Translations of Henry Fielding's Works in Eighteenth-Century Russia

Translations of Henry Fielding's Works in Eighteenth-Century RussiaAuthor(s): Iu. D. LevinSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 217-233Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210256 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 00:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.205 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:40:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mhra

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucl

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucl

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210256?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


SEER, Vol. 68, No. 2, April iggo

Translations of Henry Fielding's

Works in Eighteenth-Century

Zussia Iu. D. LEVIN

THE reception of English literature in eighteenth-century Russia is an important and complex question in comparative literature. It remains a field that has received little attention, either in the Soviet Union or in the West. The only attempt at a broad general survey to date is still the study of the American Slavist ErnestJ. Simmons, published in 1935. His English Literature and Culture in Russia (I553-I840) was the first book of this kind on the subject and is now dated. The author was obviously limited in his access to factual information, and had to rely on second-hand sources. This resulted in lacunae and inevitable super- ficiality, and led him to arbitrary statements and factual inaccuracies. Problems of influence are treated in a mechanical fashion; the internal dynamics of Russian literature are almost totally ignored.

The scholar who takes this area as his field of study is confronted with predictable difficulties. The topic is a dual one: the problem of the reader and the problem of the translator. I have approached it from the point of view of the translator. We should also keep in mind the natural obstacles facing the researcher here. For historical reasons, Russian literature had closer ties in the eighteenth century with German and French literature than with English, so that the impact of the latter is veiled by other influences and often difficult to discern. Besides, English fiction came to Russia primarily in French, German, and even other translations. And the widespread eighteenth-century practice of anonymity, together with the use of literally true, but misleading claims that a work was 'translated from the French' or 'translated from the German' frequently make more difficult the task of identifying the author's name and nationality.

The Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR is at present preparing a general study on the history of Russian translated literature in the eighteenth century. This

Dr Iurii Levin is Distinguished Senior Research Scholar (vedushchii nauchnyi sotrudnik) at the Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute of Russian Literature in Leningrad (Pushkinskii Dom).

This article is a revised version of a lecture given in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, in June I988, when Dr Levin was in Britain to receive an honorary D.Litt. degree from Oxford University.



2I8 Iu. D. LEVIN

will, among other things, assess the place of English literature in the Russian culture of that period. Clearly a broadly focused survey of this kind equipped with the contemporary methodology of comparative literature needs preliminary research not only on many specific points, but also on major problems such as Russian-English literary relations. Such research is currently being carried out both in Great Britain and in the Soviet Union. In the USSR the founder of the study of Russian- English literary and cultural relations was Academician M. P. Alekseev,1 with whom, incidentally, I now share the honour of receiv- ing the Oxford degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa. Academician Alekseev was my teacher and mentor from my student days at Lenin- grad University; thus it is my duty to continue his work in this area of scholarship. This connection also determined the subject of the present lecture. Among M. P. Alekseev's works there is a brief study, almost a sketch, entitled 'Fielding in the Russian Language', published in English in the USSR to mark the bicentenary of the writer's death in I 954.2 At the beginning the author says (the style reflects the time):

Henry Fielding is one of the great English writers who began to be exceedingly popular in Russia in the eighteenth century ... The Russian reader has always appreciated his positive life-affirming philosophy, his humanism, interest in the destinies of the plain people, his gentle humour and the pungent satire which characterizes his work, especially his novels - those superb examples of realistic writing.

It is this theme that I shall try to develop here, limiting it to the eighteenth century.

The first Russian translations of Fielding's novels appeared in the I 76os and I 770s (as a playwright he seems to have been of no interest to Russians). This was the time when Western European literatures were beginning to be widely translated in Russia. It should be borne in mind that the advent of Classicism in eighteenth-century Russian literature interrupted the old prosaic tradition, and only the verse genres were recognized as fully valid literary forms. But by the I76os Russian literature was already experiencing the same crisis of Classicism as the rest of Europe. Its dominant forms - ode and tragedy - were slowly

1 See for instance his articles 'Angliiskii iazyk v Rossii i russkii iazyk v Anglii', Uchenye zapiski Leningradskogo universiteta, no. 72, Seriia filologicheskikh nauk, vypusk 9, Leningrad, I944, pp. 77-137; "'Robinzon Kruzo" v russkikh perevodakh', Mezhdunarodnye sviazi russkoi literatury, Moscow-Leningrad, I963, pp. 86-ioo; 'Pervoe znakomstvo s Shekspirom v Rossii', Shekspir i russkaia kul'tura, Moscow-Leningrad, I965, pp. 9-69; 'Chesterfild v russkikh perevodakh', Chesterfild. Pis'ma k synu; Maksimy; Kharaktery, Leningrad, I97I, pp. 3 I 2-1 7, and his comprehensive work Russko-angliiskie literaturnye sviazi (XVIII vek -- pervaia polovina XIX veka), Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 9I, Moscow, I982, 863 pp.

2 VOKS (Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo Kul'turnykh sviazei s zagranitsei) Bulletin, 1954, 5, pp. 88-92.



HENRY FIELDING S WORKS IN RUSSIA 219

replaced by prose under the influence of the Enlightenment. The majority of Russian readers, who were gradually becoming more numerous and whose social composition was becoming broader and more democratic, also turned to prose. The original Russian literature published at the time could not completely satisfy this new demand; so translation was resorted to, especially since interest in general human problems unrestricted by any national context was typical of the Enlightenment.

However, the establishment of the translated novel on Russian soil was not a simple process. This new prose genre met with serious opposition on the part of the advocates of Classicism, among them eighteenth-century Russia's most prominent playwright, Aleksandr Sumarokov,3 so the first European novels translated into Russian were works that could be interpreted as epic poems of love or philosophy rendered in prose, such as the Voyage 2 l'fle d'Amour by Paul Talmann or Fenelon's LesAventures de Telemaque. Russian translations of these novels were published as early as the 1730s. But it was not until the middle of the I 750s that translations began to appear of works seeking to give a realistic picture of life: the novels of Lesage and Prevost.

