BETWEEN EUROPE, UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA: IVAN TURGENEV IN THE RECEPTIVE AESTHETICS OF HENRY JAMES

Alexandra P. Urakova

Alexandra P. Urakova, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: alexandraurakova@yandex.ru

Philological sciences

2017

Vol.

Pp. 152–160

December 20, 2016

March 15, 2017

821.161.1+821.111(73)

83.3

The Russian author Ivan S. Turgenev became a “pass to Europe” of a kind to the American, Henry James, in that he introduced the latter to the first-rate Parisian literary circles. James read Turgenev in German and French (despite existing English translations) and included him as the only foreigner in his book French Poets and Novelists (1878) together with Baudelaire, Balzac, Sand, Flaubert, Merimee, etc. At the same time, the question of Turgenev’s national identity is a recurring topic of Jamesian essays. In these essays, Turgenev is at once European and non-European: an acknowledged European author yet belonging to the culture that represents European otherness, as it were. Eventually, he is a non-existing American classic: a novelist who, according to James, would have been a great American writer if born in the American South. This essay scrutinizes the question of Turgenev’s national identity and his “Europeanness” on the material of Jamesian essays belonging to different genres: reviews, a mortuary, and an encyclopedic article. It also shows how James attempts to “Europeanize” Turgenev by remaking his novel Virgin Soil. His own novel, Princess Casamassima considered imitative by many critics, not only transfers the conspiracy plot to Europe but rewrites it according to the rules that James associated with Western European literary tradition.

Turgenev, H. James, reception, Europe, Russian literature, American literature, 19th century, influence, Virgin Soil, national identity.

1 Jeims H. Daisy Miller. Jeims H. Osada Londona [The Siege of London]. St. Petersburg, Azbuka-Klassika Publ., 2005. 382 p. (In Russian)

2 Urakova A. P. V otsutstvie Bairona. Obraz baironicheskogo poeta u Edgara Po i Henry Jeimsa [In the absence of Byron. The image of Byronic poet in Poe and James]. Voprosi literaturi, 2007, no 6, pp. 225–240. (In Russian)

3 Urakova A. P. Ivan Turgenev v vospriyatii Henry Jeimsa: mezhdu uchenichestvom i personalnim mifom [Ivan Turgenev in the perception of Henry James: Between apprenticeship and personal myth]. Russkaya literatura v zerkalah mirovoi kulturi: rezepzia, perevodi, interpretazia [Russian literature in the mirrors of the world culture: reception, translations, interpretation], executive ed. A. B. Kudelin, ed. M. F. Nadyarnych, V. V. Polonskii. Moscow, IMLI RAN Publ., 2015, pp. 457–479. (In Russian)

4 Brooks P. Henry James Goes to Paris. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2008. 272 p. (In English)

5 Brown Catherine. Henry James and Ivan Turgenev: Cosmopolitanism, Croquet, and Language. Available at: catherinebrown.org/wordpress/.../TJ-article.pdf. <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/CREV/letter03.html> (accessed 20 May 2015). (In English)

6 James H. Henry James Letters: in 4 vols. Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1974. Vol. 1. 489 p. (In English)

7 James H. Ivan Turgeniéff. French Poets and Novelists. New York, Macmillan, 1893, pp. 269–321. (In English)

8 James H. Ivan Turgeniéff. Atlantic Monthly, 1884, vol. 53, pp. 42–55. (In English)

9 James Н. Art. IV — Frünglingsfluthen. Ein König Lear des Dorfes. Zwei Novellen. Von Ivan Turgéniew. Mitau. 1873. North American Review, 1874, vol. 5, pp. 326–356. (In English)

10 James H. Literary Criticism: French writers. Other European writers. The Prefaces to New York Editions. New York, Literary Classics of the United States, 1984. 1408 p. (In English)

11 Richards Ch. Occasional Criticism: Henry James on Ivan Turgenev. The Slavonic and East European Review, 2000, no 78.3, pp. 464–486. (In English)

12 Turton G. Turgenev and the Context of English Literature 1850–1900. New York, Routledge, 1992. 219 p. (In English)

 Download