Contenu du sommaire

Sergei Bocharov, The French epigraph to Eugen Onegin. The author puzzles over the mysterious French epigraph in prose, placed as a philosophical and psychological clue to the famous Russian novel in verse, Eugen Onegin. Not only was Eugen Onegin an encyclopaedia of Russian life, according to Belinskii, but it was as well an encyclopaedia of European culture, states the author of the present article. The epigraph shows Pushkin's endeavor to relate his only novel in verse to his comprehensive experience of European novels of the early nineteenth century, through examples as different as Don Juan, Melmoth the wanderer and Adolph. The psychological portrait sketched in the epigraph is a "digest" of the main characters of these novels. At the same time, it foreshadows several trends which will materialize later on in Russian literature, for instance, in Dostoevskii's novels. The author of this article considers the French epigraph as a draft of Nicholas Stavrogin. The second part of this paper is devoted to the following question : "Onegin and Stavrogin".

Wiktor Woroszylski, The part played by Adam Mickiewicz. as an intermediary between the genius of Pushkin and the opinion of the French literary world. The present article examines the role of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz as an intermediary between Pushkin and the French public opinion in the late 1830's and early 1840's, acquainting the literary circles of France with the Russian poet's work, life history and their significance in the context of Russian society and culture. At the time, Pushkin was not well known in the West. Though the circumstances of his death had awakened attention, the lack of good translations and ignorance of the specificity of Russian life did not contribute to a good understanding of the poet's destiny. Mickiewicz - then an emigre in Paris - was the first to expound (in the necrology he published in Le Globe and in his lectures at the College de France) the determining influence exercised by the power then ruling in Russia on the fate that had overtaken the poet.

Larisa Volpert, The ludic aspects of Pushkin 's creative activity and the French literature. The ludic aspects of Pushkin's creative activity are linked both to the specificity at the time of Russian literary life and the originality of the process of thought of the poet who assimilated the French literary traditions. These aspects constitute an important preliminary stage in the formation of Pushkin's creative genius. The various forms of assimilation of French literary psychological traditions (epistolary « puns », « masks » and literary ludic « roles », attitudes modelled on romantic structures, resort to literary pseudonyms, etc.) have contributed to the narrative objectivisation of the writer and helped him to master the plurality of « views », to orchestrate styles and enrich the psychological and aesthetic experience essential to the making of an « omniscient author ».

André Monitor, Pushkin and Napoleon. This article studies the fluctuations of the Napoleonic theme in Pushkin's works. It distinguishes five realizations of it. The emperor is at First an anti-hero, a pure image of tyrannical violence. Then, during the South period of the writer, Napoleon becomes successively a genial conqueror, endowed with an exceptional destiny, the Saint Helena's exile who endured the sufferings of banishment, the immoral man who is taken as an example by Lord Byron's admirers. In Boldino at last, he changes himself into a sacred hero, thanks to his capacity for self-sacrifice. Each one of these representations is in harmony with a definite stage of Pushkin's poetical evolution and even anticipates it, as though this great historical theme were utilized by the author as a field of literary experiments.

Robin Kemball, Pushkin in French. The poems translated by Marina Tsvetaeva. An experimental metrical analysis. In contrast to the pure syllabism of French versification, Tsvetaeva 's French translations of Pushkin's verse (PVC) are clearly syllabo-tonic in character, and include all the rhythmic variations encountered in the originals. (Tsvetaeva 's correspondence on this subject shows that this was a deliberate process on her part.) On the other hand, there is no apparent correlation in the incidence and distribution of these variations as between French versions and Russian originals. The syllabo-tonic character of the PVC is more marked than that of other analogous versions. However, even these other versions tend towards a basic syllabo-tonic rhythm, especially if one compares them with an original French poem of analogous type (here, Baudelaire's « Le chat »). The author confines himself to an objective analysis of the metrical and rhythmical elements involved, considering that all aesthetic or artistic valuation should properly be left to the reader of French mother-tongue.

Leonid Shur, Material pertaining to Pushkin in France. The present article exposes the preliminary conclusions of research carried out by its author in the domain of French "Pushkiniana". The study bears on autographs and lists (copies) of Pushkin's works preserved in French libraries and archives. It deals also with numerous as yet unpublished documents connected with the poet's biography as well as with the destiny of Pushkin's heritage in France, the history of translations of Pushkin's works into French, etc. All those sources are interesting not only from the point of view of research on Pushkin's life and work but also with regard to Russian and French literary relations and Slavic studies in France.

John Le Donne, Police reform in Russia : a project of 1762. This article publishes an archival document which permits us to obtain a general view of the urban population of Russia at the beginning of the 1760's. It helps us speculate on the reasons why a network of urban police was not established at the time.

Bertrand Bouchet, Family, rites and memory : the role of the elders in a Soviet Turkmen community. The Merv oasis kolkhozians are representative of the social organization of the Soviet Turkmens, one of the most striking features of which is the authority of aged men. In the past it took its roots in patrilineal kinship, in the principle of seniority, in their statute as heads of single or joint households, and their group was also in collective authority over the community. In the Soviet time this authority survives in family life and in the domestic economy of the individual plots. As a collective authority, it lost its political side, but remains significant in moral and religious fields. Past and present changes point out what part aged men play as bearers of memory and continuity of the identity.

Peter Huber and Daniel Kunzi, Paris in the 1930's. Serge Efron and some NKVD agents. This article paints the portrait of the anti-Bolshevik emigre fringe living in exile in Paris. Highly receptive to Stalin's challenge of revolutionary values, including the return to pan-Russian nationalism that he advocated, members of this group would eventually be recruited by the Soviet secret services. Some would be questioned within the framework of an investigation into the 1937 murder of Communist dissident Ignace Reiss, and Serge Efron, who was married to the poetess M. Tsvetaeva and was a leading light in this group, would disappear. As the document (published for the first time) "Marina Tsvetaeva interviewed by the French police" reveals, Tsvetaeva would deny all knowledge of her husband's activities but would admit to being personally acquainted with several of his "collaborators".