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Performing Autobiography: The Multiple Memoirs of Catherine The Great (1756-96)

2004; Wiley; Volume: 63; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-9434.2004.00324.x

1467-9434

Monika Greenleaf,

Historical Studies of British Isles

The Russian ReviewVolume 63, Issue 3 p. 407-426 Performing Autobiography: The Multiple Memoirs of Catherine The Great (1756–96) Monika Greenleaf, Monika Greenleaf Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Monika Greenleaf, Monika Greenleaf Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 28 May 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9434.2004.00324.xCitations: 3AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL References 1 See the superb textological history and commentary in A. N. Pypin, ed., Sochineniia Imperatritsy Ekateriny II ( St. Petersburg , 1907), 12: 705– 800, as well as la. Barskov's introduction to this volume (ibid., v–xv). 2 The two existing English translations, by Moura Budberg (New York: Macmillan, n.d.), and, with useful annotations, by Katharine Anthony (New York: Knopf, 1927), splice different redactions to produce a continuous chronological narrative and are vastly out-of-date. Hilda Hoogenboom's new translation and commentary to the Herzen edition is forthcoming (Modern Library at Random House, 2004). I am grateful to her for sharing her rich knowedge of the Mémoires' textology and her particular insights into the redaction of 1794, both of which saved me from mistakes and misconceptions. See also Zapiski Imperatritsy Ekateriny II, with preface by Iskander [Alexander Herzen] (1859; reprint ed. Moscow, 1990). 3a Any study of Catherine II's writing must begin with Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great ( New Haven , 1981). 3b See also idem, Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia ( London , 1998), 284– 95. 3c And V. A. Bil'bassov, Istoriia Ekateriny vtoroi ( Berlin , 1896 or after), vol. 12, pt. 2. 3d Ekkehard W. Borntrager, in Katharina II: Die “Selbstherrscherin aller Reussen” ( Freiburg , 1991), comments on the uncritical appropriation of her memoirs by historians and their resulting “optimistic” image of Catherine. 3e For an early feminist view see Mary Hays's 529-page entry on Catherine the Great in her six-volume Female Biography; or, Memoirs of the Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), as well as Anthony Cross, “ Catherine the Great: Views from the Distaff Side,”in Russia in the Age of the Enlightenment: Essays for Isabel de Madariaga, ed. Roger Bartlett and Janet M. Hartley ( London , 1990), 203– 21. 3f Zoe Oldenboujrg, “ Femme et souveraine,”in Catherine de Russie ( Paris , 1966), 169– 202. 3g Hedwig Fleisch Hacker, ed., “ Zur Persona Katharinas II,”in Katherina II: In ihren Memoiren ( Frankfurt , 1972), 393– 417. 3h John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend ( New York , 1989). The new interest in the Catherine era that was triggered by perestroika has generated new research on her autobiography. 3i See V. S. Lopatin's introduction to Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin: Lichnaia perepiska 1769–1791 ( Moscow , 1997), 473– 94, for an up-to-date account of the Russian and Soviet historiography of Catherine's reign (the letters contain much autobiographical material that was not ventured in her memoirs). 3j V. N. Vinogradov, “ Trudnaia sud'ba Ekateriny II v istoriografii,”in Vek Ekateriny II: Dela balkanskie, ed. V. N. Vinogradov ( Moscow , 2000), p. 282– 93. 3k Vek Ekateriny II: Rossiia i Balkany, ed. V. N. Vinogradov ( Moscow , 1998), 6– 23. 3l Klaus Scharf, Katharina II, Deutschland, und die Deutsche ( Mainz , 1995). 3m And idem, “ Tradition – Usurpation – Legitimation. Das herrscherliche Selbst-verstandnis Katherinas II,”in Russland zur Zeit Katharinas II: Absolutismus – Aufklarung – Pragmatismus, ed. Echkhard Hubner et al. ( Cologne , 1998). The most interesting new studies promise to be Hilda Hoogenboom's aforementioned scholarly commentary to her new translation of Catherine's Mémoires, and Cynthia Whittaker's forthcoming book on Catherine as reader and writer. 4 Sochineniia Imperatritsy 12:717. All cited passages are from this edition, translated by me and accompanied by page numbers in the text. 5 All the redactions of Catherine's “Avtobiograficheskie zapiski” are contained in Pypin's Sochineniia Imperatritsy, vol. 12. They are identified by Roman numerals and dated. 6 Sochineniia Imperatritsy 12:xiii. 7 Ibid., v–xv and 705–9. 8a See Matthew H. Wikander, Princes to Act: Royal Audience and Royal Performance, 1578–1792 ( Baltimore , 1993). 