Adulterous Nations : Family Politics and National Anxiety in the European Novel

Abstract

All translations of the non-English quotes used in this book (as well as the poem that serves as the epigraph), unless otherwise noted, are my own. I have attempted to remain as literal as meaningful English permitted. In transliterating names of Russian authors and fictional characters, I have used the Library of Congress system, except for those last names whose endings are typically rendered with a y in English-language publications, both male-Tolstoy and Vronsky, for example, instead of Tolstoi and Vronskii-and female-Tolstaya and Kovalevskaya instead of Tolstaia and Kovalevskaia. In addition, in order to avoid the orthographical awkwardness of the apostrophe in the middle of Tolstoy's wife's first name-Sof'ia-I have spelled it Sofya. I have also used English spelling for the English nicknames-popular at the time-of Russian first names, so that Kiti, for example, is Kitty, and Dolli is Dolly. In the original Quo Vadis Henryk Sienkiewicz rendered the ancient Roman names in Polish; thus, Petronius is Petroniusz, Vinicius Winicjusz, and so on. I have used the Latin spelling for easier readability in English, except for when it does not make a difference, mainly with Ligia, whom English translators tend to spell Lygia. The prerevolutionary calendar in Russia was Julian or Old Style, and its dates remain as such in the official collected works of Tolstoy and in his secretary Gusev's Annals of the Life and Work of Tolstoy. I have not changed them to Gregorian dates in my work, which means that they are 12 days (and from February 17, 1900, 13 days) behind the Gregorian calendar. Finally, most novels discussed in the following pages were, as was typical in the nineteenth century, serialized in literary journals before becoming books, and I have strived to be clear about which of the two modes I refer to when listing their publication dates. When no explanation is given, the year listed refers to the book. Adulterous Nations the scholarly project of Dorothea Brooke's vicar husband, a book titled The Key to All Mythologies, implies a sort of world dominance. It is important to note, however, that the difference between the two types of adulterous women is the difference between the pursued in the "Empires" section and the pursuer in "Nations." Ladislaw fantasizes of rescuing Dorothea from the "dragon who had carried her off to his lair," 4 Crampas is known as a notorious womanizer around town in Effi Briest, and seducing Anna becomes the "исключительно одно желанье" (one exclusive desire) of Vronsky's life (PSS 18:157). Conversely, in the literatures of the "nations in waiting" 5 the empire is evil and its immorality is highlighted through its sexually aggressive female representative. She uses both her beauty and her political clout to attempt to woo the hero away from his beloved and into doing the bidding of the empire, thereby diverting his energies from improving the lot of the subjugated nation. While a Serbian work may have made for a better complement to the Russian novel that sends its heroine's seducer to fig...

A propósito del sexto Premio Nobel polaco de Literatura

“…Los más discutidos son, por cierto, los premios de Literatura y de la Paz. Con referencia al segundo, podríamos preguntarnos si debieron recibirlo Isaac Rabin (1912-2006), Shimon Peres (1923-2016 y Yasir Arafat en 1994.…”

“…El polaco es un idioma hablado por un número relativamente reducido de personas (alrededor de 30 millones) y son pocas las que deciden aprenderlo como segunda lengua, dada su gran complejidad (siete casos gramaticales y un gran número de conjugaciones irregulares), en todo caso, mayor que la del ruso que tiene fama de ser una lengua particularmente huraña para quien no creció hablándola. Comparado con el ruso, el húngaro, el checo, el rumano, el búlgaro, todos son igualmente poco traducidos (Kuzmic, 2016); ¿cuánto sabríamos de la actividad cultural y editorial de esos países si no fuera por la activa labor de las representaciones diplomáticas acreditadas en nuestro país?…”