The Learned Readers

Abstract This chapter discusses two philosophers and translators, Gustav Shpet and Adrian Frankovskii, who worked on Sterne in the 1930s. Both Shpet and Frankovskii belonged to the pre-revolutionary generation of intellectuals and, marginalized by the post-1917 political climate, withdrew from institutional philosophy, turning to literary translation as a form of refuge. Their engagement with Sterne was at once philosophical and philological: they situated him not only within the history of the novel but also within the wider context of European thought. Shpet and Frankovskii’s readings and translation practices are analysed based on their translation drafts, handwritten notes, and annotations. Unlike Shklovsky, who stressed the radical novelty of Sterne’s form, both were attentive to its continuity with early modern models and to its psychological dimension. In their interpretations, Sterne’s Shandeism appears as a response to his time—a ‘biographical device’ in which the mask of Yorick becomes a means of both resistance and escape.