The first Russian Novel and Matvei Komarov

[jeff brooks]

Dear Natasha, You might want to consider Matvei Komarov, Obstoiatel'nye i
vernye istorii dvukh moshennikov .... (spb, 1779). Shklovsky considered MK
perhaps the first professional Russian author and wrote a famous book about
him. I should add that the publisher Brill will soon be releasing an online
collection, which I edited, of *lubochnaia literatura *mostly 19th and early
20th C but including some early texts. I comment briefly on Komarov as I
recall in When Russia Learned to Read. Cheers, Jeff Brooks
Professor of Russian History
The Johns Hopkins University

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:52 PM, DAVID C HOUSTON <dchouston at wisc.edu> wrote:

> 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;
> >  posto-iannaia zhizn' i zhestokost' fortuny ego goniashchei(St.
> >  Petersburg: [Sukho-putnyi 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/<http://www-rcf.usc.edu/%7Elevitt/>
> >  Departmental Pages: http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/sll/
> >  Personal:
> >  http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/sll/people/faculty1003454.html
> >
> >
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