Holberg and Russia:

A brief survey

by

Hugh R. Whinfrey

Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) is unquestionably the dominant founding figure in modern Danish literature. His works span a variety of genres and subjects. His comedies rank with those of Aristophanes and Moliere as the best Europe has ever produced. He has been called the leading European writer of his generation.¹ His reputation stood high in France, Holland, Germany and Russia.² Most of Holberg's works and much of the associated literary criticism have however never been translated into English, a serious handicap to allowing modern scholarship to accurately expound upon his role in European literature.

Holberg's influence in Russia will be briefly examined in this essay. The intent is to create a solid basis from which to assess the existence of scholarly research opportunities in this area, outlining some possible angles of attack in the process.

His influence in Russia was primarily through his masterful comedies. The vehicles of direct transmission to Russia were almost exclusively German translations of the original Danish. The individuals surrounding the Russian National Theater, established in 1756, form the main investigative trail in tracing Holberg's influence. It is a trail that is not without controversy. It is also not the only possible trail, hints of others do exist, however they present more resistance to the scholarly investigator than does the Russian National Theater route. They also appear to be less potentially significant in comparison.

Any evaluation of Holberg's influence cannot be divorced from the context in which it occurred. To ignore the context would be to a priori dismiss such a derivative notion as influence. The context provides the corpus from which plausible inferences can be drawn. Holberg's comedies reached Russia in the mid-eighteenth century. This was a Russia still groping to digest the lurch to a Western European orientation initiated by Peter the Great. Russian literature was in a gestational period, it would be more than a half-century until Pushkin and Gogol would arrive to solidify the tradition.

It is important to recognize that the term 'gestational period', while certainly not an inaccurate description when applied to this context, does however understate the full extent of the situation. When we speak of a 'gestational period' of a Western European national literature, we presume a certain underlying cultural matrix of possibilities for the result. Russian culture had always consciously divorced itself from this matrix, emphasizing instead a distinctly Russian concept of culture. The point is that the ferment at the time included not only the organic nature of the literary products but also the degree to which they would consciously hold Russian culture aloof from continuity with Western European models.

This historical period is also colored by Catherine the Great's seizure of power in 1762, and the mysterious death shortly thereafter of her husband Peter III, the deposed but legitimate heir. Catherine's hold on power was tenuous in the 1760's. Her German nationality and lack of genealogical legitimacy were compelling targets for her detractors, and added a lively domestic political significance to the ideological debate over the degree of fundamental differentiation that Russian literature was to maintain from its Western counterparts.

The infusion of Holberg's works into the Russian scene occurred when the structural substratum of Russian literature was being constructed. Therefore the complete question of Holberg's influence must necessarily address not only the standard genealogical issues but also the impact on the structure of the national tradition as a whole. Holberg was not the only Western European whose works were influential at this time in Russia, and there was indeed a Russian folk tradition whose influence on the national literary tradition is self-evident. The point however is that any authoritative dismissal of Holberg as an influence of the very structure of the Russian literary tradition would require a detailed proof under these circumstances.

There does not appear to be any direct evidence of Holberg's comedies being performed in Russia prior to the opening of the National Theater in 1756. Stender-Petersen³ can only offer a plausible inference of the possibility of a German troupe staging some of Holberg's works, in German, in the early 1750's in Russia. Between 1743 and 1765 all of Holberg's comedies were translated into German⁴, and hence literary transmission to Russia at the earliest is probably limited to 1743. That Holberg was indeed known in the early 1750's in Russia necessarily indicates that there was an effective transmission process, it appears new research is required to establish the precise details. Stender-Petersen⁵ noted that his lack of access to the Soviet libraries was an impediment in this area. Such research may now be possible.

The earliest known data are that "Don Ranudo de Colibrados" was performed in 1757 by the National Theater⁶, in a translation by Kropotov entitled in Russian "Pride and Poverty"⁷, and "Heinrich og Pernille" in 1760.⁸ The other earliest known translations are two of "Jean de France" in the early 1760's, "Artaxerxes" in 1764, and "Plutus" and "Jeppe paa Bjerget" in 1765.⁹ These lists grew as the century progressed. Other non-dramatic works of Holberg also appeared in Russian at this time.

