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The Reception of Pushkin's Poetic Works in the 1820s: A Study of the Critic's Role

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Paul Debreczeny
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Extract

The relationship between Pushkin and his critics has been a subject of considerable interest and discussion since the poet's own time. Belinsky made it the focus of the introduction to his series of essays on Pushkin. The early biographers provided some further information, and scholarly attention dates from the 1889 monograph by S. S. Trubachev, Pushkin v russkoi kritike, 1820-1880, which appeared shortly after V. A. Zelinsky had published, between 1887 and 1889, his extremely useful anthology of Pushkin criticism. The monograph is little more than a pedestrian rehearsal of reviews, digressing only to promulgate such myths as Pushkin's “aristocratic” attitude toward critics, but it remains valuable as a catalogue of criticism. Thereafter, both before the Revolution and during the Soviet period, the relevant published material becomes too extensive to list here. Recent comprehensive treatments of the subject may be found in N. I. Mordovchenko's Russkaia kritika pervoi chetverti XIX veka (1959) and in the Academy publication Pushkin: Itogi i problemy izucheniia (1966).

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1969 , pp. 394 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1969

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References

1. B. V. Tomashevsky, Pushkin, vol. 1, 1813-1824 (Moscow, 1956) and vol. 2, 1824- 1837 (Moscow, 1961); Gukovsky, G. A., Pushkin i russkie romantiki, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1965).Google Scholar

2. Language and Literature in Society (Chicago, 1953), p. 73.

3. Vestnik Evropy, no. 6, 1802.

4. “Moi zamechaniia ob russkom teatre, ” Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Moscow, 1959-62), 6: 247. Unless otherwise stated, all subsequent references to Pushkin's works will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses within the text.

5. Sorevnovatel' prosveshcheniia i blagotvoreniia, no. 10, 1822.

6. The Letters of Alexander Pushkin, trans. J. Thomas Shaw, 3 vols. (Bloomington and Philadelphia, 1963), 1: 108. All further references to Pushkin's letters will be to this edition.

7. My Literary and Moral Wanderings, trans. Ralph E. Matlaw (New York, 1962), p. 89.

8. A Defense of Poetry, ed. John E. Jordan (Indianapolis, 1965), p. 38.

9. Letter to Pushkin, May 10, 182S; quoted by Tomashevsky, 1: 424.

10. The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (Oxford, 1904), p. 952.

11. Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (London, 1958), p. 40.

12. “Literature as Equipment for Living, ” The Philosophy of Literary Form (Baton Rouge, 1941).

13. For interesting examples, see Holt, Robert T., “A Proposed Structural-Functional Framework for Political Science,” Functionalism in the Social Sciences, ed. Martindale, Don (Philadelphia, 1965).Google Scholar

14. See Ryleev's letters to Pushkin, Feb. 12 and Mar. 10, 1825, in Stikhotvoreniia, stat'i, pis'ma (Moscow, 1956) and Bestuzhev's letter to Pushkin, Mar. 9, 1825, in Sochineniia (Moscow, 1958), vol. 2.

15. Alexander Her sen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), chap. 5.

16. Moskovskii vestnik, no. 1, 1828, and Dennitsa, 1830, respectively.