The Literary Travelogue: A Comparative Study with Special Relevance to Russian Literature from Fonvizin to Pushkin

144 Pages·1974·9.89 MB·English

by  Reuel K. Wilson (auth.)

THE LITERARY TRAVELOGUE
THE LITERARY TRAVELOGUE
A COMPARATIVE STUDY WITH SPECIAL
RELEVANCE TO RUSSIAN LITERATURE
FROM FONVIZIN TO PUSH KIN
by
REUEL K. WILSON
•
MARTINUS NI]HOFF I THE HAGUE I 1973
C I973 by Martinus Nijholl. The Hague. Netherlands
Sojtcover repri", oflhe hardcover lSI Edilio" 1973
All rights reserved. including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
]SBN·]): 978·90-247·]558·9 e-ISBN· ]): 978·94'()]0·]997·2
001: ] 0.10 071978·94·0] ().] 997·2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction IX
PART I: EVOLUTION OF THE TRAVEL GENRE IN WESTERN EUROPE
Chapter I: Some Historical Examples - The Eighteenth Cen-
tury. Goethe and Moritz I
Chapter II: Sterne's Sentimental Journey 8
Chapter III: Demaistre's Voyage autour de rna Chambre 17
Chapter IV: Dupaty's Lettres sur l'Italie 20
PART II: THE TRAVEL MEMOIR IN RUSSIA 1777-1836
Chapter V: Fonvizin's Letters from Abroad 31
Chapter VI: Radishchev's Journey from St. Petersburg to Mos-
cow 39
Chapter VII: Pushkin's Journey from Moscow to Petersburg 49
Chapter VIII: Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveler 56
Chapter IX: The Epigones 82
Chapter X: Pushkin's Journey to Erzurum 98
Chapter XI: Conclusion 122
Appendix A: Ermenonville 125
Appendix B: Auch ich in Arkadien 127
Appendix C: Karamzin's Island of Bornholm 129
Appendix D: Onegin's Journey 131
Selected Bibliography 133
Index 135
The transliteration system used for Russian titles and quotes from the
Russian is that recommended by the Slavic and East European
Journal. Russian proper names, however, I have rendered in a trans
literation - similar to that used in D. S. Mirsky's History ot Russian
Literature - which is more intelligible to the non-Slavic reader.
INTRODUCTION
The aim of this study is to trace the development of the literary travel
memoir in Russia during the last decades of the eighteenth century
and the first decades of the nineteenth. Having indicated the prove
nances of this genre in Western Europe, I shall evaluate its role in
Russian literary history. Because this study is not intended to be an
historical survey of all significant travel works that appeared in Russia,
I shall pass over such early pioneer travelers as the Abbot Daniil who
visited Palestine at the beginning of the twelfth century and recorded
for his countrymen detailed descriptions of the Holy places, or the
merchant, Afanasij Nikitin, whose travel notes concerning a trip to
India are preserved in a fifteenth century chronicle.
The travel genre, which had become enormously popular in eight
eenth century Western Europe,l was cleverly exploited by Fonvizin,
Radishchev, and Karamzin to expound to the Russian reading public
certain important notions on literary theory, on society (foreign and
domestic), on themselves, and on nature. The travel genre - then as
now a flexible instrument for transmitting, by means of diary-style
narrative, information about distant, often exotic people and places -
had been adapted by Sterne and others to themes having little relation
to a conventional journey. The Russians were quick to grasp the
genre's literary as well as its polemical possibilities, and influenced by
Western models, they too used it to convey theoretical assertions on a
variety of SUbjects.
The second half of the eighteenth century was a time of uncertainty
and transition for many literary genres. The satire, the ode, the epic,
the tragedy - all genres championed by the Classicists - were becoming
1 Karamzin in the Letters of a Russian Traveler notes that the King's library in Paris
contained seven thousand travel books! And describing his meeting with Kant, Karamzin
writes: "We spoke for about a half hour on different subjects: about travels, about China,
about the discovery of new lands."
x
INTRODUCTION
stale imitations of past models; while the Sentimental school was
developing new, more personal, forms of expression. During this
period, and especially in Russia, the travelogue becomes a hybrid
genre comprising elements of poetry, prose, and the drama.2 Writers
like Radishchev and Karamzin who were influenced by Sentimentalism
found the travelogue ideaUy suited to articulating their own inner
feelings together with a sensitivity toward nature and the simple
"primitive" life. This genre, hitherto outside the purlieu of classical
literary aesthetics, allowed them to convey at least the illusion of
spontaneous inspiration.
Although the travelogue does permit a mixture of literary genres,
it imposes some important technical limitations on the author. The
narrative must be in the first person and the material must somehow
relate to a journey (which, however, the author is at liberty to define
in his own terms). Like the literary diary, the "journey" usually
implies an autobiographical account of the narrator's experiences - the
apparently spontaneous record of day-to-day observations and
sensations. The narrative's "spontaneity" is, of course, often a purely
literary device or convention used to dramatize a fictitious character
who recounts a fictitious story that mayor may not be based on the
author's real experience. The invented travel diary or memoir3 usually
preserves, for the sake of verisimilitude, many autobiographical or
descriptive elements proper to the "real" counterpart. This applies
even to the most fantastic examples of the genre such as Swift's
Gulliver's Travels. When used for aesthetic purposes and not solely to
transmit information, the travelogue becomes "literary."
Like its distant ancestor, the picaresque novel, the fictional travel
ogue has no unified plot. Because the narrator must progress from one
location to another, any single intrigue involving one set of characters
becomes virtually impossible. The action therefore must comprehend
