The first Russian novel
Natasha Randall
nsrandall at EARTHLINK.NET
Thu Apr 23 16:46:20 UTC 2009
Thanks to Joe Andrew, Maria Fomina, Marcus Levitt, David Houston,
Vadim Besprozvanny, Jeff Brooks for your responses - very helpful
indeed!
I do think it's a murky topic, the first 'baggy monster' to emerge
from the primordial mud of moral tales, poetry and chapbooks - and
amidst roiling feelings about Russian identity too... I think I'd
draw a line in the sand sometime after the moral tales like 'The Most
Wonderful and Amazing Story of a Certain Merchant, Foma Grudtsyn,
about His Son Savva' - and the rest of those tales with the very
charming titles (beautiful princesses, sailors, extraordinary
adventures, etc), which are more fabular than anything.
I do think Karlinsky is sort of right to point to Trediakovsky's
translation as the first Russian novel (1730) - especially when you
think about attitudes toward translation in earlier eras. Indeed,
many early novels (Komarov, Emin, Chulkov) drew heavily on French
novels as far as I can tell... but there are degrees to which novels
can be derivative, and perhaps it is going too far to call the
Trediakovsky translation the first Russian novel.
Avvakum's autobiography (c.1660) I think is a major step in the
development of narrative prose - but it's not fiction really, or at
least it declares itself as autobiography whether the facts of it are
accurate or not... Even though, again, early forms of storytelling
treated the issue of fact vs. fiction rather differently than we do
today. So, does it matter that Avvakum's was an autobiography? If so,
when was the first book that set out boldly to create one long, big,
great fiction?
Was it Emin - was he the author of the first Russian novel sometime
between 1763 and 1766? He seems to be the major contender - though
there are suggestions that he wasn't a native Russian. I guess that
doesn't matter because he did write in Russian, after all. He is
swiftly followed by Chulkov and Komarov.... So, I think, as Levitt
suggested, I am left to think that these fellows are our earliest
cluster of Russian novelists in the fullest and most precise sense of
the word - fictional, prosaic, longer than a short story, not a
translation. (Even if they were considered low-brow reading...!)
Perhaps then we have Narezhny and Bulgarin as the first "decent"
novelists as it were... (I haven't read any of the above yet so I'm
not one to judge).
Does anyone know where I can find any of the original manuscripts of
these early efforts of prose (Avvakum, Trediakovsky, Emin particularly)?
Thanks again for the input,
Natasha
Natasha Randall
Translator
On 22 Apr 2009, at 12:52, Natasha Randall wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Could anyone tell me anything about the first Russian novel ever
> written - and indeed where to find an existing copy of it...? I
> suspect there are several contenders for such an accolade but any
> nudges in the right direction would be most appreciated.
>
> I'm looking into the early development of the novel in Russia, up
> to the 1830s. I'd love to go digging in an archive somewhere or
> speak to someone who might know also...
>
> Thanks in advance for any help,
>
> Natasha Randall
> Translator
>
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