008*. Anna Nikitična Arcybaševa / Анна Никитична Арцыбашева


Our next writer is out of chronological order, but she is next on the list, and so this post is for her.

Anna Arcybaševa's only published work seems to be the translation into Russian of "On The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients" (О торговле и мореплавании древних), published in Kazan in 1831, a text which Golicyn (12) found on a list of books acquired by the library of the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities in 1845. Who is she?

Anna Nikitična Arcybaševa, née Nazvanova, figures into the long entry on her husband, the historian Nikolaj Sergeevič Arcybašev (1773-1841), in Vengerov's Critical and Biographical Dictionary of Russian Writers and Scholars from which we can glean several details about her life and the context in which she lived. A provincial noblewoman from the gubernija of Vladimir, she married Arcybašev, who was, or became, a landowner in Sivil'sk, about 100 kilometers west of Kazan'. Arcybašev had been born in that region, before completing his education in Petersburg and serving briefly in the military, which brought him back to the Kazan' area. A mason in his youth, Arcybašev frequented literary and intellectual circles associated with the University of Kazan' and dedicated long hours – and thirty years – to a project on the history of Russia, which resulted in various journalistic publications and, in 1838-1843, a three-volume history (Повествование о России); a fourth volume remained incomplete and unpublished at the time of his death. Supported by the leading Moscow historians of the era, Arcybašev was known for a serious scholarly (and politically controversial) approach that eschewed romantic and nationalistic historiography. He was also an accomplished poet and author of an ode that was long attributed to Derzavin (Bulič, Ikonnikov 821).

The source text for Anna Arcybaševa's translation, a work of historical geography, rather than literature per se, has not been determined. Was this a translation of all or part of William Vincent's 1807 "The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean", or was it somehow related to the "Short History of the Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients" (Краткая история о торговле и мореплавании древних) that had been published in Petersburg in 1788? Some sources [1] aver that Arcybaševa began with a German text rather than an English one. German was certainly one of the languages active in the Arcybašev household, Nikolaj Sergeevič having been educated at a German-language boarding school. The Arcybašev family also included two sons and a daughter, Anna Nikolaevna, who followed in her mother's footsteps, translating French source texts whose subject matter was religious.


Golicyn's brief entry thus gives us occasion to contemplate the example of a provincial Russian noblewomen's literary activity in roughly 1830, illustrating once again how women's writing was often closely linked to the congenial context found in specific family environments.



FURTHER READING:

Bulič, N. Letter to M. F. De-Pule. 29 January 1875. In Pis'ma N. N. Bulicha M. F. De-Pule, ed. Marina Sidorova, Naše nasledie (2011), n. 97. 

Ikonnikov, V. S. "Nikolaj Sergeevič Arcybašev." In A. Vengerov, ed., Kritiko-biografičeskij slovar' russkich pisatelej i učenych. Vol. 1. SPb.: Semenovskaja Tipo-Litografija (I. Efrona), 1889. Pp. 818-826.

Stroev, P. M. Biblioteka Imperatorskogo Obščestva Istorija i drevnostej Rossijskich. M. 1845. No. 538, p. 193.

NOTES:

[1] This detail appears in the entry "Anna Nikitična Nazvanova" on the site of the All Russia Family Tree (Всероссийское Генеалогическое Древо), a rich font of information that, unfortunately, generally fails to identify its sources.

ILLUSTRATIONS:

1. Portrait of N. S. Arcybašev by an unknown artist (Courtesy of RussianWikipedia).

2. Kazan' in 1830 (Courtesy of Russian Wikipedia).



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