a series of episodes or miniature plots. Skillful authors illustrate their
ideas on human nature, national temperaments, social injustices,
freedom, art, etc., through such apparently unrelated episodes. A
travelogue'S unity rests not upon dramatically resolving conflicts that
2 T. Roboli, "Literatura puteSestvij," iu Russkaja Proza, ed. by B. Eikhenbaum and Y.
Tynyanov ("Academia," Leningrad: I926), pp. 42-74. The contributors to this collection
were aspiring Formalists and the articles the result of a seminar organized by the editors.
8 There is little significant difference between the travel memoir and the more subjective
diary or correspondence. The memoir usually emphasizes factual material more than the travel
diary or correspondence, but for our purposes here they can all be classified as "travelogues."
INTRODUCTION XI
occur among the characters, but rather on the author's ability to
generalize eloquently and convincingly.
Even at its most subjective and lyrical, the literary travelogue
maintains a didactic moralizing tone. Perhaps such didacticism is
inevitable since travel, whether real or imagined, provides an almost
irresistible opportunity for the traveler to reassess his own society and
his own values. Confronted with alien environments, we tend to
compare and contrast the strange with the familiar; geographical
displacement inspires detachment which in turn leads us to make
sweeping value judgments.
Not only does travel stimulate comparisons, but it may also effect
changes within an individual. The dramatization of the emotional and
intellectual changes experienced by a narrator remains an important
function of a literary travelogue. After all, since the Middle Ages the
sea or land voyage has been a common allegory for the soul's journey
through life, towards ultimate salvation or damnation. The journey
then, whether real or allegorical, has traditionally been regarded as a
means towards self-improvement a kind of education in itself for the
individual. Both Radishchev and Karamzin will seek to inform and
guide their readers by depicting the "education" of their narrators.4
Related to the travel genre, but technically outside of it, are the
journeys undertaken within the Russian Empire by many heroes of
nineteenth century Russian literature. The Caucasus were especially
appealing to the Romantic literary imagination: therefore Pushkin,
Marlinsky, Lermontov and Tolstoy show their "civilized" protagonists
in conflict with the "primitive" inhabitants of the wild and spectacular
mountain landscape. The influence of the travel genre is particularly
evident in Lermontov's novel A Hero of Our Time. In the first part,
"Bela," the narrator's descriptions of nature and the vicissitudes of
his trip (which fall within the travel-notes genre) provide a "frame"
for the story of his traveling companion, Maksim Maksimych.5
Pechorin's Journal (containing the last three parts, "Taman," "Prin
cess Mary," and "The Fatalist"), moreover, assumes the form of a
highly melodramatic travel diary, which serves to dispel, by revealing
4 The travel impressions of Fonvizin, a chauvinist and xenophobe, and Karamzin, an
admirer, though not unqualifiedly so, of Western values, embody two polarities of Russian
opinion towards Western Europe. These polarities later crystalized in the Slavophile·
Westernizers controversy.
5 John Mersereau Jr., Mikhail Lermontov (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
I96I), pp. 8I-82.
XII INTRODUCTION
Pechorin's intellectual and spiritual shallowness, the aura of romantic
mystery that others have perceived about this "hero."
Pushkin and Griboedov both wrote actual travel accounts connected
with military campaigns in the Caucasus. And both works refute
Romantic myths about wars fought on this distant and exotic terrain.
I shall discuss Pushkin's Journey to Erzurum - a prosaic response to
the sentimental journey in vogue during the first decades of the
nineteenth century. Griboedov's travel letters, on the other hand,
were not written for pUblication; they lack a consistent theme or
thesis. Since their interest is mainly biographical, I shall not include
them here.
The local "internal" travelogue, used as a platform for critical
observations on the social and political situation in Russia, plays a
significant role in Russian literature. (Although, because of the threat
of censorship, there are few examples of the critical or satiric journey
'per se,' such related works as Dead Souls and A Sportsman's Sketches
were read as indictments or at least negative portrayals of the society
they describe). Viewing one's country as though one were a foreigner
can be an effective means of showing readers the defects of their own
society. (Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes is a celebrated example of a
satiric travel diary used for such didactic ends.) Radishchev in A
Journey from Petersburg to Moscow and Chekhov in Sakhalin Island
(written over a hundred years later), were seeking to effect reforms by
describing patent injustices in their society. Their aim was to educate,
not to entertain, the reader.
I intend to trace the development of the travel genre until the 1830'S,
when its possibilities as a vehicle for Sentimental ideas had been
exhausted. I shall analyse the artistic merits as well as the ideological
content of each work. The genre has been particularly valuable to
Russian writers as an instrument for non-literary polemics. It reflects,
moreover, during the period in question, a transitional stage in the
movement of Russian literature towards the novel. The very limi
tations of this decidedly minor genre, which only becomes true
"literature" in the hands of a Sterne or a Karamzin, invite the critic
to treat it as a separate chapter, or at least a long footnote in Russian
literary history. The subject has, furthermore, been sorely neglected
by Russian and non-Russian scholarship.
PART I
EVOLUTION OF THE TRAVEL GENRE
IN WESTERN EUROPE