Rus,'ian Literature XLIV (1998) 159-183 North-;tolland
I N N O C E N T S A T H O M E : ' B E D N A J A L I Z A ' A S A R E S P O N S E T O P I S ' M A R U S S K O G O P U T E S E S T V E N N I K A
D A V I D H E R M A N
Karamzin's first major literary undertaking was his Pis'ma russkogo pute- gestvennika (Letters of a Russian Traveler), his last the Istorija gosudarstva rossijskogo (History of the Russian State). These two benchmarks chart a movement from one end of the spectrum of literary and political values to the other. Over the course of his life, Karamzin's orientation shifted from Europe to Russia, westemizer to proto-Slavophile, liberal to conservative, future to past. 1 Walicki, in a representative view, sees a gulf separating Karamzin's early work of a literary nature, which he considers westernizing, individua- listic, and apolitical - in the sense that it may aim to effect moral change in individuals but not in social structures - from his later historical work, which is politicized, conservative, and communal in its Slavophile and pro-auto- cracy leanings (1979: 54). And also representatively, he explains this shift as Karamzin's reaction to the violent phases of the French Revolution, be- ginning in 1794. 2 Distinguishing him from the Slavophiles proper, Walicki writes:
His conservatism was far more practical than that of the Slavophiles, but also much more superficial - it was a political ideology rather than a Weltanschauung. It would be difficult to find any discussion in his work of the relationship of the individual to society, or of types of culture and corresponding types of personality. (Walicki 1989: 44)
In fact, however, Karamzin's doubts about his original enthusiasm for Euro- pean civilization - about "types of culture and corresponding types of perso- nality" - can be seen in his fiction as early as his story 'Bednaja Liza' ( 'Poor
Liza'), where issues that seem to be happily resolved in the Pis'ma are raised a second time and ultimately come to challenge the very assumptions about European and Russian identities that made Karamzin's travels possible in the first place. 3 As we shall see, the very cultural phenomena that Karamzin lauds in the Pis'ma become the causes of a peculiarly Russian tragedy in 'Bednaja Liza'.
As has long been accepted, Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika under- took the task of introducing European culture, conceived for the most part as the culture of sentimentalism, to Russian readers. Karamzin's project was in effect a voyage of discovery to Europe, meant to familiarize his audience with names and places, the customs and practices of more civilized nations, and - through the literary style of the letters themselves and the persona of the narrator - with the ways of sentimentalism. Travel had been a favorite medium of sentimentalism since Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). But where Sterne's Yorick had bragged of his indifference to the typical travel sights of "pictures, statues, and churches" (1968: 84), finding more to respond to in eccentrically soulful conversation with kind strangers, Karamzin accommodates in the Pis'ma both Sternian en- counters and a more standard travelogue. 4 On the whole, despite occasional caveats, Karamzin presents Europe as a suitable model for the reshaping of Russian culture. In particular, by prominently displaying the sentimental mindset, he labors to create a new vision of the personality of the civilized Russian. Despite Lotman's considerable illumination of this topic, certain key issues remain to be explored, in particular the poetics of imitation which Karamzin proposes, that is, which cultural values (as distinct from political ones) Karamzin borrows and how he represents them. 5
Karamzin recommends sentimental values to his reader both by ex- ample and by direction. 6 He distributes praise and condemnation, hailing "skromnost' i blagonravie ~en~in", 7 or a man who is "dobr, ne~en i 6elove- koljubiv" (181), but deploring drunkenness, depravity, and violent emotions (with the signal exception of suicidal despair) s wherever he finds them. At the same time, Karamzin is unprecedentedly sensitive, in the simple sense that he is extremely aware of his own psychological states and denotes each affect with great precision (Lotman and Uspenskij 1984: 528). Moreover he promotes certain specific emotions over others - often novelties either in themselves or the intensity they reach. For example, he abandons plans to visit Hampstead outside London in order to observe beggars in the street, and feels not regret, but a kind of exultant humanity ("Den' ne propal: serdce moe bylo tronuto!" [362]). Or in pondering the suffering Rousseau was forc- ed to endure, he works himself into the stereotypically sentimental elegiac state of mind over the human predicament. In effect, the narrator demon- strates upon himself a technology for the cultivation of the sentiments, a set of methods designed to place one in emotion-inducing situations, combined
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 161
with examples of how to savor emotion, in order that the reader can learn to do the same.
Above all, Karamzin's voyager demonstrates three institutions which are of vital importance for sentimentalism: imagination, self-presentation, and the salon and its discourse. For Karamzin, sentimental culture finds its microcosm in a kind of conversational encounter with its roots in the 18th- century French salon, but modified to accept a wider circle of potential inter- locutors (Karamzin often stops to chat with the lower classes), and a broader range of topics than its model, where prominent cultural figures discussed philosophy, literature, politics, and the events of the day. 9 Time and again, he enters into heartfelt conversation with anyone who is polite, sharing and stirring sympathetic feeling. Judging from the text of the P/s'ma, Karamzin also seems to prefer direct one-to-one exchanges, whether they are im- promptu meetings on the street or his numerous visits to the sitting rooms of great men throughout Europe. Whatever the context, for Karamzin, some- thing important transpires whenever people take the time to chat and share views.
Karamzinian salon culture in turn presumes a mastery of imagination and self-presentation, seemingly disparate concepts which are nonetheless profoundly connected. Two sides of a single coin, they are both captured by the ambiguous Russian term "predstavlenie", which can encompass both "predstavlenie sebe" and "predstavlenie sebja". On this topic Karamzin is more verbose than his mentor Sterne, because the westernizing slant of the Pis'ma urges the reader to consciously remold his own behavior. The Pis'ma take their inspiration from the ongoing process Peter the Great initiated, in which Russians attempted precisely to reimagine themselves. Broadly speak- ing, imagining oneself as European and then practicing acting European was, for Karamzin and contemporaries, the path to becoming European. 1° To be civilized, especially for a Russian, meant not doing what comes naturally; civilization is learned. This is true even in the realm of language, where Ka- ramzin developed a consciously innovative vocabulary for his new sentimen- tal needs (Lotman and Uspenskij 1984: 528, 588-605). Indeed, Karamzin's famous dictum that writers should imitate the speech of society ladies is followed with the clarification that since society ladies don't speak Russian, it is necessary for would-be authors to imagine the Russian locutions that they would use. 11 And, as Lotman emphasizes, the sophisticated reader whom Karamzin was addressing did not yet exist - Karamzin's first creative act in the Pis'ma was to envision a reader who could then be conjured into being (1987: 230). In the ideologically charged questions of language and personal comportment, then, civilizing reforms were predicated upon a mastery of the manifold applications of the tool of imagination.
