How the Russians Read the French: Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book was inspired decades ago by my then-colleague in the Romance languages department, Michael Danahy. We cotaught a course on the French and Russian novel, which has continued to develop over the years with the help of Wesleyan students. Several wonderful colleagues who have written on related subjects generously read my drafts and led me to new insights. I am particularly grateful to Michael Armstrong Roche, Vladimir Golstein, Gary Kern, Robin Feuer Miller, and David Powelstock for their knowledge, thoughtfulness, and careful commentary. Many others have helped me in a variety of invaluable ways—Yaron Aronowicz, Evgenii Belodubrovsky, Nicholas Beauchamp , Ron Cameron, Jenefer Coates, Marianna Tax Choldin, Robert Conn, Neil Cornwell, Andrew Curran, June Pachuta Farris, James Gubbins, Reverend John Hall, Vera Milchina, Maria Nankova, Tatyana Nikiforova, Donald Rayfield, Ashraf Rushdy, Ralph Savarese, Alexander Schenker, Bronwyn Wallace, Kate Wolfe, and Andrei Zorin have read drafts, contributed insights, provided technical assistance, and/or given bibliographic aid. Sheila Moermond was an attentive and punctilious editor. Liza Knapp’s astute and learned reader’s report was an excellent guide to the revision process. My biggest debt is to my treasured colleague Susanne Fusso, who read the entire manuscript, much of it more than once, with her usual care, precision, and insight. Wesleyan University’s liberal sabbatical policy and research grants have been an essential boon, allowing me to spend months on end exploring the British Library’s marvelous collection of French and Russian literature. Wesleyan’s remarkable students of several generations have lent me their enthusiasm and given me their insights. xiii My husband and daughter, William and Rachel Trousdale, provided years of invaluable editorial and culinary aid. I am grateful to the following publications for permission to publish segments of this book that have appeared in earlier versions: “Lermontov’s Reading of Pushkin: The Tales of Belkin and A Hero of Our Time,” in The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Thought, ed. Derek Offord (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 58–75. Reproduced by permission of Palgrave Macmillan. “Anna Karenina: Tolstoy’s Polemic with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary,” Russian Review 54, no. 2 (April 1995): 243–59; in Russian, Znanie—sila 11 (1994): 98–102. “Dostoevsky’s Modern Gospel: Crime and Punishment and the Gospel of John,” Dostoevsky Studies 2, no. 1 (1998): 69–79. “Crime and Punishment and Jules Janin’s La Confession,” Russian Review 58 (April 1999): 234–43. “An Author of His Time: Lermontov Rewrites George Sand,” Festschrift to Honor Arnold J. McMillin, ed. Irene Zohrab, New Zealand Slavonic Journal 36 (2002): 173–82. “Petersburg’s Vasisdas: The Revue étrangère,” Zapiski russkoi akademicheskoi gruppy v SShA / Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars 33 (2004): 67–80. “Anna Karenina, Rousseau, and the Gospels,” Russian Review 66, no. 2 (April 2007): 204–19. A Note on Transliteration and Translation I have followed the custom of using the nonspecialist transliteration in the text and the Library of Congress system in the footnotes (e.g., Dostoevsky and Dostoevskii, respectively). All unattributed translations are mine. xiv Acknowledgments How the Russians Read the French ...