Polemic in the magazine "Son of the Fatherland" in 1818: on the issue of the author's problem in a documentary travelogue

Konstantinova Natalia Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-7329-9977 PhD in Philology Associate Professor of the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, Theory of Literature and Methods of Teaching Literature at Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University 630126, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Vilyuiskaya str., 28, building 3 scribe2@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

In modern science, more attention is paid to the study of documentary prose, and in addition to the concept of "documentary literature", other synonymous variants are used in the analysis of mostly modern works: fact literature, non-fiction/non-fiction literature, fiction and documentary prose, historical and documentary prose, ego-document, auto-documentary text. From the point of view of the methodology of analyzing the phenomenon of authorship in documentary prose, an experimental encyclopedia is an actual scientific study, which represents the first domestic experience of generalizing and systematizing the problems associated with the phenomenon of "non-fictional" literature ^[14]. The author-compiler E. G. Mestergazi fixes the difference between the concepts of author-creator ("biographical personality") and "image of the author", highlights the peculiarity of their relationship in the process of analyzing the documentary text. As a "marker" of the author's presence in the text, E. G. Mestergazi points out the principle of selecting material for narration and the way the facts of reality are arranged in the text – composition. Information about the biography of the writer is defined as an addition to the "image of the author", which is embodied in the work and is created with the help of a whole set of tools. In a methodological sense, the analysis of the structure of the narrative and composition becomes a way to identify the author's position. Travelogue correlates with ego texts, in which most often the "biographical author" and the subject of the narrative do not differ. This study uses an approach in which these instances will differ.  Travelogue is included in the field of that "non-fictional" prose, where the "image of the author" is constructed by a "biographical personality" through the designation of "markers" of the author's position in the text.

It can be stated that the analysis of the structure of narration and composition is becoming an actual way of determining the author's position in modern science. Within the framework of a similar methodology for analyzing the phenomenon of the author's presence in the travelogue text, researchers characterize the narrative models (from the first person, the transition from I to WE, from the third person), identify the types of narrative subjects (narrators), fix in the structure of the narrative of the text a change of points of view on the subject of description.  Scientific results range from the identification of particular individual ways of author's self-expression ^[4] to theoretical generalizations at the level of creating a new scientific language of description ^{[10, 11, 12]}.

In our opinion, one of the productive approaches to the study of the specifics of the author's installations in the documentary travelogue is the analysis of works presented in the "thick" magazines of the XIX century. We are not talking about the "top" texts of famous authors, but about travel notes, notes, letters or beginning fiction writers, or naval officers, officials performing official tasks.  Such material rarely enters the research field, although it often demonstrates to a greater extent both stereotypical, "fashionable" writing trends and individual authorial ones. Russian Russian travelogue Narrative cliches (based on the material of the journal "Russian Bulletin" of the 1860s-1880s)" ^[5] by the example of travel essays, notes, letters and memoir testimonies, A. E. Kozlov examines some narrative cliches of the Russian travelogue. It should be noted that cliches manifest themselves regardless of the plot of the narrative, the place and purpose of the journey, however, the range of actualized functions turns out to be wide – from the general fictionalization of the narrative to the communication of ideological sound to it.  Such a method of working with documentary works in the genre of travelogue seems to us productive, since it allows us to accumulate several important tasks in the research field at once, related to the specifics of expression in the structure of the narrative of the author's strategies. In addition, the analysis of journal publications sometimes reveals the author's own judgments about the way of modeling the structure of the narrative in travelogues. The author, as a biographical personality, tries to reflect on the principles of creating a travel text, and the main tasks of describing travel material, and ways of selecting information for publication. Such examples of ego documents are, of course, a rare phenomenon in the journal environment, which actualizes their value in the aspect of studying the problem of the author of a documentary travelogue and determines the scientific novelty of this study.

