Universität zu Köln

Kazaryan, Lilit (2016). Sentimentalismus auf Russisch und Französisch: Leben und Werk der Fürstin Zinaida Volkonskaja. Bachelor thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

This paper deals with the Russian princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, who was born in Dresden in 1789. She grew up amidst the most powerful and influential Russian and Western thinkers of her time, getting to know the philosophy and works of Karamzin, Kant, Voltaire and Rousseau in her early childhood. She herself was seen as one of the most erudite women of her time, she knew Latin, Greek, French and Italian and her greatest passions were literature, music, theatre, and ancient history. She was part of the contemporary history, being friends with Alexander I and following the stream of history life and straightforward from the scenes of events during and after the Napoleonic wars being in his entourage as a young woman. Volkonskaya’s writing is influenced by the Sentimentalist movement and themes both of Karamzin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Her writing connects and combines the Western and the Russian literary traditions with Volkonskaya being home in Russia, in France, and in Italy, including even more cultures, nations, and religions in her novels. The last twenty years of her life she spent in the recluse of the world dedicated to the Catholic religion, founding schools for children from bad conditions and helping the poor and the homeless. She died in Rome in the winter of 1862.