Deux lettres de la princesse de Tarente à la comtesse Golovina

Abstract

Princess L.-E. de Tarente : Two letters to Countess Golovina. Presented by Elena Gretchanaïa. A large number of letters written by Princess Louise-Emmanuelle de Tarente (1763-1814) — who emigrated in 1797 to Russia, where she died — to Countess Varvara Golovina (1766-1821) are conserved in the Russian State Archives in Moscow ; two of them, dating from 1798 and 1799, are published here. They illustrate different aspects of the influence of French culture in Russian life at the end of the 18th Century, and show both the generally underestimated degree to which French émigrés were drawn to Russian culture and the crucial role of personal contacts in the early rapprochement of the two countries. The Princess's presentation of her existential shipwreck takes the form of an almost diary-like account of everyday life, in a style in which failure and loneliness are transformed by ironic distanciation into a sort of epistolary game.