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2.3 - The Salon and the Circle

from History 2 - Mechanisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2024

By
Ilya Vinitsky
Edited by
Simon Franklin ,
Rebecca Reich  and
Emma Widdis
Simon Franklin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reich
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Emma Widdis
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

The terms ‘salon’ and ‘circle’ refer to a particular type of literary group that has shaped Russian culture since the seventeenth century, with its influence peaking in the 1820s and 1830s. Unlike literary societies, these communities have rarely had any formal membership, written rules or programmatic documents. Instead, they have tended to favour friendly chats on various subjects, literary recitations, and discussions on certain days of week, sometimes accompanied by musical performances. These practices engender strong personal bonds and shared memories. Some of these communities have created their own ‘circle languages’ with recurrent motifs, inside jokes, and domestic mythologies, which in turn have framed their literary output. The chapter reconstructs their activities by examining that output alongside secret-police reports. Viewed from this perspective, the history of literary circles and salons can be seen as the history of the vanished ‘everyday life’ of their participants.

Keywords

literary societiessalonseveryday literary lifeemotional communitiesfriendly epistle
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature , pp. 258 - 276
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Bobrova, Alina, ‘Literary societies in Russia of the first half of the 19th century: Problems of interdisciplinary description’, Russkaia literatura 1 (2021), 293–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodskii, N. L. (ed.), Literaturnye salony i kruzhki: Pervaia polovina XIX veka [Literary salons and circles: The first half of the nineteenth century] (Moscow, Leningrad: Akademiia, 1930).Google Scholar
Dolinin, V. E., Ivanov, B. I., Ostanin, B. V., and Severiukhin, D. Ya. (eds.), Samizdat Leningrada, 1950-e–1980-e: Literaturnaia entsiklopediia [Leningrad samizdat, 1950s–1980s: Literary encyclopedia] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2003).Google Scholar
Evstratov, Alexei G., ‘Dramatic conflicts and social performance at the Russian court in the 1760s: A sociocultural perspective on marital infidelity’, in Schönle, Andreas, Zorin, Andrei, and Evstratov, Alexei (eds.), The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825: Public Role and Subjective Self (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016), pp. 70–89.Google Scholar
Levitt, Marcus C., Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lotman, Yu. M., Andrei Sergeevich Kaisarov i literaturno-obshchestvennaia bor'ba ego vremeni [Andrei Sergeevich Kaisarov and the literary and social struggle of his time] (Tartu: Uchenye zapiski Tartusskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1958).Google Scholar
Peschio, Joe, The Poetics of Impudence and Intimacy in the Age of Pushkin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Schruba, Manfred, Literaturnye ob"edinenia Moskvy i Peterburga 1890–1917 godov: Slovar' [Literary associations in Moscow and Petersburg, 1890–1917: A dictionary] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004).Google Scholar
Todd, William Mills, III, Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin: Ideology, Institutions, and Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Vatsuro, V. E., S.D.P., Iz istorii literaturnogo byta pushkinskoi pory [SDP: From the history of literary life in the age of Pushkin] (Moscow: Kniga, 1989).Google Scholar
Walker, Barbara, Maximilian Voloshin and the Russian Literary Circle: Culture and Survival in Revolutionary Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

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