The Russian Novel in France: 1884-1914by F. W. J. Hemmings

The Russian Novel in France: 1884-1914 by F. W. J. HemmingsReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 29, No. 72 (Dec., 1950), pp. 342-348Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204222 .

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342 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

humour and reminiscence amused the court of the Prince; beloved by all, in his crippled old age he was taken care of in the abbey, knew all the scandals of the neighbourhood and lived till 1245. It is interesting that a German monk should record in Latin the memories of a Polish peasant. In some accounts of the peasants Polish words are used, e.g. it is stated that magnum pratum is called in Polish Vela lanca. lt gives the word

przesieka in recognisable form. Finally there appears the first recorded sentence in the Polish language when one Boguchwal, a Czech who had married a Polish woman, seeing his wife exhausted while working a mill, told her to stop and rest while he did it for her. Many stories show the darker side of life in this countryside, for instance acts of arson, as when a barn was burned with 313 choice sheep (electis ovibus), acts of violence and even murder. Such acts were usually punished by the strong princes, but even the persistent abbots had difficulty in obtaining justice from their weaker successors.

Enough has been written to show the great value of a book in which a Polish translation helps to stimulate the imagination of the reader who has only read the sober Latin. We owe a great debt to the Western Institute for enabling us to read and appreciate this important work. The Latin text is the basis of any discussion of it, but we can express the highest appreciation of Dr. Grodecki's Polish translation. Also the excellent Introduction (pp. 9-58) is worthy of the author of the early part of Dzieje Polski sredniowiecznej, still the classical account of early mediaeval Poland.

A. Bruce Boswell.

Liverpool.

The Russian Novel in France : 1884-1914. By F. W. J. Hemmings; Oxford University Press, London, 1950, pp. 250.

Mr. Hemmings's aim in The Russian Novel in France : 1884-1914 is to narrate the course and immediate effects of what he calls the Russian

literary "

invasion "

of France. The first part of the book is the weakest and the least original. It is incomplete and does not add anything new to the subject. It is merely a useful restatement of well-known facts and a collection of excerpts from leading French critics of the period under review. Nevertheless, the book has its merits and is the first of its kind published in this country.

By the " immediate effects

" of the popularity of the Russian works

in France, Mr. Hemmings understands the disintegration of the French naturalist movement. Though the author's emphasis on the import? ance of Russian influence may be considered as somewhat excessive, he does point out very interesting parallels between the works of

Maupassant and Tolstoy, Huysmans and Dostoyevsky. The year in which the first translations of Dostoyevsky into French



REVIEWS. 343

were published (1884) appears to Mr. Hemmings as the starting-point of the Russian

" invasion." He might as well have chosen for his

purpose a date two years later, when Eugene-Melchior de Vogue pub? lished his Roman russe. Indeed, according to Mr. Hemmings, this was an epoch-making event.

For all the importance attributed to Vogue, the author does not

exaggerate the value of his criticism. Mr. Hemmings realises that Le Roman russe was "

primarily a polemical work," one of the counter? blasts to Zola's Roman experimental (1880) and

" only to a subordinate

degree a work of pure criticism "

(p. 33). Yet Mr. Hemmings seems to

lay undue stress on the Frenchman's importance by calling him "

the

original apostle of the Russian novel" (p. 133). He forgets that Vogue had worthy predecessors and mentions only

a few of them, such as Merimee, Courriere, Rambaud, Leroy-Beaulieu and Fleury, but ignores Xavier Marmier cornpletely. Yet the last played a great role in the diffusion of Russian literature in France.

Russia was not a terra incognita to 19th-century France, as Mr.

Hemmings implies by making no reference whatsoever to previous French studies of Russian literature and thus depriving his readers of an appropriate background. He dismisses the question in a few sen? tences : "... in France, there was no sustained interest in Russia. At most one or two enthusiasts had chosen this field for their researches. Their enterprise was considered by the public at large to be as fruitful as mapping the mountains of the moon

" (p. 3). This refers already to

the middle of the 19th century. But no serious scholar can ignore the slow infiltration of Russian literature into France. The role of this is still undervalued, despite studies by Lozinsky, Abel Mansuy, Mohren- shildt and others. Mr. Hemmings attributes sudden French interest in the last quarter of the 19th century to political conditions. It is clear that after 1870 France turned towards Russia in an attempt to counter? balance the rising German power in Europe. But Russian culture attracted litterateurs after every attempt at a political rapprochement with Russia.