Even apart from these historical exigencies, Karamzin recommends self-presentational and imaginative strategies as part of the obligatory be-
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havioral repertoire of any self-civilizing man, Russian or otherwise. The primordially literary skill of invention, of representing to the mind's eye - however universal a phenomenon it may be - ultimately acquires in the Pis'ma a unique and essential importance. It is difficult to overestimate the multitude and variety of forms imagination takes in Karamzin's project. Imagination as a literary act Karamzin demonstrates dozens of times, as when he travels to Vevey and Clarens in an attempt to picture Rousseau's St. Preux and Julie in their "real" setting (149), or when the glory of France and the beauty of the Sa6ne inspire him to picture France in prehistoric times and envision the day when France, like pharaonic Egypt, might one day be forgotten (212), or when an inscription on the coffin of the duc de Rohan conjures forth for him scenes from Rohan's life, replete with details down to actual speeches of the duke and his son (179-181). This constant replaying of acts of imagination underscores what is for Karamzin a fundamental truth: that genuine insight into any phenomenon is predicated not so much on mental acuity, determination, experience, or training. In a move that sets him radically at odds with later thinkers, Karamzin mobilizes a kind of insight that proceeds above all from the imagination, in the form of a direct affective cognition on the part of the viewer. As a result, even observation recedes to secondary importance, summoned mostly to provide fodder for fantasy.
Karamzin travels with books, sometimes almost ignoring a sight to read about it instead; he plans his itinerary around visits to authors' homes and seeks out scenes from literature; he judges Herder by his literary tastes and characterizes him by a quotation from the man's works; he spins ela- borate fantasies over picturesque monuments and historic locales. At every stop, Karamzin experiences a Europe simultaneously overwritten with pre- existing narratives and overwritable with freshly composed ones. Karamzin's Europe is itself already a literary construct, a place which by its very existence reminds visitors that imaginative geographies can be real enough to travel through and touch. Thus both the essence of western cultures and the means of knowing them reside in the exercise of the fantasy. Since the literary history of a place or event becomes an inalienable part of it, and processes of literary invention are essential to insight and appreciation, it falls to the responsibility of the sentimental gentleman to know the canon of essential texts, n as well as the methods of imagination; in effect, to be a good reader and a competent, if not necessarily publishing, practitioner of the lite- rary art.
In European sentimentalism even before Karamzin, imaginative skills are furthermore essential in opening the gateway to social feeling. Nor are these self-induced emotions mere trifles. Sentimentalism typically celebrates the pleasures of communal concourse or the sufferings of the unfortunate. In either guise, it finds itself discovering the joys and sorrows of attending to the other. Indeed, this is perhaps the central point of divergence from roman-
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 163
ticism; in post-sentimental literature emotion becomes more personal than interpersonal, as a result tends to produce social fragmentation instead of cohesion, and can lead as often to vice as to virtue. As John Mullan has recently emphasized, philosophers close to sentimentalism, such as Hume and Adam Smith, believed that the ability to imagine oneself in the shoes of the other, to feel for the other, was a precondition for understanding the experience of another, which in turn is needed if we are to comprehend the society we inhabit (Mullen 1988: 18-56; see also Hammarberg 1991: 1-14). In an era that was just beginning to be fascinated by the philosophical and epistemological differences between subject and object, sentimentalism was a reminder, however primitive, that an accurate image of the social polity must begin by reckoning with the fact that it consists of others who are subjects in their own fight. Thus socially concerned emotion was considered a key to the creation of both a just society and the humane individuals who would populate itY It is precisely this ethical political dimension which is most underappreciated in Karamzin's sentimentalist program, usually at the expense of his more explicit pronouncements on political topics such as revolution or monarchy.
Karamzin implicitly calls for these same powers of literate artifice to be applied to the task facing every undercivilized Russian, that of creating a new self) 4 In the attainment of a new persona, imagination, now in the form of self-imagination, plays a vital part. Indeed as we have seen, all reform, all intentional change, requires the skill of imagination. For what cannot be envisioned cannot be sought. With this charting out of possible futures and possible selves in advance is associated the related process of intentional self-presentation. If Karamzin perceives the first step towards civilization in the acquisition of the essentially literary skill of invention, then the second step, the mastery of self-presentation, is prototypically theatrical. Just as a proper writing and speaking style, for Karamzin, means using polite peri- phrasis instead of direct and potentially indelicate locutions, so a proper per- sona is one carefully groomed and conscious that it is being presented for public consumption. A civilized man never simply speaks his mind or voices his desires with indifference to the effect he creates on his interlocutors. Lotman ingeniously calls attention to Karamzin's unexpected preference for naturalness and simplicity in performances by actors on the stage (1987: 233). The aesthetic (and hence behavioral) ideal expressed here, however, is not so much naturalness in the sense of verisimilitude or ingenuousness, but rather the seamless mergingof artifice and reality, in which the exertions of art cease to be visible and become one with being. In effect, Karamzin distin- guishes what might be called a genuine artifice from its false relative. Ge- nuine artifice supplants reality; false artifice remains mere artificiality.
Karamzin was phenomenally successful in promoting his new vision of what it meant to be civilized. Indeed, his standards soon became so wide-
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spread that they lose all association with their introducer, t~ By 1808, in the essay 'Pisatel' v oblEestve', 7.ukovskij was treating as a universal standard this same Europeanized behavior, or as he called it, "iskusstvo obralEat'sja prijatno" (1959-1960, 4: 394). Ultimately, Karamzinian salon culture makes of the personality an aesthetic object. The sentimental personality is not the mere expression of some inner self. Nor is it a trained moral entity, striving to live up to ethical demands. Rather it is a conglomeration of personality traits deliberately chosen and presented for the admiration of an audience, in the hopes of producing on others a pleasant impression through one's sensiti- vity and refined virtue. 7.ukovskij makes this goal, "vzaimno drug drugu nravit'sja" (393), into society's guiding principle, and describes the expected efforts of a society man "Etob nravit'sja vsegda, vo vsjakom meste i vsem naru~.nost'ju, odeZdoju, krasnoreEiem jazyka, lica, dvi~enij" (394). Yet it is essential to balance Zukovskij's orientation towards high society with Ka- ramzin's social openness. For as the latter demonstrates by his chats with poor people throughout Europe, behind his garrulous amiability there looms a very serious project of binding together individuals and classes in an on- going mutual dialogue. Certainly, any culture which ascribes semiotic value to personal comportment encourages self-control and conventionalized beha- vior of one form or another. But with its precise regulation of grooming, speech, and emotion, perhaps no other cultural movement so prized (proper) artifice as tantamount to civilization.
Sterne highlights this aestheticization of the personality in his de- scription of French shopkeepers:
Like so many rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable collisions, they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and not only become round and smooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant. (1968: 54)
The necessity of an audience, and the concomitant ability to play for one, are exemplified in Yorick's treatment of the monk he meets. The monk begs for alms, and Yorick refuses with rather unkind words. Despite pangs of guilt, he makes no redress. But as soon as a gentlewoman appears, Yorick's con- science gets the better of him and he bestows on the monk an expensive snuff-box. In ~ukovskij 's words, society becomes an "ob~irnyj teatr, gde vsjakij est' v odno vremja i dejstvuju~ij i zritel'" (1959-1960, 4: 394). We should pause to note, however, that Zukovskij's stance corresponds to the ex- ample from Sterne only partially. As Yorick makes clear, there is an implicit eligibility requirement lurking under the surface of Zukovskij's "vsjakij": a highborn lady constitutes an audience, while a poor monk does not. Karam- zin understands the theatrical impulse implicitly; can there be any more audience-oriented endeavor than his transformation of private travels into a
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 165
document addressed to an entire nation? Indeed, all sentimental journeys are nothing if not a celebration of personality as an artistic construct, with their constant diet of encounters for self-enrichment, the display of the narrator's inner self for aesthetic appreciation, and the invitation to identify.
