did VN read Hogg's Confessions?

 

This question has interested me mildly since I noticed what appears the incontestable reference (to the title, at least) when first reading Despair, perhaps 30 years ago.

 

Browsing on the net, I now came across this comment on Sinner:  "A psychological document compared with which Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a crude morality" - Walter Allen. The reference wasn’t given, but I suppose it’s from Allen’s book on the novel.

 

If VN does allude to it in Despair, the first question is whether the allusion occurs in the 1932 Russian version. Since I don’t have Russian, I wonder how it would be phrased in the original, which led me further to wonder if it had ever been translated into Russian. At one point, I seem to remember, the Devil is mistaken for Peter the Great, which might have led to Russian interest.

 

If there is no Russian version, where and when did VN come across it ?  Carolyn suggests:

 

Isn't it simply possible that he read it in English at university (Oxford was it? or Cambridge?)? I would be surprised to hear that VN had any contact with André Gide!

 

Browsing on, I found: “This now-famous book was given a hostile reception when it first appeared in 1824. It was not reprinted until the late 1830s, when a heavily bowdlerised version was included in a posthumous edition of Hogg's collected Tales and Sketches published by Blackie & Son of Glasgow. Thereafter Confessions of a Justified Sinner attracted little interest until the 1890s, when the unbowdlerised text was printed for the first time since the 1820s. However, the current high reputation of Hogg's novel did not fully begin to establish itself until 1947, when a warmly enthusiastic Introduction by Andre Gide appeared in a new edition of the unbowdlerised text.”

 

I have a copy of the 1947 Cresset (as well as “The Suicide’s Grave” edition) and had read Gide’s introduction, so I’d formed an impression that Gide had been the great popularizer of Sinner; but the book must already have been reasonably well appreciated before he promoted it.  Was Gide ever the target of one of VN’s strongly critical opinions?

 

However, it’s certainly not impossible VN had read it in English in one of the earlier editions. Wikipedia tells me: “Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge and studied Slavic and romance languages where his experiences would later help him to write the novel Glory. In 1923, he graduated from Cambridge and relocated to Berlin ….” Carolyn also noted earlier: “In 1924 the text of the first edition was reproduced in the Campion Reprints series.” Thus he couldn’t have read the Campion edition when at Cambridge. So if he did read it at Cambridge, it would have to have been in an edition from the 1890s, or earlier.

 

Those educated at older universities tend to think of Cambridge as a sort of better class of technical college, so the likelihood of an 1890s edition of Hogg’s Sinner featuring in an undergraduate’s reading, or cropping up in discussion there, during the early 1920s seems slightly improbable, but anything is possible in VN’s case.  Thus its quality could have established itself in VN’s mind some 25 years or longer before Gide praised it.

 

It is a pity VN doesn’t refer to it (I don’t think he does) in his essay on Jekyll and Hyde, considering Walter Allen’s comparison of it with J&H. Perhaps, for whatever reason, he wasn’t as impressed with it as the allusion in Despair might suggest, and it was just a passing thought. Der Bestrafte Brudermord is of course a recurring theme in VN.

 

Charles