Although the establishment of the Chair of Slavonic Studies at the

College de France (1840) was motivated by an opposite political tendency ?a challenge to Russia's Polish policy?it was manifestly a prominent event in the development of Western interest in the Slavonic world in

general. Mr. Hemmings pays but little attention to this fact. He also is unfair to Mickiewicz. One cannot merely say : " In so far as he

[Mickiewicz] mentioned the Russians in his lectures, his patriotism could never have permitted him to suggest that they were anything but a race of barbarians quite unversed in the gentler arts of civilisation

" (p. 4).

Though anti-Russian by conviction, Mickiewicz made in his lectures

interesting references to the Lay of Prince Igor', to Lomonosov, Tred'ya- kovsky, Kantemir and, especially, to Pushkin. The Polish poet was the

only person in France who, on Pushkin's death, paid him due tribute




and gave proof of deep understanding of his greatness. In an article in Le Globe Mickiewicz said inter alia :

" Were it not for Byron's

work, Pushkin would have been acclaimed the greatest poet of his time."

Mr. Hemmings definitely undervalues the importance of Turgenev in the history of Franco-Russian literary relations. After all, the latter was the first Russian writer who drew the attention of Frenchmen to his country's literature. He was not merely, as it is being suggested, an intermediary and

" a missionary of the Russian genius "

(p. 20). His own books had an instant success in France. Zapiski okhotnika reached the French public under a politically significant title : Memoirs d'un Seigneur russe ou Tableaux de la situation actuelle des nobles et des

pay sans dans les provinces russes (1858). A collection of short stories, Scenes de la vie russe, ran through nine editions after appearing in 1858. Between 1861 and 1877 the six great novels of Turgenev were turned into French. In the literary circle of Flaubert, Turgenev had a great personal success and influenced Maupassant and Zola.

Among de Vogue's predecessors, Mr. Hemmings mentions de Cyon as one of the acutest critics of Tolstoy. Though Mr. Hemmings gives much space to the lives of the critics he quotes from, he admits that with

regard to de Cyon he has been unable to discover any particulars of interest (p. 17). There is little doubt that the mysterious M. de Cyon was no other than Ilya Cyon, the well-known Moscow correspondent of Katkov's Moskovskiye Vedomosti and author of the Histoire de VEntente

franco-russe (Paris, 1895). Cyon was not a Frenchman, as it is implied. The prefix de was his own invention, as were also the assessments of his

personal role in the improvement of Franco-Russian relations. This Russian publicist cum physiologist contributed to several French periodi? cals, having been briefed by Katkov

" to foster friendly feelings towards

Russia in the Press." Mention must be made of Mr. Hemmings's own bibliography, or

rather of the lack of it. Except footnotes, the book carries merely a

chronologically amended version of V. Boutchik's list (1935) of trans? lations of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and the representative?though very incomplete?list of publications concerning Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which appeared in France during the years 1875-1914. Students will find the omission of a complete bibliography of Mr. Hemmings's subject very disappointing. It is not clear to what extent Russian material, if

any, was used in the research. The only reference to Russian sources is on p. 203 ; it deals with unpublished letters from Romain Rolland to

Tolstoy, which appeared in the series Russkaya Kul'tura i Frantsiya, vol. II, Literaturnoye Nasledstvo, Nos. 31-32, Moscow, 1937. The same series, however, contains valuable critical contributions which presumably remained unknown to Mr. Hemmings though they deal directly with the

subject-matter of his book. Doubts also may be raised as to some of Mr. Hemmings's axiomatic



REVIEWS. 345

pronouncements, i.e. : "

Tolstoy's novels are all histories of conver? sions

" (p. 46) or

" Turgenev is a stylist and an artist: the other two

[Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky] conspicuously lacked these qualities of purely aesthetic perfection . . .

" (p. 55) etc.

The reader is also puzzled by an inexplicable inconsistency in presen? tation. Some extracts from French works are given in French, some are translated into English, e.g. Marguerite's Jour d'epreuve (on p. 112 in

English) and the same author's Pascal Gefosse (on p. 113 in French). Russian works are quoted throughout in English, but Tolstoy's What is Art? is quoted in French (p. 182).

Returning to the main theme of the book under review, one must not

forget that, though it does not deal with Russian influence on the French

novel, nevertheless the question of influence unavoidably comes into the examination of interactions in literary development of the two countries. It is to Mr. Hemmings's credit that he places the question in its true

perspective. Undoubtedly the problem of influence is one of the most difficult. Mr. Hemmings does not overplay the theme of a conscious or unconscious coincidence of plot in two or more works, but emphasises their common spirit, which is certainly the only plane where influence

really matters. Mr. Hemmings detects echoes of Tolstoy in Maupassant's Mont-

Oriol, but is aware that such echoes may have been nothing more than a concession to the new demands of literary fashion. Commenting on

Maupassant's last novel, Notre Cceur, Mr. Hemmings makes an interesting remark, namely that the motif of suffering and pity?and this was at first all that French writers saw in the great Russian novelists?when

transplanted from the Russian to the French novel narrowed consider?

ably in its meaning. "

Men and women in the books of Tolstoy and

Dostoyevsky suffer a cosmic ache "

(p. 100), while for French authors

suffering is usually more egoistical, being based on a delusion of the senses.