A passage provocatively placed at the very culmination (at least in one version) 16 of the Pis'ma emphasizes the size of the gulf that Karamzin sees as separating a sensitive soul's ideals from reality.
"Beautiful is only that which does not exist," said J.-J. Rousseau. Well then, if this beauty always eludes us like a passing shade, we at least try to capture it by our imagination: we shall direct ourselves high above the clouds to the heights of sweet fancy; we shall draw ourselves a beautiful ideal; we shall deceive ourselves and deceive those who deserve to be deceived. (1967: 441)
It is a very great gap, then, that imagination must span between a reality perceived as vastly deficient and still-to-be-realized ideals of personal, emo- tional, linguistic, and national refinement. Under cover of a pleasing pastime, Karamzin is introducing an engine of imagination primed to reshape the cha- racter of a nation. Yet as a principle for a national identity, this is an aesthetic which shares a precarious border with falseness and self-deception. If no- ~ing else, one wonders what disunifying force - similar to the one we saw in Zukovskij - lies ready to challenge Karamzin's goal of national integration under the banner of a newly sophisticated Russian identity. For the words "those who deserve to be deceived" hint at an awareness of disturbing questions. Who will deceive whom? Who deserves to be deceived? And what happens if the power to deceive falls into the hands of the undeserving?
In the Pis'ma, Karamzin records another moment of doubt, brief but this time almost explicit. His paean to imagination, the European skill, is briefly challenged by a dissonant voice which itself is European. While seek- ing out the proper village in which to unleash his imagination on the theme of Julie and St. Preux, Karamzin asks directions from a peasant. "Rabotaju- ~ i j poseljanin, vidja tam ljubopytnogo prilel'ca, govorit emu s usme~koju: barin koneEno Eital Novuju Eloizu?" (152). Significantly, this comment comes precisely from the social class that sentimentalists worked so hard to bring into the fold of national culture. (Poor Liza's father is also described as a hard-working "poseljanin".) 17 Yet in the peasant's slightly mocking res- ponse we for once have an emotion that is not meant to be shared with the interlocutor, an ironic solo laughter designed to reinforce social alienation rather than bridge it. It provides another suggestion that sentimentalism's drive for social inclusiveness had yet to reckon fully with those it would include, and that the sticking point was precisely imagination. Here Karam- zin ponders whether a fully literate imagination is necessarily the universal
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good he had considered it. Over time, this doubt took on the proportions of a full narrative as 'Bednaja Liza'.
The cultural import-export business is one fraught with dangers. Towards the end of his travels, Karamzin begins to have doubts about the wisdom of his undertaking. After making a show of recording every observation and sen- sation for more than a year, the Russian traveler suddenly runs out of money, jumps on the fh'st available boat out of London, and proclaims his journey's end as soon as he reaches Kronstadt, without using the opportunity to take stock of the significance of his voyage or his return. Where we might expect at least a brief attempt to put everything in perspective or sum up key con- clusions about Europe, Russia, border-crossings, or sentimentalism, we get almost nothing. TM The abruptness of the ending can be read as a sign that Karamzin had relapsed into uncertainty regarding his project.
Karamzin's doubts stemmed from what could be called the problem of "okrestnosti" or outskirts; this was the danger of the periphery. Karamzin's abhorrence for things in between or on the outskirts unintentionally becomes the first major theme of his travels, revealed as soon as he crosses the border between Estonia and Livonia. Not surprisingly, Karamzin had originally wanted to journey by boat so as to avoid this unappealing marginal zone, "~toby skoree byt' v Germanii" (6), but the Petersburg authorities interpret his passport as allowing travel by land only. At the boundaries of the empire, everything becomes beclouded by uncertainty and half-being, and Karamzin is remarkably uneasy. The provinces of Estonia and Livonia seem strangely identical. There are no villages as such, just huts; the roads resemble roads, but carry no travelers; the cities fade into imperceptibility. The post is called German, but belongs to Russia. Yet what he discovers is less a mixture than an absence. Estonians merge indistinguishably with Livonians, their lan- guages filled with Germanic and Slavic words, but "malo sobstvennogo" (9). No sight draws the traveler's eye, "net ni bol'~ich gor, ni prostrannych dolin"; "smotret' ne na ~to", Karamzin complains; "o gorodach govorit' mnogo ne~ego" (9). The people themselves are liminal specters, their fea- tures never definitely established: silent in work, but wild in their carousals, seemingly clumsy and slow-witted, yet able to outwork a Russian fourfold. That such chaos is for Karamzin endemic to marginal zones is clear from the unexpected connection he draws: "Tut byla pre~de nasa granica - o, Petr, Petr!" (9).
Even more, however, this exclamation points out that the liminality that really exercised Karamzin was Russia's. The periphery was where Russia still resided in relation to Europe, even if it had moved towards the center thanks to Peter. Certainly medieval Russia had not lacked a native culture of its own, but without a more active importation of sentimental salon values, modern Russia would remain where it had been throughout the 18th century,
'Bednaja Liza' and 'P/'s'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 167
stalled in a nebulous zone between the Orthodox church culture of its past and the secular European culture it had only partly adopted. Such in-between zones are, for Karamzin, innately precarious. Looking ahead, we can note that ultimately Karamzin's own westernization drive merely replaced one peripheral status with another. As Karamzin himself no doubt came to realize, Russia might for itself wholeheartedly embrace European values, but the role Europe conceded it was still that of a periphery.
It can be argued that Karamzin's ruminations on Russia's peripheral status led to 'Bednaja Liza', making it in effect a kind of addendum to the Pis'ma - the missing conclusion on the advantages and dangers of border crossings, but translated into allegorical form. Here again "okrestnosti" play a vital role. The story reveals its genesis in its opening. Continuing the P/s'- ma, it relies structurally on travel - the narrator's day-trip outside of Mos- cow, and the musings he has in the role of outside observer of rural life, Here in the "okrestnosti goroda sego" (605), as the narrator calls it, the very at- mosphere of the site itself recalls to him Liza' s story. This trip is doubled by Erast, who originally undertakes sentimental (social) intercourse in a socially foreign milieu.
Like the journey abroad, this movement crosses borders with ideo- logical significance. Moscow, in the 1790's still the cultural center of Russia, had served as the invisible second pole in the original travels, the place de- parted from, compared to, and to which all the letters were implicitly ad- dressed. Yet strangely, if the goal of the Pis'ma was observation and descrip- tion, Moscow the city had gone completely undescribed except for a single landmark, a "gotiEeskij dom, ljubeznyj predmet glaz moich v Easy noEnye" (5). 19 This "gothic" element of Russia's past figures even more prominently in 'Bednaja Liza' in the "mraEnye, gotiEeskie balni Si...nova [Simonova] monastyrja" (606). These looming gothic towers mark a kind of gothic tale in which Karamzin reveals his anxieties by casting Russian culture in a distress linked with its non-European past. The tensions between a culturally advanc- ed center and a backwards but innocent periphery then play out in a story where this cultural advantage is figured as economic and class superiority.
