SOURCE: Rosenberg, Karen. “Trediakovsky on Sumarokov: The Critical Issues.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 21 (1988): 49-60.

[In the essay that follows, Rosenberg analyzes the conflict between Trediakovsky and Alexander Sumarokov in the context of the literary and academic culture of eighteenth-century Russia.]

In the late 1740s and early 1750s, Vasily Trediakovsky and Alexander Sumarokov engaged in a series of discussions on matters of languages and literature. According to earlier scholars such as P. O. Morozov and N. N. Bulich, the principal source of the conflict was the pugnaciousness of both parties. This point of view implies that Trediakovsky and Sumarokov did not articulate consistent positions but, rather, flung accusations largely at random and blamed each other for mistakes which each of them made in his own literary practice. The more recent work of I. Z. Serman, however, has shown that the two eighteenth-century rivals had a significant disagreement over the role of Slavonic in the Russian literary language.¹ And one can identify other areas in which substantive differences existed between the two men. Trediakovsky had a rather well-integrated literary theory, as his objections to Sumarokov's works suggest.

Trediakovsky and Sumarokov might possible have coexisted in Russian letters in the mid-eighteenth century, each attracting his own followers, were it not for the fact that the Academy of Sciences held a virtual monopoly over the publication of belles-lettres in the empire until the late 1790s, when the press of the Cadet Academy (Sukhoputnyi shliaketnyi kadetskii korpus) opened. If such a situation had not existed, it would be difficult to understand why Sumarokov repeatedly subjected himself to Trediakovsky's scrutiny by attempting to publish at the Academy. In the fall of 1727, the St. Petersburg printing house (S.—Peterburgskaia tipografiia) and the press at the Alexander Nevsky monastery were shut down for lack of funds, and their equipment was sent both to the Moscow press (Pechatnyi dvor) and to the Academy of Sciences in Petersburg. The former, under the direction of the Synod, was to publish books for church use, whereas the latter was to translate historical works into Russian once they had received Synodal sanction. Soon the publishing sphere of the Academy expanded to include new works of literature, books not produced by other presses in the empire in the first half of the century. Sumarokov, if he wanted to see his works in print, had to go to the Academy.²

In 1747, after the accession of Empress Elizabeth, a new process for screening manuscripts was officially introduced in the Academy: the Academy policed itself. The permission of the President of the Academy was required before a translation or an original work could be published. The procedure was that the Academic assembly (Akademicheskoe sobranie) or a representative of the president conducted a preliminary review of a manuscript and then final approval had to be given by the president or, in his absence, the chancellery of the Academy. The function of the preliminary review was not simply to determine if the contents were in any way dangerous or undesirable; literary or scientific significance was to be evaluated as well. The initial reader was to decide whether the work was both important and fine enough in style to be printed by the Academy. This system put Sumarokov into the hands of Trediakovsky and Lomonosov, who functioned as his referees more than once.³

For example, in 1748 the two professors were asked by the Academy to review Sumarokov's play Hamlet (Gamlet). Lomonosov's verdict was brief and favorable, Trediakovsky's longer and more circumspect. Like Lomonosov, Trediakovsky testified that there was nothing in the tragedy to offend anyone, but he notes that it was inferior to classical examples of the genre. Sumarokov's play fails to excite as much pity and fear as Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. In fact, he observed, Hamlet is more like the French play, Polievkt than Sophocles' work. The reference here is most certainly to Pierre Corneille's tragedy Polyeucte, completed at the end of 1641 or the beginning of 1642. The tone of Trediakovsky's words is clearly pejorative; implied is the idea that French tragedy in general and Corneille's composition in particular are inferior to ancient instances of the genre. This is a theme that will recur in Trediakovsky's later essays.⁴

Trediakovsky's review of Hamlet also reveals another important facet of his literary program: his demand that a writer be faithful to the requirements of a given genre. He approves of the fact that sin is punished and virtue rewarded in Sumarokov's play since that is the main function of tragedy. Sumarokov's first tragedy, Khorev, was marred by the fact that it failed to elevate goodness and denegrate vice, Trediakovsky writes, commending Sumarokov for having corrected the flaw in his second tragedy. Components of the genre discussed by Aristotle or by his followers—pity and fear, the purgation of the passions, a didactic purpose—were mentioned by Trediakovsky in his review. The critic who emerges from these remarks was more rigid than Sumarokov in demanding the presence of such features of the genre.⁵

