The historical upheavals of the end of the century shook the harmonious balance that prevailed in poetry between man and the world. Required new approach, a more sophisticated and sensitive analysis tool.
In Batyushkov’s poems, with amazing artistry, the most important problem of the era was developed - the relationship between the “general” life of humanity and the mental life of an individual person. Batyushkov is one of the first poets in Russia, in whose work the image of the author as a thinking person who perceives and evaluates the world was consciously built.
The beginning of the 19th century brought with it the idea of deeply personal connections between man and the outside world. Single human consciousness, anew, “for itself”, comprehending universal life, declared its absolute value through romanticism. Heine later wrote: “Under every tombstone is the history of the whole world.”6
Batyushkov is a figure in many ways characteristic of this transitional time. His personality, his reflective consciousness basically belongs to the new era. He is already almost separated by an abyss from Derzhavin, who, with his integrity, is entirely in the 18th century.
The poet's first biographer, L.N. Maikov, compares Batyushkov with the pre-Byron hero of the beginning of the century - Rene from Chateaubriand's novel of the same name. Batyushkov was deeply characterized by a feeling of discord between the ideal and reality. His worldview and creativity have a pronounced humanistic basis, which was based on the broad tradition of European thought. From the standpoint of this somewhat abstract humanism, the poet assessed his modernity. He painfully experienced the consequences of the French Revolution.
Batyushkov’s position differed from Karamzin’s position, which was not devoid of fatalism. According to Karamzin, a person and his life are an inevitable mixture of shadow and light, good and evil, sadness and joy, continuously turning into one another and inseparable from each other. Hence Karamzin’s “melancholy”. The thought of the imperfection of human spiritual nature forced Karamzin almost above all to value self-restraint, moral discipline, the ability to pity, to good deeds that manifest the inherent goodness in a person.
Karamzin felt precisely pity for the person, and not admiration for him (his sentimentalism was based on this). According to Batyushkov, the meaning of life is in the joy it gives:
While he's running after us
God of time is gray
And the meadow with flowers is destroyed
With a merciless scythe,
My friend! hurry up for happiness
Let's fly on the journey of life;
Let's get drunk with voluptuousness
And we will get ahead of death;
Let's pick flowers on the sly
Under the blade of the scythe
And the laziness of a short life
Let's extend, extend the hours!
(“My penates”).
In his understanding of the general tasks of literature, Batyushkov is an undoubted Karamzinist, although he was distinguished from Karamzin first by his epicureanism, and then by his gloomy sense of life. After some hesitation in 1812-1813, he was faithful to Europeanism to the very end and condemned the “Slavenophiles” (then the so-called followers of A.S. Shishkov) for hostility to European enlightenment and idealization of ancient barbarism. Batyushkov is the author of brilliant satires on the “Varyagorossov” (“Vision on the Shores of Lethe” and “Singer in the Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word”).
The poet believed that a true patriot of Russia should think most of all about its enlightenment.
For Russian poetry, Batyushkov saw only one - pan-European - path.
At the beginning of the 19th century, classicism gave way to romanticism in European art. In the very center of the emerging new poetry the task was to lyrically express personality.
And yet, with the active assistance of Batyushkov, a matter of paramount importance was accomplished: “love poems” were to enter the realm of “high poetry” and become an expression of a person’s worldview in the fullness of his being.
“Light poetry” as a genre flourished in Russia in the last third of the 18th century (drinking songs, romances, friendly messages, elegies), but it represented both ideologically and artistically the periphery of poetry, since the “small”, “internal” “The world was, according to the genre thinking of classicism, isolated from the “big”, “external”. In the 18th century, an ode was supposed to solve serious problems of human life (such is Derzhavin’s ode). In Batyushkov, elegy begins to serve this purpose.
The essence of Batyushkov's poetic method is understood in different ways. It is customary to speak of his poetry as an example of literary convention; This is the interpretation of Yu. N. Tynyanov, L. Ya. Ginzburg. The views of V.V. Vinogradov and G.A. Gukovsky on Batyushkov as a romantic poet who developed subjective experience in his lyrics gained wide resonance.
When applied to Batyushkov, it is still impossible to talk about romantic individualism.
True, he already had an idea, unusual for the previous literary era, about the poet’s duty to choose the kind of poetry that corresponds to his spiritual experience.
In his work, the poet creates a unique, very complex system of artistic mediations and transformations, with the help of which he builds his author’s image.
Everyone who read Batyushkov’s poems will forever remember the harmonious image of the “author,” who was at first passionately carried away by the joys of existence, accompanying him even to the “kingdom of shadows,” and then just as passionately mourned their frailty. Simple-minded, kind, passionate, peace-loving, selfless - this is how the poet is portrayed to us:
It is not wine that is fragrant,
Not fat incense
The poet brings you
But tears of tenderness
But the hearts have a quiet heat
And sweet are the songs,
Goddesses of Permes gift!
("My Penates")
This harmonious self-portrait, however, was least consistent with Batyushkov’s character. Let us present another, very expressive self-portrait sketched by the poet in a notebook. Its features are inconsistency, disharmony, and a tendency to reflect:
In his lyrics Batyushkov could not yet recreate this purely romantic character, with such a clear orientation towards “demonism”, is a character that directly leads to Onegin and Pechorin. Besides, he didn’t want to portray himself that way in his poetry.
Tragic content late lyric poetry Batyushkova does not destroy the integrity of the harmonious image of the “author”. In the reader’s mind there arises an idea of his spiritual path as a path that is natural in its own way: from a passionate feeling of the great fullness and value of life to grief over its loss.
This show-off is majestic! Azure king of the desert,
O sun! Wonderful are you among the heavenly wonders!
And there is so much beauty on earth!
But all is counterfeit or wasted silver:
Cry, mortal! cry! Your goodness
In the hand of a strict Nemesis!
("Imitations of the Ancients")
In Batyushkov’s later poems there is an ideal of courage, a willingness to pay with dignity with one’s life for the experienced joy of being:
Do you want some honey, son? - so don’t be afraid of the sting;
Crown of victory? - boldly for battle!
Are you hungry for pearls? - so come down
To the bottom, where the crocodile gapes under the water.
Don't be afraid! God will decide. He is the father of only the brave,
Only for the brave are pearls, honey or death... or a crown.
All this was written when Batyushkov was already tormented by fears, suspicions, and painful suspiciousness, when the symptoms of mental illness that frightened his friends and relatives were already evident.
For the first time in Russian poetry, Batyushkov created a “lyrical hero”. Derzhavin’s spontaneous autobiography is a phenomenon of a completely different order.
The expression “lyrical hero” is sometimes used broadly, denoting the author’s image in poetry. Since simply replacing one term with another is not fruitful, it also has strong opponents. Clarifying this term, L. Ya. Ginzburg uses it only in cases where the author’s personality in the lyrics acts as the main “object” of the image36.
The term “lyrical hero” really helps to distinguish the diverse ways of expressing the poet’s inner world.
From the poets of Pushkin’s time, the “lyrical hero” was created by Batyushkov, Denis Davydov, young Zhukovsky, Yazykov. (Delvig’s stylizations, being poetic masks, are even further removed from the poet’s real mental experience.)
Individuality in Batyushkov’s poems is not alien to a kind of “polysemy,” and here, perhaps, is one of the clues to the attractiveness of his poetry.
In the poetry of classicism, the author's image was essentially determined by the genre in which the work was written; and the “Epicurean” author, just like the Odic “author”, etc., was an abstraction. It was not he, the bearer of feelings of joy, love, friendship, who was the subject of the image, but these feelings themselves in their abstract, “pure” form.
In Batyushkov’s elegy, the “author”, who is genre by nature, is turned into a “lyrical hero” - into the subject of the image, into a character, into an individuality. Epicureanism, genre in origin, becomes an individual characteristic of the lyrical hero, who personified the values of life in the poet’s understanding.
For Batyushkov, love, like beauty, is the “personification” of life, image, symbol earthly life. The qualities that Batyushkov’s lyrical hero is endowed with are intended to symbolize the fullness of physical existence. This is youth, the feeling of falling in love, beauty.
The beloved of Batyushkov's hero is always perfectly beautiful. Her lips are certainly scarlet, her eyes are blue, her “lanits” glow like roses, her curls fall in a golden or chestnut wave; her hands are lilies, etc. She is fragrant and decorated with fragrant flowers:
Batyushkov claims that beauty is the most important property of life and belongs only to it; in the presence of death, even a beautiful lily loses its beauty, becoming like a wax statue: (“Imitations of the Ancients”)
Batyushkov’s love is not isolated into some isolated world of pleasures, but is connected with a wide range of high values of human life. The hero of Batyushkov’s erotic poems is not only an ardent lover: he is also endowed with a thirst for independence, selflessness, and humanity.
