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The Tangled Tradition: Custine, Herberstein, Karamzin, and the Critique of Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Irena Grudzinska Gross
Irena Grudzinska Gross*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages, Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University
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Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 989 - 998
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Inc. 1991

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References

1. de Custine, Astolphe, Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia, foreword Boorstin, Daniel J.. Intro. Kennan, George F. (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 16 Google Scholar. This edition is a slightly shortened version of the English 1843 translation published by Longman. The original book was published in four volumes in 1843 in Paris by Librairie d’Amyot. All the quotations come from the 1989 edition except for those from omitted passages, which have been translated from the original for this article. Citations to the 1989 edition are indicated in parentheses in the text.

2. The first French translation (from the Latin) appeared only in 1965. See La Moscovie du XVI e siede. Vue par un ambassadeur occidental Herberstein, présentation de Delort, Robert (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1965)Google Scholar.

3. Herberstein himself translated his book into German, but there were other more popular translations. See editor’s preface to von Herberstein, Sigmund, Description of Moscow and Muscovy, (1557), ed. Picard, Bertold. Trans. Grundy, J. B. C. (London: J. M. Dent, 1969)Google Scholar. This translation of selected passages was made from Herberstein’s 1557 German text, which the editor considered definitive. Citations to this 1969 edition are in parentheses in the text.

4. See the introduction to von Herberstein, Sigismund, Notes Upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country, Entitled “Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarli,” trans, and ed. Major, R. H., 2 vols. (New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.), xviii–xxi.Google Scholar

5. See Hanauer, Christine, “Die Zeitnössischen lateinischen Drucke der Moscovia Herbersteins und ihre Entstehungsgeschichte. (Ein Beitrag zur Editionstechnik im 16 Jh.,” in Humanistica Lovaniensia 31 (1982), 141–163.Google Scholar I owe this bibliographical suggestion to Michael Shank.

6. See Croma, Arturo, La conoscenza del mondo slavo in Italia. Bilancio storico-bibliografico di un millennio (Venezia-Padova: Istituto di Studi Adriatici, 1958), 116 Google Scholar.

7. See Grossing, Helmuth, Humanistische Naturwissenschaft. Zur Geschichte der wiener mathematischen Schulen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1983), 186 Google Scholar.

8. See Cronia, La conoscenza, 136.

9. See Graham, Hugh F., introduction to Antonio Possevino, S. J., The Moscovia , trans. Graham, Hugh F.. Series in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), 142 Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., 142.

11. Leitsch, Walter, “Herberstein’s Impact on the Reports about Muscovy in the 16th and 17th Centuries: Some Observations on the Technique of Borrowing,” in Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, no. 24 (1978), 163–177.Google Scholar During his lifetime Guagnini was accused of plagiarism by Maciej Strykowski, who claimed the book as his own (Leitsch, “Herberstein’s Impact,” 171-172). That claim may prove to what extent Herberstein’s book had become common property.

12. Samuel H. Baron, lecture, Russian Center, Harvard University, spring 1987.

13. Or the second discoverer, after Richard Chancellor; see Fletcher, Giles, Of the Rus Commonwealth, ed. Schmidt, Albert J. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

14. One would suppose that the social isolation in which Fletcher and most foreign visitors to Muscovy were kept might have increased the temptation to plagiarize; however, books about even such an open and well-known country as Italy show an equal degree of unacknowledged borrowings. Herberstein may have been especially tempting because he had more direct experience of Muscovite life than usual: He knew the language and, while in Muscovy, he was relatively less isolated than other visitors had been. Also, his book was comprehensive, intelligent, and well written, which, I am sure, had much to do with its attractiveness for other writers.

15. See Albert J. Schmidt, introduction, in Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth, xxvi. Fletcher’s work was known only in a censored version, because British merchants were afraid of possible trade limitations if the severe criticism of the Muscovites were known.