The translation of literary prose became common in the reign of Catherine II (after I762). The Empress herself encouraged it, being eager to demonstrate the enlightened character of her rule both to her own subjects and to foreigners. Consequently, the profession of translator acquired a certain prestige in the eyes of the public. Thus in 1778 the author Grigorii Braiko, introducing his new magazine Sanktpeter- burgskii vestnik, replaced the opening policy article with 'fragments and thoughts quoted from different authors'. Among others he quoted a passage 'from an English journal' which stated that in England the work of a translator has always been held in much esteem by that people.

An excellent translator is no less honoured and famous there than a writer; the way to immortality is equally open to him, and everyone can perceive the value of the service he is performing for society.4

And this attitude towards translators was offered as an example for emulation.

Meanwhile, the translators themselves, having turned to the Euro- pean novel, a genre new to the Russian reader, took pains to defend it and to present it in the best possible light, inserting appropriate arguments into their introductions to the published translations. In most cases they did not point out the artistic merits of the work they

3 See his article 'O chtenii romanov', Trudoliubivaia pchela, 1759, 6, pp. 374-75. 4 Sanktpeterburgskii vestnik, I 778, i, January, p. 14.



220 Iu. D. LEVIN

offered, but in accordance with the aesthetic principles of the Enlight- enment emphasized its moral excellence and instructive value. The custom of such apologias was started in 1760 by Stepan Poroshin (I 74 I-69), at the time a lieutenant in the Land Cadet Corps, later tutor to Tsarevich Paul.

It should be mentioned at this stage that in 1757 the Land Cadet Corps had set up a printing house, for the publishing of military textbooks. But this limitation was only briefly observed and the range of publications soon widened considerably. In 1759 a group of teachers and students at the school established a magazine, Prazdnoe vremia v pol'zu upotreblennoe (Leisure Time made Useful), mostly filled with translations of moralizing articles from English, French, and German magazines. Gradually there formed around the Cadet Corps printing house a group of translators whose work it published, usually translations of stories and novels.5 One of their number was the already- mentioned nineteen-year-old Lieutenant Stepan Poroshin, who pre- faced his translation of Prevost's novel Le Philosophe anglais, ou l'Histoire de Monsieur Cleveland,fils naturel de Cromwell, with a declarative introduction. Proceeding from the tenet that 'moral admonition' is always 'good for mankind', the young author brought it into accord with the fashionable eighteenth-century requirement that profit should be combined with pleasure (which goes back to Horace and his formula of utile dulci) and pointed out that 'even those people most celebrated in the world of scholarship, pursuing the common good', seek 'by providing their moralizings with the glitter of enchanting adornments to arouse greater enjoyment and attention among their readers'. Among the 'kinds' of literary work 'written with the said benevolent intention' Poroshin counts also novels, 'those books invented with the aim of instructing us in the rules of virtuous living while describing various adventures'. 6

The idea of combining pleasure with profit was further developed by Evsignei Kharlamov (I 734-85), a most prolific translator, also connected with the Land Cadet Corps, where he served both as a teacher and as manager of the printing house. His views are expounded in the introduction to his translation of the anonymous English novel The History of Charlotte Summers, the Fortunate Parish Girl (I 750), made from a French translation and entitled Sirota aglinskaia, ili Istoriia o Sharlotte Summers (I 763). Here, noting that 'there are two kinds of pastime to be derived from the reading of books, to wit pleasure and benefit',

5 See D. D. Shamrai, 'Ob izdateliakh pervogo russkogo chastnogo zhurnala: (po mat- erialam arkhiva Kadetskogo korpusa)', XVIII vek. Sbornik statei i materialov, Moscow- Leningrad, I 935, pp. 377-85.

6 Filozof aglinskoi, ili Zhitie Klevelanda, pobochnogo syna Kromveleva samim im pisannoe ... [St Petersburg], I 760, I, pp. 3-5 [unnumbered].




Kharlamov claimed that the book he had translated involved 'both these pastimes; for because of its light but extremely persuasive moral discourse it could be called instructive, and because of the extra- ordinary events contained in it it could also be called pleasing'.7

It should be noted in connection with our present theme that the novel translated by Kharlamov had an indirect link with Fielding, since the anonymous author declares the latter to be his spiritual father and his model as a writer.8 Kharlamov, of course, had never seen the original English text and knew nothing of these references to Fielding; he used a French translation by P.-A. de La Place, first published in I 75 I and several times reprinted. In the introduction to his translation La Place, who had earlier translated The History of Tom Jones, noted that he had acted here 'ainsi que dans Tom Jones, en accomodant cet Ouvrage, sans le denaturer, au gouit FranSois'.9 These words did not find their way into Kharlamov's introduction, but it is possible that they drew his attention to Fielding's major novel, the translation of which he himself soon undertook; of which more later.

Charlotte Summers was not the first English novel to be translated into Russian. The priority in this belongs to Defoe's famous Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the first part of which appeared a year earlier in the translation of Iakov Trussov; in 1764 it was followed by part II, and before the end of the century there were four editions. It would be no exaggeration to say that Defoe's novel immediately established the position of the English Enlightenment novel in Russia. As early as May 1764 Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia, the journal of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, responding to the appearance of the second part of the novel, asserted that the first part had been 'greeted by the public with much pleasure ... through its wise invention [it] affords innocent enjoyment to every kind of reader'.10 And five months later a reviewer in the same journal, in discussing what novels translators should choose for translation, wrote:

.. . we advise them at least to apply their efforts to English books or those translated from English, rather than to French ones; as in those mostly honesty and virtue, and in these more often the passions, are supreme."

This was the accepted opinion among educated Russians by the time that the first translations of Fielding's novel appeared.

