1. Ivan Aksakov spoke of Leontiev's “voluptuous cult of the cane.” See Leont'ev, Konstantin, Moia literaturnaia sud'ba (New York, 1965), p. 1965 Google Scholar (available from Johnson Reprint Company); Turgenev thought that he surpassed Dostoevsky in fatuous “selfsatisfaction, “ Turgenev, I. S., Sobranie sochinenii v dvenadtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1958), 12: 136 Google Scholar; N. Strakhov suggested that “with him religion, art, science, patriotism … were so many excuses for his most base stirrings and his most depraved thirst for pleasure and self-gratification.” V. Rozanov, as in the case of Dostoevsky, managed to color Leontiev with many of his own exotic tastes. For Strakhov's remarks to Rozanov see Literaturnye isgnanniki (St. Petersburg, 1913); for Rozanov's own views, “Neuznannyi fenomen, ” in Pamiati K. N. Leont'eva (St. Petersburg, 1911). V. Soloviev, in his encyclopedia entry, “Leont'ev, K. N., ” Entsiklopedicheskii slovar1 Brockhausa i Efrona (St. Petersburg), 17: 562-64, hypothesized that no synoptic view of Leontiev was possible. Masaryk, T. in The Spirit of Russia, vol. 2 (London, 1919), pp. 207–20 Google Scholar, attempted to maintain his usual insight and impartiality, but ended up being as hostile to Leontiev as Leontiev was to the Czechs. S. Bulgakov considered Leontiev to be an “ethical monster,” Tikhie dumy (Moscow, 1918), p. 119. On the other hand, George Ivask has recently done much in the way of translation to introduce Leontiev's fiction to a wider audience: The Egyptian Dove (New York, 1969); Against the Current: Selections from the Novels, Essays, Notes, and Letters (New York, 1969). His own essays in Vosrozhdenie, beginning with no. 118 of October 1961, and continuing to no. 138, and his more recent Konstantin Leont'ev: Zhisn’ i tvorchestvo (Bern, 1974), offer much somewhat diffuse biographical data and one of the few attempts in Western scholarship to discuss Leontiev as a writer. Soviet sources have only recently begun to show promise with Gaidenko, P.'s “Naperekor istoricheskomu protsessu,” Voprosy literatury, 1974, no. 5, pp. 159–205Google Scholar. The material is scarce in other instances. In “Konstantin Leontiev's Fiction,” American Slavic and East European Review, 20, no. 4 (December 1961): 622-29, Professor Ivask interprets Leontiev in the framework of the Narcissus myth. In a review of the translations, Clarence F. Brown recognizes Leontiev's fictional craftsmanship but pessimistically separates it from his ideas in “Slightly to the Right of the Czar, ” Neiv Republic, April 19, 1969, pp. 25-27. Eduard Swoboda in Wiener slavistischcs Jahrbuch, 13, (1966): 83-89, examines biographical background and analyzes the stylistic devices in The Egyptian Dove. Critical studies which place greater emphasis on Leontiev's intellectual history are: Berdiaev, N.'s Leontiev (London, 1940)Google Scholar; Zenkovsky, V. V.'s A History of Russian Philosophy, trans. Kline, George L., vol. 1 (New York, 1953), chapter 15Google Scholar; and Father Florovsky, Georges's Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 305 Google Scholar, and “Die Sackgassen der Romantik, ” Orient und Occident, 4 (1930): 14-27. Berdiaev follows Rozanov in comparing Leontiev to Nietzsche but is scarcely interested in literary issues which arise out of the comparison. Father Zenkovsky's chapter on Leontiev is one of the better general introductions available; my own essay often follows Father Florovsky's interpretation of the romantic “blind alley. “

2. I agree with Robert E. MacMaster (Slavic Revieiv, 28, no. 1 [March 1969]: 134— 35) that “a fuller, analytic consideration of … cultural, social, and situational matters “ would have greatly improved Stephen Lukashevich's recent study Konstantin Leontiev (1831-1891): A Study in Russian “Heroic Vitalism” (New York, 1967). In this instance, unfortunately, Erikson and the psychoanalytic approach has contributed much to Leontiev's bizarre image in scholarship, and little to an understanding of his fiction or its intellectual and literary context.