The article will focus on the situation that developed in 1818 in connection with the public accusation of the author of the travelogue of plagiarism on the pages of the magazine "Son of the Fatherland". The analysis of the ego documents presented in the journal demonstrates not only the specifics of the interaction of the authors as biographical personalities, but also expresses the individual author's attitudes to the creation of a text about the journey. First, let's pay attention to the historical context of this event.

Against the background of a noticeable increase in real travel at the beginning of the XIX century, one important historical event stood out – the Mediterranean campaign of D. N. Senyavin. It was quite well sanctified in the memoirs of its participants, naval officers, who were actively published in magazines and collections. Especially valuable primary sources of this historical event are the "Notes of a naval officer during the campaign in the Mediterranean under the command of D. N. Senyavin, from 1805 to 1810" by V. B. Bronevsky ^[1]. His travel notes were distinguished not only by the completeness of the description of the historical event, but also by the specifics of the author's strategies, which demonstrated the special phenomenon of the point of view of the author-traveler at this stage of the evolution of the travelogue genre. We have analyzed in detail the genre features of V. B. Bronevsky's text, narrative strategies, the phenomenon of the reader ^{[7, 8, 9]}.

Of course, the explicit attitude of the author of the travel notes to reliability was not the only one. The obvious desire for authenticity, documentality, objectivity, intentionally detailed description of events is combined in the text with subjectivity, the desire to express one's own experiences, thoughts and feelings, to please readers and, of course, "express oneself". Thus, in the notes of a naval officer, an interesting phenomenon of the author's point of view is expressed, demonstrating the obvious "tension" between two attitudes: the author-documentarian, ethnographer, historian and the author-writer, writer, artist.  In this regard, it can be argued that the author as a biographical person (a participant in the events, a naval officer, an eyewitness) does not fully coincide with the subject of the narrative. Constant auto-comments, presented both in the preface and in the main text of the notes, indicate the presence of a reflexive position of the subject of telling about the journey, which expresses the author's attitude to modeling the structure of the narrative. V. B. Bronevsky positions himself as a novice (non-professional) travelogue author in magazine publications about the sea campaign. At the same time, they implicitly demonstrate another task – to create their own "author's word" about the journey, to become a writer.

To achieve such a goal, he, of course, on the one hand, follows the logic of professional authors of that time, corresponds to generally accepted literary canons. The main techniques used by V. B. Bronevsky are quite sentimental and, rather, belong to the category of "common places" of the literary process of the beginning of the XIX century. The appeal to friends, the imitation of authenticity, the subjectivity of perception of reality, the shift of emphasis from the description of the terrain to the spiritual experiences of the traveler – all this correlates with the elements of the "Karamzin canon", which was popular at the initial stage of the evolution of the travelogue genre in the XIX century and subsequently continued to develop even in military travelogues.

Of particular research interest are V. B. Bronevsky's reflections on the principles of generating a text about a journey. It is these fragments that make it possible to identify ways of expressing the author's individuality in the narrative structure of the text. The most representative components of such a strategy include the following options:

1) characteristics of the attractiveness of the subject of description, explanation of the author's motivation in choosing the object of reality;

2) creating the effect of the reader's direct presence in the text, imitation of a walk;

3) description of the process of generating the text about the event (about the campaign);

4) the desire to describe momentary feelings, reflections (self-reflection of the author);

5) commenting on the choice of writing method;

6) determination of the specifics of the sea traveler's notes (detection of advantages).

Such examples confirm the idea that V. B. Bronevsky in his notes pays special attention to the process of creating a text and ways of expressing his author's Self in the structure of the narrative, including.

Moreover, this kind of self–reflection of the author of the documentary travelogue is most clearly manifested in an unexpected dispute between V. B. Bronevsky and another author who described the same historical events - P. P. Svinin. On the pages of the magazine "Son of the Fatherland" in 1818, readers observe a sudden struggle for authorship of a travelogue about the events of the naval campaign under the command of Admiral D. N. Senyavin.