A sense of pity extending to the whole of suffering humanity is more visible in the work of Paul Margueritte, who distilled it from Dostoyevsky, while from Tolstoy he learned qualities of truthful reporting and the lesson that not too much must be expected from life.

Like Maupassant and Margueritte, Huysmans also breaks away from the Medan group in the mid-eighties. He moves steadily away from the

cynical naturalism of his earlier style towards the lofty spirituality of his later works. This may be explained, however, rather by Huysmans's gradual conversion to Catholicism than by his literary development. The influence of Dostoyevsky is limited and temporary, and can be detected only in Ld-bas (1891).

Paul Bourget was more permeated with Dostoyevsky's "

religion of

suffering "

(cf. Crime d'amour), and his Andre Cornelis (1886) is based on the same thesis as Crime and Punishment. While in Le disciple (1889) the hero

" might have come out of one of Dostoyevsky's books

" (p. 131),




Bourget himself wrote that this novel marked the passage from a purely analytical to a moralising art. And most of his later works were romans a these, which points to a basic change in his outlook. The Russian novel

certainly turned Bourget away from the mere observation of physical phenomena, cultivated by the naturalist school, and led him to a moral and metaphysical interpretation of reality.

It is commonplace to say that creative writers do not receive influences as readily as their less gifted colleagues. Yet, according to Gide,

" the

strong have never feared what the weak call influences : for the strong,, these are never anything but incitements." It appears possible to illus? trate this in terms of the relation of Edouard Rod and Charles-Louis

Philippe to the Russian novelists. Rod was a very unoriginal writer and has imitated many masters. Amongst the naturalists he was per? haps the one who owed most to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. His work is,

permeated with the spirit of universal love and a lofty moral tone.

Already in the mid-eighties (La Course a la mort) Edouard Rod realised that the physical world is only one aspect of the universe and rejected the uncompromising materialism of Zola. His most candid acknow?

ledgement of indebtedness to the Russians is Le sens de la vie (1889). There are also echoes of Oblomov and Clara Milich in his earlier work.

On the other hand, Charles-Louis Philippe was no less impressed by the Russian novelists than Edouard Rod. But, being a more original writer than the latter, he came under far more indirect influence. It is rather his ideas and philosophy that are closely related to Dostoyevsky*s spirit.

In France of the eighteen-eighties Dostoyevsky was not likely to have

any serious followers ; he was looked upon with a certain condescension

by the middle class and was considered too un-French. His religion of

suffering humanity was admitted as an interesting novelty, and genteel authors could afford to introduce the notion in some of their novels.

Philippe belonged to a different generation and was not a bourgeois ; his appraisal of life had much in common with that of Dostoyevsky. The

pages on Charles-Louis Philippe belong to the best of the reviewed book. In fact, contrary to Mr. Hemmings's opinion, Vogue revealed only

Tolstoy to the French public, Turgenev being already well known. The same Vogue, who hailed Tolstoy with such fervour, was rather more restrained in the treatment of Dostoyevsky and misunderstood the Russian's later work. As Vogue says: "I do not know, amongst the countless figures invented by Dostoyevsky, any one whom Charcot could not have claimed as his own for some reason or other."

Emile Hennequin in the Ecrivains francises; etudes de critique scientifique (1889) was the first to realise that just as the truly distinctive

quality of Tolstoy's characters is their unexceptional normality, so the salient characteristic of Dostoyevsky's heroes is their abnormality. Hen-

nequin's analysis is surprisingly penetrating, although he had read only



REVIEWS. 347

The Insulted and Injured and Crime and Punishment. But in the mid- ' eighties and in the 'nineties Tolstoy aroused more interest in France than

Dostoyevsky. He had an enormous prestige as a novelist, and his philo? sophy satisfied middle-class society. He also had good commentators and enthusiastic followers (Romain Rolland). Yet the vogue of Tol-

stoyism was quickly over, and Dostoyevsky came into his own just before the outbreak of the First World War. He then seriously challenged the fame of Tolstoy in France. But better critics of Dostoyevsky's work and more faithful translations were still needed, and above all, perhaps,, a sceptical attitude to the accepted scale of moral values and a realisation of the complexity of the spirit of man. By 1913 a new start was made- in France towards exploring Dostoyevsky. Suares made an enormous

step forward since Vogue, but it was Elie Faure who, in a collection of

monographs called Les Constructeurs (1914), really explained Dostoyevsky to the French public. Faure sees the Russian novelist primarily as a brilliant psychologist. Dostoyevsky's characters are as