Antiquity was for Batyushkov the ideal of harmonious relationships between man and the world. That is why the importance of the ancient theme in his poetry is so great.
The theme of antiquity - the focus of the most important problematics of classicism - gradually gave way to the theme of the Middle Ages, raised to the forefront by the romantics. But she still attracted artistic thought.
Batyushkov’s poetry is “theatrical” (this feature, in principle, goes back to the features of the poetry of classicism). In the poem “My Penates,” this is the episode with Lileta changing clothes: Lileta enters in the clothes of a warrior, then takes them off and appears before the hero and the “spectators” in the outfit of a shepherdess:
And with a gentle smile
Sits by the fire
With a snow-white hand
Leaning towards me...
The nature of this “action” is scenic, like the episode with the warrior (the warrior, in turn, must “knock, enter, dry himself” and start a song about his campaigns). Often, Batyushkov’s poem is structured as an appeal from the hero to the people present (“Joy”, “Ghost”, “False Fear”, “Lucky” and many others). The hero seems to be commenting on the scene taking place in front of him.
Batyushkov’s poetry is characterized by initial phrases where “I” immediately attracts attention: “I feel that my gift in poetry has gone out” (“Elegy”); “In vain did I shower the altar with flowers” (“Tibullus Elegy III”); “I was leaving the shore of foggy Albion” (“Shadow of a Friend”); "My friend! I saw a sea of evil” (“To Dashkov”); “Forgive me, my balladeer” (“To Zhukovsky”); “How I love, my comrade” (“To Nikita”); “Do you remember, my priceless friend” (“False fear”); “Messallah! Without me you rush along the waves” (“Elegy from Tibullus”); “Dreams! “You accompanied me everywhere” (“Memories”); “Fatherly penates, O my nurturers!” (“My penates”), etc.
In all three historical elegies by Batyushkov (the elegy “The Dying Tass”, naturally, is given on behalf of the Italian poet) there is a personal beginning: “I am here, on these rocks hanging above the water...” (“On the ruins of a castle in Sweden”), “Oh, joy! I stand by the Rhine waters!..” (“Crossing the Rhine”), etc. Batyushkov is a lyricist both where he is “theatrical” and where he is epic.
Another type of Batyushkov’s elegy is the “intimate” elegy of disappointment.
Among Batyushkov’s works, several intimate elegies written at different times stand out, where the poet’s personal feelings are expressed more directly. This is “Memoirs of 1807.” and "Convalescence" (both between 1807-1809); "Evening" (1810); “Shadow of a Friend”, “Elegy” (“I feel that my gift for poetry has gone out...”, 1815), “Separation” (“In vain I left the country of my fathers...”), “Awakening” (1815). The feeling of grief is caused by unhappy love, loss of friendship, personal emotional experience. Batyushkov achieves here not only emotional intensity, but also genuine psychologism.
Elegies of this type can be divided into two groups. The first consists of poems in which the experience is recreated using epic or dramatic techniques.
The lyricism of Batyushkov’s most intimate elegies is very soft, gentle, restrained, alien to any kind of affectation, not only pathetic, but also “sensitive”. Lyrical self-disclosure is carried out not so much by immersion in oneself, but by depicting outside world, awakening the poet's feelings. Thus, in “Recovery” and especially in “My Genius” the compositional center is the image of a beloved woman, to whom the poet’s grateful delight is addressed. In "The Awakening" the intensity of love's longing is given as insensitivity to the wondrous beauty of nature, which has become the main subject of the image:
Nor the sweetness of pink rays
Forerunners of the morning Phoebus,
Not the gentle shine of the azure sky,
Nor the smell wafting from the fields,
Nor the fast years of the horse's zeal
Along the slope of velvet meadows,
And the barking of hounds and the ringing of horns
Around the deserted bay -
Nothing pleases the soul
A soul disturbed by dreams...52
For the first time in Russian poetry, the discord between the infinitely attractive world and the soul, which in its melancholy is alien to pleasure, is the basis of the composition itself. In a similar way, Baratynsky, Batyushkov’s heir, would later build his “Autumn”.
Batyushkov's poetry is very complex with its diverse artistic and historical material, multi-layered and polysemantic. All of her figurative structure saturated with “book”, historical, cultural, etc. associations.
Batyushkov stands at the very beginning new era Russian lyrics. While creating his original poetic system, he experienced great difficulties.
wrote the poem “Batyushkov”. The names of Batyushkov and Zhukovsky always stand side by side in time. Their common merit is the discovery of romanticism for Russian literature. But they have different romanticism. For Zhukovsky, the key word was “soul.” Characteristics of Batyushkov’s romanticism: plasticity, definiteness, orientation towards Greek antiquity, interest in Romanesque cultures; cult of sensuality, elements of eroticism. At the same time, Zhukovsky is the “soul” of Pushkin, and Batyushkov is the “body” of Pushkin.
Batyushkov in life is a dual figure. He was born in Vologda, in the family of a provincial nobleman, and studied in St. Petersburg. In 1805 he joined the Free Society of Literature, Sciences and Arts. Batyushkov is a participant in the anti-Napoleonic wars. He fought in Prussia and Sweden (where he was wounded). 1813 - participation in the Battle of Leipzig. How a romantic experiences unhappy love: his beloved Anna Furman refuses. Participates in the Arzamas society. In 1817, the only lifetime publication was published - the book “Experiments in Poems and Prose” (of 2 books, which contain both prose and poetry).
From 1818 to 1821 - was in the diplomatic service in Italy. In 1834 Batyushkov went crazy (due to heredity and strong sensitivity). And until the end of his life, Batyushkov remains mentally ill. Batyushkov is an interesting cultural prototype of Pechorin (it’s a matter of attitude, he reflects his fragility and vulnerability long before his illness). In his notebook in 1817, he makes a lengthy entry that expresses his philosophy of life - “Someone else’s is my treasure.”
Batyushkov’s creative personality: crisis-ridden attitude, duality
1.Pre-war Batyushkov. This is a mask, a lyrical hero - hedonist, singer of solitude, " small man" He expressed sensual joy. The poetic message “My Penates” - it reflects all the signs of pre-war creativity. Against the background of a sentimental worldview (sensitivity, village, nature, friends) - a special influence on the work of his uncle - M.N. Muravyova (a sentimentalist who designated “light poetry” - poesie fugitive - sliding poetry). Muravyov's influence.
Batyushkov’s theoretical work - “Speech on the influence of light poetry on language” - is an adaptation of European culture to the foundations of Russian culture. Batyushkov created a unique lyrical hero. Batyushkov was called “the singer of strangers’ Eleanors” (he created an erotic, love mask). He himself was not a fan of erotica, and he did not have the experience that he described. Aesthetic love is the personification of the fullness of life and earthly joys. Batyushkov relies on antiquity as an ideal of harmony between the individual and the world, the golden age. Batyushkov's style is dominated by neoclassicism (empire style). Empire style: orientation towards antiquity, its plastic forms and patterns.
For Batyushkov this is an ideal, a dream. For him antiquity- a dream come true, an interweaving of conventions and simple realities. The Empire style appears on the wave of social upsurge, on the wave of the anti-Napoleonic wars. Examples of the Empire style: the Main Headquarters building, Rossi Street, Alexandrinsky Theater, Exchange on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island, Kazan Cathedral, Academy of Arts; painting - Borovikovsky and Kiprensky; sculpture - Martos and Shubin. Batyushkov embodied the Empire style in “My Penates” of 1811. The main qualities of the poem: a mixture of ancient realities and reduced Russian common realities. Glorifying solitude (“a wretched hut…”). The image of a happy poet is created.
Poetics of the literary list. This is theatricalization, convention, playful meaning, poeticization of inspiration, death. Batyushkov was one of the first to poetize the idea of home in Russian literature. Batyushkov anticipated poems young Pushkin: “Town”, “Message to my sister.” Batyushkov’s poetics are characterized by plastic means of expression(verse: “The inscription on the shepherdess’s coffin” - the motive of the memory; “The Bacchante” - translation by Guys). Unlike the verse of Guys, Batyushkov has the expression of running; the emotion of ecstasy, the motive of pagan sensation, intensifies.
Also Batyushkov is the creator of a loving, sad melancholy elegies. 2 types of elegies by Batyushkov: Historical elegy- memory of past historical events; very close to Zhukovsky’s elegy “Slavyanka” (Batiushkov’s elegy: “On the ruins of a castle in Sweden” - the motive of Sweden’s military past, the idea of frailty); Love Elegy- “Recovery”, “My Genius” - ancient realities, love sickness, longing, kisses, passionate sighs, voluptuousness, the priority of heartache over the mind.