For the first time, the historian P. Kupriyanov points to this event as a "literary feud" in his research work. In his opinion, the "literary scandal" was connected with the real history of the interaction of two travelogue authors about the same event: "The participants in this acute controversy were V. B. Bronevsky and P. P. Svinyin, and the immediate reason was the book of the last "Memories in the Navy" published the day before <...> V. B. Bronevsky incriminated P. P. Svinyin, firstly, in using someone else's text, and secondly, in deceiving the public: it turned out that he was not at all an eyewitness to all that he described, although he called his book "Memories"" ^{[13, p. 60]}.

The main claim of V. B. Bronevsky to P. P. Svinyin is the accusation of the unreliability of the facts portrayed by the author-traveler. The creator of the travelogue reproaches another author that he was not an eyewitness to the events, which means that he had no right to write his "word about the journey", to position himself as an author.  In fact, in this controversy, not only the biographical context comes to the fore, but also the literary one – thinking about ways to create a text about a journey, about the formation of the author's image in the structure of the narrative, about the need to distinguish between the biographical author and the author-narrator.

V. B. Bronevsky himself explains already in the preface his principled author's attitudes: "... having walked around Europe, I saw (highlighted – N.K.) its best countries, famous for incidents. Famous for their antiquities, enlightenment and sciences <...> I kept daily notes about the events of which there was an eyewitness and about what seemed to me worthy of attention and curiosity <...> In full hope of the indulgence of the domestic public, I offer a historical narrative of this memorable campaign and together my travel notes, thoughts and impressions, set out in chronological order. I consider myself happy if enlightened readers will honor this first work of mine with a favorable acceptance, and if I bring pleasure to the officers who served in the navy and in the 15th Infantry Division in Corfu, the image of those battles where each of them had an integral part of glory" ^{[1, vol. I, p. 2]}. Let's pay attention to the degree of the concentration of pronouns I, MY, MY in this fragment, which indicates the author's intention to model not only the narrative in the first person, but in various ways to express the personal involvement of the subject of the narrative in the events that he describes. It is also important to indicate the focus, the point of view that dominates the structure of the narrative – "daily notes from an eyewitness", and an indication of the principle of selecting material for description – "what seemed to me worthy of attention".

In addition, in the Notification to the first edition in the fourth part of his notes, V. B. Bronevsky once again emphasizes that the author of the travelogue has the right to describe only what he saw himself: "I made an extract from a magazine delivered to me by one of my comrades so that I could use it when printing my notes. But as his journal contains the events of 1804 <...> a description of the cities in which I have not been, therefore I advised him to transfer the journal to letters and print them separately, to which he agreed, submitting their publication to my care. It was with great pleasure that I took upon myself this work, because his journal, both by the originality of the syllable and by curious remarks, I can think with some confidence, will give lovers of literature a pleasant, entertaining and useful reading; and moreover, together with my notes, it will make a complete overview of those countries in which our fleet from 1804 to 1810 was" ^{[1, vol. IV, p. 1]}. The situation described in the Notification reveals a kind of author's "laboratory" – the actions of a biographical author to create a travelogue, the principle of using someone else's text inside his own, the transformation ("to shift the magazine into letters") of an ego document into a literary form. Of course, the author's remark is important that he did not use someone else's material in the structure of the narrative precisely because he was not in the cities described in the text, which once again actualizes the author's concept of creating a travelogue – to write only about what he saw himself, to which he was an "eyewitness". Subsequently, in the "literary scandal" with P. P. Svinin, this story will be very relevant for comparison.

