Three Russian Tales of the Eighteenth Century: "The Comely Cook," "Vanka Kain," and "Poor Liza"

Three Russian Tales of the Eighteenth Century: "The Comely Cook," "Vanka Kain," and "Poor Liza' ed. and trans. David Gasperetti. DeKalb: Northern Illinois, 2012. Pp. ix + 238. $24.95.

The three short fictions collected here were all written toward the end of the century and hence beyond the usual Scriblerian purview. The story "Poor Liza" is, however, one of the best brief works inspired by Sterne's sentimentalism; the other two novels exhibit the reach of early eighteenth-century fiction into Russia well into the nineteenth century.

Nikolai Karamzin (1766-1826), the author of "Poor Liza" (1793), was immediately recognized in Russia as an imitator of Sterne, both because of his first work, Letters of a Russian Traveller (1791), a sentimental journey, and because he published his own critical high praise of Sterne: "O incomparable Sterne! ... At what learned university were you taught to feel so tenderly?" Mr. Gasperetti's translation of "Poor Liza" is the first I have read, and as an imitation of Sterne it is excellent (I am unable to evaluate its excellence in relation to the original). Almost a "backstory" to the mournful Maria in both Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey, it tells of the seduction of a peasant girl Liza (and almost certainly Karamzin had access to Sterne's letters to Eliza and...