8b For a brilliant reading of the Russian court's changing culture of spectacle see Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 2 vols. ( Princeton , 1995, 2000). Chapters on Catherine's reign are in 1:110–65. 9 She made this confession to Baron Melchior Grimm, remarks W. F. Reddaway, ed., in his introduction to Documents of Catherine the Great ( Cambridge , England , 1931), xix. 10a Albert Lortholary, Le mirage russe au xviii-e siècle (1951; reprint ed. Ferney-Voltaire, 2001). 10b Martin E. Malia, Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum ( Cambridge , MA , 1999). 11 Felicity A. Nussbaum, The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England ( Baltimore , 1989). 12 Grigorii A. Gukovskii, “ The Empress as Writer,”in Catherine the Great: A Profile, ed. Marc Raeff ( New York , 1972), 64– 92. 13a Besides Felicity Nussbaum, most helpful to my research on eighteenth-century autobiography have been Elizabeth W. Bruss, Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre ( Baltimore , 1972). 13b Klaus-Detlef Muller, Autobiographie und Roman: Studien zur literarischen Autobiographie der Goethezeit ( Tubingen , 1976). 13c Michael Sheringham, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires ( Oxford , 1993). 13d Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England ( Cambridge , MA , 1976). 13e Frederic S. Steussy, Eighteenth-Century German Autobiography: The Emergence of Individuality ( New York , 1996). 13f A. G. Tartarkovskii, Russkaia memuaristika XVIII–pervoi poloviny XIX veka: Ot rukopisi k knige ( Moscow , 1991). 14 For the origin of this influential concept see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence ( Cambridge , MA , 1989). 15a For example, “during Catherine the Great's reign as ruler of the Russian Empire from 1762 to 1796, British political satirists produced approximately fifty prints that refer directly to her.” See Vincent Carretta, “ ‘Petticoats in Power’: Catherine the Great in British Political Cartoons,”in 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, ed. Kevin L. Cope ( New York , 1994), 1: 23– 81. 15b For a literary equivalent see Larry Wolff, “ Die Phantasie von Katharina in der Fiction der Aufklarung: Von Baron Munchchausen zu Marquis de Sade,”in Katharina II, Russland und Europa: Beiträge zur Internationalen Forschung, ed. Claus Scharf ( Mainz , 2001), 307– 17. 16 Gukovskii, “Empress as Writer,” 69. 17 According to Bilbassov, Catherine's reading during her years as grand duchess included Joseph Barre's General History of Germany, Pierre Bayle's History and Critical Dictionary, Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, Baronius' Church History, Tacitus' Annals, Voltaire's Essay on the mores and spirit of nations, and Hardouin de Péréfixe's History of Henri IV (Istoriia Ekateriny II 1:294–306). A. Brikner adds “many novels,” the racy memoirs of Brantôme, Letters of Madame de Sévigné, Plato, and Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (Istoriia Ekateriny II [St. Petersburg, 1885], 1:58–60). 18a Samuel Johnson, The Idler and the Adventurer, ed. J. Bate et al. ( New Haven , 1963), 262– 63. 18b On Catherine and satirical journals see A. G. Cross, ed., Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth Century: Contacts and Comparisons ( Newtonville , MA , 1979). 18c And Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700–1800 ( Princeton , 1985). 19 See, on the relationship between the history of English finance and the concept of “character,” J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History ( Cambridge , England , 1985). 20a See Peter Brooks, The Novel of Worldliness: Crébillon, Marivaux, Laclos, Stendhal ( Princeton , 1969). 20b David Marshall, The Surprising Effects of Sympathy: Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley ( Chicago , 1988). 20c April Alliston, Virtue's Faults: Correspondences in Eighteenth-Century British and French Women's Fiction ( Stanford , 1996). 21 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie ( Oxford , 1976), cited in Marshall, Surprising Effects of Sympathy, 4–5. 22a Sochineniia Imperatritsy 12:105. See also Louis Reau, ed., Correspondance de Falconet avec Catherine II ( Paris , 1921), 9. 22b Iu. D. Levin, “ The English Novel in 18th-Century Russia,”in Literature, Lives, and Legality in Catherine's Russia, ed. A. G. Cross and G. S. Smith ( Nottingham , 1994), 143– 67. 23 See Spacks, Imagining a Self, 300–315. 24a In her Mémoire of 1794, Catherine mentions having read Péréfixe's “vie d'Henri IV” in 1748, the same time she was enjoying the racy memoirs of Brantôme (Sochineniia Imperatritsy 12:261). Catherine and the Enlightenment philosophes lionized the French King Henri IV as the model for modern secular monarchy, and there is much evidence of her personal cult. She asked Mlle Collot, Falconet's assistant, to sculpt a bust of Henri IV for her (letter of Catherine II to Falconet, 16 May 1768, in Correspondance de Falconet avec Catherine II [1767–1778], ed. Louis Reau [ Paris , 1921], 43– 43, plus footnote). 