16. Olearius, Adam, The Travels to Muscovy and Persia, trans, and ed. Baron, Samuel H.. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

17. Phillipi Pernisteri, Relatio de Magno Moscoviae Principe, printed in Frankfurt in 1579.

18. See Krizhanich, Iurii, Russian Statecraft, The “Politika” of Jurii Krizhanich, trans. Letiche, John M. and Dmytryshyn, Basil (London: Blackwell, 1985), 122 Google Scholar. In fact, Protestant writers were more critical of Muscovy than Catholic because they saw religious meaning expressed in manners and everyday behavior. Peter Petrejus was the author of Historien und Bericht von dem grossfürstenthum Mushkow (1620) and Jacob von Ulfeldt of Hodeoporicon Ruthenicum: De bello Moscovito (Moscoviticum?) commentariorum libri (1581). Olearius used Jacob’s book and plagiarized Petrejus. See Baron, introduction, Olearius, Travels, 14.

19. Letiche and Dmytryshyn, introduction, Krizhanich, Russian Statecraft, xiv-xv.

20. In Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarti Sigismundi Liberis Baronis in Herberstein (Basilea: Ioan-nis Oporinus, 1551), 18.

21. Rather than being a history that was a “return to the past”; see Lotman, Iurii M., “Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture,” in Lotman, Iurii, Ginsburg, Lidiia, and Uspenskii, Boris, The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 30–66 Google Scholar; see 64.

22. Pipes, Richard, Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia, A Translation and Analysis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), 52–53 Google Scholar. On Karamzin, see also Cross, A. G., N. M. Karamzin. A Study of His Literary Career 1783-1803, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and, especially, Walicki, Andrzej, A History of Russian Thought. From the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Andrews-Rusiecka, Hilda (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

23. The translation, L’Histoire de l’empire de Russie (“par M. Karamsin”), was made by two professors from St. Petersburg—St. Thomas and Jauffret—and published in nine volumes in Paris by A. Belin, in the years 1819-1826. Volumes ten and eleven were subsequently translated by D. G. Divov (“Divoff”) and published in Paris by Bossange Père.

24. See Gooch, G. P., History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (1913; Boston: Beacon, 1957), 154–155 Google Scholar.

25. La Russie en 1839 3:225. Chapter 26 and its appendix are devoted to quotations from Karamzin (3:175-238), but he is also quoted throughout the book’s four volumes. Chapter 26 was omitted in the 1989 American edition.

26. Lotman, , “The Decembrist in Daily Life (Everyday Behavior as a Historical-Psychological Category),” in The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, 95–149 Google Scholar; see esp. 115-119.

27. Lotman, Iurii, Sotvorenie Karamzina (Moscow. Kniga, 1987), 279 Google Scholar. For Karamzin’s political attitudes and the extraordinary role he played in Russian culture, see also the last chapters of this book, 280-320, and Eidelman, Natan, Poslednyi letopisets (Moscow: Kniga, 1983)Google Scholar.

28. This idea can be found, for example, in White, Hayden’s The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 12 Google Scholar.

29. In Russian Intellectual History. An Anthology, ed. Raeff, Marc, intro. Berlin, Isaiah (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1966), 117–124 Google Scholar; 117 (in the translation of Jaroslav Pelenski). Karamzin dated his foreword 7 December 1815.

30. Custine, La Russie en 1839 3:224.

31. In Stalinist times Karamzin’s Istorila was not published. Now with glasnost, it has been printed (in installments) in a Moscow publication.

32. Pipes, Karamzin’s Memoir, 89.

33. Perlina, Nina, Varieties of Poetic Utterance. Quotation in “The Brothers Karamazov” (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 10 Google Scholar (first quotation); Compagnon, Antoine, La Seconde main ou le travail de la citation (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 38 Google Scholar.

34. “In the happy respite of peace, the monarch feasted with the lords and the people like the father of a large family. Cities populated with chosen inhabitants began to adorn the deserts; Christianity was softening the fierceness of wild customs; Byzantine arts made their appearance on the shores of the Dnieper and Volkhov. Iaroslav gave the people a scroll of simple and sagacious civil laws, which conformed to the laws of the ancient Germans. In one word, Russia became not only the most spacious of all states, but also, compared to others, the most civilized.” Karamzin, “Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia” in Pipes, Karamzin’s Memoir, 104-105.

35. Custine, La Russie en 1839 3:226.