Batyushkov is a participant in Arzamas (“Vision on the Banks of Lethe”, “Singer of the Uprising of Russian Warriors” - parodies). Batyushkov’s fairy tale “The Wanderer and the Homebody” - a fairy tale in French meaning- literary novella. The hero of the story - Batyushkov's alter ego (in the game plot) - is his own Odyssey. Here is an appeal to eternal types. Batyushkov is the predecessor of Pushkin’s novel in verse. This is the type of Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin. Batyushkov turns to a translation from Greek ontology. Book “On Greek Ontology” by Arzamas. Translates the epigram and short poems into Russian.
2. Patriotic War of 1812. - a milestone in Batyushkov’s work. A new worldview and a new type of elegy emerge. It is impossible to preserve the joy of life on the “ruins”. The European enlightenment ideal is disrupted by a joyful worldview. Batyushkov is developing a different moral program. Article “Something about morality based on philosophy and religion” - Batyushkov abandons the secular foundations of morality (based on egoism). Batyushkov says “no” to both the Stoics and the Epicureans. He insists on a third path - the path of the man-wanderer. Verse: “To a friend”, “Shadow of a friend”, “Dying Tass”, “To Dashkov” - morality is based on truths Christianity, Orthodoxy.
Batyushkov’s book “Experiments in poetry and prose.” The first part is prose. Features of the “Experiments”: they turn us to tradition (“Experiments” were from Montaigne, Muravyov, Vostokov); “Experiments” are an inconclusive, incomplete, developing thing. Prose: this is also romantic logic (the genre of travel and walks - “Walk to the Academy of Arts”, “Excerpt from the letters of a Russian officer about Finland”, “Journey to Serey Castle”), but these are also portrait essays, essays(“Arnost and Tass”, “Petrarch”, “Lomonosov” and other portraits of prominent figures). Mosaic, dynamic - both externally and internally.
Focuses on a universal approach to the world. The second part of “Experiments” is poetry - 53 verses (elegy, epistles, mixing genres). This part opens with the poem “To Friends” - dedication - retrospection, which begins and ends the entire poetic part. Verse - both originals and translations. Logic: in the “mixture” section there are 2 elegies - “The Dying Tass” and “Crossing the Rhine”. Poems and prose in the book interact according to the principle of complementarity.
Batyushkov's meaning:
He became a translator of various cultures (ancient - Hesiod, Tibulus, Homer; Italian - Tasso, Arnosto, Casti, Boccaccio; French - Parni, Milvoa, Gresse; northern culture - Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark).
Created a prose style (essays, portraits, travel).
He created an analogue of a “strange person”, an eccentric.
His lyrical hero ranges from a hedonist to a skeptic; flickering from personal biographical to conventional role-playing.
Batyushkov is the creator of the prototype of the “book of the 20th century” (Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Brodsky).
Belinsky, defining the originality of the poetry of the author of “The Bacchae,” wrote: “The direction of Batyushkov’s poetry is completely opposite to the direction of Zhukovsky’s poetry. If uncertainty and haze constitute the distinctive character of romanticism in the spirit of the Middle Ages, then Batyushkov is as much a classicist as Zhukovsky is a romantic.” But more often the critic praised him as a romantic.
Batyushkov's work is very complex and contradictory. This gives rise to great controversy in his assessment. Some critics and literary scholars consider him a neoclassicist (P. A. Pletnev, P. N. Sakulin, N. K. Piksanov). Based on the poet’s obvious connections with sentimentalism, he is perceived either as a sentimentalist (A. N. Veselovsky) or as a pre-romanticist (N. V. Fridman). Exaggerating Batyushkov’s inherent similarities with Zhukovsky, he was ranked among “dull” romanticism. But Batyushkov, experiencing at the beginning of his work the partial influence of classicism (“God”), and then humanistic-elegiac romanticism, did not belong to the true adherents of either classicism or elegiac romanticism. All of his literary activity, poetic and theoretical, was basically developed in a constant struggle against classicism and its epigones. Clearly aiming for classicism, he asked in his “Message to N. I. Gne-dich”: “What’s in loud songs for me?” Batyushkov spoke in the difficult conditions of a transitional time: the passing but still active epigonic classicism, the strengthening of sentimentalism, the emergence and popularity of humanistic-elegiac romanticism. And this was reflected in his poetry. But, experiencing and overcoming the influence of literary influences, Batyushkov was formed primarily as a poet of hedonistic-humanistic romanticism. His poetry is characterized by the creation objective image a lyrical hero, an appeal to reality, expressed, according to Belinsky, in particular, in the introduction of “events in the form of memories” into some elegies. All this was news in the literature of that time.
A large number of Batyushkov’s poems are called friendly messages. These messages pose and solve problems social behavior personality. Batyushkov’s ideal in artistic embodiment is certainty, naturalness and sculpturality. In the poems “To Malvina”, “The Merry Hour”, “Bacchante”, “Tavrida”, “I feel that my gift for poetry has gone out” and similar ones, he achieves almost realistic clarity and simplicity. In “Tavrida” it’s warm initial appeal: “Dear friend, my angel!” The image of the heroine is plastic, rosy and fresh, like a “rose of the field,” sharing “labor, worries and lunch” with her beloved. The expected circumstances of the heroes’ lives are also outlined here: a simple hut, “a home key, flowers and a rural vegetable garden.” Admiring this poem, Pushkin wrote: “In terms of feeling, in harmony, in the art of versification, in luxury and carelessness of imagination, this is Batyushkov’s best elegy.” But the elegy “I feel that my gift in poetry has gone out” is not inferior to it. With its sincerity of feelings, sincerity of its appeal to its beloved, it anticipates the best realistic elegies of Pushkin.
Details of the life of the lyrical hero (“Evening”, “My foam”) indicate an invasion of poetry Everyday life. In the poem “Evening” (1810), the poet talks about the “staff” of a decrepit shepherdess, the “smoky shack”, the “sharp plow” of the oratai, the fragile “boat” and other specific details of the circumstances he recreates.
The bright plasticity of Batyushkov’s best works is determined by the strict purposefulness of all means of depicting them. Thus, the poem “To Malvina” begins by comparing the beauty with a rose. The next four stanzas play on and expand on this comparison. And the graceful work ends with a wish-recognition: “Let the tender roses be proud On the lilies of your chest! Oh, dare I, my dear, confess? I would die like a rose on it.” The poem “Bacchae” recreates the image of the priestess of love. Already in the first stanza, which reports the rapid run of the Bacchus priestesses to the holiday, their emotionality, impetuosity, and passion are emphasized: “The winds noisily carried away their loud howls, splashes and groans.” The further content of the poem is the development of the motive of elemental passion. Belinsky wrote about the elegy “On the Ruins of a Castle in Sweden” (1814): “How everything in it is sustained, complete, finished! What a luxurious and at the same time elastic, strong verse!”
Batyushkov's poetry is characterized by a complex evolution. If in his early poems he tends to express and depict mental states more or less statically (“How Happiness Comes Slowly”), then in the heyday of his creativity the poet depicts them in development, dialectically, in complex contradictions (“Separateness” ; “The Fate of Odysseus”; “To a Friend”).
Batyushkov’s works, embodying natural, individual feelings and passions, did not fit into the usual genre-type formations and verse metrhythmic schemes of classicism, intended to express abstract feelings. Following Zhukovsky, the poet contributed his share to the development of syllabic-tonic verse. “Easy poetry,” which demanded naturalness and spontaneity, led to Batyushkov’s widespread use of iambic in different feet, characterized by colloquialism, expressiveness, and flexibility. According to I. N. Rozanov, almost two-thirds of his poems were written in this meter (“Dream”, “Message to N. I. Gnedich”, “Memories”, etc.). But for most of the most cheerful lyrical works glorifying love, Batyushkov preferred a playful trochee (“To Phyllis,” “False Fear,” “Lucky.” “Apparition,” “Bacchae”). Expanding the possibilities of syllabonics, the poet, in addition to tetrameter (“How happiness slowly comes”), hexameter (“Message to my poems”), iambic, also uses trimeter. The liveliness of the message “My Penates,” written in iambic trimeter, evoked the praise of Pushkin and Belinsky.
In a number of poems, Batyushkov showed examples of strophic art and remarkable mastery of the symmetrical construction of verse (“On the death of F.F. Kokoshkin’s wife,” “To a friend,” “Song of Harald the Bold,” “Crossing the Rhine”). Giving his poems ease, the spontaneity of the flow of feelings and thoughts, he more often uses free stanzas, but also strives for symmetry in it (“Merry Hour”).