" real

" as those

of any imaginative artist, he says. Like some of the later critics, Faure

appraises Dostoyevsky's figures as the embodiment of intelligence and

thought in their complete nakedness, figures divested of every veil which shrouds them from the eye of the beholder. Dostoyevsky reshuffles all

values, and sincerity emerges as the supreme, the only real virtue. For

Faure, Dostoyevsky is important principally as the herald of a new

morality : it is in that sense that he is a " constructeur."

After the war, Dostoyevsky's influence assumed far greater propor? tions?Gide, Claudel, Proust, Duhamel were all under his spell, whilst

Tolstoy's influence on formative thought came to an end. Mr. Hemmings uses an unfortunate phrase in his conclusion ; he claims

that "If Vogue had not succeeded in reducing Dostoyevsky to a few happy formulas?' the apostle of the religion of human suffering,'

' a man who travelled everywhere, but travelled only by night'?then the chances are that [he] would have had a far longer struggle to win readers"

(p. 237). This is quite incorrect. Vogue had not understood Dostoyev? sky, and none of his contemporaries could have done so. The Russian novelist would have come into his own anyway when the time was ripe to accept him.

It would be constructive to consider the evolution of French criticism on Dostoyevsky in its relation to Russian criticism. After all, in Russia, Belinsky and Dostoyevsky's contemporaries did not see much more in the great writer than the theme of pity and compassion plus an interest in morbid psychology. Mr. Hemmings does not even mention the possi? bility of later French litterateurs studying Russian criticisms. Dostoev?

sky had to wait for adequate recognition, for his mentality did not belong, historically, to his own time.

More documentation, a complete bibliography, and a parallel review of what Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky meant to the Russians at the time of their dissemination in France, and Mr. Hemmings's work would have




been a most valuable contribution to comparative literature, that stimu?

lating field of literary criticism which is still so little explored in England.

Georgette Donchin. London.

Un contributo alto studio dell'ideologia panslava?La figura di Svatopluk Cech. By Wolf Giusti; Editrice University di Trieste, 1950.

Synthetic portraits of two leading Czech 19th-century poets have

recently appeared in current reviews. One of these is a pen-portrait of

Svatopluk Cech by the well-known Slavist Wolf Giusti in a review

published by the University of Trieste. Present trends tend to belittle both psycho-analytical criticism and

ideological treatment of a subject. Psycho-analytical methods are

rejected even in the Soviet-dominated territories, moreover the poet is denied both spiritual and moral personality, and literary criticism has to move within the narrow limits of dialectical materialism. Giusti sees in Svatopluk Cech the herald of an ideology. Though far from being bound down by the onesidedness of dialectical materialism, Giusti has not avoided all the pitfalls of ideological analysis.

His opening chapter deals with the outstanding events of the second half of 19th-century Bohemia?events of cultural, social and economic moment. These are, according to Giusti, the reinforcing of the Austrian constitution in i860 which gave the Czechs greater cultural freedom ; the founding of the Sokol movement in 1862, a body-training organisa? tion which became the focus of Czech patriotic activity and Slav solidar?

ity ; and the return of the Bohemian crown to Prague in 1867. Some other factors of equal moment have been overlooked, such as the found?

ing of the Czech National Theatre, the activities of the Czech University and the Czech Museum, and the rise of Bohemia's industrial potential.

In the second chapter the author analyses the poet's work : his

delicately modest lyrics of meadow flowers and the winter season

(" Ice Flowers "

and "

Winter Fantasies ") ; his small-town idyll "

In the Shade of the Limetree

" ; the satire

" Mr. Beetle's Trip into the

Fifteenth Century," and some poems in the folksong style. The author sees a certain disparity between the heroic aspirations of the poet's epic work, and the modest, more intimate small-town framework within which it is couched. Giusti is right in thinking that the poet was aware of this disparity.

The third chapter is entitled "

Cech's liberalism." Here the author of the article challenges the view that Sv. Cech was a poet of liberalism. Giusti's definition makes the term include a sense of proportion and limitation ; an urge for historical fact; a modern European outlook ; the will to safeguard the individual against external pressures, irrational

trends, equalitarianism and collectivism; an aristocratic cultural stan? dard ; and a hatred of rhetoric. Alongside liberalism Giusti places



Documents

The Russian Novel in France: 1884-1914by F. W. J. Hemmings