P. Verlaine and F.M. Dostoevsky in the Works of Charles Morice in the 1880s: Intersections and Parallels

The article examines an unexplored case of literary interactions between the works of Paul Verlaine and F.M. Dostoevsky, which arose in the book by the French poet Charles Morice about Verlaine, that was the first study of Verlaine’s life and work to be published as a separate edition. Eugene-Melchior de Vogue, the author of the famous book “The Russian Novel”, was one of the first translators of Dostoevsky’s work, and the young rebel Morice became imbued with the ideas of Russian classics interpreted by Eugene-Melchior de Vogue, and projected them onto the work of Verlaine. This is happening against the background of the evolution of the creative relationship between Morice and Verlaine, as well as the dramatic history of Morice’s translation of Russian classics with Ilya Halperine-Kaminsky. One of the earliest direct indications of the influence of Russian literature on Morice was his assertion in “The Literature of Today” (1889) that Russian literature was a “natural ally” for French literature, realizing some of its cherished dreams and offering it “a lesson in simplicity and intense power”. Morice’s acquaintance with the Russian world proved to be not an ephemeral episode, but part of his complex worldview, evolving toward a kind of modernist traditionalism, which became quite evident later, in the 1910s, when Morice finally returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church. In Morice’s book “Paul Verlaine” (1888), associations with the Russia and the Dostoevsky’s works form a kind of background against which a portrait of Verlaine emerges, associated with “the power of the earth”, with Mitya Karamazov’s reflections on beauty and the Madonna, with images of fallen women from various works by Dostoevsky, etc. The study outlines new ways to explore Verlaine's work, as well as Dostoevsky’s first reception in France in the 1880s.