Such strictness about the fulfillment of genre requirements can also be seen in Trediakovsky's evaluation of Sumarokov's two epistles, one on the Russian language and the other on the art of verse (“Epistola; o russkom iazyke” and “Epistola: o stikhotvorstve”). In his report to the Academic chancellery dated 12 October 1748, Trediakovsky took the position that these works should not be published. A major flaw in both of them, but especially in the first, he found, was an abundance of satirical elements. They would be far better if they were more like the genre of the epistle and less like that of the satire, he wrote. He faults Sumarokov for chosing the wrong literary models, asserting that the malicious irony at the expense of various writers in the first epistle recalls Aristophanes' comedies, except that Sumarokov does not actually name names. Aristophanes' works were strictly forbidden in Athens by the authorities, Trediakovsky writes pointedly. Perhaps, he admits, the doctrine of poetic license might be invoked in the author's defense, but one must be on guard lest license become wilfulness. For, he cautions in a paraphrase of Cicero, once something has been done it may be taken as fitting and correct.⁶

Sumarokov subsequently revised his epistles and on 9 November 1748 they were given to Trediakovsky and Lomonosov to review. Trediakovsky's evaluation of the second submission was not much more favorable than his opinion of the earlier version. He noted that the epistles had been improved to a certain extent and contained nothing injurious to the state; however, he continued, their offensive qualities had not been eradicated and had even been augmented. Genre was still an issue for him. The works are epistles in name only and malicious satire in point of fact, he charged, rejecting Sumarokov's request to have them published. While Lomonosov agreed with Trediakovsky that the works contain satirical elements, he found literary precedents for the presence of such features. Verses on the improvement of the verbal arts are permissible among all civilized peoples and there is even a Russian model for Sumarokov's work: the verse satires of Prince Antiokh Dmitrievich Kantemir which had received general acclaim. Lomonosov approved Sumarokov's two satires for publication and they were printed in 1748.⁷

Sumarokov's comedy Tresotinius has often been considered the beginning of the quarrel with Trediakovsky, but from the above chronicle it seems valid to consider it only the next episode in the long debate. In part, it may have been Sumarokov's revenge for the trouble which Trediakovsky and Lomonosov had caused him. In the play, each of these professors appears as a pedant, a traditional comic character—Lomonosov under the name of Bobembius and Trediakovsky as Tresotinius. Perhaps because Trediakovsky rather than Lomonosov reacted unfavorably to the final version of the two epistles, it is Tresotinius who receives the more negative treatment. He is shown as an anachronism, a man who still recites verses from the New and Short Method for Composing Russian Verse (Novyi i kratkii sposob k slozheniiu rossiiskikh stikhov, 1735), whereas another character quotes a few lines from the recent Khorev. His archaic language is parodied and his penchant for difficult, even incomprehensible, poetry is held up to ridicule. But even more significant for our purposes is the fact that Sumarokov, in writing Tresotinius at breakneck speed from 12 to 13 January 1750, disregarded Trediakovsky's rule that one should closely follow classical models. The play borrows at least as much from Holberg, Molière and possibly Théophile de Vaure as from Terence. The name Tresotinius, for example, is derived from Molière's comedy Les femmes savantes, which includes a pedant called Tricotin or in later editions Trissotin, after the French poet Cotin. This was Sumarokov's first comedy and, in fact, the first comedy written in the Russian language, so its appearance was an important event. It is quite possible that Sumarokov intended it to function as an example of how both ancient and modern comedies could be imitated in one work.⁸

Trediakovsky's criticisms of Tresotinius and of a number of other works by Sumarokov appeared in 1750 in a “letter” written as if by one friend of Trediakovsky to another. From his comments, it is evident that Trediakovsky believed an author should take relatively few liberties with a literary form. Comedy, he reminded Sumarokov, was supposed to correct the morals of society and not to offend the honor of one individual. According to the rules, it should contain an exposition, a problem and a resolution. Because Tresotinius lacked these elements, it was not worthy of being considered a comedy.⁹ Trediakovsky, as he appears in the critique, is tolerant of modern authors if and when they obey the classical rules, relatively strictly interpreted. He reminds the reader of the three dramatic unities of action, time and place, and criticizes Sumarokov for violating the first two in Khorev. In addition he objects to the fact that Sumarokov's tragedy shows the death of a hero on stage, in violation of the rules of drama. Khorev should have killed himself behind a screen or offstage, he suggests. Reiterating the traditional precepts, Trediakovsky also insists that tragedy serve a moral purpose by inspiring the audience with a love of virtue and an aversion to evil and by teaching in an entertaining rather than an unrelievedly didactic manner. Yet in Khorev, he charges, evil triumphs and virtue perishes.¹⁰

