Deux russes écrivains français. by Andre MazonReview by: Marc RaeffSlavic Review, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1965), pp. 559-560Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2492301 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 14:37

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 support@jstor.org.

.

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Slavic Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:37:36 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Reviews 559

The revolution had many precursors, and the French enlightenment, in its various forms, was among them.

The book is marred by an inexcusable number of errors and inconsisten- cies in spelling, punctuation, transliteration, and footnote format. There is an index of names but not of subjects.

Institute for the Study of the USSR OLIVER J. FREDERIKSEN

Munich

ANDRE MAZON, Deux russes ecrivains frangais. Paris: Didier, 1964. Pages 427. "Etudes de litt6rature etrang&re et comparee," Vol. LI.

We are accustomed to see cosmopolitanism and nationalism as antithetical, but this is not necessarily the case, as the history of the Russian elite in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century shows. Indeed, the wealthy and socially prominent members of the Russian service nobility were in all respects the products of a European education who derived their ideas and values from the intellectual trends prevailing in the West; yet-to a greater or lesser degree-every one of them was also very "national" in his patri- otism, his eagerness to contribute to Russian culture, his desire to bring some Russian values and elements into the mainstream of Western civilization. Quite naturally, the evolution from passive imitation to creative contribu- tion was a gradual process (both for a particular individual and for the group as a whole), but it is important to remember that both cosmopolitan- ism and nationalism were always present, only their proportions changing from one case to another.

The lives, careers, and works of the two figures who are the subject of the volume under review provide an illustration. Prince Aleksandr Mikhailo- vich Belosel'sky-Belozersky (1752-1809) was a typical grand seigneur of Catherine's time. Scion of a rich and prominent family, he had a precocious and successful diplomatic career which led to long periods of residence in Dresden and Turin; when he failed to obtain the most coveted assignments, he retired to a life of cultivated leisure on his estates and in Moscow. His main interest lay in the realm of aesthetics, and in his earlier works he ex- pounds the prevailing neoclassical canons of beauty. Belosel'sky is nothing but a popularizer, for he draws all his ideas from standard reference works; his own contribution is limited to a rather odd catalogue of illustrations for the various categories and forms (see Appendices XIII, XV, and XVI and the interesting analysis by A. BesanSon, "Un neo-classique russe: A propos de trois lettres du prince Alexandre Beloselski," Revue des Etudes slaves, XLII, No. 1-4 [1963], 83-95). After his retirement, without abandoning these imita- tive neoclassical preferences and canons, Belosel'sky tried to give them a new literary expression in works based on themes he believed were national and popular.

Prince Elim Petrovich Meshchersky (1808-44) belonged to the following generation of the Russian elite. The son of a Procurator General of the Holy Synod under Alexander I and Nicholas I, he grew up in an orthodox political and religious environment. Educated largely in France-where he lived most of his life and where he served briefly as a kind of "cultural

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:37:36 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

560 Slavic Review

attache"' to the Russian Embassy-he fell, however, under the spell of Ger- man romantic and idealist philosophy. The main influence on his thinking was Baader's peculiar brand of mysticism and messianism. Under its impact he developed, in the essay De la foi dans la science (1831), ideas that came close to the religious messianic nationalism of Chaadaev and later Slavo- philes. But Meshchersky also experienced the influence of De Maistre and De Bonald; he therefore remained a staunch defender of the autocratic system of Nicholas I-an attitude that brought him much closer to S. S. Uvarov than to the Aksakovs or to A. Khomiakov.

Neither author can lay claim to literary merit or significance, although Meshchersky was a very minor figure in the French romantic movement. But their lives and ideas graphically illustrate the elements that went into the making of the Russian intellectual elite between the reigns of Catherine II and Nicholas I.

We are, therefore, grateful to Professor Mazon-the dean of French Slavic studies-for having brought together and sifted for us a vast amount of widely dispersed information. Modestly he has refrained from analyzing and interpreting the numerous documents he has laboriously collected over many decades. But both the scholar of literature and the intellectual historian will profitably use the many sources which Professor Mazon generously cites at length or in full. Columbia University MARC RAEFF

CHARLES A. MOSER, Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's. London, The Hague, and Paris: Mouton, 1964. Pages 215. 22 Dutch guilders. "Slavistic Printings and Reprintings," Vol. XLII.

Originally a doctoral dissertation, subsequently revised and expanded by re- search in various libraries in Leningrad, Moscow, Paris, London, and the United States, Dr. Moser's book is a comprehensive study of the "antinihil- ist" novel from 1855 to 1872, covering two well-known classics, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and Dostoevsky's Possessed, lesser-known novels by Leskov, Goncharov, and Pisemsky, and a number of obscure works by writers now completely forgotten.

Dr. Moser has diligently analyzed his novels, conscientiously combed con- temporary sources, dutifully perused the few available monographs on the subject. The effort is praiseworthy, the results not altogether satisfactory.

The distribution of material is out of balance: accounts of the nihilist milieu and contacts between the novelists and the radicals take up 134 pages, while only 43 pages are given to analysis of the novels themselves. Moreover, the considerable overlapping of material in the various chapters is confusing and detracts from the unity of the work.

Pisarev, the acknowledged leader of the nihilists, emphasized that the new philosophy "leads to the full emancipation of personality." This aspect of nihilism is not sufficiently brought out, nor has the author made a really serious effort to differentiate between the nihilists and the revolutionary socialists.

One basic difficulty in a study of this type is that of classification. Which novels are "antinihilist," which "nihilist," which "neutral"? Can Turge-

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:37:36 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions