My Confession (Nikolai Karamzin)

Moya ispoved' (Russian: Моя исповедь), English translation: My Confession is a short story (povest') by the Russian writer Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826). It was first published in 1802 in the journal Vestnik Yevropy (Вестник Европы; "The European Messenger") (Part 2, No. 6) under the signature "Count N. N."^[1][2]

The story is written in the first person. The protagonist is a "Count N. N.", who, in "a letter to an editor of a journal", openly reports on his life. He is portrayed as a cynic and egoist, considering himself an exceptional person; he writes his confession merely out of obedience to fashionable trends.

About a sojourn in the German city Leipzig for example, he writes:^[3]

Приехав в Лейпциг, мы спешили познакомиться со всеми славными профессорами — и нимфами. Гофмейстер мой имел великое уважение к первым и маленькую слабость к последним. Я взял его себе за образец — и мы одним давали обеды, другим — ужины.

(roughly translated) Having arrived in Leipzig, we hastened to make the acquaintance of all the illustrious professors — and nymphs. My tutor held great respect for the former and a slight weakness for the latter. I took him as my model — and to the one we gave dinners, to the others — suppers.

Literary scholars interpret My Confession as a satire and a polemic against Jean-Jacques Rousseau, author of the influential Confessions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Karamzin challenges Rousseau's educational theories and questions the notion of humanity's inherent goodness.^[4] The narrative also contains elements of self-parody.^[1]

My Confession significantly influenced the development of 19th-century Russian literature, with its enduring tendency toward confessional writing. It marks the beginnings of reflection and self-analysis, later exemplified in Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time.^[5]

According to the Slavicist Ulrike Brinkjost, Karamzin parodies in the povest' the sentimentalist genre (as also in his Rycar' našego vremeni / Рыцарь нашего времени). He exposes in it

die Konventionalität sentimentalistischer Themen, Figurenkonstellationen und Motive [...] und stellt durch eine alle Werte und Wertigkeiten des Sentimentalismus in ihr Gegenteil verkehrende Verfremdung Hypertrophien und automatisierte Verfahren des Genres bloß^[6]

the conventionality of sentimentalist themes, character constellations, and motifs, and—through an estrangement that reverses all the values and hierarchies of sentimentalism—reveals the hypertrophies and automated procedures of the genre.

• Vestnik Yevropy (1802-1830) (Russian)
• Rycar' našego vremeni (Russian)
• Letters of a Russian Traveler (Russian)

• "My confession; a letter to an editor of a journal", in: Selected Prose of N. M. Karamzin. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969
• Ulrike Brinkjost: Geschichte und Geschichten: Ästhetischer und histographischer Diskurs bei N. M. Karamzin. (Slavistische Beiträge, Band 390), Sagner, München 2000

• Моя исповедь (Карамзин) - Russian Wikisource
• “My confessions have no moral purpose” (“My Confession” by Nikolay Karamzin) - L. F. Lutsevich (English abstract)
• Cultural Strategies of Tricksterism in the Age of Enlightenment: N. Karamzin’s My Confession - Elena Prikazchikova (abstract)
• Моя исповедь (Russian)