Thus, the public polemic of two authors about the same event/journey indicated by P. Kupriyanov actualizes the author's problem in the documentary travelogue and allows, on the one hand, to identify individual author's attitudes, goals and objectives of creating travel notes, on the other hand, to determine the criteria for distinguishing the biographical author and the hero-narrator in the documentary travelogue. The material for analysis in this case are three publications in the journal "Son of the Fatherland" for 1818: "Notification" by V. B. Bronevsky in the journal of December 7, 1818 ^[3]; "Response to the notification" by P. P. Svinyin in the journal of December 14, 1818 ^[16]; "Addition to the notification" V. B. Bronevsky in the journal of December 31, 1818 ^[2]. In addition, the object of comparative research is the texts of travelogues: "Notes of a naval officer in the continuation of the campaign in the Mediterranean under the command of Vice Admiral Dmitry Nikolaevich Senyavin from 1805 to 1810" by V. B. Bronevsky ^[1]; and "Memories in the Navy" by P. P. Svinyin ^[15].

In the first "Notification", V. B. Bronevsky argues his claims to P. P. Svinyin by the fact that he passed his personal reliable travel notes to his opponent for approval before their publication, as an inexperienced, novice author to an experienced writer and publisher. In a further dispute, the naval officer calls these drafts "the original" and accuses Svinyin of using fragments from these notes almost verbatim – "copied from my original". Recall that V. B. Bronevsky himself did not use someone else's material provided to him by a friend in order to describe European cities in more detail.

In addition, he reproaches P. P. Svinyin as the author of "Memoirs in the Navy" for calling his book "Memoirs", although he uses other people's sources of information: "The writer of the Memoirs should have said from whom he heard, especially since he knew about my intention to publish a description, and my notes are so I had it in my hands for a long time" ^{[3, p. 185]}. In his opinion, fragments of his travel notes published in other journals before the full publication can be a clear proof of plagiarism: "In order to clearly prove how G. Svinyin described, I propose the following extracts from magazines in which excerpts of my notes were printed by many before the release of his Memoirs" ^{[3, p. 186]}.

Such a publication becomes a resonant event, as it casts doubt on the authenticity of the authorship of the book by a famous writer and publisher, and also focuses on the fact that any memoirs as a form of travelogue should be written only by an eyewitness of the events. But, in addition to information about obvious borrowings, this note in the magazine actually becomes a kind of ego document in which the author of the travelogue reflects on the specifics of creating a text about the journey. Thus, biographical material (auto-documentary) makes it possible to analyze it as a source of studying the author's problem in a documentary travelogue.

Responding to V. B. Bronevsky's claims, P. P. Svinyin argues for the choice of the title of his book in a different way: "... a description of what I saw (italics - S.P.) and heard on the spot, which may very well be understood by the word Memories" ^{[16, p. 235]}. He admits that he was not so much a participant as a witness of that campaign, decided to become its chronicler and ten years later published his notes, which he – a purely civilian person, a translator on the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – modestly titled: "Memories in the Navy." In the "Reply to the notification" he also points to the fact that since 1816 his memoirs were published in the magazines "Son of the Fatherland", "Pantheon of Glorious Russian Men" and "Bulletin of Europe", and in 1818 they began to be published as part of a separate publication. In the preface to it , P.P. Svinyin wrote: "At the request of many venerable persons, I emboss my notes concerning the sailing of the Russian fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Senyavin on the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic and the Archipelago, which I witnessed for the most part while being with the fleet in the rank of a diplomatic official... My main goal is to inform the future historian of fair information to describe the glorious campaign and present in the present light the exploits of the famous Russian, who justified the choice of a wise monarch in this important field" ^{[15, p. 2]}. V. B. Bronevsky at the same time just points out that one year out of five is not a big part, continuing reproach P. P. Svinyin for putting information about the events of 1805-1806 in his memoirs, whereas he was in the navy only in 1807. This contradiction in the preface of P. P. Svinyin's book causes the main perplexity of V. B. Bronevsky.

