Echo of La Princesse de Cleves in Russian literature, or on dramatizationof epic genre

The resonant character of perception of La Princesse de Cleves (1687) by M.M. de Lafayette(1634-1693) in Russian nineteenth-century literature is examined in the article. La Princesse deCleves, as a product of the epoch of classical drama, is a model of European analytical novel. Thenovel, rising moral and philosophical problems, is marked by deep understanding of complexity andinfinity of human feelings, and is characterized by dramatization of all its components.The creative material of the Russian nineteenth-century novel (A Nest of Nobles by I.S Turgenev(1858), Anna Karenina by L.N. Tolstoy (1873-1876), and The Eternal Husband by F.M. Dostoevsky(1870)) is examined to show that the resonant echo of La Princesse de Cleves was conditioned by theactive psychologization of the action itself, as well as to the shift from story to characters. Collisionsof the plot (a dramatic separation of people loving each other for pursuance of moral duty; the tournamentmotif; the motif of the fatal letter) are infused with psychological reaction, which turns thestory situation into a conceptually important motif of a tragic collision of feeling and duty. Dramatizationof the epic genre in Russian literature reflects the keen writers' feeling of the inevitable crisis inthe spiritual life of Russian society. The principles of objective narration of the analytical novel withan open dramatic structure become an important component of Russian prose and signify deep connectionof writers with lofty moral and ethical requirements of classicism literature. The fact of Russianwriters' attention to moral and philosophical problems of La Princesse de Cleves indicates theirinterest in works of French moralists (La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues), who were not only contemporaries,but also like-minded persons for M.M. de Lafayette.A typological connection between Russian literature and discoveries of de Lafayette could possiblyexist by the agency of French nineteenth-century prose (Stendhal, Constant, Flaubert's MadameBovary, in particular), which inherited the experience of the seventeenth-century novel.Russian prose of the second half of the 19th century provides synthesis of analytism and deeppenetration into the mystery of the human's inner world, originated from the sentimental-Rousseaunovel type. It is this synthesis that comprises artistic development of tendencies of La Princesse deCleves.

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