An Unusual Story Started in Omsk: Ivan Goncharov and Russian-Danish Literary Contacts

The article deals with the initial story of Peter Hansen’s literary activity, a Dane who came to Omsk and became the most significant translator of Scandinavian literature into Russian. The first published Hansen’s book was his translation of “The Same Old Story” by Ivan Goncharov. Goncharov and Hansen were in correspondence during two years; and now these letters remain one of the significant sources of information about Russian-Danish literary relations in the end of the 19th century. Apparently, in his letters to Goncharov Hansen mentioned for the very first time in the Russian cultural context the name of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who stood at the origins of existentialism. As a fact, Goncharov was not familiar with Danish literature, but there are certain typological similarities with Kierkegaard’s ideas in his novels. It looks like Goncharov was approaching existential issues in his writings, and it becomes a confirmation of general trends in European literature of that time and similar paths of intellectual search. Hansen was fascinated by Kierkegaard’s ideas from his youth, and it seems that he sensed an existential content in Goncharov’s novels.