Passage Charles E. The Russian Hoffmannists

Mouton & Co Publishers, 1963. — 264 с.
Отсканированные страницы + слой распознанного текста.The significance of the Tales of Hoffmann for Russian literature forms the continuous thread upon which all parts of the present book are strung, but the author wishes to explain at the outset why the several parts, the beads upon the strand, are so diverse. Various points of fact needed to be made in this study and one major point of fancy needed, so to speak, to be unmade. Both processes required patient examination of details.
The point of fancy to be unmade was the irresponsible identification of Hoffmann's influence where no such influence, or very little, exists. Critics, both amateur and professional, made such claims from 1825 onwards and both kinds of critics have repeated the errors down to the present moment. The Countess Rostopcina provided the best example of such unwarranted claims when she dubbed Prince Odoevskij, in his own lifetime, "Hoffmann II". The resemblance between the two writers was generic but superficial; Odoevskij himself, an utterly honest man, disavowed the resemblance emphatically. Our examination of the facts of the matter has brought us to the conclusion that there was slightly more influence than Odoevskij remembered and vastly less than Countess Rostopcina imagined. Clarification of such points was time-consuming but necessary if a true judgment was to be arrived at. It is, however, incidental to the establishment of points of fact in this study, which is concerned with significant influences of Hoffmann upon Russian creative writers.