Taking care of the naturalness of the poems, the poet pays a lot of attention to their euphony. He loves musical harmonies of consonants: “They play, dance and sing” (“To Malvina”); “The clock is winged! don’t fly” (“Advice to Friends”); “In all the greatness of blis-tala” (“Memories”); “Horses with a silver rein!” (“Happy Lives”) Skillfully repeating, concentrating sounds p, p, b and others, the poet creates an entire musical symphony in the poem: “You awaken, O Baya, from the tomb When the Aurora rays appear...” (1819).
Batyushkov is one of the first among poets to violate the absolute boundaries between genres established by the classicists. He gives the message the properties of either an elegy (“To a Friend”), or a historical elegy (“To Dashkov”), he enriches the genre of elegy and turns it into a lyric-epic work (“Crossing the Rhine”, “Hesiod and Omir - rivals", "Dying Tass").
Expanding the possibilities of spoken language in poetry, Batyushkov achieves spontaneity in poetry: “Give me a simple pipe, Friends! and sit around me under this elm tree’s thick shadow. Where freshness breathes in the middle of the day" (“Advice to Friends”). But at the same time, where necessary, he turns to anaphors (“Excerpt from Song XXXIV of “Furious Orland”), inversions (“Shadow of a Friend”) and other means of syntactic figurativeness.
Democratizing literary language, the poet is not afraid of words and expressions from a wider circle than his beloved society of the enlightened nobility. In him we will find appropriately used words: “crash” (“Advice to Friends”), “stomping” (“Joy”), “blurs” (“Prisoner”).
The plastic expressiveness of Batyushkov’s works is also helped by precise, concrete visual means, in particular epithets. He has youth red, Bacchus funny, watch wings, meadows green, streams transparent,(“Advice to Friends”), nymphs frisky And alive, dream sweet(“Merry Hour”), maiden innocent(“Source”), groves curly(“Joy”), camp slim, la nita girls blazing("Bacchante").
But, having fully mastered the art of artistic expression and brilliantly demonstrated it in many beautiful lyrical creations, Batyushkov also left poems that were, to one degree or another, unfinished. This was also noted by Belinsky. According to his observation, the poet’s lyrical works are mostly “below the talent he discovered” and far from fulfilling “the expectations and demands he himself aroused.” They contain difficult, clumsy turns and phrases: “ More like by sea It’s possible to sail a boat comfortably” (“N. I. Gnedich”, 1808). Or: “Led by the muses, he penetrated into the days of his youth” (“To Tassu”, 1808). They are not always free from unjustified archaism: in the elegy “The Dying Tass”, written in 1817, there are words that clearly fall out of its style: “koshnitsy”, “kissing”, “vesi”, “finger”, “oratay”, “ripe”, “fire”, “intertwined”, “right hand”, “hundreds”, “voice”, “unbreakable”.
Batyushkov is a remarkable expert on antiquity. He introduces historical and mythological names of this world into his poems. The poem “Dream” recalls zephyrs, nymphs, graces, cupids, Anacreon, Sappho, Horace and Apollo, and in the poem “Advice to Friends” - nymphs, Bacchus, Eros. He has poems “To Malvina”, “Message to Chloe”, “To Phyllis”. However, the abundance of ancient names, historical and mythological in poems about modernity, undoubtedly introduces stylistic inconsistency. That is why Pushkin, regarding the message “My Penates,” remarked: “The main flaw in this charming message is the too obvious confusion of ancient mythological customs with the customs of a resident of a village near Moscow.” In this poem, in a “wretched hut” with a “decrepit and tripod table”, “hard bed”, “meager rubbish”, “cups”, “golden cup” and “bed of flowers” coexist.
Crisis of worldview, historical elegies, anthological poems. Remaining faithful to the Epicurean muse, Batyushkov wrote in 1817: “He is forever young who sings Love, wine, erotica.” But at this time, “light poetry”, full of cheerfulness, had already lost its leading role in his work. In the second period of his creative career, which begins around 1813, the poet enters a period of ideological doubts, hesitations and disappointments.
The unstoppable onset of the “Iron Age” of bourgeois-capitalist relations and the aggravated social contradictions roughly destroyed the poet’s sweet dream of an independent, peaceful, happy life huts far from cities. He was literally shocked by the destructive events suffered by peoples, especially his compatriots, in the war of 1812. In October 1812, he wrote to N.I. Gnedich from Nizhny Novgorod: “The terrible actions of the vandals or the French in Moscow and its environs, the actions , unparalleled in history itself, completely upset my little philosophy and quarreled me with humanity.”
Life inexorably destroyed Batyushkov’s educational philosophy. He entered a period of ideological crisis.
In Soviet historical and literary scholarship, it is more common to call Batyushkov a “pre-romanticist,” although there are other concepts. This point of view was introduced into scientific circulation with appropriate argumentation B.V. Tomashevsky: “This word (i.e. “pre-romanticism” - K.G.) is usually used to name those phenomena in the literature of classicism in which there are some signs of a new direction that received full expression in romanticism. Thus, pre-romanticism is a transitional phenomenon.”
What are these “some signs”? - “This is, first of all, a clear expression of a personal (subjective) attitude towards what is being described, the presence of “sensitivity” (among pre-romanticists - predominantly dreamy-melancholic, sometimes tearful); a sense of nature, often with a desire to depict unusual nature; The landscape depicted by the pre-romanticists was always in harmony with the poet’s mood.”
We find further substantiation of B.V. Tomashevsky’s point of view in the detailed monograph by N.V. Friedman - with the difference that its author, calling Batyushkov a “pre-romanticist”, like Pushkin early period, denies any connection between the “ideological foundations” of Batyushkov’s poetry and classicism.
Conflicting judgments about Batyushkov’s literary position are caused by the very nature of his work, which reflects one of the significant transitional stages in the development of Russian poetry.
Late XVIII - first years XIX V. were the heyday of Russian sentimentalism, the initial stage of the formation of the romantic movement. This era is characterized by transitional phenomena, reflecting both new trends and the influence of the still existing aesthetic norms of classicism. Batyushkov was a typical figure of this time, called “strange” by Belinsky, when “the new appeared without replacing the old, and the old and the new lived amicably next to each other, without interfering with one another” (7, 241). None of the Russian poets early XIX V. I did not feel as keenly as Batyushkov the need to update outdated norms and forms. At the same time, his connections with classicism, despite the predominance of the romantic element in his poetry, were quite strong, which Belinsky also noted. Having seen “renewed classicism” in a number of Pushkin’s early “plays,” Belinsky called their author “an improved, improved Batyushkov” (7, 367).
A literary movement is not formed in an empty space. initial stage it is not necessarily marked by a manifesto, a declaration, a program. It always has its own prehistory from the moment of emergence in the depths of the previous direction, the gradual accumulation of certain characteristics in it and further movement towards qualitative changes, from lower forms to higher ones, in which they find expression with the greatest completeness aesthetic principles new direction. In the emerging, in the new, to one degree or another, there are some features of the old, transformed, updated in accordance with the requirements of the time. This is the pattern of continuity and continuity of the literary process.
When studying the literary activity of such a typical figure of the transitional era as Batyushkov, it is important first of all to understand the relationship, the peculiar combination in his poetry of the new and the old, that which is the main thing that determines the poet’s worldview.
Batyushkov walked next to Zhukovsky. Their creativity constitutes a natural link in the process of updating poetry, enriching its internal content and forms. They both relied on the achievements of the Karamzin period and were representatives of the new generation. But although the general trend in the development of their creativity was uniform, they walked in different ways. Zhukovsky's lyrics grew directly in the depths of sentimentalism. Batyushkov also had organic connections with sentimentalism, although in his lyrics some features of classicism were preserved in a transformed form. On the one hand, he continued (this is the main, main road of his creative development) the elegiac line of sentimentalism; on the other hand, in his desire for clarity and rigor of form, he relied on the achievements of classicism, which gave modern critics a reason to call him a “neoclassicist.”
Batyushkov lived a troubled life. He was born in Vologda on May 29 (according to modern times) 1787 into an old noble family. He was brought up in St. Petersburg private boarding schools. Then he served in the Ministry of Public Education (as a clerk). At the same time (1803) his friendship with N. I. Gnedich began, acquaintances with I. P. Pnin, N. A. Radishchev, I. M. Born began. In April 1805, Batyushkov joined the “Free Society of Literature, Sciences and Arts.” In the same year, Batyushkov’s first printed work, “Message to My Poems,” appeared in the magazine “News of Russian Literature.” During the second war with Napoleonic France (1807), he takes part in the campaigns of the Russian army in Prussia; in 1808–1809 - in the war with Sweden. In the battle of Heilsberg, Batyushkov was seriously wounded in the leg. In 1813, he took part in the battles near Leipzig as an adjutant of General N.N. Raevsky.