3. Controversy over the use of the term “romanticism” is summarized in Rene Wellek's essays “The Concept of Romanticism in Literary History, ” Comparative Literature, 1 (1949): 1-23, and 2 (1949): 147-72; and “Romanticism Re-examined, ” in Northrop Frye, ed., Romanticism Reconsidered (New York, 1963), pp. 107-33 (first printed in Concepts of Criticism [New Haven, 1963]). As will become obvious further on, I do not share Arthur Lovejoy's view that romanticism is a vague or impractical concept; nor do I agree with Northrop Frye's suggestion that a “conceptual approach” to romanticism is unwise. In the last instance, our differences seem to arise from a question of genre. Professor Frye shows a marked predilection for poetry, while I prefer to emphasize prose writers such as Leontiev, Stendhal, and Dostoevsky, whose often romantic images are best understood with a conceptual critical sensibility. I do, however, accept the critical principle adhered to by Mr. Frye and René Wellek that the inner standards of romanticism should not be examined outside of the concrete textual situation of some one writer's or poet's work. Much of the following discussion is indebted to two other studies which still retain their vigor in our time: Walzel, Oskar's German Romanticism (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; and Irving Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism (Cleveland and New York, 1955). In both works, the chapters dealing with romantic irony and Schlegel are particularly relevant to my discussion of idealism and the notion of a romantic crisis in modern conditions. Peckham, Morse, in “Toward a Theory of Romanticism,” PMLA, 61 (1951): 5–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests the same view of romantic nihilism that I share but comes to different conclusions than those proposed in this essay. Florovsky's “Die Sackgassen der Romantik “; Zamotin, I.'s Romantizm dvadtsatykh godov XIX stoletiia v russkoi literature, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1911)Google Scholar; and Čiževskij, Dmitrij's History of Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature, vol. 1 (Nashville, 1974)Google Scholar and Outline of Comparative Slavic Literatures (Boston, 1952), pp. 85-103 provide pertinent material dealing with the Russian tradition.

4. For the biographical details used here see Leontiev's memoirs Moia litcraturnaia sud'ba (also published in Mescheriakova, N., ed., Litcraturnoe nasledstvo [Moscow, 1935])Google Scholar, and the material Ivask has accumulated in Vosroshdenie.

5. See Zenkovsky's History of Russian Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 439-42, 445-47, for an extensive discussion of Leontiev's aesthetics and ethics from a religious perspective. Leontiev's paradoxical religious views often reflect the tensions of his romanticism; his reading of Herzen on Mt. Athos, and his refusal, even as a monk on his deathbed to speak of an afterlife, would seem to be indications of the same rejection of idealism within the romantic tradition. See A. Konopliantsev's “Zhizn’ K. N. Leont'eva i sviazi s razvitiem ego mirosozertsaniia, ” in Pamiati K. N. Leont'eva.

6. Leont'ev, Konstantin Nikolaevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1912-14), pp. 24–25Google Scholar. All translations from Leontiev's fiction are my own.

7. Ivask, Brown, Swoboda.

8. Leont'ev, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, p. 133.

9. For example, by Lukashevich, Konstantin Leontiev, p. 47.

10. Pavlov left a clear imprint on Russian intellectual history. See Zenkovsky, History of Russian Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 274; and Billington, James H.'s The Icon and the Axe (New York, 1966), p. 312.Google Scholar

11. Moia litcraturnaia sud'ba, Literatumoe nasledstvo, p. 461.

12. Leont'ev, Konstantin, Egipetskii golub: Rasskas rnsskogo (New York, 1954), p. 148.Google Scholar