24b In the midst of the Russo-Turkish War, she wrote to Voltaire at Ferney (10 April 1770) how she imagined a conversation with him: “Henri IV will be party to it, Sulli also, but not Moustapha.” A few years later at the time of Diderot and Grimm's visits to St. Petersburg, she reported to Voltaire, “They will tell you, monsieur, how highly I rate Henry IV, the Henriade [Voltaire's epic]” (27 December 1773–7 January 1774). In his Notes on Catherine's “frank and good-tempered” colloquies with him about the theory vs. practice of her rule, Diderot reinforced the parallel, “You can tell her the truth, she is the true wife of Henri IV.” See W. F. Reddaway, ed., Documents of Catherine the Great: The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767 in the English text of 1768 ( Cambridge , England , 1931), 51, 193, 323. 25a Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, Histoire du roi Henry le Grand ( Paris , 1749), edition corrected by the author. 25b Leon Vallée, ed., History of Henry IV, in the series Courtiers and Favourites of Royalty, Memoirs of the Court of France, vol. 17 ( Paris , 1903). Péréfixe's biography, addressed to the young Louis XIV, represents the assimilation of Machiavelli into French statecraft. 26 Péréfixe, Histoire du roi Henri le Grand, 32–33. 27 A divine archetype in many religions and mythologies, identified among others by Carl Jung; hermaphroditic features symbolize the divinity's perfect unity of opposites and self-sufficiency. 28 Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History ( New York , 1984). 29a Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à d'Alembert, in his Oeuvres complètes ( Paris , 1995), 5: 76. 29b Rousseau, Letter to d'Alembert, trans. Allan Bloom ( Ithaca , 1968). 30a Rousseau, Emile ou de l'Education, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond ( Paris , 1969), 4: 692– 868. 30b Rousseau, Emile or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom ( New York , 1979), 357– 74. I. Madariaga, 1981, writes, “In the 1760's and 1770's…all Rousseau's works except the Social Contract appeared in Russian translation.” Catherine's dislike of Emile is attested. In her Ukase of 1763 she pointed out that unsupervised bookshops were selling such undesirable foreign books as Rousseau's Emile (Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, 330, 334). 30c See Susan Moller Okin's comparative analysis of Rousseau's various attempts to integrate women into his theory of the “state of nature,”“natural” patriarchy, and the social contract, in Women in Western Political Thought ( Princeton , 1992), 99– 194. 31 Alexander M. Schenker paints an interesting portrait of Catherine as artistic collaborator and correspondent in The Bronze Horseman: Falconet's Monument to Peter the Great (New Haven, 2003). 32 Machiavelli recommended hunting as essential preparation for warfare and leadership. See Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, intro. Max Lerner ( New York , 1950), 53– 55. 33 Claude-Carloman de Rulhière, Une Histoire de la Révolution de Russia en l'année 1762 ( Paris , 1994). The La Rochefoucauld salon and the French Academy were two prominent venues where Rulhière was asked to read the manuscript. For an account sympathetic to Rulhière see A. Lortholary, Le Mirage russe, 186–91. According to V. A. Bil'bassov, Catherine did not read Rulhière's work herself, but Princess Dashkova did and noted down all its inaccuracies. She ambiguously concluded that a man so well-initiated at court could not have written such a false account. Given the two women's closeness, Catherine must have had a very good idea of its contents. Bil'bassov cites Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova 7:653 and 21:189 in his Istoriia Ekateriny vtoroi 12:2:2. 34a See Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction ( Stanford , 1986). 34b Catherine associates this new experience with Elizabeth's bodily regime. See, on a related subject, Madeleine Kahn, Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the Eighteenth-Century Novel ( Ithaca , 1991). 35 This is one of the few Russian passages in the memoirs. Many of Catherine's writings, including her plays, journalistic pieces and fairytales, and large parts of her massive correspondence, were composed by her in Russian. V. S. Lopatin confirms her competence and range of expression in the Russian language, though her French was far superior (Lichnaia perepiska, 542). 36 I am grateful to Irene Masing-Delic for this insight, among many others. 