If Sumarokov has taken these elements from French, then he has chosen the wrong teachers, thought Trediakovsky. The French precedent for such practices was clearly not sufficient justification for him. If French writers bloody the stage, then they too are breaking the rules, he stated. While it is permissible to copy aspects of French tragedies which are in accordance with the rules, it is not correct to ape their mistakes. One should do something because it is right and not simply because others do it, he cautions; those French tragedies in which evil emerges triumphant and virtue goes unrewarded are unworthy of imitation. One of the fundamental problems with Sumarokov, Trediakovsky suggested in his “letter,” was that he selects bad literary models, preferring inferior moderns to superior ancients. The chief sources for Tresotinius were Holberg and Molière, Trediakovsky writes, perhaps deliberately ignoring the evident correspondences between Sumarokov's play and works by Plautus and Terence. In his polemical piece, Trediakovsky was trying to paint Sumarokov as an ignoramus who was not well schooled in either Greek or Latin and therefore probably unable to imitate the classics. He alleged that Sumarokov knew Homer only through the work of the French translator Dacier and was not familiar with Statius because he had not been translated into French. The implicit message of these passages is that Trediakovsky, who had a classical education, was a better writer than that graduate of the fashionable Cadet Academy, Sumarokov.¹¹

Of course, just as it would be foolish to accept uncritically the caricature of Trediakovsky presented in Tresotinius, it would be unwise to base a conception of Sumarokov on Trediakovsky's inflammatory remarks. Sumarokov was one of the most frequent visitors to the library of the Academy of Sciences and the records show that he borrowed the works of ancient authors. He was not as ignorant of the classics as Trediakovsky would have one believe. Sumarokov made this point in his response to Trediakovsky's comments, the article “Answer to Criticism” (“Otvet na kritiku”), written sometime between 8 March and 21 July 1750. The character of Captain Bramarbas in Tresotinius was taken from Terence's Eunuchus, Sumarokov said. It is possible that Trediakovsky's schooling at the Moscow Academy gave him a firmer grasp of the ancients than Sumarokov had (although much of Trediakovsky's knowledge, too, may well have been “secondhand”). But perhaps the major difference between the two was not in the extent of their acquaintance with the classics but in their attitude towards them. Sumarokov—although he was not an iconoclast by any means—was more willing to break genre conventions than was the professor of eloquence, Trediakovsky.¹²

As an alternative to Sumarokov's more liberal approach, Trediakovsky offered a number of suggestions. In the letter of 1750, after criticizing Sumarokov for failing to imbue Khorev with a moral purpose, he praised John Barclay for having put a divinely inspired message in his Argenis. Thus a work which Trediakovsky himself had translated is brought forth as a corrective to Sumarokov's tragedy. By mentioning Barclay's name, Trediakovsky hinted that he was not opposed to modern compositions per se, but only to those which are in some way defective. He also thought that his own literary efforts might serve as examples of how to follow the rules. On 29 September 1750, Trediakovsky was asked by the Empress Elizabeth to produce a tragedy. The fact that he dedicated this work, Deidamiia, to Sumarokov suggests that it was intended as a lesson to his rival on how to write. Given that the relations between Sumarokov and Trediakovsky were at a particularly low ebb in 1750, one might sense some disingenuousness in the dedication to Sumarokov “as a token of eternal remembrance.” And one may hear echoes of the debate with Sumarokov in the section of the preface to the tragedy where Trediakovsky asserts that all can judge whether the emendations which he has made in the mythic story represent probable events, as required. This may well be his response to Khorev which, Trediakovsky asserted in his letter, violated the principle of probability.¹³

