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The Perception of Emotional Coldness in Andrei Turgenev's Diaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Andrei Zorin
Andrei Zorin*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Abstract

In this article, Andrei Zorin discusses the generational shift in the techniques of self-analysis that occurred in Russia at the turn from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries as revealed in the diaries of Andrei Turgenev, a document that has attracted the attention of many scholars but still remains largely unpublished. Young Turgenev was influenced both by his upbringing in the circles of Moscow Freemasons and by the literature of German Sturm und Drang and especially by the early tragedies by Friedrich Schiller. In his self-reflections, his dramatic love story, and his attempts to translate Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard into Russian, Turgenev demonstrated his quest to resemble his favorite literary characters and the despair caused by his failure to meet these self-imposed standards. Both his quest and his personality as revealed in the diaries can serve as a symbol of the new emotional culture that emerged in Russia and became prevalent there throughout the Romantic age.

Type
Emotional Turn? Feelings in Russian History and Culture
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , Summer 2009 , pp. 238 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2009

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References

1. Vasilii Istrin presented extensive quotes from the diaries in his article on Turgenev's younger brother Aleksandr. See Istrin, Vasilii, “Mladshii turgenevskii kruzhok i Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev,” in Arkhiv brat'ev Turgenevykh (St. Petersburg, 1911), 2:15–111 Google Scholar. Evgenii Tarasov started preparing Andrei Turgenev's diaries for publication as a special volume in the Arkhiv brat'ev Turgenevykh series, but the edition never appeared because of the revolution and civil war in Russia.

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44. RO IRLI, f. 209, d. 276,1. 24. Emphasis added.

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51. RO IRLI, f. 309, d. 276,11. 230b.-24, 41. As Pope wrote it, the first line reads: “Now warm in love, now withering in thy bloom.” Pope, Alexander, The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems, ed. Tillotson, Geoffrey (New Haven, 1954), 322,11. 37–38 Google Scholar. At least one of Turgenev's mistakes was not totally arbitrary, however, as the expression “warm in youth” can also be found in the text. Ibid., 329,1. 110.

52. RO IRLI, f. 309, d. 276,1. 39. “Come Abelard!for what hast though to dread? / The torch of Venus burns not for the dead; / Nature stands check'd, Religion disapproves; / Ev'n thou art cold—yet Eloisa loves. / Ah! hopeless lasting flames like those that burn / To light the dead, and warm th’ unfruitful urn.” Pope, Rape of the Lock, 340-41. Emphasis in the original.

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67. RO IRLI, f. 309, d. 1239,1. 590b.

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