F. Dostoevsky’s image in T. de Banville’s poem Les Petits Lapins

Abstract

In the mid-1880s, the French came to discover Dostoevsky’s works. Yet neither Russian nor foreign scholars have attempted to fnd out when exactly his name was frst mentioned in French fction. This article represents the frst such study. The author believes that Théodore de Banville was the frst French author who introduced Dostoevsky’s name to the poetry of the late 1880s, or can at least be credited with one of the earliest mentions of the Russian writer’s name in French verse. For authors of de Banville’s generation, Dostoevsky remained a trendy foreign writer whose opinions and manner of writing stood in stark contrast with traditional French literary, aesthetic and ethical values. De Banville’s lines about the Russian author are full of irony and mock what the poet views as Dostoevsky’s exaggerated ‘psychologism.’ The article also describes the context for Dostoevsky’s reception, drawing comparisons with other foreign authors who became known to French audiences around the same time. The study contains a comparison between G. Flaubert’s response to L. Tolstoy’s War and Peace [Voyna i mir] and de Banville’s reception of Dostoevsky.