Was it in order to show how inferior Tresotinius was to one of its ostensible models, Terence's Eunuchus, that Trediakovsky translated the Roman comedy in 1752? It is very likely that we should see this event as another incident in the long series of arguments between the two rivals. The translation was preceded by a preface in which Trediakovsky stated that he offered The Eunuch (Evnukh) as the companion to Deidamiia, a work we have understood as a lesson to Sumarokov. The Eunuch is a comedy in five acts and in verse, as the rules require, he asserted; significantly, in his letter of 1750, he had observed that Tresotinius consisted of seventeen scenes and was mostly in prose. In the preface to The Eunuch, Trediakovsky resumes his earlier attacks on French drama, criticizing prose comedies in foreign languages for violating the rules of the genre. Such remarks were probably meant as a reproach to Sumarokov, the imitator of the French. In his preface to The Eunuch, Trediakovsky recalled that René Rapin observed a common failing in French comedies, namely, weakness in the denouement; the absence of a denouement was one of the flaws which he had found in Tresotinius in 1750. If Sumarokov had studied Rapin, he might have known better than to model his play on French works, Trediakovsky evidently implies.¹⁴

It may be surprising to the modern reader that Trediakovsky thought of his translations of Argenis and Eunuchus as counterweights to Sumarokov's “original” plays Tresotinius and Khorev, respectively. Yet, within a particular theoretical tradition, it would not be strange for him to see translations in such a light. It must be remembered that in Europe during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the translator was permitted to play a creative role and had the option of modernizing or otherwise “improving” the original text. Strict word-for-word translation was practiced and defended by few. Trediakovsky may have picked up this understanding of translation from the ancients, such as Quintilian, Cicero or Horace, from their more modern followers, or from both. Indeed, there are so many places where he might have encountered this notion that it would be naive to attempt to identify his source or sources. We know that he had arrived at it by late 1730 or early 1731, when his translation of Paul Tallemant's Voyage à l'isle d'amour appeared in print. In the preface to the Voyage to the Island of Love (Ezda v ostrov liubvi), Trediakovsky's first published work, he claimed for himself the status of creator (“tvorets”) of a literary composition, explaining that a translator differs from a creator in name only. Perhaps this passage is one of those which won Trediakovsky his reputation as an arrogant braggart. But he was not only announcing his own achievement; he was transmitting to the Russian reader a European tradition of regarding translation in a particular light. It is only within such a context that Trediakovsky's later efforts to turn Fénelon's Télémaque into a Russian work make sense. The Tilemakhida was his epic as much as Fénelon's, according to this conception of translation.¹⁵

And there is another important reason why the modern opposition between a translation and an original work should not be imposed upon Russian letters of the mid-eighteenth century. Because authors of the neo-classical era were taught to imitate appropriate models, their “original” works were often patterned rather closely on earlier literary compositions. Perhaps that is why Etkind has said that the concept of plagiarism was unknown in Russia during that century. This is an overstatement, however, as Trediakovsky's letter of 1750 indicates. One objection that Trediakovsky made to a number of Sumarokov's works is that they consisted entirely of borrowed material. Imitation has its limits, he evidently believed. Tresotinius, he charged, was composed wholly of pieces from Holberg and Voltaire, and Khorev is completely taken from various French plays. The epistle on verse is all out of Boileau's L'Art poétique and the epistle on the Russian language is nothing but an amalgam of other people's ideas. Boileau, too, showed little inventiveness, according to Trediakovsky, for L'Art poétique is simply an elaborated version of Horace's “Ad Pisones,” he alleged.¹⁶

Sumarokov's defense, given in his “Answer to Criticism,” shows that there was some disagreement over the practice of borrowing literary material. Using a topos made famous by Terence and citing various precedents, Sumarokov defended this practice. Terence did not just make use of some aspects of Greek comedies but practically translated them. Racine copied and translated from Euripides in both Iphigénie and Phèdre, and no one considered that to be a shortcoming. The adoption of material is permissible, especially if indisguised, Sumarokov argued, noting that in Khorev he had made no attempt to hide his debt to Racine. Similarly, he insisted that he had never tried to conceal his use of Boileau in his epistle on poetry. An author may take from the work of another writer, he asserted, and there is nothing shameful about that activity for even great writers engage in it.¹⁷