Liza's zone is the backwards but natively Russian past and its primarily religious culture. Certainly, as a representative of the past, Liza hardly re- sembles the women who inhabit byliny, hagiographies, or Domostroj. Nor is her behavior markedly Orthodox. Rather, Liza is made representative by the repeated topographical association with a place where the past lives onf l The monastery, in whose shadow she lives and dies, symbolizes medieval culture - still standing, but tellingly abandoned. Indeed, as the narrator looks at the monastery he sees only the past in a symbolically charged vision:
I/IHor~a Ha BpaTax xpaMa pacCMaTpHBa~O H306pa;~eHHe qy~ec, B C e M MOHaCTblpe ~lyqHBIIIHXC~I, -- TaM pb[6bI Ha~aIOT C He6a ~
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HaCblII~eHH~I :~HTeJlel~l MOHaCTblp~I, oca~<~eHHOrO MHOrOtlHC.rIeH - HblMH BparaMH: TyT o6pa3 6OrOMaTepH o6pan~aeT HenpH~Te~eR B 6erCTBO. Bee CHe 06HOB$I~IeT B MOel~ IIaM~ITH HCTOpHIO Hal i iero OTeqecTBa -- rleqaslbHyIO HCTOpHIO Tex epeMeH, KoFRa ceHpenble TaTapbl H JIHTOB~bl OFHeM H MetIOM OHyCTOIII83IH 0KpeCTHOCTH pOCCHttCKOIt CTOJIH~bl H K o r e a HecqaCTHa~ MOCKBa, KaK 6e33a- II~HTHaR B~OBHI~a, OT OJ/Jtoro 6ora o ~ H ~ a ~ a HOMOII~H B SnOTblX CeOHX 6e~CTBH~X. (606)
Again an imaginative act is presented as opening the door to genuine insight. Here Russia's past is not a story of secular wars and heroic victories, but, like the description of the Baltic peoples, another sad story of the woes that befall peripheries, which this time are the outlying regions of the state laid waste by enemy attacks.
This passage gives the events in Liza's story a historical resonance. The paradigmatic "pe~ai'naja istorija" - the widow and the dangerous ex- posure of the "okrestnosti" to alien forces - places historical Muscovy in a curious parallel with Liza and her widowed mother. ~ And if Muscovy is be- sieged by foreign armies, then Liza is exposed to the dangerous foreign powers of sentimental salon culture, represented by the citified hero with the European-sounding name, Erast. The story of Poor Liza is the enactment of what may happen to native Russian civilization in its interactions with the superior cultural powers Karamzin himself had labored so mightily to import in the Pis'ma.
Yet if the historical Muscovy is the victim on the periphery, in Liza's story the newly Europeanized Moscow has switched roles. Certainly Mos- cow remains less "civilized" in the western sense than Petersburg or Paris. But in relation to its own outskirts, it serves as cultural center and source of foreign ideas, a role which makes it an overwhelming presence beyond its proper borders:
CTOg Ha celt r ope , BH~HIIIb Ha npaBoi~ CTOpOHe rlOqTH BCIO MOC- KBy, CnlO y>racny~o rpoMaRy ~OMOB H RepKBe~t, KOTOpa~ n p e ~ - CTaBJDIeTCH rJIa3aM B o6pa3e Be.rlHqeCTBeHHOFO aMqbHTeaTpa: Be- JIHKOYleI'IHa~I KapTHHa, OCO6JIHBO KOFRa CBeTHT Ha Hee COYlHI.[e, ror;aa BeqepHHe nyqH ero nI, IsiaioT Ha 6ecqncaermblx 3naTbix xyrIo~ax [...] (605; italics in original)
If the city seems a magnificent amphitheater, then the country is by extension its stage. The trope is a significant one in a story where culturally literate city dwellers are witness to one of the first presentations of rural inhabitants as protagonists. But unlike Zukovskij 's vision of society as a shared theater, these "okrestnosti" are a stage invisible to the local inhabitants, le.rast has grown tired of "svetskie zabavy" (610), and seeks a change of scenery and a
"Bednaja Liza' and "Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika" 169
new kind of drama, but Liza only finds out that she is enmeshed in a role- play when it is too late. l~rast on the other hand is poised to make full use of the prerogatives of the stage because, like a proper sentimentalist, he pos- sesses the requisite actor's talents of self-reinvention and self-presentation. He has, in other words, tired of "society amusements", but not of the social arts.
Liza is imperiled because she remains untutored in the new foreign behavior made possible when imagination and its corollaries are internalized. The plot turns on Erast's ability to manipulate his own image in Liza's eyes. When Liza first sees him he is "chorolo odetyj ~elovek, prijatnogo vida" (608). When he next appears, "Molodoj Eelovek poklonilsja ej tak uEtivo, s takim prijatnym vidom, ~to ona ne mogla podumat' ob nem niEego, krome chorotego" (609). At his third appearance, he "vzgljanul na nee s vidom laskovym" (612, italics in original). With his mastery of "vidy", Erast easily succeeds in deceiving Liza. Liza, on the other hand, is betrayed by her own essence. Always naively truthful, she has not learned that character can be modified and deliberately presented. Liza does not represent herself in any way; she simply is. All of her character appears on the surface and is as it seems. Liza's cultural education is a native Russian one; it does not teach the conventions of the stage.
It is important to note, however, that the danger is implicitly limited to the in-between zone where city and country can see each other, where Euro- pean manners and uninitiated Russian innocents meet. Deep in the country- side away from the city, where Russian mores would hold full sway, Liza would certainly be safer, if only because Erast and Liza could find for their meetings no neutral ground away from prying eyes and defined social roles. At the same time, it is not the city per se that is dangerous. In Moscow the danger of misleading "vidy" is neutralized by the presence of the rest of the audience - viewers of l~rast's play who are no less sophisticated than he is. As Erast asks Liza where she lives, "MimochodjalEie na~ali ostanavlivat'sja i, smotrja na nich, kovarno usmechalis'" (608). Erast restores his prerogative by shifting the action to the stage on the margins, offering Liza regular pay- ments for her flowers if she will stay at home and sell only to him. Like the earlier snicker emitted by the peasant met on the Rousseauian hunt, this laughter is a tacit acknowledgment by Karamzin that not everyone can be convinced the artifice of "predstavlenie sebja/sebe" isn't just another lie.
Encounters with poor girls figure prominently in the sentimental ethos. When Karamzin meets the maidservant Sophie during his sojourn in London, some of his favorite things - tasteful polite conversation, charm, innocence, youth, poverty, and pretty women - come together to produce a revealing exchange. With the best of intentions but with a profligate' s eye, he notes that his usual girl, Jenny, "kotoraja, skazat' pravdu, ne o~en' krasiva soboju", takes Sun-
170 David Herman
day off and is replaced by a "prelestnaja devu~ka let semnadcati" (370). Ka- ramzin soon finds that communication across national and class lines is facilitated by the company of a pretty and modest young girl, despite her evident uneagerness to speak back. As delight loosens his tongue, "K moemu udivleniju, Anglinskija frazy sami soboju mne predstavljalis', i est'li by ja vsjakoj den' mog govorit' s prelestnoju Sofieju, to ~erez mesjac zagovoril by kak - Orator Parlamenta!" (370). In the end, after much cajoling, Sophie fi- nally agrees to drink tea with the gentleman, but refuses to sit down and continues to blush.
