The First Epoch: The Eighteenth Century and the Russian Cultural Imagination PDF
Preview The First Epoch: The Eighteenth Century and the Russian Cultural Imagination
The First Epoch Publications of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies David M. Bethea Series Editor The First Epoch (cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4) The Eighteenth Century and the Russian Cultural Imagination Luba Golburt The University of Wisconsin Press Publication of this volume has been made possible, in part, through support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and from the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies in the Department of Slavic Languages of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059 uwpress.wisc.edu 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England eurospanbookstore.com Copyright © 2014 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Golburt, Luba, author. The first epoch : the eighteenth century and the Russian cultural imagination / Luba Golburt. pages cm. — (Publications of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN978-0-299-29814-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN978-0-299-29813-5 (e-book) 1. Russian literature—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Russian literature—19th century—History and criticism. 3. Russian literature—History and criticism—Theory, etc. I. Title. II. Series: Publications of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies. PG3007.G65 2014 891.709´002—dc23 2013027990 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Eighteenth Century as a Vanishing Point 3 Part I Derzhavin’s Moment 23 Prologue 25 1 The Empresses’ Histories: Lomonosov and Derzhavin 30 2 Catherine’s Passing: Hybrid Genres of Commemoration 72 3 Poetry Reads Power: Overcoming Patronage 114 Part II The Fictions of the Eighteenth Century 155 Prologue 157 4 The Verisimilar Eighteenth Century: Historical Fiction in the 1830s 164 5 Mimetic Temporalities: Fashion from the Eighteenth Century to Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades” 205 6 The Margins of History: Ivan Turgenev’s Eighteenth-Century Characters 239 Epilogue 273 Notes 277 Bibliography 337 Index 357 Illustrations Figure 1.David Lüders, Count P. G. Chernyshev with his Wife Ekaterina Andreevna, Daughters Dar’ia, Natal’ia, Anna, and Son(1750s) 16 Figure 2.Vigilius Eriksen, Portrait of Catherine II at a Mirror (between 1762 and 1764) 60 Figure 3.Vigilius Eriksen, Portrait of Catherine II at a Mirror (detail) 61 Figure 4.Vladimir Borovikovskii, Portait of Catherine II, Empress of Russia(1794) 101 Figure 5.Richard Brompton, Portrait of Alexandra Branicka with a Bust of Catherine II(1781) 230 Figure 6.Giovanni Battista Lampi the Elder, Portrait of Catherine II(1793) 231 Acknowledgments This is a book about diverse interpretations of the recent past. These in- terpretations emerged during an epoch when the pursuit of historicity first came to be seen as the most pressing of intellectual concerns. Even as the nineteenth century distanced itself from the age of empresses and the Enlight- enment, the eighteenth century’s legacies remained everywhere present: rec- ognized and misapprehended, remembered and meaningfully forgotten. Any acknowledgment of prehistory or influence is necessarily partial and frag- mented, for we are shaped by our recent pasts in a multitude of ways difficult to appreciate fully and consciously. This project, originating in a dissertation defended in the Comparative Literature Department at Stanford University, and maturing over the course of the past seven years of my tenure at UC Berkeley, has taken a decade to complete, in the process accruing temporal layers and pasts of its own and incurring many debts of guidance and friend- ship, most of which I hope to acknowledge here. The thinking that went into this book, on everything from Pushkin to liter - ary fashion to scholarly style, was shaped most lastingly by conversations with my principal dissertation advisor, Monika Greenleaf. Gregory Freidin and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht offered invaluable guidance at the early stages of this project, revealing to me through their distinctive intellectual styles the mul- tip le forms this book might take. Viktor Markovich Zhivov profoundly influ- enced my conception of the eighteenth century; his sudden passing as this book was nearing completion is a loss that will be felt continually and acutely. I have enjoyed much support and inspiration from my colleagues at UC Berke- ley, all of whom are thanked here. Some debts call for individual acknowledg- ment. Irina Paperno set exacting standards of scholarly rigor and intellectual ix x Acknowledgments friendship; I am grateful for her incisive criticism of parts of this book and for her generous humanity. Harsha Ram has helped refine many of this book’s arguments, sometimes by articulating their broader implications before these became visible to the author herself, sometimes simply by reciting poetry we both love in the halls of Dwinelle. Olga Matich read early drafts and reminded me every step of the way of the all-importance of scholarly “oomph.” Anna Muza was always the ideal and most indulgent interlocutor for everything about, and around, this book. Anne Nesbet showed with understated certainty that the Romantic practice of thinking in and through nature is still viable. And Eric Naiman believed that Turgenev belonged in my story, and singled out the one sentence in this book that might become the kernel for the next one. Discussions with many colleagues and friends have left traces through out this book: Polina Barskova, Elif Batuman, Paul Belasky, Boris Bernshtein, Zhenya Bershtein, David Bethea, Julie Buckler, Anne Dwyer, Victoria Frede, Nila Friedberg, Boris Gasparov, Amelia Mukamel Glaser, Stuart Goldberg, Gitta Hammarberg, Kate Holland, Hilde Hoogenboom, Robert P. Hughes, Lilya Kaganovsky, Andrew Kahn, Rita Kaushanskaya, Joachim Klein, Ilya Kliger, Konstantine Klioutchkine, Michael Kunichika, Marcus Levitt, John Malmstad, Michael Marrinan, Boris Maslov, Anne Eakin Moss, Igor Nemirov - sky, Anna Nisnevich, Oleg Proskurin, Vera Proskurina, Renee Perelmutter, Irina Reyfman, Na’ama Rokem, Andreas Schönle, Tatiana Smoliarova, Victoria Somoff, Alyson Tapp, and William Mills Todd III. I am particularly grateful to Andrew Kahn and Irina Reyfman for expertly reviewing the manuscript for the University of Wisconsin Press and sharing their insights on many other occasions. This book was also immensely enriched by conversations with undergraduate and graduate students at UC Berkeley. I have presented sections of this book at meetings of ASEEES, ACLA, and AATSEEL, as well as at colloquia at Amherst, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, USC, and UW Madison, and am thankful to the audiences for their insights. Research for this project was made possi- ble by the generous support of the UC Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowship, the Townsend Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, the UC Berkeley Humanities Research Fellowship, and the COR Junior Faculty Research Grant; predoctoral work was funded by the Whiting Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Stanford Comparative Literature Department, and the Stan- ford Center for Russian and East European Studies Research Grant. Initial versions of sections of chapters 2 and 5 first appeared in The Slavic Reviewunder the titles “Derzhavin’s Ruins and the Birth of Historical Elegy”
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