German Genius of Russian Literature

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the most expressive facts and forms of creative reception of German literature in Russia in the 19th century. Based on research in the field of the theory of cultural transfer, the author of the article proceeds from the conviction that the condition and result of the movement of ideas and images across the border of the original cultural-historical context is their morphosemantic transformation in a new evolutionary paradigm. None of the Russian writers was only an obedient performer of the suggestions of their “German genius”; an intense dialogue took place between them, bordering on a break, and therefore precisely creatively productive. In this case, special attention is paid to two factors: the functions of intermediary authorities (travelers, translators, magazines, salon groups, universities, literary areas)
and the tightness of interdiscursive links between literature, philosophy and social thought — a characteristic feature of perceiving Russian culture. The article consists of several fragments, covering in aggregate the main episodes of the selected plot. The section “Zhukovsky and Russian Schillerism” gives a generalized picture of the work written by German poets from the first translation experiments “Monument to Schiller” (1974), emphasizing the civic pathos of Schiller’s work. The section “Romantic poetry of thought — under the sign of Schelling” reveals the nature of rethinking German classics in the poetry of “Wisdom lovers”, Lermontov and Tyutchev. The section “Goethe and Schiller in the сontext of Russian Hegelianism” reveal the role of the Russian-German dialogue in shaping the philosophical worldview of Belinsky and Herzen, Turgenev and Dostoevsky. The section “Russian Hoffmann and Russian Heine” is an attempt to answer the question of why they, along with Goethe and Schiller, became the most visible and influential participants in the literary process in Russia.