The first book of Fielding's to come out in Russian, in 1766, was not, however, one of his celebrated novels. It was A Journey from this World to

7 Sirota aglinskaia, iii Istoriia o Sharlotte Summers . . ., St Petersburg, I 763, I, p. 3 [unnumbered].

8 See W. L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding, New Haven, I 9 1 8, 2, pp. 134-35. 9 L'Orpheline Angloise, ou Histoire de Charlotte Summers, nouvelle edition, London, I 78 ,1, p. 3.

Unfortunately this was the earliest edition available to me. 10 Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia i izvestiia o uchenykh delakh, 1764, May, p. 463. 1 Ibid., October, P. 373.



222 Iu. D. LEVIN

the Next - a fantastic satire in imitation of Lucian included in the three-volume collection, Miscellanies, that Fielding published by sub- scription in I 743. Its translator was Vladimir Zolotnitskii ( I 74i-after 1797), who a short time before had taught German at the Land Cadet Corps, and in the year the translation was published served as secretary to N. I. Panin. Perhaps it was the political acuteness of Fielding's satire that attracted Zolotnitskii. He did not know English and was using a fairly close German translation published in Copenhagen in I 759.12 He seems to have known nothing whatsoever about Fielding, and in accordance with Fielding's mystifying introduction, reproduced in the German edition, took him to be simply the publisher of a forgotten manuscript found in a bookshop: 'Mr Fielding, having found [the manuscript] ... delivered it to us in German [sic!], and I am presenting it to the public in Russian', Zolotnitskii wrote in his introduction. And yet his opinion of the book itself was high: 'We see that this author was one of those learned people who have a penetrating mind: for in this fictitious and humorous tale he has described most reasonably the human state and the passions thereof'.13

This did not prevent him, however, from treating the text he was translating in a very high-handed manner, in the belief that, unlike scientific and philosophical works, books 'of philological, romantic and other content may be left to the knowledgeable translator's own discretion'. For this reason he could announce: 'with the publication of this translation I ought to give warning to the reader that I have left out some passages as altogether pointless; others have been completely changed'.'4 Indeed, a comparison of the two texts reveals thiat chapters viii and ix of the original and the German translation have been considerably shortened and combined into a single chapter eight (which necessitated a change of numbering of all the following chapters). In the process Zolotnitskii cut out of chapter viii episodes juxtaposing historical characters of different epochs: Homer here holds in his lap his eighteenth-century French translator Mme Dacier and questions her about Alexander Pope, English translator of the Iliad; Virgil walks hand in hand with Addison; Shakespeare converses with Milton and the Restoration actors. In the Russian translation these episodes are absent. The closing passages of Fielding's Journey - the story of Anne Boleyn, presented as a separate fragment of the dis- covered manuscript do not appear in the Russian translation at all; they are replaced by the narrative of one Harmel, relating how he

12 Reise nach der andern Welt. Aus dem Englischen des Herrn Henry Fielding Esq., ibersetzt, Copenhagen, I759.

13 Puteshestvie v drugoi svet. Ostroumnaia povest', s aglinskago podlinnika na nemetskii, a s nemetskago na rossiiskii iazyk perevel V.Z., St Petersburg, 1766, p. 3.

14 Ibid., pp. 3-4.




perished as a result of the schemes of his unfaithful wife Lucilla, killed by her lover. We may assume that the story was borrowed by Zolotnitskii from some source which remains to be established. And lastly, contrary to the original English text and the German translation, Zolotnitskii added his own 'happy' ending:

Being moved by pity, seeing many souls condemned to eternal torment, I turned away from this shameful sight and went back into the interior of that celestial realm to enjoy bliss inconceivable to mortal intelligence.15

The publication of the Russian translation of the Journey scarcely helped to promote Fielding's reputation in Russia, especially since he was named only once in the introduction as the publisher of an anonymous manuscript. Nor is any information available concerning the popularity of the Journey with the readers; at any rate there was no second edition. It was only four years later, with the appearance in Russian of Tom Jones, that Fielding became widely known in Russia.

It is interesting to note that this major work of Fielding's attracted two Russian translators simultaneously. One of them was Evsignei Kharlamov, already mentioned; the other was a translator, whose name is unknown, was connected with the Assembly Promoting the Translation of Foreign Books into Russian.

The Assembly was founded in 1768 by Empress Catherine II, who made a personal grant of 5,ooo roubles annually for the remuneration of the translators. Although officially the Assembly was not subject to the authority of the Academy of Sciences, close ties existed between them, and the main programme of the Assembly consisted of translations from European, mostly French, thinkers, the Greek and Latin authors, and scientific treatises in various fields. Literary fiction held a comparatively small place among the productions of the Assembly, only those works being translated which were already internationally famous: Voltaire's Candide, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, the tragedies of Corneille, and so on.16 The fact that the translators of the Assembly turned to the novels of Fielding was, therefore, an acknowledgement of their significance.

We have, however, only indirect information about the translator of Tom Jones. Kharlamov stated in the introduction to his own translation that when his labours were coming to an end he learned that 'the book was assigned for translation by the Assembly promoting that of foreign books into Russian'. So he hastened to complete and publish his translation, 'having received firm assurance that its content, approved by so famous and celebrated a Society, cannot but be praised by the

15 Ibid., p. 288. 16 See V. P. Semennikov, Sobranie staraiushcheesia o perevode inostrannykh knig, uchrezhdennoe

Ekaterinoi II. I768-I783 gg. Istoriko-literaturnoe issledovanie, St Petersburg, 19 I 3.



224 Iu. D. LEVIN

public'.17 The appearance of Kharlamov's translation evidently prevented the completion and publication of the Assembly translation.