What Sumarokov and Trediakovsky were arguing about in this segment of their polemics was how much one author should take from another. Both clearly accepted the idea of imitation but Trediakovsky wanted to limit the amount which an author could borrow from a particular source. Not only Sumarokov was guilty in this regard, Trediakovsky thought; so was Boileau. In 1750, Trediakovsky had alleged that Sumarokov, in his epistle on verse, was dependent on Boileau who, in turn, took all his ideas from Horace. In response, Sumarokov admitted his debt to Boileau but stated that the Frenchman was not entirely derivative. Trediakovsky answered this statement in the 1752 collection of his works, a fact which has gone unnoticed by scholars. There he attempted to set the matter straight by laying out the situation as he saw it. Boileau and Horace share much the same content and that coincidence is not merely accidental for Boileau took not only the plan of his work but most of his images and absolutely all of his rules from Horace. According to Trediakovsky, only in the order of presentation and in the amount of space awarded to a particular topic do the works of the two authors differ. To prove that Boileau took everything from Horace, Trediakovsky put his translations of the “Ad Pisones” and L'Art poétique side by side in the first volume of the collection. Of course, the presence of the two translations also allowed the Russian reader to judge how much new material was contained in Sumarokov's epistle on verse. Although this polemical purpose was not explicitly stated, it would most probably have been clear to those who knew about the quarrel between the two men or who had seen Sumarokov's epistle.¹⁸

Trediakovsky's point in this part of his debate with Sumarokov seems to be that there is an acceptable amount of borrowing beyond which an author should not go. If he exceeds this level, he cannot be considered very good. A major flaw in Sumarokov, he thought, was that that writer relied too heavily on the French. Khorev is a mere copy of French tragedies, and since the French have borrowed a great deal from the Greeks and the Romans, Sumarokov's work is nothing but an imitation of an imitation. Since Sumarokov lacks proficiency in classical languages, he cannot compare the French with their sources, Trediakovsky asserted in 1750. Similarly, he wrote in the preface to The Eunuch that French comedy is only a copy (“spisok”) of an original (“podlinnik”). As the Romans took from the Greeks, so the French and all the other European peoples imitated the Romans. Therefore, he reasoned, the Russians, by copying the French, are bringing their countrymen Greek comedy third hand.¹⁹

In this context, Trediakovsky's Tilemakhida, published in 1766, can be understood as another attempt to provide a counterweight to the trend represented by Sumarokov. Trediakovsky's translation of Fénelon's Télémaque was, first of all, a means of proving by example that a man who knows classical languages can deal better with a French work. In translating Fénelon, Trediakovsky explained in his preface, he often used Slavonic forms which are close to the Greek. This is appropriate in a work such as Télémaque which deals with religion and philosophy, he reasoned. French and German have no idiom except the secular usage, he asserted, obviously pleased that the resources of the Russian literary languages (“Slavenorossiiskii”) allowed him to imitate the ancients in a manner unavailable to Fénelon. Similarly, he claimed that “Slavenorossiiskii” and the classical languages coincidentally share the same feature of free word order. This, he suggests, is another advantage of Russian poetry over French verse, in which word order is more fixed. Thus Trediakovsky tried to prove that his Tilemakhida had direct affinities with the compositions of Homer and Virgil and was not simply a translation of a French epic. Implied is the question: Could Sumarokov have accomplished this?²⁰

After all of Trediakovsky's imprecations against the French, one may wonder why he chose to translate Fénelon's Télémaque rather than an epic by Homer or Virgil. It is possible that part of his intention was the desire to prove to Sumarokov and his followers that he was not anti-modern or anti-French. The point which he stressed in his introduction to the Tilemakhida was that a modern epic must fulfill certain requirements such as the use of mythological personages and events. Therefore, he continued, Voltaire, Camoëns, Tasso and Milton, all of whom utilized historical facts, did not write works of that genre. The French Academy refused to recognize Voltaire's Henriade as an epic and, Trediakovsky stated, it was correct in doing so, for Henri IV was not the fabulous hero whom the epic requires. The Henriade is no more an epic than Bova Korolevich, he wrote with evident hyperbole. Drawing heavily on the panegyric to Télémaque by Fénelon's disciple, Andrew Ramsay, he tried to demonstrate that the work which he had selected to translate did indeed meet all the demands of the genre. In short, he attempted to prove that a Russian writer can and must choose intelligently from among the French, as Sumarokov had failed to do.²¹

