Our Notes & References

The first complete Russian edition of this text written by the French La Harpe for the Russian Shuvalov.

Rare: absent from Smirnov-Sokolskii. We could trace only one example at auctions worldwide – the Diaghilev-Lifar copy, sold in 1975, and only two institutional holdings outside Russia (University of Warsaw, National Library of the Czech Republic), in addition to a handful of examples in Russia.

A friend of Voltaire, Jean-François de La Harpe (1739–1803) was a celebrated French playwright and astute literary critic, who frequently recited his works at the French court. The prominent count Andrei Petrovich Shuvalov (1744-89), senator, Director of the St. Petersburg and Moscow Assignment Banks, member of the Council under the Empress, and Freemason, commissioned La Harpe to report on “the ‘literary’ news and the rumours of the court” (Russo, p. 5). La Harpe became a correspondent of Paul I: their letters were published in France in 1801-07.

La Harpe’s Epistle to Shuvalov on the effects of rural nature… was originally written in 1779, when La Harpe, with his penchant for controversy, decided to attack the excesses of descriptive poetry among French authors. In his poetic message, he describes Lyon, his home town on occasion, as an example of how descriptive poetry can still achieve its noble purpose, without the excesses “without listing all colours on the wings of a colourful butterfly” (p. 17).

The work acquired some notoriety and La Harpe recited it in 1782 at the French Academy, in the presence of the future Paul I and his wife Maria Feodorovna, who were in France at the time as part of their Grand Tour.

The second part of the book is an excerpt from the treatise on descriptive poetry by Jean François de Saint-Lambert (1716–1803), a French poet, philosopher and military officer, also famous for his liaisons with lovers of Voltaire and Rousseau.

The French text was translated by the young Avraam Sergeevich Norov (1795-1869), who later became famous for his collection of books, comprising 16,000 volumes (currently in the Russian State Library in Moscow). Norov’s name is not mentioned, but his authorship is confirmed by the proceedings of the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science, and the Arts, where this translation was recited in 1818.

Complete with its engraved title, with a vignette by Dmitrii Arkadev described by Obolianinov as ‘charming’ (‘prelestnaia graviura’).

With bibliophile provenance: from the library of Vladimir Nikitich Vitov (b. 1894), an economist and member of the Moscow Society of Bookplate Enthusiasts, whose collection comprised more than 3,500 volumes, with a focus on historical monuments and arts. This example also contains a bookplate of count. Given the printing quality and the colour of the label paper, it was likely added by Vitov or a subsequent owner.

Provenance

Vladimir Nikitich Vitov (blue ink stamp, with item and shelf numbers and Vitov’s signature in purple ink, to verso of upper wrapper).

Bibliography

Obolianinov 2165; Smirdin 8023; Russo, Elena, review of The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris, in Reviews in History, 5 January 2017. Not in Smirnov-Sokolskii.