Desbordes-Valmore, Smirdin and Pushkin in the Face of “Industrial Literature”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the influence of “industrial literature” (Sainte-Beuve’s term) and Anglomania on Franco-Russian cultural relations of the Romantic era. In particular, the author considers the reader’s reception of the short story collection “Lady Betty’s Salon,” published in France under the name of Desbordes-Valmore (March 1836). The translation of the collection into Russian, signed with the cryptonym N.D., was published in the printing house of A.F. Smirdin in the same year. The article reveals the economic and cultural prerequisites of the publication, as well as the peculiarities of the French edition, which is a transposition of popular stories by English authors of keepsakes of 1810–1830. Numerous facts improve the popularity of Desbordes-Valmore’s works in aristocratic salons of Moscow and St. Petersburg (Rostopchina, Dargomyzhsky, Glinka, Annenkov). The author of the article suggests that Pushkin may have influenced Smirdin’s decision to publish the work. The analysis of an anonymous critical book review, signed with the initial R.M. and published in the newspaper “Northern Bee” (November 1836), reveals the similarity of the judgments expressed in the critical note with Pushkin’s views on the state of French literature contemporary to him, as well as his profound knowledge of the material. The book has become a bibliographic rarity in France, but has survived in Russian translation, although it is the only case of translation of Desbordes-Valmore’s prose into Russian in the 19th century.

Keywords

• desbordes-valmore
• pushkin
• smirdin
• keepsakes
• anglomania
• translation
• transposition
• literary adaptation
• book market