Kharlamov presented Fielding as 'the most celebrated writer of the [English] nation' and assured the future readers of the book 'who have not studied languages' that, 'having found in it an excellent picture of human character and events credible in every detail, enhanced by some moral instruction profitable to the young, [they] will read it with no small pleasure'.18 Thus stress was laid on the natural union of realism ('events credible in every detail') and immaculate morality. The latter, indispensable for a work of art from the point of view of Enlightenment aesthetics, was further stressed in the dedication of the translation (to V. A. Chertkov, a former teacher of Kharlamov's in the Cadet Corps), which indicated that the translator was drawn to this book by 'various credible adventures contained in it and a picture of human manners and passions that serves to instruct the Readers and to confirm them in the triumph of virtue as much as to turn them from vice'.19

Like Charlotte Summers, Tom Jones was translated by Kharlamov from a French translation by La Place. Pierre-Antoine de La Place ( 707- 93), whose major work was an eight-volume Le The/atre anglois ( 745-48) containing expositions of the plays of Shakespeare and other English playwrights, had published in London in I 750 L'Histoire de Tom Jones, which ran to several editions. In his 'Lettre ecrite a Monsieur Fielding, Auteur de cet Ouvrage' preceding the translation, La Place defended his arbitrary treatment of the original by pleading that French taste was undoubtedly superior to the aesthetic taste of any other nation. He actually claimed that if 'Monsieur Fielding ... avoit ecrit pour les FranSois, il eut probablement supprime un grand nombre de passages tres excellents en eux-memes, mais qui leur paro'troient deplaces'.20 Accordingly, La Place proceeded to abridge Fielding's novel dras- tically, compressing the six-volume English original text into four volumes in the French translation. He omits the introductory chapters to each of the eighteen books of the novel, chapters that are, in fact, social, moral, and critical digressions very important to Fielding. The chapters in which the plot of the novel is developed are considerably shortened, with two adjoining chapters often compressed into one. As a

17 Povest' o Tomase lonese, ili Naidenysh. Sochinennaia na Aglinskom iazyke G. Fil'dingom. A so onago perevedennaia na Frantsuzskoi G. Delaplasom. S Frantsuzskago zhe na Rossiiskoi Evsigneem Kharla-- movym, St Petersburg, 1770, I, pp. II I [unnumbered]. 18 Ibid., pp. 9-io [unnumber ed]. 19 Ibid., p. 7 [unnumbered]. 20 Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l'Enfant trouve'; Traduction de l'Anglois de Mr. Fielding, par Mr. De La

Place, London-Paris, I 764, 1, p. vi. See also Constance B. West, 'La theorie de traduction au XVIII siecle. Par rapport surtout aux traductions francaises d'ouvrages anglais', Revue de littirature comparee, I 2e annee, I 932, p. 338. On the impression made by La Place's translation in France see Harold Wade Streeter, The Eighteenth Century English Novel in French Translation: A Bibliographical Study, New York, 1936, pp. 76-8 I.




result book II, for instance, comprising nine chapters in the original, has only four in translation; book IV has ten out of fourteen chapters remaining; in book VII nine remain out of fifteen; and so on.

One example will sufficiently illustrate La Place's treatment of Fielding's text. Chapter 2 of book iv of the original is devoted to the description of Sophia Western and occupies several pages where Fielding, in a parody of solemn rhetoric, piles up elaborate periods permeated with quaint idioms, mention of historical characters, quota- tions of poetry both English and Latin, etc. La Place rejects all this and restricts himself to a few lines to which he adds the translation of the next chapter of the original in order to form a full chapter. Those lines read:

Le veridique Auteur de cette Histoire a fait un portrait en grand, et tres-detaille, des charmes, de la figure, du caractere, et des talents de notre Heroine; et moi, pour epargner a nos FranSois, moins patients que nos voisins, l'ennui toujours inseparable des longueurs,je dirai tout simplement, Que Sophie etoit belle, et qui plus est, aimable.21

After which La Place suggests that readers should open any of the old novels and confer upon Sophia all the charms of the princess described in it.

Kharlamov's translation follows the French text:

ArAHHCKHPI ABTOp cei HloBecTH 3AeAaA BeAHKOe 143o6pa}KeHHe H BeCbMa

upOCTpaHHoe o KpacoTe AHLIa, HpaBa H CBOiiCTB HamIeM repOiHH; aX, 4a6bi AHHIHTb HaIIIHX )PpaH14Y30B, He CTOAb TeprieAHBbIX CKOAb HainH coceAH,

CKYKH BcerAa Hepa3AyIHOH OT npOCTpaHCTBa, cKaZy COBcem npOCTO, 'TO

Co(pmq 6bIAa npeKpacHa H Aio6AeH'HY AOCToHHa.22

Of course, La Place did not always treat the English original with so little respect. Nevertheless, Fielding's famous novel in its French guise was deprived of much of its richness, and it was this abridged version that was translated into Russian. In addition a comparative majority of educated Russian readers knew French and could acquaint themselves with La Place's translation directly.

Kharlamov's translation was published in separate volumes, in an edition of 6oo copies each, during I 770-7 I. Apparently it did not gain immediate recognition. At least in April I 77I, when only three volumes out of four had appeared, Kharlamov placed an advertisement in the Sanktpeterburgskie vedomosti announcing that only IOO copies had been sold of each volume published to date, and offering wholesale buyers the remaining part of the editions at a discount of twenty to thirty per

21 Histoire de Tom Jones, i, pp. 8I-82. 22 Povest' o Tomase Ionese, I, pp . 1 2 2-2 3.



226 IU. D. LEVIN

cent.23 But when the translation, entitled Povest' o Tomase lonese, i1i Naidenysh, was published in full, the author of the book did achieve wide popularity among the Russian reading public, and this success was undoubtedly one of the reasons why the very next year, 1772, the translators of the Assembly Promoting the Translation of Foreign Books began to publish no fewer than three well-known novels by Fielding: Joseph Andrews, Jonathan Wild, and Amelia. As Kharlamov had done before him, the translator of two of the three novels, Ivan Sytenskii, presented the English author in his introductions to the best possible advantage.