Karamzin is perhaps fortunate to have happened upon so virtuous a companion, for a similar meeting nearly undoes parson Yorick. In the chap- ter 'The Temptation', Sterne's hero gets to know a chambermaid who, though she blushes, does agree to sit. Since there is nowhere else, they sit on his bed. She obviously has no intention of leaving, their hands touch, and Yorick struggles to resist, well aware that "the devil was in me" (Sterne 1968: 92). Soon he is helping her do the buckles of her shoes and accidental- ly upends her. At the last second he finds the force to conquer his lust. But his triumph is tempered by a lament for love:
If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece - must the whole web be rent in drawing them out? - Whip me such stoics, great governer of nature! (1968: 94)
As we shall see, this is an attitude with which 'Bednaja Liza' implicitly con- curs. It is notable as well that poverty and money are vital features in each of these three scenes. Yorick meets the chambermaid by giving her a coin as a pretext to start a conversation with her. I~rast and Liza meet when he buys one of her flowers (he tries to give her more than the price, but she refuses). And Sophie appears instead of the usual Jenny apparently because she wants to "nakopit' neskol'ko ginej i vozvratit'sja v Kentskoe Grafstvo k stariku otcu, kotoroj v bol'~oj nu~de" (370). Lest we conclude that Yorick once and for all reins in his libido for available women, we must remember that the work suggests he is not telling all, both at its beginning, where the title pro- mises travels to a second country never visited, and at its abrupt end (1968: 125):
So that when I stretch'd out my hand, I caught hold of the Fille de Chambre's
END OF VOL. II
Here, though the narration proper cuts off when the limits of modesty are reached, the momentum of the events continues to carry the narrator and the
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Hs'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 171
reader forward. And this scene reminds us of another fact important for 'Bednaja Liza'. There is a gentlewoman asleep in the second bed in Yorick's room, yet when he reaches out in her direction, Yorick touches her maid- servant. Unknown gentlewomen may be desired, but it is servant-class wo- men who are easily touched, even if only by accident, Thus if the main theme of Sterne's travels is "the connection between sexual attraction and the finer feelings in man and woman" (Jack 1968: xx), then sometimes Karamzin with his modesty finds himself in a precarious bind. For sentimentalism is all about toying with the bounds of illicit sex, often with a poor girl, whether this leads to rape (as in Richardson), incest (as in Karamzin's own 'Ostrov Borngol'm'), or the coy refusal to tell all (as in Sterne). Sentimentalism presumes to believe that between pleasant attraction and destructive passion stands a clear and definable border, patrolled by a reliable border guard (so- cial or personal restraint), but always finds itself ineluctably drawn to cross that very border for a glimpse of what lies on the other side.
Hence the literary aspect of l~rast's sexual fantasies is not limited to his use of imagination and self-presentation. His entire story is a replaying of perhaps the most fundamental sentimental narrative." Other pre-existing literary models allied with sentimentalism shape his behavior as well. His ideas of rural innocence come from "romany, idillii" (610). Liza has no herd, but he considers her his ".pastugka" (614), for he envisions her as a character from one of those idylls. Erast
n M e n ~OBOnBHO ;~KHBOe BOO6pa>KenHe H qacTO n e p e c e n a n c ~ MBIC3IeHHO B Te BpeMeHa (6blB1.~ne H~H He 6bIBI.HHe), B KOTOpBIe, ccnr I eepHTb CTHXOTBOp~aM, Bee n10~H 6 e c n e q n o r y n s n n n o a y - r aM [ . . . ] n a cqacTJIHaOl~ npa3~IIJtOCTH BCe ~ I H CBOH IIpOBO)K~aJIH. (610)
With the predilection for journeys implied by "pereseljalsja", with his active imagination, his liking for literature, and the ability to reinvent himself, Ernst is nothing but a master of the very skills Karamzin prescribes for cultivated gentlemen.
As we saw in Europe, border-crossing offers the possibility of unusual experiences and renewed emotions. Liza's overriding attractive quality is one that nullifies personality: her otherness. Her ruralness and poverty give her a piquancy that society beauties lack. At the same time, Ernst has no interest in actually exploring poverty or bucolic life. He shows a similar indifference for the complexities of Liza's character: he already knows it, for he is in love with a figment of his own literate invention. Illiterate in the simple sense and as a consequence unaware that personalities can be "authored", Liza's own "~elove~eskij dokument", to appropriate Ginzburg's phrase, is a blank page, and it is precisely this blankness that allows others to write on it. 23
172 David Herman
Yet Karamzin is indecisive about the status of the fantasy of the Golden Age that l~rast gleans from his reading of idylls. There is a key hesitation or anxiety about this ideal given away by Karamzin's "slip .... v te vremena - byv~ie ili ne byv~ie", in which he demonstratively raises a crucial issue only to show he is unable to resolve it. ~ It would be futile to argue that l~rast errs by believing an earlier age can be resurrected: Liza is living proof that the past does survive. Idylls may be false, but they are not inherently more so than other cultural constructs, including refashioned national identities. And if it is idylls that are at fault in I~rast's mistreatment of Liza, then not only is he again merely displaying the fruits of a European edu- cation, but one of the writers responsible for misleading him is Karamzin himself, l~rast can be viewed as responding consistently to the urging of the poet in Karamzin's 'Protej' (1798), who depicts idyllic scenes ~t la Gessner at the urging of his "~uvstvitel'naja duma" (1966: 242):
Torua on [the poet] c FecnepoM canpe~mo caoei~ H3 myMa ropoJ~OB 30BET a noah ~r~ojxelt: "OcTaBBTe, FOBOpHT, )KHJ'IHII~e cKyKH TOMI-IOI~I, I"~e Bee BeceJllele B rlpHTBOpCTBe COCTOHT; l"~e Bbl naxo~HTe e,/l~IHbl~ .II03KHIalI~ BI4~ YTexn n 3a6aB. B cenn l'IpnpoJxbl CKpOMnO~ ~yLUeBnbI~ cnan~n~ Mnp C secezocTb~O ;~HBeT; TaM cqaCTbe Ha slyry c qbHa.UKaMH RBeTeT I/I CMOTpHTCH B pyqel l c rlaCTylJ_IKOIO rlpeKpacHOl~l. (1966: 243)
This could be l~.rast's credo, and since 'Protej' is a defense of the poetic art, l~rast can hardly be faulted. Quite reasonably, he flees the "pritvorstvo" and "lo~.nyj vid" of the city, seeks the company of a "pastu~ka", and spins for himself alternative literary fantasies.
