Abstract
The influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood on Russian symbolism has not been adequately explored in the significant body of scholarship dedicated to it. To give but a few examples, Pre-Raphaelite motifs such as the enigmatic female figure, a jewel-toned palette, and elements drawn from a mythical European past widely appear in Russian symbolist poetry and painting. Drawing upon archival research, this article demonstrates that the symbolists did not simply borrow these motifs in passive imitation, but that they arose out of the symbolists' substantive engagement with modernity itself. Tracing the genealogy that links symbolism to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the article develops a transactional model of influence that encourages us to think of the development of Russian modernism with greater nuance. By destabilizing the notion of the Russian symbolists' marginal position in relation to western Europe, this investigation provides a theoretical challenge to the notion of Russia's peripheral modernity.
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