happy expectations of life) only to be caught unawares in a sudden storm (fate's appearance). All they can do is "wipe away the last tear shed for life" and drown. The infection of pessimism touches Karamzin's fictionalized narrator as it so often does: "With sorrowing thoughts I pondered this castle [the lovers' home]; the wind blew from its deserted walls" (p. 255). Variations among people in their perception of the world, a question Karamzin takes up in his intellectual digressions, finds reflection in a short narrative. Through the subjective promptings of his imagination he creates a private fantasy about a castle he is touring, complete with a robber-lord, his family and his numerous victims. Calling a halt to his daydream, "Hold, imagination!" he leaves his imagination behind and re-enters the objective world and continues his tour (pp. 114-115). Karamzin's other narrative inclusions are equally illustrative of important sentimental themes. The value of family intimacy as the ideal of

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true community is prominent in his recounting of the joyful reunion of a family of French emigres (pp. 210-211). The destruction of their previous position in French society means nothing to them as long as their family is together. The theme of hope for finding a better life in the next world is prominent in its intellectual phrasing and in Karamzin's lyrical digressions. It is no accident, then, that the theme appears also in the more indirect form of a narrative insert (here, in the form of a narrative poem of Karamzin's own composition). A young fop betrays an innocent country girl and seeks another lover. Learning of his inconstancy she takes poison and dies, counting on a better life beyond the grave where she and her lover will be united in permanent happiness (p. 503). While most of the short narratives come from Karamzin himself, there are some told by episodic characters whom he meets during this travels. It is in keeping with the overall pattern of the Letters that his category of tales also supports basic sentimental doctrines held elsewhere in the work. For example, Karamzin meets an old invalid soldier who wistfully looks back on a better time, saying it was superior to the present (pp. 331-332). An abbot decries the materialist value system of comtemporary society, and looks back on a golden age that was free of worldly pursuits (pp. 379-380). At another point in his travels, Karamzin encounters a female Ossian who lives in a deserted, mysterious castle. She also laments the passing of a way of life more noble than the dissolute present (pp. 402-403). Obviously, all the narratives above share the same debt to Macpherson and his type of sentimentalism. Here also we find the characteristic emotive devices that Karamzin uses in his own tales. Direct rendering of dialog, moody nature description, an editorial emphasis on the virtues of the heroes, and numerous emotional exclamations all help to enlist the reader's sympathy for the idea inherent in each of the tales, as they do in Karamzin's own narratives. The above discussions of Karamzin's choice of narrative inserts by no means exhaust his use of them in the Letters. The few mentioned here are but indicative of how often he turns them into illustrations of the very sentimental values he expounds in other sections of the work. Karamzin's choice of quotes from and reference to contemporary Western literature also play a role in familiarizing his audience with the values of sensibility. Just as his numerous references to philosophers and their systems of thought reinforce the reader's intellectual grasp of sentimental ideals, so does his repeated quotation from important sentimental works reinforce his emotional familiarity with those same values.

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For example, Karamzin lingers over some of the emotional high points of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, sharing his innermost feelings that help recreate the enlotional matrix he finds in Sterne's book. He visits the island on which Rousseau composed Promenades solitaires and feels a kinship with the Frenchman's sweet contemplation of the better world that lies beyond death, his only alternative to his haunted pessimism toward finding peace in this life (p. 320). He includes one of St. Preux's expressive letters to Julia, full of pessimism and sorrow over their separation (pp. 278-279). The omnipresent motif of melancholy finds another expression in Karamzin's reference to the opera Atisa. He praises one of its arias, "Vivre ou mourir", in which two lovers share their sense of persecution at the hands of fate and Cybele (p. 292). An ode by Addison stresses a pietistic hymn of praise for true friendship. Shakespeare speaks of the greater value of one's inner nobility over mere material possessions. Haller's idyll "Die Alpen" praises the peasants' happiness in nature which even the wealthiest kings must envy. Both authors exemplify the principle of turning away from the materialistic idols of society in one's search for life's spiritual meaning. Karamzin everywhere keeps important sentimental authors and their best known works before his readers' eyes. It is a most effective way of providing a recommended list of reading for those still learning what sentimentalism is all about. Ossian's Fingal, Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela, Schiller's tragedy Fiesko, (full of the same strong feeling as Karamzin recommends in his more abstract critical analysis of Shakespeare), Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, Thomson's The Seasons, Gray's "Elegy", and Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise are a few of the many references to significant works that find their way into the Letters. The sheer weight of repeated references to such works and their central themes provided a highly educative service to the Russian reader who was still impatiently trying to absorb the whole ethos of Western cultivated sentiment. Occasionally, Karamzin slows his normally quick reference to such sentimental works to recount the entire plot of one or another piece. Here, as in the more numerous short quotes and references, an emotion typical of some central sentimental value dominates the reader's attention. For example, Karamzin recounts a French melodrama (Peter the Great) about the emperor's fictionalized marriage to a peasant girl in a foreign country "not far from Russia's borders". Disguising himself as a simple workman he is learning the country's skills in shipbuilding. When he meets an especially attractive country lass he gives free reign to his heart

