Les Archives de la Comtesse D.; Roman Épistolaire

Toulouse: Éditions Ombres, 1997. Small octavo in dark blue illuys paper wraps; 114 pages; 17 cm. Near fine(+) with very minor external wear. . Paperback. ISBN: 284142071X; 9782841420711; National Library: FRBNF369993350000004

In French. Translation of: Arkhiv Grafini D.: Povestʹ V PisʹMakh. Petite Bibliothèque Ombres; 106; Un roman entièrement composé de lettres adressées à une certaine comtesse par ses proches: lettres de famille, messages d'amour, problèmes d'intendance ... mais aucune lettre de l'héroïne elle-même. Un jeu compliqué de miroirs et de tromperie mutuelle, une ronde de visages et de voix. Les Archives de la comtesse D. is a short epistolary novel by the Russian poet Alexei Apukhtin, written in 1890 and published only after his death. Apukhtin (1840–1893) was an aristocratic dandy and a classmate and close friend of Tchaikovsky, who set his poems to music). The book's device is that it contains only the letters the countess receives, never her replies, so her portrait comes together indirectly, through her correspondents. Several letter-writers describe the same events, each blind in their own way, and only the reader sees the whole web of illusions and lies. Under a light, quick-moving surface it covers the usual society-novel themes: family, money, rank, marriage, class and adultery. It also touches the rivalry of the period between patriarchal Moscow and artistic St. Petersburg. Unusually for nineteenth-century Russian fiction, it leaves out religion and mysticism entirely.