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References
‘Russian 19th-Century Thought — Recent Source Material. II. Čaadaev — Editions of the “Lettres philosophiques”.’ Cf.SST VII,3, 227–230.
Ibid., p. 230.
For this information, the present author is primarily indebted to Prof. Mary-Barbara Zeldin, of Hollins College, Virginia, U.S.A., to whom he would like to express his grateful acknowledgements here. (See also ref. 6,infra.)
‘Chaadaev's Philosophical Letters Written to a Lady and his Apologia of a Madman’, edited by Raymond T. McNally, inForschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, 1966, 11, SS. 24–129.
Cf. McNally,op. cit., pp. 24–25, incl. footnote on p. 24.
Private communications to the present author.
On this point, cf.inter alia SST VII,3, 232 (ref. 29).
McNally, p. 25.
McNally, p. 25.
Cf.inter alia SST VII,3, 228–230.
McNally, p. 30.
Cf. McNally, p. 29, p. 31, and esp. p. 118. Prof. Zeldin writes of her microfilm copies (all from the Daškov collection) that only Letters III, IV, V, and VIII are in Čaadaev's handwriting, while Letters I, II, VI, and VII are copies — all in manuscript. “Letters VI, VII, and VIII have corrections in Čaadaev's handwriting. The others haveno corrections.” (Private communication to the present author.)
McNally, p. 32. The version of theApologie as given by McNally thus differs in several essentials from the Gagarin/Geršenzon version generally known to Western readers (and recently republished in the Rencontre edition). It is not clear why McNally did not see fit to add to his version the final section from the Gagarin/Geršenzon text, containing as it does Čaadaev's striking defence of the autocratic principle (in the sense of the people's delegation of power to their masters) and — as the opening lines of his second chapter (apparently never completed) — his mention of the geographical factor as “at once the essential element in our political greatness and the true cause of our intellectual impotence”. This missing section — beginning with the words: “Serait-ce donc que l'esprit sérieux qui aura profondément médité sur son pays,...” — can be found in Geršenzon (Sočinenija i pis'ma P. Ja. Čaadaeva, t.I, M. 1913) on pp. 233–234, and in the Rencontre edition (De Pouchkine à Gorki, vol. II, Lausanne 1966) on pp. 126–127.
McNally, p. 25.
McNally, p. 33. (The distinction between ‘errors’ and ‘mistakes’ is not explained!)
McNally, p. 33.
Cf. McNally, pp. 125–129.
Cf.inter alia SST VII,3, 232 (ref. 23) and 233 (ref. 33).
Ibid.
Cf.SST VII,3, 229–230.
On this point, cf.SST VII,3, 223–226, esp. p. 224. The firstLettre philosophique appeared in Book VI ofPoljarnaja zvezda (1861), pp. 141–162. (Cf. Book VI of the facsimile edition, Izd. ‘Nauka’, M. 1968.)
Cf. E. A. Moskov,The Russian Philosopher Chaadayev, his Ideas and his Epoch, New York, 1937.
Cf.SST VII,3,229 and 232 (ref. 29). As correctly stated on p. 229, Šaxovskij published (inLit. nasledstvo 22–24, 1935) Russian translations only of the five newly discovered letters (Nos II, III, IV, V, and VIII), andnot of all eight, as erroneously stated in ref. 33 on p. 233, also in an earlier article by the present author (SST V,3, 178), who would here like to tender his apologies for this unfortunate oversight. McNally's text is ambiguous, but rathersuggests the same error: “Then, almost one hundred years after the publication of the Russian translation of the ‘First Philosophical Letter’, the completed series of eight ‘Philosophical Letters’ was made public ...” (p. 28).
Cf.SST V,1–2, 120.
For Christoff, cf.SST V,1–2, 125. For Turgenev, cf.:A. I. Turgenev: Xronika russkogo/Dnevniki (1825–1826 gg.), izdanie podgotovil M. I. Gillel'son, Izd. ‘Nauka’, M.-L., 1964.
Polnoe sobranie sočinenij Alekseja Stepanoviča Xomjakova, t. III, M. 1900, p. 454.
Cf. Fritz Lieb,Sophia und Historie, Aufsätze zur östlichen und westlichen Geistesund Theologiegeschichte, herausgegeben von Martin Rohkrämer, EVZ-Verlag, Zürich, 1962, SS. 55–82.
McNally,op. cit., p. 28.
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Kemball, R.J. Čaadaev's ‘Lettres philosophiques’ and ‘Apologie d'un fou’. Studies in Soviet Thought 8, 173–180 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01043813
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01043813