Batyushkov’s personal drama dates back to 1815 - his infatuation with Anna Fedorovna Furman.
At the end of 1815, when the Karamzinists, in contrast to the conservative “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word,” created their own literary association"Arzamas", Batyushkov becomes a member of it, defends the program language reform N. M. Karamzina.
In 1817, a two-volume collection of Batyushkov’s works, “Experiments in Poetry and Prose,” was published, the only lifetime edition of the poet’s works. In 1818–1821 He is in Italy in the diplomatic service, where he becomes close to N.I. Turgenev (later one of the prominent figures in the “Union of Welfare”).
Batyushkov hated clerical work, although he was forced to serve. He dreamed of free creativity and put the vocation of a poet above all else.
Batyushkov’s literary fate was tragic. At thirty-four years of age, he leaves the field of “literature” forever. Then silence, long-term (inherited from the mother) mental illness and death from typhus on July 7 (19), 1855.
The poet's madness is the result not only of heredity, but also increased vulnerability, weak security. In a letter to N.I. Gnedich in May 1809, Batyushkov wrote: “I am so tired of people, and everything is so boring, and my heart is empty, there is so little hope that I would like to be destroyed, diminished, become an atom.” In November of the same year, in a letter to him, “If I live another ten years, I will go crazy... I’m not bored, not sad, but I feel something extraordinary, some kind of spiritual emptiness.” So, long before the onset of the crisis, Batyushkov foresaw the sad outcome of the internal drama he was experiencing.
On the formation process aesthetic views Batyushkova beneficial influence influenced by his close acquaintance and friendship with many prominent literary figures of that time.
From Batyushkov’s inner circle, special mention should be made of Mikhail Nikitich Muravyov (1757–1807), the poet’s cousin, under strong influence whom he stayed with, from whom he studied and whose advice he valued. Muravyov guided and encouraged his first steps in the field of literature.
Sensitivity, dreaminess, thoughtfulness, which determine the emotional tonality of Batyushkov’s lyrics, in their original expressions are present in Muravyov’s poems as their integral part, as their characteristic feature.
Muravyov rejected rational “floridism”, cold rationalism in poetic creativity, called for naturalness and simplicity, the search for “treasures” in one’s own heart. Muravyov is the first Russian poet to substantiate the dignity of “light poetry” as poetry of small lyrical forms and informal, intimate themes. He wrote an entire treatise in verse, outlining the stylistic principles of “light poetry.”
In “An Essay on Poetry” he wrote:
Love common sense: be captivated by simplicity(("Essay on Poetry", 1774–1780))
……………….
Flee false art and mind
…………….
Remember your goal, be able to do it without regret
Ambitious discard decorations
…………….
The syllable should be like a transparent river:
Swift, but clean and full without spilling.
These “rules”, set out in the language of poetry, which have not lost their meaning even today, would not have had such an attractive and effective force if they had not been supported by the examples of simple and euphonious Russian created by Muravyov. poetic speech:
Your evening is full of coolness -
The shore is moving in crowds,
Like a magical serenade
The voice comes in wavesShow favor to the goddess(("To the Goddess of the Neva", 1794))
He sees an enthusiastic drink.
Who spends the night sleepless,
Leaning on granite.
Not only in themes, in the development of lyrical genres, but also in work on language and poetry, Batyushkov relied on the experience and achievements of his talented predecessor and teacher. What is outlined as a program in Muravyov’s poetry finds development in Batyushkov’s lyrics, which was facilitated by a common aesthetic platform and a common view of poetry.
In his first poetic declaration (“Message to my poems”, 1804 or 1805) Batyushkov tries to define his position, his attitude towards current state Russian poetry. On the one hand, he is repelled by description (who “messes up poetry”, “composes odes”), on the other hand, by the excesses of sentimentalism (tearfulness, games of sensitivity). Here he condemns “poets - boring liars” who “do not fly up, not to the sky,” but “to the ground.” In this fundamental question about the relationship between the ideal (“sky”) and the real (“earth”), Batyushkov shared the romantic point of view: “What is in loud songs for me? I am happy with my dreams..."; “...by dreaming we are closer to happiness”; “...we all love fairy tales, we are children, but big ones.” “Dream” is opposed to rationality and rationalism:
What is empty in truth? She just dries out the mind(("Message to N. I. Gnedich", 1805))
A dream gilds everything in the world,
And angry from sadness
Dream is our shield.
Oh, should the heart be forbidden to forget itself,
Exchange poets for boring sages!
Nothing characterizes the personality of Batyushkov the poet more than dreaminess. It runs like a running leitmotif through all his lyrics, starting from his first poetic experiments:
And sorrow is sweet:(("Dream", 1802–1803; pp. 55–56))
He dreams in sorrow.
………..
A hundred times we are happy with fleeting dreams!
Many years later, the poet returns to his early poem, devoting enthusiastic lines to a poetic dream:
Friend of tender muses, messenger of heaven,
A source of sweet thoughts and heart-loving tears,
Where are you hiding, Dream, my goddess?
Where is that happy land, that peaceful desert,
Which mysterious flight are you aiming for?
Nothing - neither wealth, “neither light, nor empty glory” - replaces dreams. It contains the highest happiness:
So the poet considers his hut a palace(("Dream", 1817; pp. 223–224, 229))
And happy - he dreams.
In the formation of the aesthetics of Russian romanticism, romantic ideas about poetry and the poet, Batyushkov’s role was exceptional, as great as Zhukovsky’s. Batyushkov was the first in the history of Russian poetry to give a heartfelt definition of inspiration as “an impulse of winged thoughts,” a state of internal clairvoyance when “excitement of passions” is silent and a “bright mind,” freed from “earthly bonds,” soars “in the heavens” (“My Penates” , 1811–1812). In the “Message to I.M. Muravyov-Apostol” (1814–1815), the same theme is developed, acquiring an increasingly romantic character:
I see in my mind how an inspired youth((p. 186))
Stands in silence above the furious abyss
Among dreams and first sweet thoughts,
Listening to the monotonous noise of the waves...
His face burns, his chest sighs painfully,
And a sweet tear wets the cheek...
Poetry is born of the sun. She is a “heavenly flame”, her language is the “language of the gods” (“Message to N.I. Gnedich”, 1805). The poet is a “child of heaven,” he is bored on earth, he strives for “heaven.” Thus, Batyushkov’s romantic concept of “poetry” and “poet” gradually takes shape, not without the influence of traditional ideas.
Batyushkov’s personality was dominated by what Belinsky called “noble subjectivity” (5, 49). The predominant element of his work is lyricism. Not only the original works, but also Batyushkov’s translations are marked with the stamp of his unique personality. Batyushkov's translations are not translations in the strict sense, but rather alterations, free imitations, into which he introduces his own moods, themes and motives. In the Russified translation of “Boalo’s 1st satire” (1804–1805) there is a lyrical image of the inhabitant of Moscow himself, a poet, “unhappy,” “unsociable,” who runs from “fame and noise,” from the vices of “the world,” a poet who “I have never flattered people,” “I have not lied,” in whose songs there is “holy truth.” No less important for Batyushkov was the idea of independence and integrity of the singer. Let him be “poor,” “endure cold, heat,” “forgotten by people and the world,” but he cannot put up with evil, does not want to “crawl” before those in power, does not want to write odes, madrigals, or sing praises of “rich scoundrels”:
Rather, I am like a simple peasant,((pp. 62–63))
Who then sprinkles his daily bread,
Than this fool, big gentleman,
With contempt he crushes people on the pavement!
The translation of Boileau’s satire reflects Batyushkov’s life position, his contempt for “rich scoundrels” who are “disgusted by the world of truth”, for whom “there is nothing sacred in the whole world.” “Sacred” for the poet is “friendship”, “virtue”, “pure innocence”, “love, beauty of hearts and conscience”. Here is an assessment of reality:
Vice reigns here, vice is the ruler here,((p. 64))
He is wearing ribbons, wearing orders, and is clearly visible everywhere...
Batyushkov twice refers to the “sacred shadow” of Torquato Tasso, tries to translate (excerpts have been preserved) his poem “Liberated Jerusalem”. In the poem “To Tassu” (1808), those facts and situations of the Italian poet’s biography were selected that allowed Batyushkov to express “many of his hidden thoughts” about his own life path, about the personal tragedy he is experiencing. What reward awaits the poet “for harmonious songs”? - “Zoil’s sharp poison, feigned praise and caresses of the courtiers, poison for the soul and the poets themselves” (p. 84). In the elegy “The Dying Tass” (1817), Batyushkov creates the image of a “sufferer,” “exile,” “wanderer,” who has “no refuge on earth.” “Earthly”, “instant”, “perishable” in Batyushkov’s lyrics are opposed to the sublime, “heavenly”. Eternity, immortality - “in the works of the majestic” “arts and muses.”
