Leconte de Lisle in Russian literary criticism of the 1880s – early 1910s

Abstract

The article examines the evolution of the perception of the works of Charles Leconte de Lisle in Russian literary criticism in the late 1880s – early 1910s. The chronological framework of the study is due to the fact that in 1889 the first detailed analysis of works by Leconte de Lisle appeared and, in the 1890s, Russian symbolists paid attention to the French poet; the other chronological boundary was caused by the crisis and end of Russian symbolism in in the late 1900s and early 1910s. Using the historical comparative method, the author analyzes articles by Maria Frishmut, Dmitry Merezhkovskiy, Valery Bryusov, Innokentiy Annenskiy, fully or partially dedicated to Leconte de Lisle. The author discovers that Russian critics relied on French critical works on Leconte de Lisle: critics saw his poetry as cold, dispassionate, objective (nonpersonal), possessing the perfection of a poetic form close to sculpture and painting. While Frishmut uses the judgments of his French predecessors, relying primarily on Paul Bourget, the symbolists put works of Leconte de Lisle in the context of the genealogy of Russian symbolism. Merezhkovskiy in the 1890s leads the genealogy of the symbolists from Leconte de Lisle. Bryusov considered Leconte de Lisle a classic and a representative of a certain line in poetry characterized by a careful accomplishing of a poetic form. The author pays particular attention to the evolution of the perception of Leconte de Lisle in Annenskiy’s literary criticism. She shows that Annenskiy developed his aesthetic concepts on the basis of Leconte de Lisle’s works and infers that in the late 1890s–1900s, during the period of the formation of symbolism, Annensky formed the concept of art as a symbol based on Leconte de Lisle’s works and in the late 1900s, in the period of the crisis of symbolism and the appeal to extra-aesthetic reality, considered Leconte de Lisle in the appropriate categories, seeing his tragedy in the fact that in his work he turned away from life and always talked about death. A statue is a stable image in Annenskiy’s articles that mention Leconte de Lisle; for the critic, a statue as a perfection of form and a classic monument corresponds to all Leconte de Lisle’s works and his place in the history of literature.