Clearly, Karamzin seems to fear the inevitable reading that l~rast's sin is nothing more than the possession of cultural literacy. To combat this, he makes l~rast careless as well, condemning him as well-intentioned but not wise, and self-indulgent ("s izrjadnym razumom i dobrym serdcem, dobrym ot prirody, no slabym i vetrenym" [610]). 25 At one point the narrator even calls for a subordination of the emotions to the reason evocative of an earlier age: "Bezrassudnyj molodoj ~elovek! znae~' li ty svoe serdce? Vsegda li mo- ~e~' otv~at ' za svoi dvi~enija? Vsegda li rassudok est' car' ~uvstv tvoich?" (614). Yet again, if l~rast is guilty of dissembling combined with flightiness, then he is only imitating the national characteristics of the most civilized people on earth, Karamzin's beloved French. Compare the description of the prototypical Frenchman in the Pis'ma:
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 173
HHKTO, KpOMe ero , He yMeOT IIpHJIaCKaTb qeJIOBeKa O,H]tHM BH- ROM, ORHOIO Be>K.rtHBOIO ym, x6KOIO [...] BeTpeHOCTt,, HerIOCTOKH- CTBO, KOTOpblg COOTaBYIfllOT IIOpOK or0 xapaKTepa, CO¢~HH~IIOTC~ B HeM C HIO6O3HbIMH CBOI~ICTBaMH ~ylIIH, HpoIfCXO~,qI.HIIMH HCKO- TopI~IM 06paaoM OT cero caMoro nopoKa, t~paHRy3 HeHOCTOSlHeH [...] r i o BCTpCH0C'I'H 0CTaB.rI~CT OH :Io6poe, H36HpaCT BpeRltoe." 3a TO [...] ri.rIaqeT eCTIJIH HaRO6HO. Bece~aa 6eapaccy~uocTb eCTb Mm-Ia.q no~apyra TKH3HH ero. (320-321; italics in original)
This description neatly captures the essentials of l~rast's character, from his control over "vid" and his "veselaja bezrassudnost'" to the tears he sheds after causing Liza's suicide. ~
The extended introduction of 'Bednaja Liza' has been nearly universal- ly treated by critics as a mood-setting piece, an "overture", as Gukovskij and Hammarberg call it in echo of Sipovskij.27 But Karamzin clearly has a much more important purpose in mind. It is to function as a counterexample to l~rast's abuse of cultural skills, presented in the person of the narrator. The narrator demonstrates their proper use as he notes down his musings while wandering the environs of Moscow. This is the second part of Karamzin's strategy to fault l~rast and salvage some aspect of the European cultural inheritance he still reveres. Yet here, where for once Karamzin explicitly means to erect a distinction or border that will hold, between imagination used and imagination abused, between the narrator and I~rast, we get an ob- ject lesson in the porousness of boundaries. The narrator takes great pains to spell out the steps of his ostensibly proper imaginative practice. It consists in traveling to the countryside, observing arresting sights, and using them to create touching stories which one tells to oneself, impromptu narratives for self-consumption. Fantasy is to be focussed upon the poor other - whose poverty, like Liza's, or misfortune, like the monks' or medieval Moscow's - provides rich narrative potentials. The narrator demonstrates the technique when he imagines monks who could have lived in the monastery and various ways in which they might have suffered ("Inogda vcho~.u v kelii i predsta- vljaju sebe tech, kotorye v nich ~ili - pe~al'nye kartiny!" [606]). Careful ob- servation of the periphery is irrelevant. The essential is not to find out what actually happens there, to discriminate details, but to pursue an understand- ing of another type, an imaginatively felt insight that asserts one's compas- sion for the other while nonetheless remaining indifferent to his individual truth.
Certainly this new approach to self-stimulation is more limited and spe- cific than that suggested in the Pis'ma, particularly in its focus on the dis- tanced other (looking grows in importance as active engagement in dialogue becomes less essential) and the other's poorness, which Karamzin under- stands in both the economic and sentimental senses and which reverses the
174 David Herman
relative superiority of the visitor and the visited from the Pis'ma. But even in this form, it hardly condemns I~rast. I~rast's method may be the willful im- position of literary techniques on the ultimately resistant material of real life, "using" the poor for the creation of convenient fictions, but this is precisely what the narrator has recommendedfl In the end, the distinction of justified and unjustified uses of cultural skills collapses. For Karamzin, the real tra- gedy is that l~rast cannot be "faulted for his failure as a Sentimental reader" (Hammarberg 1991: 158), for indeed, though the narrator calls attention to Erast's reading habits, he refrains from condemning themfl Erast's acts clearly precipitate the disaster, yet the narrator is unable to distinguish the moment when l~rast commits an error that might be held up for repudiation or for distinction from his literary preceptors. It is symbolic that the narrator cannot pronounce the words of denunciation which he prepares: "Ja zabyvaju ~eloveka v I~raste - gotov proklinat' ego - no jazyk moj ne dvi~etsja - smotrju na nebo i sleza katitsja po licu moemu" (619; cf. Hammarberg 1991: 154). As this passage demonstrates, the narrator turns to lamentation precise- ly as an alternative to condemnation. If it is true that the narrator directs his glance at the party from which he expects restitution, then, as in the earlier Sterne quotation, he questions a higher authority than Erast.
Indeed, the anxiety over unstable boundaries implicates Erast and the narrator in a second way, for the boundary between them, seemingly secure and mandated by the very conventions of narrative, turns out to be far less fixed. For if it is impossible to satisfactorily distinguish the doer of the mis- deed from the one who deplores it, then their two voices necessarily run to- getherfl And in fact an unexpected and symbolic rapprochement between the two takes place at the end when the narrator reveals that he is only the story's second narrator, having learned the events from Erast's own telling of them. The narrator, seemingly our wiser guide through the story of Liza, whose journey to the outskirts appears to precede Erast's and therefore lay down standards for judging it, turns out to be the follower and double.
In the end, Liza perishes because she lacks a developed "European" imagination, though Karamzin allows that native Russians have some rudi- ments of the skill. As she muses over the social distance that separates her and l~rast and makes their lasting union impossible, she too follows precisely the narrator's prescription for authors: she begins with rural sights - a pas- sing shepherd - and superimposes her own desires, and in the process gene- rates a story in which she is easily able to detain and seduce Erast-as-shep- herd. The problem is that Liza cannot imagine her way across any ideolo- gically charged boundaries. For city-dwellers, at least, these rural fantasies are an exercise in engaging the other. But Liza's dream fails completely on this score, for it never leaves the rural setting that Liza herself inhabits. It is at bottom the most mundane of scenarios, safely within the realm not only of the plausible, but even of the commonplace: the shepherd is united with the
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 175
shepherdess. When she abandons her reverie with the sigh, "Me~ta!" (611), she reveals that she believes the border between imagination and reality to be absolute. Unlike her "sister" Dunja in 'Stancionnyj smotritel", Pu~kin's re- written 'Bednaja Liza', Karamzin's heroine literally cannot envision any pos- sible narratives that would end with her joined with her aristocratic beloved.
However, in the story's key moment, l~rast finally teaches Liza the art of imaginative representation. Yet the result is that Liza becomes infected by the culture of the center and dies. 3t After he tells Liza that he will always love her, l~rast demands that Liza learn the key skill of dissembling, if only once:
- KaK ~ c'~aCT~HBa! I,'I KaK o6pa~yeTc~a MaTymKa, K o r e a y3HaeT, qTO TbI MeH,q .rIIO6aIJ.[b!
- Ax , HOT, J'IHaa! el~ He aa•O6rlO I-iHqero CKa3blBaTb [. . .] OHa a o o 6 p a a H r ce6e qTO-an6y~ , xy~oe.
