Three Russian Tales of the Eighteenth Century: The Comely Cook, Vanka Kain, and "Poor Liza"

Introduction

i n T r o d u c T i o n Mikhail Chulkov, Matvei Komarov, Nikolai Karamzin, and eighteenth-Century Russian Literary Culture T h e a u T h o r s i n T h i s c o l l e c T i o n have much that distinguishes them from one another, from their social status to their level of literary sophistication and intellectual depth. The most gifted of the three, nikolai Karamzin, was a nobleman born into the type of privilege that allowed him to befriend and work with the social and cultural elite of late-eighteenth-century russia. by the end of his rather short-lived literary career, he was the most celebrated russian writer of his age, justly praised for the graceful style, emotional intensity, and aesthetic refinement that define his work. in the last two decades of his life, Karamzin’s reputation and connections reached such proportions that when he decided to abandon belles-lettres to concentrate on writing a history of russia, Tsar alexander i supported his project by appointing him official court historiographer. on the other end of the spectrum stands Matvei Komarov . an enslaved servant or serf, he belonged to the largest, and most downtrodden, social class in eighteenth-century russia—some of whose members Karamzin’s family, though far from rich, would have owned. as a house servant, his life was immeasurably easier 4 i n T r o d u c T i o n than the lot of those serfs toiling in the fields, which not only explains his ability to read and write but also his familiarity with the commonplaces of enlightenment philosophy and russian neoclassical literature. Melding this knowledge with the irreverent wit and wisdom of the lower classes, Komarov parlayed his modest talents into becoming the most popular russian writer of the eighteenth century. residing socially somewhere between these polar opposites , Mikhail chulkov was born into the thin layer that passed for the middle class in eighteenth-century russia. although from a relatively modest background, chulkov acquired an education that equipped him to do battle with the best-known writers of his day. in his verse, journalism, and prose fiction, he fully engaged in the literary debates of the late 1760s, displaying both an encyclopedic knowledge of the norms of russian neoclassicism and a savvy command of the same subcultural resources, especially folklore, that Komarov exploited. despite substantial differences in their backgrounds and abilities, chulkov, Komarov, and Karamzin share one important trait: they all produced seminal texts expressing the major literary, social, or philosophical concerns of late-eighteenth-century Russia. The first of the three to enter the world of belles-lettres, chulkov utilized a lighthearted sense of humor to deflate the literary pretensions of his age. In his finest work, The Comely Cook (1770), a rollicking description of the bawdy misadventures of the prostitute heroine Martona serves to lampoon the devices, philosophy, and grave sense of mission underpinning the reigning literary aesthetic of neoclassicism while also subverting the excesses of the early stirrings of sentimentalism in russia. beginning his career two decades later, Karamzin came of age as well-established trends in west european sentimentalism were taking ever deeper root in russian soil. From the time he began publishing his first major literary work, Letters of a Russian Traveler (1791), he not only observed the many facets of the literary etiquette of Sentimentalism but also did more than any other author to define their use in russia. This is especially true of “poor liza” (1792), in which Karamzin creates a template for the movement by concisely laying out its major themes, introducing an archetypal heroine of David Gasperetti 5 increased psychological complexity, and recounting her story in an elegant language whose vocabulary and syntax were modeled on the speech of Karamzin’s noble peers. Though far less skilled than Karamzin or even chulkov, Komarov nevertheless touched even more readers than they did, both during his lifetime and after it. his adaptation of the popular legend surrounding the eponymous outlawprotagonist of Vanka Kain (1779) became Russia’s first best seller, which he followed up just three years later with yet another wildly successful novel, The Tale of the adventures of the english Milord George and the Brandenburg Margravine Friderika Louisa. Taken together, these two works secured Komarov’s popularity with a large segment of the russian reading public for...