Another reason why Trediakovsky translated Fénelon rather than an ancient epic is given in the introduction to the Tilemakhida. He states that the Christian message of Télémaque makes it superior to the works of pagan authors. There was a clearly polemical context for these remarks as well. Trediakovsky had often criticized Sumarokov for holding suspect views. In Khorev he had found elements of atheism taken from Hobbes and Spinoza and in Sumarokov's version of Psalm 106, Trediakovsky identified lines which he believed propounded the theory of the plurality of worlds. Trediakovsky may well have been anxious to prove that he, rather than his rival, was capable of providing an irreproachably Christian work. In expounding the precepts to be learned from Télémaque, Trediakovsky again followed Ramsay's lead. It was important for him to chose a work which others had found to be imbued with Christian sentiments; it meant that the claims for Fénelon's work made in the preface did not stand on Trediakovsky's authority alone, but reflected a larger community of thought which considered Fénelon a model Christian writer. It also should be remembered that in a number of his theoretical works, Trediakovsky had explained that poetry at its inception had spread religious truths. He had often called for poetry to return to its original mission. The Tilemakhida was one such return.²²

Finally, linguistic considerations may have drawn Trediakovsky to a French work. On the basis of the available evidence, one cannot be at all certain that Trediakovsky's command of Greek was fully adequate to the task of translating Homer. His knowledge of Latin is better attested, both by his translations and by his treatises in Latin. But it would not have been merely a matter of rendering Virgil into acceptable Russian. A translation was a competition, an attempt to equal if not outdo the “original,” and Trediakovsky may well have feared that the Russian literary language did not yet have the resources to rival Virgil. According to this interpretation, Trediakovsky was a rather modest translator, from his early years when he rendered Tallemant's work into Russian. It was not outrageously bold or overambitious for a young man to attempt to equal Tallemant who enjoyed some popularity in Europe but did not have the reputation of a Fénelon. Similarly, it was not arrogant for an established man of letters to tackle Fénelon, whose work, although respected by many, was not a generally accepted symbol of excellence, as was Virgil's. This elements of restraint in Trediakovsky has often been overlooked by scholars who may have been overwhelmed by the self-assurance with which he corrected his rival.²³

Literary historians have been preoccupied too long with the obvious features of the polemics between Sumarokov and Trediakovsky: the ad hominem attacks and the defensive strategies. It is probable, however, that attentive contemporary readers heard much more than the histrionics of the debate. Those familiar with the rhetoric of polemical discourse would very likely have seen beneath the hyperbole and recognized the more subtle distinctions between these two neo-classicists. We may never fully grasp the context which an eighteenth-century audience would have understood, but through a careful examination of the extant material, we can reconstruct at least some of the substantive issues in the quarrel.

Notes

1. P. Morozov, “Iz istorii russkoi literaturnoi kritiki,” in his Minuvshii vek: literaturnye ocherki (Spb., 1902), p. 246; N. Bulich, Sumarokov i sovremennaia emu kritika (Spb., 1854), pp. 59-62. I. Z. Serman, “Lomonosov v rabote and tekstom ‘Sobraniia raznykh sochinenii v stikhakh i prose’ 1751 goda.” in Materialy i issledovaniia po leksike russkogo iazyka, ed. Iu. S. Sorokin (M-L., 1965), pp. 118-27.

2. Chetyresta let russkogo knigopechataniia 1564-1964, ed. M. P. Kim, et al. (M, 1976), p. 178; S. P. Luppov, Kniga v Rossii v poslepetrovskoe vremia (1725-1740) (L, 1976), pp. 36-37; Gary J. Marker, “Publishing and the Formation of a Reading Public in Eighteenth-Century Russia” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1977), pp. 120-23, 161 ff.

3. Marker, pp. 110-11, 148-49; D. V. Tiulichev, “Tsenzura izdanii Akademii nauk v XVIII v.,” Sbornik statei i materialov Biblioteki Akademii nauk SSSR po knigovedeniiu, II (1970), pp. 92-96.

4. P. S. Biliarskii, Materialy dlia biografii Lomonosova (Spb., 1865), pp. 114-15. Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, ed. M. I. Sukhomlinov, X (Spb., 1897), pp. 460-61. Sumarokov's Hamlet was finally published at the Academy at Sumarokov's expense in 1748. See P. P. Pekarskii, Istoriia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk v Peterburge, II (Spb., 1873), p. 131.