The epicurean motifs of Batyushkov’s lyrics are permeated with contempt for wealth, nobility, and rank. More dear to the poet is freedom, the ideal of personal independence, “freedom and tranquility”, “carelessness and love” that he glorifies:
"Happy! happy who flowers(("To Petin", 1810; pp. 121–122))
Decorated the days of love,
Sang with carefree friends
And I dreamed about happiness!
He is happy, and three times as happy,
All nobles and kings!
So come on, in an unknown place,
Alien to slavery and chains,
Somehow we drag out our lives,
Often with grief in half,
Pour the cup fuller
And laugh at fools!”
This conclusion is a conclusion to reflections on life. Before this “song” with a call for “carelessness” there are significant lines:
I'll come to my senses... yes joy((p. 122))
Will he get along with his mind?
“Mind” here in the sense of rationality, opposed to feeling, destroying joy. Hence the cult of feeling, the desire to live “with the heart.”
In the poem “To Friends” (1815), Batyushkov calls himself a “carefree poet,” which gives rise to incorrect interpretations of the pathos of his work. His Epicureanism flowed from his life position, from his "philosophical life". “Life is a moment! It won't take long to have fun." Merciless time takes away everything. And therefore
Oh, while youth is priceless(("Elysius", 1810; p. 116))
Didn't rush away like an arrow,
Drink from a cup full of joy...
All the best, significant things in Batyushkov’s work, which constitute the enduring aesthetic value of his lyrics, are to a certain extent connected with the concept of “light poetry,” the founder of which on Russian soil was M. N. Muravyov.
The term "light poetry" can be interpreted in different ways. It is important how Batyushkov himself understood him. This is, first of all, not an easy genre of salon, cutesy lyrics, but one of the most difficult birth poetry, requiring “possible perfection, purity of expression, harmony in style, flexibility, smoothness; he demands truth in feelings and the preservation of the strictest decency in all respects... poetry, even in small forms, is a difficult art and requires all life and all spiritual efforts.”
In the field of “light poetry” Batyushkov included not only poems in the spirit of Anacreon, but also generally small forms of lyricism, intimate and personal themes, “graceful” subtle sensations and feelings. Batyushkov passionately defended the dignity of small lyrical forms, which was of fundamental importance to him. He sought support in the past achievements of Russian poetry, highlighting trends, the line of its development, in which he found reflection of Anacreon’s Muse. The same considerations dictated Batyushkov’s increased interest in French “light poetry,” in particular Parni.
This was the time when sensitivity - the banner of sentimentalism - became the defining feature of the new style. For Batyushkov, poetry is a “heavenly flame,” combining “in the human soul” “imagination, sensitivity, dreaminess.” He also perceived poetry in this aspect. ancient times. In addition to personal passion, Batyushkov was also influenced by the trends and literary hobbies of his time, “a craving for the restoration of ancient forms... The most sensitive works were taken from antiquity, translated into lyric poetry and served as an object of imitation for elegiacs: Tibullus, Catullus, Propertius...”.
Batyushkov had a rare gift for comprehending the uniqueness of Hellenistic and Roman culture, the ability to convey through the means of Russian poetic speech all the beauty and charm of the lyrics of antiquity. “Batyushkov,” wrote Belinsky, “introduced into Russian poetry a completely new element for it: ancient artistry” (6, 293).
The desire to “forget sadness”, “drown grief in a full cup” led to the search for “joy and happiness” in “carelessness and love”. But what is “joy” and “happiness” in a “fleeting life”? Batyushkov’s Epicureanism, called “ideal” by Belinsky (6, 293), - special properties, he is brightly colored with quiet dreaminess and an innate ability to seek and find beauty everywhere. When the poet calls for “golden carelessness”, and advises “to mix wisdom with jokes”, “to seek fun and amusement”, then one should not think that we are talking about rough passions here. Earthly pleasures in themselves are worthless in the eyes of the poet if they are not warmed by a dream. The dream gives them grace and charm, sublimity and beauty:
...let's forget the sadness(("Advice to Friends", 1806; p. 75))
Let's dream in sweet bliss:
Dream is a direct mother of happiness!
The content of Batyushkov’s poetry is far from limited to poems in the anthological genre. She in many ways anticipated and predetermined the themes and main motives of Russian romantic poetry: the glorification of personal freedom, the independence of the artist, the hostility of “cold rationality,” the cult of feeling, the subtlest “feelings,” the movements of the “life of the heart,” admiration for “wonderful nature,” the feeling of “ the mysterious" connection of the human soul with nature, faith in poetic dream and inspiration.
Batyushkov contributed many significant new things to the development of lyrical genres. His role in the development of Russian elegy is especially important. In his lyrics, the process of further psychologizing the elegy continues. Traditional elegiac complaints about fate, the pangs of love, separation, infidelity of the beloved - all that is found in abundance in elegies late XVIII century, in the poetry of sentimentalists, - is enriched in Batyushkov’s elegies with the expression of complex individual experiences, the “life” of feelings in their movement and transitions. For the first time in Russian lyrics, complex psychological states are expressed with such spontaneity and sincerity of tragically colored feelings and in such an elegant form:
There is an end to wanderings - never to sorrows!(("Elegy", 1815; p. 200))
In your presence there is suffering and torment
I learned new things with my heart.
They are worse than separation
The most terrible thing! I saw, I read
In your silence, in your intermittent conversation,
In your sad gaze,
In this secret sorrow of downcast eyes,
In your smile and in your very gaiety
Traces of heartache...
For the fate of Russian poetry no less important had a psychologization of the landscape, strengthening its emotional coloring. At the same time, in Batyushkov’s elegies, the passion for the night (lunar) landscape, characteristic of romantic poetry, is striking. Night is the time for dreams. “Dream is the daughter of the silent night” (“Dream”, 1802 or 1803):
...like a ray of sunshine goes out in the middle of the heavens,(("Evening. Imitation of Petrarch", 1810; p. 115))
Alone in exile, alone with my longing,
I talk in the night with the pensive moon!
Where Batyushkov turns to a contemplative and dreamy depiction of a night landscape in attempts to convey the “picturesque beauty” of nature, to “paint” its pictures by means of poetic speech, his closeness to Zhukovsky is reflected, his kinship with him is not only in common literary origins, but also by the nature of perception, figurative system, even in vocabulary:
... In the valley where the spring gurgles and sparkles,(("God", 1801 or 1805; p. 69))
In the night, when the moon quietly sheds its ray on us,
And the clear stars shine from behind the clouds...
I'll touch the magic strings
I will touch... and the nymphs of the mountains in the monthly radiance,
Like light shadows, in a transparent robe
They will come down with the sylvans to hear my voice.
Timid naiads, floating above the water,They will clasp their white hands,(("Message to Count Vielgorsky", 1809; p. 104))
And the May breeze, waking up on the flowers,
In cool groves and gardens,
Will blow quiet wings...
The Patriotic War of 1812 became an important milestone in spiritual development Batyushkova, caused certain changes in his public sentiment. The war brought something that had hitherto faintly sounded in the poet’s lyrics. civil issue. During these years, Batyushkov wrote a number of patriotic poems, including the message “To Dashkov” (1813), in which the poet, in the days of national disaster, “among the ruins and graves,” when his “dear homeland” is in danger, refuses to “sing love and joy , carelessness, happiness and peace":
No no! my talent perish((p. 154))
And the lyre is precious to friendship,
When you are forgotten by me,
Moscow, the golden land of the fatherland!
It is no coincidence that it was precisely in these years, after the Patriotic War, in the atmosphere of a general rise in national self-awareness that Batyushkov developed a persistent desire to expand the field of elegy. Her framework for the implementation of his new plans, the poetic development of historical, heroic themes seemed narrow to him. The search for the poet did not go in one direction. He experiments, turns to Russian ballads, even fables. Batyushkov gravitates toward multi-subject, complex plot constructions, to a combination of motives of intimate elegy with historical meditation. An example of such a combination would be famous poem, noted by Belinsky among Batyushkov’s highest achievements, is “On the ruins of a castle in Sweden” (1814). The introduction, a gloomy night landscape, written in the Ossian style, is fully consistent with the character of dreamy reflection and gives a romantic sound to the entire work:
I am here, on these rocks hanging above the water,((p. 172))
In the sacred twilight of the oak forest
I wander thoughtfully and see before me
Traces of past years and glory:
Debris, a formidable rampart, a moat overgrown with grass,
Pillars and a dilapidated bridge with cast iron chains,
Mossy strongholds with granite teeth
And a long row of coffins.
Everything is quiet: a dead sleep in the monastery.