There were several different types of theaters in Russia in the second quarter of the 18th century, but the emergence of a modern professional theater came with the establishment of the Russian National Theater in 1756. Other permanent theaters followed shortly thereafter. The first director of the Russian National Theater was A.P. Sumarokov, the Russian neoclassical playwright. He was noted for an inflated notion of his own significance, and a royal decree was issued in 1761 in which he resigned his post as director of the theater.

Sumarokov had a significant influence on Russian comedy. His works were open to charges of wholesale borrowing from foreign writers even in his own lifetime. Many of his later comedies are arguably modeled on Moliere's. Stender-Petersen, who devoted an entire chapter of his work to the relationship between Sumarokov and Holberg¹⁰, has postulated a strong influence from Holberg in three of Sumarokov's early comedies written in 1750.¹¹ His analysis is detailed, covering 20 pages, and in it he argues strongly for his conclusion that "despite the fact that Sumarokov was familiar with a lot of other, Italian and French, especially Molierian comedies, it was Holberg he first and foremost went to school with."¹² The foreign influence issue is in fact so pervasive with Sumarokov that the usually suspect Soviet scholarship could not avoid it:

The assertion has been popularized that Sumarokov borrowed his comedies from Moliere, Holberg, and other foreign dramaturgists. To a significant degree it is correct, but at the same time he used the work of these authors only to the degree to which it helped him to put into dramatic shape his direct observations of Russian reality.¹³

Ivan Elagin (1725-94) took over the directorship of the Russian National Theater from 1766-1779. Elagin was Catherine the Great's literary collaborator and the developer of the theory of 'cultural adaptation' of drama, as opposed to normal translation.¹⁴ Elagin was the head of a circle of young translators and playwrights. His two secretaries, Vladimir Lukin and Denis Fonvizin, are both prominent figures in the history of Russian drama. The pressing problem for Elagin was a lack of repertoire, specifically comedy:

To facilitate the advent of an authentic and contemporary Russian drama, Elagin and the young writers of his circle conceived the idea of selecting suitable foreign comedies and then transposing their action to Russia, substituting Russian names, customs, and situations for those depicted in the foreign original, but keeping the plot and the action intact. Elagin himself set the first example for this procedure by producing in 1764 a russified adaptation of "Jean de France", a topical satire on fashionable Gallomania by the Danish playwright Ludvig Holberg.¹⁵

Elagin's adaptation was entitled "Jean de Mole or A Russian Frenchman". There is no controversy about Holberg's influence on the result. It is however significant that this was the first application of Elagin's theory of adaptation, and a potential point of Holbergian influence on the structural substratum of the modern national literary tradition. An investigation into possible interrelationships of the theory and the paradigmatic example deserves some scholarly attention.

The most engaging academic controversy involving Holberg's influence in Russian literature involves Elagin's secretary Denis Fonvizin. The dispute is over the connection between "Jean de France" and Fonvizin's "The Brigadier", written in 1769. A reading of "The Brigadier" as an indictment of Gallomania was common in the nineteenth century, and towards the end of the century it was frequently viewed as an adaptation of Holberg's Gallomaniac "Jean de France." ¹⁶ Twentieth century critics have however generally cooled to accepting it as an adaptation. Some simply ignore the issue. Others have summarily dismissed the connection, without proof.¹⁷ Evgeny Cherniavsky gave an accounting of the scholarly assertions of a significant relationship between the two comedies, refuting all the claims of influence, in his 1950 dissertation at Moscow University.

Stender-Petersen devoted 46 pages to a detailed analysis of Holberg's influence on Fonvizin.¹⁸ It is difficult to dismiss this work as just Scandinavian nationalistic hype, which seems to be implied by modern critics who dismiss Stender-Petersen's conclusions. Numerous parallel passages are cited in the texts, clearly evidencing that "The Brigadier" was not constructed without detailed reference to the text of "Jean de France." Stender-Petersen also devotes considerable discussion to the congruences in generalities of plot and characters. On the whole, Stender-Petersen is emotionally convincing and presents a sufficient body of facts to justify feeling that way. One of the most pressing needs for the scholarship of the issue is to put Stender-Petersen's work into English.

