Voyage en Sibérie fait par ordre du roi en 1761: 1. Introduction et apparat critique; 2. Edition critique by Jean Chappe d'Auteroche Michel Mervaud (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 159 dedication and originaltalent ofJapanese technicians and workmen'(p. I85). A. Cherevkova's I890 account portraysa railwayand rickshawjourney with her son. The cold drizzledid not dampen her appreciationof local colour and scenic touches. The final passage, My FirstDay inJapanby E. Kobiakova, is probably the least helpful:it reads like any excited tourist'sfirstimpressions: she is dazzled by the exotic sightof fishingwith cormorants. None of the accounts included in this compilation could give insights comparableto those affordedby LafcadioHearn. Afterall,he was so intrigued byJapan that he never left after arrivingin I890. He marriedinto a samurai familyand assumedJapanesenationality,renaminghimselfKoizumi Yakumo. His books, from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan(i 894) to TheRomance oftheMilky Way(I905) demonstrate such a profound understandingof the country and people that he was regarded as 'almost as Japanese as the haiku'(Lafcadio Hearn:Writings fromjapan, ed. F. King, London, I984, P. I5). Nonetheless, Wells'santhology is welcome. It providesthe Anglophone world with insights into Russian reactions to Japan: some 'orientalist' preconceptions, some condescension, a tentative approachto the food, but also an appreciationof a talentedpeople living in beautifulsurroundings. Department ofRussian andSlavonic Studies DAVID N. COLLINS University ofLeeds Chappe d'Auteroche, Jean. Voyage en Siberie fait par ordredu roi en I76I. i. Introduction etapparat critique; 2. Editioncritique. Editedby Michel Mervaud. SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century) 2004: 03-04. Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 2004. xvi + vii + 624 PP. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. fI 20.00 (2 vols, paperback). NOTORIOUS,at least in Catherine the Great's eyes, the abbe Chappe d'Auteroche's I768 account of an astronomicaltripundertakento Tobol'skin 176I-62 to observe the transit of Venus over the sun, was attacked more fiercely than most negative reporting on Russia before the Soviet era. Catherine even went as far as commissioning, or at least inspiring, a counterblast, the furious Antidote,ou examen du mauvaislivreintituleVoyage en Sibe'rie (Frenchversion Amsterdam, I 77I-72; Englishversion, London I772). Scholarly opinion tends to have followed Catherine's strictures, Walther Kirchner stating that the book 'shows a singular lack of insight and is disappointingfor a man of Chappe's standing'(ASiberian Journey. theJournalof HansJakobFries,I774-I776, London, I974, introduction pp. 26-27). Tony Cross,in a half-acknowledgedadmissionof theAntidote's pungent effectiveness, wrote that it 'was so successful that subsequent travellers, such as William Coxe and Andrew Swinton, took Chappe to task and painted a much rosier picture' (GorskiVienats,Cambridge, I970, p. 88). Given the controversy surroundingthe book, it is really interesting to see that at last a thoroughly scholarly version has been published. The reprint of the original English translation, A JourneyintoSiberia(New York, 1970), contained very little in the way of a scholarly apparatus. Like many of the other reprints published in this i6o SEER, 84, I, 2006 era of pre-electronic educational expansion, it performedthe welcome taskof enabling new universitylibrariesto acquire hard copy of the text, but cannot be said to have materiallyadded to scholarship.The editor'sjustificationfor the present edition can be summed up in the following brief excerpt: 's'il a contribue A fortifier un certain nombre de cliches antirusses, son Voyage constitue incontestablementvers 1770 une des principalessourcesd'informations et dejugements surle probleme russe,au moment precis oiucelui-cijoue un r6le majeur dans les debats sur l'evolution des societes, les conditions du progres des arts et des sciences, bref sur l'idee de "civilisation"' (p. 122). Nonetheless, possiblybecause of financialconsiderations,the edition contains only the first part of the original, covering Chappe's journey up to his departurefrom Tobol'skon the returnleg of the expedition. However, it does include 'pour la premiere fois la serie complete des planches, d'apres notre exemplaire de reference'. It also contains a massive introduction (I 22 pp.), detailingChappe'slife history,a shortsection on Frenchtripsto Russiabefore his, and a complex explanation and dissection of the sources and content of the text. There is also a thoroughly scholarly essay by Madeleine Pinault Sorensen, an arthistorianfromthe Louvre,who has previouslywrittenon the plates contained in D'Alembert and Diderot's famous Encyclopedie, (pp. 123-227, includingappendices). My main objection to Chappe's work is its title. The vast majority of the work refers to political structures,conditions of life and moeursin European Russia...