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A. S. Pushkin: Notes on French Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

Robert A. Maguire
Robert A. Maguire*
Affiliation:
Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University
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Extract

"Everybody knows," Pushkin wrote in 1832, "that the French are the most anti-poetic nation. Their best writers, the most glorious representatives of this keen-witted and positive people, Montagne [sic], Voltaire, Montesquieu, La Harpe, and Rousseau himself have shown how the feeling of the beautiful has been foreign and incomprehensible to them." This is an indirection of poetic proportion: Pushkin was less interested in the prose which he considered the strength of the French than in the poetry which he considered their weakness. But the picture is more complex than that; it must be built up from an essentially incidental literary criticism, much of which is fragmented throughout the poet's letters, sketches, and jottings.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 1958 , pp. 101 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1958

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References

1 “Nachalo stat'i o V. Gjugo,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenij Pushkina (16 vols., Moscow- Leningrad, AN SSSR, 1937-1949), XI, 219. This edition will be referred to in the text by volume and page number.

2 Our survey will not cover the questions of Pushkin's omissions or of implied criticisms, such as parodies, in the literary works. We are limiting ourselves to the more important French writers (for Pushkin), and, with a few exceptions, to the commentaries which do not appear in the literary works.

3 See esp. “O francuzskoj slovesnosti” (1822-24), XII, 191-92; “O poezij klassicheskoj i romanticheskoj” (1825), XI, 36-38; and “O nichtozhestve literatury russkoj” (1834), XI, 268-72. Pushkin's earlier views on classical and romantic poetry are remarkably similar to the theories of Mme. de Staël. Cf. her De l'Allemagne, esp. Part II, chs. 2, 11.

4 E.g., Buffon, whom Pushkin praised for his clear style (XI, 18); Diderot, who is characterized as a vacillator in religious matters (in the poem “K vel'mozhe,” 1830); and, of course, Voltaire.

5 Quoted by V. M. Zhirmunskij, “Pushkin and Western Literature,” in Pushkin (A Collection of Articles … ) (Moscow, 1939), p. 159.

6 XIII, 380-81. I.e., Pushkin's own idea of what romanticism should be, not French romanticism. For a discussion of this complex question, see B. Tomashevskij, Pushkin (Moscow-Leningrad, 1956), I, 603-15.

7 In France, Sainte-Beuve and Nodier were expounding the view that the Renaissance writers were the genuine precursors of romanticism, and that old French, preclassical literature ought to serve as the basis for a long-needed literary reform.

8 See, e.g., “O proze” (1822), XI, 18-19; “Prichinami, zamedlivshimi khod nashi slovesnosti … ” (1824), XI, 21; “Pis'mo k izdatelju ‘Literaturnykh pribavlenij … (1831), XI, 216; "Puteshestvie iz Modcvy v Peterburg" (1834), XI, 223-67; "Sochinenija i pcrevody v stikhalch Pavla Katenina" (1833), XI, 220-21; "Rouijskaja Akademija" (1836). XII, 41-45; and "Mnenie M. E. Lobanova . . . " (1836), XII, 67-74.