The Russian Connection: Sources for Miriam Rooth of James's "The Tragic Muse"

Abstract

THE INFLUENCE OF IVAN SERGEI TURGENEV on the art of his friend Henry has long been noted by literary critics, beginning with Cornelia Pulsifer Kelley in Early Development of Henry (1930), stressed by Daniel Lerner in his study The Influence of Turgenev on Henry James (1941), and recently emphasized in terms of poetic realism by Dale Peterson in Clement Vision (1975).' No one to date, however, has traced the relationship of Ivan Turgenev's heroines to Miriam Rooth of Tragic Muse (1890). James's admiration for the Russian author's work may well have begun in his early youth. Barbara Wilkie Tedford contends that when published his first critical essay on Turgenev in 1874 he had behind him as much as a twenty-year reading acquaintance with the Russian master.2 Selections from Sportsman's Sketches appeared in Dickens's periodical Household Words in 1855, and may have found their way into the living quarters of the Jameses, who spent the winter of 1855-56 in London. Tedford also assumes that the popular French periodical Revue des Deux Mondes would have arrived regularly for the family during the 1850s; mentions the salmon-coloured volumes that he read during his year at Newport. A translation of Turgenev's short story Moumou appeared in March of 1856 in Revue, and Tedford conjectures that James, then only thirteen, may have read it. If so, then the Russian would have coloured his adolescent imagination. As an adult formally codified his appreciation of Turgenev. American writer's extensive critical work on the Russian novelist, beginning with his lengthy essay in North American Review, is well-known. Two major reviews appeared in the 1870s, and a memo-