The Influence of French on Eighteenth-Century Literary Russian: Semantic and Phraseological Calques by May Smith (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 529 Smith,May. TheInfluence ofFrench onEighteenthCentury Literary Russian:Semantic and Phraseological Caiques. PeterLang, Oxford,Bern,New Yorkand Vienna, 2007.399pp.Notes.Bibliography. Indexes.£43.00(paperback). In studiesof how Russian lexis and phraseologydeveloped duringthe eighteenth century therehas perhapsbeen an understandable tendency to underestimate theimportance ofcalques.Calques are,after all,muchharder to identify thanloanwords, and it is thegreatmeritofthisbook thatMay Smith, thanks to herexcellent knowledge ofFrench, has been able to extract froma wide range of sourcesevidenceof parallelsbetweenFrenchand Russian usage thatdemonstrate beyonddoubt the centralimportanceof semantic and phraseological caiques in theprocessoftransforming Russian into a language capable of expressing the standardEuropean concepts and sensibilities oftheperiod.Her arguments are almostentirely convincing, well-supported and advancedwithappropriate confidence or caution;ifthe readermayoccasionally feelthatsheis overstating hercase,theinstances in questionare marginal and debatable. It has to be said,however, thattheauthormakessurprisingly little ofher material. Her overallconclusions are blandand understated; curiously, they do notalwaysagreewithherevidence.She states(p. 377)that'thelanguage ofthefopand thecoquette,whichwas one ofhyperboles, periphrases and metaphors, exerted a strong and continuous influence on theRussianliterary language',butherexamplesshowthatitwas notonlythelanguageofthefop and the coquettethatexertedthisinfluence but, more importantly, they provide enoughmaterial tohaveenabledhertoproducemoreinteresting and moresubtleconclusions aboutthestrength, continuity and,indeed,durability ofthisinfluence. Similarly, shemakesa ritualobeisancetowards theimportanceofChurchSlavonicin thecreation ofcaiques,butappearsnotto have noticedthatherexampleswouldhavejustified muchmoreenlightening and original observations on therespective rolesofRussianand ChurchSlavonic inthisprocess.Her graspoflanguagehistory seems,though, ingeneraltobe a shade uncertain: she persistently refers to a linguistic construct she calls '(Old) ChurchSlavonic/ (Old) Russian',a simplification thatisfrom a certain point of view understandable, but which is none the less unhelpful; the etymological information accompanying theexamplesin chapterone (which couldeasilyhavebeen omitted) is at bestperfunctory and at worstslapdash. There are also questionsthatcouldbe askedaboutthearrangement ofthe material and abouttheuse ofworksofreference and secondary sources. One thing thatcannotbe saidaboutthisbookis thattheauthorhas been well-served byherpublisher. It oughtto be a matter ofcommonsensethat anytextintended forpublication needsthescrutiny ofa hawk-eyed outsider, and in thisinstance a good editormight wellhavehelpedtheauthoraddress some oftheissuesmentioned in thepreviousparagraph.One who was no morethanhalf-way competent wouldcertainly have seento theeradication ofthecopiouseditorial infelicities (minorlinguistic errors, mixedtransliterationsystems and thelike)and misprints thatat timesmakethisbookdifficult to use. It cannotbe deniedthatthebook is wellpresented, butit does not 53° SEER>87> 3> JULY2OO9 seemunreasonable to expecta seriousacademicpublisher to investa little timeand attention inensuring thatthecontent reachesthesamestandard. In themeantime, one can butexpress thewishthattheauthor willnotabandon the subjectof Franco-Russian linguistic contactsand thatshe willuse her knowledge and herskills to embarkon a moreprofound investigation ofan area wheremuchremains tobe elucidated. University ofGlasgow /Bologna J.A. Dunn Lounsbery, Anne. Thin Culture, High Art: Gogol,Hawthorne, and Authorship in Kineteenth-Century Russia and America.Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. Harvard University Press,Cambridge,MA and London, 2007.ix + 342pp. Notes.Index.£17.95:€23.40:$27.50(paperback). WhycompareNikolaiGogol' and NathanielHawthorne, twoseemingly very different writers fromtwoverydifferent cultures? In her book, Lounsbery givesus morethanamplereasonstodo so. The readercomesawaywith, first of all, a deeperunderstanding of each of thetwowriters underdiscussion and secondly, a different lenswithwhichto examinetheworksofthetwo authors. Lounsbery seestheparallelsbetweenGogol' and Hawthorne as stemming from important parallelsbetweennineteenth-century Russianand American history and culture.She explainsthateach of the two societiesfeltitself deficient and derivative whencomparedwithEurope,and thateach ofthe twoauthorsrespondedto his 'culture'by £mak[ing] artfromthisnothing' (p. 2). This response,in turn,opened paths,Lounsberyasserts,forlater Russianand American writers to createnationalliteratures thatspoke'deep' 'truths' in spiteofthecultural lacks(p. 21). She talksabouttheresponse ofGogol' and Hawthorne to variousaspects ofprint culture, and abouttheirresponseto a position betweenoralculture and print culture. In a section on DeadSouls, shetellsus thatGogol' suspects bothoral and printculture. Hawthorne, in TheHouseofthe Seven Gables, she writes, seesoralculture as beingauthentic. Lounsbery's book is well organized.She first lays the groundwork for her comparisons of Gogol' and Hawthorneby speakingabout the role of writers and institutions inRussiaand theUnitedStatesinthefirst halfofthe nineteenth century. She thendividesthebookintothreeparts.Each partis dividedintothreesections. The first sectionofPartOne focuses on Gogol"s early writings; the second, on Hawthorne's;and a concludingsection interweaves thetwo.PartTwo isdividedintoa section on an analysis oí Dead Souls; a section on TheHouse ofthe Seven Gables; and a conclusion thatcompares and contrasts thetwonovels.PartThree focuseson a sectionthatanalyses Gogol"s writings on Rome ('Rome'); a sectionon Hawthorne's writings on Rome,specifically, TheMarble Faun;and a conclusion thatspeaksofboth.An epilogueis entitled 'Canonization, Influence, Judgment'. Lounsbery knowsthesecondary sources.She is generous inherattribution to otherscholars.At the same time,when her interpretations differ from ...