- aeJmaa CTaTbCfl. - O~tIaro31< n p o m y r e 6 ~ He roaopnTb eI1 06 aTOM HH c~oaa. -- X o p o m o : n a ~ o 6 n o r e 6 ~ rlOCJlylllaTbc~I, X0T~I MHe tie XOTe-
zocb 6hi tin,~ero ratir~, or nee. (612)
As a trained practitioner of imagination, Erast instinctively fears the fruits of Liza's mother's invention. More importantly, this is from all signs the first time in her life that Liza has acted less than honestly. Since the distin- guishing characteristic of the representative of native culture has till now been the inability to speak anything but the evident truth, this one small act of dissembling causes Liza to forfeit her very essence. She has tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge and its poison proves too strong for her. If formerly her mark was always to be herself, now she has turned against herself. The total self-repudiation of suicide is merely the final logical step, a stage that is reached when she drowns herself, again repeating her original sin by refusing to speak her last words directly to her mother. Having learned the ways of representation, Liza now takes her imitation of Erast a step fur- ther, passing the dangerous knowledge on to other innocents. She sets upon a neighbor girl and asks her to be her representative before her mother, that is, to imagine herself as Liza: "Poceluj u nee ruku tak, kak ja teper' tvoju celuju [...]" (620). And she repeats Erast's first act towards her, passing on to her mother a large sum of money and insisting that it is warranted by the circumstances, in effect giving money where love is wanted. The cycle of corruption continues as the neighbor girl, who at fifteen is the exact age Liza was when her carefree existence was ended by death (her father's), is forced to witness the spectacle of suicide.
As we have seen, it is the boundary ground on the margins of the center that allows for the dangerous intermingling and blurring of identities. Even
176 David Herman
the dissembler falls prey to the shifting boundaries of the liminal zone. I~rast's mark had been his mastery of masks and controlled emotion, and, as a result, his inability to find a satisfying stability in his own identity - his inability to be like Liza and simply be himself. But under the effect of the tragedy, he at last adopts a fixed self and remains unchanging in this persona until he dies ("ne mog ute~it'sja i po~ital sebja ubijceju"; "byl do konca ~izni svoej nes~astliv" [621]). Liza's suicide ironically confers on Erast the chance to escape the conventionality of high society that, like the poet in 'Protej', he has been unconsciously fleeing all along. At the end, Erast has achieved the unmediated selfhood that he so admired in Liza at the beginning. 32
There is ultimately a profound tension built into Karamzin's concept of what it means to be civilized. The concept is founded on the forms of ima- gination and controlled (self-)representation, where proper personal comport- ment, the ability to create and read literary fabrications as what they are, and the ability to lie are precariously alike. Like the Livonians and the Estonians, the essence of civilization spills across its own border. The real tragedy of Liza is that though she is destroyed by learning Erast's skills, she would not be saved by not learning them. Then she simply would fall into the second trap which awaits her, the one usually identified by critics as the cause of her downfall, the shock of being deceived. In effect, innocence will leave her in peril at the hands of every culturally literate passerby, but the alternative, the fruit of the tree of knowledge, is poisonous. In the end, the Europeanized Erast returns to a Russian directness, while the native Liza is brought to suicide by the powers of cultural literacy that Erast unwittingly yields. The meeting of center and periphery ends in mutual destruction and the repudia- tion of the sentimental European culture Karamzin himself had championed. But in this shadow play of European and Russian values, neither side is directly to blame. The balance of power is simply too unequal; there is no adequate safeguard for Russian innocence. Or rather, there is no safeguard until someone steps forth to fill the shoes of the missing father of the orphan. As a writer, of course, Karamzin would never reject the imaginative word as a vital civilizing force. Instead, his creative energies had already begun to turn towards another task of imagining: the fathering forth of a new con- ception of civilization that would do justice to the cultural wealth Poor Liza represented, those native historical, cultural, and spiritual riches that had only been hinted at in 'Bednaja Liza'.
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 177
NOTES
As Lotman and Uspenskij point out, Karamzin's interest in contemporary Europe was simultaneously a projection of a future Russia (1984: 533). Walicki (1979: 54). Neuh~iuser sees a similar, but not identical, moral and artistic crisis in Karamzin's view of human nature, beginning as early as 1791 or 1792. Here the battle is between two visions of the forces governing human affairs. One vision embraces the idyllic possibility of a perfect world and perfect happiness. The other entertains pre-romantic meditations on un- redeemed, undeserved human suffering.
It is not so much the human soul or mind which is the source of evil, but rather that evil arises out of a combination of various factors, natural inclinations which contradict human laws, the negative in- fluence of civilization, and a combination of unhappy circumstances for which only the word fate seems to be the appropriate term. (Neuh~iuser 1975: 65)
Unlike Walicki, however, Neuh~user finds Karamzin's anxieties expressed in his fiction. 'Bednaja Liza' appeared in 1792, or after the writing but before the final editing and publication of major portions of the Pis'ma. Moreover, travel was often seen as the capstone of a serious education, that is, as an act of self-refinement, a theme that will become important in what follows. Cf. Orlov (1977: 200). In Sotvorenie Karamzina, Lotman provides numerous examples of Karam- zin's real or perceived foppish (i.e. markedly European) behavior. Moreover, he works with a concept very close to what Stephen Greenblatt (1980) has called "self-fashioning" - self as (artistic) construct, created by the same processes as artwork - as the overriding metaphor for his work and its title. However, after taking great pains to distinguish the real Karamzin from the narrative persona Karamzin adopted in the Pis'ma (the real Karamzin's letters to real friends were few, uneffusive, and businesslike, for example), Lotman provides examples of self-construction exclusively from Karamzin's own deportment in private life. What remains to be explored is precisely the shift in the narrative personae and their outlook on human affairs that occurs from the Pis'ma to 'Bednaja Liza', or the way Karamzin approaches not the con- struction of his own self but the question of self-construction in general. One can come away from Lotman's work with the impression that Karamzin's overriding goal in his dandified behavior was to shock, or in effect to dis- tinguish himself from the society around him; such a view, however, un- derestimates the degree to which Karamzin in his published work, both prose and essays, is always intent on legislating new behavioral and aesthetic norms
178 David Herman