5. Materialy dlia istoriia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, IX, pp 473-74.

6. Trediakovsky's vehemence may be attributed to injured amour-propre, for the two epistles by Sumarokov only slightly veiled attacks on Trediakovsky's style and on his character. See Pekarskii, Istoriia, II, pp. 133-34.

7. Biliarskii, pp. 115-16. The letter is in M. V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, X (M-L, 1957), p. 460. Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, IX, p. 535; Pekarskii, Istoriia, II, pp. 132-33.

8. A. P. Sumarokov, Tresotinius: Komediia, in his Polnoe sobranie vsekh sochinenii v stikhakh i proze, V (M, 1781), pp. 333-63. See P. Rulin, “Pervaia komediia Sumarokova,” Izvestiia po russkomu iazyku i slovesnosti, II, Kn. 1 (1929), pp. 238, 242-50, 253-69.

9. V. K. Trediakovskii, “Pis'mo v kotorom soderzhitsia rassuzhdenie o stikhotvorenii, ponyne na svet izdannom ot avtora dvukh od, dvukh tragedii, i dvukh epistol, pisannoe ot priiatelia k priiateliu 1750 v Sankpeterburge,” ed. A. A. Kunik (Spb., 1865), pp. 438-39. The letter was not published in the eighteenth century and appeared in print only in 1865. Reportedly, Teplov had requested a review of Sumarokov's works by Trediakovsky. See Pekarskii, Istoriia, II, p. 152.

10. Ibid., pp. 441-42, 461-63, 484-85, 487, 493-95, 498.

11. See Gerda Achinger, Der franzoesische Anteil an der russischen Literaturkritik des 18. Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Beruecksichtigung der Zeitschriften (1730-1780) (Hamburg, 1970), pp. 54-59. The deficiencies of French drama were also discussed in Trediakovsky's preface to the Tilemakhida. Rhyme, which is employed in numerous French plays, is not appropriate in drama and was not used by Greek and Roman playwrights, he wrote. And, he continued, there is another serious problem in French comedy: although plays are supposed to improve man, they rarely do so and, instead, corrupt and offend with remarks directed at specific individuals. Trediakovsky counselled his fellow countrymen to imitate Sophocles, Euripides and Terence rather than Corneille, Racine and Molière. V. K. Trediakovskii, “Pred”iz”iasnenie ob iroicheskoi piime,” in his Sochineniia Tred'iakovskogo, II (Spb., 1849), pp. lxiii-lxix.

12. Istoriia Biblioteki Akademii nauk SSSR 1714-1964 (M-L., 1964), p. 120. More work deserves to be done on the subject of who borrowed what from the Academy library, on the model of E. B. Ryss and G. M. Korovin, “M. V. Lomonosov—chitatel' Biblioteki Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk,” Trudy Biblioteki Akademii nauk i Fundamental'noi Biblioteki obshchestvennykh nauk AN SSSR, III (1958), pp. 283-303. A. P. Sumarokov, “Otvet na kritiku,” p. 116.

13. Trediakovskii, “Pis'mo,” pp. 497, 488. On the Empress'request, see Pekarskii, Istoriia, II, p. 157. V. K. Trediakovskii, Deidamiia tragediia... (M, 1775), p. 3. On this play see Hans-Bern Harder, Studien zur Geschichte der russischen klassizistischen Tragoedie 1747-1769 (Weisbaden, 1962), pp. 85-97.

14. Trediakovsky's Evnukh has never been published in full. Part of the play and sections of the preface are given i “Evnukh V. K. Trediakovskogo; podgotovleno k pechati L. V. Modzalevskim,” Vosemnadtsatyi vek, I (1935), pp. 311-26. See especially pp. 312-13. An article included in the collection of Trediakovsky's work published during his lifetime is an abridged version of the preface to the manuscript Evnukh. See V. K. Trediakovskii, “Rassuzhdenie o komedii vobshche,” in his Sochineniia i perevody kak stikhami tak i prozoiu, II (Spb., 1752), pp. 188-209. See James L. Rice, “Trediakovskij and the Russian Poetic Genres 1730-60: Studies in the History of Eighteenth-Century Russian Literature,” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1965), pp. 271-72. Trediakovskii, “Pis'mo,” pp. 437-38.