... Mr Fielding, a famous English playwright, whose memory is honoured not only in his own land but all over Europe. Everywhere his writings are perused with pleasure, and not only did the British feel no indignation at his choosing for the most part the faults of his native land as a subject for the exercising of his pen; but they actually considered him their benefactor and a good citizen of London, striving to remove their defects.24

Thus was the author of Joseph Andrews recommended to the reader. In presenting to his readers the novel about Jonathan Wild, robber and outlaw, Sytenskii maintains 'that the name of the author is in itself sufficient to ensure the desired success for this novel', yet on account of its contents considers it 'his duty to suggest certain things in its defence'. Comparing Fielding to Richardson, whose novels 'contain in them at every turn traces of virtuous deeds and noble thoughts', the Russian translator asks a rhetorical question:

... is there not as much need for light to penetrate the depths of vice and the core of an evil heart, so long as they are presented in all their utter vileness and without the risk of exciting passions in souls of meagre wit?25

Thus was the critical nature of Fielding's realism explained and the social meaning of his satire accounted for. At the same time, unlike many of his contemporaries, Sytenskii held it to be 'the translator's duty' to translate faithfully, without 'softening' 'certain passages that may not be very pleasing to some readers'.26

But there is not much to be said 'about the accuracy of the translations of Fielding's novels into Russian, since they were all themselves made from intermediate translations. Sytenskii used German translations; at the same time P. I. von Berg, a graduate of Moscow Univer- sity, translated Amelia from a French translation by M.-J.-L. 23 Sanktpeterburgskie vedomosti, I77I, 29, 12 April, P. 5 [unnumbered]; the advertiser calls

himself the 'person working on the translation of Naidenysh, or Povest' o Tomase lonese', which gives reason to attribute it to E. S. Kharlamov. 24 Prikliucheniia Iosifa Andrevsa i priiatelia ego Avraama Adamsa, izdannye gospodinom Fildingorn.

Perevel s nemetskogo Ivan Sytenskoi, St Petersburg, I 772, I, pp. i-ii.

25 Deianiia gospodina Ionafana Vilda Velikago, pisannye gospodinom Fildingom. Perevel s nemetskago Ivan Sytenskoi, St Petersburg, 1772, I, pp. iV-Vi. 26Ibid., p. ix.




Riccoboni. Joseph Andrews reached the Russian reader in a particularly tortuous way: published in I742, it appeared the very next year in French, with the title-page saying that it had been translated by an English lady in London,27 an appropriate letter by the lady preceding the translation. Later this was found to be a mystification; Fielding's novel had in fact been translated by Abbe P.-F.-G. Desfontaines (i685-I745) ,28 a former Jesuit who had left the Society and was earning his living as ajournalist, making a great number of enemies by his bitter and mordant criticism.

The London French translation of Joseph Andrews was reprinted in Amsterdam a year later.29 The Amsterdam edition was the source of a German translation which came out in Danzig in I 745.30 And finally this German translation (which, incidentally, very much interested the German poet F. G. Klopstock)31 was translated into Russian by Sytenskii who preserved both introductions: 'The introduction of the publisher of this book, Mr Fielding' and 'The letter of the English lady who translated this book from her own language into French'.32

Naturally, in such 'many-staged' translation Fielding lost a certain measure of originality. The French translators were especially damag- ing to his creations. It seems the English traveller Edward Clarke was fully justified when, visiting Russia in I8oo and, finding that the Russian nobility were reading English novels in French translation, he wrote about the translators:

... when they attempt to translate Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, or any of those inimitable original pictures of English manners, the effect is

27 Les Aventures de Joseph Andrews et du ministre Abraham Adams, publiees en anglois en 5742 par M. Fielding et traduites en Francois a Londres, par une dame angloise, 2 vols, London, 1743. 28 See Thelma Morris, 'L'Abbe Desfontaines et son role dans la litterature de son temps',

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, I9, Geneva, I961, pp. 309-23. In 1727 he had published an extremely free translation of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which was also published in Russian under the auspices of the Assembly Promoting the Translation of Foreign Books, in I 772. See Thelma Morris, pp. 278-300, and Iu. D. Levin, 'Rannee vospriiatie Dzho- natana Svifta v Rossii', Vzaimosviazi russkoi i zarubezhnykh literatur, Leningrad, I 983, pp. 26-30. 29 Avantures de Joseph Andrews, et de son ami Abraham Adams, Ecrites dans le gozt des Avantures de

Don-Quichotte. Publie'es en Anglois par M. Fielding. Et traduites en Franfois, a Londres, par une Dame Angloise, sur la troisieme Edition, Amsterdam, I 744. 30 Begebenheiten des Joseph Andrews und seines Freundes Abraham Adams. In dem Geschmacke der

Abentheuer des Don Quixotte geschrieben. Englisch durch Herrn Fielding herausgegeben. Ins Deutsche durch ein Mitglied der deutschen Gesellschaft ibersetzt, Danzig, 1745. See Marce Blassneck, Frankreich als Vermittler englisch-deutscher Einftisse im I7. und s8. Jahrhundert, Leipzig, I934, pp. 129-32. 31 See Franz Muncker, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock: Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Schriften,

Berlin, I893, p. 195. 32 Prikliucheniia Iosifa Andrevsa, i, pp. iii-xlix.



