Le Sentimentalisme Russe. Revue des etudes slaves. Tome 74, fascicule 4 (review)

Reviewed by: Le Sentimentalisme Russe. Revue des études slaves Valeria Sobol (bio) Jean Breuillard, ed. Le Sentimentalisme Russe. Revue des études slaves. Tome 74, Fascicule 4. Paris: Institut d’Études Slaves, 2002–3. 290pp. €25. ISBN 2-7204-0389-X. To most literary scholars outside the Slavist community, eighteenth-century Russian literature fails to evoke any associations. Unlike the following century, when Russian literature emerged as one of the world's leading literary traditions, no famous names or literary enterprises stand out in Russian eighteenth-century belles lettres. And yet the eighteenth century is one of the most fascinating periods in Russian cultural history during which, in ardent linguistic and literary debates and artistic experimentation, Russian modern prose and poetry were born. In spite of this, even in Slavic studies (especially outside Russia), literature of that period still occupies a marginal place in university curricula and scholarly discussions. [End Page 377] The seventy-fourth issue of the Revue des études slaves—a leading francophone journal dedicated to Slavic studies—addresses this lacuna by bringing together some of the best European scholars on the late eighteenth century, specifically on Russian Sentimentalism. This volume was organized by French Russianist Jean Breuillard, who not only wrote an introduction to the volume, translated several articles into French, and authored book reviews, but also contributed one of the best articles to this collection. Breuillard's illuminating introduction outlines the problematic terminology and contested chronology of Russian Sentimentalism, its philosophical premises, and its novelty vis-à-vis classicist philosophy, aesthetics, and poetics. The introduction also situates Russian Sentimentalism in its European context and makes important observations on the peculiarity of this movement in Russia. Fraanje Maarten's article continues this discussion of concerns unique to Russian Sentimentalism and argues convincingly that Russian Sentimentalists, unlike their Western counterparts, had to battle a view (derived from Montesquieu's theory that national character is dependent on a country's climate) that held their nation to be incapable of strong emotions. At the same time, as Maarten reminds us, Russia's own eighteenth-century history—above all, Peter the Great's reforms directed towards modernizing and westernizing Russia—put its imprint on Russian Sentimentalism, which cannot be fully understood outside the context of these reforms and Russian Enlightenment in general. Andrew Kahn's excellent article, impressive in its scope, methodology, and erudition, traces the history of the topos of tranquillity in Russian literature from the 1740s to 1790s. Kahn elucidates the rich philosophical and, more importantly, medical-scientific context (too often neglected in studies of Russian Sentimentalism) that gave this idea its various shapes and manifestations throughout the second half of the century. While these articles, along with Natalia Kochetkova's discussion of the complex relationship between Russian Sentimentalism and masonry, enrich our understanding of the period as a whole, some other contributions undertake a reinterpretation of canonical works of Russian Sentimentalism. Among them are André Monnier's insightful analysis of temporality in Radishchev's Journey from Petersburg to Moscow, which establishes the temporal structure of the work as mainly Sentimentalist (that is, subjective and emotion-driven), and Nora Buhks's inspiring and sophisticated interpretation of one of the most enigmatic novellas by Karamzin—"The Island of Bornholm." Buhks offers two possible plot variations of the incestuous relationship suggested in the novella and, on this basis, two different readings. The brother-sister version of incest suggests the drama of a split androgyny and wholeness, while the hypothetical stepmother-stepson relationship emphasizes the idea of return and origin. Buhks links these two possibilities to two behavioural models, both personally relevant to Karamzin—those of the traveller and the [End Page 378] exile. In another re-examination of the canon of Russian Sentimentalism, Christo Manolakev productively applies a gender approach to Karamzin's novella "Poor Liza," which he places into the larger context (both Russian and Western) of the theme of female death in literature and the problem of female, as opposed to male, sensibility. The relevance of gender analysis to the studies of eighteenth-century Russian culture is evidenced by a number of essays in this volume that address problems of gender and the process of "feminization" in that period. Laura Rossi...

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