15. On European translation theory and practice, see John W. Draper, “The Theory of Translation in the Eighteenth Century,” Neophilogus, VI (1921), pp. 241-54; L. G. Kelley, The True Interpreter; A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West (Oxford, 1979) especially pp. 35-36, 41, 51; R. W. Ladborough, “Translating from the Ancients in Seventeenth-Century France,” Journal of the Warburg Institute, II (1938-1939), pp. 85-104; Georges Mounin, Les belles infidèles (Paris, 1955), especially pp. 70, 80, 86 ff., 96 ff., 117 ff.

    On the probable time of the publication of the Ezda see B. A. Uspenskii, Pervaia russkaia grammatika na rodnom iazyke (M, 1975), p. 66. V. Trediakovskii, “K chitateliu [of the Ezda],” in Trediakovskii, Stikhotvoreniia, ed. A. S. Orlov (L, 1935), p. 324.

    On Trediakovsky's theory of translation, see E. S. Aznaurova, “Osnovye tendentsii v razvitii russkogo khudozhestvennogo perevoda v XVIII veke,” Uchenye zapiski Tashkentskogo gos. ped. instituta inostrannykh iazykov, VI (1962), pp. 47-52; Michael Heim Berman, “Trediakovskij, Sumarokov and Lomonosov as Translators of Western European Literature,” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1971), p. 32 ff; lu. D. Levin, “Ob istoricheskoi evoliutsii printsipov perevoda (K istorii perevodicheskoi mysli v Rossii),” in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi russkoi literatury, ed. M. P. Alekseev (M-L, 1963), pp. 11-16.

16. E. G. Etkind, “Poeticheskii perevod v istorii russkoi literatury,” in Mastera russkogo stikhotvornogo perevoda, I (L, 1968), p. 17. Trediakovskii, “Pis'mo,” p. 442. More work deserves to be done on the changing conception of authorship in eighteenth-century Russia. A very interesting contribution to the study of this problem is James Cracraft, “Did Feofan Prokopovich Really Write the Pravda voli monarshei?,” Slavic Review, No. 2 (1981), pp. 173-93.

17. On Terence's often cited defense against the charge of plagiarism, see Harold O. White, Plagiarism and Imitation during the English Renaissance; A Study in Critical Distinctions (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), especially pp. 5, 12-15, 26, 162-63. Sumarokov, “Otvet na kritiku,” pp. 116-17.

18. Trediakovskii, “Pis'mo,” pp. 441-42. See D. M. Lang, “Boileau and Sumarokov; the Manifesto of Russian Classicism,” The Modern Language Review, XLIII (1948), pp. 500-6; Sumarokov, “Otvet na kritiku,” p. 115; Trediakovskii, “K chitateliu,” p. ii.

19. Trediakovskii, “Pis'mo,” pp. 461-63, 487, 496. Trediakovskii, “Rassuzhdenie o komedii vobshche,” pp. 209, 190. “Evnukh V. K. Trediakovskogo,” p. 313.

20. Trediakovskii, “Pred”iz”iasnenie,” pp. lxxiii-lxxvi, lxiv.

21. Ibid., pp. xxi-xxii, xlix-l. On Trediakovsky's use of Ramsay, see Achinger, pp. 39-45; A. D. Galakhov, “Zametki o Tred'iakovskom,” Otechestvennye zapiski, XC, No. 9 (1853), otd. V, p. 75.

22. Trediakovskii, “Pis'mo,” p. 490. Nikolai Grigorovich, “Izvet Trediakovskogo na Sumarokova,” Russkii arkhiv, No. 12 (1907), pp. 460-62. For a discussion of Trediakovsky's idea that poetry should return to its original religious mission, see Karen Rosenberg, “Between Ancients and Moderns; V. K. Trediakovskij on the Theory of Language and Literature,” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1980), pp. 268-96.

23. On the competitive aspect of translation, see G. Gukovskii, “K voprosu o russkom klassitsizme; Sostiazanie i perevody,” Poetika, IV (1928), pp. 126-48. Translation can be understood as an implicit statement that one language is capable of bearing a message given in another and, historically, this aspect of translation has been discussed by apologists for various media. For more on this question, see Riccardo Picchio, “Guidelines for a Comparative Study of the Language Question among the Slavs,” in Aspects of the Slavic Language Question (New Haven: Yale Consilium on International Studies, ed Riccardo Picchio and Harvey Goldblatt, vol. 1 [1984], pp. 1-44, passim).