However, he acknowledges the fact that when Svinyin writes in his "Memoirs ..." about the events in which he was directly involved, the coincidences with his notes disappear: "... as for page 117 in the descriptions of some objects we have nothing in common, and not a single thought, not just one expression, because here G. Svinyin described what he saw with his own eyes and depicted in his own way" ^{[3, pp. 188-189]}. And, indeed, the markers of the author's presence are most clearly expressed in those fragments of the text where the events in which P. P. Svinyin was directly involved are described. In this case, he describes not only events, natural phenomena, the behavior of the participants of the campaign, Admiral Senyavin, the impressions of others about Someone else's world, but also characterizes his own behavior in detail, reflects his psychological state. In other words, the subject of the narrative moves to the foreground, becomes a separate object of description. So, for example, Svinyin narrates: "On January 1, 1807, with the first ray of the new year, we entered Boko di Cataro safely and at the sight of the admiral's ship saluted him with a full salute <...> Here I had the honor to be introduced to Admiral Senyavin by the commander in the most flattering terms at my expense and, I confess, I loved him with all my soul at first sight. From two words, his special ability to bind subordinates to himself was noticeable. The Admiral caressed me, and when I asked for his orders on my account, he allowed me to stay on the "Strong" until I arrived in Corfu" ^{[15, p. 65]}. The transition in speech from the form of the first person WE to the form I fixes the narrator's focus on describing personal experiences, relations with Senyavin, and not on the general events of the naval campaign. All the Admiral's actions are shown through the prism of the narrator's personal perception, focused on his person, on his location and well-being.

Especially in this regard, the episode about how Captain-Commander Ignatiev was buried on the island of Tenedos in the Aegean Sea stands out. The narrator tells in detail about the farewell ceremony and focuses only on his psychological state: "I was so bitter, so hard that I couldn't cry. I would have considered a tear a blessing at that time <...> During the entire continuation of the sad ceremony, I stood as if speechless. Suddenly harmony is an eternal memory! – shook my whole being. I trembled involuntarily, came to my senses, looked – and the priest's hand was throwing the last handful of earth into the grave at a famous man who would turn into earth himself in a few days..." ^{[15, p. 89]}.

Thus, analyzing the forms of the author's presence in the text of "Memories in the Navy" by P. P. Svinyin, one can make sure that V. B. Bronevsky's claims relate to a greater extent not even the appropriation of the materials themselves about the campaign of D. N. Senyavin, but the ways of presenting the author's point of view in the text. V. B. Bronevsky describes in great detail those fragments, which, in his opinion, were borrowed by Pavel Petrovich from his notes, paying attention to details, thanks to which it is possible to convict the author of unreliability of information about events (the time is inaccurately indicated, the description of the weather does not coincide with the features of the climate in these places, the features of the landscape are distorted, etc.).

Let's pay attention to some comparisons of fragments ^{[3, p. 187]}:

In a Note , V. B. Bronevsky points out: "In the local climate, torrential rains fall in January, which makes the roads to the mountains impassable" ^{[3, p. 187]}. However, we note that in these fragments there are obviously different forms of the author's presence: Bronevsky's narrator is clearly focused on expressing his subjective opinion about the object of a world alien to him and the reasons for such an assessment. In Svinyin's text, the form WE is used and the opinion expressing the collective national consciousness rather than the individual author's is broadcast, his narrator joins the general vision of the object of reality, as evidenced by the method of comparing someone else's world and his own ("like ours").

In another fragment, on the contrary, the significance of the author's Self is enhanced in Svinyin's text ^{[3, p. 186]}:

In the note, V. B. Bronevsky again accuses the opponent of unreliability, pointing to the fact that in January there can be no heat in these places, but, on the contrary, the temperature drops to 4 degrees. But in this case, attention is drawn to a greater extent to copying the way of expressing the subjective position of the narrator.