228 Iu. D. LEVIN

ridiculous beyond description. Squire Western becomes a French Philo- sopher, and Goldsmith's Primrose a Fleur de Lis.33

Clarke was, of course, exaggerating the damage that foreign translators did, but there was undoubtedly a measure of truth in his statement. Fielding's novels came to Russian soil much impoverished, and Rus- sian translators themselves were often aware of it. One translator, connected with the printing-house of the Cadet Corps and hiding behind the initials I. R., while translating a German translation of a novel ascribed to Fielding,34 attributed the defects of his work in part to 'a twofold translation which has without doubt diminished the beauty of the author's style'.35 But still there was so much strength and merit in the 'comic epic' in prose which Fielding had created that even the arbitrariness of the translators could not destroy them. And the Russian readers duly appreciated the socio-ethical and artistic significance of his works. It was not without reason that all four of Fielding's novels translated into Russian in the I 770s were reprinted within the next decade: Deianiia gospodina Ionafana Vilda Velikogo in I785-86, Prikliucheniia Iosifa Andrevsa in 1787, Povest' o Tomase Ionese in 1787-88, Amelia before 1785.36 As has been established by A. G. Cross, Fielding ranks first among the English novelists translated in Russia in the eighteenth century.37

Indirect proof of Fielding's reputation may be seen in the fact that works by other authors were continually ascribed to him, something often facilitated by misattribution of the English originals or the intermediate translations.38 I have already mentioned the novel by Gain de Montagnac published under Fielding's name, with the anonymous translator (I. R.) stating in the introduction: '... this book was written by Mr Fielding, the celebrated English writer who has already shown his skill in depicting human nature in "Amelia" and "The Foundling" '.39 The Russian translation of The Adventures of Roderick

33 Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, London, 18 I O, Part I, Russia, Tartary and Turkey, p. 72; also quoted in A. G. Cross, "'S anglinskago": Books of English Origin in Russian Translation in late Eighteenth-Century Russia', Oxford Slavonic Papers, N.S.i9, I986, pp. 74-75.

34 The French original of the novel, entitled Memoires du chevalier de Kilpar, traduits ou imitis de l'Anglois de M. Fielding par M. D...M...C...D..., Paris, 1768, was the work of L. L.J. Gain de Montagnac. The German translation which formed the basis of the Russian version was entitled Geschichte des Ritters von Kilpar. Aus dem Englischen des Herrn Fielding, Leipzig, 1769. The Russian translator therefore believed the original to have been English. 35 Sposob byt' dobrodetel'nym, ili Dostopamiatnye pokhozhdeniia kavalera Kil'para, sochinennyia

slavnym anglinskim pisatelem G. Fil'dingom, a s nemetskogo na rossiiskoi iazyk perevel I.R., St Petersburg, I 776, p. 8 [unnumbered]. 36 The exact years when the translation of Amelia was reprinted have not been established.

The two first parts carry the date of the first edition, 1772-73, but they were printed on paper with a watermark of I 779; only the date of the third part is given beyond doubt: 1785.

37 A. G. Cross, "'S anglinskago"', pp. 66, 77, 8i. 38 See W. L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding, iII, pp. 340-49. 39 Sposob byt' dobrodetel'nym, p. 7 [unnumbered].




Random (Moscow, 1788) was likewise published under Fielding's name; publication began too of the translation of The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (St Petersburg, I789), but the translator then found out that it had been written by Tobias Smollett, and the title-page of the second and third parts of the translation carried the real author's name. To Fielding was ascribed his sister Sarah's novel The Adventures of David Simple (in the Russian translation David Prostyi, ili Istinnyi drug, St Petersburg, I 796), to which he had in fact written only the introduction. Finally, Fielding was given as the author of the novel Neschastiia ot chuvstvitel'nosti, the translation of an anonymous English novel The Curse of Sentiment (I787), which came to Russia through a French translation.40 (This attribution remained firmly fixed in the mind of Russian readers: a Russian journal of the beginning of the nineteenth century mentions 'extracts from Fielding's novel (misfortunes from sentiment) 1.)41

It must be stated that in the nineteenth century, unlike the eighteenth, of all Fielding's works only Tom Jones was translated into Russian, in I848, though at least from the original and by the well- known translator of Shakespeare Andrei Kroneberg. It is only in the Soviet period that other novels besides Tom Jones have been translated again, and his comedies have also been translated for the first time.42

Reviewing of newly published books was rather a rare occurrence in the eighteenth-century Russian press; it was an honour reserved only for those works especially attractive from the point of view of the reading public. One of these happened to be Povest' o Tomase Ionese, the second edition of which evoked a delighted reaction from Moskovskie vedomosti:

This wonderful Novel by one of the best Authors is worthy of attention for the many beauties it abounds in, and while providing a pleasant and at the same time instructive pastime, does not contain the dullness and stupidity of many other Novels, and by the same token may serve as satisfactory reading for every kind of Public.43

It was not without reason that Tom Jones, of all Fielding's books, was favoured with a special review. The novel had undoubtedly become one of the most popular and widely read works in late eighteenth-century Russia. And in 1786 one of the St Petersburg magazines published a solemn epistle entitled 'Gratitude to Mr Felding [sic] for Thomas

40 Neschastiia ot chuvstvitel'nosti, sochinenie G. Fil'dinga, s tret'iago izdaniia na Anglinskom iazyke perelozhennoe na Frantsuzskoi Gm. Mersie, a s onago na Rossiiskoi iazyk perevel N****N****, Moscow, 1791 , 2 parts. 41 'Samoubiistvo. Otryvok iz pis'ma k priiateliu', Aglaia, i i, i8I0, 2 (August), p. 20. 42 See I. M. Levidova, comp., Genri Fil'ding: Bio-bibliograficheskii ukazatel' k dvukhsotpiatide-

siatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia, Moscow, 1957, pp. 22-23. 43 Moskovskie vedomosti, 1788, 28, 5 April, pp. 275-76.



230 IU. D. LEVIN

Jones'.4 In the covering letter to the editor the author called Fielding 'a great author -a single line of whose is more moving and instructive than many tomes of cold moralizing', and exclaimed, addressing the author of Tom Jones:

Oh, my friend Felding! ... You have informed and diverted me. Your principles instruct me, your style charms me, your tenderness moves me to tears. You present virtue in such fascinating and tender guise, inspire so much reverence for it, that one cannot but follow it, cannot but believe that it dwells in your heart.