37 Machiavelli, The Prince, 63–64. I have not been able to verify that Catherine read Machiavelli, but at the very least she would have found in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, which she claimed to have read in its entirety, an article on “machiavellism.” 38 For a trenchant analysis of “The Gender of Character” see F. Nussbaum, Autobiographical Subject, 127–53; and Catherine Gallagher, Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace 1670–1820 ( Berkeley , 1994). 39 See Lopatin, Lichnaia perepiska, 478–90, for documentation of the secret ceremony, their lifelong friendship, and Potemkin's unshakable authority even after each spouse had moved on to other favorites. 40 Alliston, Virtue's Faults. On the other hand, as Sara Maza relates in Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France ( Berkeley , 1993), the scandalous (though spurious) “Diamond Necklace Affair” had contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette in public opinion. It is just possible that Catherine, who sympathized with the late French queen, opened her 1791 memoir with this deliberately defiant flourish. 41 Hilda Hoogenboom, “Catherine the Great's ‘Memoirs’: A Rhetoric of Androgyny,” paper delivered at the AAASS Conference, Toronto, 23 November 2003. 42 Voltaire's world-famous defense of the Huguenot Callas family in their trial for murder created the model narrative and devices for the mémoire judiciaire, which Catherine, a financial supporter and promoter of the Callas cause and of Voltaire's renown, must surely have attended to. 43 For an illuminating discussion of these late eighteenth-century trends see Isabel V. Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815 ( Ithaca , 1996), 253– 98. 44a For a thorough archival study of corporal punishment in the eighteenth century see Abby M. Schrader, Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia ( DeKalb , IL , 2002). 44b As well as Brenda Meehan-Waters, “ The Development and Limits of Security of Noble Status, Person, and Property in Eighteenth-Century Russia,”in Russia and the West in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Anthony Cross ( Newtonville , MA , 1983), 294– 302. 45 According to Peter I's statute on succession, the reigning tsar was free to choose his/her successor. 46 Carrara, “Petticoats in Power,” 23–81. 47 Maza, Private Lives, 314. 48a On the antifeminine drive of the late Enlightenment see Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution ( Berkeley , 1992). 48b Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment ( Ithaca , 1994). 48c Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, “ The Limping Woman and the Public Sphere,”in Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Veronica Kelly and Dorothea Mücke ( Stanford , 1994), 23– 44. 49 For an original study of symbolic modes of feminine communication and bequest that circumvented patrilineal inheritance and verbal codes see Alliston, Virtue's Faults. 50 I agree with Alexander A. Kizevetter's characterization of her: “Self-advertisement, however, is only the lowest form of the art of publicity. The highest form is the ability to put praise of one's self into the mouths of others.” He does not, however, apply this notion to her memoirs. See his “Portrait of the Enlightened Autocrat,” in Raeff, ed., Catherine the Great, 13. 51 That is, no other copies have been found in family archives of the nobility. 52 I see in Catherine's final choice a version of Felicity Nussbaum's argument about “the gender of character” in Autobiographical Subject. 53 In 1778, Herder, the first philosopher of “Selbstbeschreibung,” had instead claimed an ethical value for the merciless disclosure of “the dark side of the human being, his hatred, aversions, vexations, and lusts.” By 1790, following the outbreak of imitative suicides and scandalous disclosures that accompanied “Wertherfever” and the publication of Rousseau's long-awaited Confessions, Herder began to associate publicity not with light but with contagion. “Indecent thinking” and “the secret debris and futile fallacies of the human heart” should be withheld from the public, while pedagogical reading groups should discuss selected autobiographies, such as Benjamin Franklin's. See Helmut J. Schneider, “ The Cold Eye: Herder's Critique of Enlightenment Visualism,”in Johann Gottfried Herder, Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge, ed. Wulf Koepke ( Columbia , SC , 1996), 53– 60. 54 Nineteenth-century, Soviet, and now the new Petersburg nationalist historiography have repeatedly tried to belittle Catherine's (and “the Century of Empresses'”) contribution to Russian history and culture. Citing Literature Volume63, Issue3July 2004Pages 407-426 ReferencesRelatedInformation