The first Russian Novel

[DAVID C HOUSTON]

Dear Natasha,

Just to add to Professor Levitt's message, you may want to have a look at M. M. Kheraskov's novels, "Kadm i Garmoniia" (1786) and "Polidor, syn Kadma i Garmonii" (1794).  In the first of these (as Mikhail Weisskopf points out in his 1993 monograph on Gogol), Kheraskov in fact writes about how he initially considered calling the work a poema--interesting from a generic standpoint.

Best wishes,

David Houston
University of Wisconsin-Madison

----- Original Message -----
From: Marcus Levitt <levitt at COLLEGE.USC.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 11:46 am
Subject: [SEELANGS] The first Russian Novel
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu


> Dear Natasha,
>   
>  Arguably, the first original Russian novels were by F. A. Emin (c. 1735
>  - 1770) in 1763-66:
>   
>  Nepostoiannaia fortuna, ili Pokhozhdenie Miramonda, 3 vols. (St.
>  Petersburg: [Sukhoputnyi kadetskii korpus], 1763), 1200 copies; 2nd ed.
>  (Moscow: N. Novikov, 1781); 3rd ed. (St. Petersburg: [Sytin], 1792).
>   
>  Prikliucheniia Femistokla i raznye politicheskiia, grazhdanskiia,
>  filosoficheskiia, fizicheskiia i voennyia ego s synom svoim razgovory;
>  posto­iannaia zhizn' i zhestokost' fortuny ego goniashchei(St.
>  Petersburg: [Sukho­putnyi kadetskii korpus], 1763), 655 copies; 2nd ed.
>  (Moscow: N. Novikov, 1781).
>   
>  Nagrazhdennaia postoiannost', ili prikliucheniia Lizarka i Sarmandy(St.
>  Petersburg: [Akademiia nauk], 1764), 612 copies;  2nd ed. (St.
>  Petersburg: Bogdanovich, 1788).
>   
>  Pis'ma Ernesta i Doravry, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg: [Akademiia nauk],
>  1766), 1420 copies; (St. Petersburg: [Akademiia nauk], 1766 [sic; not
>  earlier than 1791).
>   
>  Simon Karlinsky has argued that Trediakovsky's translation of
>  Tallement's Voyage to the Island of Love might deserve that title: 
>  "Tallemant and the Beginning of the Novel in Russia,” Comparative
>  Literature, 15: 3 (1963):  226‑233, and Trediakovskii himself in the
>  foreword argued that translation in this case (when there was no
>  tradition to rely upon, no novelistic language) was tantamount to
>  original creation. And Trediakovsky's translation did have significant
>  influence ...
>   
>  Yours,
>  Marcus
>   
>   
>  Marcus Levitt, Associate Professor
>  
>  Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
>  University of Southern California College of Letters, Arts and
>  Sciences
>  Los Angeles, CA 90089-4353
>  Fax (213) 740-8550
>  Tel  (213) 740-2736
>  Personal Web Page: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~levitt/ 
>  Departmental Pages: http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/sll/ 
>  Personal:
>  http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/sll/people/faculty1003454.html
>  
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