for others to copy. In addition, I am interested in the specific forms of artistic construction Karamzin envisions and what they can tell us about his project of self-construction, rather than vice versa. Certainly not all the values Karamzin esteems are entirely sentimental. Among his likes and dislikes are some undoubtedly influenced more by masonic and enlightenment convictions (though these are not always at odds with sentimentalism). And occasionally Karamzin is even anti-European, showing preferences for Russian mores and habits. Karamzin (1984: 365). All further reference to this work is to this edition, by page number only. The editors of this edition retain certain conventions of Karamzin's original orthography, arguing that they are semiotically meaning- ful. Here too the Pis'ma prepare a narrative vocabulary for 'Bednaja Liza'. Si- povskij argues that the story owes its appeal to contemporary readers to the fact that it was the first to make use of the theme of suicide in Russian fiction (1975: 518). Despite suicide's violence, which exceeds the gentle pitch of emotion sanctioned in sentimentalism, Karamzin was clearly fascinated by the topic, which figures in the Pis'ma in the story of the Abbot N** (185-187) and the verse tale about Alina (313-317). The story of the Abbot's suicide in particular stands out. With its uncharacteristically gruesome imagery, the story lacks even a didactic message, since the reasons for the Abbot's self- destruction are never uncovered. Karamzin claims to have known the Abbot personally, and in one very suggestive scene, the two of them sit side by side in a park, eerily mirroring one another ("Oba my dumali i mol~ali" [186]). Yet it turns out that one of them is planning his own death. In effect, this unusual passage sets up a pattern that, as we shall see, is inherited by 'Bed- naja Liza': suicide as the other choice, the alternative to sentimental practices, or what happens to those who fail in the sentimentalist feat of finding pleasure in sorrow. On Karamzin's visits to real salons and salons in general, see Lotman (1987: 135-140, 275, and also 130-135, 199-201, 230, 268-270), and Uspenskij (1985: 46-55). It is also worth noting that acting, in the form of wearing a disguise, plays a prominent role in the mythology of Peter the Great's original Great Embassy to Europe. On theatricality as a mark of the age, see Lotman (1984a, 1984b, 1985). "~to ~ ostaetsja delat' avtoru? Vydumyvat', so~injat' vyra~enija; ugadyvat' lu~]ij vybor slov; davat' starym nekotoryj novyj smysl, predlagat' ich v novoj svjazi..." (Karamzin [1964, 2: 185]; 'Ot~ego v Rossii malo avtorskich talan- tov?'). Cf. Lotman and Uspenskij (1984: 564). Even Belinskij, a decided cynic when it came to sentimentalism, would later agree:
'Bednaja Liza' and 'Pis'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 179
14
15
16
20
21 22
~TH ed/e3h/6I-LrlH BeJIHKHM ularoM BIIepe~ ~I~Iff O61KeCTBa: H60 KTO MO::KeT IIJIaKaTb He TOJIBKO O qy::~HX cTpa~aHH~IX, HO H BOO6I/~e O cTpa~IaHHSlX BblMbIIIIJIeHHblX, TOT, KOHetIHO, 6OYlbLLIe tleJIOBeK~ He;~eJIH TOT, KTO IlYlaqeT ToFxa TOYlbK0, Korea e r o 6OabHO 6bIOT. (1953-1959: 166; 'CoqHHeHHSl A~eKcaH~apa I'[yI_I.IKHHa. CTaTb~I BTO-
pas'; italics in original)
Karamzin's own new self upon his return from abroad was a subject of his friends' nearly universal comment and often disapproval. See Lotman (1987: 193-201) and Uspenskij (1985: 46-48). On the predominance of the culture of artifice in general, mostly in reference to a slightly later period, see Todd (1986). The exact status of this passage is problematic. In the 'Letter to the Spectateur du Nord about Russian Literature', written in French, Karamzin quotes from his own Pis'ma, presenting a version of the ending which includes the above. But the passage is missing from the canonical text of the Pis'ma, and is not mentioned in the variants given in Karamzin (1984). It could be simply a falsification for the purposes of the 'Letter to the Spectateur', but in Sotvo- renie Karamzina Lotman considers the text here part of an early version that did not survive (1987: 258). Karamzin (1964, 1: 607). All further references to 'Bednaja Liza' are to vol. 1 of this edition. There is, to be sure, a generic tradition in this connection (Yorick's travels end even more abruptly), but it must be balanced against Karamzin's project of national refashioning, entirely lacking in his model, which is pursued consistently enough in the Pis'ma to justify at least a cursory inventory of conclusions. Berkov points out that "goti~eskij" is used here in the meaning of "sred- nevekovyj, varvarskij, urodlivyj" (Karamzin 1964, 1: 787n.). Cross considers the word "a synonym of medieval obscurity and barbarism" (1971: 86). Para- doxically, here is a case where a loan word implies something older, more primitive, hence more Russian. Toporov characterizes as one of Karamzin's leading innovations the combin- ing of "istori~eskoe" and "pejza~noe" to create a middle ground where history and nature meet (1995: 90-123). This is the space Liza inhabits. Cf. Toporov (1995: 165-167). This is true in a second sense as well. As several critics have noted, the story of Liza echoes the Alina story that Karamzin heard in France and recorded in the Pis'ma (Karamzin 1984: 313-317). So treacherous are border crossings that even the plot kernel of the allegory of Russia itself comes from abroad. Ginzburg (1971: 12). In this passage, Ginzburg is referring to documents such as letters and memoirs that record and shape perceptions of human character. But as Ginzburg herself goes on to demonstrate, the term has a more radical meaning of .~a~man behavior as a deliberately created artifact, a text like other texts, produced by the same process of "writing" that produces texts in the
180 David Herman
24
25
28
29
30
31
32
traditional sense. Liza's combination of illiteracy with innate honesty under- scores the link between literary texts and behavioral ones. As Cross observes of Karamzin in general, "Recognizing the Golden Age is an illusion, he was, nevertheless, enchanted by it" (1975: 85). Like Cross, Orlov notes that Karamzin reserves his highest praise in the Pis'ma for the inhabitants of the Swiss Alps, whom he depicts in "svoego roda sceny iz le- gendarnogo 'zolotogo veka'" (1977: 206). The weight of critical tradition has tended to object to the search for any serious moral or ideological stance in 'Bednaja Liza', citing the primacy of affect for its own sake. See, for example, Gukovskij (1939: 506-507); Blagoj (1955: 530). However, ethical issues always loom over sentimental works of this sort, if only because the master-narrative here is the spectacle of inno- cence wronged. And there is a good deal of Yorick here as well. Piper cites "the great depth of Yorick's feelings and their very short duration" (1965: 98). Sipovskij (1975: 513); Gukovskij (1941: 78); Hammarberg (1991: 145, 148- 150). For Nebel it is a "lyrical evocation of the Moscow environs" (1967: 123; cf. also 128). Hammarberg disagrees. "One of the differences between the narrator and Erast is that while Erast tries to transform art into life, the narrator transforms life into art" (1991: 158). Clearly the author of the Pis'ma regularly attempts to make art into life, as does the narrator of 'Bednaja Liza' by virtue of following in Steme's footsteps. And in a broader sense, I have tried to show that the uncertainty of the distinction between art and life is precisely the anxiety in a culture as aware of its own liking for artifice as sentimentalism. Besides, Karamzin's well-known dicta about the edifying effects of high literature, such as "Durnye ljudi i romanov ne ~itajut" (Karamzin 1964, 2: 176; 'O kni~noj torgovle i ljubvi ko ~teniju v Rossii'), do not allow for a distinction of proper and improper reading, and emphasize instead the ethical value of reading per se. Hammarberg explores this point at length, agreeing but arguing for some distinction of Erast's and the narrator's voices (1991: 141-143, 155-159). In the traditional reading, of course, Liza dies from love spurned. For ex- ample, Cross (1971: 102-103); Nebel (1967: 127). This integrity of the Russian personality later became a touchstone for the Slavophiles. Kireevskij, for example, argues, "At every moment of his life [Western man] is like a different person" (1966: 200). "In Russia, on the other hand, [there is] an overwhelming reaching out for wholeness of being, both external and internal, social and individual" (205). Kireevskij even sees some of the same causes: in the west "theatricality becomes life's inseparable companion, serving as an external cover for falsehood even as idle fancy provides its internal mask" (203). The 18th-century nobleman and historian Michail ~erbatov, whom Walicki considers the first forerunner of the Slavophiles, likewise perceived fictions as a deleterious European import, in a description of the moral strength of Russia before Peter's reforms: "Ne bylo
'Beclnaja Liza' and 'I~s'ma russkogo putegestvennika' 181
raznych dlja uveselenija stx3inennych kni~g i tako skuka i uedinennaja ~izn' zastavljala ~itat' bo~estvennoe pisanie" (Sterbatov 1983: 12). Karamzin, of course, did not agree with ~terbatov and regularly underscored the moral benefits of fiction. But 'Bednaja Liza' records his moment of greatest hesi- tation over the value of the mastery of fictions.
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