“The journey of criticism” by S. K. Fereltst: problems of context, attribution and interpretation

“The Critic’s Journey” by S.K. Fereltst is a symbolic travelogue of the 1810s that does not have an established tradition of interpretation. The article examines some aspects that complicate the presupposition of the analysis of this work, and substantiates the need for a new academic edition of this text. In preparing such an edition it is necessary to rely on biographical research of recent decades, allowing us to reconstruct the portrait of the author of “The Critic’s Journey”, as well as on numerous contexts, primarily related to the educational prose of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries. In particular the article substantiates the connection between “The Critic’s Journey” and the translation of the French moralizing work “The Critic, or, A Sensual Journey around the Palais Royal, the Royal Chambers, in Paris” (Le censeur, ou Voyage sentimental autour du Palais Royal; ouvrage critique, historique et moral, dédié aux étrangers, chez Anne Geneviève Masson, 1802, translated in Rus. in 1807), as well as “Sentimental Journey” by L. Sterne. Other sources of influence are associated with the comedy of the Catherine era and the satirical magazines of the second half of the 18th century. Drawing on the numerous plots and story situations of his predecessors Fereltzt abandons the sentimental style, reducing his plot to the well known formula “Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas”. It also shows the presence of common places in the poetics of S.K. Fereltst and Vasily Narezhnyy: both contemporaries overcome the Karamzin canon. In conclusion, the article notes the shortcomings of the existing reprints of “The Critic’s Journey” (false attribution, incorrect commentary, controversial interpretations) and the errors that appeared in the electronic unofficial versions of this work. The analysis of negative material leads the researcher to the idea of a new academic publication with correct commentary and without all the aforementioned errors.