Magazine “Smes’” and novel “El Criticón” by Baltasar Gracián

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.2-18.051

Trakhtenberg Lev A.,

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor

at the Department of the History of Russian Literature,

Faculty of Philology

Lomonosov Moscow State University

e-mail: Lev_A_T@inbox.ru

The connection between the Russian satirical magazine Smes’ (“The Medley”) and El Criticón, an allegorical novel by Baltasar Gracián, is demonstrated for the first time. It is shown that two articles in Smes’ are in fact fragments translated from El Criticón. Apparently, not the Spanish original but its French translation was the immediate source of the Russian text. The articles in Smes’ differ from their source in several important details, thus changing the meaning of the text. In one of them, “Pride always flatters us…”, the characters approach those usual for Russian satire. Another one, “A letter from my friend”, is connected to the actual historic context of the Russo-Turkish war of the 1768–1774.

Keywords: 18th-century Russian literature, international literary relations, satirical magazines, allegory.

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