SOURCE: Bagby, Lewis. “Bestuzhev's Byron: Cross-Cultural Transformation.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 29, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 1995): 271-84.

In the following essay, Bagby examines some of Bestuzhev's correspondence which reveal the writer's affinity for Byron's life and work, particularly the poem “Darkness.”

It is the text, with its universal power of world disclosure, which gives a self to the ego.

Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory

This article is an investigation of a reference by Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinskii to Lord Byron's uncharacteristic poem, “Darkness.”¹ Bestuzhev uses the citation to create an illusion of solidity and coherence in his experience.² It appears in a letter of 1831 to his publishers, Ksenofont and Nikolai Polevoi, of The Moscow Telegraph (1825-34). Bestuzhev's letters of exile are peopled with figures from Western literature, but the greatest affinity he felt was for the person and work of Byron. In his letters to the Polevoi brothers Bestuzhev was wont to discuss literary...