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Narrative Technique in Chulkov’s Prigozhaia povarikha

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

J. G. Garrard
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Extract

The first part of Mikhail Chulkov’s short novel The Comely Cook was published in 1770 and appears to have enjoyed a considerable success with the Russian reading public of the eighteenth century, including the great military hero Alexander Suvorov. The work soon became a bibliographical rarity, and it was not until this century that it was reprinted. Given the embryonic state of the prose genres in Russia at the time Chulkov’s novel appeared, it is not surprising to find that much attention has been paid to the possible sources upon which he might have drawn. Toward the end of the nineteenth century there was a tendency to stress West European influences on Chulkov. In the Soviet period several Russian scholars have played down these influences and have sought to demonstrate that the novel was essentially a home-grown product written by a raznochinets in opposition to the neoclassical theories of noble writers.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1968 , pp. 554 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1968

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References

1 Prigozhaia povarikha, Hi pokhozhdenie razvratnoi zhenshchiny, Part I (St. Petersburg, 1770). The work remained unfinished. There is no concrete evidence for the oftenrepeated suggestion that Chulkov wrote a second part, which Catherine's censors did not allow to be published. Suvorov's fondness for the novel was mentioned by Rastopchin in Russkii Vestnik (1808) and is quoted in M. Longinov, “O romane Prigozhaia povarikha (1770),” Sovremennik, No. 7 (1856), p. 19.

2 In Burtsev, V. L., Obstoiatel'noe bibliograficheskoe opisanie…, V (St. Petersburg, 1901), 187–210 Google Scholar. A. A. Titov edited a reprint of the 1770 edition, which was published in Moscow in 1904. It is also available in Zapadov, A. V. and Makogonenko, G. P., eds., Russkaia proza XVIII veka , I (Leningrad, 1950), 157–92 Google Scholar. The novel has recently been translated into English in Segel, Harold B., ed., The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia , II (New York, 1967), 28–68.Google Scholar

3 N. Belozerskaia referred to Prigozhaia povarikha as “nothing more than a weak imitation of the lightweight French novel” in her book Vasilii Trofimovich Narezhnyi : Istoriko-literaturnyi ocherk (2nd rev. ed.; St. Petersburg, 1896), p. 38. V. V. Sipovsky assigns Prigozhaia povarikha to the third of his amorphous categories, the Gil Bias type, in his Ocherki po istorii russkogo romana (St. Petersburg, 1909). A sound introduction to the works of both Chulkov and Fedor Emin is provided by E. Mechnikova, “Na zare russkogo romana,” Golos Minuvshego, VI (1914), 5-40.

4 Nechaeva, V, “Russkii bytovoi roman XVIII veka : M. D. Chulkov,” Uchënye zapiski RANION , II (1928), 5–41 Google Scholar; P. A., Orlov, “Real'no-bytovye romany Chulkova i ego satirikobytovye povesti,” Uchënye zapiski Riazan'skogo gos. ped. instituta , No. 8 (1949), pp. 60–97 Google Scholar. See also Shtrange, M. M., Demokraticheskaia intelligentsiia Rossii v XVIII veke (Moscow, 1965)Google Scholar. In his Istoriia russkoi literatury XVIII veka (4th rev. ed.; Moscow, i960), pp. 390-92, D. D. Blagoi, whose approach is sociological, takes the view that Chulkov was drawing upon real life situations in contemporary Russia. A more balanced treatment is Gukovsky, G. A., Russkaia literatura XVIII veka (Moscow, 1939), pp. 222–30 Google Scholar. There are also some very useful comments in V., Shklovsky, Chulkov i Levshin (Leningrad, 1933).Google Scholar

5 Mathauserová, Světla, RuskÝ zdroj monologické románové formy (M. D. čulkov) (Prague, 1961)Google Scholar. I am indebted to Professor D. Tschžiewskij of the University of Heidelberg for this reference. See also Mathauserová, S., “Der Roman des russischen Schriftstellers M. D. Čulkov,” Studien zur Geschichte der russischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts , ed. Grasshoff, H. and Lehmann, U. (Berlin, 1963), p. 96–103.Google Scholar

6 Serman, I. Z., “Stanovlenie i razvitie romana v russkoi literature serediny XVIII veka in Iz istorii russkikh literaturnykh otnoshenii XVIII-XX vekov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1959), pp. 82–95 Google Scholar. See also Jurij, Striedter, Der Schelmenroman in Russland (Berlin, 1961)Google Scholar. Striedter is fully aware of the domestic influences on Chulkov, but devotes most of his attention to extending Sipovsky's parallel between Chulkov and Lesage; he sees Martona as a female variant of the picaro (p. 98 and passim).

7 The first three parts of Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne had already appeared in a Russian translation : Zhizn’ Marianny, Hi Pokhozhdenie gospozhi grafini de, Vol. I (Moscow, 1762). There is no evidence that Chulkov was familiar with Defoe's Moll Flanders, a work strikingly similar to his own in some respects.

8 F. C. Green, French Novelists, Manners and Ideas (New York, 1929), p. 16.

9 It may be significant that Prigozhaia povarikha is subtitled satiricheskii roman in a list of Chulkov's works printed at the end of Part IV of his Sobranie raznykh pesen (St. Petersburg, 1774), facing p. 236. Serman (“Stanovlenie i razvitie romana…“) gives a good account of the differing attitudes of Chulkov and Emin toward prose fiction and its function. See also Serman's contribution to the collective work Istoriia russkogo romana, ed. G. M. Fridlender, I (Moscow and Leningrad, 1962), 47-65.

10 Peresmeshnik, ili Slavenskie skazki, Parts I-IV (St. Petersburg, 1766-68). A fifth part was added to the 3rd rev. ed. (Moscow, 1789).

11 The technique has of course been canonized in English literature, since Shakespeare used it so often. There is a possible echo of this episode in Pushkin's poem “Domik v Kolomne,” in which a suitor obtains entrance to a house while pretending to be a female cook named Mavrusha.

12 Russkaia proza XVIII veka, I, 181. Subsequent page references to this edition are given in the text.

13 There is bound to be some terminological confusion between the terms “novel” and “romance” in Russia, especially during the eighteenth century, because the Russians have only one word—roman—for both, whereas in English we have adopted the Spanish novela to designate what was felt to be a new type of prose work, distinct from the older romance. For a discussion of this problem of terminology see V., Kozhinov, Proiskhozhdenie romana : teoretiko-istoricheskii ocherk (Moscow, 1963), pp. 58 ffGoogle Scholar. See also Peter, Brang, Studien zu Theorie und Praxis der russischen Erzahlung, ijjo-1811 (Wiesbaden, 1960), pp. 36–52.Google Scholar

14 Ian, Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Los Angeles and Berkeley, 1962), p. 94.Google Scholar

15 Mechnikova, “Na zare russkogo romana,” p. 25.

16 Shutlivaia povesf (St. Petersburg, 1763). Emin accused Chulkov of trying to be “a Russian Scarron.“

17 George Saintsbury, A History of the French Novel, I (London, 1917), 280.