At the same time, in the "Response to the notification", P. P. Svinyin tries to explain the similarities in the fragments cited by V. B. Bronevsky by the coincidence of those general impressions and details that are characteristic of all travelers describing the same geographical objects. Coincidences become a kind of "common place", the universal language of travel authors: according to the principle "everyone will say so". It is important to point out that P. P. Svinyin focuses attention not so much on the similarity of fragments, namely narratives: "After that, we will say a few words about the similarity of our narratives, placed by G. Bronevsky in two columns: they could and should have been in this form, because we saw the first three objects with one eye, and the last one was so it is memorable and fresh that upon my arrival in Boc di Cataro was the first conversation for everyone" ^{[16, p. 237]}. The author of "Memories in the Fleet" thereby defines one of the ways to create a travelogue from the point of view of the author's strategy – to describe what he saw with his own eyes. In this case, the coincidences may be related to the overall focus of the reality image. In addition, P. P. Svinyin fixes in his reasoning another way – to join the general tradition of describing the object of travel, to express the generally accepted point of view of travelers: "Not only did I dare to drink the water that G. Bronevsky ate in the Qatar Castle, but thousands of other travelers, of course, had the same audacity, as from fatigue and the heat, climbing to a height, and the purity of the water – evenly as here you rarely pass the Pulkovo Mountain without trying the water from the grotto" ^{[16, p. 238]}. Such a strategy – "describe as everything" – allows you to characterize not only those events in which the narrator was an eyewitness, but also others. In this case, the writer even compliments his opponent and claims that he describes the "common places" more skillfully:  "... G. Bronevsky describes it too – he speaks in a completely different language, everyone will notice the same in the other columns given by him; he describes  in the same way, but not so and – maybe incomparably better than mine!" ^{[16, p. 238]}. In this way, the opponent rather avoids direct rivalry with V. B. Bronevsky as an author, writer, agreeing with the claims made and trying to explain them in the context of the general tradition of creating documentary travelogues as ego documents.

P. P. Svinyin demonstrates his author's strategies to a lesser extent, unlike a naval officer, hiding behind the role of a documentary historian, rather than an author-writer. In addition to the revised diary, P. P. Svinyin includes a number of appendices in his book: compiled from official papers and eyewitness memoirs "Continuation of the actions of the Russian squadron in Lisbon", a biographical sketch "Some details about Vice Admiral Dmitry Nikolaevich Senyavin", as well as "Extracts from the journal of Vasily Alekseevich Safonov, lieutenant of the corvette "Flora"". Additions to the general text mostly contain an attitude to historical authenticity, a desire to preserve for posterity the details of the expedition of D. N. Senyavin, to highlight the merits of the admiral and other participants who distinguished themselves during the military operation. Subsequently, it is the totality of all the constituent parts of P. P. Svinyin's travelogue that is evaluated by historians as an important documentary evidence of an eyewitness to historical events about the naval campaign of D. N. Senyavin, along with the notes of V. B. Bronevsky. However, during the creation of travelogues, in 1818, on the pages of the magazine "Son of the Fatherland", the variability of the author's strategies, attitudes to the way of modeling the text about the journey, the structure of the narrative about the same real event is revealed.

Thus, the controversy about authorship on the pages of the magazine "Son of the Fatherland" reveals a clear discrepancy in the writers' ideas about how the author's point of view should be expressed in the text of the travelogue. V. B. Bronevsky insists that the subject of the narrative should absolutely coincide with the biographical author of the text, observe accuracy in the transmission of facts about the journey, describe only something that was witnessed on a real trip. P. P. Svinyin, responding to Bronevsky's claims, to the accusation of plagiarism, on the contrary, argues that the author has the right to describe not only his own impressions, but also to focus on someone else's opinion, to convey a general impression of significant events (to describe not only "what he saw, but also what he heard" on the spot). In addition, according to P. P. Svinyin, obvious coincidences in different travelogue texts about one event may be due to the fact that the authors express the "common" interests of every traveler who finds himself in a certain, well-known and popular place. In connection with these differences, we can conclude that the authors of documentary travelogues imagined the distance between the biographical author and the subject of the narrative differently, reflecting on the process of text generation.