‘A Melmoth? a cosmopolitan? a patriot?’: Melmoth the Wanderer's Russian Epigones

Abstract

Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer had immediate, rich, and enduring influence upon Russian literature: Aleksandr Pushkin, after reading it in French translation in 1823, cited it in his own 1833 novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin, introducing the adjective ‘ mel’moticheskii’ (‘Melmoth-like’) to Russian. The titular demon of Mikhail Lermontov's dramatic poem The Demon (c. 1838) emulates Melmoth, while Maturin's novel was significant both for Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Maturin's novel was just as widely read and (sometimes) travestied within Russia as the work of other Gothic-fantastic authors, like E. T. A. Hoffmann and Lord Byron. Yet no detailed English-language scholarly overview exists of Melmoth's Russian epigones, from Pushkin's Onegin to lesser-known, later imitations. This essay will clarify Maturin's impact on Russian literature by identifying the Russian authors most clearly influenced by Melmoth, from the dawn of Romanticism to the nostalgic fictions of Russian émigré and dissident authors in the early twentieth century.