Catherine the Great. (1729-1796.)
The French culture, which had held sway in Russia before Catherine II., became even more pronounced when she ascended the throne. She corresponded with Voltaire, offered d’Alembert the place of tutor to her son, paid Diderot a salary as keeper of his own library, which she had purchased from him, and, in the first part of her reign, laboured, at least platonically, for the introduction of new laws in the spirit of Rousseau and Montesquieu. She planned to build schools and academies, encouraged the establishment of printing presses, by making them free from government control, and by her own example did much to foster literature. One of her earliest ventures is her famous Instruction for the commission that had been called to present a project for a new code of laws. She composed a large number of comedies, tragedies and operas, wrote a work on Russian proverbs and a number of fairy tales. Of the latter her Prince Khlor gave Derzhávin an occasion to immortalise her as Felítsa, and to inaugurate a new style of ode. Catherine was the first to found a satirical journal, the All Kinds of Things (see p. 326), the prototype of a number of similar periodical publications. The latter part of her reign is characterised by a reactionary tendency, due to her general distrust of the Masons, who had taken a firm foothold in Russia and whom she suspected of favouring the French Revolution. She then put literature under a ban, and caused much annoyance to men like Nóvikov and Radíshchev.
Her Prince Khlor has been translated into English under the title: Ivan Czarovitz; or, The Rose Without Prickles That Stings Not, A Tale, written by her Imperial Majesty, translated from the Russian Language, London, 1793. It had previously appeared in a periodical paper, The Bee, published at Edinburgh. It is reproduced here.
Act I., Scene 4, of Mrs. Grumble’s Birthday, in C. E. Turner’s Studies in Russian Literature, and the same, in Fraser’s Magazine, 1877.
There is also a translation of Catherine’s Memoirs, originally written by her in French, under the title: Memoirs of the Empress Catherine II., Written by Herself, with a Preface by A. Herzen, translated from the French, London and New York, 1859.
O TEMPORA
ACT I., SCENE 1. MR. SENSIBLE, MÁVRA
Mávra. Believe me, I am telling you the truth. You cannot see her. She is praying now, and I dare not go into her room myself.
Sensible. Does she really pray all day long? No matter at what time I come, I am told I cannot see her: she was this morning at matins, and now she is praying again.
Mávra. That is the way our time is passed.