But here the memory lives:
And the traveler, leaning on the grave stone,
Tastes sweet dreams.
Batyushkov possessed a rare gift: with the power of dreamy imagination, he could “revive” the past, the signs of which were inspired in his poems by a single feeling. Contemplation of the ruins in the silence of the night imperceptibly turns into a dreamy thought about people, brave warriors and freedom-loving skalds, and the frailty of everything earthly:
But everything is covered here in the gloomy darkness of the night,((p. 174))
All time has turned to dust!
Where before the skald thundered on a golden harp,
There the wind whistles only sadly!
………………
Where are you, brave crowds of heroes,
You, wild sons of both war and freedom,
Arose in the snow, among the horrors of nature,
Among the spears, among the swords?
The strong died!..……
Such a perception of the distant historical past is not a tribute to fashion, as is often the case; it is internally inherent in Batyushkov the poet, which is confirmed by another similar description, where for the first time in Russian lyrics a poetic “formula” of the “secret” language of nature is given:
Nature's horrors, hostile elements battle,(("Message to I.M. Muravyov-Apostol", 1814–1815; p. 186))
Waterfalls roaring from gloomy rocks,
Snowy deserts, eternal masses of ice
Or the noisy sea, the vast view -
Everything, everything lifts the mind, everything speaks to the heart
With eloquent but secret words,
And the fire of poetry feeds between us.
The poem “On the ruins of a castle in Sweden,” despite the presence in it of elements of other genres (ballads, odes), is still an elegy, the kind of it that can be called a historical meditative elegy.
Contemplation, daydreaming, thoughtfulness, despondency, sadness, disappointment, doubt are too general concepts, especially when it comes to lyric poetry; they are filled with different psychological content, which receives different colors depending on the individuality of the poet. Dreaminess, for example, among sentimentalists (or rather, among the epigones of this trend), was often feigned, a tribute to fashion, excessively tearful. In the lyrics of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov, dreaminess appears in a new quality, combined with elegiac sadness, imbued with philosophical reflection - a poetic state that is inherent in both of them. “In the works of these writers (Zhukovsky and Batyushkov - K.G.), - wrote Belinsky, - ... it is not only official delights that speak the language of poetry. but also such passions, feelings and aspirations, the source of which was not abstract ideals, but the human heart, human soul"(10, 290–291).
Both Zhukovsky and Batyushkov owed a lot to Karamzin and sentimentalism, as well as to Arzamas. There were many similarities in their daydreaming, but there were also differences. For the first, it is predominantly contemplative in nature with a mystical overtones. For the second, daydreaming is not “replaced,” as Belinsky assumed (6, 293), but is combined with thoughtfulness, in the words of Batyushkov himself, “quiet and deep thoughtfulness.”
Batyushkov also wrote in prose. Batyushkov’s prosaic experiments reflect general process search for new ways, the author’s desire to genre diversity(see Chapter 3).
Batyushkov viewed his prose experiments as “material for poetry.” He turned to prose mainly in order to “write well in poetry.”
Belinsky did not highly value Batyushkov’s prose works, although he noted them “ good language and syllable" and saw in them "an expression of the opinions and concepts of the people of his time" (1, 167). In this regard, Batyushkov’s prose “experiments” had an impact on the formation of the style of Pushkin’s prose.
Batyushkov’s great merits in enriching the Russian poetic language, the culture of Russian verse. In the dispute about the “old” and “new syllable”, in this central issue social and literary struggle of the era, which has more broad meaning rather than the problem of the language of literature, Batyushkov took the position of the Karamzinists. The poet considered the main advantages of the “poetic style” to be “movement, strength, clarity.” In his poetic work, he adhered to these aesthetic norms, especially the last one - “clarity”. According to Belinsky’s definition, he introduced into Russian poetry “correct and pure language”, “sonorous and light verse”, “plasticism of forms” (1, 165; 5, 551).
Belinsky recognized the “importance” of Batyushkov for the history of Russian literature, called Batyushkov “one of the smartest and most educated people of his time,” spoke of him as a “true poet,” gifted by nature with great talent. Nevertheless, in general judgments about the character and content of Batyushkov’s poetry, the critic was too harsh. Batyushkov’s poetry seemed to Belinsky “narrow”, overly personal, poor in content from the point of view of its social sound, expression of the national spirit in it: “Batiushkov’s muse, forever wandering under foreign skies, did not pick a single flower on Russian soil” (7, 432 ). Belinsky could not forgive Batyushkov for his passion for the “light poetry” of Parni (5, 551; 7, 128). The critic's judgments may have been influenced by the fact that he wrote about Batyushkov as Pushkin's predecessor, in connection with Pushkin - and in assessing Batyushkov's lyrics, the vast world of Pushkin's poetry could serve as a criterion.
The range of Batyushkov’s elegiac thoughts was determined early. He deeply believed in the power of the initial “first impressions”, “first fresh feelings” (“Message to I.M. Muravyov-Apostol”), which the poet did not betray throughout his entire creative life. Batyushkov’s poetry is closed primarily in the circle of personal experiences, and this is the source of its strength and weakness. Throughout his creative career, the poet remained faithful to “pure” lyrics, limiting its content to a personal theme. Only the Patriotic War of 1812 gave an explosion of patriotic sentiment, and then not for long. This time dates back to Batyushkov’s desire to get out of his closed world of favorite motifs, expand the boundaries of elegy, and enrich it thematically with the experience of other genres. The search went in different directions, but Batyushkov achieved tangible results where he did not betray his natural gift as an elegiac poet. He created new varieties of the genre, which were destined for a great future in Russian poetry. These are his message elegies and meditative, philosophical and historical elegies.
Thought, along with daydreaming, has always been characteristic inner world Batyushkova. Over the years, in his lyrics, meditation “under the burden of sadness” increasingly takes on a gloomy shade, one can hear “heartfelt melancholy,” “ heartbreak", tragic notes sound more and more clearly, and one of his last poems sounds like a unique result of the poet’s thoughts about life:
You know what you said((1824; p. 240))
Saying goodbye to life, gray-haired Melchizedek?
A man will be born a slave,
He will go to his grave as a slave,
And death will hardly tell him
Why did he walk through the valley of wonderful tears,
He suffered, cried, endured, disappeared.
On review literary heritage Batyushkov creates the impression of incompleteness. His poetry is deep in content and significance, but it, according to Belinsky’s definition, “is always indecisive, always wants to say something and seems to find no words” (5, 551).
Batyushkov did not manage to express much of what was inherent in his richly gifted nature. What prevented the poetry living in his soul from sounding in full voice? In Batyushkov’s poems one often encounters the bitterness of resentment that he is “unknown” and “forgotten.” But no less clearly sounds in them the bitter confession that inspiration is leaving him: “I feel that my gift in poetry has gone out...” (“Memories”, 1815). Batyushkov was experiencing a deep internal drama that accelerated the onset of the crisis, and he fell silent... But what he managed to accomplish gave him every right to identify the image of a true poet he created with himself:
Let the fierce rock play at their will,(("Message to I.M. Muravyov-Apostol", p. 187))
Even if unknown, without gold and honor,
With his head drooping, he wanders among people;
………………
But he will never betray the muses or himself.
In the very silence he will drink everything.
V. V. Tomashevsky wrote about the “odic nature” of the elegy “On the ruins of a castle in Sweden” and immediately added: “These poems turn into elegiac reflections, in which the breadth of the theme remains from the ode” (Tomashevsky B. K. N. Batyushkov, p. XXXVIII).
“Evening at Kantemir’s”, 1816 (see: Batyushkov K.N. Soch. M., 1955, p. 367).
See: Fridman N.V. Prose Batyushkova. M., 1965.
“Speech on the influence of light poetry on the language,” 1816 (Batyushkov K.N. Experiments in poetry and prose, p. 11).
Melchizedek is a person mentioned in the Bible (Genesis, chapter 14, v. 18–19). Symbol of highest wisdom.
Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov
Ideological artistic originality poetry of Batyushkov.
Belinsky, defining the originality of the poetry of the author of “The Bacchae,” wrote: “The direction of Batyushkov’s poetry is completely opposite to the direction of Zhukovsky’s poetry. If uncertainty and vagueness constitute the distinctive character of romanticism in the spirit of the Middle Ages, then Batyushkov is as much a classicist as Zhukovsky is a romantic.” But more often the critic praised him as a romantic.
