“A Riverside Estate” and the Dichotomy of the “Beautiful” and the “Picturesque”: Russian / English Context

Abstract

The article analyzes one of the key concepts of British pre-Romantic aesthetics, the category of the “picturesque,” on the example of the “riverside estate” imagery in English and Russian literatures. It examines the “picturesque” together with the associated category of the “beautiful.” Descriptions of real-life and imaginary mansions in memoir, treatises, and travel notes reveal aesthetic categories that English 18th and 19th century authors of verbal landscape sketches relied upon. One of the purposes of this article is to trace and demonstrate whether the term “picturesque” was commonly used in both analyzed cultures. Whereas in English literature, it was applied, first of all, to suburban manors and farms (or granges), Russian literary texts replaced it either with synonyms (“free”, “beautiful”), or with the concept of the “vigorous” (zhivotvorny) that was derived from the “picturesque” and developed by Vl.S. Solovyov. The article thus traces the dynamics behind the borrowing of the English term in the descriptions of Russian estates from the 18th through the early 20th centuries, and singles out Russian synonyms for the term “picturesque.”

Keywords

• British pre-Romantic aesthetics
• “beautiful
• ” “picturesque
• ” “riverside estate
• ” English landscape garden
• Russian “estate culture
• ” vigorous (zhivotvorny).