Marvin Kantor is the outspoken English-language critic whose views oppose Stender-Petersen's. Kantor insists on an organic analysis, ignoring the historical context altogether:

It seems to me that the arguments advanced for the influence of "Jean de France" on "The Brigadier" were based primarily on extrinsic considerations and simply disregard some rather essential determinative criteria.¹⁹

A closer look at these comedies reveals that we are dealing in essence not only with two different types, but with essential compositional differences of dramatic structure, plot structure, treatment of theme and characters and methods of characterization.²⁰

Kantor cites Stender-Petersen, and even gives two brief quotes from his work.²¹ The disparity between Kantor and Stender-Petersen can be partially explained by a difference in approach, yet the overlooking of the details of textual similarities provided by Stender-Petersen only serves, in my mind, to deflate Kantor's credibility. Kantor does seem to admit a polemical purpose: "I would like to take up this problem since, it seems to me, it circumscribes the nature of Fonvizin's contribution to Russian comedy and defines the question of his 'originality.'"²²

When Fonvizin's biography is brought into the picture, it becomes clear why only an organic analysis could stand a chance of refuting the disputed connection. The turning point in Fonvizin's life was a performance of "Heinrich and Pernille" he saw in St. Petersburg in 1760, which stimulated his desire to write for the theater. Fonvizin translated Holberg's "Moral Fables" into Russian in 1761, three editions in all being printed (1761, 1765, 1787). Fonvizin's rival was Elagin's other secretary, Vladimir Lukin. There was considerable animosity between them. Lukin was deeply involved in the 'adaptation' philosophy. "The Brigadier" was Fonvizin's first professional attempt at original playwriting, and seems aimed directly at Lukin's views about Russian playwriting talent.

Fonvizin's innovation in "The Brigadier" was the inclusion of several themes of social criticism uniquely relevant to Russian society. "Jean de France" does indeed seem to serve as the raw material that was re-worked to form what Kantor calls a 'composite satire', as opposed to the 'monolithic satire' of "Jean de France".²³ In fact, the necessary transformations are relatively easy to follow. The criticisms Kantor makes of the organic discontinuities of "The Brigadier" only serve to accentuate the forced and artificial nature of the result.²⁴ To deny a Holbergian influence at all on Fonvizin is simply not credible, it can only be an issue of degree and not one of existence. Kantor says however that "Any attempt to establish the extent, if any, of indirect influence, becomes, because of the very nature of the problem, an academic question."²⁵

"The Brigadier" was highly influential in the development of the ensuing generation of Russian writers, particularly Gogol. There is thus a genealogical issue of the degree of Holberg's influence on Gogol. There is also another point of contact with the structural substratum which deserves investigation because "The Brigadier" is apparently pedagogically embedded in this substratum.

"Jean de France" is not the only comedy of Holberg's that has left a trail in Russian literature. Stender-Petersen also found that "Don Ranudo" left a trail, potentially influencing even Gogol.²⁶

Another more curious trail left by Holberg in Russian culture involves his "History of Denmark". A two-volume translation of it by Jakov Kozelskii was published in 1756-66. Kozelskii was in fact writing a work of political protest against Catherine's usurpation of the Russian throne. He did not translate Holberg's entire work, but instead selected various historical episodes from Danish history which dealt with the murder of the legitimate king and the usurpation of the throne by the murderer. To these selections Kozelskii added his own extensive notes which are again masked criticisms of Catherine.

Kozelskii seems to have started a stunted genre of subtle political polemic in this society of strict censorship. Alexander Radishchev seems to have followed Kozelskii's lead. "In 1773, Radishchev published a Russian translation of Mably's "Observations sur l'histoire de la Grece", with annotations in which he sharply criticized autocracy."²⁷ Radishchev of course went on to become the founder of the particularly Russian fusion of social activism with literature and philosophy. Holberg thus appears to have possibly played some sort of role in the genesis of the Russian radical tradition. Further research might produce some extremely controversial results.

In summary, there is a lot of scholarly work to be done, and a lot of it will have to contain subjective elements. The collapse of the Soviet Union may have opened new sources for scholarly research in this area, and hence the field appears ripe for new efforts. All indications are that some provocative conclusions can be drawn which could start a new set of controversies whose polemics would give a stronger sense of credit to Holberg's influence on Russian letters than exists currently.

Seattle, July 1994.

Endnotes

Bibliography