At the same time he stresses the effectiveness of the social criticism in Fielding, 'true interpreter of the human heart', who can teach 'knowledge of man, that arduous and unending study'. And the author concluded:

Too long now have I been a plaything of my pretended friends and imagined benefactors. Everywhere there is the pursuit of profit, everywhere vanity, hypocrisy or shallow-mindedness: everywhere there are Blifils. In you alone, oh Felding, may I hope to discover a true friend.

The author of the message was Adrian Gribovskii (I766-I833), a short time previously a provincial official, who at the time of writing had been dismissed from his post. Later he had a successful career at the court of Catherine II, but in 1786 when 'Gratitude' was written, he was in financial difficulties. The historian V. A. Bil'basov who wrote a biographical article on Gribovskii considered 'Gratitude' to be a set of fine, empty, pompous phrases angling for a favourable reaction from the public.45 But even if we accept this point of view, it obviously follows that Gribovskii must have been counting upon the indisputable popularity and fame enjoyed by the creator of Tom Jones among the Russian reading public.

Further evidence of Fielding's popularity is to be found in a reminiscence by the poet I. I. Dmitriev about the first literary effort of N. M. Karamzin, later the greatest Russian writer of the turn of the century, but at the time a seventeen-year-old youth. Karamzin had completed a translation ordered by the bookseller Miller 'who used to buy and publish translations, paying for them ... with books out of his bookshop'. 'I cannot even now recall without pleasure', wrote Dmitriev in his later years, 'with what a triumphant air the good and kind youth Karamzin came running into my room, holding, two in each hand, the small volumes of Fielding's Tom Jones with illustra- tions, translated by Kharlamov. It was the first remuneration for his

44 'Blagodarenie G. Feldingu za Tomasa lonesa', Zerkalo sveta, 2, 1786, 30, pp. 229-32. 4V. A. Bil'basov, 'Adrian Gribovskii, sostavitel' zapisok o Ekaterine Velikoi', Russkaia

starina, 73, January I892, pp. 25-26.




literary work'.46 And the writer and public figure M. N. Murav'ev (I757-i 807), recounting in a private letter of I797 a visit to a Moscow bookseller, mentioned: 'I picked up Fielding's novel Tom Jones in his shop.'47

The success of Fielding's novel in Russia at the time was one of the reasons for the appearance on the Russian stage of the French three-act lyrical comedy Tom Jones (I765), written by Poinsinet after the novel and with music by Philidor.48 The comedy, translated into Russian by Princess E. P. Volkonskaia and V. A. Levshin, was staged in the I 770s or the I 780s. According to one of the contemporary spectators, 'This play is filled with quite good ideas, grand choruses and pleasant solo parts; horn music adds still more to its splendour. The part of Mr Wester [sic!] has won considerable praise from the public'.49

Fielding's novels did much to establish the reputation of the English novel in general among the Russian reading public. As early as 1778, in one of its reviews, Sanktpeterburgskii vestnik wrote: 'And so we would wish to have primarily translated into our tongue more of the good and useful novels written by Richardson, Fielding, Goldsmith and their like .. .'. 50 Of the three English writers named, only Fielding had by that time been translated into Russian, and he served as a kind of standard of quality for the English novel. It should be noted that the contrast between Fielding and Richardson drawn, as we saw, in I. Sytenskii's introduction to Deianiia gospodina Jonafana Vilda Velikogo was not usually remarked upon in the Russian press, and as a rule they were named together. Typical in this connection is the beginning of a review of the translation of The Adventures of Roderick Random, which was (as already mentioned) ascribed to Fielding.

Those who like novellistic narrations and know the worth thereof, quite rightly give preference to English novels over French and all others in the world, perhaps because in the former we see none of that exertion of the power of imagination, of that pompous sentimentality and those Heroics in Love and in other social relationships which are to be found at every turn in other novels. Fielding's novels have yet more to set them apart from the same kind of works by his fellow-countrymen and are deemed, after Richardson's Grandisson, Clarissa and Pamela, to be the best works of their kind.5l

46 I. I. Dmitriev, Vzgliad na moiu zhizn': Zapiski v 3-kh chastiakh, Moscow, i866, p. 40; 'Fielding's' italicized in the original. See also A. G. Cross, 'Karamzin's First Short Story?', in L. H. Leghters, ed., Russia: Essays in History and Literature, Leiden, 1972, pp. 38-55. 47 Pamiatniki kul'tury: Novye otkrytiia. Ezhegodniik 1980, Leningrad I 98I, p. 49. 48 See A. Digeon, Les Romans de Fielding, Paris, 1913, p. 303. 49 Drammaticheskii slovar', i1i Pokazaniia po alfavitu vsekh rossiiskikh teatral'nykh sochinenii i

perevodov. . ., Moscow, I787, pp. 140-41. 50 F., 'Izvestie o novykh knigakh', Sanktpeterburgskii vestnik, 1778, i, March, p. 3I9. See

further I. F. Martynov, 'English Literature and Eighteenth-Century Russian Reviewers', Oxford Slavonic Papers, N.S., 4, I97 , pp. 30-42. 51 Moskovskie vedomosti, 1788, I 64, 9 August, pp. 585-86.



