Book Description

This volume highlights the diversity and complexity of cultural dialogue between Russia and Western Europe since the end of the eighteenth century. Part one contains contributions which focus on how these cultures have viewed each other. There are chapters on the myth of Dumas père in Russia, the Russian travelogues of Henry Lansdell, Konstantin Leont’ev’s views on Great Britain and France, and the Russian Symbolists’ construction of a mythical European past. Authors in the second part compare the account of the year 1793 in novels by Hugo, Dickens and Dostoevsky, and the representation of female beauty by Bunin and Proust. Part three looks at ways in which these different cultures have influenced each other. Subjects include echoes of French Impressionism in Soviet painting, John McGahern’s rewriting of a Tolstoy play, and actress Renata Litvinova’s reworking of the story of Marguerite Gauthier from La Dame aux Camélias. The subject of part four is the actual physical encounters between Russia and Western Europe. There are contributions on Karamzin’s experiences in revolutionary Alsace, the impression on Russian national consciousness made by invading French soldiers in 1812, and the experiences of leading French émigrés in inter-war Paris.