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and proposes to her, all the while retaining the secret of his identity. His aide, also in disguise, sounds the work's sentimental theme of spiritual equality between people of different social classes in his address to Peter: "'...you are great of soul; you wish to raise the dignity of man in our country and despise the vain arrogance of people; nobility of the soul alone is worthy of respect in your eyes; Katherine is noble in her soul — and so let her be the wife of my Lord, my father and my friend!'" (p. 397). Forced to leave his betrothed because of a mutiny in Russia, he later returns to reveal his true identity to Katherine, explaining his disguise with the words: I wished to possess a tender heart... which would love in me, not an emperor, but a man: here is that heart! My heart and hand are yours; accept them and the crown from me! The crown will not grace you, but you it! (p. 399) The substitution of spiritual excellence for social class as the basis for marriage is a familiar sentimental principle. Its appearance in story form, replete with emotional coloration, indirectly repeats and strengthens that principle by acting it out. The great value of Letters of a Russian Traveller lies in Karamzin's talented summing up of a whole era in the West. The work represents an incisive and admirably rounded analysis of exactly what was going on in the countries whose cultural taste played such a formative role in Russia's growth into a member of the European community. By preparing a veritable encyclopedia of specific information about Western manners, places and institutions, Karamzin satisfied the Russian's hunger for knowledge he had little chance of acquiring first-hand. What has been too often overlooked is the educational program which also undergirds the digressive or personal sections of the Letters. True, it is a different kind of education than the facts of names and places. Yet the Letters fulfilled its reader's need to understand and drink in the influences of sentimentalism that had quickly come to dictate his reading habits and his changing vision of himself. Karamzin's method of educating his countrymen in the new taste is an intricate and beautifully balanced one. It is essentially based on traditional rhetorical models in its double appeal to the reader's intellectual and emotional faculties. What he states clearly in the form of a compressed principle he is likely to restate in the form of a lyrical outburst. The seriously philosophical analysis of a sentimental value coming from authorities like Kant or Baumgarten has a distinct tendency to re-appear in the more emotional form of various short stories. Theoretical discussions of the merits of

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exhibited emotion in drama come alive in Karamzin's references to King Lear, Fiesko, and Peter the Great. Throughout, he keeps important sentimental authors, themes, and titles before his reader's eyes. The balance, the powerful union of mind and heart in Karamzin's expression of prominent sentimental themes, gradually initiate the Russian reader into familiarity with Europe's new sensibility. Rice University

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Bestsellers rarely endure. Those that do often live on to embarrass their authors during their lifetimes or else compromise their reputations after their deaths. In later years Goethe's Olympian serenity was on occasion ruffled by the continued reference to him as the writer of The Sorrows of Young Werther, as though none of his less popular works had any significance. Public reaction to Goethe's novel was in fact quite extraordinary. Young men imitated Werther's style of dress, wearing blue jackets and yellow pants, and some even went so far as to emulate his suicide, either by shooting themselves or by drowning with a copy of the novel in their pockets. In 1792, eighteen years after the appearance of Werther, Nikolaj Karamzin's tale "Poor Liza" ("Bednaja Liza") called forth similar public reaction, the like of which had never been seen before in Russia, although happily there are no recorded cases of young maidens casting themselves into the pond near the Simonov Monastery. Like Goethe, Karamzin too in later life came to regret the close attention devoted by Russians and foreigners alike to "Poor Liza" and his other early "sentimental" tales, to the exclusion of what he regarded as his more respectable work on Russian history. With few exceptions, until quite recently, Russians have tended to agree with him. One still comes across the view that Karamzin was important chiefly as an historian rather than as a writer of prose fiction and verse. Happily, such a view is now the exception and we have a number of good studies of Karamzin's prose fiction, although it cannot yet be said that his work has been fully understood and appreciated in its Russian and European context.1 1

For a review of contemporary scholarship on Karamzin in English, German and Russian, see the present author's "Karamzin in Recent Soviet Criticism", The Slavic and East European Journal XI, No. 4 (1967), 464-72. A noteworthy addition is Hans Rothe, Ν. Μ. Karamzins europäische Reise: Der Beginn des russischens Romans (Bad Homburg, Verlag Gehlen), 1968.