Batyushkov's work is very complex and contradictory. This gives rise to great controversy in his assessment. Some critics and literary scholars consider him a neoclassicist (P. A. Pletnev, P. N. Sakulin, N. K. Piksanov). Based on the poet's obvious connections with sentimentalism, he is perceived either as a sentimentalist (A. N. Veselovsky) or as a pre-romanticist (N. V. Fridman). Exaggerating the similarities between Batyushkov and Zhukovsky, he was classified as a “dull” romanticist. But Batyushkov, experiencing at the beginning of his work the partial influence of classicism (“God”), and then humanistic-elegiac romanticism, did not belong to the true adherents of either classicism or elegiac romanticism. All of him literary activity, poetic and theoretical, at its core developed in a constant struggle with classicism and its epigones. Clearly aiming for classicism, he asked in his “Message to N. I. Gnedich”: “What’s in loud songs for me?” Batyushkov spoke in the difficult conditions of a transitional time: the passing but still active epigonic classicism, the strengthening of sentimentalism, the emergence and popularity of humanistic-elegiac romanticism. And this was reflected in his poetry. But, experiencing and overcoming the influence of literary influences, Batyushkov was formed primarily as a poet of hedonistic-humanistic romanticism. His poetry is characterized by the creation of an objective image of the lyrical hero, an appeal to reality, expressed, according to Belinsky, in particular, in the introduction of “events in the form of memories” into some elegies. All this was news in the literature of that time.
A large number of Batyushkov’s poems are called friendly messages. In these messages, problems of social behavior of the individual are raised and solved. Batyushkov's ideal artistic embodiment- definition, naturalness and sculpture. In the poems “To Malvina”, “The Merry Hour”, “Bacchante”, “Tavrida”, “I feel that my gift for poetry has gone out” and similar ones, he achieves almost realistic clarity and simplicity. In “Tavrida” the initial address is heartfelt: “Dear friend, my angel!” The image of the heroine is plastic, rosy and fresh, like a “rose of the field,” sharing “labor, worries and lunch” with her beloved. The expected circumstances of the heroes’ lives are also outlined here: a simple hut, “a home key, flowers and a rural vegetable garden.” Admiring this poem, Pushkin wrote: “In terms of feeling, in harmony, in the art of versification, in luxury and carelessness of imagination, Batyushkov’s best elegy.” But she is not inferior to the elegy “I feel that my gift in poetry has gone out.” With its sincerity of feelings and sincerity of its appeal to its beloved, it anticipates the best realistic elegies of Pushkin.
The details of the life of the lyrical hero (“Evening”, “My Penates”) indicate an invasion of everyday life into poetry. In the poem “Evening” (1810), the poet talks about the “staff” of a decrepit shepherdess, the “smoky shack”, the “sharp plow” of the oratai, the fragile “get along” and other specific details of the circumstances he recreates.
The vivid plasticity of Batyushkov’s best works is determined by the strict purposefulness of all means of depicting them. Thus, the poem “To Malvina” begins with a comparison of the beauty with a rose. The next four stanzas play on and expand on this comparison. And the graceful work ends with a wish-recognition: “Let the tender roses be proud On the lilies of your chest! Oh, dare I, my dear, confess? I would die like a rose on it.” The poem “Bacchae” recreates the image of the priestess of love. Already in the first stanza, which reports the rapid run of the Bacchus priestesses to the holiday, their emotionality, impetuosity, and passion are emphasized: “The winds noisily carried away their loud howls, splashes and groans.” The further content of the poem is the development of the motive of elemental passion. Belinsky wrote about the elegy “On the Ruins of a Castle in Sweden” (1814): “How everything in it is sustained, complete, finished! What a luxurious and at the same time elastic, strong verse!” (VII, 249).
Batyushkov's poetry is characterized by a complex evolution. If in early poems he tends to express and depict mental states more or less statically (“How happiness slowly comes”), then in the heyday of his creativity the poet depicts them in development, dialectically, in complex contradictions (“Separation”; “The Fate of Odysseus "; "To friend").
Batyushkov’s works, embodying natural, individual feelings and passions, did not fit into the usual genre-type formations and verse metro-rhythmic schemes of classicism, intended to express abstract feelings. Following Zhukovsky, the poet contributed his share to the development of syllabic-tonic verse. “Easy poetry,” which required naturalness and spontaneity, led to Batyushkov’s widespread use of iambic in different feet, characterized by colloquialism, expressiveness, and flexibility. According to I. N. Rozanov, almost two-thirds of his poems were written in this meter (“Dream”, “Message to N. I. Gnedich”, “Memories”, etc.). But for most of the most cheerful lyrical works glorifying love, Batyushkov preferred a playful trochee (“To Phyllis,” “False Fear,” “Lucky,” “Ghost,” “Bacchae”). Expanding the possibilities of syllabonics, the poet, in addition to tetrameter (“How happiness slowly comes”), hexameter (“Message to my poems”), iambic, also uses trimeter. The liveliness of the message “My Penates,” written in iambic trimeter, evoked the praise of Pushkin and Belinsky.
In a number of poems, Batyushkov showed examples of strophic art and remarkable mastery of the symmetrical construction of verse (“On the death of F. F. Kokoshkin’s wife”; “To a friend”, “Song of Harald the Bold”, “Crossing the Rhine”). Giving his poems ease, the spontaneity of the flow of feelings and thoughts, he more often uses free stanzas, but also strives for symmetry in it (“Merry Hour”).
Taking care of the naturalness of the poems, the poet pays a lot of attention to their euphony. He loves musical harmonies of consonants: “They play, dance and sing” (“To Malvina”); “The clock is winged! don’t fly” (“Advice to Friends”); “She shone in all her greatness” (“Memories”); “Horses with a silver rein!” (“Lucky”) Skillfully repeating, concentrating the sounds p, r, b, etc., the poet creates an entire musical symphony in the poem: “You awaken, O Baya, from the tomb When the aurora rays appear...” (1819).
Batyushkov is one of the first among poets to violate the absolute boundaries between genres established by the classicists. He gives the message the properties of either an elegy (“To a Friend”) or a historical elegy (“To Dashkov”), he enriches the genre of elegy and turns it into a lyric-epic work (“Crossing the Rhine”, “Hesiod and Omir - Rivals”, "Dying Tass")
Expanding the possibilities of spoken language in poetry, Batyushkov achieves spontaneity in poetry: “Give me a simple pipe, Friends! and sit around me under this thick elm shadow, where freshness breathes in the middle of the day" (“Advice to Friends”). But at the same time, where necessary, he turns to anaphors (“Excerpt from Song XXXIV of Furious Orland”), inversions (“Shadow of a Friend”) and other means of syntactic figurativeness.
By democratizing the literary language, the poet is not afraid of words and expressions from a wider circle than the society of the enlightened nobility that is kind to him. In him we will find appropriately used words: “crash” (“Advice to Friends”), “stomping” (“Joy”), “blurs” (“Prisoner”).
The plastic expressiveness of Batyushkov’s works is also helped by precise, concrete, visual means, in particular epithets. He has a red youth, a cheerful Bacchus, winged hours, green meadows, clear streams (“Advice to Friends”), playful and lively nymphs, a sweet dream (“Merry Hour”), an innocent maiden (“Source”), curly groves (“Joy”) "), the figure is slender, the girl's cheeks are flaming ("Bacchae").
But, having fully mastered the art of artistic expression and brilliantly demonstrated it in many beautiful lyrical creations, Batyushkov also left poems that were, to one degree or another, unfinished. This was also noted by Belinsky. According to his observation, the poet’s lyrical works are mostly “below the talent he discovered” and far from fulfilling “the expectations and demands he himself aroused.” They contain difficult, clumsy turns of phrase and phrases: “Rather, by sea you can comfortably sail on a long boat” (“N. I. Gnedich”, 1808). Or: “Led by the muses, he penetrated into the days of his youth” (“To Tassu”, 1808). They are not always free from unjustified archaism: in the elegy “The Dying Tass”, written in 1817, there are words that clearly fall out of its style: “koshnitsy”, “kissing”, “vesi”, “finger”, “oratay”, “ ripe”, “fire”, “woven”, “right hand”, “hundreds”, “voice”, “unbreakable”.
Batyushkov is a wonderful expert on antiquity. He introduces historical and mythological names of this world into his poems. The poem “Dream” recalls zephyrs, nymphs, graces, cupids, Anacreon, Sappho, Horace and Apollo, and in the poem “Advice to Friends” - nymphs, Bacchus, Eros. He has poems “To Malvina”, “Message to Chloe”, “To Phyllis”. However, the abundance of ancient names, historical and mythological in poems about modernity, undoubtedly introduces stylistic inconsistency. That is why Pushkin, regarding the message “My Penates,” remarked: “The main flaw in this charming message is the too obvious confusion of ancient mythological customs with the customs of a resident of a village near Moscow.” In this poem, in a “wretched hut” with a “decrepit and tripod table”, “hard bed”, “meager rubbish”, “cups”, “golden cup” and “bed of flowers” coexist.