232 Iu. D. LEVIN

The first biography of Fielding in Russian appeared in I795, in the thirteenth part of the Historical Dictionary,52 a publication based on the French Dictionnaire historique ( 752) of J. B. Ladvocat and the Nouveau dictionnaire historique portatif, ou Histoire abre'ge ( 759-66) of L. M. Chau- don. This article is rather shallow and inaccurate; among other things it gives incorrectly the place and date of the writer's death. Special attention is given to Fielding's moral image: 'Passions, desires and sensibilities ranged in him to the extreme'; 'He liked pleasures, but there was no vice in his character'; 'His perception was able to penetrate the innermost windings of the human heart, to discern self-interest, false- hood, vanity, cupidity, self-seeking friendship, ingratitude and care- lessness of soul, which he ridiculed in a sharp and stinging manner, and often quite successfully'. Then follows a list of Fielding's novels translated into French (with Roderick Random and Memoirs ofthe Chevalier Kilpar included in the list), and in the commentary the French point of view is plain to see:' . . . we note in them good descriptions, moving ideas and fine characters, but the Author goes beyond measure into speculations, digressions and minute descriptions. Some of these defects have been removed in the French translation. . .'. In conclusion there wasJ. F. de Laharpe's opinion of Tom Jones. He considered the novel to be 'the best English book': 'in this tale one can see everything there is in the world; and all this the author depicts not through an abundance of words, but through abundance of deeds and actions themselves'.

During the second half of the I 780s and in the I 790s, as a result of the Sentimentalist trends spreading in Russian literature, the English novelists most translated were Richardson and Sterne. But Fielding was not forgotten. His name occurs constantly in critical articles of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries (mostly translated), either in the ranks of the English writers, or among those European novelists who took the subjects for their books from tlhe common life often of the lower social orders, which they depicted as it was, realistically, to use a modern term: Lesage, Prevost, Crebillon, Richardson, Smollett, Wieland and others.53 There also appear anec- dotes connected with Fielding's name. Thus in i8o8 the magazine Genius of Time published under the title 'The Portrait of Fielding' a story

52 'Fil'ding, (Genrik)', in Slovar' istoricheskii, ili Sokrashchennaia biblioteka, zakliuchaiushchaia v sebe zhitiia i deianiia. . ., I 3, Moscow, I 795, pp. 268-7 I . 53 See 'Nechto o romanakh', Priiatnoe i poleznoe preprovozhdenie vremeni, 6, I795, p. 209;

'Topograficheskoe opisanie tsarstva Poezii: (Perevod s frantsuzskogo)', Vestnik Evropy, 4, I802, I3, p. 5; V-i A-ch [Anastasevich] 'Novye zamechaniia na staryi spor o drevnikh i novykh pisateliakh: (Iz Entsiklopedicheskogo Magazina)', Severnyi vestnik, 3, I804, 8, p. I 26; 'O skazkakh i romanakh', Avrora, 2, i8o6, 2, p. I59, 3, pp. 202-03; 'O romanakh: (Iz soch. Krasitskago). (S pol'skogo), Vestnik Evropy, 34, I807, I5, p. I85; '0 chtenii romanov voobshche i angliiskikh v osobennosti. Iz Fr. zhurn.', Rossiiskii muzeum, 4, I8I5, IO-I I, pp. I6, i i9; V. Brimmer, 'Razgovor o chuvstvitel'nosti mezhdu chuvstvitel'nvm i khladnokrovnym', Sorevnovatel' prosveshcheniia i blagotvoreniia, i, i8i8, 3, p. 323.




about Hogarth painting the portrait of his late friend;54 and the Miscellany of Literary Matters, a journal carrying only translations, included in an I805 biographical article on the printer Thomas Cadell the episode of Cadell's teacher, Andrew Millar, helping Fielding who was oppressed by poverty while writing the novel Tom Jones'.55

Interesting proof of reverence for the memory of Fielding is to be found in the notes of the Russian writer and traveller Pavel Svin'in (I 787-I839). In I807, as a diplomatic official, he sailed round Europe on Russian ships and arrived in Lisbon, where Fielding had died and had been buried. 'I also went to the English cemetery', Svin'in recalled,

to kneel at the grave of my favourite author Fielding. His monument consists of a plain white marble urn. This plainness reflects the Poet's soul. Luxurious tombs do not fit the creator of Tom Jones: let those be decorated with them whose names would otherwise be retained neither in eternity, nor in posterity, nor in the hearts of their kindred and friends!56

The historian of Russian literature Vasilii Sipovskii, who made a detailed study of the history of the novel in eighteenth-century Russia, established beyond doubt the existence of 'great interest among the Russian public for the works of Fielding', and at the same time 'noted a characteristic phenomenon, that with such high interest towards this writer there is not a single trace of his influence in imitative Russian books'.57 This apparent contradiction seems to me easily explained. Fielding, 'the creator of the realistic novel, a man of wonderful knowledge of his country's mode of life', as Maksim Gor'kii called him,58 presented an obvious case of a writer whose creations are based directly on the surrounding reality. Karamzin, speculating upon the character of the English, could say with perfect justice: 'Fielding did not have to imagine characters for his novels, it was enough to observe and describe'; and in another place: 'Richardson and Fielding taught the French and the German to write novels as a life-story. . .'.59 That is why Fielding was impossible to copy; other writers could only learn from him to create realistic pictures ofthe life of their own country, in this case Russia. It was not without reason that the founder of modern Russian literature, Aleksandr Pushkin, outlining the development of the European literature that Russia was absorbing, declared emphatically: 'Richardson, Fielding and Sterne uphold the glory of the prose novel'.60

54 Genii vremen, 2, i8o8, I03, 26 December, pp. 409-10. 55 Zhurnal razlichnykh predmetov slovesnosti, izdavaemyi Liudovikom Rokka. Perevel sfrantsuzskogo

Fedor Kabrit, 2, 1805, 3, July, pp. I i -i8. 56 Vospominaniia naflotePavla Svin'ina, St Petersburg, I8I9, part 2, p. 272. 57 V. V. Sipovskii, Ocherki iz istorii russkogo romana, St Petersburg, I910, I, 2 (XVIII vek),

p. 892. 58 M. Gor'kii, Istoriia russkoi literatury, Moscow, I939, p. 38. 59 N. M. Karamzin, Pis'ma russkogo puteshestvennika, Leningrad, I 984, pp. 384, 369. 60 A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Moscow-Leningrad, ii, 1949, p. 272.

8



Documents

Translations of Henry Fielding's Works in Eighteenth-Century Russia