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The Byron Journal
Russian Byronism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Abstract
This essay discusses a period of Byron's reception in Russia characterised not only by an
intensified interest in Byron's works, but also the modification of Byron's influence by
Russian literary tradition, contemporary aesthetic and philosophical ideas, a particular
interest in Byron in relation to the perceived 'end' of European culture and an attention
to Byron's 'metaphysical' dramas in connection with a more general turn to ontological/
metaphysical questions in Russian thought. Most striking, however, is the fact that
between the 1880s and 1910s, the theoretical, literary and philosophical discussion of
Byron in Russia played a significant part in the much larger national debate then going on
about the kinds of survival and development available to humanity in general and Russian
civilisation in particular. The essay shows that during this period Byron's life and work
were read as containing the prototypes of contemporary individualistic and pessimistic
'diseases', as offering profound insights into the foundations of human existence and as
prophesying a new era of the titanic 'superhuman' and 'divine humanity'.