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The parallel between Werther and "Poor Liza" can be carried further since both belong to the same style and mode of literature written during the age of sensibility in the second half of the eighteenth century. Werther exercised an influence upon Karamzin's story, just as Goethe himself was influenced by Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloi'se and Ossian. The brief interpolated story in Goethe's novel about an unfortunate girl who threw herself into a pond after being seduced and abandoned may well have provided the germ for Karamzin's tale.2 The echoes of Werther may also be traced in Karamzin's incomplete sketch "Liodor", which appeared in his Moscow Journal (Moskovskij zumal) shortly before "Poor Liza". 3 In any case Goethe was not one of Karamzin's favorite authors and Karamzin did not have to, nor did he, turn to a German intermediary for the Rousseauan and Ossianic elements which so attracted him at the outset of his career; he came to them independently. The quotient of originality in the plot of "Poor Liza" is of course not high, certainly when viewed against the background of European literature of the period, or indeed of Russian literature itself. It has been pointed out that Karamzin may well have drawn upon earlier Russian works for the basic plot of his own tale.4 But questions of influence and originality are not my main concern here, nor do they affect the essential historical significance of Karamzin's tale in the development of Russian literature. The importance of Karamzin's language reforms, of his "new style" (novyj slog), has never been in serious doubt, but it should also be noted that "Poor Liza" has other features which are equally indicative of the innovative character of Karamzin's writing as well as of the status of prose fiction in Russia at this time. My purpose is not to "rehabilitate" Karamzin's story, to attempt a 2

V. Sipovskij, "Vlijanie 'Vertera' na russkij roman XVIII veka", iurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosvesienija (January, 1906), 62. The girl's story is told by Werther to Lotte's husband Albert during their argument about suicide (Werther's letter of August 12 in Part I). 3 Ibid., 63-64. The story "Liodor" appeared in Moskovskij zurnal V (March, 1792), 305-334; it has never been reprinted. "Bednaja Liza" appeared in Part VI (June 1792) 238-277; it has been reprinted many times. Peter Brang, in his Studien zu Theorie und Praxis der russischen Erzählung 1770-1811 (Wiesbaden, 1960), 138, disagrees with Sipovskij and sees the influence of Ossian rather than of Werther in "Liodor". 4 Brang {Studien..., 142-143) notes the possible influence on Karamzin of Ja. Β. Knjaznin's poem "Flor i Liza", published in Sankt-Peterburgskij Vestnik in 1778. More recently V. Puxov in a brief note, "Pervaja russkaja povest' ο Bednoj Lize", Russkaja literatura 1 (1965), 120-122, has remarked upon some striking parallels between Karamzin's story and an earlier prose tale, "Kolin i Liza", first published in Vetera, 25 (1772); Vetera was reprinted by Novikov in 1788. This tale was published anonymously, but Puxov suggests it might also have been written by Knjaznin.

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«evaluation of it, suggesting that all previous readers or scholars have missed the point, but rather to try to go beyond the mere pigeon holing of the story as "sentimental". The use of the title "Poor Liza" as a sort of critical shorthand for the later, extreme forms of the sentimental tale, written in imitation of Karamzin's story, should not deceive us. Karamzin himself, after all, viewed such epigones with a jaundiced eye; it seems unfair to tar him with the same brush. Similarly, it would be a mistake to lump together Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveller (Pis'ma russkogo putesestvennika) with the pedestrian efforts of lesser writers such as P. Ju. L'vov and N. P. Brusilov. It may be just as well to rehearse the tale's merits before narrowing our focus to a discussion of some narrative problems in "Poor Liza" and comparing briefly Karamzin's efforts to resolve them with those of Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther, as well as with those of Zukovskij in his story "Mary's Grove" ("Mar'ina ro§